id
int64 12
1.07M
| title
stringlengths 1
124
| text
stringlengths 0
228k
| paragraphs
list | abstract
stringlengths 0
123k
| date_created
stringlengths 0
20
| date_modified
stringlengths 20
20
| templates
list | url
stringlengths 31
154
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
16,645 |
Demographics of Kazakhstan
|
The demographics of Kazakhstan enumerate the demographic features of the population of Kazakhstan, including population growth, population density, ethnicity, education level, health, economic status, religious affiliations, and other aspects of the population. Some use the word Kazakh to refer to the Kazakh ethnic group and language (autochthonous to Kazakhstan as well as parts of China and Mongolia) and Kazakhstani to refer to Kazakhstan and its citizens regardless of ethnicity, but it is common to use Kazakh in both senses. According to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the population of Kazakhstan in 2050 could reach about 37.5 million.
Official estimates put the population of Kazakhstan at 18,137,300 as of December 2017, of which 44% is rural and 56% urban population. The 2009 population estimate is 6.8% higher than the population reported in the last census from January 1999 (slightly less than 15 million). These estimates have been confirmed by the 2009 population census, and this means that the decline in population that began after 1989 has been arrested and reversed.
In a report released by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) in September 2021, the level of urbanization in Kazakhstan is estimated to reach 69.1% by 2050.
The proportion of men makes up 48.3%, the proportion of women 51.7%. The proportion of Kazakhs makes up 63.6%, Russians 23.7%, Uzbeks 2.9%, Ukrainians 2.1%, Uygur 1.4%, Tatars 1.3%, Germans 1.1%, others 3.9%. Note that a large percentage of the population are of mixed ethnicity.
The first census in Kazakhstan was conducted under Russian Imperial rule in 1897, which estimated population at round 4 million people. Following censuses showed a growth until 1939, where numbers showed a decrease to 6,081 thousand relative to the previous census done 13 years earlier, due to famines of 1922 and 1933.
But since 1939 population has steadily increased to 16.5 million in 1989, according to corresponding year census. Official estimates indicate that the population continued to increase after 1989, peaking out at 17 million in 1993 and then declining to 15 million in the 1999 census. The downward trend continued through 2002, when the estimated population bottomed out at 14.9 million, and then resumed its growth. Significant numbers of Russians returned to Russia. Kazakhstan underwent significant urbanization during the first 50 years of the Soviet era, as the share of the rural population declined from more than 90% in the 1920s to less than 50% since the 1970s. The fertility rate declined to amongst the lower rates in the world in 1999 and increased to again amongst the higher rates in the world in 2021.
As of 2003, there were discrepancies between Western sources regarding the population of Kazakhstan. United States government sources, including the CIA World Fact Book and the US Census Bureau International Data Base, listed the population as 15,340,533, while the World Bank gave a 2002 estimate of 14,858,948. This discrepancy was presumably due to difficulties in measurement caused by the large migratory population in Kazakhstan, emigration, and low population density – only about 5.5 persons per km in an area the size of Western Europe.
Births and deaths until 1979 are estimates.
Population Estimates by Sex and Age Group (01.VII.2021) (Data refer to resident population.):
Structure of the population (01.01.2021) (Estimates):
The age group under 15 is considered below the working age, while the age group over 63(60) is above the working age (63 years for men, 60 for women).
Total fertility rate by regions of Kazakhstan: Mangystau – 3.80, South Kazakhstan – 3.71, Kyzylorda – 3.42, Atyrau – 3.29, Jambyl – 3.20, Aqtobe – 2.70, Almaty (province) – 2.65, Almaty (city) – 2.65, City of Astana – 2.44, West Kazakhstan – 2.29, Aqmola – 2.19, East Kazakhstan – 2.07, Qaragandy – 2.04, Pavlodar – 1.98, North Kazakhstan – 1.72, Qostanay – 1.70, Republic of Kazakhstan – 2.65. Thus it can be seen that fertility rate is higher in more traditionalist and religious south and west, and lower in the north and east, where the percentage of Slavic and German population is still relatively high.
According to the Kazakhstan Demographic and Health Survey in 1999, the TFR for Kazakhs was 2.5 and that for Russians was 1.38. TFR in 1989 for Kazakhs & Russians were 3.58 and 2.24 respectively.
Source: UN World Population Prospects
Kazakhstan's dominant ethnic group, the Kazakhs, traces its origins to the 15th century, when after the disintegration of Golden Horde, numbers of Turkic and Turco-Mongol tribes united to establish the Kazakh Khanate. With a cohesive culture and national identity, they constituted an absolute majority on the land until colonization by the Russian empire. Russian advances into the territory of Kazakhstan began in the late 18th century, when the Kazakhs nominally accepted Russian rule in exchange for protection against repeated attacks by the western Mongolian Kalmyks. In the 1890s, Russian peasants began to settle on the fertile lands of northern Kazakhstan, causing many Kazakhs to move eastwards into Chinese territory in search of new grazing grounds. The 1906 completion of the Trans-Aral Railway between Orenburg and Tashkent further facilitated Russian colonization.
The first collective farms were formed in Kazakhstan in 1921, populated primarily by Russians and Soviet deportees. In 1930, as part of the first Five Year Plan, the Kazakh Central Committee decreed the sedentarization of nomads and their incorporation into collectivized farms. This movement resulted in devastating famines, claiming the lives of an estimated 40% of ethnic Kazakhs (1.5 million), between 1930 and 1933. Hundreds of thousands also fled to China, Iran and Afghanistan. The famine made Kazakhs a minority of the population of Kazakhstan, and only after the republic gained independence in 1991 did Kazakhs have a slim demographic majority within Kazakhstan.
Demographics did shift in the 1950s and 1960s, when, as part of Nikita Khrushchev's Virgin Lands Campaign, hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens relocated to the Kazakh steppes in order to farm. As recognized in the 1959 census, the Kazaks became the second-largest ethnic group in Kazakhstan for the first time in recorded history, comprising just 30% of the total population of Kazakhstan. Russians numbered 42.7%.
Since the Soviet Union's collapse, the numbers of members of European ethnic groups has been falling and Asian groups have been continuously rising. According to 2023 estimates, the ethnic composition of Kazakhstan was approximately: 70.7% Kazakh, 15.2% Russian, 3.3% Uzbek, 1.9% Ukrainian, 1.5% Uyghur, 1.1% Tatar, 1.1% German, and <1% Korean, Turkish, Azerbaijani, Belarusian, Dungan, Kurdish, Tajik, Polish, Kyrgyz, Chechen.
For current data, use these sites.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The demographics of Kazakhstan enumerate the demographic features of the population of Kazakhstan, including population growth, population density, ethnicity, education level, health, economic status, religious affiliations, and other aspects of the population. Some use the word Kazakh to refer to the Kazakh ethnic group and language (autochthonous to Kazakhstan as well as parts of China and Mongolia) and Kazakhstani to refer to Kazakhstan and its citizens regardless of ethnicity, but it is common to use Kazakh in both senses. According to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the population of Kazakhstan in 2050 could reach about 37.5 million.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Official estimates put the population of Kazakhstan at 18,137,300 as of December 2017, of which 44% is rural and 56% urban population. The 2009 population estimate is 6.8% higher than the population reported in the last census from January 1999 (slightly less than 15 million). These estimates have been confirmed by the 2009 population census, and this means that the decline in population that began after 1989 has been arrested and reversed.",
"title": "Demographic trends"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In a report released by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) in September 2021, the level of urbanization in Kazakhstan is estimated to reach 69.1% by 2050.",
"title": "Demographic trends"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The proportion of men makes up 48.3%, the proportion of women 51.7%. The proportion of Kazakhs makes up 63.6%, Russians 23.7%, Uzbeks 2.9%, Ukrainians 2.1%, Uygur 1.4%, Tatars 1.3%, Germans 1.1%, others 3.9%. Note that a large percentage of the population are of mixed ethnicity.",
"title": "Demographic trends"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The first census in Kazakhstan was conducted under Russian Imperial rule in 1897, which estimated population at round 4 million people. Following censuses showed a growth until 1939, where numbers showed a decrease to 6,081 thousand relative to the previous census done 13 years earlier, due to famines of 1922 and 1933.",
"title": "Demographic trends"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "But since 1939 population has steadily increased to 16.5 million in 1989, according to corresponding year census. Official estimates indicate that the population continued to increase after 1989, peaking out at 17 million in 1993 and then declining to 15 million in the 1999 census. The downward trend continued through 2002, when the estimated population bottomed out at 14.9 million, and then resumed its growth. Significant numbers of Russians returned to Russia. Kazakhstan underwent significant urbanization during the first 50 years of the Soviet era, as the share of the rural population declined from more than 90% in the 1920s to less than 50% since the 1970s. The fertility rate declined to amongst the lower rates in the world in 1999 and increased to again amongst the higher rates in the world in 2021.",
"title": "Demographic trends"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "As of 2003, there were discrepancies between Western sources regarding the population of Kazakhstan. United States government sources, including the CIA World Fact Book and the US Census Bureau International Data Base, listed the population as 15,340,533, while the World Bank gave a 2002 estimate of 14,858,948. This discrepancy was presumably due to difficulties in measurement caused by the large migratory population in Kazakhstan, emigration, and low population density – only about 5.5 persons per km in an area the size of Western Europe.",
"title": "Demographic trends"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "",
"title": "Vital statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Births and deaths until 1979 are estimates.",
"title": "Vital statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "",
"title": "Vital statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Population Estimates by Sex and Age Group (01.VII.2021) (Data refer to resident population.):",
"title": "Vital statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Structure of the population (01.01.2021) (Estimates):",
"title": "Vital statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The age group under 15 is considered below the working age, while the age group over 63(60) is above the working age (63 years for men, 60 for women).",
"title": "Vital statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Total fertility rate by regions of Kazakhstan: Mangystau – 3.80, South Kazakhstan – 3.71, Kyzylorda – 3.42, Atyrau – 3.29, Jambyl – 3.20, Aqtobe – 2.70, Almaty (province) – 2.65, Almaty (city) – 2.65, City of Astana – 2.44, West Kazakhstan – 2.29, Aqmola – 2.19, East Kazakhstan – 2.07, Qaragandy – 2.04, Pavlodar – 1.98, North Kazakhstan – 1.72, Qostanay – 1.70, Republic of Kazakhstan – 2.65. Thus it can be seen that fertility rate is higher in more traditionalist and religious south and west, and lower in the north and east, where the percentage of Slavic and German population is still relatively high.",
"title": "Vital statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "According to the Kazakhstan Demographic and Health Survey in 1999, the TFR for Kazakhs was 2.5 and that for Russians was 1.38. TFR in 1989 for Kazakhs & Russians were 3.58 and 2.24 respectively.",
"title": "Vital statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "",
"title": "Vital statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Source: UN World Population Prospects",
"title": "Vital statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Kazakhstan's dominant ethnic group, the Kazakhs, traces its origins to the 15th century, when after the disintegration of Golden Horde, numbers of Turkic and Turco-Mongol tribes united to establish the Kazakh Khanate. With a cohesive culture and national identity, they constituted an absolute majority on the land until colonization by the Russian empire. Russian advances into the territory of Kazakhstan began in the late 18th century, when the Kazakhs nominally accepted Russian rule in exchange for protection against repeated attacks by the western Mongolian Kalmyks. In the 1890s, Russian peasants began to settle on the fertile lands of northern Kazakhstan, causing many Kazakhs to move eastwards into Chinese territory in search of new grazing grounds. The 1906 completion of the Trans-Aral Railway between Orenburg and Tashkent further facilitated Russian colonization.",
"title": "Ethnic groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The first collective farms were formed in Kazakhstan in 1921, populated primarily by Russians and Soviet deportees. In 1930, as part of the first Five Year Plan, the Kazakh Central Committee decreed the sedentarization of nomads and their incorporation into collectivized farms. This movement resulted in devastating famines, claiming the lives of an estimated 40% of ethnic Kazakhs (1.5 million), between 1930 and 1933. Hundreds of thousands also fled to China, Iran and Afghanistan. The famine made Kazakhs a minority of the population of Kazakhstan, and only after the republic gained independence in 1991 did Kazakhs have a slim demographic majority within Kazakhstan.",
"title": "Ethnic groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Demographics did shift in the 1950s and 1960s, when, as part of Nikita Khrushchev's Virgin Lands Campaign, hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens relocated to the Kazakh steppes in order to farm. As recognized in the 1959 census, the Kazaks became the second-largest ethnic group in Kazakhstan for the first time in recorded history, comprising just 30% of the total population of Kazakhstan. Russians numbered 42.7%.",
"title": "Ethnic groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Since the Soviet Union's collapse, the numbers of members of European ethnic groups has been falling and Asian groups have been continuously rising. According to 2023 estimates, the ethnic composition of Kazakhstan was approximately: 70.7% Kazakh, 15.2% Russian, 3.3% Uzbek, 1.9% Ukrainian, 1.5% Uyghur, 1.1% Tatar, 1.1% German, and <1% Korean, Turkish, Azerbaijani, Belarusian, Dungan, Kurdish, Tajik, Polish, Kyrgyz, Chechen.",
"title": "Ethnic groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "For current data, use these sites.",
"title": "External links"
}
] |
The demographics of Kazakhstan enumerate the demographic features of the population of Kazakhstan, including population growth, population density, ethnicity, education level, health, economic status, religious affiliations, and other aspects of the population. Some use the word Kazakh to refer to the Kazakh ethnic group and language and Kazakhstani to refer to Kazakhstan and its citizens regardless of ethnicity, but it is common to use Kazakh in both senses. According to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the population of Kazakhstan in 2050 could reach about 37.5 million.
|
2002-02-25T15:43:11Z
|
2023-12-19T19:40:41Z
|
[
"Template:Dead link",
"Template:Demographics of Europe",
"Template:Asia in topic",
"Template:Small",
"Template:Decrease",
"Template:Clear",
"Template:In lang",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Asia topic",
"Template:Refbegin",
"Template:Citation",
"Template:Redirect",
"Template:GraphChart",
"Template:Bar box",
"Template:Nonspecific",
"Template:Cbignore",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Decreasepositive",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Refend",
"Template:Europe topic",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Infobox place demographics",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Kazakhstan topics"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Kazakhstan
|
16,646 |
Politics of Kazakhstan
|
The politics of Kazakhstan takes place in the framework of a presidential republic, whereby the President of Kazakhstan is head of state and nominates the head of government. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of parliament.
None of the elections held in Kazakhstan have been considered free or fair by Western standards with issues noted including ballot tampering, multiple voting, harassment of opposition candidates and press censorship.
The president is elected by popular vote for a five-year term. The prime minister and first deputy prime minister are appointed by the president. Council of Ministers is also appointed by the president. President Nazarbayev expanded his presidential powers by decree: only he can initiate constitutional amendments, appoint and dismiss the government, dissolve Parliament, call referendums at his discretion, and appoint administrative heads of regions and cities.
The president is the head of state. He also is the commander in chief of the armed forces and may veto legislation that has been passed by the Parliament. President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who was in office since Kazakhstan became independent, won a new 7-year term in the 1999 election that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said fell short of international standards. A major political opponent, former prime minister Akezhan Kazhegeldin, was prohibited from running against the president because he had attended an unauthorized meeting of "the movement for free elections". On top of this the election was unconstitutionally called two years ahead of schedule. Free access to the media is also denied to opposing opinions. In 2002 a law set very stringent requirements for the maintenance of legal status of a political party, which lowered the number of legal parties from 19 in 2002 to 8 in 2003. The prime minister, who serves at the pleasure of the president, chairs the Cabinet of Ministers and serves as Kazakhstan's head of government. There are three deputy prime ministers and 16 ministers in the Cabinet. Bakhytzhan Sagintayev became the Prime Minister in September 2016.
The legislature, known as the Parliament (Parliament), has two chambers. The Lower House Assembly (Mazhilis) has 107 seats, elected for a four-year term, 98 seats are from party lists, 9 - from Assembly of People. All MPs are elected for 5 years. The Upper House Senate has 47 members, 40 of whom are elected for six-year terms in double-seat constituencies by the local assemblies, half renewed every two years, and 7 presidential appointees. In addition, ex-presidents are ex officio senators for life. Majilis deputies and the government both have the right of legislative initiative, though most legislation considered by the Parliament is proposed by the government. Several deputies are elected from the Assembly of People of Kazakhstan.
There are 65 judges on the Supreme Court of Kazakhstan. There are seven members of the Constitutional Council. Out of the 7 members, 3 are appointed by the president.
There are local and oblast (regional) level courts, and a national-level Supreme Court. Local level courts serve as courts of first instance for less serious crimes such as theft and vandalism. Oblast level courts hear more serious criminal cases and also hear cases in rural areas where no local courts have been established. A judgment by a local court may be appealed to the oblast level. The Supreme Court is a cassation court that hears appeals from the oblast courts.
The constitution establishes a seven-member Constitutional Council to determine the constitutionality of laws adopted by the legislature. It also rules on challenges to elections and referendums and interprets the constitution. The president appoints three of its members, including the chair.
Under constitutional amendments of 1998, the president appoints a chairperson of a Higher Judicial Council, which nominates judges for the Supreme Court. The Council consists of the chairperson of the Constitutional Council, the chairperson of the Supreme Court, the Prosecutor General, the Minister of Justice, senators, judges, and other persons appointed by the president. The president recommends and the Senate (upper legislative chamber) approves these nominees for the Supreme Court. Oblast judges (nominated by the Higher Judicial Council) are appointed by the president. Lower level judges are appointed by the president from a list presented by the Higher Judicial Council. Under legislation approved in 2000, judges serve for life.
Early presidential elections were held in Kazakhstan on 9 June 2019 following the resignation of long-term president Nursultan Nazarbayev. Originally scheduled for 2020, seven candidates were registered to participate in the elections, including incumbent president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who had assumed the presidency three months before the elections following the resignation of Nazarbayev. Tokayev was subsequently re-elected with 71% of the vote. His closest challenger, Amirjan Qosanov of the Ult Tagdyry party, received 16%.
In 1999, Kazakhstan applied for observer status at the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly. The official response of the Assembly was that Kazakhstan could apply for full membership, because it is partially located in Europe, but that they would not be granted any status whatsoever at the Council until their democracy and human rights records improved. Improvement in these areas has been made for in 2012, Kazakhstan was elected by United Nations members to serve on the UN Human Rights Council. Despite this, Kazakhstan is still considered to have a very poor human rights record by analysts such as The Economist Intelligence Unit.
AsDB, CIS, EAPC, EBRD, ECE, ECO, ESCAP, FAO, IAEA, IBRD, ICAO, IDA, IDB, IFAD, IFC, IFRCS (associate), ILO, IMF, IMO, Interpol, IOC, IOM, ISO, ITU, NAM (observer), NSG, OAS (observer), OIC, OPCW, OSCE, PFP, SCO, UN, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNIDO, UPU, WCL, WFTU, WHO, WIPO, WMO, WToO, WTrO (observer)
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The politics of Kazakhstan takes place in the framework of a presidential republic, whereby the President of Kazakhstan is head of state and nominates the head of government. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of parliament.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "None of the elections held in Kazakhstan have been considered free or fair by Western standards with issues noted including ballot tampering, multiple voting, harassment of opposition candidates and press censorship.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The president is elected by popular vote for a five-year term. The prime minister and first deputy prime minister are appointed by the president. Council of Ministers is also appointed by the president. President Nazarbayev expanded his presidential powers by decree: only he can initiate constitutional amendments, appoint and dismiss the government, dissolve Parliament, call referendums at his discretion, and appoint administrative heads of regions and cities.",
"title": "Executive branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The president is the head of state. He also is the commander in chief of the armed forces and may veto legislation that has been passed by the Parliament. President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who was in office since Kazakhstan became independent, won a new 7-year term in the 1999 election that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said fell short of international standards. A major political opponent, former prime minister Akezhan Kazhegeldin, was prohibited from running against the president because he had attended an unauthorized meeting of \"the movement for free elections\". On top of this the election was unconstitutionally called two years ahead of schedule. Free access to the media is also denied to opposing opinions. In 2002 a law set very stringent requirements for the maintenance of legal status of a political party, which lowered the number of legal parties from 19 in 2002 to 8 in 2003. The prime minister, who serves at the pleasure of the president, chairs the Cabinet of Ministers and serves as Kazakhstan's head of government. There are three deputy prime ministers and 16 ministers in the Cabinet. Bakhytzhan Sagintayev became the Prime Minister in September 2016.",
"title": "Executive branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The legislature, known as the Parliament (Parliament), has two chambers. The Lower House Assembly (Mazhilis) has 107 seats, elected for a four-year term, 98 seats are from party lists, 9 - from Assembly of People. All MPs are elected for 5 years. The Upper House Senate has 47 members, 40 of whom are elected for six-year terms in double-seat constituencies by the local assemblies, half renewed every two years, and 7 presidential appointees. In addition, ex-presidents are ex officio senators for life. Majilis deputies and the government both have the right of legislative initiative, though most legislation considered by the Parliament is proposed by the government. Several deputies are elected from the Assembly of People of Kazakhstan.",
"title": "Legislative branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "There are 65 judges on the Supreme Court of Kazakhstan. There are seven members of the Constitutional Council. Out of the 7 members, 3 are appointed by the president.",
"title": "Judicial branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "There are local and oblast (regional) level courts, and a national-level Supreme Court. Local level courts serve as courts of first instance for less serious crimes such as theft and vandalism. Oblast level courts hear more serious criminal cases and also hear cases in rural areas where no local courts have been established. A judgment by a local court may be appealed to the oblast level. The Supreme Court is a cassation court that hears appeals from the oblast courts.",
"title": "Judicial branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The constitution establishes a seven-member Constitutional Council to determine the constitutionality of laws adopted by the legislature. It also rules on challenges to elections and referendums and interprets the constitution. The president appoints three of its members, including the chair.",
"title": "Judicial branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Under constitutional amendments of 1998, the president appoints a chairperson of a Higher Judicial Council, which nominates judges for the Supreme Court. The Council consists of the chairperson of the Constitutional Council, the chairperson of the Supreme Court, the Prosecutor General, the Minister of Justice, senators, judges, and other persons appointed by the president. The president recommends and the Senate (upper legislative chamber) approves these nominees for the Supreme Court. Oblast judges (nominated by the Higher Judicial Council) are appointed by the president. Lower level judges are appointed by the president from a list presented by the Higher Judicial Council. Under legislation approved in 2000, judges serve for life.",
"title": "Judicial branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Early presidential elections were held in Kazakhstan on 9 June 2019 following the resignation of long-term president Nursultan Nazarbayev. Originally scheduled for 2020, seven candidates were registered to participate in the elections, including incumbent president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who had assumed the presidency three months before the elections following the resignation of Nazarbayev. Tokayev was subsequently re-elected with 71% of the vote. His closest challenger, Amirjan Qosanov of the Ult Tagdyry party, received 16%.",
"title": "Political parties and elections"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In 1999, Kazakhstan applied for observer status at the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly. The official response of the Assembly was that Kazakhstan could apply for full membership, because it is partially located in Europe, but that they would not be granted any status whatsoever at the Council until their democracy and human rights records improved. Improvement in these areas has been made for in 2012, Kazakhstan was elected by United Nations members to serve on the UN Human Rights Council. Despite this, Kazakhstan is still considered to have a very poor human rights record by analysts such as The Economist Intelligence Unit.",
"title": "International organization participation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "AsDB, CIS, EAPC, EBRD, ECE, ECO, ESCAP, FAO, IAEA, IBRD, ICAO, IDA, IDB, IFAD, IFC, IFRCS (associate), ILO, IMF, IMO, Interpol, IOC, IOM, ISO, ITU, NAM (observer), NSG, OAS (observer), OIC, OPCW, OSCE, PFP, SCO, UN, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNIDO, UPU, WCL, WFTU, WHO, WIPO, WMO, WToO, WTrO (observer)",
"title": "International organization participation"
}
] |
The politics of Kazakhstan takes place in the framework of a presidential republic, whereby the President of Kazakhstan is head of state and nominates the head of government. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of parliament. None of the elections held in Kazakhstan have been considered free or fair by Western standards with issues noted including ballot tampering, multiple voting, harassment of opposition candidates and press censorship.
|
2002-06-13T21:02:27Z
|
2023-10-19T07:05:36Z
|
[
"Template:Short description",
"Template:More citations needed",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Politics of Asia",
"Template:Kazakhstan topics",
"Template:Politics of Kazakhstan",
"Template:Elect",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Authority control"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Kazakhstan
|
16,647 |
Economy of Kazakhstan
|
The economy of Kazakhstan is the largest in Central Asia in both absolute and per capita terms. In 2021, Kazakhstan attracted more than US$370 billion of foreign investments since becoming an independent republic after the collapse of the former Soviet Union.
It possesses oil reserves as well as minerals and metals. It also has considerable agricultural potential, with its vast steppe lands accommodating both livestock and grain production. The mountains in the south are important for apples and walnuts; both species grow wild there. Kazakhstan's industrial sector rests on the extraction and processing of these natural resources.
The Dissolution of the Soviet Union and the collapse of demand for Kazakhstan's traditional heavy industry products have resulted in a sharp decline of the economy since 1991, with the steepest annual decline occurring in 1994. In 1995–97 the pace of the government program of economic reform and privatization quickened, resulting in a substantial shifting of assets into the private sector. Kazakhstan was granted "market economy country" status by the European Union and the United States, in 2000 and 2002 respectively.
The December 1996 signing of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium agreement to build a new pipeline from western Kazakhstan's Tengiz Field through Russia to the Black Sea increased prospects for substantially larger oil exports until Putin took issue with the lukewarm support he experienced in the wake of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine from Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. Kazakhstan's economy turned downward in 1998 with a 2.5% decline in GDP growth due to slumping oil prices and the August financial crisis in Russia. A bright spot in 1999 was the recovery of international petroleum prices, which, combined with a well-timed tenge devaluation and a bumper grain harvest, pulled the economy out of recession.
GDP per capita shrank by 26% in the 1990s. In the 2000s, Kazakhstan's economy grew sharply, aided by increased prices on world markets for Kazakhstan's leading exports: oil, metals and grain. GDP grew 9.6% in 2000, up from 1.7% in 1999. In 2006, extremely high GDP growth had been sustained, and grew by 10.6%. Business with the booming economies of Russia and China, as well as neighboring Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) nations have helped to propel this growth. The increased economic growth also led to a turn-around in government finances, with the budget moving from a cash deficit of 3.7% of GDP in 1999 to 0.1% surplus in 2000. The country experienced a slowdown in economic growth from 2014, sparked by falling oil prices and the effects of the Russo-Ukrainian War. The country's currency was devalued by 19% in 2014 and by 22% in 2015.
In 2017, the World Economic Forum compiled its Global Competitiveness Ranking, ranking Kazakhstan 57th out of 144 countries. The ranking considers multiple macroeconomic and financial factors, such as market size, GDP, tax rates, infrastructure development, etc. In 2012, the World Economic Forum listed corruption as the biggest problem in doing business in the country, while the World Bank listed Kazakhstan as a corruption hotspot, on a par with Angola, Bolivia, Kenya, Libya and Pakistan. Kazakhstan scored 31 points out of 100 in Transparency International's 2018 edition of the Corruption Perceptions Index, indicating high levels of corruption.
Cyril Muller, the World Bank Vice President for Europe and Central Asia, visited Astana in January 2017. He praised the country's progress, made during the 25-year partnership with the World Bank. Muller also talked about Kazakhstan's improved positioning in the World Bank's Doing Business Report 2017, where Kazakhstan ranked 35th out of 190 countries worldwide. After 2000, the government conducted several public sector reforms and adopted the New Public Management (NPM) approach, which was aimed at reducing costs and increasing the efficiency of the public service delivery.
Kazakhstan secured the 3rd position in the Central and South Asia regional ranking of the 2018 Global Innovation Index (GII) released by World Intellectual Property Organization.
In the 2014 Economic Freedom Index published by The Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC, Kazakhstan has gained 22 points over the past 17 years, which is noted by the authors as among the 20 best improvements recorded by any country. Kazakhstan's economic freedom score is 69.1, equalling "moderately free". Its overall score has increased by 0.1 point, with significant improvements in investment freedom and government integrity offsetting steep declines in fiscal health and monetary freedom. Kazakhstan is ranked 11th among 43 countries in the Asia–Pacific region, and its overall score is above the regional and world averages.
This chart shows trends in the gross domestic product of Kazakhstan at market prices estimated by the International Monetary Fund, with figures in millions of tenge.
The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2017. Inflation under 5% is in green.
Kazakhstan's GDP grew 4.1% in real terms during the period from January to September 2011.
Kazakhstan's real GDP growth was projected to reach 4.3% in 2014, the main driving force of the economy in Kazakhstan in 2014 is the consumer sector; the consumption in Kazakhstan is mainly boosted by the retail lending.
According to the Agency of Statistics of the Republic of Kazakhstan the country's GDP growth in the first quarter of 2014 was 3.8%.
The country devalued its currency by 19% in February 2014. The country experienced a slowdown in economic growth from 2014 sparked by falling oil prices and the effects of the 2014 Russo-Ukrainian War.
The Government of Kazakhstan signed a Framework Partnership Agreement with IBRD, IFC, MIGA on 1 May 2014; according to this Agreement the World Bank will allocate US$2.5 trillion to Kazakhstan, for the diversification of the economy and reaching the sustainable development.
The World Bank report shows that Kazakhstan, as of 2015, reached the level of an upper-middle-income country with a GDP of US$170 billion.
Another 22% devaluation occurred in August 2015.
Foreign direct investment increased 30 percent in 2015 in Kazakhstan's agricultural industry and 80 percent in the country's petroleum products sector.
In 2016 Kazakhstan's economy started to recover from the crisis caused by low oil prices and the tenge devaluation. According to the Minister of National Economy of Kazakhstan, in nine months of 2016 the GDP growth reached 0.4%. Sectors of economy that experienced the highest growth included construction (6.9%), agriculture (4.9%), and transport sector (4.0%).
The GDP per capita in current US$ in Kazakhstan declined by about 40% between 2013 compared and 2017.
Kazakhstan was ranked 25th out of 190 countries in the World Bank's Doing Business 2020 report. The country improved its position by 3 points, from 28 to 25, in the 2020 ranking compared to the previous year. This placed Kazakhstan ahead of countries such as Iceland (26th place), Austria (27th place), Russia (28th place), Japan (29th place), etc.
Kazakhstan has prioritized the development of non-oil sectors of economy, which accounted for 85% of the country's economic growth in 2019.
In the first seven months of 2020, Kazakhstan exported significantly more goods than the previous year, including a seven-fold increase in automobile exports. The country's GDP decreased by 3 percent due to the decline in the service sector because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the real sector of the economy grew significantly. Agriculture, construction, and manufacturing all saw increases in production in the first eight months of the year.
The biggest growth in 2020 occurred in the automotive industry (+53.6%), pharmaceuticals (+39.7%), processed metal products (+19.5%), mechanical engineering (+16.5%), as well as in light industry (+16.4%). The industries in the service sector that demonstrated growth included construction (+10.7%) and information and communications (+8.2%).
Kazakhstan is the leading country in the world for uranium production volumes with 35% of global production, and it has the world's second biggest uranium reserves after Australia.
Oil and gas is the leading economic sector. In 2000, Kazakhstan produced 35,252,000 metric tons of oil (700,000 barrels per day), a 17.4% increase over 1999's 30,025,000 tons. It exported 28,883,000 tons of oil in 2000, up 38.8% from 20,813,000 tons in 1999. Production in 2001 has been growing at roughly 20%, on target to meet the government's forecast of 40,100,000 tons of oil (800,000 barrels per day). In 2000, production reached 11.5 km³ of natural gas, up from 8.2 km³ in 1999.
Kazakhstan has the potential to be a world-class oil exporter in the medium term. The landmark foreign investment in Kazakhstan is the TengizChevroil joint venture, owned 50% by ChevronTexaco, 25% by ExxonMobil, 20% by KazMunaiGas of Kazakhstan, and 5% by LukArco of Russia. The Karachaganak natural gas and gas condensate field is being developed by BG, Agip, ChevronTexaco, and Lukoil. The Agip-led Offshore Kazakhstan Consortium has discovered potentially huge Kashagan oil field in the northern Caspian. Kazakhstan's economic future is linked to oil and gas development. GDP growth will depend on the price of oil, as well as the ability to develop new deposits.
January 2022 began with thousands of people returning to the streets of Kazakhstan to protest against the surging gas prices, recording four straight days of demonstrations, which is claimed to be the biggest protests to have taken place in the oil-rich country in decades. Protesters invaded into government buildings and took over police vehicles despite a strict emergency led by the state being in place.
Kazakhstan is a leading producer of many mineral commodities, including salt, uranium, ferrochrome, titanium sponge, cadmium, potash, magnesium, rhenium, copper, bauxite, gallium and zinc.
The country was the world's largest producer of uranium in 2018. In 2019, the country was the world's 10th largest producer of gold; 11th largest world producer of copper; 3rd largest worldwide producer of chromium; 9th largest world producer of bauxite; 9th largest world producer of zinc; 10th largest worldwide producer of antimony; 12th largest world producer of iron ore; 12th largest world producer of lead; 14th largest world producer of manganese; 17th largest world producer of phosphate; 6th largest world producer of bismuth, and the 7th largest world producer of sulfur.
In June 2014 the CKD (Complete Knock-Down) assembly of Toyota Fortuner was launched in Kostanay, Kazakhstan. The expected annual output makes around 3,000 cars.
The Kazakhstan's car industry was developing rapidly in 2014 producing US$2 billion worth of products annually. Unfortunately, the industry experienced a decline despite high hopes, with sales dwindling to only 46,000 in 2016.
In 2020, the Kazakh economy observed the biggest growth in its automotive industry, which saw a 53.6% growth, despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
GE Transportation acquired 50% stake in Lokomotiv Kurastyru Zauyty in a joint venture with Kazakhstan's national railway company Temir Zholy.
On 22 December 2014 the World Bank approved an US$88 million loan that would support Kazakhstan's efforts to facilitate commercially and socially viable innovation in technology. The Fostering Productive Innovation Project aims to improve the country in areas that are able to foster and support technological innovation.
According to A.T. Kearney's 2015 Global Retail Development Index, Kazakhstan ranked 13 out of 30. In the 2016th Index, Kazakhstan ranked as the 4th best developing country for retail investments, scoring 56.5 out of 100. Kazakhstan's market attracted large international retailers, such as French retail chains Carrefour and Leroy Merlin, as well as food giants McDonald's and KFC.
Kazakhstan is the ninth-largest country by area and the largest landlocked country. Tourism is not a major component of the economy. As of 2014, tourism has accounted for 0.3% of Kazakhstan GDP, but the government had plans to increase it to 3% by 2020.
Gambling in Kazakhstan was developing already during the day of Czarist Russia, then lotteries were organized. In 1698, Czar Peter I signed a decree which allowed organized lotteries for the first time. In later years lotteries were organized by the Ministry of Finance of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which included Kazakhstan.
The Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Kazakhstan started issuing licenses for gambling activity in 1999.
In 2007 the government of Kazakhstan has introduced a new law which ordered banning gambling on the territory of Kazakhstan besides 2 places which were to become the examples of Russia's special gambling zones. Casinos existing outside these areas had to be closed or moved to places where they could operate legally. The first legal casino opened after the introduction of new law was Casino Flamingo in Kapchagay, which was opened on 1 October 2008.
In 2018, the income of gambling companies in Kazakhstan amounted to ₸19.5 billion. This is 16.1% more than in 2017. Then this amount was at the level of ₸16.8 billion.
As of 2016, the total housing area in Kazakhstan was 342.6 million square metres (3,688 million square feet), an average of 21.4 m (230 sq ft) per person. The housing area per person increased by 20% in the period from 2005 to 2016, but remained below the UN's recommended standard of 30 square metres (320 square feet) per person.
Kazakhstan has 11 transcontinental routes, including rail and road routes, and many oil and gas pipelines. The country's geographic position allows for the transporting of goods from China to Europe three to four times faster than other routes.
Sherin Suzhikova, Counselor of Kazakhstan's Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Chao Yon-chuan, Secretary-General of the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA), signed an agreement on 13 October 2006 in Taipei to improve economic relations through "exchanges of market information and visits by trade professionals." TAITRA has an office in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
In 2006, North Dakota's then Lieutenant Governor Jack Dalrymple led an 18-member delegation of the North Dakota Trade Office representing seven North Dakota companies and Dickinson State University on a trip to Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Russia. North Dakota exports mostly machinery to Kazakhstan, the eighth largest destination for North Dakotan exports; machinery exports increased from US$22,000 to US$25 million between 2000 and 2005.
The percentage of high-tech exports (as a share of manufactured exports) from Kazakhstan has grown from just 4.46% in 1995 to 37.17% in 2014. One of the main factors that triggered this growth was the Technology Commercialization Project developed and implemented by the World Bank Group and the Kazakh Government. Through this project, 65 Kazakh tech startups received funding and training helping them get their innovations into markets.
China is Kazakhstan's important trade partner. In late March 2015 the two countries signed 33 deals worth US$23.6 billion. The deals cover different industries, such as oil refining, cars, steel.
Kazakhstan's foreign trade turnover in 2018 comprised $93.5bn that is 19.7% more compared to 2017. The volume of export in the reporting period made $67bn (+25.7%) and import was $32.5bn (+9.9%).
The Government of Kazakhstan has been supporting Kazakhstani exporters operating in foreign markets through their QazTrade incubator. Since September 2019, the program selects businesses and assists them with navigating bureaucracy and connecting to foreign markets the government deems a priority, including Germany, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, and China.
The Kazakh government approved in August 2017 a national investment strategy, which seeks to increase foreign investments by 26% in five years and create a more favorable investment climate. The strategy also identified 27 countries as the most important sources investments. These countries include the US, UK, China, Russia, Germany, France, Italy, Turkey, Japan, the UAE, South Korea and others. The Ministry for Investment and Development works with Ministry of Foreign Affairs to develop individual plans of actions for each country.
In order to achieve the 26% growth of FDI, Kazakhstan executes economic diplomacy. Key actors of Kazakhstan's foreign economic policy are the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Trade and Integration of Kazakhstan, KazakhInvest and Qaztrade.
In October 2014, Kazakhstan introduced its first overseas dollar bonds in 14 years. Kazakhstan issued $2.5 billion of 10- and 30-year bonds on 5 October 2014, in what was the nation's first dollar-denominated overseas sale since 2000. Kazakhstan sold $1.5 billion of 10-year dollar bonds to yield 1.5 percentage points above midswaps and $1 billion of 30-year debt at two percentage points over midswaps. The country drew bids for $11 billion.
Kazakhstan is the largest recipient of total and annual foreign direct investment of all CIS countries. The OECD has recognized the strides the government has made in opening the country to international investment and in improving the policy framework for investment as part of their efforts to diversify the economy. In 2017 Kazakhstan was invited by OECD to become Adherent to the OECD Declaration on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises.
In June 2014 Kazakhstan's president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, signed into law tax concessions to promote foreign investment, including a 10-year exemption from corporation tax, an 8-year exemption from property tax, and a 10-year freeze on most other taxes. Other measures include a refund on capital investments of up to 30 percent once a production facility is in operation. In order to attract investment, Kazakhstan lowered the tax burden for foreign investors. The corporate income tax rate dropped from 30% to 20%. The government also gradually reduced VAT from 16% in 2006 to 12% in 2009.
As of 30 September 2014, total foreign investment in Kazakhstan reached US$211.5 billion. Of that total, net foreign Direct Investment constituted US$129.3 billion, with portfolio and other investments comprising the remaining US$82.2 billion.
Reflecting Kazakhstan's ambitious FDI roadmap, a three-year goal to increase FDI by US$30 billion by 2025 was announced.
As of July 2015, Kazakhstan attracted US$16 billion in the manufacturing industry over the past five years, which is 2.5 times more than over the previous five years. Kazakhstan put into operation four hundred new products, such as car industry, railway engineering, manufacture of basic chemical products, uranium industry, the industry of rare earth metals. The volume of new enterprises amounted to ₸580 billion.
In June 2015 – June 2016 the total number of enterprises owned by foreign investors in Kazakhstan increased by 2.3 percent and reached 9,000. 8,691 foreign companies operating in the Kazakhstan are small businesses.
As of the beginning of 2016, the World Bank invested over US$6.8 billion in Kazakhstan since 1992. These funds were invested in development of roads and social infrastructure, increasing of competitiveness of SME's, education, healthcare, environment protection, etc.
In 2012, Kazakhstan conducted the first review of the OECD investment standards, which resulted in 12 recommendations on how to improve the investment climate of the country. After adopting Law on public – private partnership that extends the use of the mechanism and revising standards of intellectual property protection and the rules of attracting foreign labor, Kazakhstan started a second review of the OECD in 2016.
According to Ministry of Investment and Development of Kazakhstan, as of May 2016, attraction of foreign investment in oil refining increased by 80%, food industry – 30%, in engineering – by 7 times. The Ministry also reported that there were 200 investment projects in country worth more than $40 billion.
In mid-2016 a group of companies led by Chevron announced a US$36.8 billion investment in Kazakhstan's Tengiz oil field.
In the first quarter of 2016, Kazakhstan attracted US$2.7 billion in foreign direct investment. The largest investor in the Kazakh economy is the Netherlands ($66 billion), followed by the United States (US$26 billion) and Switzerland (US$15 billion). According to the Chairman of Kazakhstan National Bank, a key factor triggering the increased inflow of foreign investment is implementation of the Nurly Zhol state programme that provides for the creation of favourable conditions. As of September 2016, foreign investments in the Kazakh economy totalled US$5.7 billion, which is 4,8% more than during the same period of the previous year.
Summarizing 2016, Kazakhstan's Foreign Minister Erlan Idrissov noted that Kazakhstan attracted US$20 billion of foreign direct investment during the year. The gross inflow of foreign direct investment in 2016 grew by 40% compared to 2015 and surpassed the previous record of 2008. The number of foreign businesses operating in Kazakhstan increased 25% in 2016 compared to 2015. The main recipients of foreign direct investment were the mining industry, geological exploration and processing. The top four investors include the Netherlands, the United States, Switzerland and France.
Kazakhstan introduced a visa-free regime for citizens of EAEU, OECD, Monaco, Malaysia, United Arab Emirates, and Singapore starting from 2017. The visa-free entry is expected to increase cooperation with investors and businesses of these countries.
Agriculture is one of Kazakhstan's most important sectors where the country seeks to attract foreign investments to boost the competitiveness of this sector of economy. To that end, in 2017 KazAgro negotiated with the European Investment Bank (EIB) a €200 million loan for a period of 15 years.
Kazakhstan attracted $330 billion in foreign direct investment from more than 120 countries since 1991 until 2019. More than 50% of FDI in Kazakhstan was directed from the European Union (EU). 15%, or $48.4 billion, of FDI originated from the United States, and 5% from the United Kingdom and China each. President Tokayev set foreign investment attraction as a priority in his 2 September 2019 state-of-the-nation address. In 2018, Kazakhstan attracted $24 billion of foreign direct investments. The Foreign Ministry of Kazakhstan plays an important role in attracting foreign investors to the country.
In 2019, gross FDI inflow to Kazakhstan amounted to US$24.1 billion. In 2019, mining and metallurgy accounted for the largest volume of foreign investment – 56.3%. The industry attracted record US$13.586 billion in foreign investment. Manufacturing and trade were second and third most attractive sectors for investors. US$3.5 billion of FDI was directed into the manufacturing industry, while trade attracted $3 billion in 2019.
The top five countries investing the most into the economy of Kazakhstan remained unchanged in 2019. The Netherlands invested $7.3 billion in Kazakhstan (30.2%), followed by the USA — $5.5 billion (23.0%) and Switzerland — $2.2 billion. China outran the Russian Federation in terms of investments and took 4th place with $1.7 billion (7.0%), while the Russian Federation closed the top five with $1.4 billion (5.8%) invested in Kazakhstan.
Noteworthy that Kazakhstan's gross inflow of FDI increased 15.8 percent per year in 2018 and remained at the level of US$24 billion from 2019, even though world economies saw a decrease in investment during that time period.
13 Kazakhstan's regions out of 14 saw investment growth in 2020, despite the COVID-19 pandemic. High growth of investment was in the construction sector, specifically in Turkestan region and Zhambyl region as well as Shymkent city.
Kazakhstan's investment environment is defined by the government's support for foreign investors. To increase the FDI inflow, the country established the Kazakh Invest National Company, or Kazakh Invest for short. It is a one-stop shop for investors that facilitates investment projects' implementation process from an idea to implementation, as well as ensures aftercare services. In 2018, Kazakh Invest helped develop more than 70 investment proposals in a variety of industries: metallurgy, petrochemistry, food industry, tourism and other. It included creating a business plan, financial model and teaser development.
In order to facilitate foreign investment, Kazakhstan launched in 2020 an online portal elicense.kz, which allows to conclude investment contracts online reducing red tape. The first agreement that was concluded via the portal was between Kaz Solar 50 and the German company Solarnet Investment GmbH for a renewable energy project worth ₸5 billion.
In 2015 Kazakhstan passed a law to regulate Intellectual Property, patent law, and copyright protections and bring its legislation into line with the European Patent Convention (1994 revision) and the 2006 Singapore Treaty.
On 11 November 2014 in his address to the nation for 2015, Nazarbayev proclaimed Kazakhstan's New Economic Policy – The Path to the Future (Nurly Zhol). The new economic policy implies large-scale state investment in infrastructure over the next several years. In the short term, the program "Nurly Zhol" will apply the anti-crisis measures to overcome the turbulence in the global economy. The long-term measures of the state program of infrastructure development will help to create a strong platform for new growth.
Kazakhstan has identified five priorities for modernization of the state and the economy to maintain competitiveness in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Kazakhstan was ranked 36th in the Ease of Doing Business report released by the World Bank Group in 2018. The report's rankings rate ease of regulations for businesses and strength of property rights.
The Heritage Foundation, a Washington DC – based research center, ranked Kazakhstan 41st in its Index of Economic Freedom 2018. Its overall score has increased by 0.1 point, still being only "moderately free" with significant improvements in investment freedom and government integrity offsetting steep declines in fiscal health and monetary freedom.
Kazakhstan aimed in 2017 to boost its economy by attracting private investors interested in developing national companies. This is the main goal of privatization that is expected to decrease the share of public property to 15% of GDP. Such companies as Kazakhstan Railways, Samruk-Energo, Kazatomprom, Kaspost, KazMunayGas and Air Astana are expected to be sold through IPO.
Kazakhstan fell from 32nd to the 38th place in the 2018 IMD World Competitiveness ranking. The report evaluates business efficiency, public finance and domestic economy.
In December 2015, Kazakhstan Government approved new privatization plan for 2016 – 2020. It is a large-scale privatization program that continues the privatization of 2014 and includes 60 major state-owned companies. According to Kazakh Finance ministry, the state budget got ₸6.99 billion (US$20.6 million) from the deals reached within the 2014–2016 privatization program as of 20 Sept. 2016. Kazakhstan's privatization program aims to reduce the state participation in the economy to 15 percent, which is the level set for countries of the OECD.
A Special Economic Zone (SEZ) is a part of Kazakhstan's territory, which has a special legal regime, with all the necessary infrastructure, to carry out priority activities.
On the territory of the Republic of Kazakhstan, there are 12 special economic zones with different sectoral orientations:
A new program to support small businesses was launched in Kazakhstan in February 2015. 2015 is expected to be a pilot period of the program. During that period the initiative will be focused on three major areas, notably agribusiness, machinery building and production of construction materials, and is to be further extended to other industries.
In May 2015 the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) agreed to provide €41 million for technical cooperation projects, advisory support to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and to introduce a Women in Business program.
In 2016 the number of Kazakhstan's telecom start-ups increased by 10% compared to 2015. Around 9,400 small telecom companies are currently registered in the country.
The Kazakh Government provides extensive support to businesses, especially SMEs. The development of SMEs is an integral part of Kazakhstan's Business Road Map 2020 state programme. The share of SMEs in Kazakhstan's GDP increased from 24.9% in 2015 to 28.4% in 2018. Kazakhstan plans to raise this indicator to 50% by 2050.
Kazakhstan was ranked 54th 2017 Economic Freedom of the World report published by Fraser Institute, but ranks 12 places below on place 66 when adjusted by the Gender Disparity Index, which captures the degree to which women around the world have the same legal rights as men and adjusts the economic freedom score accordingly. This shows a large disadvantage of women in business.
In recent years a trade route has been established between Kazakhstan and the United States. It now makes up 54% of the World's salt imports and exports by volume (350,000 tonnes per year).
In 2021, 14 products developed by Kazakh scientists began being exported to China, Russia, Turkey, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and the Czech Republic. These products include, but are not limited to, food & drinks based on milk whey; probiotics; an anti-fungal drug; biological sanitation products.
In 2021, it was reported that the number of young female entrepreneurs in Kazakhstan has increased by 15 percent.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The economy of Kazakhstan is the largest in Central Asia in both absolute and per capita terms. In 2021, Kazakhstan attracted more than US$370 billion of foreign investments since becoming an independent republic after the collapse of the former Soviet Union.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "It possesses oil reserves as well as minerals and metals. It also has considerable agricultural potential, with its vast steppe lands accommodating both livestock and grain production. The mountains in the south are important for apples and walnuts; both species grow wild there. Kazakhstan's industrial sector rests on the extraction and processing of these natural resources.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The Dissolution of the Soviet Union and the collapse of demand for Kazakhstan's traditional heavy industry products have resulted in a sharp decline of the economy since 1991, with the steepest annual decline occurring in 1994. In 1995–97 the pace of the government program of economic reform and privatization quickened, resulting in a substantial shifting of assets into the private sector. Kazakhstan was granted \"market economy country\" status by the European Union and the United States, in 2000 and 2002 respectively.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The December 1996 signing of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium agreement to build a new pipeline from western Kazakhstan's Tengiz Field through Russia to the Black Sea increased prospects for substantially larger oil exports until Putin took issue with the lukewarm support he experienced in the wake of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine from Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. Kazakhstan's economy turned downward in 1998 with a 2.5% decline in GDP growth due to slumping oil prices and the August financial crisis in Russia. A bright spot in 1999 was the recovery of international petroleum prices, which, combined with a well-timed tenge devaluation and a bumper grain harvest, pulled the economy out of recession.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "GDP per capita shrank by 26% in the 1990s. In the 2000s, Kazakhstan's economy grew sharply, aided by increased prices on world markets for Kazakhstan's leading exports: oil, metals and grain. GDP grew 9.6% in 2000, up from 1.7% in 1999. In 2006, extremely high GDP growth had been sustained, and grew by 10.6%. Business with the booming economies of Russia and China, as well as neighboring Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) nations have helped to propel this growth. The increased economic growth also led to a turn-around in government finances, with the budget moving from a cash deficit of 3.7% of GDP in 1999 to 0.1% surplus in 2000. The country experienced a slowdown in economic growth from 2014, sparked by falling oil prices and the effects of the Russo-Ukrainian War. The country's currency was devalued by 19% in 2014 and by 22% in 2015.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In 2017, the World Economic Forum compiled its Global Competitiveness Ranking, ranking Kazakhstan 57th out of 144 countries. The ranking considers multiple macroeconomic and financial factors, such as market size, GDP, tax rates, infrastructure development, etc. In 2012, the World Economic Forum listed corruption as the biggest problem in doing business in the country, while the World Bank listed Kazakhstan as a corruption hotspot, on a par with Angola, Bolivia, Kenya, Libya and Pakistan. Kazakhstan scored 31 points out of 100 in Transparency International's 2018 edition of the Corruption Perceptions Index, indicating high levels of corruption.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Cyril Muller, the World Bank Vice President for Europe and Central Asia, visited Astana in January 2017. He praised the country's progress, made during the 25-year partnership with the World Bank. Muller also talked about Kazakhstan's improved positioning in the World Bank's Doing Business Report 2017, where Kazakhstan ranked 35th out of 190 countries worldwide. After 2000, the government conducted several public sector reforms and adopted the New Public Management (NPM) approach, which was aimed at reducing costs and increasing the efficiency of the public service delivery.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Kazakhstan secured the 3rd position in the Central and South Asia regional ranking of the 2018 Global Innovation Index (GII) released by World Intellectual Property Organization.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In the 2014 Economic Freedom Index published by The Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC, Kazakhstan has gained 22 points over the past 17 years, which is noted by the authors as among the 20 best improvements recorded by any country. Kazakhstan's economic freedom score is 69.1, equalling \"moderately free\". Its overall score has increased by 0.1 point, with significant improvements in investment freedom and government integrity offsetting steep declines in fiscal health and monetary freedom. Kazakhstan is ranked 11th among 43 countries in the Asia–Pacific region, and its overall score is above the regional and world averages.",
"title": "Macro-economic trend"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "This chart shows trends in the gross domestic product of Kazakhstan at market prices estimated by the International Monetary Fund, with figures in millions of tenge.",
"title": "Macro-economic trend"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2017. Inflation under 5% is in green.",
"title": "Macro-economic trend"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Kazakhstan's GDP grew 4.1% in real terms during the period from January to September 2011.",
"title": "Economic growth and GDP"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Kazakhstan's real GDP growth was projected to reach 4.3% in 2014, the main driving force of the economy in Kazakhstan in 2014 is the consumer sector; the consumption in Kazakhstan is mainly boosted by the retail lending.",
"title": "Economic growth and GDP"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "According to the Agency of Statistics of the Republic of Kazakhstan the country's GDP growth in the first quarter of 2014 was 3.8%.",
"title": "Economic growth and GDP"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The country devalued its currency by 19% in February 2014. The country experienced a slowdown in economic growth from 2014 sparked by falling oil prices and the effects of the 2014 Russo-Ukrainian War.",
"title": "Economic growth and GDP"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The Government of Kazakhstan signed a Framework Partnership Agreement with IBRD, IFC, MIGA on 1 May 2014; according to this Agreement the World Bank will allocate US$2.5 trillion to Kazakhstan, for the diversification of the economy and reaching the sustainable development.",
"title": "Economic growth and GDP"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The World Bank report shows that Kazakhstan, as of 2015, reached the level of an upper-middle-income country with a GDP of US$170 billion.",
"title": "Economic growth and GDP"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Another 22% devaluation occurred in August 2015.",
"title": "Economic growth and GDP"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Foreign direct investment increased 30 percent in 2015 in Kazakhstan's agricultural industry and 80 percent in the country's petroleum products sector.",
"title": "Economic growth and GDP"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In 2016 Kazakhstan's economy started to recover from the crisis caused by low oil prices and the tenge devaluation. According to the Minister of National Economy of Kazakhstan, in nine months of 2016 the GDP growth reached 0.4%. Sectors of economy that experienced the highest growth included construction (6.9%), agriculture (4.9%), and transport sector (4.0%).",
"title": "Economic growth and GDP"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The GDP per capita in current US$ in Kazakhstan declined by about 40% between 2013 compared and 2017.",
"title": "Economic growth and GDP"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Kazakhstan was ranked 25th out of 190 countries in the World Bank's Doing Business 2020 report. The country improved its position by 3 points, from 28 to 25, in the 2020 ranking compared to the previous year. This placed Kazakhstan ahead of countries such as Iceland (26th place), Austria (27th place), Russia (28th place), Japan (29th place), etc.",
"title": "Economic growth and GDP"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Kazakhstan has prioritized the development of non-oil sectors of economy, which accounted for 85% of the country's economic growth in 2019.",
"title": "Economic growth and GDP"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In the first seven months of 2020, Kazakhstan exported significantly more goods than the previous year, including a seven-fold increase in automobile exports. The country's GDP decreased by 3 percent due to the decline in the service sector because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the real sector of the economy grew significantly. Agriculture, construction, and manufacturing all saw increases in production in the first eight months of the year.",
"title": "Economic growth and GDP"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The biggest growth in 2020 occurred in the automotive industry (+53.6%), pharmaceuticals (+39.7%), processed metal products (+19.5%), mechanical engineering (+16.5%), as well as in light industry (+16.4%). The industries in the service sector that demonstrated growth included construction (+10.7%) and information and communications (+8.2%).",
"title": "Economic growth and GDP"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Kazakhstan is the leading country in the world for uranium production volumes with 35% of global production, and it has the world's second biggest uranium reserves after Australia.",
"title": "Sectors of economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Oil and gas is the leading economic sector. In 2000, Kazakhstan produced 35,252,000 metric tons of oil (700,000 barrels per day), a 17.4% increase over 1999's 30,025,000 tons. It exported 28,883,000 tons of oil in 2000, up 38.8% from 20,813,000 tons in 1999. Production in 2001 has been growing at roughly 20%, on target to meet the government's forecast of 40,100,000 tons of oil (800,000 barrels per day). In 2000, production reached 11.5 km³ of natural gas, up from 8.2 km³ in 1999.",
"title": "Sectors of economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Kazakhstan has the potential to be a world-class oil exporter in the medium term. The landmark foreign investment in Kazakhstan is the TengizChevroil joint venture, owned 50% by ChevronTexaco, 25% by ExxonMobil, 20% by KazMunaiGas of Kazakhstan, and 5% by LukArco of Russia. The Karachaganak natural gas and gas condensate field is being developed by BG, Agip, ChevronTexaco, and Lukoil. The Agip-led Offshore Kazakhstan Consortium has discovered potentially huge Kashagan oil field in the northern Caspian. Kazakhstan's economic future is linked to oil and gas development. GDP growth will depend on the price of oil, as well as the ability to develop new deposits.",
"title": "Sectors of economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "January 2022 began with thousands of people returning to the streets of Kazakhstan to protest against the surging gas prices, recording four straight days of demonstrations, which is claimed to be the biggest protests to have taken place in the oil-rich country in decades. Protesters invaded into government buildings and took over police vehicles despite a strict emergency led by the state being in place.",
"title": "Sectors of economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Kazakhstan is a leading producer of many mineral commodities, including salt, uranium, ferrochrome, titanium sponge, cadmium, potash, magnesium, rhenium, copper, bauxite, gallium and zinc.",
"title": "Sectors of economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The country was the world's largest producer of uranium in 2018. In 2019, the country was the world's 10th largest producer of gold; 11th largest world producer of copper; 3rd largest worldwide producer of chromium; 9th largest world producer of bauxite; 9th largest world producer of zinc; 10th largest worldwide producer of antimony; 12th largest world producer of iron ore; 12th largest world producer of lead; 14th largest world producer of manganese; 17th largest world producer of phosphate; 6th largest world producer of bismuth, and the 7th largest world producer of sulfur.",
"title": "Sectors of economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In June 2014 the CKD (Complete Knock-Down) assembly of Toyota Fortuner was launched in Kostanay, Kazakhstan. The expected annual output makes around 3,000 cars.",
"title": "Sectors of economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The Kazakhstan's car industry was developing rapidly in 2014 producing US$2 billion worth of products annually. Unfortunately, the industry experienced a decline despite high hopes, with sales dwindling to only 46,000 in 2016.",
"title": "Sectors of economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In 2020, the Kazakh economy observed the biggest growth in its automotive industry, which saw a 53.6% growth, despite the COVID-19 pandemic.",
"title": "Sectors of economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "GE Transportation acquired 50% stake in Lokomotiv Kurastyru Zauyty in a joint venture with Kazakhstan's national railway company Temir Zholy.",
"title": "Sectors of economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "On 22 December 2014 the World Bank approved an US$88 million loan that would support Kazakhstan's efforts to facilitate commercially and socially viable innovation in technology. The Fostering Productive Innovation Project aims to improve the country in areas that are able to foster and support technological innovation.",
"title": "Sectors of economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "According to A.T. Kearney's 2015 Global Retail Development Index, Kazakhstan ranked 13 out of 30. In the 2016th Index, Kazakhstan ranked as the 4th best developing country for retail investments, scoring 56.5 out of 100. Kazakhstan's market attracted large international retailers, such as French retail chains Carrefour and Leroy Merlin, as well as food giants McDonald's and KFC.",
"title": "Sectors of economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Kazakhstan is the ninth-largest country by area and the largest landlocked country. Tourism is not a major component of the economy. As of 2014, tourism has accounted for 0.3% of Kazakhstan GDP, but the government had plans to increase it to 3% by 2020.",
"title": "Sectors of economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Gambling in Kazakhstan was developing already during the day of Czarist Russia, then lotteries were organized. In 1698, Czar Peter I signed a decree which allowed organized lotteries for the first time. In later years lotteries were organized by the Ministry of Finance of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which included Kazakhstan.",
"title": "Sectors of economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Kazakhstan started issuing licenses for gambling activity in 1999.",
"title": "Sectors of economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In 2007 the government of Kazakhstan has introduced a new law which ordered banning gambling on the territory of Kazakhstan besides 2 places which were to become the examples of Russia's special gambling zones. Casinos existing outside these areas had to be closed or moved to places where they could operate legally. The first legal casino opened after the introduction of new law was Casino Flamingo in Kapchagay, which was opened on 1 October 2008.",
"title": "Sectors of economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "In 2018, the income of gambling companies in Kazakhstan amounted to ₸19.5 billion. This is 16.1% more than in 2017. Then this amount was at the level of ₸16.8 billion.",
"title": "Sectors of economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "As of 2016, the total housing area in Kazakhstan was 342.6 million square metres (3,688 million square feet), an average of 21.4 m (230 sq ft) per person. The housing area per person increased by 20% in the period from 2005 to 2016, but remained below the UN's recommended standard of 30 square metres (320 square feet) per person.",
"title": "Sectors of economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Kazakhstan has 11 transcontinental routes, including rail and road routes, and many oil and gas pipelines. The country's geographic position allows for the transporting of goods from China to Europe three to four times faster than other routes.",
"title": "External trade and investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Sherin Suzhikova, Counselor of Kazakhstan's Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Chao Yon-chuan, Secretary-General of the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA), signed an agreement on 13 October 2006 in Taipei to improve economic relations through \"exchanges of market information and visits by trade professionals.\" TAITRA has an office in Almaty, Kazakhstan.",
"title": "External trade and investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In 2006, North Dakota's then Lieutenant Governor Jack Dalrymple led an 18-member delegation of the North Dakota Trade Office representing seven North Dakota companies and Dickinson State University on a trip to Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Russia. North Dakota exports mostly machinery to Kazakhstan, the eighth largest destination for North Dakotan exports; machinery exports increased from US$22,000 to US$25 million between 2000 and 2005.",
"title": "External trade and investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The percentage of high-tech exports (as a share of manufactured exports) from Kazakhstan has grown from just 4.46% in 1995 to 37.17% in 2014. One of the main factors that triggered this growth was the Technology Commercialization Project developed and implemented by the World Bank Group and the Kazakh Government. Through this project, 65 Kazakh tech startups received funding and training helping them get their innovations into markets.",
"title": "External trade and investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "China is Kazakhstan's important trade partner. In late March 2015 the two countries signed 33 deals worth US$23.6 billion. The deals cover different industries, such as oil refining, cars, steel.",
"title": "External trade and investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Kazakhstan's foreign trade turnover in 2018 comprised $93.5bn that is 19.7% more compared to 2017. The volume of export in the reporting period made $67bn (+25.7%) and import was $32.5bn (+9.9%).",
"title": "External trade and investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "The Government of Kazakhstan has been supporting Kazakhstani exporters operating in foreign markets through their QazTrade incubator. Since September 2019, the program selects businesses and assists them with navigating bureaucracy and connecting to foreign markets the government deems a priority, including Germany, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, and China.",
"title": "External trade and investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The Kazakh government approved in August 2017 a national investment strategy, which seeks to increase foreign investments by 26% in five years and create a more favorable investment climate. The strategy also identified 27 countries as the most important sources investments. These countries include the US, UK, China, Russia, Germany, France, Italy, Turkey, Japan, the UAE, South Korea and others. The Ministry for Investment and Development works with Ministry of Foreign Affairs to develop individual plans of actions for each country.",
"title": "External trade and investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "In order to achieve the 26% growth of FDI, Kazakhstan executes economic diplomacy. Key actors of Kazakhstan's foreign economic policy are the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Trade and Integration of Kazakhstan, KazakhInvest and Qaztrade.",
"title": "External trade and investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "In October 2014, Kazakhstan introduced its first overseas dollar bonds in 14 years. Kazakhstan issued $2.5 billion of 10- and 30-year bonds on 5 October 2014, in what was the nation's first dollar-denominated overseas sale since 2000. Kazakhstan sold $1.5 billion of 10-year dollar bonds to yield 1.5 percentage points above midswaps and $1 billion of 30-year debt at two percentage points over midswaps. The country drew bids for $11 billion.",
"title": "External trade and investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Kazakhstan is the largest recipient of total and annual foreign direct investment of all CIS countries. The OECD has recognized the strides the government has made in opening the country to international investment and in improving the policy framework for investment as part of their efforts to diversify the economy. In 2017 Kazakhstan was invited by OECD to become Adherent to the OECD Declaration on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises.",
"title": "External trade and investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "In June 2014 Kazakhstan's president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, signed into law tax concessions to promote foreign investment, including a 10-year exemption from corporation tax, an 8-year exemption from property tax, and a 10-year freeze on most other taxes. Other measures include a refund on capital investments of up to 30 percent once a production facility is in operation. In order to attract investment, Kazakhstan lowered the tax burden for foreign investors. The corporate income tax rate dropped from 30% to 20%. The government also gradually reduced VAT from 16% in 2006 to 12% in 2009.",
"title": "External trade and investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "As of 30 September 2014, total foreign investment in Kazakhstan reached US$211.5 billion. Of that total, net foreign Direct Investment constituted US$129.3 billion, with portfolio and other investments comprising the remaining US$82.2 billion.",
"title": "External trade and investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Reflecting Kazakhstan's ambitious FDI roadmap, a three-year goal to increase FDI by US$30 billion by 2025 was announced.",
"title": "External trade and investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "As of July 2015, Kazakhstan attracted US$16 billion in the manufacturing industry over the past five years, which is 2.5 times more than over the previous five years. Kazakhstan put into operation four hundred new products, such as car industry, railway engineering, manufacture of basic chemical products, uranium industry, the industry of rare earth metals. The volume of new enterprises amounted to ₸580 billion.",
"title": "External trade and investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "In June 2015 – June 2016 the total number of enterprises owned by foreign investors in Kazakhstan increased by 2.3 percent and reached 9,000. 8,691 foreign companies operating in the Kazakhstan are small businesses.",
"title": "External trade and investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "As of the beginning of 2016, the World Bank invested over US$6.8 billion in Kazakhstan since 1992. These funds were invested in development of roads and social infrastructure, increasing of competitiveness of SME's, education, healthcare, environment protection, etc.",
"title": "External trade and investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "In 2012, Kazakhstan conducted the first review of the OECD investment standards, which resulted in 12 recommendations on how to improve the investment climate of the country. After adopting Law on public – private partnership that extends the use of the mechanism and revising standards of intellectual property protection and the rules of attracting foreign labor, Kazakhstan started a second review of the OECD in 2016.",
"title": "External trade and investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "According to Ministry of Investment and Development of Kazakhstan, as of May 2016, attraction of foreign investment in oil refining increased by 80%, food industry – 30%, in engineering – by 7 times. The Ministry also reported that there were 200 investment projects in country worth more than $40 billion.",
"title": "External trade and investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "In mid-2016 a group of companies led by Chevron announced a US$36.8 billion investment in Kazakhstan's Tengiz oil field.",
"title": "External trade and investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "In the first quarter of 2016, Kazakhstan attracted US$2.7 billion in foreign direct investment. The largest investor in the Kazakh economy is the Netherlands ($66 billion), followed by the United States (US$26 billion) and Switzerland (US$15 billion). According to the Chairman of Kazakhstan National Bank, a key factor triggering the increased inflow of foreign investment is implementation of the Nurly Zhol state programme that provides for the creation of favourable conditions. As of September 2016, foreign investments in the Kazakh economy totalled US$5.7 billion, which is 4,8% more than during the same period of the previous year.",
"title": "External trade and investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Summarizing 2016, Kazakhstan's Foreign Minister Erlan Idrissov noted that Kazakhstan attracted US$20 billion of foreign direct investment during the year. The gross inflow of foreign direct investment in 2016 grew by 40% compared to 2015 and surpassed the previous record of 2008. The number of foreign businesses operating in Kazakhstan increased 25% in 2016 compared to 2015. The main recipients of foreign direct investment were the mining industry, geological exploration and processing. The top four investors include the Netherlands, the United States, Switzerland and France.",
"title": "External trade and investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Kazakhstan introduced a visa-free regime for citizens of EAEU, OECD, Monaco, Malaysia, United Arab Emirates, and Singapore starting from 2017. The visa-free entry is expected to increase cooperation with investors and businesses of these countries.",
"title": "External trade and investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Agriculture is one of Kazakhstan's most important sectors where the country seeks to attract foreign investments to boost the competitiveness of this sector of economy. To that end, in 2017 KazAgro negotiated with the European Investment Bank (EIB) a €200 million loan for a period of 15 years.",
"title": "External trade and investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Kazakhstan attracted $330 billion in foreign direct investment from more than 120 countries since 1991 until 2019. More than 50% of FDI in Kazakhstan was directed from the European Union (EU). 15%, or $48.4 billion, of FDI originated from the United States, and 5% from the United Kingdom and China each. President Tokayev set foreign investment attraction as a priority in his 2 September 2019 state-of-the-nation address. In 2018, Kazakhstan attracted $24 billion of foreign direct investments. The Foreign Ministry of Kazakhstan plays an important role in attracting foreign investors to the country.",
"title": "External trade and investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "In 2019, gross FDI inflow to Kazakhstan amounted to US$24.1 billion. In 2019, mining and metallurgy accounted for the largest volume of foreign investment – 56.3%. The industry attracted record US$13.586 billion in foreign investment. Manufacturing and trade were second and third most attractive sectors for investors. US$3.5 billion of FDI was directed into the manufacturing industry, while trade attracted $3 billion in 2019.",
"title": "External trade and investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "The top five countries investing the most into the economy of Kazakhstan remained unchanged in 2019. The Netherlands invested $7.3 billion in Kazakhstan (30.2%), followed by the USA — $5.5 billion (23.0%) and Switzerland — $2.2 billion. China outran the Russian Federation in terms of investments and took 4th place with $1.7 billion (7.0%), while the Russian Federation closed the top five with $1.4 billion (5.8%) invested in Kazakhstan.",
"title": "External trade and investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Noteworthy that Kazakhstan's gross inflow of FDI increased 15.8 percent per year in 2018 and remained at the level of US$24 billion from 2019, even though world economies saw a decrease in investment during that time period.",
"title": "External trade and investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "13 Kazakhstan's regions out of 14 saw investment growth in 2020, despite the COVID-19 pandemic. High growth of investment was in the construction sector, specifically in Turkestan region and Zhambyl region as well as Shymkent city.",
"title": "External trade and investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Kazakhstan's investment environment is defined by the government's support for foreign investors. To increase the FDI inflow, the country established the Kazakh Invest National Company, or Kazakh Invest for short. It is a one-stop shop for investors that facilitates investment projects' implementation process from an idea to implementation, as well as ensures aftercare services. In 2018, Kazakh Invest helped develop more than 70 investment proposals in a variety of industries: metallurgy, petrochemistry, food industry, tourism and other. It included creating a business plan, financial model and teaser development.",
"title": "External trade and investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "In order to facilitate foreign investment, Kazakhstan launched in 2020 an online portal elicense.kz, which allows to conclude investment contracts online reducing red tape. The first agreement that was concluded via the portal was between Kaz Solar 50 and the German company Solarnet Investment GmbH for a renewable energy project worth ₸5 billion.",
"title": "External trade and investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "In 2015 Kazakhstan passed a law to regulate Intellectual Property, patent law, and copyright protections and bring its legislation into line with the European Patent Convention (1994 revision) and the 2006 Singapore Treaty.",
"title": "External trade and investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "On 11 November 2014 in his address to the nation for 2015, Nazarbayev proclaimed Kazakhstan's New Economic Policy – The Path to the Future (Nurly Zhol). The new economic policy implies large-scale state investment in infrastructure over the next several years. In the short term, the program \"Nurly Zhol\" will apply the anti-crisis measures to overcome the turbulence in the global economy. The long-term measures of the state program of infrastructure development will help to create a strong platform for new growth.",
"title": "Public policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Kazakhstan has identified five priorities for modernization of the state and the economy to maintain competitiveness in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.",
"title": "Public policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Kazakhstan was ranked 36th in the Ease of Doing Business report released by the World Bank Group in 2018. The report's rankings rate ease of regulations for businesses and strength of property rights.",
"title": "Public policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "The Heritage Foundation, a Washington DC – based research center, ranked Kazakhstan 41st in its Index of Economic Freedom 2018. Its overall score has increased by 0.1 point, still being only \"moderately free\" with significant improvements in investment freedom and government integrity offsetting steep declines in fiscal health and monetary freedom.",
"title": "Public policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Kazakhstan aimed in 2017 to boost its economy by attracting private investors interested in developing national companies. This is the main goal of privatization that is expected to decrease the share of public property to 15% of GDP. Such companies as Kazakhstan Railways, Samruk-Energo, Kazatomprom, Kaspost, KazMunayGas and Air Astana are expected to be sold through IPO.",
"title": "Public policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Kazakhstan fell from 32nd to the 38th place in the 2018 IMD World Competitiveness ranking. The report evaluates business efficiency, public finance and domestic economy.",
"title": "Public policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "In December 2015, Kazakhstan Government approved new privatization plan for 2016 – 2020. It is a large-scale privatization program that continues the privatization of 2014 and includes 60 major state-owned companies. According to Kazakh Finance ministry, the state budget got ₸6.99 billion (US$20.6 million) from the deals reached within the 2014–2016 privatization program as of 20 Sept. 2016. Kazakhstan's privatization program aims to reduce the state participation in the economy to 15 percent, which is the level set for countries of the OECD.",
"title": "Public policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "A Special Economic Zone (SEZ) is a part of Kazakhstan's territory, which has a special legal regime, with all the necessary infrastructure, to carry out priority activities.",
"title": "Public policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "On the territory of the Republic of Kazakhstan, there are 12 special economic zones with different sectoral orientations:",
"title": "Public policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "A new program to support small businesses was launched in Kazakhstan in February 2015. 2015 is expected to be a pilot period of the program. During that period the initiative will be focused on three major areas, notably agribusiness, machinery building and production of construction materials, and is to be further extended to other industries.",
"title": "Public policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "In May 2015 the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) agreed to provide €41 million for technical cooperation projects, advisory support to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and to introduce a Women in Business program.",
"title": "Public policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "In 2016 the number of Kazakhstan's telecom start-ups increased by 10% compared to 2015. Around 9,400 small telecom companies are currently registered in the country.",
"title": "Public policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "The Kazakh Government provides extensive support to businesses, especially SMEs. The development of SMEs is an integral part of Kazakhstan's Business Road Map 2020 state programme. The share of SMEs in Kazakhstan's GDP increased from 24.9% in 2015 to 28.4% in 2018. Kazakhstan plans to raise this indicator to 50% by 2050.",
"title": "Public policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Kazakhstan was ranked 54th 2017 Economic Freedom of the World report published by Fraser Institute, but ranks 12 places below on place 66 when adjusted by the Gender Disparity Index, which captures the degree to which women around the world have the same legal rights as men and adjusts the economic freedom score accordingly. This shows a large disadvantage of women in business.",
"title": "Recent miscellany"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "In recent years a trade route has been established between Kazakhstan and the United States. It now makes up 54% of the World's salt imports and exports by volume (350,000 tonnes per year).",
"title": "Recent miscellany"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "In 2021, 14 products developed by Kazakh scientists began being exported to China, Russia, Turkey, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and the Czech Republic. These products include, but are not limited to, food & drinks based on milk whey; probiotics; an anti-fungal drug; biological sanitation products.",
"title": "Recent miscellany"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "In 2021, it was reported that the number of young female entrepreneurs in Kazakhstan has increased by 15 percent.",
"title": "Recent miscellany"
}
] |
The economy of Kazakhstan is the largest in Central Asia in both absolute and per capita terms. In 2021, Kazakhstan attracted more than US$370 billion of foreign investments since becoming an independent republic after the collapse of the former Soviet Union. It possesses oil reserves as well as minerals and metals. It also has considerable agricultural potential, with its vast steppe lands accommodating both livestock and grain production. The mountains in the south are important for apples and walnuts; both species grow wild there. Kazakhstan's industrial sector rests on the extraction and processing of these natural resources. The Dissolution of the Soviet Union and the collapse of demand for Kazakhstan's traditional heavy industry products have resulted in a sharp decline of the economy since 1991, with the steepest annual decline occurring in 1994. In 1995–97 the pace of the government program of economic reform and privatization quickened, resulting in a substantial shifting of assets into the private sector. Kazakhstan was granted "market economy country" status by the European Union and the United States, in 2000 and 2002 respectively. The December 1996 signing of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium agreement to build a new pipeline from western Kazakhstan's Tengiz Field through Russia to the Black Sea increased prospects for substantially larger oil exports until Putin took issue with the lukewarm support he experienced in the wake of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine from Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. Kazakhstan's economy turned downward in 1998 with a 2.5% decline in GDP growth due to slumping oil prices and the August financial crisis in Russia. A bright spot in 1999 was the recovery of international petroleum prices, which, combined with a well-timed tenge devaluation and a bumper grain harvest, pulled the economy out of recession. GDP per capita shrank by 26% in the 1990s. In the 2000s, Kazakhstan's economy grew sharply, aided by increased prices on world markets for Kazakhstan's leading exports: oil, metals and grain. GDP grew 9.6% in 2000, up from 1.7% in 1999. In 2006, extremely high GDP growth had been sustained, and grew by 10.6%. Business with the booming economies of Russia and China, as well as neighboring Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) nations have helped to propel this growth. The increased economic growth also led to a turn-around in government finances, with the budget moving from a cash deficit of 3.7% of GDP in 1999 to 0.1% surplus in 2000. The country experienced a slowdown in economic growth from 2014, sparked by falling oil prices and the effects of the Russo-Ukrainian War. The country's currency was devalued by 19% in 2014 and by 22% in 2015. In 2017, the World Economic Forum compiled its Global Competitiveness Ranking, ranking Kazakhstan 57th out of 144 countries. The ranking considers multiple macroeconomic and financial factors, such as market size, GDP, tax rates, infrastructure development, etc. In 2012, the World Economic Forum listed corruption as the biggest problem in doing business in the country, while the World Bank listed Kazakhstan as a corruption hotspot, on a par with Angola, Bolivia, Kenya, Libya and Pakistan. Kazakhstan scored 31 points out of 100 in Transparency International's 2018 edition of the Corruption Perceptions Index, indicating high levels of corruption. Cyril Muller, the World Bank Vice President for Europe and Central Asia, visited Astana in January 2017. He praised the country's progress, made during the 25-year partnership with the World Bank. Muller also talked about Kazakhstan's improved positioning in the World Bank's Doing Business Report 2017, where Kazakhstan ranked 35th out of 190 countries worldwide. After 2000, the government conducted several public sector reforms and adopted the New Public Management (NPM) approach, which was aimed at reducing costs and increasing the efficiency of the public service delivery. Kazakhstan secured the 3rd position in the Central and South Asia regional ranking of the 2018 Global Innovation Index (GII) released by World Intellectual Property Organization.
|
2002-02-25T15:43:11Z
|
2023-12-28T03:49:45Z
|
[
"Template:Decrease",
"Template:See also",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Navboxes",
"Template:IncreaseNegative",
"Template:Overly detailed",
"Template:Commons category",
"Template:POV",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Use American English",
"Template:Citation needed",
"Template:Dead link",
"Template:Infobox economy",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Excerpt",
"Template:Clarify",
"Template:Convert",
"Template:Cvt",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:DecreasePositive",
"Template:Increase",
"Template:Steady"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Kazakhstan
|
16,648 |
Telecommunications in Kazakhstan
|
Telecommunications in Kazakhstan include radio, television, fixed and mobile telephones, and the internet.
The largest telecommunications company in Kazakhstan is Kazakhtelecom, which is responsible for infrastructure such as cables and exchanges, and provides internet, television and telephone connections to individuals and businesses. The state of Kazakhstan is a major shareholder in Kazakhtelekom.
Kazakhstan's international calling code is +7, used in combination with the zone codes 6xx and 7xx. It is the only former Soviet country except Russia not yet to have transitioned away from +7. In 2021, the number +997 was allocated by the ITU, but as of 2023 had not been implemented. In early 2023, the country applied instead for the number +77.
Telephone numbers, both fixed and mobile, are 10 digits long.
Telephone density of fixed telephone subscriptions is decreasing, standing at 16 per 100 people in 2021, compared to its peak of 26 per 100 in 2012.
As of 2021, there were estimated to be over 24 million cellular subscriptions; 127 per 100 inhabitants of Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan has 4G mobile internet and has begun work on 5G as of 2021.
Kazakhstan's national DAMA satellite communication network was established in 1999 in order to provide communication services to sparsely populated areas with poor road access.
It is estimated that as of 2021, 91% of Kazakhstan residents have access to the internet.
In 2023, Kazakhstan will begin the construction on the joint Trans Caspian Fiber Optic (TCFO) project.
The government of Kazakhstan carries out surveillance of telecommunications and internet traffic in the country and, as of 2010, was found to filter content related to social and political issues, as well as preparing list twice per year of websites to be blocked. ISPs are required to prohibit users from disseminating materials or information not in accordance with the country’s laws, including pornography. Since 2015 it is an imprisonable offense to spread unverified information online. Kazakhstan has also throttled or shut down the internet as a response to political dissent, such as during country-wide political unrest in January 2022.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Telecommunications in Kazakhstan include radio, television, fixed and mobile telephones, and the internet.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The largest telecommunications company in Kazakhstan is Kazakhtelecom, which is responsible for infrastructure such as cables and exchanges, and provides internet, television and telephone connections to individuals and businesses. The state of Kazakhstan is a major shareholder in Kazakhtelekom.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Kazakhstan's international calling code is +7, used in combination with the zone codes 6xx and 7xx. It is the only former Soviet country except Russia not yet to have transitioned away from +7. In 2021, the number +997 was allocated by the ITU, but as of 2023 had not been implemented. In early 2023, the country applied instead for the number +77.",
"title": "Telephones"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Telephone numbers, both fixed and mobile, are 10 digits long.",
"title": "Telephones"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Telephone density of fixed telephone subscriptions is decreasing, standing at 16 per 100 people in 2021, compared to its peak of 26 per 100 in 2012.",
"title": "Telephones"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "As of 2021, there were estimated to be over 24 million cellular subscriptions; 127 per 100 inhabitants of Kazakhstan.",
"title": "Telephones"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Kazakhstan has 4G mobile internet and has begun work on 5G as of 2021.",
"title": "Telephones"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Kazakhstan's national DAMA satellite communication network was established in 1999 in order to provide communication services to sparsely populated areas with poor road access.",
"title": "Telephones"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "It is estimated that as of 2021, 91% of Kazakhstan residents have access to the internet.",
"title": "Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In 2023, Kazakhstan will begin the construction on the joint Trans Caspian Fiber Optic (TCFO) project.",
"title": "Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The government of Kazakhstan carries out surveillance of telecommunications and internet traffic in the country and, as of 2010, was found to filter content related to social and political issues, as well as preparing list twice per year of websites to be blocked. ISPs are required to prohibit users from disseminating materials or information not in accordance with the country’s laws, including pornography. Since 2015 it is an imprisonable offense to spread unverified information online. Kazakhstan has also throttled or shut down the internet as a response to political dissent, such as during country-wide political unrest in January 2022.",
"title": "Internet"
}
] |
Telecommunications in Kazakhstan include radio, television, fixed and mobile telephones, and the internet. The largest telecommunications company in Kazakhstan is Kazakhtelecom, which is responsible for infrastructure such as cables and exchanges, and provides internet, television and telephone connections to individuals and businesses. The state of Kazakhstan is a major shareholder in Kazakhtelekom.
|
2002-02-25T15:43:11Z
|
2023-12-18T14:11:29Z
|
[
"Template:Main",
"Template:Expand section",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Telecommunications",
"Template:Kazakhstan topics",
"Template:Short description"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_in_Kazakhstan
|
16,649 |
Transport in Kazakhstan
|
The vast territory of Kazakhstan spans across 2,700,000 km (1,000,000 sq mi). The population density is low in Kazakhstan, and the centers of industry and agriculture are spread out and remote from world markets.
Railways provide 68% of all cargo and passenger traffic to over 57% of the country. There are 15,333 km (9,527 mi) in common carrier service, excluding industrial lines. All railway lines in Kazakhstan are built in 1,520 mm (4 ft 11+27⁄32 in) gauge, of which 4,000 km (2,500 mi) is electrified (2012).
Kazakhstan Temir Zholy (KTZ) is the national railway company. KTZ cooperates with French loco manufacturer Alstom in developing Kazakhstan's railway infrastructure. Alstom has more than 600 staff and two joint ventures with KTZ and its subsidiary in Kazakhstan. In July 2017, Alstom opened its first locomotive repairing center in Kazakhstan. It is the only repairing center in Central Asia and the Caucasus.
As the Kazakhstani rail system was designed during the Soviet era, rail routes were designed ignoring inter-Soviet borders, based on the needs of Soviet planning. This has caused anomalies, such as the route from Oral to Aktobe passing briefly through Russian territory. It also means that routes might not suit modern-day Kazakhstani needs.
Kazakhstan's developed railway system promotes international and regional trade connecting Asia and Europe. In 2019, the transit of goods through Kazakhstan increased 23% to 664,000 containers.
The strategy of transport development in Kazakhstan until 2015 is to build 1,600 km (990 mi) of new electrified and 2,700 km (1,700 mi) of existing railway stations.
In 2006, a standard gauge rail link from China to Europe was proposed.
In 2007, it was proposed to eliminate break of gauge at Druzhba-Alashankou by converting the Kazakhstan main line to European gauge.
In 2008, BOOT line from Zhetigen to Khorgos on the China border. The line would branch off the existing railway near Shaquanzi.
There is a small (8.56 km (5.32 mi)) metro system in Almaty, the former capital and the largest city in the country. Second and third metro lines are planned in the future. The second line would intersect with the first line at Alatau and Zhibek Zholy stations.
In May 2011, the construction of the second phase of the Almaty Metro line 1 began. The general contractor is Almatymetrokurylys. The extension includes five new stations, and will connect the downtown area of Almaty with Kalkaman in the suburbs. Its length will be 8.62 km (5.36 mi).
The construction is divided into three phases. The first phase, the addition of the two stations Sairan and Moscow with a length of 2.7 km (1.7 mi) opened in 2015.
There was a tram system of 10 lines which operated from 1937 to 2015.
A metro system is currently under construction in Astana , the capital city.
The metro line had been a long time coming and the project was abandoned at one point in 2013, but an agreement was signed on 7 May 2015 for the project to go ahead.
In Oskemen, a tram system was operated until 2018. Opened between 1959 and 1978, the tram was a popular form of transport in Oskemen/Ust-Kamenogorsk. At its peak, it had six routes, but in the end it had four routes in operation. It had a fleet of 50 working tram cars.
In Pavlodar, there is a 86 km (53 mi) tram network which began service in 1965. As of 2012, the network has 20 regular and three special routes. The network has a 60% share of the local public transport market. Its fleet of 115 trams are due to be replaced and in 2012, with the city announcing plans to purchase 100 new trams.
There are two tram lines in Temirtau.
Kazakhstan has a road network stretching over 96,000 km (60,000 mi), most of which is in need of modernization and repair. It is, however, notable for containing the easterly terminus of European route E40, which contains the most easterly section of the Euroroute network.
It is stated in the CIA Factbook that Kazakhstan has a total road network of 93,612 km (58,168 mi) which is made up of 84,100 km (52,300 mi) paved and 9,512 km (5,910 mi) unpaved roads (2008).
As of 2017, there were 3,845,301 registered cars and a total of 4,425,770 units of autotransport.
Five international routes pass through Kazakhstan, totaling 23,000 km (14,000 mi). These highways are:
In 2009, the country began the construction of the "Western Europe - Western China" highway, which will be completed by 2013. The total length of the road will be 8,445 km (5,247 mi), of which 2,787 km (1,732 mi) will be in Kazakhstan (Aktobe, Kyzylorda, South Kazakhstan, Zhambyl and Almaty oblasts). The thickness of the asphalt and concrete pavement will be 80 cm (31 in), and the expected lifespan of the highway will be 25 years, without a major overhaul, and the maximum speed limit 120 km/h (75 mph). The project includes a number of bridges over rivers, road maintenance facilities, bus stop areas, avtopavilony, cattle trails, and electronic signage. Simultaneously with the construction of this highway, roads will be repaired and built in areas along its route.
The motorway network in Kazakhstan is rather underdeveloped, mainly due to the low population density in the country, which doesn't require wider roads on long distances. There is a total of 490 km of motorways. The following are the only existing multi-lane, double carriage roads in Kazakhstan:
As of 2010, pipelines in Kazakhstan consist of:
There are 4,000 km (2,500 mi) of waterways on the Syrdariya (Syr Darya), 80%, and Ertis (Irtysh) rivers, (2010)
The merchant marine has a total of 119 vessels as of 2017 consisting of four general cargo vessels, ten petroleum tankers, and 105 other vessels.
Kazakhstan has a total of 97 airports. (2012) However, it is quoted as having a total of 449 airports in 2001.
The large area of the country and the associated long distances makes air travel a very important component in domestic travel.
total: 64
total: 33
11 airports of Kazakhstan are part of the open sky regime, which allows more foreign carriers and more flights to operate at Kazakh airports. They include the airports of Nur-Sultan, Almaty, Shymkent, Aktau, Karaganda, Ust-Kamenogorsk, Pavlodar, Kokshetau, Taraz, Petropavlovsk, and Semey.
Total: 3 (2012)
The European Commission blacklisted all Kazakh carriers in 2009, with the sole exception of Air Astana. Since then, Kazakhstan had consistently been taking measures to modernize and revamp its air safety oversight. Thus, in 2016, the European Aviation Safety Agency removed all Kazakh airlines from its blacklist citing “sufficient evidence of compliance” with international standards by Kazakh airlines and its Civil Aviation Committee.
In December 2021, it was announced that Kazakhstan’s aviation safety record increased to 84%, which is 15% higher than the global average. These statistics were reported from an audit conducted by the ICAO Coordinated Validation Mission.
Kazakhstan is actively involved in the New Silk Road initiative, which is an infrastructure project expected to significantly accelerate and reduce the cost of goods delivery from China to Europe through Central Asia.
This article incorporates public domain material from The World Factbook. CIA.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The vast territory of Kazakhstan spans across 2,700,000 km (1,000,000 sq mi). The population density is low in Kazakhstan, and the centers of industry and agriculture are spread out and remote from world markets.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Railways provide 68% of all cargo and passenger traffic to over 57% of the country. There are 15,333 km (9,527 mi) in common carrier service, excluding industrial lines. All railway lines in Kazakhstan are built in 1,520 mm (4 ft 11+27⁄32 in) gauge, of which 4,000 km (2,500 mi) is electrified (2012).",
"title": "Railways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Kazakhstan Temir Zholy (KTZ) is the national railway company. KTZ cooperates with French loco manufacturer Alstom in developing Kazakhstan's railway infrastructure. Alstom has more than 600 staff and two joint ventures with KTZ and its subsidiary in Kazakhstan. In July 2017, Alstom opened its first locomotive repairing center in Kazakhstan. It is the only repairing center in Central Asia and the Caucasus.",
"title": "Railways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "As the Kazakhstani rail system was designed during the Soviet era, rail routes were designed ignoring inter-Soviet borders, based on the needs of Soviet planning. This has caused anomalies, such as the route from Oral to Aktobe passing briefly through Russian territory. It also means that routes might not suit modern-day Kazakhstani needs.",
"title": "Railways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Kazakhstan's developed railway system promotes international and regional trade connecting Asia and Europe. In 2019, the transit of goods through Kazakhstan increased 23% to 664,000 containers.",
"title": "Railways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The strategy of transport development in Kazakhstan until 2015 is to build 1,600 km (990 mi) of new electrified and 2,700 km (1,700 mi) of existing railway stations.",
"title": "Railways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In 2006, a standard gauge rail link from China to Europe was proposed.",
"title": "Railways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In 2007, it was proposed to eliminate break of gauge at Druzhba-Alashankou by converting the Kazakhstan main line to European gauge.",
"title": "Railways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In 2008, BOOT line from Zhetigen to Khorgos on the China border. The line would branch off the existing railway near Shaquanzi.",
"title": "Railways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "There is a small (8.56 km (5.32 mi)) metro system in Almaty, the former capital and the largest city in the country. Second and third metro lines are planned in the future. The second line would intersect with the first line at Alatau and Zhibek Zholy stations.",
"title": "Rapid transit and tram systems"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In May 2011, the construction of the second phase of the Almaty Metro line 1 began. The general contractor is Almatymetrokurylys. The extension includes five new stations, and will connect the downtown area of Almaty with Kalkaman in the suburbs. Its length will be 8.62 km (5.36 mi).",
"title": "Rapid transit and tram systems"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The construction is divided into three phases. The first phase, the addition of the two stations Sairan and Moscow with a length of 2.7 km (1.7 mi) opened in 2015.",
"title": "Rapid transit and tram systems"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "There was a tram system of 10 lines which operated from 1937 to 2015.",
"title": "Rapid transit and tram systems"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "A metro system is currently under construction in Astana , the capital city.",
"title": "Rapid transit and tram systems"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The metro line had been a long time coming and the project was abandoned at one point in 2013, but an agreement was signed on 7 May 2015 for the project to go ahead.",
"title": "Rapid transit and tram systems"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In Oskemen, a tram system was operated until 2018. Opened between 1959 and 1978, the tram was a popular form of transport in Oskemen/Ust-Kamenogorsk. At its peak, it had six routes, but in the end it had four routes in operation. It had a fleet of 50 working tram cars.",
"title": "Rapid transit and tram systems"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In Pavlodar, there is a 86 km (53 mi) tram network which began service in 1965. As of 2012, the network has 20 regular and three special routes. The network has a 60% share of the local public transport market. Its fleet of 115 trams are due to be replaced and in 2012, with the city announcing plans to purchase 100 new trams.",
"title": "Rapid transit and tram systems"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "There are two tram lines in Temirtau.",
"title": "Rapid transit and tram systems"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Kazakhstan has a road network stretching over 96,000 km (60,000 mi), most of which is in need of modernization and repair. It is, however, notable for containing the easterly terminus of European route E40, which contains the most easterly section of the Euroroute network.",
"title": "Highways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "It is stated in the CIA Factbook that Kazakhstan has a total road network of 93,612 km (58,168 mi) which is made up of 84,100 km (52,300 mi) paved and 9,512 km (5,910 mi) unpaved roads (2008).",
"title": "Highways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "As of 2017, there were 3,845,301 registered cars and a total of 4,425,770 units of autotransport.",
"title": "Highways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Five international routes pass through Kazakhstan, totaling 23,000 km (14,000 mi). These highways are:",
"title": "Highways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In 2009, the country began the construction of the \"Western Europe - Western China\" highway, which will be completed by 2013. The total length of the road will be 8,445 km (5,247 mi), of which 2,787 km (1,732 mi) will be in Kazakhstan (Aktobe, Kyzylorda, South Kazakhstan, Zhambyl and Almaty oblasts). The thickness of the asphalt and concrete pavement will be 80 cm (31 in), and the expected lifespan of the highway will be 25 years, without a major overhaul, and the maximum speed limit 120 km/h (75 mph). The project includes a number of bridges over rivers, road maintenance facilities, bus stop areas, avtopavilony, cattle trails, and electronic signage. Simultaneously with the construction of this highway, roads will be repaired and built in areas along its route.",
"title": "Highways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The motorway network in Kazakhstan is rather underdeveloped, mainly due to the low population density in the country, which doesn't require wider roads on long distances. There is a total of 490 km of motorways. The following are the only existing multi-lane, double carriage roads in Kazakhstan:",
"title": "Highways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "As of 2010, pipelines in Kazakhstan consist of:",
"title": "Pipelines"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "There are 4,000 km (2,500 mi) of waterways on the Syrdariya (Syr Darya), 80%, and Ertis (Irtysh) rivers, (2010)",
"title": "Waterways and waterborne transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The merchant marine has a total of 119 vessels as of 2017 consisting of four general cargo vessels, ten petroleum tankers, and 105 other vessels.",
"title": "Ports and harbors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Kazakhstan has a total of 97 airports. (2012) However, it is quoted as having a total of 449 airports in 2001.",
"title": "Airports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The large area of the country and the associated long distances makes air travel a very important component in domestic travel.",
"title": "Airports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "total: 64",
"title": "Airports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "total: 33",
"title": "Airports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "11 airports of Kazakhstan are part of the open sky regime, which allows more foreign carriers and more flights to operate at Kazakh airports. They include the airports of Nur-Sultan, Almaty, Shymkent, Aktau, Karaganda, Ust-Kamenogorsk, Pavlodar, Kokshetau, Taraz, Petropavlovsk, and Semey.",
"title": "Airports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Total: 3 (2012)",
"title": "Airports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The European Commission blacklisted all Kazakh carriers in 2009, with the sole exception of Air Astana. Since then, Kazakhstan had consistently been taking measures to modernize and revamp its air safety oversight. Thus, in 2016, the European Aviation Safety Agency removed all Kazakh airlines from its blacklist citing “sufficient evidence of compliance” with international standards by Kazakh airlines and its Civil Aviation Committee.",
"title": "Airlines"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In December 2021, it was announced that Kazakhstan’s aviation safety record increased to 84%, which is 15% higher than the global average. These statistics were reported from an audit conducted by the ICAO Coordinated Validation Mission.",
"title": "Airlines"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Kazakhstan is actively involved in the New Silk Road initiative, which is an infrastructure project expected to significantly accelerate and reduce the cost of goods delivery from China to Europe through Central Asia.",
"title": "The New Silk Road"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "This article incorporates public domain material from The World Factbook. CIA.",
"title": "References"
}
] |
The vast territory of Kazakhstan spans across 2,700,000 km2 (1,000,000 sq mi). The population density is low in Kazakhstan, and the centers of industry and agriculture are spread out and remote from world markets.
|
2002-02-25T15:43:11Z
|
2023-10-06T16:53:35Z
|
[
"Template:Asia topic",
"Template:Update",
"Template:Track gauge",
"Template:As of",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Kazakhstan transit",
"Template:Kazakhstan topics",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:For",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Transportation in Europe",
"Template:Motorways in Asia",
"Template:CIA World Factbook",
"Template:Motorways in Europe",
"Template:Citation needed",
"Template:Flagicon",
"Template:Clarify",
"Template:Airports in Kazakhstan",
"Template:Commons category",
"Template:Convert",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Cleanup",
"Template:Reflist"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Kazakhstan
|
16,650 |
Armed Forces of the Republic of Kazakhstan
|
The Armed Forces of the Republic of Kazakhstan (Kazakh: Қазақстан Республикасының Қарулы Күштері, Qazaqstan Respublikasynyñ Qaruly Küşterı, Russian: Вооружённые силы Республики Казахстан) is the unified armed forces of Kazakhstan. It consists of three branches (Ground Forces, Air Defense Forces, Naval Forces) as well as four independent formations (Air Assault Forces, Special Forces, Rocket and Artillery Forces, Territorial Troops). The National Guard, Civil Defense, Border Service and the State Security Service serve as militarized affiliates of the armed forces. The national defence policy aims are based on the Constitution of Kazakhstan. They guarantee the preservation of the independence and sovereignty of the state and the integrity of its land area, territorial waters and airspace and its constitutional order. The armed forces of Kazakhstan act under the authority of the Kazakhstan Ministry of Defence.
The branches and subordinate bodies of the armed forces include:
The Military Balance 2013 reported the armed forces' strength as; Army, 20,000, Navy, 3,000, Air Force, 12,000, and MoD, 4,000. It also reported 31,000 paramilitary personnel.
The General Staff is the main body for the management of the armed forces of the state in peacetime and wartime, coordinates the development of plans for the construction and development of the Armed Forces, other troops and military formations, their operational, combat and mobilization training, organizes and carries out strategic planning application and interaction of the Armed Forces, other troops and military formations, and also develops a plan for the operational equipment of the country's territory in defense.
On May 7, 1992, the president of Kazakhstan took a number of actions regarding defence. He signed a decree on the 'establishment of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Kazakhstan', the transformation of the State Committee of Defence of the Republic of Kazakhstan into the Ministry of Defence, on the attribution of Sagadat Nurmagambetov the military rank of Colonel General, and the appointment of General-Colonel Sagadat Nurmagambetov as Defence Minister of Kazakhstan. Mukhtar Altynbayev served as the Minister of Defence twice, most recently from December 2001 to 10 January 2007.
On June 30, 1992, the Soviet Armed Forces' Turkestan Military District disbanded, following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The most powerful grouping of forces from the Turkestan Military District then became the core of Kazakhstan's new military. Kazakhstan acquired all the units of the 40th Army (the former 32nd Army) and part of the 17th Army Corps, including 6 land force divisions, storage bases, the 14th and 35th air-landing brigades, 2 rocket brigades, 2 artillery regiments and a large amount of equipment which had been withdrawn from over the Urals after the signing of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe.
On July 6, 2000, a presidential decree returned the armed forces returned to a dual structure (general-purpose forces and air defense forces). The Airmobile Forces were also created, and it transitioned to a new military-territorial structure of established military districts. In February 2001, a decree divided the functions of the Ministry of Defence and General Staff. From 2000 to 2003, the transition of the Armed Forces to the brigade structure of troops was fully implemented.
Kazakhstan had its first military parade in its history at Otar Military Base on May 7, 2013, celebrating the Defender of the Fatherland Day as the national holiday for the first time ever. During the ceremony, the first woman was promoted to the rank of General. Kazakhstan is a founding member of CSTO and SCO. Kazakhstan also has an Individual Partnership Action Plan with NATO & strategic cooperation with the Turkish Armed Forces.
During the civil war in Tajikistan, in accordance with the decision of the CIS countries, peacekeepers were sent to Tajikistan. The participants were Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. At the initial stage, on September 10, 1992, one 300 man airborne assault battalion from the 35th Guards Air Assault Brigade was sent to Tajikistan. Later, in the spring of 1993, a consolidated battalion of three rifle companies was formed from three agencies: the Ministry of Defense, the Interior Ministry, and the Border Troops of the KNB. The combat task of the Kazakh military during the civil war in Tajikistan was to strengthen the checkpoints and outposts of the Russian border detachment in Kalai-Khumb. On April 7, 1995, in the Pshikhavr Gorge of the Pamirs, a company was ambushed, during which 17 people were killed, 33 were injured. Over the entire period of peacekeeping missions in Tajikistan, during the hostilities, the combined Kazakh battalion lost 54 soldiers killed and missing. The mission formally ended in 2000, and the peacekeepers left in 2001.
Kazakhstan has one of the most extensive peacekeeping operations in the Commonwealth of Independent States. The KAZBAT is the main Kazakh peacekeeping military unit, falling under the 38th Air Assault Brigade (KAZBRIG) of the Airmobile Forces. It was formed on 31 January 2000 by decree of President Nursultan Nazarbayev. They are trained in accordance with NATO and United Nations standards and are therefore authorized to wear blue helmets while on duty and during parades.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic in Kazakhstan broke out, volunteer military personnel have been called to serve to combat the virus. The volunteers are stationed at checkpoints and city facilities as well as patrolled the streets to enforce lockdowns.
In 2012, a quarter of the budget allocated for the MoD was allocated for modernization, restoration, overhaul and the acquisition of weapons. From 2012 to 2014, defense spending amounted to 12 billion tenge.
The 32nd Army had been serving in Kazakhstan for many years. The 32nd Army had been redesignated initially the 1st Army Corps (1988), then the 40th Army (June 1991). It came under Kazakh control in May 1992. On November 1, 1992, on the basis of units of the former Soviet 40th Army of the Turkestan Military District, the First Army Corps was created, with its headquarters in Semipalatinsk. Later, at its base was established the Eastern Military District, retitled on 13 November 2003 as Regional Command East.
Today the Ground Forces include four regional commands:
There are also the Airmobile Forces with four brigades, and the Artillery and Missile Forces (formed as a separate branch on 7 May 2003).
At the time of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the 24th Fighter-Bomber Aviation Division with three aviation regiments and three separate regiments was stationed in Kazakhstan. By late 1993 the Kazakhstan Air Force comprised a total of six regiments, with a further air defence fighter regiment. The 11th Division included the 129th Fighter-Bomber Regiment based at Taldy Kurgan, with MiG-27 'Flogger' aircraft and the 134th Fighter-Bomber Regiment at Zhangiz-tobe with MiG-27s. There was also the 149th Bomber Regiment at Zhetigen/Nikolayevka, with Sukhoi Su-24 'Fencers'. Independent elements comprised the 715th Fighter Regiment at Lugovaya, with MiG-29s and MiG-23 'Floggers'; the 39th Reconnaissance Regiment at Balkhash, with MiG-25RBs and Su-24MR "Fencer" aircraft, and the 486th Helicopter Regiment based at Ucharal with Mi-24 'Hind'. The sole air defence fighter aviation regiment was the 356th Fighter Aviation Regiment at Semipalatinsk with Mikoyan MiG-31 "Foxhound" air defence fighters, which had been part of the 56th Air Defence Corps of the 14th Independent Air Defence Army. The Air Force was under the command of Major General Aliy Petrovich Volkov.
Today the Kazakh Air and Air Defence Force has four fast jet bases:
On 28 October 2010, two strategic agreements signed today establish the framework for Eurocopter's creation of a 50/50 joint venture with Kazakhstan Engineering Kazakhstan to assemble EC145 helicopters, along with the sale of 45 of these locally assembled aircraft for government missions in the country. On 28 November 2011, Eurocopter delivered the first of six EC145s ordered to date by the Kazakh Ministries of Defence and Emergencies. Deliveries are to continue through 2017.
On 3 January 2012, Airbus Military signed a firm contract with Kazspetsexport, a state company belonging to the Ministry of Defence of Kazakhstan, to supply two EADS CASA C-295 military transport aircraft plus the related service support package for spare parts and ground support equipment. Additionally, a memorandum of understanding has been signed for a further six C295 aircraft, for which separate firm contracts will be signed progressively over the next few years. The first two aircraft will be delivered by April 2013 and for the remaining six aircraft a delivery schedule will be defined over the following years. This purchase likely represents a quid pro quo. In 2008, EADS made titanium sourcing agreements with Kazakh suppliers.
In May 2012, Kazakhstan signed a letter of intent to acquire 20 Eurocopter EC725 helicopters. They were to be assembled in Astana by Kazakhstan Engineering. These Eurocoptors will be fitted with modern systems made by the Turkish firm Aselsan.
Kazakhstan's Naval Forces were established by presidential decree on 7 May 2003 in spite of being the largest landlocked country on earth. They operate on the Caspian Sea, based at Aktau. The Kazakh Naval Force has a strength of 3,000 personnel and is equipped with fourteen inshore patrol craft.
The following higher educational institutions are the main military academies in Kazakhstan:
Other militarized educational institutions:
Secondary schools:
There are approximately 8,000-8,500 women serving in the Kazakh army. Of those women, 750 are officers. The Ministry of Defence has been working to promote women in the military through educational programs and career advancement opportunities. Only 2.1% of leadership positions within the Ministry of Defence are held by women. The Ministry of Defence also hosts Batyr Arular, which is a nationwide competition for service men and women, showcasing their combat skills, combat readiness and overall physical ability. Batyr Arular gives awards for the best service women.
Every year, all men aged 18 to 27 are called up for military service in Kazakhstan. There are a number of circumstances due to which one can be released from military service both on a temporary and permanent basis.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Armed Forces of the Republic of Kazakhstan (Kazakh: Қазақстан Республикасының Қарулы Күштері, Qazaqstan Respublikasynyñ Qaruly Küşterı, Russian: Вооружённые силы Республики Казахстан) is the unified armed forces of Kazakhstan. It consists of three branches (Ground Forces, Air Defense Forces, Naval Forces) as well as four independent formations (Air Assault Forces, Special Forces, Rocket and Artillery Forces, Territorial Troops). The National Guard, Civil Defense, Border Service and the State Security Service serve as militarized affiliates of the armed forces. The national defence policy aims are based on the Constitution of Kazakhstan. They guarantee the preservation of the independence and sovereignty of the state and the integrity of its land area, territorial waters and airspace and its constitutional order. The armed forces of Kazakhstan act under the authority of the Kazakhstan Ministry of Defence.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The branches and subordinate bodies of the armed forces include:",
"title": "General composition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The Military Balance 2013 reported the armed forces' strength as; Army, 20,000, Navy, 3,000, Air Force, 12,000, and MoD, 4,000. It also reported 31,000 paramilitary personnel.",
"title": "General composition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The General Staff is the main body for the management of the armed forces of the state in peacetime and wartime, coordinates the development of plans for the construction and development of the Armed Forces, other troops and military formations, their operational, combat and mobilization training, organizes and carries out strategic planning application and interaction of the Armed Forces, other troops and military formations, and also develops a plan for the operational equipment of the country's territory in defense.",
"title": "General composition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "On May 7, 1992, the president of Kazakhstan took a number of actions regarding defence. He signed a decree on the 'establishment of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Kazakhstan', the transformation of the State Committee of Defence of the Republic of Kazakhstan into the Ministry of Defence, on the attribution of Sagadat Nurmagambetov the military rank of Colonel General, and the appointment of General-Colonel Sagadat Nurmagambetov as Defence Minister of Kazakhstan. Mukhtar Altynbayev served as the Minister of Defence twice, most recently from December 2001 to 10 January 2007.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "On June 30, 1992, the Soviet Armed Forces' Turkestan Military District disbanded, following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The most powerful grouping of forces from the Turkestan Military District then became the core of Kazakhstan's new military. Kazakhstan acquired all the units of the 40th Army (the former 32nd Army) and part of the 17th Army Corps, including 6 land force divisions, storage bases, the 14th and 35th air-landing brigades, 2 rocket brigades, 2 artillery regiments and a large amount of equipment which had been withdrawn from over the Urals after the signing of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "On July 6, 2000, a presidential decree returned the armed forces returned to a dual structure (general-purpose forces and air defense forces). The Airmobile Forces were also created, and it transitioned to a new military-territorial structure of established military districts. In February 2001, a decree divided the functions of the Ministry of Defence and General Staff. From 2000 to 2003, the transition of the Armed Forces to the brigade structure of troops was fully implemented.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Kazakhstan had its first military parade in its history at Otar Military Base on May 7, 2013, celebrating the Defender of the Fatherland Day as the national holiday for the first time ever. During the ceremony, the first woman was promoted to the rank of General. Kazakhstan is a founding member of CSTO and SCO. Kazakhstan also has an Individual Partnership Action Plan with NATO & strategic cooperation with the Turkish Armed Forces.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "During the civil war in Tajikistan, in accordance with the decision of the CIS countries, peacekeepers were sent to Tajikistan. The participants were Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. At the initial stage, on September 10, 1992, one 300 man airborne assault battalion from the 35th Guards Air Assault Brigade was sent to Tajikistan. Later, in the spring of 1993, a consolidated battalion of three rifle companies was formed from three agencies: the Ministry of Defense, the Interior Ministry, and the Border Troops of the KNB. The combat task of the Kazakh military during the civil war in Tajikistan was to strengthen the checkpoints and outposts of the Russian border detachment in Kalai-Khumb. On April 7, 1995, in the Pshikhavr Gorge of the Pamirs, a company was ambushed, during which 17 people were killed, 33 were injured. Over the entire period of peacekeeping missions in Tajikistan, during the hostilities, the combined Kazakh battalion lost 54 soldiers killed and missing. The mission formally ended in 2000, and the peacekeepers left in 2001.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Kazakhstan has one of the most extensive peacekeeping operations in the Commonwealth of Independent States. The KAZBAT is the main Kazakh peacekeeping military unit, falling under the 38th Air Assault Brigade (KAZBRIG) of the Airmobile Forces. It was formed on 31 January 2000 by decree of President Nursultan Nazarbayev. They are trained in accordance with NATO and United Nations standards and are therefore authorized to wear blue helmets while on duty and during parades.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Since the COVID-19 pandemic in Kazakhstan broke out, volunteer military personnel have been called to serve to combat the virus. The volunteers are stationed at checkpoints and city facilities as well as patrolled the streets to enforce lockdowns.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In 2012, a quarter of the budget allocated for the MoD was allocated for modernization, restoration, overhaul and the acquisition of weapons. From 2012 to 2014, defense spending amounted to 12 billion tenge.",
"title": "Budget"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The 32nd Army had been serving in Kazakhstan for many years. The 32nd Army had been redesignated initially the 1st Army Corps (1988), then the 40th Army (June 1991). It came under Kazakh control in May 1992. On November 1, 1992, on the basis of units of the former Soviet 40th Army of the Turkestan Military District, the First Army Corps was created, with its headquarters in Semipalatinsk. Later, at its base was established the Eastern Military District, retitled on 13 November 2003 as Regional Command East.",
"title": "Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Today the Ground Forces include four regional commands:",
"title": "Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "There are also the Airmobile Forces with four brigades, and the Artillery and Missile Forces (formed as a separate branch on 7 May 2003).",
"title": "Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "At the time of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the 24th Fighter-Bomber Aviation Division with three aviation regiments and three separate regiments was stationed in Kazakhstan. By late 1993 the Kazakhstan Air Force comprised a total of six regiments, with a further air defence fighter regiment. The 11th Division included the 129th Fighter-Bomber Regiment based at Taldy Kurgan, with MiG-27 'Flogger' aircraft and the 134th Fighter-Bomber Regiment at Zhangiz-tobe with MiG-27s. There was also the 149th Bomber Regiment at Zhetigen/Nikolayevka, with Sukhoi Su-24 'Fencers'. Independent elements comprised the 715th Fighter Regiment at Lugovaya, with MiG-29s and MiG-23 'Floggers'; the 39th Reconnaissance Regiment at Balkhash, with MiG-25RBs and Su-24MR \"Fencer\" aircraft, and the 486th Helicopter Regiment based at Ucharal with Mi-24 'Hind'. The sole air defence fighter aviation regiment was the 356th Fighter Aviation Regiment at Semipalatinsk with Mikoyan MiG-31 \"Foxhound\" air defence fighters, which had been part of the 56th Air Defence Corps of the 14th Independent Air Defence Army. The Air Force was under the command of Major General Aliy Petrovich Volkov.",
"title": "Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Today the Kazakh Air and Air Defence Force has four fast jet bases:",
"title": "Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "On 28 October 2010, two strategic agreements signed today establish the framework for Eurocopter's creation of a 50/50 joint venture with Kazakhstan Engineering Kazakhstan to assemble EC145 helicopters, along with the sale of 45 of these locally assembled aircraft for government missions in the country. On 28 November 2011, Eurocopter delivered the first of six EC145s ordered to date by the Kazakh Ministries of Defence and Emergencies. Deliveries are to continue through 2017.",
"title": "Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "On 3 January 2012, Airbus Military signed a firm contract with Kazspetsexport, a state company belonging to the Ministry of Defence of Kazakhstan, to supply two EADS CASA C-295 military transport aircraft plus the related service support package for spare parts and ground support equipment. Additionally, a memorandum of understanding has been signed for a further six C295 aircraft, for which separate firm contracts will be signed progressively over the next few years. The first two aircraft will be delivered by April 2013 and for the remaining six aircraft a delivery schedule will be defined over the following years. This purchase likely represents a quid pro quo. In 2008, EADS made titanium sourcing agreements with Kazakh suppliers.",
"title": "Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In May 2012, Kazakhstan signed a letter of intent to acquire 20 Eurocopter EC725 helicopters. They were to be assembled in Astana by Kazakhstan Engineering. These Eurocoptors will be fitted with modern systems made by the Turkish firm Aselsan.",
"title": "Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Kazakhstan's Naval Forces were established by presidential decree on 7 May 2003 in spite of being the largest landlocked country on earth. They operate on the Caspian Sea, based at Aktau. The Kazakh Naval Force has a strength of 3,000 personnel and is equipped with fourteen inshore patrol craft.",
"title": "Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The following higher educational institutions are the main military academies in Kazakhstan:",
"title": "Personnel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Other militarized educational institutions:",
"title": "Personnel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Secondary schools:",
"title": "Personnel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "There are approximately 8,000-8,500 women serving in the Kazakh army. Of those women, 750 are officers. The Ministry of Defence has been working to promote women in the military through educational programs and career advancement opportunities. Only 2.1% of leadership positions within the Ministry of Defence are held by women. The Ministry of Defence also hosts Batyr Arular, which is a nationwide competition for service men and women, showcasing their combat skills, combat readiness and overall physical ability. Batyr Arular gives awards for the best service women.",
"title": "Personnel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Every year, all men aged 18 to 27 are called up for military service in Kazakhstan. There are a number of circumstances due to which one can be released from military service both on a temporary and permanent basis.",
"title": "Personnel"
}
] |
The Armed Forces of the Republic of Kazakhstan is the unified armed forces of Kazakhstan. It consists of three branches as well as four independent formations. The National Guard, Civil Defense, Border Service and the State Security Service serve as militarized affiliates of the armed forces. The national defence policy aims are based on the Constitution of Kazakhstan. They guarantee the preservation of the independence and sovereignty of the state and the integrity of its land area, territorial waters and airspace and its constitutional order. The armed forces of Kazakhstan act under the authority of the Kazakhstan Ministry of Defence.
|
2002-02-25T15:43:11Z
|
2023-12-26T07:04:21Z
|
[
"Template:Main",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Infobox national military",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Lang-kk",
"Template:Lang",
"Template:Lang-ru",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Kazakh Armed Forces",
"Template:Kazakhstan topics",
"Template:Military of Asia"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_Forces_of_the_Republic_of_Kazakhstan
|
16,651 |
Foreign relations of Kazakhstan
|
Foreign relations of Kazakhstan are primarily based on economic and political security. The Nazarbayev administration has tried to balance relations with Russia and the United States by sending petroleum and natural gas to its northern neighbor at artificially low prices while assisting the U.S. in the War on Terror. Kazakhstan is a member of the United Nations, Collective Security Treaty Organization, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (which it chaired in 2010), North Atlantic Cooperation Council, Commonwealth of Independent States, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and NATO's Partnership for Peace program. Kazakhstan established a customs union with Russia and Belarus, transformed into the Eurasian Economical Community then in 2015 into the Eurasian Economic Union. President Nazarbayev has prioritized economic diplomacy into Kazakhstan's foreign policy.
Kazakhstan has a "multi-vector" foreign policy, i.e. a triangulation between the major powers of Russia, China and the US. Kazakhstan has called for “intra-regional integration in Central Asia” and international integration of the region.
In December 2010, Kazakhstan held the first OSCE summit since 1999.
In 2015 Kazakhstan joined the Inter-American Convention on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters. In September the Kazakh Senate ratified the Convention, which unites 26 countries, including the United States, South Korea, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela and other countries.
Kazakhstan's main foreign policy efforts are focused on achieving the following goals:
The Foreign Ministry of Kazakhstan assumed the new function of attracting investments to Kazakhstan in December 2018. As part of the new responsibilities, the Ministry oversees activities in attracting foreign investment and promoting Kazakh exports abroad, taking away these responsibilities from the reformed Ministry for Investment and Development. Two main objectives of Kazakhstan's economic diplomacy include comprehensive support of Kazakh business abroad and promotion of non-resource export. These objectives are set to help achieve the goals of diversifying the economy, creating new jobs, promoting innovative technologies and attracting foreign investors.
As part of economic diplomacy, Kazakhstan compiled a list of 40 countries its Foreign Ministry is to target in a bid to attract more foreign investment. Coordinated by the Foreign Ministry, Kazakhstan's diplomatic missions also address issues of strategic interest to Kazakhstan's business community in their receiving states.
Not until 2005 did Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan agree to begin demarcating their shared borders. No seabed boundary with Turkmenistan in the Caspian Sea has been agreed on and the usage of Caspian Sea water is a matter that remains unsettled by international agreement.
According to Bakhytzhan Sagintaev, first deputy prime minister, in 2015 Kazakhstan and China will sign an intergovernmental agreement on water allocation of the 24 transboundary rivers.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991, Kazakhstan inherited 1,410 nuclear warheads and the Semipalatinsk nuclear-weapon test site. By April 1995, Kazakhstan had returned the warheads to Russia and, by July 2000, had destroyed the nuclear testing infrastructure at Semipalatinsk.
On December 2, 2009, UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon and the Republic of Kazakhstan designated August 29 as International Day against Nuclear Tests, the anniversary of the date that Kazakhstan closed the Semipalatinsk test site in 1991.
The contribution of Kazakhstan's President Nazarbayev to nuclear non-proliferation was highly recognized by Japan. During his visit to Japan in November 2016, Nursultan Nazarbayev was awarded the title of special honorary citizen of Hiroshima for his non-proliferation efforts.
Illegal cannabis and, to a lesser extent, opium production in Kazakhstan is an international issue since much of the crop ends up being sold in other countries, particularly in other member-states of Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). In 1998, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimated that a "minimum of 1,517 tons of cannabis was harvested" in Kazakhstan.
With the fall of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan became a major transit country for narcotics produced in Southwest Asia, primarily from Afghanistan. In 2001, Kazakh authorities reported 1,320 cases of drug trafficking and seized 18 metric tons of narcotics. However, this is viewed as a fraction of the actual total volume trafficked and widespread corruption continues to hamper government anti-drug efforts; Transparency International gave Kazakhstan a score of 2.2, on a scale of 0–10 with 0 indicating a "highly corrupt" state. Russia and other parts of Europe are the main markets for these drugs although drug use is growing in Kazakhstan as well.
In November 2014 Kazakh Foreign Minister and Resident Representative of UNDP in Kazakhstan signed a project document supporting Kazakhstan's Foreign Affairs Ministry in forming KazAID, a system of Official Development Assistance (ODA). KazAID is the first ODA programme among the Central Asian states. The KazAID program implies technical assistance and humanitarian aid to Afghanistan. As of 2016, Kazakhstan provided Afghanistan with 20,000 tons of food products valued at some $20 million.
Kazakhstan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs with assistance of the UNDP and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) leads ODA titled "Promoting Kazakhstan's ODA Cooperation with Afghanistan." The ODA is aimed at expanding economic independence and rights of Afghan women. The project marks Kazakhstan's first international cooperation for Afghanistan in the framework of national system of ODA.
As of 2017, Kazakhstan provided ODA worth approximately $450 million. Countries of Central Asia and Afghanistan are a priority for Kazakhstan's ODA.
Kazakhstan has not established diplomatic relations with Botswana, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, East Timor, Malawi, Nauru, Somalia, and South Sudan.
Kazakhstan has proactively worked to establish ties with African nations. Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Askar Mussinov participated in the 25th Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union in Johannesburg, South Africa June 12–15.
Responding to an international call to help ease the suffering that Ebola is causing in West Africa, Kazakhstan transferred $50,000 to the UN Ebola Trust Fund in late 2014. After that Astana expressed its intention to provide $300,000 to the African Union's special project to fight Ebola.
The 1st day of the VIII Astana Economic Forum held on May 21, 2015, was dedicated to Africa and was titled "Africa – the Next Driver of the Global Economy". The Foreign Minister of Kazakhstan Erlan Idrissov noted: "We recognise that Africa is a continent with huge potential. It has enormous human capital and a large, young population.” More than 20 permanent representatives to the United Nations (UN) from Africa participated in the session.
On September 28, 2015, Kazakhstan and the UNDP signed a $2 million cost-sharing agreement launching a new program to help 45 African countries implement the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.
Kazakhstan's Deputy Foreign Minister Yerzhan Ashikbayev said that Kazakhstan is seeking "new perspectives" and boosting its relations with Latin American nations via a series of diplomatic visits.
Ashikbayev attended the 44th General Assembly of the Organization of American States in Asuncion, Paraguay on June 4. Kazakhstan was the largest delegation among the conference's 39 observer nations.
The Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza, on June 3 met with the Deputy Foreign Minister, Yerzhan Ashikbayev, in Asunción, Paraguay, for the 44th OAS General Assembly where Ashikbayev presented a contribution to help fund important OAS programs.
Foreign Minister Erlan Idrissov conducted a four-day visit to Mexico on September 17–20, 2014. During his visit Idrissov met with Mexican Economy Secretary Ildefonso Guajardo, Foreign Secretary Jose Antonio Meade, former President Vincente Fox, other senior officials and business leaders. The Minister and his delegation will view the future site of Kazakhstan's embassy in Mexico City. Idrissov said that the main objective of his visit was to build a bridge between Latin America and Eurasia. The Foreign Minister underlined that economic and trade collaboration with Kazakhstan will allow investors to reach neighboring markets, such as Russia and China. Idrissov also said that Kazakhstan seeks to expand its presence in Latin America and considers Mexico as a strategic ally in building these relations, while Kazakhstan can offer the same support to Mexico in the Eurasian region.
Delegations from the EFTA States, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland met with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan for a first round of negotiations on a broad-based Free Trade Agreement on January 11–13, 2011 in Geneva.
The launching of EFTA-Russia/Belarus/Kazakhstan free trade negotiations had been announced in November 2010 by Ministers from the seven participating States, following a preparatory process including a Joint Feasibility Study.
The 11th round of free trade negotiations was conducted from January 27 to 30, 2014 in Astana, Kazakhstan. A 12th round of negotiations scheduled for April 2014 has been postponed. No new dates have been set yet.
The Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) with Kazakhstan has been the legal framework for European Union-Kazakhstan bilateral relations since it entered into force in 1999. In November 2006 a Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation in the field of energy between the EU and Kazakhstan has been signed establishing the basis for enhanced cooperation.
The future European Commission assistance will focus on the following priority areas: promotion of the ongoing reform process at political, economic, judiciary and social level, infrastructure building, and cooperation in the energy sector.
The overall EU co-operation objectives, policy responses and priority fields for Central Asia can be found in the EC Regional Strategy Paper for Central Asia 2007–2013. In addition to the assistance under the Development Cooperation Instrument (DCI), Kazakhstan participates in several ongoing regional programs.
On January 20, 2015 Kazakhstan and the EU initialed the EU-Kazakhstan Enhanced Partnership and Cooperation Agreement. This agreement will greatly facilitate stronger political and economic relations between Kazakhstan and the EU. It will increase the flow of trade, services and investment between the parties and will contribute to Kazakhstan's political and social development.
Bilateral relations received a post-pandemic refocus with the EU visit by Kazakhstan's president in November 2021. The visit was the first to Europe by Tokayev since becoming president in 2019.
Kazakhstan has been a member of NATO's Partnership for Peace since May 27, 1994. In October 2014 Kazakhstan and NATO marked 20 years of cooperation within the Partnership for Peace. To that end, from October 6 to 10, 2014 a NATO delegation visited Kazakhstan to take part in a series of public diplomacy events. Among meetings with Kazakhstan's officials, the delegates also visited the Nazarbayev and the Gumilyov Eurasian National universities in Astana, where they delivered lectures explaining NATO's engagement with partners in the Central Asian region and briefed audiences on the key outcomes of the recent NATO Wales Summit, with particular focus on NATO's partnership policy and Afghanistan.
A NATO delegation also plans to visit Astana in the first half of 2015 and hold a joint event with the Kazakh side in the second half of 2015. The future NATO-Kazakhstan joint activities will be held in the framework of the Partnership for Peace program, which centres on the development and exchange of experience for peacekeeping forces.
At the 27th meeting of the Foreign Investors' Council, President Nazarbayev announced visa-free entry for citizens of the United States, the Netherlands, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Malaysia, the UAE, South Korea, and Japan. Currently Kazakhstan and the United States issue 5-year visas to citizens of each other.
This will fulfill a goal of diversifying the economy while also helping the world become more acquainted with Kazakhstan's cultural patrimony. Since 2001 to 2012, Kazakhstan has doubled its tourism earnings. Experts expect that Kazakhstan will continue to benefit from tourism from the eased visa regime.
On July 15, 2014, Kazakhstan launched a pilot project of visa-free regime for 10 countries: UK, USA, Germany, France, Italy, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Malaysia, the Netherlands, South Korea and Japan. Citizens of these countries can enter, exit and transit through Kazakhstan without a visa for visits of up to 15 calendar days at a time.
On June 26, 2015, Kazakhstan issued a resolution expanding the number of countries included in a trial visa-free regime and extended that regime until December 31, 2017. The list now includes 19 countries, including Australia, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UAE, the U. K. and the U.S.
Starting from January 1, 2017, Kazakhstan introduced visa-free access for 20 developed countries. These countries include the OECD members, Malaysia, Monaco, the UAE and Singapore.
Kazakhstan became a member of the United Nations on March 2, 1992, nearly three months after gaining independence.
During the General Assembly on November 12, 2012, Kazakhstan was elected to a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council for the first time. Their seat is with the Asian Group and their term will expire in 2015.
At United Nations Day 2013, Foreign Minister Erlan Idrisov addressed the UN General Assembly saying the UN should develop a regional center in Almaty. Since the United Nations has no regional offices between Vienna and Bangkok, Almaty is home to 18 international organization's regional offices and would be vital to the development of Central Asia and its neighbors.
At the 68th Assembly of the United Nations, Foreign Minister Idrisov announced Kazakhstan's bid for a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council for 2017–2018. So far they and Thailand have announced their bids.
In February 2015 the United Nations' specialized agency World Health Organization opened a new geographically dispersed office (GDO) for primary health care in Kazakhstan at the Kazakh National Medical University of S.Asfendiyarov in Almaty. According to the head the Kazakh Medical University, the GDO of the WHO's European Bureau in Almaty will be financed by the UN.
In July 2015 Kazakhstan was accepted to the Executive Council of the World Federation of UNESCO (WCF) Clubs at the ninth WCF World Congress, UNESCO Centres and Associations.
On May 6, 2016, Kazakh Foreign Minister Erlan Idrissov spoke at two high level meetings at the U.N. headquarters in New York. The Foreign Minister said that Kazakhstan was calling for a nuclear free world by 2045, the 100th anniversary of the United Nations.
Kazakhstan signed the Paris Climate Change Agreement on Aug 2 at UN Headquarters in New York. The Kazakh Senate ratified the Paris Agreement on October 27, 2016. Under the Paris Agreement, Kazakhstan has committed to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 15-20% by 2030 up to the level observed in 1990.
In March 2017, Kazakhstan marked 25 years of its membership in the United Nations. To celebrate this anniversary, Kazakhstan opened the “Kazakhstan and the United Nations: Interaction for Peace” exhibition in the Museum of the Library of the First President of Kazakhstan. During 25 years of cooperation, the UN opened 15 representative offices in Kazakhstan, including the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), among others.
Astana is a host city of the Eighth International Forum on Energy for Sustainable Development that is planned to be held in June 2017. The Forum is co-organized through collaboration by Kazakhstan with the UN Regional Commissions, as well as UNDP, IEA, IAEA, IRENA, the World Bank, UNID, the Copenhagen Centre on Energy Efficiency, and the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century.
Kazakhstan, along with Sweden, Bolivia and Ethiopia, were elected to serve on Security Council for a two-year term, starting from January 1, 2017. Kazakhstan became the first Central Asian country to be elected as a non-permanent member of the UNSC. Kazakhstan assumed the chairmanship of UNSC on January 1, 2018. According to Kazakhstan's Foreign Minister Kairat Abdrakhmanov, during this period Kazakhstan will focus on drawing attention on international community to the issues of Central Asia and Afghanistan.
Kazakhstan outlined priorities during its UNSC tenure. They included nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, fight against terrorism and extremism, promotion of peacemaking and peace-building, as well as security and development issues in the Central Asian region.
President Nazarbayev's address to the UNSC was presented by the Foreign Minister of Kazakhstan at the ministerial-level open debate of the UNSC held on January 10, 2017. The address was based on the principles of the Kazakh President's earlier Manifesto “The World. The 21st Century.” It declares Kazakhstan's commitment to building a world free of nuclear weapons and to rid humanity of wars and conflicts.
President Nazarbayev chaired the January 18 UN Security Council briefing on WMD non-proliferation and related measures to better provide security for Central Asia. It was the first time a president of a Central Asian country chaired a UNSC briefing.
On October 31, 2018, Kazakhstan deployed 120 Kazakh peacekeepers to serve with the UN mission in furthering peace in south Lebanon. It was the first time Kazakh troops were serving with UNIFIL in the Mission's 40-year history. On August 20, 2020, Kazakhstan deployed a second group of 60 peacekeepers to the UNIFIL.
Kazakhstan is one of the original founding members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, known as the Shanghai Five. They formally began the organization on April 26, 1996, with the signing of the Treaty on Deepening Military Trust in Border Regions in Shanghai. Since then, Kazakhstan has become a very active member in global politics within the organization.
At the SCO Summit in Bishkek, Kyrygyzstan on September 20, 2013, Kazakhstan met with leaders to discuss many issues. One of the main issues discussed was the focus on regional stability for Afghanistan after the United States withdraws its troop. Kazakhstan also signed the Bishkek Declaration along with members and observers to find diplomatic solutions for Iran and Syria. On Syria, Kazakhstan wanted to help find a diplomatic solution that would not involve direct intervention due to the need of UN authorization. On Iran, Kazakhstan wanted to see a diplomatic solution between Iran and the P5+1 group for Iran to enrich uranium at levels for energy consumption.
In November 2016, Kazakhstan chaired first ever SCO human rights consultations. The meetings were held in Beijing and aimed at further consolidation of the SCO member states cooperation in human rights.
Astana hosted the 17th Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit June 8–9, 2017. The summit featured the ceremony of accession of India and Pakistan to the organization. Therefore, the total number of member states increased to eight: China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India, and Pakistan.
Kazakhstan joined the Antarctic Treaty in November 2014 being the 51st country to ratify it.
Kazakhstan had shown an interest in the Antarctic before, with officials even identifying it as a potential source of drinking water for the arid steppe nation. The country staged its first expedition to the South Pole in 2011.
On January 23 in Davos at the World Economic Forum, Prime Minister of Kazakhstan Karim Massimov and Secretary General of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Angel Gurria signed a Memorandum of Understanding between Kazakhstan and the OECD on the implementation of the Country Program of Cooperation for 2015–2016.
In July 2016, it was announced that Kazakhstan was admitted to the OECD Competition Committee that aims to promote antitrust reforms. Kazakhstan is the first Central Asian country to join the committee.
Kazakhstan joined the Declaration on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises of the OECD and became an associated participant of the OECD Investment Committee in June 2017. OECD Investment Committee is the leading government forum for cooperation on international investment issues.
Kazakhstan applied for WTO accession on January 29, 1996. The accession negotiations between Kazakhstan and the WTO lasted 20 years and on November 30, 2015, the organization welcomed Kazakhstan as its 162nd Member.
In April 2017, the General Council of the WTO announced that Kazakhstan's Ambassador to Switzerland and Permanent Representative of the Republic of Kazakhstan to the UN structures Zhanar Aitzhanova would be the Chairperson of the WTO Committee for Trade and Environment in 2017.
The 21st World Anti Crisis Conference was conducted with the support of the UN General Assembly Resolution A/RES/67/19International financial sistem and development from December 21, 2012, on May 23, 2013, within the framework of the VI Astana Economic Forum. Main outcome of the WAC I was the Astana Declaration and the guidelines of the World Anti-Crisis Plan developed using the contributions from the international expert community, the UN member states and the UN Secretariat.
The concept of the WAC Plan, based on democratic principles and the interests of all UN member states aims at developing effective measures to overcome the economic and financial crisis, preventing future recessions and ensuring long-term balanced growth of the global economy.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Foreign relations of Kazakhstan are primarily based on economic and political security. The Nazarbayev administration has tried to balance relations with Russia and the United States by sending petroleum and natural gas to its northern neighbor at artificially low prices while assisting the U.S. in the War on Terror. Kazakhstan is a member of the United Nations, Collective Security Treaty Organization, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (which it chaired in 2010), North Atlantic Cooperation Council, Commonwealth of Independent States, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and NATO's Partnership for Peace program. Kazakhstan established a customs union with Russia and Belarus, transformed into the Eurasian Economical Community then in 2015 into the Eurasian Economic Union. President Nazarbayev has prioritized economic diplomacy into Kazakhstan's foreign policy.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Kazakhstan has a \"multi-vector\" foreign policy, i.e. a triangulation between the major powers of Russia, China and the US. Kazakhstan has called for “intra-regional integration in Central Asia” and international integration of the region.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In December 2010, Kazakhstan held the first OSCE summit since 1999.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In 2015 Kazakhstan joined the Inter-American Convention on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters. In September the Kazakh Senate ratified the Convention, which unites 26 countries, including the United States, South Korea, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela and other countries.",
"title": "Multilateral agreements"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Kazakhstan's main foreign policy efforts are focused on achieving the following goals:",
"title": "Foreign policy 2014–2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The Foreign Ministry of Kazakhstan assumed the new function of attracting investments to Kazakhstan in December 2018. As part of the new responsibilities, the Ministry oversees activities in attracting foreign investment and promoting Kazakh exports abroad, taking away these responsibilities from the reformed Ministry for Investment and Development. Two main objectives of Kazakhstan's economic diplomacy include comprehensive support of Kazakh business abroad and promotion of non-resource export. These objectives are set to help achieve the goals of diversifying the economy, creating new jobs, promoting innovative technologies and attracting foreign investors.",
"title": "Economic diplomacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "As part of economic diplomacy, Kazakhstan compiled a list of 40 countries its Foreign Ministry is to target in a bid to attract more foreign investment. Coordinated by the Foreign Ministry, Kazakhstan's diplomatic missions also address issues of strategic interest to Kazakhstan's business community in their receiving states.",
"title": "Economic diplomacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Not until 2005 did Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan agree to begin demarcating their shared borders. No seabed boundary with Turkmenistan in the Caspian Sea has been agreed on and the usage of Caspian Sea water is a matter that remains unsettled by international agreement.",
"title": "Border issues"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "According to Bakhytzhan Sagintaev, first deputy prime minister, in 2015 Kazakhstan and China will sign an intergovernmental agreement on water allocation of the 24 transboundary rivers.",
"title": "Border issues"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "When the Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991, Kazakhstan inherited 1,410 nuclear warheads and the Semipalatinsk nuclear-weapon test site. By April 1995, Kazakhstan had returned the warheads to Russia and, by July 2000, had destroyed the nuclear testing infrastructure at Semipalatinsk.",
"title": "Nuclear weapons non-proliferation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "On December 2, 2009, UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon and the Republic of Kazakhstan designated August 29 as International Day against Nuclear Tests, the anniversary of the date that Kazakhstan closed the Semipalatinsk test site in 1991.",
"title": "Nuclear weapons non-proliferation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The contribution of Kazakhstan's President Nazarbayev to nuclear non-proliferation was highly recognized by Japan. During his visit to Japan in November 2016, Nursultan Nazarbayev was awarded the title of special honorary citizen of Hiroshima for his non-proliferation efforts.",
"title": "Nuclear weapons non-proliferation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Illegal cannabis and, to a lesser extent, opium production in Kazakhstan is an international issue since much of the crop ends up being sold in other countries, particularly in other member-states of Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). In 1998, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimated that a \"minimum of 1,517 tons of cannabis was harvested\" in Kazakhstan.",
"title": "Illicit drugs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "With the fall of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan became a major transit country for narcotics produced in Southwest Asia, primarily from Afghanistan. In 2001, Kazakh authorities reported 1,320 cases of drug trafficking and seized 18 metric tons of narcotics. However, this is viewed as a fraction of the actual total volume trafficked and widespread corruption continues to hamper government anti-drug efforts; Transparency International gave Kazakhstan a score of 2.2, on a scale of 0–10 with 0 indicating a \"highly corrupt\" state. Russia and other parts of Europe are the main markets for these drugs although drug use is growing in Kazakhstan as well.",
"title": "Illicit drugs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In November 2014 Kazakh Foreign Minister and Resident Representative of UNDP in Kazakhstan signed a project document supporting Kazakhstan's Foreign Affairs Ministry in forming KazAID, a system of Official Development Assistance (ODA). KazAID is the first ODA programme among the Central Asian states. The KazAID program implies technical assistance and humanitarian aid to Afghanistan. As of 2016, Kazakhstan provided Afghanistan with 20,000 tons of food products valued at some $20 million.",
"title": "KazAID"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Kazakhstan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs with assistance of the UNDP and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) leads ODA titled \"Promoting Kazakhstan's ODA Cooperation with Afghanistan.\" The ODA is aimed at expanding economic independence and rights of Afghan women. The project marks Kazakhstan's first international cooperation for Afghanistan in the framework of national system of ODA.",
"title": "KazAID"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "As of 2017, Kazakhstan provided ODA worth approximately $450 million. Countries of Central Asia and Afghanistan are a priority for Kazakhstan's ODA.",
"title": "KazAID"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Kazakhstan has not established diplomatic relations with Botswana, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, East Timor, Malawi, Nauru, Somalia, and South Sudan.",
"title": "Diplomatic relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Kazakhstan has proactively worked to establish ties with African nations. Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Askar Mussinov participated in the 25th Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union in Johannesburg, South Africa June 12–15.",
"title": "Bilateral relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Responding to an international call to help ease the suffering that Ebola is causing in West Africa, Kazakhstan transferred $50,000 to the UN Ebola Trust Fund in late 2014. After that Astana expressed its intention to provide $300,000 to the African Union's special project to fight Ebola.",
"title": "Bilateral relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The 1st day of the VIII Astana Economic Forum held on May 21, 2015, was dedicated to Africa and was titled \"Africa – the Next Driver of the Global Economy\". The Foreign Minister of Kazakhstan Erlan Idrissov noted: \"We recognise that Africa is a continent with huge potential. It has enormous human capital and a large, young population.” More than 20 permanent representatives to the United Nations (UN) from Africa participated in the session.",
"title": "Bilateral relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "On September 28, 2015, Kazakhstan and the UNDP signed a $2 million cost-sharing agreement launching a new program to help 45 African countries implement the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.",
"title": "Bilateral relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Kazakhstan's Deputy Foreign Minister Yerzhan Ashikbayev said that Kazakhstan is seeking \"new perspectives\" and boosting its relations with Latin American nations via a series of diplomatic visits.",
"title": "Bilateral relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Ashikbayev attended the 44th General Assembly of the Organization of American States in Asuncion, Paraguay on June 4. Kazakhstan was the largest delegation among the conference's 39 observer nations.",
"title": "Bilateral relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza, on June 3 met with the Deputy Foreign Minister, Yerzhan Ashikbayev, in Asunción, Paraguay, for the 44th OAS General Assembly where Ashikbayev presented a contribution to help fund important OAS programs.",
"title": "Bilateral relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Foreign Minister Erlan Idrissov conducted a four-day visit to Mexico on September 17–20, 2014. During his visit Idrissov met with Mexican Economy Secretary Ildefonso Guajardo, Foreign Secretary Jose Antonio Meade, former President Vincente Fox, other senior officials and business leaders. The Minister and his delegation will view the future site of Kazakhstan's embassy in Mexico City. Idrissov said that the main objective of his visit was to build a bridge between Latin America and Eurasia. The Foreign Minister underlined that economic and trade collaboration with Kazakhstan will allow investors to reach neighboring markets, such as Russia and China. Idrissov also said that Kazakhstan seeks to expand its presence in Latin America and considers Mexico as a strategic ally in building these relations, while Kazakhstan can offer the same support to Mexico in the Eurasian region.",
"title": "Bilateral relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Delegations from the EFTA States, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland met with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan for a first round of negotiations on a broad-based Free Trade Agreement on January 11–13, 2011 in Geneva.",
"title": "Bilateral relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The launching of EFTA-Russia/Belarus/Kazakhstan free trade negotiations had been announced in November 2010 by Ministers from the seven participating States, following a preparatory process including a Joint Feasibility Study.",
"title": "Bilateral relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The 11th round of free trade negotiations was conducted from January 27 to 30, 2014 in Astana, Kazakhstan. A 12th round of negotiations scheduled for April 2014 has been postponed. No new dates have been set yet.",
"title": "Bilateral relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) with Kazakhstan has been the legal framework for European Union-Kazakhstan bilateral relations since it entered into force in 1999. In November 2006 a Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation in the field of energy between the EU and Kazakhstan has been signed establishing the basis for enhanced cooperation.",
"title": "Bilateral relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The future European Commission assistance will focus on the following priority areas: promotion of the ongoing reform process at political, economic, judiciary and social level, infrastructure building, and cooperation in the energy sector.",
"title": "Bilateral relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The overall EU co-operation objectives, policy responses and priority fields for Central Asia can be found in the EC Regional Strategy Paper for Central Asia 2007–2013. In addition to the assistance under the Development Cooperation Instrument (DCI), Kazakhstan participates in several ongoing regional programs.",
"title": "Bilateral relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "On January 20, 2015 Kazakhstan and the EU initialed the EU-Kazakhstan Enhanced Partnership and Cooperation Agreement. This agreement will greatly facilitate stronger political and economic relations between Kazakhstan and the EU. It will increase the flow of trade, services and investment between the parties and will contribute to Kazakhstan's political and social development.",
"title": "Bilateral relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Bilateral relations received a post-pandemic refocus with the EU visit by Kazakhstan's president in November 2021. The visit was the first to Europe by Tokayev since becoming president in 2019.",
"title": "Bilateral relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Kazakhstan has been a member of NATO's Partnership for Peace since May 27, 1994. In October 2014 Kazakhstan and NATO marked 20 years of cooperation within the Partnership for Peace. To that end, from October 6 to 10, 2014 a NATO delegation visited Kazakhstan to take part in a series of public diplomacy events. Among meetings with Kazakhstan's officials, the delegates also visited the Nazarbayev and the Gumilyov Eurasian National universities in Astana, where they delivered lectures explaining NATO's engagement with partners in the Central Asian region and briefed audiences on the key outcomes of the recent NATO Wales Summit, with particular focus on NATO's partnership policy and Afghanistan.",
"title": "NATO"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "A NATO delegation also plans to visit Astana in the first half of 2015 and hold a joint event with the Kazakh side in the second half of 2015. The future NATO-Kazakhstan joint activities will be held in the framework of the Partnership for Peace program, which centres on the development and exchange of experience for peacekeeping forces.",
"title": "NATO"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "At the 27th meeting of the Foreign Investors' Council, President Nazarbayev announced visa-free entry for citizens of the United States, the Netherlands, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Malaysia, the UAE, South Korea, and Japan. Currently Kazakhstan and the United States issue 5-year visas to citizens of each other.",
"title": "Visa regimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "This will fulfill a goal of diversifying the economy while also helping the world become more acquainted with Kazakhstan's cultural patrimony. Since 2001 to 2012, Kazakhstan has doubled its tourism earnings. Experts expect that Kazakhstan will continue to benefit from tourism from the eased visa regime.",
"title": "Visa regimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "On July 15, 2014, Kazakhstan launched a pilot project of visa-free regime for 10 countries: UK, USA, Germany, France, Italy, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Malaysia, the Netherlands, South Korea and Japan. Citizens of these countries can enter, exit and transit through Kazakhstan without a visa for visits of up to 15 calendar days at a time.",
"title": "Visa regimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "On June 26, 2015, Kazakhstan issued a resolution expanding the number of countries included in a trial visa-free regime and extended that regime until December 31, 2017. The list now includes 19 countries, including Australia, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UAE, the U. K. and the U.S.",
"title": "Visa regimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Starting from January 1, 2017, Kazakhstan introduced visa-free access for 20 developed countries. These countries include the OECD members, Malaysia, Monaco, the UAE and Singapore.",
"title": "Visa regimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Kazakhstan became a member of the United Nations on March 2, 1992, nearly three months after gaining independence.",
"title": "United Nations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "During the General Assembly on November 12, 2012, Kazakhstan was elected to a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council for the first time. Their seat is with the Asian Group and their term will expire in 2015.",
"title": "United Nations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "At United Nations Day 2013, Foreign Minister Erlan Idrisov addressed the UN General Assembly saying the UN should develop a regional center in Almaty. Since the United Nations has no regional offices between Vienna and Bangkok, Almaty is home to 18 international organization's regional offices and would be vital to the development of Central Asia and its neighbors.",
"title": "United Nations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "At the 68th Assembly of the United Nations, Foreign Minister Idrisov announced Kazakhstan's bid for a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council for 2017–2018. So far they and Thailand have announced their bids.",
"title": "United Nations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In February 2015 the United Nations' specialized agency World Health Organization opened a new geographically dispersed office (GDO) for primary health care in Kazakhstan at the Kazakh National Medical University of S.Asfendiyarov in Almaty. According to the head the Kazakh Medical University, the GDO of the WHO's European Bureau in Almaty will be financed by the UN.",
"title": "United Nations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "In July 2015 Kazakhstan was accepted to the Executive Council of the World Federation of UNESCO (WCF) Clubs at the ninth WCF World Congress, UNESCO Centres and Associations.",
"title": "United Nations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "On May 6, 2016, Kazakh Foreign Minister Erlan Idrissov spoke at two high level meetings at the U.N. headquarters in New York. The Foreign Minister said that Kazakhstan was calling for a nuclear free world by 2045, the 100th anniversary of the United Nations.",
"title": "United Nations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Kazakhstan signed the Paris Climate Change Agreement on Aug 2 at UN Headquarters in New York. The Kazakh Senate ratified the Paris Agreement on October 27, 2016. Under the Paris Agreement, Kazakhstan has committed to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 15-20% by 2030 up to the level observed in 1990.",
"title": "United Nations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "In March 2017, Kazakhstan marked 25 years of its membership in the United Nations. To celebrate this anniversary, Kazakhstan opened the “Kazakhstan and the United Nations: Interaction for Peace” exhibition in the Museum of the Library of the First President of Kazakhstan. During 25 years of cooperation, the UN opened 15 representative offices in Kazakhstan, including the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), among others.",
"title": "United Nations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Astana is a host city of the Eighth International Forum on Energy for Sustainable Development that is planned to be held in June 2017. The Forum is co-organized through collaboration by Kazakhstan with the UN Regional Commissions, as well as UNDP, IEA, IAEA, IRENA, the World Bank, UNID, the Copenhagen Centre on Energy Efficiency, and the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century.",
"title": "United Nations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Kazakhstan, along with Sweden, Bolivia and Ethiopia, were elected to serve on Security Council for a two-year term, starting from January 1, 2017. Kazakhstan became the first Central Asian country to be elected as a non-permanent member of the UNSC. Kazakhstan assumed the chairmanship of UNSC on January 1, 2018. According to Kazakhstan's Foreign Minister Kairat Abdrakhmanov, during this period Kazakhstan will focus on drawing attention on international community to the issues of Central Asia and Afghanistan.",
"title": "United Nations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Kazakhstan outlined priorities during its UNSC tenure. They included nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, fight against terrorism and extremism, promotion of peacemaking and peace-building, as well as security and development issues in the Central Asian region.",
"title": "United Nations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "President Nazarbayev's address to the UNSC was presented by the Foreign Minister of Kazakhstan at the ministerial-level open debate of the UNSC held on January 10, 2017. The address was based on the principles of the Kazakh President's earlier Manifesto “The World. The 21st Century.” It declares Kazakhstan's commitment to building a world free of nuclear weapons and to rid humanity of wars and conflicts.",
"title": "United Nations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "President Nazarbayev chaired the January 18 UN Security Council briefing on WMD non-proliferation and related measures to better provide security for Central Asia. It was the first time a president of a Central Asian country chaired a UNSC briefing.",
"title": "United Nations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "On October 31, 2018, Kazakhstan deployed 120 Kazakh peacekeepers to serve with the UN mission in furthering peace in south Lebanon. It was the first time Kazakh troops were serving with UNIFIL in the Mission's 40-year history. On August 20, 2020, Kazakhstan deployed a second group of 60 peacekeepers to the UNIFIL.",
"title": "Peacekeeping"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Kazakhstan is one of the original founding members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, known as the Shanghai Five. They formally began the organization on April 26, 1996, with the signing of the Treaty on Deepening Military Trust in Border Regions in Shanghai. Since then, Kazakhstan has become a very active member in global politics within the organization.",
"title": "Shanghai Cooperation Organisation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "At the SCO Summit in Bishkek, Kyrygyzstan on September 20, 2013, Kazakhstan met with leaders to discuss many issues. One of the main issues discussed was the focus on regional stability for Afghanistan after the United States withdraws its troop. Kazakhstan also signed the Bishkek Declaration along with members and observers to find diplomatic solutions for Iran and Syria. On Syria, Kazakhstan wanted to help find a diplomatic solution that would not involve direct intervention due to the need of UN authorization. On Iran, Kazakhstan wanted to see a diplomatic solution between Iran and the P5+1 group for Iran to enrich uranium at levels for energy consumption.",
"title": "Shanghai Cooperation Organisation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "In November 2016, Kazakhstan chaired first ever SCO human rights consultations. The meetings were held in Beijing and aimed at further consolidation of the SCO member states cooperation in human rights.",
"title": "Shanghai Cooperation Organisation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Astana hosted the 17th Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit June 8–9, 2017. The summit featured the ceremony of accession of India and Pakistan to the organization. Therefore, the total number of member states increased to eight: China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India, and Pakistan.",
"title": "Shanghai Cooperation Organisation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Kazakhstan joined the Antarctic Treaty in November 2014 being the 51st country to ratify it.",
"title": "Other international organizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Kazakhstan had shown an interest in the Antarctic before, with officials even identifying it as a potential source of drinking water for the arid steppe nation. The country staged its first expedition to the South Pole in 2011.",
"title": "Other international organizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "On January 23 in Davos at the World Economic Forum, Prime Minister of Kazakhstan Karim Massimov and Secretary General of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Angel Gurria signed a Memorandum of Understanding between Kazakhstan and the OECD on the implementation of the Country Program of Cooperation for 2015–2016.",
"title": "Other international organizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "In July 2016, it was announced that Kazakhstan was admitted to the OECD Competition Committee that aims to promote antitrust reforms. Kazakhstan is the first Central Asian country to join the committee.",
"title": "Other international organizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Kazakhstan joined the Declaration on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises of the OECD and became an associated participant of the OECD Investment Committee in June 2017. OECD Investment Committee is the leading government forum for cooperation on international investment issues.",
"title": "Other international organizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Kazakhstan applied for WTO accession on January 29, 1996. The accession negotiations between Kazakhstan and the WTO lasted 20 years and on November 30, 2015, the organization welcomed Kazakhstan as its 162nd Member.",
"title": "Other international organizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "In April 2017, the General Council of the WTO announced that Kazakhstan's Ambassador to Switzerland and Permanent Representative of the Republic of Kazakhstan to the UN structures Zhanar Aitzhanova would be the Chairperson of the WTO Committee for Trade and Environment in 2017.",
"title": "Other international organizations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "The 21st World Anti Crisis Conference was conducted with the support of the UN General Assembly Resolution A/RES/67/19International financial sistem and development from December 21, 2012, on May 23, 2013, within the framework of the VI Astana Economic Forum. Main outcome of the WAC I was the Astana Declaration and the guidelines of the World Anti-Crisis Plan developed using the contributions from the international expert community, the UN member states and the UN Secretariat.",
"title": "World Anti-Crisis Conference"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "The concept of the WAC Plan, based on democratic principles and the interests of all UN member states aims at developing effective measures to overcome the economic and financial crisis, preventing future recessions and ensuring long-term balanced growth of the global economy.",
"title": "World Anti-Crisis Conference"
}
] |
Foreign relations of Kazakhstan are primarily based on economic and political security. The Nazarbayev administration has tried to balance relations with Russia and the United States by sending petroleum and natural gas to its northern neighbor at artificially low prices while assisting the U.S. in the War on Terror. Kazakhstan is a member of the United Nations, Collective Security Treaty Organization, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, North Atlantic Cooperation Council, Commonwealth of Independent States, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and NATO's Partnership for Peace program. Kazakhstan established a customs union with Russia and Belarus, transformed into the Eurasian Economical Community then in 2015 into the Eurasian Economic Union. President Nazarbayev has prioritized economic diplomacy into Kazakhstan's foreign policy. Kazakhstan has a "multi-vector" foreign policy, i.e. a triangulation between the major powers of Russia, China and the US. Kazakhstan has called for “intra-regional integration in Central Asia” and international integration of the region. In December 2010, Kazakhstan held the first OSCE summit since 1999.
|
2002-02-25T15:51:15Z
|
2023-10-27T11:29:48Z
|
[
"Template:Asia in topic",
"Template:Kazakhstan topics",
"Template:Politics of Kazakhstan",
"Template:Date table sorting",
"Template:See also",
"Template:Dts",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Citation needed",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Foreign relations of Kazakhstan",
"Template:Foreign relations of Europe",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Flag",
"Template:Flagu",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite news"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Kazakhstan
|
16,653 |
History of Kenya
|
A part of Eastern Africa, the territory of what is known as Kenya has seen human habitation since the beginning of the Lower Paleolithic. The Bantu expansion from a West African centre of dispersal reached the area by the 1st millennium AD. With the borders of the modern state at the crossroads of the Bantu, Nilo-Saharan and Afro-Asiatic ethno-linguistic areas of Africa, Kenya is a truly multi-ethnic state. The Wanga Kingdom was formally establsihed in the late 17th century. The kingdom covered from the Jinja in Uganda to Naivasha in the East of Kenya. This is the first time the Wanga people and Luhya tribe were united and led by a centralized leader, a king, known as the Nabongo.
The European and Arab presence in Mombasa dates to the Early Modern period, but European exploration of the interior began in the 19th century. The British Empire established the East Africa Protectorate in 1895, from 1920 known as the Kenya Colony.
During the wave of decolonisation in the 1960s, Kenya gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1963, had Elizabeth II as its first head of state, and Jomo Kenyatta as its Prime Minister. It became a republic in 1964, and was ruled as a de facto one-party state by the Kenya African National Union (KANU), led by Kenyatta from 1964 to 1978. Kenyatta was succeeded by Daniel arap Moi, who ruled until 2002. Moi attempted to transform the de facto one-party status of Kenya into a de jure status during the 1980s, but with the end of the Cold War, the practices of political repression and torture which had been "overlooked" by the Western powers as necessary evils in the effort to contain communism were no longer tolerated in Kenya.
Moi came under pressure, notably by US ambassador Smith Hempstone, to restore a multi-party system, which he did by 1991. Moi won elections in 1992 and 1997, which were overshadowed by politically motivated killings on both sides. During the 1990s, evidence of Moi's involvement in human rights abuses and corruption, such as the Goldenberg scandal, was uncovered. He was constitutionally barred from running in the 2002 election, which was won by Mwai Kibaki. Widely reported electoral fraud on Kibaki's side in the 2007 elections resulted in the 2007–2008 Kenyan crisis. Kibaki was succeeded by Uhuru Kenyatta in the 2013 general election. There were allegations that his rival Raila Odinga actually won the contest, however, the Supreme Court through a thorough review of evidence adduced found no malpractice during the conduct of the 2013 general election both from the IEBC and the Jubilee Party of Uhuru Kenyatta. Uhuru was re-elected in office five years later in 2017. His victory was however controversial. The supreme court had vitiated Uhuru win after Raila Odinga disputed the result through a constitutionally allowed supreme court petition. Raila Odinga would later boycott a repeat election ordered by the court, allowing Uhuru Kenyatta sail through almost unopposed with 98% of the vote.
Fossils found in Kenya have shown that primates inhabited the area for more than 20 million years. In 1929, the first evidence of the presence of ancient early human ancestors in Kenya was discovered when Louis Leakey unearthed one million year old Acheulian handaxes at the Kariandusi Prehistoric Site in southwest Kenya. Subsequently, many species of early hominid have been discovered in Kenya. The oldest, found by Martin Pickford in the year 2000, is the six million year old Orrorin tugenensis, named after the Tugen Hills where it was unearthed. It is the second oldest fossil hominid in the world after Sahelanthropus tchadensis.
In 1995 Meave Leakey named a new species of hominid Australopithecus anamensis following a series of fossil discoveries near Lake Turkana in 1965, 1987 and 1994. It is around 4.1 million years old.
In 2011, 3.2 million year old stone tools were discovered at Lomekwi near Lake Turkana - these are the oldest stone tools found anywhere in the world and pre-date the emergence of Homo.
One of the most famous and complete hominid skeletons ever discovered was the 1.6-million-year-old Homo erectus known as Nariokotome Boy, which was found by Kamoya Kimeu in 1984 on an excavation led by Richard Leakey.
The oldest Acheulean tools ever discovered anywhere in the world are from West Turkana, and were dated in 2011 through the method of magnetostratigraphy to about 1.76 million years old.
East Africa, including Kenya, is one of the earliest regions where modern humans (Homo sapiens) are believed to have lived. Evidence was found in 2018, dating to about 320,000 years ago, at the Kenyan site of Olorgesailie, of the early emergence of modern behaviors including: long-distance trade networks (involving goods such as obsidian), the use of pigments, and the possible making of projectile points. It is observed by the authors of three 2018 studies on the site, that the evidence of these behaviors is approximately contemporary to the earliest known Homo sapiens fossil remains from Africa (such as at Jebel Irhoud and Florisbad), and they suggest that complex and modern behaviors had already begun in Africa around the time of the emergence of Homo sapiens. Further evidence of modern behaviour was found in 2021 when evidence of Africa's earliest funeral was found. A 78,000 year old Middle Stone Age grave of a three-year-old child was discovered in Panga ya Saidi cave. Researchers said the child's head appeared to have been laid on a pillow. The body had been laid in a fetal position. Michael Petraglia, a professor of human evolution and prehistory at the Max Planck Institute said, “It is the oldest human burial in Africa. It tells us something about our cognition, our sociality and our behaviours and they are all very familiar to us today.”
The first inhabitants of present-day Kenya were hunter-gatherer groups, akin to the modern Khoisan speakers. The Kansyore culture, dating from the mid 5th millennium BCE to the 1st millennium BCE was one of East Africa's earliest ceramic producing group of hunter-gatherers. This culture was located at Gogo falls in Migori county near Lake Victoria. Kenya's rock art sites date between 2000BCE and 1000 CE. This tradition thrived at Mfangano Island, Chelelemuk hills, Namoratunga and Lewa Downs. The rock paintings are attributed to the Twa people, a hunter-gatherer group that was once widespread in East Africa. For the most part, these communities were assimilated into various food-producing societies that began moving into Kenya from the 3rd millennium BCE.
Linguistic evidence points to a relative sequence of population movements into Kenya that begins with the entry into northern Kenya of a possibly Southern Cushitic speaking population around the 3rd millennium BCE. They were pastoralists who kept domestic stock, including cattle, sheep, goat, and donkeys. Remarkable megalithic sites from this time period include the possibly archaeoastronomical site Namoratunga on the west side of Lake Turkana. One of these megalithic sites, Lothagam North Pillar Site, is East Africa's earliest and largest monumental cemetery. At least 580 bodies are found in this well planned cemetery. By 1000 BCE and even earlier, pastoralism had spread into central Kenya and northern Tanzania. Eburran hunter gatherers, who had lived in the Ol Doinyo Eburru volcano complex near Lake Nakuru for thousands of years, start adopting livestock around this period.
In present times the descendants of the Southern Cushitic speakers are located in north central Tanzania near Lake Eyasi. Their past distribution, as determined by the presence of loanwords in other languages, encompasses the known distribution of the Highland Savanna Pastoral Neolithic culture.
Beginning around 700 BCE, Southern Nilotic speaking communities whose homelands lay somewhere near the common border between Sudan, Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia moved south into the western highlands and Rift Valley region of Kenya.
The arrival of the Southern Nilotes in Kenya occurred shortly before the introduction of iron to East Africa. The past distribution of the Southern Nilotic speakers, as inferred from place names, loan words and oral traditions includes the known distribution of Elmenteitan sites.
Evidence suggests that autochthonous Iron production developed in West Africa as early as 3000–2500BCE. The ancestors of Bantu speakers migrated in waves from west/central Africa to populate much of Eastern, Central and Southern Africa from the first millennium BC. They brought with them iron forging technology and novel farming techniques as they migrated and integrated with the societies they encountered. The Bantu expansion is thought to have reached western Kenya around 1000 BCE.
The Urewe culture is one of Africa's oldest iron smelting centres. Dating from 550BCE to 650BCE, this culture dominated the Great Lakes region including Kenya. Sites in Kenya include Urewe, Yala and Uyoma in northern Nyanza. By the first century BC, Bantu speaking communities in the great lakes region developed iron forging techniques that enabled them to produce carbon steel.
Later migrations through Tanzania led to settlement on the Kenyan coast. Archaeological findings have shown that by 100 BCE to 300 AD, Bantu speaking communities were present at the coastal areas of Misasa in Tanzania, Kwale in Kenya and Ras Hafun in Somalia. These communities also integrated and intermarried with the communities already present at the coast. Between 300 AD-1000 AD, through participation in the long existing Indian Ocean trade route, these communities established links with Arabian and Indian traders leading to the development of the Swahili culture.
Historians estimate that in the 15th century, Southern Luo speakers started migrating into Western Kenya. The Luo descend from migrants closely related to other Nilotic Luo Peoples (especially the Acholi and Padhola people) who moved from South Sudan through Uganda into western Kenya in a slow and multi-generational manner between the 15th and 20th centuries. As they moved into Kenya and Tanzania, they underwent significant genetic and cultural admixture as they encountered other communities that were long established in the region.
The walled settlement of Thimlich Ohinga is the largest and best preserved of 138 sites containing 521 stone structures that were built around the Lake Victoria region in Nyanza Province. Carbon dating and linguistic evidence suggest that the site is at least 550 years old. Archaeological and ethnographic analysis of the site taken with historical, linguistic and genetic evidence suggests that the populations that built, maintained and inhabited the site at various phases had significant ethnic admixture.
Swahili people inhabit the Swahili coast which is the coastal area of the Indian Ocean in Southeast Africa. It includes the coastal areas of Southern Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania and Northern Mozambique with numerous islands, cities and towns including Sofala, Kilwa, Zanzibar, Comoros, Mombasa, Gede, Malindi, Pate Island and Lamu. The Swahili coast was historically known as Azania in the Greco-Roman era and as Zanj or Zinj in Middle Eastern, Chinese and Indian literature from the 7th to the 14th century. The Periplus of the Erythrean Sea is a Graeco-Roman manuscript that was written in the first century AD. It describes the East African coast (Azania) and a long existing Indian Ocean Trade route. The East African Coast was long inhabited by hunter-gatherer and Cushitic groups since at least 3000BC. Evidence of indigenous pottery and agriculture dating as far back as this period has been found along the coast and offshore islands. International trade goods including Graeco-Roman pottery, Syrian glass vessels, Sassanian pottery from Persia and glass beads dating to 600BC have been found at the Rufiji River delta in Tanzania.
Bantu Groups had migrated to the Great Lakes Region by 1000BCE. Some Bantu speakers continued to migrate further southeast towards the East African Coast. These Bantu speakers mixed with the local inhabitants they encountered at the coast. The earliest settlements in the Swahili coast to appear on the archaeological record are found at Kwale in Kenya, Misasa in Tanzania and Ras Hafun in Somalia. The Kenyan coast had hosted communities of ironworkers and communities of Eastern Bantu subsistence-farmers, hunters and fishers who supported the economy with agriculture, fishing, metal production and trade with outside areas. Between 300AD – 1000AD Azanian and Zanj settlements in the Swahili coast continued to expand with local industry and international trade flourishing. Between 500 and 800 A.D. they shifted to a sea-based trading economy and began to migrate south by ship. In the following centuries, trade in goods from the African interior, such as gold, ivory, and slaves stimulated the development of market towns such as Mogadishu, Shanga, Kilwa, and Mombasa. These communities formed the earliest city-states in the region which were collectively known to the Roman Empire as "Azania".
By the 1st century CE, many of the settlements such as those in Mombasa, Malindi, and Zanzibar - began to establish trade relations with Arabs. This led ultimately to the increased economic growth of the Swahili, the introduction of Islam, Arabic influences on the Swahili Bantu language, and cultural diffusion. Islam rapidly spread across Africa between 614AD – 900AD. Starting with the first Hijrah (migration) of Prophet Muhammad's followers to Ethiopia, Islam spread across Eastern, Northern and Western Africa. The Swahili city-states became part of a larger trade network. Many historians long believed that Arab or Persian traders established the city-states, but archeological evidence has led scholars to recognize the city-states as an indigenous development which, though subjected to foreign influence due to trade, retained a Bantu cultural core. The Azanian and Zanj communities had a high degree of intercultural exchange and admixture. This fact is reflected in the language, culture and technology present at the coast. For instance, between 630AD - 890AD, Archaeological evidence indicates that crucible steel was manufactured at Galu, south of Mombasa. Metallurgical analysis of iron artefacts indicates that the techniques used by the inhabitants of the Swahili coast combined techniques used in other African sites as well as those in West and South Asian sites. The Swahili City States begin to emerge from pre-existing settlements between 1000AD and 1500AD. The earliest gravestone found at Gedi Ruins dates to the earlier part of this period. The oldest Swahili texts in existence also date to this period. They were written in old Swahili script (Swahili-Arabic alphabet) based on Arabic letters. This is the script found on the earliest gravestones.
One of the most travelled people of the ancient world, Moroccan explorer Ibn Battuta, visited Mombasa on his way to Kilwa in 1331. He describes Mombasa as a large island with banana, lemon and citron trees. The local residents were Sunni Muslims who he described as “religious people, trustworthy and righteous.” He noted that their mosques were made of wood and were expertly built. Another ancient traveller, Chinese Admiral Zheng He visited Malindi in 1418. Some of his ships are reported to have sunk near Lamu Island. Recent genetic tests done on local inhabitants confirmed that some residents had Chinese ancestry.
Swahili, a Bantu language with many Arabic loan words, developed as a lingua franca for trade between the different peoples. A Swahili culture developed in the towns, notably in Pate, Malindi, and Mombasa. The impact of Arabic and Persian traders and immigrants on the Swahili culture remains controversial. During the Middle Ages,
the East African Swahili coast [including Zanzibar] was a wealthy and advanced region, which consisted of many autonomous merchant cities. Wealth flowed into the cities via the Africans' roles as intermediaries and facilitators of Indian, Persian, Arab, Indonesian, Malaysian, African and Chinese merchants. All of these peoples enriched the Swahili culture to some degree. The Swahili culture developed its own written language; the language incorporated elements from different civilisations, with Arabic as its strongest quality. Some Arab settlers were rich merchants who, because of their wealth, gained power—sometimes as rulers of coastal cities.
Portuguese explorers appeared on the East African coast at the end of the 15th century. The Portuguese did not intend to found settlements, but to establish naval bases that would give Portugal control over the Indian Ocean. After decades of small-scale conflict, Arabs from Oman defeated the Portuguese in Kenya.
The Portuguese became the first Europeans to explore the region of current-day Kenya: Vasco da Gama visited Mombasa in April 1498. Da Gama's voyage successfully reached India (May 1498), and this initiated direct maritime Portuguese trade links with South Asia, thus challenging older trading networks over mixed land and sea routes, such as the spice-trade routes that utilised the Persian Gulf, Red Sea and caravans to reach the eastern Mediterranean. (The Republic of Venice had gained control over much of the trade between Europe and Asia. Especially after the Ottoman Turks captured Constantinople in 1453, Turkish control of the eastern Mediterranean inhibited the use of traditional land-routes between Europe and India. Portugal hoped to use the sea route pioneered by da Gama to bypass political, monopolistic and tariff barriers.)
Portuguese rule in East Africa focused mainly on a coastal strip centred in Mombasa. The Portuguese presence in East Africa officially began after 1505, when a naval force under the command of Dom Francisco de Almeida conquered Kilwa, an island located in the south-east of present-day Tanzania.
The Portuguese presence in East Africa served the purpose of controlling trade within the Indian Ocean and securing the sea routes linking Europe and Asia. Portuguese naval vessels disrupted the commerce of Portugal's enemies within the western Indian Ocean, and the Portuguese demanded high tariffs on items transported through the area, given their strategic control of ports and of shipping lanes. The construction of Fort Jesus in Mombasa in 1593 aimed to solidify Portuguese hegemony in the region. The Omani Arabs posed the most direct challenge to Portuguese influence in East Africa, besieging Portuguese fortresses. Omani forces captured Fort Jesus in 1698, only to lose it in a revolt (1728), but by 1730 the Omanis had expelled the remaining Portuguese from the coasts of present-day Kenya and Tanzania. By this time the Portuguese Empire had already lost interest in the spice-trade sea-route because of the decreasing profitability of that traffic. (Portuguese-ruled territories, ports and settlements remained active to the south, in Mozambique, until 1975.)
Under Seyyid Said (ruled 1807–1856), the Omani sultan who moved his capital to Zanzibar in 1840, the Arabs set up long-distance trade-routes into the African interior. The dry reaches of the north were lightly inhabited by semi-nomadic pastoralists. In the south, pastoralists and cultivators bartered goods and competed for land as long-distance caravan routes linked them to the Kenyan coast on the east and to the kingdoms of Uganda on the west. Arab, Shirazi and coastal African cultures produced an Islamic Swahili people trading in a variety of up-country commodities, including slaves.
Omani Arab colonisation of the Kenyan and Tanzanian coasts brought the once independent city-states under closer foreign scrutiny and domination than was experienced during the Portuguese period. Like their predecessors, the Omani Arabs were primarily able only to control the coastal areas, not the interior. However, the creation of plantations, intensification of the slave trade and movement of the Omani capital to Zanzibar in 1839 by Seyyid Said had the effect of consolidating the Omani power in the region. The slave trade had begun to grow exponentially starting at the end of the 17th Century with a large slave market based at Zanzibar. When Sultan Seyyid Said moved his capital to Zanzibar, the already large clove and spice plantations continued to grow, driving demand for slaves. Slaves were sourced from the hinterland. Slave caravan routes into the interior of Kenya reached as far as the foothills of Mount Kenya, Lake Victoria and past Lake Baringo into Samburu country.
Arab governance of all the major ports along the East African coast continued until British interests aimed particularly at securing their 'Indian Jewel' and creation of a system of trade among individuals began to put pressure on Omani rule. By the late 19th century, the slave trade on the open seas had been completely strangled by the British. The Omani Arabs had no interest in resisting the Royal Navy's efforts to enforce anti-slavery directives. As the Moresby Treaty demonstrated, whilst Oman sought sovereignty over its waters, Seyyid Said saw no reason to intervene in the slave trade, as the main customers for the slaves were Europeans. As Farquhar in a letter made note, only with the intervention of Said would the European Trade in slaves in the Western Indian Ocean be abolished. As the Omani presence continued in Zanzibar and Pemba until the 1964 revolution, but the official Omani Arab presence in Kenya was checked by German and British seizure of key ports and creation of crucial trade alliances with influential local leaders in the 1880s. Nevertheless, the Omani Arab legacy in East Africa is currently found through their numerous descendants found along the coast that can directly trace ancestry to Oman and are typically the wealthiest and most politically influential members of the Kenyan coastal community.
The first Christian mission was founded on 25 August 1846, by Dr. Johann Ludwig Krapf, a German sponsored by the Church Missionary Society of England. He established a station among the Mijikenda at Rabai on the coast. He later translated the Bible into Swahili. Many freed slaves rescued by the British Navy are settled here. The peak of the slave plantation economy in East Africa was between 1875 – 1884. It is estimated that between 43,000 – 47,000 slaves were present on the Kenyan coast, which made up 44 percent of the local population. In 1874, Frere Town settlement in Mombasa was established. This was another settlement for freed slaves rescued by the British Navy. Despite pressure from the British to stop the East African slave trade, it continued to persist into the early 20th century.
By 1850 European explorers had begun mapping the interior. Three developments encouraged European interest in East Africa in the first half of the 19th century. First, was the emergence of the island of Zanzibar, located off the east coast of Africa. Zanzibar became a base from which trade and exploration of the African mainland could be mounted. By 1840, to protect the interests of the various nationals doing business in Zanzibar, consul offices had been opened by the British, French, Germans and Americans. In 1859, the tonnage of foreign shipping calling at Zanzibar had reached 19,000 tons. By 1879, the tonnage of this shipping had reached 89,000 tons. The second development spurring European interest in Africa was the growing European demand for products of Africa including ivory and cloves. Thirdly, British interest in East Africa was first stimulated by their desire to abolish the slave trade. Later in the century, British interest in East Africa would be stimulated by German competition.
In 1895 the British government took over and claimed the interior as far west as Lake Naivasha; it set up the East Africa Protectorate. The border was extended to Uganda in 1902, and in 1920 the enlarged protectorate, except for the original coastal strip, which remained a protectorate, became a crown colony. With the beginning of colonial rule in 1895, the Rift Valley and the surrounding Highlands became reserved for whites. In the 1920s Indians objected to the reservation of the Highlands for Europeans, especially British war veterans. The whites engaged in large-scale coffee farming dependent on mostly Kikuyu labour. Bitterness grew between the Indians and the Europeans.
This area's fertile land has always made it the site of migration and conflict. There were no significant mineral resources—none of the gold or diamonds that attracted so many to South Africa.
Imperial Germany set up a protectorate over the Sultan of Zanzibar's coastal possessions in 1885, followed by the arrival of Sir William Mackinnon's British East Africa Company (BEAC) in 1888, after the company had received a royal charter and concessionary rights to the Kenya coast from the Sultan of Zanzibar for a 50-year period. Incipient imperial rivalry was forestalled when Germany handed its coastal holdings to Britain in 1890, in exchange for German control over the coast of Tanganyika. The colonial takeover met occasionally with some strong local resistance: Waiyaki Wa Hinga, a Kikuyu chief who ruled Dagoretti who had signed a treaty with Frederick Lugard of the BEAC, having been subject to considerable harassment, burnt down Lugard's fort in 1890. Waiyaki was abducted two years later by the British and killed.
Following severe financial difficulties of the British East Africa Company, the British government on 1 July 1895 established direct rule through the East African Protectorate, subsequently opening (1902) the fertile highlands to white settlers.
A key to the development of Kenya's interior was the construction, started in 1895, of a railway from Mombasa to Kisumu, on Lake Victoria, completed in 1901. This was to be the first piece of the Uganda Railway. The British government had decided, primarily for strategic reasons, to build a railway linking Mombasa with the British protectorate of Uganda. A major feat of engineering, the "Uganda railway" (that is the railway inside Kenya leading to Uganda) was completed in 1903 and was a decisive event in modernising the area. As governor of Kenya, Sir Percy Girouard was instrumental in initiating railway extension policy that led to construction of the Nairobi-Thika and Konza-Magadi railways.
Some 32,000 workers were imported from British India to do the manual labour. Many stayed, as did most of the Indian traders and small businessmen who saw opportunity in the opening up of the interior of Kenya. Rapid economic development was seen as necessary to make the railway pay, and since the African population was accustomed to subsistence rather than export agriculture, the government decided to encourage European settlement in the fertile highlands, which had small African populations. The railway opened up the interior, not only to the European farmers, missionaries and administrators, but also to systematic government programmes to attack slavery, witchcraft, disease and famine. The Africans saw witchcraft as a powerful influence on their lives and frequently took violent action against suspected witches. To control this, the British colonial administration passed laws, beginning in 1909, which made the practice of witchcraft illegal. These laws gave the local population a legal, nonviolent way to stem the activities of witches.
By the time the railway was built, military resistance by the African population to the original British takeover had petered out. However new grievances were being generated by the process of European settlement. Governor Percy Girouard is associated with the debacle of the Second Maasai Agreement of 1911, which led to their forceful removal from the fertile Laikipia plateau to semi-arid Ngong. To make way for the Europeans (largely Britons and whites from South Africa), the Maasai were restricted to the southern Loieta plains in 1913. The Kikuyu claimed some of the land reserved for Europeans and continued to feel that they had been deprived of their inheritance.
In the initial stage of colonial rule, the administration relied on traditional communicators, usually chiefs. When colonial rule was established and efficiency was sought, partly because of settler pressure, newly educated younger men were associated with old chiefs in local Native Councils.
In building the railway the British had to confront strong local opposition, especially from Koitalel Arap Samoei, a diviner and Nandi leader who prophesied that a black snake would tear through Nandi land spitting fire, which was seen later as the railway line. For ten years he fought against the builders of the railway line and train. The settlers were partly allowed in 1907 a voice in government through the legislative council, a European organisation to which some were appointed and others elected. But since most of the powers remained in the hands of the Governor, the settlers started lobbying to transform Kenya in a Crown Colony, which meant more powers for the settlers. They obtained this goal in 1920, making the Council more representative of European settlers; but Africans were excluded from direct political participation until 1944, when the first of them was admitted in the council.
Kenya became a military base for the British in the First World War (1914–1918), as efforts to subdue the German colony to the south were frustrated. At the outbreak of war in August 1914, the governors of British East Africa (as the Protectorate was generally known) and German East Africa agreed a truce in an attempt to keep the young colonies out of direct hostilities. However Lt Col Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck took command of the German military forces, determined to tie down as many British resources as possible. Completely cut off from Germany, von Lettow conducted an effective guerilla warfare campaign, living off the land, capturing British supplies, and remaining undefeated. He eventually surrendered in Zambia eleven days after the Armistice was signed in 1918. To chase von Lettow the British deployed Indian Army troops from India and then needed large numbers of porters to overcome the formidable logistics of transporting supplies far into the interior by foot. The Carrier Corps was formed and ultimately mobilised over 400,000 Africans, contributing to their long-term politicisation.
An early anti-colonial movement opposed to British rule known as Mumboism took root in South Nyanza in the early 20th century. Colonial authorities classified it as a millennialist cult. It has since been recognised as an anti-colonial movement. In 1913, Onyango Dunde of central Kavirondo proclaimed to have been sent by the serpent god of Lake Victoria, Mumbo to spread his teachings. The colonial government recognised this movement as a threat to their authority because of the Mumbo creed. Mumbo pledged to drive out the colonialists and their supporters and condemned their religion. Violent resistance against the British had proven to be futile as the Africans were outmatched technologically. This movement therefore focused on anticipating the end of colonialism, rather than actively inducing it. Mumboism spread amongst Luo people and Kisii people. The Colonial authorities suppressed the movement by deporting and imprisoning adherents in the 1920s and 1930s. It was officially banned in 1954 following the Mau Mau rebellion.
The first stirrings of modern African political organisation in Kenya Colony sought to protest pro-settler policies, increased taxes on Africans and the despised kipande (Identifying metal band worn around the neck). Before the war, African political focus was diffuse. But after the war, problems caused by new taxes and reduced wages and new settlers threatening African land led to new movements. The experiences gained by Africans in the war coupled with the creation of the white-settler-dominated Kenya Crown Colony, gave rise to considerable political activity. Ishmael Ithongo called the first mass meeting in May 1921 to protest African wage reductions. Harry Thuku formed the Young Kikuyu Association (YKA) and started a publication called Tangazo which criticised the colonial administration and missions. The YKA gave a sense of nationalism to many Kikuyu and advocated civil disobedience. The YKA gave way to the Kikuyu Association (KA) which was the officially recognised tribal body with Harry Thuku as its secretary. Through the KA, Thuku advocated for African suffrage. Deeming it unwise to base a nationalist movement around one tribe, Thuku renamed his organisation the East African Association and strived for multi-ethnic membership by including the local Indian community and reaching out to other tribes. The colonial government accused Thuku of sedition, arrested him and detained him until 1930.
In Kavirondo (later Nyanza province), a strike at a mission school, organised by Daudi Basudde, raised concerns about the damaging implications on African land ownership by switching from the East African Protectorate to the Kenyan Colony. A series of meetings dubbed ‘Piny Owacho’ (Voice of the People) culminated in a large mass meeting held in December 1921 advocating for individual title deeds, getting rid of the kipande system and a fairer tax system. Archdeacon W. E. Owen, an Anglican missionary and prominent advocate for African affairs, formalised and canalised this movement as the president of the Kavirondo Taxpayers Welfare Association. Bound by the same concerns, James Beauttah initiated an alliance between the Kikuyu and Luo communities.
In the mid-1920s, the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA) was formed. Led by Joseph Keng’ethe and Jesse Kariuki, it picked up from Harry Thuku's East African Association except that it represented the Kikuyu almost exclusively. Johnstone Kenyatta was the secretary and editor of the associations’ publication Mugwithania (The unifier). The KCA focused on unifying the Kikuyu into one geographic polity, but its project was undermined by controversies over ritual tribute, land allocation and the ban on female circumcision. They also fought for the release of Harry Thuku from detention. Upon Thuku's release, he was elected president of the KCA. The government banned the KCA after World War II began when Jesse Kariuki compared the compulsory relocation of Kikuyus who lived near white owned land to Nazi policies on compulsory relocation of people.
Most political activity between the wars was local, and this succeeded most among the Luo of Kenya, where progressive young leaders became senior chiefs. By the later 1930s government began to intrude on ordinary Africans through marketing controls, stricter educational supervision and land changes. Traditional chiefs became irrelevant and younger men became communicators by training in the missionary churches and civil service. Pressure on ordinary Kenyans by governments in a hurry to modernise in the 1930s to 1950s enabled the mass political parties to acquire support for "centrally" focused movements, but even these often relied on local communicators.
During the early part of the 20th century, the interior central highlands were settled by British and other European farmers, who became wealthy farming coffee and tea. By the 1930s, approximately 15,000 white settlers lived in the area and gained a political voice because of their contribution to the market economy. The area was already home to over a million members of the Kikuyu tribe, most of whom had no land claims in European terms, and lived as itinerant farmers. To protect their interests, the settlers banned the growing of coffee, introduced a hut tax and the landless were granted less and less land in exchange for their labour. A massive exodus to the cities ensued as their ability to provide a living from the land dwindled.
Kenya became a focus of resettlement of young, upper class British officers after the war, giving a strong aristocratic tone to the white settlers. If they had £1,000 in assets they could get a free 1,000 acres (4 km); the goal of the government was to speed up modernisation and economic growth. They set up coffee plantations, which required expensive machinery, a stable labour force, and four years to start growing crops. The veterans did escape democracy and taxation in Britain, but they failed in their efforts to gain control of the colony. The upper class bias in migration policy meant that whites would always be a small minority. Many of them left after independence.
Power remained concentrated in the governor's hands; weak legislative and executive councils made up of official appointees were created in 1906. The European settlers were allowed to elect representatives to the Legislative Council in 1920, when the colony was established. The white settlers, 30,000 strong, sought "responsible government," in which they would have a voice. They opposed similar demands by the far more numerous Indian community. The European settlers gained representation for themselves and minimised representation on the Legislative Council for Indians and Arabs. The government appointed a European to represent African interests on the council. In the "Devonshire declaration" of 1923 the Colonial Office declared that the interests of the Africans (comprising over 95% of the population) must be paramount—achieving that goal took four decades. Historian Charles Mowat explained the issues:
In the Second World War (1939–45) Kenya became an important British military base for successful campaigns against Italy in the Italian Somaliland and Ethiopia. The war brought money and an opportunity for military service for 98,000 men, called "askaris". The war stimulated African nationalism. After the war, African ex-servicemen sought to maintain the socioeconomic gains they had accrued through service in the King's African Rifles (KAR). Looking for middle class employment and social privileges, they challenged existing relationships within the colonial state. For the most part, veterans did not participate in national politics, believing that their aspirations could best be achieved within the confines of colonial society. The social and economic connotations of KAR service, combined with the massive wartime expansion of Kenyan defence forces, created a new class of modernised Africans with distinctive characteristics and interests. These socioeconomic perceptions proved powerful after the war.
British officials sought to modernise Kikuyu farming in the Murang'a District 1920–1945. Relying on concepts of trusteeship and scientific management, they imposed a number of changes in crop production and agrarian techniques, claiming to promote conservation and "betterment" of farming in the colonial tribal reserves. While criticised as backward by British officials and white settlers, African farming proved resilient and Kikuyu farmers engaged in widespread resistance to the colonial state's agrarian reforms.
Modernisation was accelerated by the Second World War. Among the Luo the larger agricultural production unit was the patriarch's extended family, mainly divided into a special assignment team led by the patriarch, and the teams of his wives, who, together with their children, worked their own lots on a regular basis. This stage of development was no longer strictly traditional, but still largely self-sufficient with little contact with the broader market. Pressures of overpopulation and the prospects of cash crops, already in evidence by 1945, made this subsistence economic system increasingly obsolete and accelerated a movement to commercial agriculture and emigration to cities. The Limitation of Action Act in 1968 sought to modernise traditional land ownership and use; the act has produced unintended consequences, with new conflicts raised over land ownership and social status.
As Kenya modernized after the war, the role of the British religious missions changed their roles, despite the efforts of the leadership of the Church Missionary Society to maintain the traditional religious focus. However the social and educational needs were increasingly obvious, and the threat of the Mau Mau uprisings pushed the missions to emphasize medical, humanitarian and especially educational programs. Fundraising efforts in Britain increasingly stressed the non-religious components. Furthermore, the imminent transfer of control to the local population became a high priority.
As a reaction to their exclusion from political representation, the Kikuyu people, the most subject to pressure by the settlers, founded in 1921 Kenya's first African political protest movement, the Young Kikuyu Association, led by Harry Thuku. After the Young Kikuyu Association was banned by the government, it was replaced by the Kikuyu Central Association in 1924.
In 1944 Thuku founded and was the first chairman of the multi-tribal Kenya African Study Union (KASU), which in 1946 became the Kenya African Union (KAU). It was an African nationalist organization that demanded access to white-owned land. KAU acted as a constituency association for the first black member of Kenya's legislative council, Eliud Mathu, who had been nominated in 1944 by the governor after consulting élite African opinion. The KAU remained dominated by the Kikuyu ethnic group. However, the leadership of KAU was multitribal. Wycliff Awori was the first vice president followed by Tom Mbotela. In 1947 Jomo Kenyatta, former president of the moderate Kikuyu Central Association, became president of the more aggressive KAU to demand a greater political voice for Africans. In an effort to gain nationwide support of KAU, Jomo Kenyatta visited Kisumu in 1952. His effort to build up support for KAU in Nyanza inspired Oginga Odinga, the Ker (chief) of the Luo Union (an organisation that represented members of the Luo community in East Africa) to join KAU and delve into politics.
In response to the rising pressures, the British Colonial Office broadened the membership of the Legislative Council and increased its role. By 1952 a multiracial pattern of quotas allowed for 14 European, 1 Arab, and 6 Asian elected members, together with an additional 6 Africans and 1 Arab member chosen by the governor. The council of ministers became the principal instrument of government in 1954. In 1952, Princess Elizabeth and her husband Prince Philip were on holiday at the Treetops Hotel in Kenya when her father, King George VI, died in his sleep. Elizabeth cut short her trip and returned home immediately to assume the throne. She was crowned Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey in 1953 and as British hunter and conservationist Jim Corbett (who accompanied the royal couple) put it, she went up a tree in Africa a princess and came down a queen.
A key watershed came from 1952 to 1956, during the Mau Mau Uprising, an armed local movement directed principally against the colonial government and the European settlers. It was the largest and most successful such movement in British Africa. Members of the forty group, World War II(WW2) veterans, including Stanley Mathenge, Bildad Kaggia and Fred Kubai became core leaders in the rebellion. Their experiences during the WW2 awakened their political consciousness, giving them determination and confidence to change the system. Key leaders of KAU known as the Kapenguria six were arrested on the 21st of October. They include Jomo Kenyatta, Paul Ngei, Kungu Karumba, Bildad Kaggia, Fred Kubai and Achieng Oneko. Kenyatta denied he was a leader of the Mau Mau but was convicted at trial and was sent to prison in 1953, gaining his freedom in 1961.
An intense propaganda campaign by the colonial government effectively discouraged other Kenyan communities, settlers and the international community from sympathising with the movement by emphasising on real and perceived acts of barbarism perpetrated by the Mau Mau. Although a much smaller number of Europeans died compared to Africans during the uprising, each individual European loss of life was publicised in disturbing detail, emphasising elements of betrayal and bestiality. As a result, the protest was supported almost exclusively by the Kikuyu, despite issues of land rights and anti-European, anti-Western appeals designed to attract other groups. The Mau Mau movement was also a bitter internal struggle among the Kikuyu. Harry Thuku said in 1952, "To-day we, the Kikuyu, stand ashamed and looked upon as hopeless people in the eyes of other races and before the Government. Why? Because of the crimes perpetrated by Mau Mau and because the Kikuyu have made themselves Mau Mau." That said, other Kenyans directly or indirectly supported the movement. Notably, Pio Gama Pinto, a Kenyan of Goan descent, facilitated the provision of firearms to forest fighters. He was arrested in 1954 and detained until 1959. Another notable example was the pioneering lawyer Argwings Kodhek, the first East African to obtain a law degree. He became known as the Mau Mau lawyer as he would successfully defend Africans accused of Mau Mau crimes pro bono. 12,000 militants were killed during the suppression of the rebellion, and the British colonial authorities also implemented policies involving the incarceration of over 150,000 suspected Mau Mau members and sympathizers (mostly from the Kikuyu people) into concentration camps. In these camps, the colonial authorities also used various forms of torture to attempt information from the detainees. In 2011, after decades of waiting, thousands of secret documents from the British Foreign Office were declassified. They show that the Mau Mau rebels were systematically tortured and subjected to the most brutal practices, men were castrated and sand introduced into their anus, women were raped after introducing boiling water into their vaginas. The Foreign Office archives also reveal that this was not the initiative of soldiers or colonial administrators but a policy orchestrated from London.
The Mau Mau uprising set in play a series of events that expedited the road to Kenya's Independence. A Royal Commission on Land and Population condemned the reservation of land on a racial basis. To support its military campaign of counter-insurgency the colonial government embarked on agrarian reforms that stripped white settlers of many of their former protections; for example, Africans were for the first time allowed to grow coffee, the major cash crop. Thuku was one of the first Kikuyu to win a coffee licence, and in 1959 he became the first African board member of the Kenya Planters Coffee Union. The East African Salaries Commission put forth a recommendation – 'equal pay for equal work' – that was immediately accepted. Racist policies in public places and hotels were eased. John David Drummond, 17th Earl of Perth and Minister of State for Colonial affairs stated: "The effort required to suppress Mau Mau destroyed any settlers illusions that they could go it alone; the British Government was not prepared for the shedding of [more] blood in order to preserve colonial rule."
The pioneers of the trade union movement were Makhan Singh, Fred Kubai and Bildad Kaggia. In 1935, Makhan Singh started the Labour trade union of Kenya. In the 1940s, Fred Kubai started the Transport and Allied Workers Union and Bildad Kaggia founded the Clerks and Commercial Workers Union. In 1949, Makhan Singh and Fred Kubai started the East Africa Trade Union Congress. They organised strikes including the railway workers strike in 1939 and the protest against granting of a Royal Charter to Nairobi in 1950. These pioneering trade union leaders were imprisoned during the crackdown on Mau Mau. Following this crackdown, all national African political activity was banned. This ban was in place even when the first African members of the legislative council (MLCs) were elected. To manage and control African political activity, the colonial government permitted district parties starting in 1955. This effectively prevented African unity by encouraging ethnic affiliation. Trade unions led by younger Africans filled the vacuum created by the crackdown as the only organisations that could mobilise the masses when political parties were banned.
The Kenya Federation of Registered Trade Unions (KFRTU) was started by Aggrey Minya in 1952 but was largely ineffective. Tom Mboya was one of the young leaders who stepped into the limelight. His intelligence, discipline, oratory and organisational skills set him apart. After the colonial government declared a state of emergency on account of Mau Mau, at age 22, Mboya became the Director of Information of KAU. After KAU was banned, Mboya used the KFRTU to represent African political issues as its Secretary General at 26 years of age. The KFRTU was backed by the western leaning International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). Tom Mboya then started the Kenya Federation of Labour (KFL) in place of KFRTU, which quickly became the most active political body in Kenya, representing all the trade unions. Mboya's successes in trade unionism earned him respect and admiration. Mboya established international connections, particularly with labour leaders in the United States of America through the ICFTU. He used these connections and his international renown to counter moves by the colonial government.
Several trade union leaders who were actively involved in the independence struggle through KFL would go on to join active politics becoming members of parliament and cabinet ministers. These include Arthur Aggrey Ochwada, Dennis Akumu, Clement Lubembe and Ochola Ogaye Mak'Anyengo. The trade union movement would later become a major battlefront in the proxy cold war that would engulf Kenyan politics in the 1960s.
After the suppression of the Mau Mau rising, the British provided for the election of the six African members to the Legislative Council (MLC) under a weighted franchise based on education. Mboya successfully stood for office in the first election for African MLCs in 1957, beating the previously nominated incumbent, Argwings Kodhek. Daniel Arap Moi was the only previously nominated African MLC who kept his seat. Oginga Odinga was also elected and shortly afterwards nominated as the first chairman of the African elected members. Mboya's party, the Nairobi People's Convention Party (NPCP), was inspired by Kwame Nkurumah's People's Convention Party. It became the most organised and effective political party in the country. The NPCP was used to effectively mobilise the masses in Nairobi in the struggle for greater African representation on the council. The new colonial constitution of 1958 increased African representation, but African nationalists began to demand a democratic franchise on the principle of "one man, one vote." However, Europeans and Asians, because of their minority position, feared the effects of universal suffrage.
In June 1958, Oginga Odinga called for the release of Jomo Kenyatta. This call built momentum and was taken up by the NPCP. Agitation for African suffrage and self-rule picked up in pace. One major hindrance to self-rule was the lack of African human capital. Poor education, economic development and a lack of African technocrats were a real problem. This inspired Tom Mboya to begin a programme conceptualised by a close confidante Dr. Blasio Vincent Oriedo, funded by Americans, of sending talented youth to the United States for higher education. There was no university in Kenya at the time, but colonial officials opposed the programme anyway. The next year Senator John F. Kennedy helped fund the programme, hence its popular name – The Kennedy Airlift. This scholarship program trained some 70% of the top leaders of the new nation, including the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, environmentalist Wangari Maathai and Barack Obama's father, Barack Obama Sr.
At a conference held in 1960 in London, agreement was reached between the African members and the British settlers of the New Kenya Group, led by Michael Blundell. However many whites rejected the New Kenya Group and condemned the London agreement, because it moved away from racial quotas and toward independence. Following the agreement a new African party, the Kenya African National Union (KANU), with the slogan "Uhuru," or "Freedom," was formed under the leadership of Kikuyu leader James S. Gichuru and labour leader Tom Mboya. KANU was formed in May 1960 when the Kenya African Union (KAU) merged with the Kenya Independence Movement (KIM) and Nairobi People's Convention Party (NPCP). Mboya was a major figure from 1951 until his death in 1969. He was praised as nonethnic or antitribal, and attacked as an instrument of Western capitalism. Mboya as General Secretary of the Kenya Federation of Labour and a leader in the Kenya African National Union before and after independence skilfully managed the tribal factor in Kenyan economic and political life to succeed as a Luo in a predominantly Kikuyu movement. A split in KANU produced the breakaway rival party, the Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU), led by Ronald Ngala and Masinde Muliro. In the elections of February 1961, KANU won 19 of the 33 African seats while KADU won 11 (twenty seats were reserved by quota for Europeans, Asians and Arabs). Kenyatta was finally released in August and became president of KANU in October.
In 1962, a KANU-KADU coalition government, including both Kenyatta and Ngala, was formed. The 1962 constitution established a bicameral legislature consisting of a 117-member House of Representatives and a 41-member Senate. The country was divided into 7 semi-autonomous regions, each with its own regional assembly. The quota principle of reserved seats for non-Africans was abandoned, and open elections were held in May 1963. KADU gained control of the assemblies in the Rift Valley, Coast and Western regions. KANU won majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives, and in the assemblies in the Central, Eastern and Nyanza regions. Kenya now achieved internal self-government with Jomo Kenyatta as its first president. The British and KANU agreed, over KADU protests, to constitutional changes in October 1963 strengthening the central government, ensuring that Kenya would be a de facto single-party state. Kenya attained independence on 12 December 1963 as the Commonwealth realm of Kenya and was declared a republic on 12 December 1964 with Jomo Kenyatta as Head of State. In 1964 constitutional changes further centralised the government and various state organs were formed. One of the key state organs was the Central Bank of Kenya which was established in 1966.
The British government bought out the white settlers and they mostly left Kenya. The Indian minority dominated retail business in the cities and most towns, but was deeply distrusted by the Africans. As a result, 120,000 of the 176,000 Indians kept their old British passports rather than become citizens of an independent Kenya; large numbers left Kenya, most of them headed to Britain.
Once in power Kenyatta swerved from radical nationalism to conservative bourgeois politics. The plantations formerly owned by white settlers were broken up and given to farmers, with the Kikuyu the favoured recipients, along with their allies the Embu and the Meru. By 1978 most of the country's wealth and power was in the hands of the organisation which grouped these three tribes: the Kikuyu-Embu-Meru Association (GEMA), together comprising 30% of the population. At the same time the Kikuyu, with Kenyatta's support, spread beyond their traditional territorial homelands and repossessed lands "stolen by the whites" – even when these had previously belonged to other groups. The other groups, a 70% majority, were outraged, setting up long-term ethnic animosities.
The minority party, the Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU), representing a coalition of small tribes that had feared dominance by larger ones, dissolved itself voluntarily in 1964 and former members joined KANU. KANU was the only party 1964–66 when a faction broke away as the Kenya People's Union (KPU). It was led by Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, a former vice-president and Luo elder. KPU advocated a more "scientific" route to socialism—criticising the slow progress in land redistribution and employment opportunities—as well as a realignment of foreign policy in favour of the Soviet Union. On 25 February 1965, Pio Gama Pinto, a Kenyan of Goan descent and freedom fighter who was detained during the colonial period was assassinated in what is recognised as Kenya's first political assassination. He was also Oginga Odinga's chief tactician and link to the eastern bloc. His death dealt a severe blow to the Oginga Odinga's organisational efforts.
The government used a variety of political and economic measures to harass the KPU and its prospective and actual members. KPU branches were unable to register, KPU meetings were prevented and civil servants and politicians suffered severe economic and political consequences for joining the KPU. A security Act was passed in Parliament in July 1966 and granted the government powers to carry out detention without trial, which was used against KPU members. In a series of dawn raids in August 1966, several KPU party members were arrested and detained without trial. They included Ochola Mak'Anyengo (the secretary general of the Kenya Petroleum Oil Workers Union), Oluande Koduol (Oginga Odinga's private secretary) and Peter Ooko (the general secretary of the East African Common Services Civil Servants Union).
In June 1969, Tom Mboya, a Luo member of the government considered a potential successor to Kenyatta, was assassinated. Hostility between Kikuyu and Luo was heightened, and after riots broke out in Luo country the KPU was banned. The specific riots that led to the banning of the KPU resulted in the incident referred to as the Kisumu massacre. Kenya thereby became a one-party state under KANU.
Ignoring his suppression of the opposition and continued factionalism within KANU the imposition of one-party rule allowed Mzee ("Old Man") Kenyatta, who had led the country since independence, to claim he had achieved "political stability." Underlying social tensions were evident, however. Kenya's very rapid population growth and considerable rural to urban migration were in large part responsible for high unemployment and disorder in the cities. There also was much resentment by blacks at the privileged economic position held by Asians and Europeans in the country.
At Kenyatta's death (22 August 1978), Vice-president Daniel arap Moi became interim President. On 14 October, Moi formally became president after he was elected head of KANU and designated its sole nominee. In June 1982, the National Assembly amended the constitution, making Kenya officially a one-party state. On 1 August members of the Kenyan Air Force launched an attempted coup, which was quickly suppressed by Loyalist forces led by the Army, the General Service Unit (GSU) – paramilitary wing of the police – and later the regular police, but not without civilian casualties.
Independent Kenya, although officially non-aligned, adopted a pro-Western stance. Kenya worked unsuccessfully for East African union; the proposal to unite Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda did not win approval. However, the three nations did form a loose East African Community (EAC) in 1967, that maintained the customs union and some common services that they had shared under British rule. The EAC collapsed in 1977 and was officially dissolved in 1984. Kenya's relations with Somalia deteriorated over the problem of Somalis in the North Eastern Province who tried to secede and were supported by Somalia. In 1968, however, Kenya and Somalia agreed to restore normal relations, and the Somali rebellion effectively ended.
Kenyatta died in 1978 and was succeeded by Daniel Arap Moi (b. 1924, d. 2020) who ruled as President 1978–2002. Moi, a member of the Kalenjin ethnic group, quickly consolidated his position and governed in an authoritarian and corrupt manner. By 1986, Moi had concentrated all the power – and most of its attendant economic benefits – into the hands of his Kalenjin tribe and of a handful of allies from minority groups.
On 1 August 1982, lower-level air force personnel, led by Senior Private Grade-I Hezekiah Ochuka and backed by university students, attempted a coup d'état to oust Moi. The putsch was quickly suppressed by forces commanded by Army Commander Mahamoud Mohamed, a veteran Somali military official. In the coup's aftermath, some of Nairobi's poor Kenyans attacked and looted stores owned by Asians. Robert Ouko, the senior Luo in Moi's cabinet, was appointed to expose corruption at high levels, but was murdered a few months later. Moi's closest associate was implicated in Ouko's murder; Moi dismissed him but not before his remaining Luo support had evaporated. Germany recalled its ambassador to protest the "increasing brutality" of the regime and foreign donors pressed Moi to allow other parties, which was done in December 1991 through a constitutional amendment.
On the heels of the Garissa massacre of 1980, Kenyan troops committed the Wagalla massacre in 1984 against thousands of civilians in the North Eastern Province. An official probe into the atrocities was later ordered in 2011.
After local and foreign pressure, in December 1991, parliament repealed the one-party section of the constitution. The first multiparty elections were held in 1992.
The Forum for the Restoration of Democracy (FORD) emerged as the leading opposition to KANU, and dozens of leading KANU figures switched parties. But FORD, led by Oginga Odinga (1911–1994), a Luo, and Kenneth Matiba, a Kikuyu, split into two ethnically based factions. In the first open presidential elections in a quarter century, in December 1992, Moi won with 37% of the vote, Matiba received 26%, Mwai Kibaki (of the mostly Kikuyu Democratic Party) 19%, and Odinga 18%. In the Assembly, KANU won 97 of the 188 seats at stake. Moi's government in 1993 agreed to economic reforms long urged by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which restored enough aid for Kenya to service its $7.5 billion foreign debt.
Obstructing the press both before and after the 1992 elections, Moi continually maintained that multiparty politics would only promote tribal conflict. His own regime depended upon exploitation of inter-group hatreds. Under Moi, the apparatus of clientage and control was underpinned by the system of powerful provincial commissioners, each with a bureaucratic hierarchy based on chiefs (and their police) that was more powerful than the elected members of parliament. Elected local councils lost most of their power, and the provincial bosses were answerable only to the central government, which in turn was dominated by the president. The emergence of mass opposition in 1990–91 and demands for constitutional reform were met by rallies against pluralism. The regime leaned on the support of the Kalenjin and incited the Maasai against the Kikuyu. Government politicians denounced the Kikuyu as traitors, obstructed their registration as voters and threatened them with dispossession. In 1993 and after, mass evictions of Kikuyu took place, often with the direct involvement of army, police and game rangers. Armed clashes and many casualties, including deaths, resulted.
Further liberalisation in November 1997 allowed the expansion of political parties from 11 to 26. President Moi won re-election as president in the December 1997 elections, and his KANU Party narrowly retained its parliamentary majority.
Moi ruled using a strategic mixture of ethnic favouritism, state repression and marginalisation of opposition forces. He utilised detention and torture, looted public finances and appropriated land and other property. Moi sponsored irregular army units that attacked the Luo, Luhya and Kikuyu communities, and he denied his responsibility by attributing the violence to ethnic clashes arising from land dispute. Beginning in 1998, Moi engaged in a carefully calculated strategy to manage the presidential succession in his and his party's favour. Faced with the challenge of a new, multiethnic political coalition, Moi shifted the axis of the 2002 electoral contest from ethnicity to the politics of generational conflict. The strategy backfired, ripping his party wide open and resulting in the humiliating defeat of its candidate, Kenyatta's son, in the December 2002 general elections.
Constitutionally barred from running in the December 2002 presidential elections, Moi unsuccessfully promoted Uhuru Kenyatta, the son of Kenya's first President, as his successor. A rainbow coalition of opposition parties routed the ruling KANU party, and its leader, Moi's former vice-president Mwai Kibaki, was elected president by a large majority.
On 27 December 2002, by 62% the voters overwhelmingly elected members of the National Rainbow Coalition (NaRC) to parliament and NaRC candidate Mwai Kibaki (b. 1931) to the presidency. Voters rejected the Kenya African National Union's (KANU) presidential candidate, Uhuru Kenyatta, the handpicked candidate of outgoing president Moi. International and local observers reported the 2002 elections to be generally more fair and less violent than those of both 1992 and 1997. His strong showing allowed Kibaki to choose a cabinet, to seek international support and to balance power within the NaRC.
Kenya witnessed a spectacular economic recovery, helped by a favourable international environment. The annual rate of growth improved from −1.6% in 2002 to 2.6% by 2004, 3.4% in 2005, and 5.5% in 2007. However, social inequalities also increased; the economic benefits went disproportionately to the already well-off (especially to the Kikuyu); corruption reached new depths, matching some of the excesses of the Moi years. Social conditions deteriorated for ordinary Kenyans, who faced a growing wave of routine crime in urban areas; pitched battles between ethnic groups fighting for land; and a feud between the police and the Mungiki sect, which left over 120 people dead in May–November 2007 alone.
Once regarded as the world's "most optimistic," Kibaki's regime quickly lost much of its power because it became too closely linked with the discredited Moi forces. The continuity between Kibaki and Moi set the stage for the self-destruction of Kibaki's National Rainbow Coalition, which was dominated by Kikuyus. The western Luo and Kalenjin groups, demanding greater autonomy, backed Raila Amolo Odinga (1945– ) and his Orange Democratic Movement (ODM).
In the December 2007 elections, Odinga, the candidate of the ODM, attacked the failures of the Kibaki regime. The ODM charged the Kikuyu with having grabbed everything and all the other tribes having lost; that Kibaki had betrayed his promises for change; that crime and violence were out of control, and that economic growth was not bringing any benefits to the ordinary citizen. In the December 2007 elections the ODM won majority seats in Parliament, but the presidential elections votes were marred by claims of rigging by both sides. It may never be clear who won the elections, but it was roughly 50:50 before the rigging started.
"Majimboism" was a philosophy that emerged in the 1950s, meaning federalism or regionalism in Swahili, and it was intended to protect local rights, especially regarding land ownership. Today "majimboism" is code for certain areas of the country to be reserved for specific ethnic groups, fuelling the kind of ethnic cleansing that has swept the country since the election. Majimboism has always had a strong following in the Rift Valley, the epicenter of the recent violence, where many locals have long believed that their land was stolen by outsiders. The December 2007 election was in part a referendum on majimboism. It pitted today's majimboists, represented by Odinga, who campaigned for regionalism, against Kibaki, who stood for the status quo of a highly centralised government that has delivered considerable economic growth but has repeatedly displayed the problems of too much power concentrated in too few hands – corruption, aloofness, favouritism and its flip side, marginalisation. In the town of Londiani in the Rift Valley, Kikuyu traders settled decades ago. In February 2008, hundreds of Kalenjin raiders poured down from the nearby scruffy hills and burned a Kikuyu school. Three hundred thousand members of the Kikuyu community were displaced from Rift Valley province. Kikuyus quickly took revenge, organising into gangs armed with iron bars and table legs and hunting down Luos and Kalenjins in Kikuyu-dominated areas like Nakuru. "We are achieving our own perverse version of majimboism," wrote one of Kenya's leading columnists, Macharia Gaitho.
The Luo population of the southwest had enjoyed an advantageous position during the late colonial and early independence periods of the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s, particularly in terms of the prominence of its modern elite compared to those of other groups. However the Luo lost prominence due to the success of Kikuyu and related groups (Embu and Meru) in gaining and exercising political power during the Jomo Kenyatta era (1963–1978). While measurements of poverty and health by the early 2000s showed the Luo disadvantaged relative to other Kenyans, the growing presence of non-Luo in the professions reflected a dilution of Luo professionals due to the arrival of others rather than an absolute decline in the Luo numbers.
Between 1980 and 2000 total fecundity in Kenya fell by about 40%, from some eight births per woman to around five. During the same period, fertility in Uganda declined by less than 10%. The difference was due primarily to greater contraceptive use in Kenya, though in Uganda there was also a reduction in pathological sterility. The Demographic and Health Surveys carried out every five years show that women in Kenya wanted fewer children than those in Uganda and that in Uganda there was also a greater unmet need for contraception. These differences may be attributed, in part at least, to the divergent paths of economic development followed by the two countries since independence and to the Kenya government's active promotion of family planning, which the Uganda government did not promote until 1995.
The 3rd President of Kenya Mwai Kibaki ruled since 2002 until 2013. After his tenure Kenya held its first general elections after the new constitution had been passed in 2010. Uhuru Kenyatta (son of the first president Jomo Kenyatta) won in a disputed election result, leading to a petition by the opposition leader, Raila Odinga. The supreme court upheld the election results and President Kenyatta began his term with William Ruto as the deputy president. Despite the outcome of this ruling, the Supreme Court and the head of the Supreme Court were seen as powerful institutions that could carry out their role of checking the powers of the president. In 2017, Uhuru Kenyatta won a second term in office in another disputed election. Following the defeat, Raila Odinga again petitioned the results in the Supreme Court, accusing the electoral commission of mismanagement of the elections and Uhuru Kenyatta and his party of rigging. The Supreme Court overturned the election results in what became a landmark ruling in Africa and one of the very few in the world in which the results of a presidential elections were annulled. This ruling solidified the position of the Supreme Court as an independent body. Consequently, Kenya had a second round of elections for the presidential position, in which Uhuru emerged the winner after Raila refused to participate, citing irregularities.
The historical handshake in March 2018 between president Uhuru Kenyatta and his long-time opponent Raila Odinga meant reconciliation followed by economic growth and increased stability.
In August 2022, Deputy President William Ruto narrowly won the presidential election. He took 50.5% of the vote. His main rival, Raila Odinga, got 48.8% of the vote. According to the Afrobarometer survey 67.9% of Kenyan citizens participated in the last election( 2022) and 17.6% did not vote in the presidential election. On 13 September 2022, William Ruto was sworn in as Kenya's fifth president.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "A part of Eastern Africa, the territory of what is known as Kenya has seen human habitation since the beginning of the Lower Paleolithic. The Bantu expansion from a West African centre of dispersal reached the area by the 1st millennium AD. With the borders of the modern state at the crossroads of the Bantu, Nilo-Saharan and Afro-Asiatic ethno-linguistic areas of Africa, Kenya is a truly multi-ethnic state. The Wanga Kingdom was formally establsihed in the late 17th century. The kingdom covered from the Jinja in Uganda to Naivasha in the East of Kenya. This is the first time the Wanga people and Luhya tribe were united and led by a centralized leader, a king, known as the Nabongo.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The European and Arab presence in Mombasa dates to the Early Modern period, but European exploration of the interior began in the 19th century. The British Empire established the East Africa Protectorate in 1895, from 1920 known as the Kenya Colony.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "During the wave of decolonisation in the 1960s, Kenya gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1963, had Elizabeth II as its first head of state, and Jomo Kenyatta as its Prime Minister. It became a republic in 1964, and was ruled as a de facto one-party state by the Kenya African National Union (KANU), led by Kenyatta from 1964 to 1978. Kenyatta was succeeded by Daniel arap Moi, who ruled until 2002. Moi attempted to transform the de facto one-party status of Kenya into a de jure status during the 1980s, but with the end of the Cold War, the practices of political repression and torture which had been \"overlooked\" by the Western powers as necessary evils in the effort to contain communism were no longer tolerated in Kenya.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Moi came under pressure, notably by US ambassador Smith Hempstone, to restore a multi-party system, which he did by 1991. Moi won elections in 1992 and 1997, which were overshadowed by politically motivated killings on both sides. During the 1990s, evidence of Moi's involvement in human rights abuses and corruption, such as the Goldenberg scandal, was uncovered. He was constitutionally barred from running in the 2002 election, which was won by Mwai Kibaki. Widely reported electoral fraud on Kibaki's side in the 2007 elections resulted in the 2007–2008 Kenyan crisis. Kibaki was succeeded by Uhuru Kenyatta in the 2013 general election. There were allegations that his rival Raila Odinga actually won the contest, however, the Supreme Court through a thorough review of evidence adduced found no malpractice during the conduct of the 2013 general election both from the IEBC and the Jubilee Party of Uhuru Kenyatta. Uhuru was re-elected in office five years later in 2017. His victory was however controversial. The supreme court had vitiated Uhuru win after Raila Odinga disputed the result through a constitutionally allowed supreme court petition. Raila Odinga would later boycott a repeat election ordered by the court, allowing Uhuru Kenyatta sail through almost unopposed with 98% of the vote.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Fossils found in Kenya have shown that primates inhabited the area for more than 20 million years. In 1929, the first evidence of the presence of ancient early human ancestors in Kenya was discovered when Louis Leakey unearthed one million year old Acheulian handaxes at the Kariandusi Prehistoric Site in southwest Kenya. Subsequently, many species of early hominid have been discovered in Kenya. The oldest, found by Martin Pickford in the year 2000, is the six million year old Orrorin tugenensis, named after the Tugen Hills where it was unearthed. It is the second oldest fossil hominid in the world after Sahelanthropus tchadensis.",
"title": "Paleolithic"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In 1995 Meave Leakey named a new species of hominid Australopithecus anamensis following a series of fossil discoveries near Lake Turkana in 1965, 1987 and 1994. It is around 4.1 million years old.",
"title": "Paleolithic"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In 2011, 3.2 million year old stone tools were discovered at Lomekwi near Lake Turkana - these are the oldest stone tools found anywhere in the world and pre-date the emergence of Homo.",
"title": "Paleolithic"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "One of the most famous and complete hominid skeletons ever discovered was the 1.6-million-year-old Homo erectus known as Nariokotome Boy, which was found by Kamoya Kimeu in 1984 on an excavation led by Richard Leakey.",
"title": "Paleolithic"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The oldest Acheulean tools ever discovered anywhere in the world are from West Turkana, and were dated in 2011 through the method of magnetostratigraphy to about 1.76 million years old.",
"title": "Paleolithic"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "East Africa, including Kenya, is one of the earliest regions where modern humans (Homo sapiens) are believed to have lived. Evidence was found in 2018, dating to about 320,000 years ago, at the Kenyan site of Olorgesailie, of the early emergence of modern behaviors including: long-distance trade networks (involving goods such as obsidian), the use of pigments, and the possible making of projectile points. It is observed by the authors of three 2018 studies on the site, that the evidence of these behaviors is approximately contemporary to the earliest known Homo sapiens fossil remains from Africa (such as at Jebel Irhoud and Florisbad), and they suggest that complex and modern behaviors had already begun in Africa around the time of the emergence of Homo sapiens. Further evidence of modern behaviour was found in 2021 when evidence of Africa's earliest funeral was found. A 78,000 year old Middle Stone Age grave of a three-year-old child was discovered in Panga ya Saidi cave. Researchers said the child's head appeared to have been laid on a pillow. The body had been laid in a fetal position. Michael Petraglia, a professor of human evolution and prehistory at the Max Planck Institute said, “It is the oldest human burial in Africa. It tells us something about our cognition, our sociality and our behaviours and they are all very familiar to us today.”",
"title": "Paleolithic"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The first inhabitants of present-day Kenya were hunter-gatherer groups, akin to the modern Khoisan speakers. The Kansyore culture, dating from the mid 5th millennium BCE to the 1st millennium BCE was one of East Africa's earliest ceramic producing group of hunter-gatherers. This culture was located at Gogo falls in Migori county near Lake Victoria. Kenya's rock art sites date between 2000BCE and 1000 CE. This tradition thrived at Mfangano Island, Chelelemuk hills, Namoratunga and Lewa Downs. The rock paintings are attributed to the Twa people, a hunter-gatherer group that was once widespread in East Africa. For the most part, these communities were assimilated into various food-producing societies that began moving into Kenya from the 3rd millennium BCE.",
"title": "Neolithic"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Linguistic evidence points to a relative sequence of population movements into Kenya that begins with the entry into northern Kenya of a possibly Southern Cushitic speaking population around the 3rd millennium BCE. They were pastoralists who kept domestic stock, including cattle, sheep, goat, and donkeys. Remarkable megalithic sites from this time period include the possibly archaeoastronomical site Namoratunga on the west side of Lake Turkana. One of these megalithic sites, Lothagam North Pillar Site, is East Africa's earliest and largest monumental cemetery. At least 580 bodies are found in this well planned cemetery. By 1000 BCE and even earlier, pastoralism had spread into central Kenya and northern Tanzania. Eburran hunter gatherers, who had lived in the Ol Doinyo Eburru volcano complex near Lake Nakuru for thousands of years, start adopting livestock around this period.",
"title": "Neolithic"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In present times the descendants of the Southern Cushitic speakers are located in north central Tanzania near Lake Eyasi. Their past distribution, as determined by the presence of loanwords in other languages, encompasses the known distribution of the Highland Savanna Pastoral Neolithic culture.",
"title": "Neolithic"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Beginning around 700 BCE, Southern Nilotic speaking communities whose homelands lay somewhere near the common border between Sudan, Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia moved south into the western highlands and Rift Valley region of Kenya.",
"title": "Neolithic"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The arrival of the Southern Nilotes in Kenya occurred shortly before the introduction of iron to East Africa. The past distribution of the Southern Nilotic speakers, as inferred from place names, loan words and oral traditions includes the known distribution of Elmenteitan sites.",
"title": "Neolithic"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Evidence suggests that autochthonous Iron production developed in West Africa as early as 3000–2500BCE. The ancestors of Bantu speakers migrated in waves from west/central Africa to populate much of Eastern, Central and Southern Africa from the first millennium BC. They brought with them iron forging technology and novel farming techniques as they migrated and integrated with the societies they encountered. The Bantu expansion is thought to have reached western Kenya around 1000 BCE.",
"title": "Iron Age"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The Urewe culture is one of Africa's oldest iron smelting centres. Dating from 550BCE to 650BCE, this culture dominated the Great Lakes region including Kenya. Sites in Kenya include Urewe, Yala and Uyoma in northern Nyanza. By the first century BC, Bantu speaking communities in the great lakes region developed iron forging techniques that enabled them to produce carbon steel.",
"title": "Iron Age"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Later migrations through Tanzania led to settlement on the Kenyan coast. Archaeological findings have shown that by 100 BCE to 300 AD, Bantu speaking communities were present at the coastal areas of Misasa in Tanzania, Kwale in Kenya and Ras Hafun in Somalia. These communities also integrated and intermarried with the communities already present at the coast. Between 300 AD-1000 AD, through participation in the long existing Indian Ocean trade route, these communities established links with Arabian and Indian traders leading to the development of the Swahili culture.",
"title": "Iron Age"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Historians estimate that in the 15th century, Southern Luo speakers started migrating into Western Kenya. The Luo descend from migrants closely related to other Nilotic Luo Peoples (especially the Acholi and Padhola people) who moved from South Sudan through Uganda into western Kenya in a slow and multi-generational manner between the 15th and 20th centuries. As they moved into Kenya and Tanzania, they underwent significant genetic and cultural admixture as they encountered other communities that were long established in the region.",
"title": "Iron Age"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The walled settlement of Thimlich Ohinga is the largest and best preserved of 138 sites containing 521 stone structures that were built around the Lake Victoria region in Nyanza Province. Carbon dating and linguistic evidence suggest that the site is at least 550 years old. Archaeological and ethnographic analysis of the site taken with historical, linguistic and genetic evidence suggests that the populations that built, maintained and inhabited the site at various phases had significant ethnic admixture.",
"title": "Iron Age"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Swahili people inhabit the Swahili coast which is the coastal area of the Indian Ocean in Southeast Africa. It includes the coastal areas of Southern Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania and Northern Mozambique with numerous islands, cities and towns including Sofala, Kilwa, Zanzibar, Comoros, Mombasa, Gede, Malindi, Pate Island and Lamu. The Swahili coast was historically known as Azania in the Greco-Roman era and as Zanj or Zinj in Middle Eastern, Chinese and Indian literature from the 7th to the 14th century. The Periplus of the Erythrean Sea is a Graeco-Roman manuscript that was written in the first century AD. It describes the East African coast (Azania) and a long existing Indian Ocean Trade route. The East African Coast was long inhabited by hunter-gatherer and Cushitic groups since at least 3000BC. Evidence of indigenous pottery and agriculture dating as far back as this period has been found along the coast and offshore islands. International trade goods including Graeco-Roman pottery, Syrian glass vessels, Sassanian pottery from Persia and glass beads dating to 600BC have been found at the Rufiji River delta in Tanzania.",
"title": "Swahili culture and trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Bantu Groups had migrated to the Great Lakes Region by 1000BCE. Some Bantu speakers continued to migrate further southeast towards the East African Coast. These Bantu speakers mixed with the local inhabitants they encountered at the coast. The earliest settlements in the Swahili coast to appear on the archaeological record are found at Kwale in Kenya, Misasa in Tanzania and Ras Hafun in Somalia. The Kenyan coast had hosted communities of ironworkers and communities of Eastern Bantu subsistence-farmers, hunters and fishers who supported the economy with agriculture, fishing, metal production and trade with outside areas. Between 300AD – 1000AD Azanian and Zanj settlements in the Swahili coast continued to expand with local industry and international trade flourishing. Between 500 and 800 A.D. they shifted to a sea-based trading economy and began to migrate south by ship. In the following centuries, trade in goods from the African interior, such as gold, ivory, and slaves stimulated the development of market towns such as Mogadishu, Shanga, Kilwa, and Mombasa. These communities formed the earliest city-states in the region which were collectively known to the Roman Empire as \"Azania\".",
"title": "Swahili culture and trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "By the 1st century CE, many of the settlements such as those in Mombasa, Malindi, and Zanzibar - began to establish trade relations with Arabs. This led ultimately to the increased economic growth of the Swahili, the introduction of Islam, Arabic influences on the Swahili Bantu language, and cultural diffusion. Islam rapidly spread across Africa between 614AD – 900AD. Starting with the first Hijrah (migration) of Prophet Muhammad's followers to Ethiopia, Islam spread across Eastern, Northern and Western Africa. The Swahili city-states became part of a larger trade network. Many historians long believed that Arab or Persian traders established the city-states, but archeological evidence has led scholars to recognize the city-states as an indigenous development which, though subjected to foreign influence due to trade, retained a Bantu cultural core. The Azanian and Zanj communities had a high degree of intercultural exchange and admixture. This fact is reflected in the language, culture and technology present at the coast. For instance, between 630AD - 890AD, Archaeological evidence indicates that crucible steel was manufactured at Galu, south of Mombasa. Metallurgical analysis of iron artefacts indicates that the techniques used by the inhabitants of the Swahili coast combined techniques used in other African sites as well as those in West and South Asian sites. The Swahili City States begin to emerge from pre-existing settlements between 1000AD and 1500AD. The earliest gravestone found at Gedi Ruins dates to the earlier part of this period. The oldest Swahili texts in existence also date to this period. They were written in old Swahili script (Swahili-Arabic alphabet) based on Arabic letters. This is the script found on the earliest gravestones.",
"title": "Swahili culture and trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "One of the most travelled people of the ancient world, Moroccan explorer Ibn Battuta, visited Mombasa on his way to Kilwa in 1331. He describes Mombasa as a large island with banana, lemon and citron trees. The local residents were Sunni Muslims who he described as “religious people, trustworthy and righteous.” He noted that their mosques were made of wood and were expertly built. Another ancient traveller, Chinese Admiral Zheng He visited Malindi in 1418. Some of his ships are reported to have sunk near Lamu Island. Recent genetic tests done on local inhabitants confirmed that some residents had Chinese ancestry.",
"title": "Swahili culture and trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Swahili, a Bantu language with many Arabic loan words, developed as a lingua franca for trade between the different peoples. A Swahili culture developed in the towns, notably in Pate, Malindi, and Mombasa. The impact of Arabic and Persian traders and immigrants on the Swahili culture remains controversial. During the Middle Ages,",
"title": "Swahili culture and trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "the East African Swahili coast [including Zanzibar] was a wealthy and advanced region, which consisted of many autonomous merchant cities. Wealth flowed into the cities via the Africans' roles as intermediaries and facilitators of Indian, Persian, Arab, Indonesian, Malaysian, African and Chinese merchants. All of these peoples enriched the Swahili culture to some degree. The Swahili culture developed its own written language; the language incorporated elements from different civilisations, with Arabic as its strongest quality. Some Arab settlers were rich merchants who, because of their wealth, gained power—sometimes as rulers of coastal cities.",
"title": "Swahili culture and trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Portuguese explorers appeared on the East African coast at the end of the 15th century. The Portuguese did not intend to found settlements, but to establish naval bases that would give Portugal control over the Indian Ocean. After decades of small-scale conflict, Arabs from Oman defeated the Portuguese in Kenya.",
"title": "Portuguese and Omani influences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The Portuguese became the first Europeans to explore the region of current-day Kenya: Vasco da Gama visited Mombasa in April 1498. Da Gama's voyage successfully reached India (May 1498), and this initiated direct maritime Portuguese trade links with South Asia, thus challenging older trading networks over mixed land and sea routes, such as the spice-trade routes that utilised the Persian Gulf, Red Sea and caravans to reach the eastern Mediterranean. (The Republic of Venice had gained control over much of the trade between Europe and Asia. Especially after the Ottoman Turks captured Constantinople in 1453, Turkish control of the eastern Mediterranean inhibited the use of traditional land-routes between Europe and India. Portugal hoped to use the sea route pioneered by da Gama to bypass political, monopolistic and tariff barriers.)",
"title": "Portuguese and Omani influences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Portuguese rule in East Africa focused mainly on a coastal strip centred in Mombasa. The Portuguese presence in East Africa officially began after 1505, when a naval force under the command of Dom Francisco de Almeida conquered Kilwa, an island located in the south-east of present-day Tanzania.",
"title": "Portuguese and Omani influences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The Portuguese presence in East Africa served the purpose of controlling trade within the Indian Ocean and securing the sea routes linking Europe and Asia. Portuguese naval vessels disrupted the commerce of Portugal's enemies within the western Indian Ocean, and the Portuguese demanded high tariffs on items transported through the area, given their strategic control of ports and of shipping lanes. The construction of Fort Jesus in Mombasa in 1593 aimed to solidify Portuguese hegemony in the region. The Omani Arabs posed the most direct challenge to Portuguese influence in East Africa, besieging Portuguese fortresses. Omani forces captured Fort Jesus in 1698, only to lose it in a revolt (1728), but by 1730 the Omanis had expelled the remaining Portuguese from the coasts of present-day Kenya and Tanzania. By this time the Portuguese Empire had already lost interest in the spice-trade sea-route because of the decreasing profitability of that traffic. (Portuguese-ruled territories, ports and settlements remained active to the south, in Mozambique, until 1975.)",
"title": "Portuguese and Omani influences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Under Seyyid Said (ruled 1807–1856), the Omani sultan who moved his capital to Zanzibar in 1840, the Arabs set up long-distance trade-routes into the African interior. The dry reaches of the north were lightly inhabited by semi-nomadic pastoralists. In the south, pastoralists and cultivators bartered goods and competed for land as long-distance caravan routes linked them to the Kenyan coast on the east and to the kingdoms of Uganda on the west. Arab, Shirazi and coastal African cultures produced an Islamic Swahili people trading in a variety of up-country commodities, including slaves.",
"title": "Portuguese and Omani influences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Omani Arab colonisation of the Kenyan and Tanzanian coasts brought the once independent city-states under closer foreign scrutiny and domination than was experienced during the Portuguese period. Like their predecessors, the Omani Arabs were primarily able only to control the coastal areas, not the interior. However, the creation of plantations, intensification of the slave trade and movement of the Omani capital to Zanzibar in 1839 by Seyyid Said had the effect of consolidating the Omani power in the region. The slave trade had begun to grow exponentially starting at the end of the 17th Century with a large slave market based at Zanzibar. When Sultan Seyyid Said moved his capital to Zanzibar, the already large clove and spice plantations continued to grow, driving demand for slaves. Slaves were sourced from the hinterland. Slave caravan routes into the interior of Kenya reached as far as the foothills of Mount Kenya, Lake Victoria and past Lake Baringo into Samburu country.",
"title": "19th century history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Arab governance of all the major ports along the East African coast continued until British interests aimed particularly at securing their 'Indian Jewel' and creation of a system of trade among individuals began to put pressure on Omani rule. By the late 19th century, the slave trade on the open seas had been completely strangled by the British. The Omani Arabs had no interest in resisting the Royal Navy's efforts to enforce anti-slavery directives. As the Moresby Treaty demonstrated, whilst Oman sought sovereignty over its waters, Seyyid Said saw no reason to intervene in the slave trade, as the main customers for the slaves were Europeans. As Farquhar in a letter made note, only with the intervention of Said would the European Trade in slaves in the Western Indian Ocean be abolished. As the Omani presence continued in Zanzibar and Pemba until the 1964 revolution, but the official Omani Arab presence in Kenya was checked by German and British seizure of key ports and creation of crucial trade alliances with influential local leaders in the 1880s. Nevertheless, the Omani Arab legacy in East Africa is currently found through their numerous descendants found along the coast that can directly trace ancestry to Oman and are typically the wealthiest and most politically influential members of the Kenyan coastal community.",
"title": "19th century history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The first Christian mission was founded on 25 August 1846, by Dr. Johann Ludwig Krapf, a German sponsored by the Church Missionary Society of England. He established a station among the Mijikenda at Rabai on the coast. He later translated the Bible into Swahili. Many freed slaves rescued by the British Navy are settled here. The peak of the slave plantation economy in East Africa was between 1875 – 1884. It is estimated that between 43,000 – 47,000 slaves were present on the Kenyan coast, which made up 44 percent of the local population. In 1874, Frere Town settlement in Mombasa was established. This was another settlement for freed slaves rescued by the British Navy. Despite pressure from the British to stop the East African slave trade, it continued to persist into the early 20th century.",
"title": "19th century history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "By 1850 European explorers had begun mapping the interior. Three developments encouraged European interest in East Africa in the first half of the 19th century. First, was the emergence of the island of Zanzibar, located off the east coast of Africa. Zanzibar became a base from which trade and exploration of the African mainland could be mounted. By 1840, to protect the interests of the various nationals doing business in Zanzibar, consul offices had been opened by the British, French, Germans and Americans. In 1859, the tonnage of foreign shipping calling at Zanzibar had reached 19,000 tons. By 1879, the tonnage of this shipping had reached 89,000 tons. The second development spurring European interest in Africa was the growing European demand for products of Africa including ivory and cloves. Thirdly, British interest in East Africa was first stimulated by their desire to abolish the slave trade. Later in the century, British interest in East Africa would be stimulated by German competition.",
"title": "19th century history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In 1895 the British government took over and claimed the interior as far west as Lake Naivasha; it set up the East Africa Protectorate. The border was extended to Uganda in 1902, and in 1920 the enlarged protectorate, except for the original coastal strip, which remained a protectorate, became a crown colony. With the beginning of colonial rule in 1895, the Rift Valley and the surrounding Highlands became reserved for whites. In the 1920s Indians objected to the reservation of the Highlands for Europeans, especially British war veterans. The whites engaged in large-scale coffee farming dependent on mostly Kikuyu labour. Bitterness grew between the Indians and the Europeans.",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "This area's fertile land has always made it the site of migration and conflict. There were no significant mineral resources—none of the gold or diamonds that attracted so many to South Africa.",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Imperial Germany set up a protectorate over the Sultan of Zanzibar's coastal possessions in 1885, followed by the arrival of Sir William Mackinnon's British East Africa Company (BEAC) in 1888, after the company had received a royal charter and concessionary rights to the Kenya coast from the Sultan of Zanzibar for a 50-year period. Incipient imperial rivalry was forestalled when Germany handed its coastal holdings to Britain in 1890, in exchange for German control over the coast of Tanganyika. The colonial takeover met occasionally with some strong local resistance: Waiyaki Wa Hinga, a Kikuyu chief who ruled Dagoretti who had signed a treaty with Frederick Lugard of the BEAC, having been subject to considerable harassment, burnt down Lugard's fort in 1890. Waiyaki was abducted two years later by the British and killed.",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Following severe financial difficulties of the British East Africa Company, the British government on 1 July 1895 established direct rule through the East African Protectorate, subsequently opening (1902) the fertile highlands to white settlers.",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "A key to the development of Kenya's interior was the construction, started in 1895, of a railway from Mombasa to Kisumu, on Lake Victoria, completed in 1901. This was to be the first piece of the Uganda Railway. The British government had decided, primarily for strategic reasons, to build a railway linking Mombasa with the British protectorate of Uganda. A major feat of engineering, the \"Uganda railway\" (that is the railway inside Kenya leading to Uganda) was completed in 1903 and was a decisive event in modernising the area. As governor of Kenya, Sir Percy Girouard was instrumental in initiating railway extension policy that led to construction of the Nairobi-Thika and Konza-Magadi railways.",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Some 32,000 workers were imported from British India to do the manual labour. Many stayed, as did most of the Indian traders and small businessmen who saw opportunity in the opening up of the interior of Kenya. Rapid economic development was seen as necessary to make the railway pay, and since the African population was accustomed to subsistence rather than export agriculture, the government decided to encourage European settlement in the fertile highlands, which had small African populations. The railway opened up the interior, not only to the European farmers, missionaries and administrators, but also to systematic government programmes to attack slavery, witchcraft, disease and famine. The Africans saw witchcraft as a powerful influence on their lives and frequently took violent action against suspected witches. To control this, the British colonial administration passed laws, beginning in 1909, which made the practice of witchcraft illegal. These laws gave the local population a legal, nonviolent way to stem the activities of witches.",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "By the time the railway was built, military resistance by the African population to the original British takeover had petered out. However new grievances were being generated by the process of European settlement. Governor Percy Girouard is associated with the debacle of the Second Maasai Agreement of 1911, which led to their forceful removal from the fertile Laikipia plateau to semi-arid Ngong. To make way for the Europeans (largely Britons and whites from South Africa), the Maasai were restricted to the southern Loieta plains in 1913. The Kikuyu claimed some of the land reserved for Europeans and continued to feel that they had been deprived of their inheritance.",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "In the initial stage of colonial rule, the administration relied on traditional communicators, usually chiefs. When colonial rule was established and efficiency was sought, partly because of settler pressure, newly educated younger men were associated with old chiefs in local Native Councils.",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "In building the railway the British had to confront strong local opposition, especially from Koitalel Arap Samoei, a diviner and Nandi leader who prophesied that a black snake would tear through Nandi land spitting fire, which was seen later as the railway line. For ten years he fought against the builders of the railway line and train. The settlers were partly allowed in 1907 a voice in government through the legislative council, a European organisation to which some were appointed and others elected. But since most of the powers remained in the hands of the Governor, the settlers started lobbying to transform Kenya in a Crown Colony, which meant more powers for the settlers. They obtained this goal in 1920, making the Council more representative of European settlers; but Africans were excluded from direct political participation until 1944, when the first of them was admitted in the council.",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Kenya became a military base for the British in the First World War (1914–1918), as efforts to subdue the German colony to the south were frustrated. At the outbreak of war in August 1914, the governors of British East Africa (as the Protectorate was generally known) and German East Africa agreed a truce in an attempt to keep the young colonies out of direct hostilities. However Lt Col Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck took command of the German military forces, determined to tie down as many British resources as possible. Completely cut off from Germany, von Lettow conducted an effective guerilla warfare campaign, living off the land, capturing British supplies, and remaining undefeated. He eventually surrendered in Zambia eleven days after the Armistice was signed in 1918. To chase von Lettow the British deployed Indian Army troops from India and then needed large numbers of porters to overcome the formidable logistics of transporting supplies far into the interior by foot. The Carrier Corps was formed and ultimately mobilised over 400,000 Africans, contributing to their long-term politicisation.",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "An early anti-colonial movement opposed to British rule known as Mumboism took root in South Nyanza in the early 20th century. Colonial authorities classified it as a millennialist cult. It has since been recognised as an anti-colonial movement. In 1913, Onyango Dunde of central Kavirondo proclaimed to have been sent by the serpent god of Lake Victoria, Mumbo to spread his teachings. The colonial government recognised this movement as a threat to their authority because of the Mumbo creed. Mumbo pledged to drive out the colonialists and their supporters and condemned their religion. Violent resistance against the British had proven to be futile as the Africans were outmatched technologically. This movement therefore focused on anticipating the end of colonialism, rather than actively inducing it. Mumboism spread amongst Luo people and Kisii people. The Colonial authorities suppressed the movement by deporting and imprisoning adherents in the 1920s and 1930s. It was officially banned in 1954 following the Mau Mau rebellion.",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The first stirrings of modern African political organisation in Kenya Colony sought to protest pro-settler policies, increased taxes on Africans and the despised kipande (Identifying metal band worn around the neck). Before the war, African political focus was diffuse. But after the war, problems caused by new taxes and reduced wages and new settlers threatening African land led to new movements. The experiences gained by Africans in the war coupled with the creation of the white-settler-dominated Kenya Crown Colony, gave rise to considerable political activity. Ishmael Ithongo called the first mass meeting in May 1921 to protest African wage reductions. Harry Thuku formed the Young Kikuyu Association (YKA) and started a publication called Tangazo which criticised the colonial administration and missions. The YKA gave a sense of nationalism to many Kikuyu and advocated civil disobedience. The YKA gave way to the Kikuyu Association (KA) which was the officially recognised tribal body with Harry Thuku as its secretary. Through the KA, Thuku advocated for African suffrage. Deeming it unwise to base a nationalist movement around one tribe, Thuku renamed his organisation the East African Association and strived for multi-ethnic membership by including the local Indian community and reaching out to other tribes. The colonial government accused Thuku of sedition, arrested him and detained him until 1930.",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "In Kavirondo (later Nyanza province), a strike at a mission school, organised by Daudi Basudde, raised concerns about the damaging implications on African land ownership by switching from the East African Protectorate to the Kenyan Colony. A series of meetings dubbed ‘Piny Owacho’ (Voice of the People) culminated in a large mass meeting held in December 1921 advocating for individual title deeds, getting rid of the kipande system and a fairer tax system. Archdeacon W. E. Owen, an Anglican missionary and prominent advocate for African affairs, formalised and canalised this movement as the president of the Kavirondo Taxpayers Welfare Association. Bound by the same concerns, James Beauttah initiated an alliance between the Kikuyu and Luo communities.",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "In the mid-1920s, the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA) was formed. Led by Joseph Keng’ethe and Jesse Kariuki, it picked up from Harry Thuku's East African Association except that it represented the Kikuyu almost exclusively. Johnstone Kenyatta was the secretary and editor of the associations’ publication Mugwithania (The unifier). The KCA focused on unifying the Kikuyu into one geographic polity, but its project was undermined by controversies over ritual tribute, land allocation and the ban on female circumcision. They also fought for the release of Harry Thuku from detention. Upon Thuku's release, he was elected president of the KCA. The government banned the KCA after World War II began when Jesse Kariuki compared the compulsory relocation of Kikuyus who lived near white owned land to Nazi policies on compulsory relocation of people.",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Most political activity between the wars was local, and this succeeded most among the Luo of Kenya, where progressive young leaders became senior chiefs. By the later 1930s government began to intrude on ordinary Africans through marketing controls, stricter educational supervision and land changes. Traditional chiefs became irrelevant and younger men became communicators by training in the missionary churches and civil service. Pressure on ordinary Kenyans by governments in a hurry to modernise in the 1930s to 1950s enabled the mass political parties to acquire support for \"centrally\" focused movements, but even these often relied on local communicators.",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "During the early part of the 20th century, the interior central highlands were settled by British and other European farmers, who became wealthy farming coffee and tea. By the 1930s, approximately 15,000 white settlers lived in the area and gained a political voice because of their contribution to the market economy. The area was already home to over a million members of the Kikuyu tribe, most of whom had no land claims in European terms, and lived as itinerant farmers. To protect their interests, the settlers banned the growing of coffee, introduced a hut tax and the landless were granted less and less land in exchange for their labour. A massive exodus to the cities ensued as their ability to provide a living from the land dwindled.",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Kenya became a focus of resettlement of young, upper class British officers after the war, giving a strong aristocratic tone to the white settlers. If they had £1,000 in assets they could get a free 1,000 acres (4 km); the goal of the government was to speed up modernisation and economic growth. They set up coffee plantations, which required expensive machinery, a stable labour force, and four years to start growing crops. The veterans did escape democracy and taxation in Britain, but they failed in their efforts to gain control of the colony. The upper class bias in migration policy meant that whites would always be a small minority. Many of them left after independence.",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Power remained concentrated in the governor's hands; weak legislative and executive councils made up of official appointees were created in 1906. The European settlers were allowed to elect representatives to the Legislative Council in 1920, when the colony was established. The white settlers, 30,000 strong, sought \"responsible government,\" in which they would have a voice. They opposed similar demands by the far more numerous Indian community. The European settlers gained representation for themselves and minimised representation on the Legislative Council for Indians and Arabs. The government appointed a European to represent African interests on the council. In the \"Devonshire declaration\" of 1923 the Colonial Office declared that the interests of the Africans (comprising over 95% of the population) must be paramount—achieving that goal took four decades. Historian Charles Mowat explained the issues:",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "In the Second World War (1939–45) Kenya became an important British military base for successful campaigns against Italy in the Italian Somaliland and Ethiopia. The war brought money and an opportunity for military service for 98,000 men, called \"askaris\". The war stimulated African nationalism. After the war, African ex-servicemen sought to maintain the socioeconomic gains they had accrued through service in the King's African Rifles (KAR). Looking for middle class employment and social privileges, they challenged existing relationships within the colonial state. For the most part, veterans did not participate in national politics, believing that their aspirations could best be achieved within the confines of colonial society. The social and economic connotations of KAR service, combined with the massive wartime expansion of Kenyan defence forces, created a new class of modernised Africans with distinctive characteristics and interests. These socioeconomic perceptions proved powerful after the war.",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "British officials sought to modernise Kikuyu farming in the Murang'a District 1920–1945. Relying on concepts of trusteeship and scientific management, they imposed a number of changes in crop production and agrarian techniques, claiming to promote conservation and \"betterment\" of farming in the colonial tribal reserves. While criticised as backward by British officials and white settlers, African farming proved resilient and Kikuyu farmers engaged in widespread resistance to the colonial state's agrarian reforms.",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Modernisation was accelerated by the Second World War. Among the Luo the larger agricultural production unit was the patriarch's extended family, mainly divided into a special assignment team led by the patriarch, and the teams of his wives, who, together with their children, worked their own lots on a regular basis. This stage of development was no longer strictly traditional, but still largely self-sufficient with little contact with the broader market. Pressures of overpopulation and the prospects of cash crops, already in evidence by 1945, made this subsistence economic system increasingly obsolete and accelerated a movement to commercial agriculture and emigration to cities. The Limitation of Action Act in 1968 sought to modernise traditional land ownership and use; the act has produced unintended consequences, with new conflicts raised over land ownership and social status.",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "As Kenya modernized after the war, the role of the British religious missions changed their roles, despite the efforts of the leadership of the Church Missionary Society to maintain the traditional religious focus. However the social and educational needs were increasingly obvious, and the threat of the Mau Mau uprisings pushed the missions to emphasize medical, humanitarian and especially educational programs. Fundraising efforts in Britain increasingly stressed the non-religious components. Furthermore, the imminent transfer of control to the local population became a high priority.",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "As a reaction to their exclusion from political representation, the Kikuyu people, the most subject to pressure by the settlers, founded in 1921 Kenya's first African political protest movement, the Young Kikuyu Association, led by Harry Thuku. After the Young Kikuyu Association was banned by the government, it was replaced by the Kikuyu Central Association in 1924.",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "In 1944 Thuku founded and was the first chairman of the multi-tribal Kenya African Study Union (KASU), which in 1946 became the Kenya African Union (KAU). It was an African nationalist organization that demanded access to white-owned land. KAU acted as a constituency association for the first black member of Kenya's legislative council, Eliud Mathu, who had been nominated in 1944 by the governor after consulting élite African opinion. The KAU remained dominated by the Kikuyu ethnic group. However, the leadership of KAU was multitribal. Wycliff Awori was the first vice president followed by Tom Mbotela. In 1947 Jomo Kenyatta, former president of the moderate Kikuyu Central Association, became president of the more aggressive KAU to demand a greater political voice for Africans. In an effort to gain nationwide support of KAU, Jomo Kenyatta visited Kisumu in 1952. His effort to build up support for KAU in Nyanza inspired Oginga Odinga, the Ker (chief) of the Luo Union (an organisation that represented members of the Luo community in East Africa) to join KAU and delve into politics.",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "In response to the rising pressures, the British Colonial Office broadened the membership of the Legislative Council and increased its role. By 1952 a multiracial pattern of quotas allowed for 14 European, 1 Arab, and 6 Asian elected members, together with an additional 6 Africans and 1 Arab member chosen by the governor. The council of ministers became the principal instrument of government in 1954. In 1952, Princess Elizabeth and her husband Prince Philip were on holiday at the Treetops Hotel in Kenya when her father, King George VI, died in his sleep. Elizabeth cut short her trip and returned home immediately to assume the throne. She was crowned Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey in 1953 and as British hunter and conservationist Jim Corbett (who accompanied the royal couple) put it, she went up a tree in Africa a princess and came down a queen.",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "A key watershed came from 1952 to 1956, during the Mau Mau Uprising, an armed local movement directed principally against the colonial government and the European settlers. It was the largest and most successful such movement in British Africa. Members of the forty group, World War II(WW2) veterans, including Stanley Mathenge, Bildad Kaggia and Fred Kubai became core leaders in the rebellion. Their experiences during the WW2 awakened their political consciousness, giving them determination and confidence to change the system. Key leaders of KAU known as the Kapenguria six were arrested on the 21st of October. They include Jomo Kenyatta, Paul Ngei, Kungu Karumba, Bildad Kaggia, Fred Kubai and Achieng Oneko. Kenyatta denied he was a leader of the Mau Mau but was convicted at trial and was sent to prison in 1953, gaining his freedom in 1961.",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "An intense propaganda campaign by the colonial government effectively discouraged other Kenyan communities, settlers and the international community from sympathising with the movement by emphasising on real and perceived acts of barbarism perpetrated by the Mau Mau. Although a much smaller number of Europeans died compared to Africans during the uprising, each individual European loss of life was publicised in disturbing detail, emphasising elements of betrayal and bestiality. As a result, the protest was supported almost exclusively by the Kikuyu, despite issues of land rights and anti-European, anti-Western appeals designed to attract other groups. The Mau Mau movement was also a bitter internal struggle among the Kikuyu. Harry Thuku said in 1952, \"To-day we, the Kikuyu, stand ashamed and looked upon as hopeless people in the eyes of other races and before the Government. Why? Because of the crimes perpetrated by Mau Mau and because the Kikuyu have made themselves Mau Mau.\" That said, other Kenyans directly or indirectly supported the movement. Notably, Pio Gama Pinto, a Kenyan of Goan descent, facilitated the provision of firearms to forest fighters. He was arrested in 1954 and detained until 1959. Another notable example was the pioneering lawyer Argwings Kodhek, the first East African to obtain a law degree. He became known as the Mau Mau lawyer as he would successfully defend Africans accused of Mau Mau crimes pro bono. 12,000 militants were killed during the suppression of the rebellion, and the British colonial authorities also implemented policies involving the incarceration of over 150,000 suspected Mau Mau members and sympathizers (mostly from the Kikuyu people) into concentration camps. In these camps, the colonial authorities also used various forms of torture to attempt information from the detainees. In 2011, after decades of waiting, thousands of secret documents from the British Foreign Office were declassified. They show that the Mau Mau rebels were systematically tortured and subjected to the most brutal practices, men were castrated and sand introduced into their anus, women were raped after introducing boiling water into their vaginas. The Foreign Office archives also reveal that this was not the initiative of soldiers or colonial administrators but a policy orchestrated from London.",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "The Mau Mau uprising set in play a series of events that expedited the road to Kenya's Independence. A Royal Commission on Land and Population condemned the reservation of land on a racial basis. To support its military campaign of counter-insurgency the colonial government embarked on agrarian reforms that stripped white settlers of many of their former protections; for example, Africans were for the first time allowed to grow coffee, the major cash crop. Thuku was one of the first Kikuyu to win a coffee licence, and in 1959 he became the first African board member of the Kenya Planters Coffee Union. The East African Salaries Commission put forth a recommendation – 'equal pay for equal work' – that was immediately accepted. Racist policies in public places and hotels were eased. John David Drummond, 17th Earl of Perth and Minister of State for Colonial affairs stated: \"The effort required to suppress Mau Mau destroyed any settlers illusions that they could go it alone; the British Government was not prepared for the shedding of [more] blood in order to preserve colonial rule.\"",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "The pioneers of the trade union movement were Makhan Singh, Fred Kubai and Bildad Kaggia. In 1935, Makhan Singh started the Labour trade union of Kenya. In the 1940s, Fred Kubai started the Transport and Allied Workers Union and Bildad Kaggia founded the Clerks and Commercial Workers Union. In 1949, Makhan Singh and Fred Kubai started the East Africa Trade Union Congress. They organised strikes including the railway workers strike in 1939 and the protest against granting of a Royal Charter to Nairobi in 1950. These pioneering trade union leaders were imprisoned during the crackdown on Mau Mau. Following this crackdown, all national African political activity was banned. This ban was in place even when the first African members of the legislative council (MLCs) were elected. To manage and control African political activity, the colonial government permitted district parties starting in 1955. This effectively prevented African unity by encouraging ethnic affiliation. Trade unions led by younger Africans filled the vacuum created by the crackdown as the only organisations that could mobilise the masses when political parties were banned.",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "The Kenya Federation of Registered Trade Unions (KFRTU) was started by Aggrey Minya in 1952 but was largely ineffective. Tom Mboya was one of the young leaders who stepped into the limelight. His intelligence, discipline, oratory and organisational skills set him apart. After the colonial government declared a state of emergency on account of Mau Mau, at age 22, Mboya became the Director of Information of KAU. After KAU was banned, Mboya used the KFRTU to represent African political issues as its Secretary General at 26 years of age. The KFRTU was backed by the western leaning International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). Tom Mboya then started the Kenya Federation of Labour (KFL) in place of KFRTU, which quickly became the most active political body in Kenya, representing all the trade unions. Mboya's successes in trade unionism earned him respect and admiration. Mboya established international connections, particularly with labour leaders in the United States of America through the ICFTU. He used these connections and his international renown to counter moves by the colonial government.",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Several trade union leaders who were actively involved in the independence struggle through KFL would go on to join active politics becoming members of parliament and cabinet ministers. These include Arthur Aggrey Ochwada, Dennis Akumu, Clement Lubembe and Ochola Ogaye Mak'Anyengo. The trade union movement would later become a major battlefront in the proxy cold war that would engulf Kenyan politics in the 1960s.",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "After the suppression of the Mau Mau rising, the British provided for the election of the six African members to the Legislative Council (MLC) under a weighted franchise based on education. Mboya successfully stood for office in the first election for African MLCs in 1957, beating the previously nominated incumbent, Argwings Kodhek. Daniel Arap Moi was the only previously nominated African MLC who kept his seat. Oginga Odinga was also elected and shortly afterwards nominated as the first chairman of the African elected members. Mboya's party, the Nairobi People's Convention Party (NPCP), was inspired by Kwame Nkurumah's People's Convention Party. It became the most organised and effective political party in the country. The NPCP was used to effectively mobilise the masses in Nairobi in the struggle for greater African representation on the council. The new colonial constitution of 1958 increased African representation, but African nationalists began to demand a democratic franchise on the principle of \"one man, one vote.\" However, Europeans and Asians, because of their minority position, feared the effects of universal suffrage.",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "In June 1958, Oginga Odinga called for the release of Jomo Kenyatta. This call built momentum and was taken up by the NPCP. Agitation for African suffrage and self-rule picked up in pace. One major hindrance to self-rule was the lack of African human capital. Poor education, economic development and a lack of African technocrats were a real problem. This inspired Tom Mboya to begin a programme conceptualised by a close confidante Dr. Blasio Vincent Oriedo, funded by Americans, of sending talented youth to the United States for higher education. There was no university in Kenya at the time, but colonial officials opposed the programme anyway. The next year Senator John F. Kennedy helped fund the programme, hence its popular name – The Kennedy Airlift. This scholarship program trained some 70% of the top leaders of the new nation, including the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, environmentalist Wangari Maathai and Barack Obama's father, Barack Obama Sr.",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "At a conference held in 1960 in London, agreement was reached between the African members and the British settlers of the New Kenya Group, led by Michael Blundell. However many whites rejected the New Kenya Group and condemned the London agreement, because it moved away from racial quotas and toward independence. Following the agreement a new African party, the Kenya African National Union (KANU), with the slogan \"Uhuru,\" or \"Freedom,\" was formed under the leadership of Kikuyu leader James S. Gichuru and labour leader Tom Mboya. KANU was formed in May 1960 when the Kenya African Union (KAU) merged with the Kenya Independence Movement (KIM) and Nairobi People's Convention Party (NPCP). Mboya was a major figure from 1951 until his death in 1969. He was praised as nonethnic or antitribal, and attacked as an instrument of Western capitalism. Mboya as General Secretary of the Kenya Federation of Labour and a leader in the Kenya African National Union before and after independence skilfully managed the tribal factor in Kenyan economic and political life to succeed as a Luo in a predominantly Kikuyu movement. A split in KANU produced the breakaway rival party, the Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU), led by Ronald Ngala and Masinde Muliro. In the elections of February 1961, KANU won 19 of the 33 African seats while KADU won 11 (twenty seats were reserved by quota for Europeans, Asians and Arabs). Kenyatta was finally released in August and became president of KANU in October.",
"title": "British rule (1895–1963)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "In 1962, a KANU-KADU coalition government, including both Kenyatta and Ngala, was formed. The 1962 constitution established a bicameral legislature consisting of a 117-member House of Representatives and a 41-member Senate. The country was divided into 7 semi-autonomous regions, each with its own regional assembly. The quota principle of reserved seats for non-Africans was abandoned, and open elections were held in May 1963. KADU gained control of the assemblies in the Rift Valley, Coast and Western regions. KANU won majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives, and in the assemblies in the Central, Eastern and Nyanza regions. Kenya now achieved internal self-government with Jomo Kenyatta as its first president. The British and KANU agreed, over KADU protests, to constitutional changes in October 1963 strengthening the central government, ensuring that Kenya would be a de facto single-party state. Kenya attained independence on 12 December 1963 as the Commonwealth realm of Kenya and was declared a republic on 12 December 1964 with Jomo Kenyatta as Head of State. In 1964 constitutional changes further centralised the government and various state organs were formed. One of the key state organs was the Central Bank of Kenya which was established in 1966.",
"title": "Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "The British government bought out the white settlers and they mostly left Kenya. The Indian minority dominated retail business in the cities and most towns, but was deeply distrusted by the Africans. As a result, 120,000 of the 176,000 Indians kept their old British passports rather than become citizens of an independent Kenya; large numbers left Kenya, most of them headed to Britain.",
"title": "Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Once in power Kenyatta swerved from radical nationalism to conservative bourgeois politics. The plantations formerly owned by white settlers were broken up and given to farmers, with the Kikuyu the favoured recipients, along with their allies the Embu and the Meru. By 1978 most of the country's wealth and power was in the hands of the organisation which grouped these three tribes: the Kikuyu-Embu-Meru Association (GEMA), together comprising 30% of the population. At the same time the Kikuyu, with Kenyatta's support, spread beyond their traditional territorial homelands and repossessed lands \"stolen by the whites\" – even when these had previously belonged to other groups. The other groups, a 70% majority, were outraged, setting up long-term ethnic animosities.",
"title": "Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "The minority party, the Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU), representing a coalition of small tribes that had feared dominance by larger ones, dissolved itself voluntarily in 1964 and former members joined KANU. KANU was the only party 1964–66 when a faction broke away as the Kenya People's Union (KPU). It was led by Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, a former vice-president and Luo elder. KPU advocated a more \"scientific\" route to socialism—criticising the slow progress in land redistribution and employment opportunities—as well as a realignment of foreign policy in favour of the Soviet Union. On 25 February 1965, Pio Gama Pinto, a Kenyan of Goan descent and freedom fighter who was detained during the colonial period was assassinated in what is recognised as Kenya's first political assassination. He was also Oginga Odinga's chief tactician and link to the eastern bloc. His death dealt a severe blow to the Oginga Odinga's organisational efforts.",
"title": "Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "The government used a variety of political and economic measures to harass the KPU and its prospective and actual members. KPU branches were unable to register, KPU meetings were prevented and civil servants and politicians suffered severe economic and political consequences for joining the KPU. A security Act was passed in Parliament in July 1966 and granted the government powers to carry out detention without trial, which was used against KPU members. In a series of dawn raids in August 1966, several KPU party members were arrested and detained without trial. They included Ochola Mak'Anyengo (the secretary general of the Kenya Petroleum Oil Workers Union), Oluande Koduol (Oginga Odinga's private secretary) and Peter Ooko (the general secretary of the East African Common Services Civil Servants Union).",
"title": "Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "In June 1969, Tom Mboya, a Luo member of the government considered a potential successor to Kenyatta, was assassinated. Hostility between Kikuyu and Luo was heightened, and after riots broke out in Luo country the KPU was banned. The specific riots that led to the banning of the KPU resulted in the incident referred to as the Kisumu massacre. Kenya thereby became a one-party state under KANU.",
"title": "Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Ignoring his suppression of the opposition and continued factionalism within KANU the imposition of one-party rule allowed Mzee (\"Old Man\") Kenyatta, who had led the country since independence, to claim he had achieved \"political stability.\" Underlying social tensions were evident, however. Kenya's very rapid population growth and considerable rural to urban migration were in large part responsible for high unemployment and disorder in the cities. There also was much resentment by blacks at the privileged economic position held by Asians and Europeans in the country.",
"title": "Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "At Kenyatta's death (22 August 1978), Vice-president Daniel arap Moi became interim President. On 14 October, Moi formally became president after he was elected head of KANU and designated its sole nominee. In June 1982, the National Assembly amended the constitution, making Kenya officially a one-party state. On 1 August members of the Kenyan Air Force launched an attempted coup, which was quickly suppressed by Loyalist forces led by the Army, the General Service Unit (GSU) – paramilitary wing of the police – and later the regular police, but not without civilian casualties.",
"title": "Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Independent Kenya, although officially non-aligned, adopted a pro-Western stance. Kenya worked unsuccessfully for East African union; the proposal to unite Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda did not win approval. However, the three nations did form a loose East African Community (EAC) in 1967, that maintained the customs union and some common services that they had shared under British rule. The EAC collapsed in 1977 and was officially dissolved in 1984. Kenya's relations with Somalia deteriorated over the problem of Somalis in the North Eastern Province who tried to secede and were supported by Somalia. In 1968, however, Kenya and Somalia agreed to restore normal relations, and the Somali rebellion effectively ended.",
"title": "Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Kenyatta died in 1978 and was succeeded by Daniel Arap Moi (b. 1924, d. 2020) who ruled as President 1978–2002. Moi, a member of the Kalenjin ethnic group, quickly consolidated his position and governed in an authoritarian and corrupt manner. By 1986, Moi had concentrated all the power – and most of its attendant economic benefits – into the hands of his Kalenjin tribe and of a handful of allies from minority groups.",
"title": "Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "On 1 August 1982, lower-level air force personnel, led by Senior Private Grade-I Hezekiah Ochuka and backed by university students, attempted a coup d'état to oust Moi. The putsch was quickly suppressed by forces commanded by Army Commander Mahamoud Mohamed, a veteran Somali military official. In the coup's aftermath, some of Nairobi's poor Kenyans attacked and looted stores owned by Asians. Robert Ouko, the senior Luo in Moi's cabinet, was appointed to expose corruption at high levels, but was murdered a few months later. Moi's closest associate was implicated in Ouko's murder; Moi dismissed him but not before his remaining Luo support had evaporated. Germany recalled its ambassador to protest the \"increasing brutality\" of the regime and foreign donors pressed Moi to allow other parties, which was done in December 1991 through a constitutional amendment.",
"title": "Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "On the heels of the Garissa massacre of 1980, Kenyan troops committed the Wagalla massacre in 1984 against thousands of civilians in the North Eastern Province. An official probe into the atrocities was later ordered in 2011.",
"title": "Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "After local and foreign pressure, in December 1991, parliament repealed the one-party section of the constitution. The first multiparty elections were held in 1992.",
"title": "Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "The Forum for the Restoration of Democracy (FORD) emerged as the leading opposition to KANU, and dozens of leading KANU figures switched parties. But FORD, led by Oginga Odinga (1911–1994), a Luo, and Kenneth Matiba, a Kikuyu, split into two ethnically based factions. In the first open presidential elections in a quarter century, in December 1992, Moi won with 37% of the vote, Matiba received 26%, Mwai Kibaki (of the mostly Kikuyu Democratic Party) 19%, and Odinga 18%. In the Assembly, KANU won 97 of the 188 seats at stake. Moi's government in 1993 agreed to economic reforms long urged by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which restored enough aid for Kenya to service its $7.5 billion foreign debt.",
"title": "Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Obstructing the press both before and after the 1992 elections, Moi continually maintained that multiparty politics would only promote tribal conflict. His own regime depended upon exploitation of inter-group hatreds. Under Moi, the apparatus of clientage and control was underpinned by the system of powerful provincial commissioners, each with a bureaucratic hierarchy based on chiefs (and their police) that was more powerful than the elected members of parliament. Elected local councils lost most of their power, and the provincial bosses were answerable only to the central government, which in turn was dominated by the president. The emergence of mass opposition in 1990–91 and demands for constitutional reform were met by rallies against pluralism. The regime leaned on the support of the Kalenjin and incited the Maasai against the Kikuyu. Government politicians denounced the Kikuyu as traitors, obstructed their registration as voters and threatened them with dispossession. In 1993 and after, mass evictions of Kikuyu took place, often with the direct involvement of army, police and game rangers. Armed clashes and many casualties, including deaths, resulted.",
"title": "Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Further liberalisation in November 1997 allowed the expansion of political parties from 11 to 26. President Moi won re-election as president in the December 1997 elections, and his KANU Party narrowly retained its parliamentary majority.",
"title": "Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Moi ruled using a strategic mixture of ethnic favouritism, state repression and marginalisation of opposition forces. He utilised detention and torture, looted public finances and appropriated land and other property. Moi sponsored irregular army units that attacked the Luo, Luhya and Kikuyu communities, and he denied his responsibility by attributing the violence to ethnic clashes arising from land dispute. Beginning in 1998, Moi engaged in a carefully calculated strategy to manage the presidential succession in his and his party's favour. Faced with the challenge of a new, multiethnic political coalition, Moi shifted the axis of the 2002 electoral contest from ethnicity to the politics of generational conflict. The strategy backfired, ripping his party wide open and resulting in the humiliating defeat of its candidate, Kenyatta's son, in the December 2002 general elections.",
"title": "Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Constitutionally barred from running in the December 2002 presidential elections, Moi unsuccessfully promoted Uhuru Kenyatta, the son of Kenya's first President, as his successor. A rainbow coalition of opposition parties routed the ruling KANU party, and its leader, Moi's former vice-president Mwai Kibaki, was elected president by a large majority.",
"title": "Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "On 27 December 2002, by 62% the voters overwhelmingly elected members of the National Rainbow Coalition (NaRC) to parliament and NaRC candidate Mwai Kibaki (b. 1931) to the presidency. Voters rejected the Kenya African National Union's (KANU) presidential candidate, Uhuru Kenyatta, the handpicked candidate of outgoing president Moi. International and local observers reported the 2002 elections to be generally more fair and less violent than those of both 1992 and 1997. His strong showing allowed Kibaki to choose a cabinet, to seek international support and to balance power within the NaRC.",
"title": "Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Kenya witnessed a spectacular economic recovery, helped by a favourable international environment. The annual rate of growth improved from −1.6% in 2002 to 2.6% by 2004, 3.4% in 2005, and 5.5% in 2007. However, social inequalities also increased; the economic benefits went disproportionately to the already well-off (especially to the Kikuyu); corruption reached new depths, matching some of the excesses of the Moi years. Social conditions deteriorated for ordinary Kenyans, who faced a growing wave of routine crime in urban areas; pitched battles between ethnic groups fighting for land; and a feud between the police and the Mungiki sect, which left over 120 people dead in May–November 2007 alone.",
"title": "Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Once regarded as the world's \"most optimistic,\" Kibaki's regime quickly lost much of its power because it became too closely linked with the discredited Moi forces. The continuity between Kibaki and Moi set the stage for the self-destruction of Kibaki's National Rainbow Coalition, which was dominated by Kikuyus. The western Luo and Kalenjin groups, demanding greater autonomy, backed Raila Amolo Odinga (1945– ) and his Orange Democratic Movement (ODM).",
"title": "Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "In the December 2007 elections, Odinga, the candidate of the ODM, attacked the failures of the Kibaki regime. The ODM charged the Kikuyu with having grabbed everything and all the other tribes having lost; that Kibaki had betrayed his promises for change; that crime and violence were out of control, and that economic growth was not bringing any benefits to the ordinary citizen. In the December 2007 elections the ODM won majority seats in Parliament, but the presidential elections votes were marred by claims of rigging by both sides. It may never be clear who won the elections, but it was roughly 50:50 before the rigging started.",
"title": "Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "\"Majimboism\" was a philosophy that emerged in the 1950s, meaning federalism or regionalism in Swahili, and it was intended to protect local rights, especially regarding land ownership. Today \"majimboism\" is code for certain areas of the country to be reserved for specific ethnic groups, fuelling the kind of ethnic cleansing that has swept the country since the election. Majimboism has always had a strong following in the Rift Valley, the epicenter of the recent violence, where many locals have long believed that their land was stolen by outsiders. The December 2007 election was in part a referendum on majimboism. It pitted today's majimboists, represented by Odinga, who campaigned for regionalism, against Kibaki, who stood for the status quo of a highly centralised government that has delivered considerable economic growth but has repeatedly displayed the problems of too much power concentrated in too few hands – corruption, aloofness, favouritism and its flip side, marginalisation. In the town of Londiani in the Rift Valley, Kikuyu traders settled decades ago. In February 2008, hundreds of Kalenjin raiders poured down from the nearby scruffy hills and burned a Kikuyu school. Three hundred thousand members of the Kikuyu community were displaced from Rift Valley province. Kikuyus quickly took revenge, organising into gangs armed with iron bars and table legs and hunting down Luos and Kalenjins in Kikuyu-dominated areas like Nakuru. \"We are achieving our own perverse version of majimboism,\" wrote one of Kenya's leading columnists, Macharia Gaitho.",
"title": "Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "The Luo population of the southwest had enjoyed an advantageous position during the late colonial and early independence periods of the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s, particularly in terms of the prominence of its modern elite compared to those of other groups. However the Luo lost prominence due to the success of Kikuyu and related groups (Embu and Meru) in gaining and exercising political power during the Jomo Kenyatta era (1963–1978). While measurements of poverty and health by the early 2000s showed the Luo disadvantaged relative to other Kenyans, the growing presence of non-Luo in the professions reflected a dilution of Luo professionals due to the arrival of others rather than an absolute decline in the Luo numbers.",
"title": "Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Between 1980 and 2000 total fecundity in Kenya fell by about 40%, from some eight births per woman to around five. During the same period, fertility in Uganda declined by less than 10%. The difference was due primarily to greater contraceptive use in Kenya, though in Uganda there was also a reduction in pathological sterility. The Demographic and Health Surveys carried out every five years show that women in Kenya wanted fewer children than those in Uganda and that in Uganda there was also a greater unmet need for contraception. These differences may be attributed, in part at least, to the divergent paths of economic development followed by the two countries since independence and to the Kenya government's active promotion of family planning, which the Uganda government did not promote until 1995.",
"title": "Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "The 3rd President of Kenya Mwai Kibaki ruled since 2002 until 2013. After his tenure Kenya held its first general elections after the new constitution had been passed in 2010. Uhuru Kenyatta (son of the first president Jomo Kenyatta) won in a disputed election result, leading to a petition by the opposition leader, Raila Odinga. The supreme court upheld the election results and President Kenyatta began his term with William Ruto as the deputy president. Despite the outcome of this ruling, the Supreme Court and the head of the Supreme Court were seen as powerful institutions that could carry out their role of checking the powers of the president. In 2017, Uhuru Kenyatta won a second term in office in another disputed election. Following the defeat, Raila Odinga again petitioned the results in the Supreme Court, accusing the electoral commission of mismanagement of the elections and Uhuru Kenyatta and his party of rigging. The Supreme Court overturned the election results in what became a landmark ruling in Africa and one of the very few in the world in which the results of a presidential elections were annulled. This ruling solidified the position of the Supreme Court as an independent body. Consequently, Kenya had a second round of elections for the presidential position, in which Uhuru emerged the winner after Raila refused to participate, citing irregularities.",
"title": "Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "The historical handshake in March 2018 between president Uhuru Kenyatta and his long-time opponent Raila Odinga meant reconciliation followed by economic growth and increased stability.",
"title": "Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "In August 2022, Deputy President William Ruto narrowly won the presidential election. He took 50.5% of the vote. His main rival, Raila Odinga, got 48.8% of the vote. According to the Afrobarometer survey 67.9% of Kenyan citizens participated in the last election( 2022) and 17.6% did not vote in the presidential election. On 13 September 2022, William Ruto was sworn in as Kenya's fifth president.",
"title": "Independence"
}
] |
A part of Eastern Africa, the territory of what is known as Kenya has seen human habitation since the beginning of the Lower Paleolithic. The Bantu expansion from a West African centre of dispersal reached the area by the 1st millennium AD. With the borders of the modern state at the crossroads of the Bantu, Nilo-Saharan and Afro-Asiatic ethno-linguistic areas of Africa, Kenya is a truly multi-ethnic state. The Wanga Kingdom was formally establsihed in the late 17th century. The kingdom covered from the Jinja in Uganda to Naivasha in the East of Kenya. This is the first time the Wanga people and Luhya tribe were united and led by a centralized leader, a king, known as the Nabongo. The European and Arab presence in Mombasa dates to the Early Modern period, but European exploration of the interior began in the 19th century. The British Empire established the East Africa Protectorate in 1895, from 1920 known as the Kenya Colony. During the wave of decolonisation in the 1960s, Kenya gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1963, had Elizabeth II as its first head of state, and Jomo Kenyatta as its Prime Minister. It became a republic in 1964, and was ruled as a de facto one-party state by the Kenya African National Union (KANU), led by Kenyatta from 1964 to 1978. Kenyatta was succeeded by Daniel arap Moi, who ruled until 2002. Moi attempted to transform the de facto one-party status of Kenya into a de jure status during the 1980s, but with the end of the Cold War, the practices of political repression and torture which had been "overlooked" by the Western powers as necessary evils in the effort to contain communism were no longer tolerated in Kenya. Moi came under pressure, notably by US ambassador Smith Hempstone, to restore a multi-party system, which he did by 1991.
Moi won elections in 1992 and 1997, which were overshadowed by politically motivated killings on both sides. During the 1990s, evidence of Moi's involvement in human rights abuses and corruption, such as the Goldenberg scandal, was uncovered. He was constitutionally barred from running in the 2002 election, which was won by Mwai Kibaki. Widely reported electoral fraud on Kibaki's side in the 2007 elections resulted in the 2007–2008 Kenyan crisis. Kibaki was succeeded by Uhuru Kenyatta in the 2013 general election. There were allegations that his rival Raila Odinga actually won the contest, however, the Supreme Court through a thorough review of evidence adduced found no malpractice during the conduct of the 2013 general election both from the IEBC and the Jubilee Party of Uhuru Kenyatta. Uhuru was re-elected in office five years later in 2017. His victory was however controversial. The supreme court had vitiated Uhuru win after Raila Odinga disputed the result through a constitutionally allowed supreme court petition. Raila Odinga would later boycott a repeat election ordered by the court, allowing Uhuru Kenyatta sail through almost unopposed with 98% of the vote.
|
2001-05-11T00:05:06Z
|
2023-12-11T08:17:29Z
|
[
"Template:See also",
"Template:Rp",
"Template:When",
"Template:Convert",
"Template:Cite thesis",
"Template:Years in Kenya",
"Template:History of Africa",
"Template:History of Kenya",
"Template:Culture of Kenya",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Kenya topics",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Sfn",
"Template:Further",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Citation",
"Template:Dead link",
"Template:EngvarB",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Citation needed",
"Template:PMID",
"Template:ISBN"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Kenya
|
16,654 |
Geography of Kenya
|
The Geography of Kenya is diverse, varying amongst its 47 counties. Kenya has a coastline on the Indian Ocean, which contains swamps of East African mangroves. Inland are broad plains and numerous hills. Kenya borders South Sudan to the northwest, Uganda to the west, Somalia to the east, Tanzania to the south, and Ethiopia to the north.
Central and Western Kenya is characterized by the Kenyan Rift Valley and central Province home to the highest mountain, Mount Kenya and Mount Elgon on the border between Kenya and Uganda. The Kakamega Forest in western Kenya is a relic of an East African rainforest. Much bigger is Mau Forest, the largest forest complex in East Africa.
Much of the western two-thirds of the country consists of the Pliocene–Pleistocene volcanics deposited on Precambrian basement rocks. The southeast corner of the country is underlain by sediments of the Karoo System of Permian to Late Triassic age and a strip of Jurassic age sediments along the coast in the Mombasa area. The Anza trough is a NW–SE trending Jurassic rift extending from the Indian Ocean coast to the Sudan northwest of Lake Turkana. The Anza Rift resulted from the break–up of Gondwana.
The climate of Kenya varies by location, from mostly cool every day, to always warm/hot by mid afternoon. The climate along the coast is tropical. This means rainfall and temperatures are higher than inland throughout the year. At the coastal cities, Mombasa, Lamu and Malindi, the air temperature changes from cool to hot, almost every day. (See chart below).
The further inland one is in Kenya, the more arid the climate becomes. An extremely arid climate is nearly devoid of rainfall, and temperature varies widely according to the general time of the day/night. For many areas of Kenya, the daytime temperature rises about 12 °C (corresponding to a rise of about 22 °F), almost every day.
Elevation is the major factor in temperature levels, with the higher areas, on average, about 11 °C (20 °F) cooler, day or night. The many cities over a kilometre in elevation have temperature swings from roughly 10–26 °C (50–79 °F). Nairobi, at 1,798 m (5,899 ft), ranges from 9–27 °C (49–80 °F), and Kitale, at 1,825 m (5,988 ft), ranges from 11–28 °C (51–82 °F). At night, heavy clothes or blankets are needed, in the highlands, when the temperature drops to about 10–12 °C (50–54 °F) every night.
At lower altitudes, the increased temperature is like day and night, literally: like starting the morning at the highland daytime high, and then adding the heat of the day, again. Hence, the overnight low temperatures near sea level are nearly the same as the high temperatures of the elevated Kenyan highlands. However, locations along the Indian Ocean have more moderate temperatures, as a few degrees cooler in the daytime, such as at Mombasa (see chart below).
There are slight seasonal variations in temperature, of 4 °C or 7.2 °F, cooler in the winter months. Although Kenya is centred at the equator, it shares the seasons of the Southern Hemisphere: with the warmest summer months in December–March and the coolest winter months in June–August, again with differences in temperature varying by location within the country.
On the high mountains, such as Mount Kenya, Mount Elgon and Kilimanjaro, the weather can become bitterly cold for most of the year. Some snowfall occurs on the highest mountains.
Climate change is posing an increasing threat to global socio-economic development and environmental sustainability. Developing countries with low adaptive capacity and high vulnerability to the phenomenon are disproportionately affected. Climate change in Kenya is increasingly impacting the lives of Kenya's citizens and the environment. Climate Change has led to more frequent extreme weather events like droughts which last longer than usual, irregular and unpredictable rainfall, flooding and increasing temperatures.
The effects of these climatic changes have made already existing challenges with water security, food security and economic growth even more difficult. Harvests and agricultural production which account for about 33% of total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) are also at risk. The increased temperatures, rainfall variability in arid and semi-arid areas, and strong winds associated with tropical cyclones have combined to create favorable conditions for the breeding and migration of pests. An increase in temperature of up to 2.5 °C by 2050 is predicted to increase the frequency of extreme events such as floods and droughts.
Hot and dry conditions in Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs) make droughts or flooding brought on by extreme weather changes even more dangerous. Coastal communities are already experiencing sea level rise and associated challenges such as saltwater intrusion. Lake Victoria, Lake Turkana and other lakes have significantly increased in size between 2010 and 2020 flooding lakeside communities. All these factors impact at-risk populations like marginalized communities, women and the youth.
Kenya's terrain is composed of low plains that rise into central highlands that are, in turn, bisected by the Great Rift Valley. There is also a fertile plateau in the west of the country.
The lowest point on Kenya is at sea level on the Indian Ocean. The highest point on Kenya is 5,197 meters above sea level at Mount Kenya.
The notable rivers in Kenya are the Athi-Galana-Sabaki River, which at a total length of about 390 kilometers while draining an area of about 70,000 square kilometers, is the second longest river in the country, the Tana River, the longest river in the country at a total length of just over 1000 kilometers, covering a catchment area of over 100,000 square kilometers, and the Nzoia River, which is a 257-kilometre-long (160 mi) river, rising from Mount Elgon, which flows so
Natural resources that are found in Kenya include: limestone, soda ash, salt, gemstones, fluorite, zinc, diatomite, oil, titanium, gas, gold, gypsum, wildlife and hydropower.
9.8% of the land is arable; permanent crops occupy 0.9% of the land, permanent pasture occupies 37.4% of the land; forest occupies 6.1% of the land. Other uses make up the rest of Kenya's land. This is as of 2011.
1,032 km of Kenyan land was irrigated in 2003.
30.7 km (2011)
Natural hazards include recurring drought and flooding during the rainy seasons.
There is limited volcanic activity in the country. Barrier Volcano (elev. 1,032 m) last erupted in 1921. Several others have been historically active (see List of volcanoes in Kenya).
Current issues that threaten the environment at the moment include water pollution from urban and industrial wastes; degradation of water quality from the increased use of pesticides and fertilisers; deforestation; water hyacinth infestation in Lake Victoria; soil erosion; desertification; and poaching.
This is a list of the extreme points of Kenya, the points that are further north, south, east or west than any other location.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Geography of Kenya is diverse, varying amongst its 47 counties. Kenya has a coastline on the Indian Ocean, which contains swamps of East African mangroves. Inland are broad plains and numerous hills. Kenya borders South Sudan to the northwest, Uganda to the west, Somalia to the east, Tanzania to the south, and Ethiopia to the north.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Central and Western Kenya is characterized by the Kenyan Rift Valley and central Province home to the highest mountain, Mount Kenya and Mount Elgon on the border between Kenya and Uganda. The Kakamega Forest in western Kenya is a relic of an East African rainforest. Much bigger is Mau Forest, the largest forest complex in East Africa.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Much of the western two-thirds of the country consists of the Pliocene–Pleistocene volcanics deposited on Precambrian basement rocks. The southeast corner of the country is underlain by sediments of the Karoo System of Permian to Late Triassic age and a strip of Jurassic age sediments along the coast in the Mombasa area. The Anza trough is a NW–SE trending Jurassic rift extending from the Indian Ocean coast to the Sudan northwest of Lake Turkana. The Anza Rift resulted from the break–up of Gondwana.",
"title": "Geology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The climate of Kenya varies by location, from mostly cool every day, to always warm/hot by mid afternoon. The climate along the coast is tropical. This means rainfall and temperatures are higher than inland throughout the year. At the coastal cities, Mombasa, Lamu and Malindi, the air temperature changes from cool to hot, almost every day. (See chart below).",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The further inland one is in Kenya, the more arid the climate becomes. An extremely arid climate is nearly devoid of rainfall, and temperature varies widely according to the general time of the day/night. For many areas of Kenya, the daytime temperature rises about 12 °C (corresponding to a rise of about 22 °F), almost every day.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Elevation is the major factor in temperature levels, with the higher areas, on average, about 11 °C (20 °F) cooler, day or night. The many cities over a kilometre in elevation have temperature swings from roughly 10–26 °C (50–79 °F). Nairobi, at 1,798 m (5,899 ft), ranges from 9–27 °C (49–80 °F), and Kitale, at 1,825 m (5,988 ft), ranges from 11–28 °C (51–82 °F). At night, heavy clothes or blankets are needed, in the highlands, when the temperature drops to about 10–12 °C (50–54 °F) every night.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "At lower altitudes, the increased temperature is like day and night, literally: like starting the morning at the highland daytime high, and then adding the heat of the day, again. Hence, the overnight low temperatures near sea level are nearly the same as the high temperatures of the elevated Kenyan highlands. However, locations along the Indian Ocean have more moderate temperatures, as a few degrees cooler in the daytime, such as at Mombasa (see chart below).",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "There are slight seasonal variations in temperature, of 4 °C or 7.2 °F, cooler in the winter months. Although Kenya is centred at the equator, it shares the seasons of the Southern Hemisphere: with the warmest summer months in December–March and the coolest winter months in June–August, again with differences in temperature varying by location within the country.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "On the high mountains, such as Mount Kenya, Mount Elgon and Kilimanjaro, the weather can become bitterly cold for most of the year. Some snowfall occurs on the highest mountains.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Climate change is posing an increasing threat to global socio-economic development and environmental sustainability. Developing countries with low adaptive capacity and high vulnerability to the phenomenon are disproportionately affected. Climate change in Kenya is increasingly impacting the lives of Kenya's citizens and the environment. Climate Change has led to more frequent extreme weather events like droughts which last longer than usual, irregular and unpredictable rainfall, flooding and increasing temperatures.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The effects of these climatic changes have made already existing challenges with water security, food security and economic growth even more difficult. Harvests and agricultural production which account for about 33% of total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) are also at risk. The increased temperatures, rainfall variability in arid and semi-arid areas, and strong winds associated with tropical cyclones have combined to create favorable conditions for the breeding and migration of pests. An increase in temperature of up to 2.5 °C by 2050 is predicted to increase the frequency of extreme events such as floods and droughts.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Hot and dry conditions in Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs) make droughts or flooding brought on by extreme weather changes even more dangerous. Coastal communities are already experiencing sea level rise and associated challenges such as saltwater intrusion. Lake Victoria, Lake Turkana and other lakes have significantly increased in size between 2010 and 2020 flooding lakeside communities. All these factors impact at-risk populations like marginalized communities, women and the youth.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Kenya's terrain is composed of low plains that rise into central highlands that are, in turn, bisected by the Great Rift Valley. There is also a fertile plateau in the west of the country.",
"title": "Terrain"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The lowest point on Kenya is at sea level on the Indian Ocean. The highest point on Kenya is 5,197 meters above sea level at Mount Kenya.",
"title": "Terrain"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The notable rivers in Kenya are the Athi-Galana-Sabaki River, which at a total length of about 390 kilometers while draining an area of about 70,000 square kilometers, is the second longest river in the country, the Tana River, the longest river in the country at a total length of just over 1000 kilometers, covering a catchment area of over 100,000 square kilometers, and the Nzoia River, which is a 257-kilometre-long (160 mi) river, rising from Mount Elgon, which flows so",
"title": "Terrain"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Natural resources that are found in Kenya include: limestone, soda ash, salt, gemstones, fluorite, zinc, diatomite, oil, titanium, gas, gold, gypsum, wildlife and hydropower.",
"title": "Terrain"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "9.8% of the land is arable; permanent crops occupy 0.9% of the land, permanent pasture occupies 37.4% of the land; forest occupies 6.1% of the land. Other uses make up the rest of Kenya's land. This is as of 2011.",
"title": "Terrain"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "1,032 km of Kenyan land was irrigated in 2003.",
"title": "Terrain"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "30.7 km (2011)",
"title": "Terrain"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Natural hazards include recurring drought and flooding during the rainy seasons.",
"title": "Natural hazards"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "There is limited volcanic activity in the country. Barrier Volcano (elev. 1,032 m) last erupted in 1921. Several others have been historically active (see List of volcanoes in Kenya).",
"title": "Natural hazards"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Current issues that threaten the environment at the moment include water pollution from urban and industrial wastes; degradation of water quality from the increased use of pesticides and fertilisers; deforestation; water hyacinth infestation in Lake Victoria; soil erosion; desertification; and poaching.",
"title": "Natural hazards"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "This is a list of the extreme points of Kenya, the points that are further north, south, east or west than any other location.",
"title": "Extreme points"
}
] |
The Geography of Kenya is diverse, varying amongst its 47 counties. Kenya has a coastline on the Indian Ocean, which contains swamps of East African mangroves. Inland are broad plains and numerous hills. Kenya borders South Sudan to the northwest, Uganda to the west, Somalia to the east, Tanzania to the south, and Ethiopia to the north. Central and Western Kenya is characterized by the Kenyan Rift Valley and central Province home to the highest mountain, Mount Kenya and Mount Elgon on the border between Kenya and Uganda. The Kakamega Forest in western Kenya is a relic of an East African rainforest. Much bigger is Mau Forest, the largest forest complex in East Africa.
|
2001-05-11T00:05:23Z
|
2023-11-14T20:04:30Z
|
[
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Geography of Africa",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Convert",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Excerpt",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Use British English",
"Template:Coord",
"Template:Kenya topics",
"Template:Africa topic",
"Template:Portal",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Infobox country geography"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Kenya
|
16,655 |
Demographics of Kenya
|
The demography of Kenya is monitored by the Kenyan National Bureau of Statistics. Kenya is a multi-ethnic state in East Africa. Its total population was at 47,558,296 as of the 2019 census.
A national census was conducted in 1999, although the results were never released. A new census was undertaken in 2009, but turned out to be controversial, as the questions about ethnic affiliation seemed inappropriate after the ethnic violence of the previous year. Preliminary results of the census were published in 2010.
Kenya's population was reported as 47.6 million during the 2019 census compared to 38.6 million inhabitants 2009, 30.7 million in 1999, 21.4 million in 1989, and 15.3 million in 1979. This was an increase of a factor of 2.5 over 30 years, or an average growth rate of more than 3 percent per year. The population growth rate has been reported as reduced during the 2000s, and was estimated at 2.7 percent (as of 2010), resulting in an estimate of 46.5 million in 2016.
Kenya has a very diverse population that includes most major ethnic, racial and linguistic groups found in Africa. Bantu and Nilotic populations together constitute around 92% of the nation's inhabitants. People from Asian or European heritage living in Kenya are estimated at around 200,000.
Kenya's largest ethnic group is the Kikuyu. They make up less than a fifth of the population. Since Kenyan independence in 1963, Kenyan politics have been characterized by ethnic tensions and rivalry between the larger groups. This devolved into ethnic violence in the 2007–2008 Kenyan crisis.
In Kenya's last colonial census of 1962, population groups residing in the territory included European, African and Asian individuals. According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, Kenya had a population of 47,564,296 by 2019. The largest native ethnic groups were the Kikuyu (8,148,668), Luhya (6,823,842), Kalenjin (6,358,113), Luo (5,066,966), Kamba (4,663,910), Somalis (2,780,502), Kisii (2,703,235), Mijikenda (2,488,691), Meru (1,975,869), Maasai (1,189,522), and Turkana (1,016,174). Foreign-rooted populations included Asians (90,527), Europeans (42,868) with Kenyan citizenship, 26,753 without, and Kenyan Arabs (59,021). The number of ethnic categories and sub-categories recorded in the census has changed significantly over time, expanding from 42 in 1969 to more than 120 in 2019.
Bantus are the single largest population division in Kenya. The term Bantu denotes widely dispersed but related peoples that speak south-central Niger–Congo languages. Originally from Cameroon-Nigeria border regions, Bantus began a millennium-long series of migrations referred to as the Bantu expansion that first brought them south into East Africa about 2,000 years ago.
Most Bantu are farmers. Some of the prominent Bantu groups in Kenya include the Kikuyu, the Kamba, the Luhya, the Kisii, the Meru, and the Mijikenda. The Swahili people are descended from Wangozi Bantu peoples that intermarried with Arab immigrants.
The Kikuyu, who are one of the biggest tribes in Kenya, seem to have assimilated a significant number of Cushitic speakers. Evidence from their Y DNA shows that 18% of Kikuyu carry the E1b1b Y DNA.
Nilotes are the second-largest group of peoples in Kenya. They speak Nilo-Saharan languages and went south into East Africa from Western Asia and North Africa by way of South Sudan. Most Nilotes in Kenya are historically pastoralists. The most prominent of these groups include the Luo, the Maasai, the Samburu, the Turkana, and the Kalenjin. As with the Bantu, some Nilotic systems of governance (such as Ibinda of the Nandi) bear similarities with those of their Cushitic neighbors (such as the Gada system of the Oromo).
Cushitic peoples form a small minority of Kenya's population. They speak languages belonging to the Afroasiatic family and originally came from Ethiopia and Somalia. However, some large ethnic Somali clans are native to the area that used be known as NFD in Kenya. These people are not from Somalia but share the same ethnicity as the majority in Somalia. Most are herdsmen and have almost entirely adopted Islam. Cushites are concentrated in the northernmost North Eastern Province, which borders Somalia.
The Cushitic peoples are divided into two groups: the Southern Cushites and the Eastern Cushites.
An entrepreneurial community, they established themselves in the business sector, particularly in Eastleigh, Nairobi.
Asians living in Kenya are descended from South Asian migrants. Significant Asian migration to Kenya began between 1896 and 1901 when some 32,000 indentured labourers were recruited from British India to build the Kenya-Uganda Railway. The majority of Kenyan Asians hail from the Gujarat and Punjab regions. The community grew significantly during the colonial period, and in the 1962 census Asians made up a third of the population of Nairobi and consisted of 176,613 people across the country.
Since Kenyan independence large numbers have emigrated due to race-related tensions with the Bantu and Nilotic majority. Those that remain are principally concentrated in the business sector, and Asians continue to form one of the more prosperous communities in the region. According to the 2019 Census, Kenyan Asians number 47,555 people, while Asians without Kenyan citizenship number 42,972 individuals. In 2017, they were officially recognised as the 44th tribe of Kenya.
Europeans in Kenya are primarily the descendants of British migrants during the colonial period, there is also a significant expat population of Europeans living in Kenya. Economically, virtually all Europeans in Kenya belong to the middle- and upper-middle-class. Nowadays, only a small minority of them are landowners (livestock and game ranchers, horticulturists and farmers), with the majority working in the tertiary sector: in air transport, finance, import, and hospitality. Apart from isolated individuals such as anthropologist and conservationist Richard Leakey, F.R.S., who died in 2022, Kenyan white people have virtually completely retreated from Kenyan politics, and are no longer represented in public service and parastatals, from which the last remaining staff from colonial times retired in the 1970s. According to the 2019 Census, Kenyan Europeans number 42,868 people, while Europeans without Kenyan citizenship number 26,753 individuals. 0.3% of the population of Kenya is from Asia or Europe.
Arabs form a small but historically important minority ethnic group in Kenya. They are principally concentrated along the coast in cities such as Mombasa,malindi,lamu and Nairobi. A Muslim community, they primarily came from Oman and Hadhramaut in Yemen, and are engaged in trade. Arabs are locally referred to as Washihiri or, less commonly, as simply Shihiri in the Bantu Swahili language, Kenya's lingua franca. According to the 2019 Census, Kenyan Arabs number 59,021 people.
Kenya's various ethnic groups typically speak their mother tongues within their own communities. The two official languages, English and Swahili, serve as the main lingua franca between the various ethnic groups. English is widely spoken in commerce, schooling and government. Peri-urban and rural dwellers are less multilingual, with many in rural areas speaking only their native languages.
According to Ethnologue, there are a total of 69 languages spoken in Kenya. Most belong to two broad language families: Niger-Congo (Bantu branch) and Nilo-Saharan (Nilotic branch), which are spoken by the country's Bantu and Nilotic populations, respectively. The Cushitic and Arab ethnic minorities speak languages belonging to the separate Afro-Asiatic family, with the Indian and European residents speaking languages from the Indo-European family.
According to the 2022 revision of the World Population Prospects, the total population was 53,005,614 in 2021 compared to 6,077,000 in 1950, and around 1,700,000 in 1900. The proportion of children below the age of 15 in 2010 was 42.5%, 54.9% between the ages of 15 and 65, and 2.7% was 65 years or older. Worldometers estimates the total population at 48,466,928 inhabitants, a 29th global rank.
Population by Sex and Age Group (Census 24.VIII.2009):
Population by Sex and Age Group (Census 24.VIII.2019) (The figure for both sexes includes intersex persons.):
Total Fertility Rate (TFR) (Wanted Fertility Rate) and Crude Birth Rate (CBR):
Fertility data as of 2014 (DHS Program):
Numbers are in thousands. UN medium variant projections
Registration of vital events is in Kenya not complete. The Population Department of the United Nations prepared the following estimates.
Demographic statistics according to the World Population Review in 2022.
The following demographic are from the CIA World Factbook unless otherwise indicated.
definition: age 15 and over can read and write (2015 est.)
Like the demographics of Africa in general, Kenya is plagued by high infant mortality, low life expectancy, malnourishment (32% of population) and HIV/AIDS. While these concerns remain grave, a trend towards improvement is reported in the period of 2006 to 2010: Infant mortality was at estimated at 59.26 deaths/1,000 live births as of 2006, decreasing to 54.7 deaths/1,000 live births as of 2010. Life expectancy was estimated at 48.9 years as of 2006, and has risen to 64 years in 2012.
According to 2008–09 Kenyan government survey, total fertility was 4.6, contraception usage among married women was 46 percent. Total fertility rate has decreased 4.91 children per woman (2006 estimate), to 4.38 (2010 estimate). Literacy (age 7 and over) was estimated at 85.1% in 2003 (male: 90.6%, female: 79.7%).
CIA World Factbook estimate:
Attribution:
Media related to Demographics of Kenya at Wikimedia Commons
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The demography of Kenya is monitored by the Kenyan National Bureau of Statistics. Kenya is a multi-ethnic state in East Africa. Its total population was at 47,558,296 as of the 2019 census.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "A national census was conducted in 1999, although the results were never released. A new census was undertaken in 2009, but turned out to be controversial, as the questions about ethnic affiliation seemed inappropriate after the ethnic violence of the previous year. Preliminary results of the census were published in 2010.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Kenya's population was reported as 47.6 million during the 2019 census compared to 38.6 million inhabitants 2009, 30.7 million in 1999, 21.4 million in 1989, and 15.3 million in 1979. This was an increase of a factor of 2.5 over 30 years, or an average growth rate of more than 3 percent per year. The population growth rate has been reported as reduced during the 2000s, and was estimated at 2.7 percent (as of 2010), resulting in an estimate of 46.5 million in 2016.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Kenya has a very diverse population that includes most major ethnic, racial and linguistic groups found in Africa. Bantu and Nilotic populations together constitute around 92% of the nation's inhabitants. People from Asian or European heritage living in Kenya are estimated at around 200,000.",
"title": "Ethnic groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Kenya's largest ethnic group is the Kikuyu. They make up less than a fifth of the population. Since Kenyan independence in 1963, Kenyan politics have been characterized by ethnic tensions and rivalry between the larger groups. This devolved into ethnic violence in the 2007–2008 Kenyan crisis.",
"title": "Ethnic groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In Kenya's last colonial census of 1962, population groups residing in the territory included European, African and Asian individuals. According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, Kenya had a population of 47,564,296 by 2019. The largest native ethnic groups were the Kikuyu (8,148,668), Luhya (6,823,842), Kalenjin (6,358,113), Luo (5,066,966), Kamba (4,663,910), Somalis (2,780,502), Kisii (2,703,235), Mijikenda (2,488,691), Meru (1,975,869), Maasai (1,189,522), and Turkana (1,016,174). Foreign-rooted populations included Asians (90,527), Europeans (42,868) with Kenyan citizenship, 26,753 without, and Kenyan Arabs (59,021). The number of ethnic categories and sub-categories recorded in the census has changed significantly over time, expanding from 42 in 1969 to more than 120 in 2019.",
"title": "Ethnic groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Bantus are the single largest population division in Kenya. The term Bantu denotes widely dispersed but related peoples that speak south-central Niger–Congo languages. Originally from Cameroon-Nigeria border regions, Bantus began a millennium-long series of migrations referred to as the Bantu expansion that first brought them south into East Africa about 2,000 years ago.",
"title": "Ethnic groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Most Bantu are farmers. Some of the prominent Bantu groups in Kenya include the Kikuyu, the Kamba, the Luhya, the Kisii, the Meru, and the Mijikenda. The Swahili people are descended from Wangozi Bantu peoples that intermarried with Arab immigrants.",
"title": "Ethnic groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The Kikuyu, who are one of the biggest tribes in Kenya, seem to have assimilated a significant number of Cushitic speakers. Evidence from their Y DNA shows that 18% of Kikuyu carry the E1b1b Y DNA.",
"title": "Ethnic groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Nilotes are the second-largest group of peoples in Kenya. They speak Nilo-Saharan languages and went south into East Africa from Western Asia and North Africa by way of South Sudan. Most Nilotes in Kenya are historically pastoralists. The most prominent of these groups include the Luo, the Maasai, the Samburu, the Turkana, and the Kalenjin. As with the Bantu, some Nilotic systems of governance (such as Ibinda of the Nandi) bear similarities with those of their Cushitic neighbors (such as the Gada system of the Oromo).",
"title": "Ethnic groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Cushitic peoples form a small minority of Kenya's population. They speak languages belonging to the Afroasiatic family and originally came from Ethiopia and Somalia. However, some large ethnic Somali clans are native to the area that used be known as NFD in Kenya. These people are not from Somalia but share the same ethnicity as the majority in Somalia. Most are herdsmen and have almost entirely adopted Islam. Cushites are concentrated in the northernmost North Eastern Province, which borders Somalia.",
"title": "Ethnic groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The Cushitic peoples are divided into two groups: the Southern Cushites and the Eastern Cushites.",
"title": "Ethnic groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "An entrepreneurial community, they established themselves in the business sector, particularly in Eastleigh, Nairobi.",
"title": "Ethnic groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Asians living in Kenya are descended from South Asian migrants. Significant Asian migration to Kenya began between 1896 and 1901 when some 32,000 indentured labourers were recruited from British India to build the Kenya-Uganda Railway. The majority of Kenyan Asians hail from the Gujarat and Punjab regions. The community grew significantly during the colonial period, and in the 1962 census Asians made up a third of the population of Nairobi and consisted of 176,613 people across the country.",
"title": "Ethnic groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Since Kenyan independence large numbers have emigrated due to race-related tensions with the Bantu and Nilotic majority. Those that remain are principally concentrated in the business sector, and Asians continue to form one of the more prosperous communities in the region. According to the 2019 Census, Kenyan Asians number 47,555 people, while Asians without Kenyan citizenship number 42,972 individuals. In 2017, they were officially recognised as the 44th tribe of Kenya.",
"title": "Ethnic groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Europeans in Kenya are primarily the descendants of British migrants during the colonial period, there is also a significant expat population of Europeans living in Kenya. Economically, virtually all Europeans in Kenya belong to the middle- and upper-middle-class. Nowadays, only a small minority of them are landowners (livestock and game ranchers, horticulturists and farmers), with the majority working in the tertiary sector: in air transport, finance, import, and hospitality. Apart from isolated individuals such as anthropologist and conservationist Richard Leakey, F.R.S., who died in 2022, Kenyan white people have virtually completely retreated from Kenyan politics, and are no longer represented in public service and parastatals, from which the last remaining staff from colonial times retired in the 1970s. According to the 2019 Census, Kenyan Europeans number 42,868 people, while Europeans without Kenyan citizenship number 26,753 individuals. 0.3% of the population of Kenya is from Asia or Europe.",
"title": "Ethnic groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Arabs form a small but historically important minority ethnic group in Kenya. They are principally concentrated along the coast in cities such as Mombasa,malindi,lamu and Nairobi. A Muslim community, they primarily came from Oman and Hadhramaut in Yemen, and are engaged in trade. Arabs are locally referred to as Washihiri or, less commonly, as simply Shihiri in the Bantu Swahili language, Kenya's lingua franca. According to the 2019 Census, Kenyan Arabs number 59,021 people.",
"title": "Ethnic groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Kenya's various ethnic groups typically speak their mother tongues within their own communities. The two official languages, English and Swahili, serve as the main lingua franca between the various ethnic groups. English is widely spoken in commerce, schooling and government. Peri-urban and rural dwellers are less multilingual, with many in rural areas speaking only their native languages.",
"title": "Languages"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "According to Ethnologue, there are a total of 69 languages spoken in Kenya. Most belong to two broad language families: Niger-Congo (Bantu branch) and Nilo-Saharan (Nilotic branch), which are spoken by the country's Bantu and Nilotic populations, respectively. The Cushitic and Arab ethnic minorities speak languages belonging to the separate Afro-Asiatic family, with the Indian and European residents speaking languages from the Indo-European family.",
"title": "Languages"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "According to the 2022 revision of the World Population Prospects, the total population was 53,005,614 in 2021 compared to 6,077,000 in 1950, and around 1,700,000 in 1900. The proportion of children below the age of 15 in 2010 was 42.5%, 54.9% between the ages of 15 and 65, and 2.7% was 65 years or older. Worldometers estimates the total population at 48,466,928 inhabitants, a 29th global rank.",
"title": "Population"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Population by Sex and Age Group (Census 24.VIII.2009):",
"title": "Population"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Population by Sex and Age Group (Census 24.VIII.2019) (The figure for both sexes includes intersex persons.):",
"title": "Population"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "",
"title": "Population"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Total Fertility Rate (TFR) (Wanted Fertility Rate) and Crude Birth Rate (CBR):",
"title": "Population"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Fertility data as of 2014 (DHS Program):",
"title": "Population"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Numbers are in thousands. UN medium variant projections",
"title": "Population"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Registration of vital events is in Kenya not complete. The Population Department of the United Nations prepared the following estimates.",
"title": "Population"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Demographic statistics according to the World Population Review in 2022.",
"title": "Other population statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The following demographic are from the CIA World Factbook unless otherwise indicated.",
"title": "Other population statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "definition: age 15 and over can read and write (2015 est.)",
"title": "Other population statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Like the demographics of Africa in general, Kenya is plagued by high infant mortality, low life expectancy, malnourishment (32% of population) and HIV/AIDS. While these concerns remain grave, a trend towards improvement is reported in the period of 2006 to 2010: Infant mortality was at estimated at 59.26 deaths/1,000 live births as of 2006, decreasing to 54.7 deaths/1,000 live births as of 2010. Life expectancy was estimated at 48.9 years as of 2006, and has risen to 64 years in 2012.",
"title": "Other population statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "According to 2008–09 Kenyan government survey, total fertility was 4.6, contraception usage among married women was 46 percent. Total fertility rate has decreased 4.91 children per woman (2006 estimate), to 4.38 (2010 estimate). Literacy (age 7 and over) was estimated at 85.1% in 2003 (male: 90.6%, female: 79.7%).",
"title": "Other population statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "CIA World Factbook estimate:",
"title": "Religion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Attribution:",
"title": "References"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Media related to Demographics of Kenya at Wikimedia Commons",
"title": "External links"
}
] |
The demography of Kenya is monitored by the Kenyan National Bureau of Statistics. Kenya is a multi-ethnic state in East Africa. Its total population was at 47,558,296 as of the 2019 census. A national census was conducted in 1999, although the results were never released. A new census was undertaken in 2009, but turned out to be controversial, as the questions about ethnic affiliation seemed inappropriate after the ethnic violence of the previous year. Preliminary results of the census were published in 2010. Kenya's population was reported as 47.6 million during the 2019 census compared to 38.6 million inhabitants 2009, 30.7 million in 1999, 21.4 million in 1989, and 15.3 million in 1979. This was an increase of a factor of 2.5 over 30 years, or an average growth rate of more than 3 percent per year. The population growth rate has been reported as reduced during the 2000s, and was estimated at 2.7 percent, resulting in an estimate of 46.5 million in 2016.
|
2001-05-11T00:05:39Z
|
2023-11-15T03:23:34Z
|
[
"Template:Citation",
"Template:Commons category-inline",
"Template:Africa in topic",
"Template:Main",
"Template:See also",
"Template:Further",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Kenya topics",
"Template:Infobox place demographics",
"Template:UN Population",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:CIA World Factbook",
"Template:Split",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Main article",
"Template:Ethnic groups in Kenya",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Source-attribution",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Culture of Kenya",
"Template:Historical populations",
"Template:GraphChart",
"Template:Bar box"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Kenya
|
16,656 |
Politics of Kenya
|
The politics of Kenya take place in a framework of a presidential representative democratic republic, whereby the president is both head of state and head of government, and of a multi-party system in accordance with a new constitution passed in 2010.
Executive power is exercised by the executive branch of government, headed by the President, who chairs the cabinet, which is composed of people chosen from outside parliament. Legislative power is vested exclusively in Parliament. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature. In Kenyan politics, the executive wields considerable power and other institutions have limited means of checking that power.
The Economist Intelligence Unit rated Kenya a "hybrid regime" in 2022. The Political terror scale gave the country a rating of 4 meaning that civil and political rights violations had expanded to large numbers of the population. Murders, disappearances, and torture were common parts of life.
The president is elected for a five-year term by the people. As of the 2013 March general election, the Constitution of Kenya has two requirements for any candidate to be declared winner:
If none of the candidates fulfills these requirements there is to be a runoff between the two contenders with the highest number of votes. The Deputy President is the running mate of the candidate that wins the presidential election whilst other cabinet members will be appointed, with the approval from the National Assembly, from outside Parliament.
Between 2008 and 2013 Kenya was governed by a Grand coalition, established by a power-sharing agreement, signed by then President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga of the Orange Democratic Movement. That government was semi-presidential in form, with the executive headed by a President and a Prime Minister, and ministers were appointed to reflect political parties' relative strength in Kenya's 10th Parliament in which Raila Odinga's party, the Orange Democratic Movement was the largest party. Under the power-sharing agreement, each of the two major parties also nominated a deputy prime minister. The post of the Prime Minister was abolished after 2013, returning Kenya to a presidential system of government.
The Bicameral Parliament consists of a National Assembly and Senate. The National Assembly, or Bunge, has 349 members, 290 members elected for a five-year term in single-seat constituencies, 47 women elected from each county, 12 members nominated by political parties in proportion to their share of seats won in the single-member constituencies, and an ex officio member: the speaker.
There is also a Senate with 67 members. 47 elected from counties acting as single-member constituencies, 16 women nominated by political parties, a man and a woman representing youths and a man and woman representing people with disabilities. The speaker is an ex-officio member.
The Kenyan judiciary is divided into Superior Courts and Subordinate Courts. Superior Courts consist of the Chief Justice who is also the president of the Supreme Court, the Deputy Chief Justice (who are members of the Supreme Court), Supreme Court judges, High Court judges, and judges of the Court of Appeal (no associate judges) appointed by an independent Judicial Service Commission. The Chief Justice and his or her deputy are nominated by the President from names selected by the Judicial Service Commission and voted by the National Assembly. Subordinates Courts are Magistrates' Courts, Kadhi Courts and Courts-Martial. The current chief justice is Martha Koome. Then the Tribunal are bodies which are established by Acts of Parliament to exercise judicial or quasi-judicial functions and these supplement ordinary courts in the administration of justice but do not have penal jurisdiction.
Under the 2010 Constitution, Kenya is divided into 47 counties (including the Cities of Nairobi and Mombasa), each comprising a whole number of Parliamentary constituencies. Each county has an elected Assembly, whose members are elected from single-member wards.
There are provisions for additional Assembly members to be appointed to improve the gender balance and to represent special groups such as persons with disabilities and youth. Each county is administered by an elected County Governor and Deputy Governor, backed by an Executive Committee.
Since independence in 1963, Kenya has maintained remarkable stability, despite changes in its political system and crises in neighboring countries. Particularly since the re-emergence of multiparty democracy, Kenyans have enjoyed an increased degree of freedom. A cross-party parliamentary reform initiative in the fall of 1997 revised some oppressive laws inherited from the colonial era that had been used to limit freedom of speech and assembly. This improved public freedoms and contributed to generally credible national elections in December 1997.
In December 2002, Kenya held democratic and open elections and elected Mwai Kibaki as their new president. The elections, which were judged free and fair by local and international observers, marked an important turning point in Kenya's democratic evolution. President Kibaki campaigned on a policy of generating economic growth, improving education, combating corruption, and implementing a new constitution, the draft of which was produced by Professor Ghai under the Moi regime. Considerable success has been achieved in the first two policy areas, the constitutional process had become mired (see below) and the fight against corruption has been a disaster.
There have been major scandals (including Anglo-Leasing), which the government has failed to investigate. John Githongo, then Permanent Secretary to the President on Ethics and Governance, resigned in protest, and donor nations, in particular the British, have made public criticisms of the lack of progress. Following disagreements between the partners in the then-government coalition, constitutional reform proceeded slower than anticipated. The NAK faction (allied to President Kibaki) favored a centralized presidential system, while the LDP faction—which had fewer parliamentary seats in that coalition than NAK—demanded a federal, parliamentary system, referred to in some circles as Majimbo.
Prior to the 2002 election, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was agreed between NAK and LDP, which laid the basis for the two groups to contest the election under the NARC (Rainbow Alliance) banner. The MoU agreed that a new constitution would be established shortly after the election, which provided for the new role of a strong Prime Minister while weakening the role of the President. Raila Odinga, then leader of LDP, maintained aspirations to become Prime Minister. However, that draft constitution was modified by the government from what was written by Professor Ghai and amended by the Bomas committee.
This maintained a strong President, who controls a weaker Prime Minister. This led to a split between NAK and LDP, with the former campaigning for a 'Yes' vote in a 2005 referendum on the constitution and the latter a 'No'. Also supporting a 'No' vote was the majority of Uhuru Kenyatta's KANU party, the sole party of government from independence to 2002. The outcome of that referendum, in which the draft constitution was rejected, signalled a wider re-alignment before the 2007 elections, in which the No team reorganised itself as the Orange Democratic Movement with Raila Odinga as their presidential flag bearer whilst those in the Yes team ended up in several political parties including the Party of National Unity.
Internal wrangling within that governing coalition also negatively affected other crucial areas of governance, notably the planned large-scale privatisation of government-owned enterprises. The 2007 presidential elections were largely believed to have been flawed with international observers stating that they did not meet regional or international standards. Most observers suggest that the tallying process for the presidential results was rigged to the advantage of the incumbent president, Mwai Kibaki, despite overwhelming indications that his rival and the subsequent Prime Minister of Kenya, Raila Odinga, won the election. In July 2008, exit polls commissioned by the US government were released, revealing that Odinga had won the election by a comfortable margin of 6%, well outside of the poll's 1.3% margin of error.
There was significant and widespread violence in Kenya—2007–2008 Kenyan crisis—following the unprecedented announcement of Kibaki as the winner of the 2007 presidential elections. The violence led to the death of almost 1,000 people and the displacement of almost 600,000 people. Some researchers note it allowed the violent settlement of land disputes between ethnic groups over controversial concepts of 'ancestral homelands'.
A diplomatic solution was achieved, as the two rivals were later united in a grand coalition government following international mediation, led by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, under a power-sharing National Accord on Reconciliation Act, entrenched in the constitution. Following the agreement, power was shared between President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister, Raila Odinga. Several steps were recommended to ensure stability and peace for the Nation during the negotiations that led to the formation of the Coalition government. One of these reforms was the famous Agenda 4 which deals with reforms in various sectors. A new constitution was identified as a key area in fulfilling Agenda 4. A draft constitution was published and Kenyans adopted it in a vote on 4 August 2010. In 2013 the coalition government was rendered ineffective due to the constitution. General elections were held and the Jubilee coalition with President, Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President, William Samoei Ruto clinched victory. The new constitution also provided for a bicameral house, the Senate and the National Assembly. These were duly filled up with elected candidates. The nation was also divided into counties headed by governors and represented in the Senate by senators. Women in these counties were also represented by electing women Representatives. The five-year term ended on 2017 and the country went in for the elections. The President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy William Samoei Ruto were re-elected on 30 October 2017. This will run up to 2022 when the next elections will be conducted. The historical handshake in March 2018 between President Uhuru Kenyatta and his long-time opponent Raila Odinga meant reconciliation followed by economic growth and increased stability. William Ruto was declared the winner of the 2022 Kenyan general election On 13 September 2022, William Ruto was sworn in as Kenya's fifth president.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The politics of Kenya take place in a framework of a presidential representative democratic republic, whereby the president is both head of state and head of government, and of a multi-party system in accordance with a new constitution passed in 2010.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Executive power is exercised by the executive branch of government, headed by the President, who chairs the cabinet, which is composed of people chosen from outside parliament. Legislative power is vested exclusively in Parliament. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature. In Kenyan politics, the executive wields considerable power and other institutions have limited means of checking that power.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The Economist Intelligence Unit rated Kenya a \"hybrid regime\" in 2022. The Political terror scale gave the country a rating of 4 meaning that civil and political rights violations had expanded to large numbers of the population. Murders, disappearances, and torture were common parts of life.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The president is elected for a five-year term by the people. As of the 2013 March general election, the Constitution of Kenya has two requirements for any candidate to be declared winner:",
"title": "Executive branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "If none of the candidates fulfills these requirements there is to be a runoff between the two contenders with the highest number of votes. The Deputy President is the running mate of the candidate that wins the presidential election whilst other cabinet members will be appointed, with the approval from the National Assembly, from outside Parliament.",
"title": "Executive branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Between 2008 and 2013 Kenya was governed by a Grand coalition, established by a power-sharing agreement, signed by then President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga of the Orange Democratic Movement. That government was semi-presidential in form, with the executive headed by a President and a Prime Minister, and ministers were appointed to reflect political parties' relative strength in Kenya's 10th Parliament in which Raila Odinga's party, the Orange Democratic Movement was the largest party. Under the power-sharing agreement, each of the two major parties also nominated a deputy prime minister. The post of the Prime Minister was abolished after 2013, returning Kenya to a presidential system of government.",
"title": "Executive branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The Bicameral Parliament consists of a National Assembly and Senate. The National Assembly, or Bunge, has 349 members, 290 members elected for a five-year term in single-seat constituencies, 47 women elected from each county, 12 members nominated by political parties in proportion to their share of seats won in the single-member constituencies, and an ex officio member: the speaker.",
"title": "Legislative branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "There is also a Senate with 67 members. 47 elected from counties acting as single-member constituencies, 16 women nominated by political parties, a man and a woman representing youths and a man and woman representing people with disabilities. The speaker is an ex-officio member.",
"title": "Legislative branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The Kenyan judiciary is divided into Superior Courts and Subordinate Courts. Superior Courts consist of the Chief Justice who is also the president of the Supreme Court, the Deputy Chief Justice (who are members of the Supreme Court), Supreme Court judges, High Court judges, and judges of the Court of Appeal (no associate judges) appointed by an independent Judicial Service Commission. The Chief Justice and his or her deputy are nominated by the President from names selected by the Judicial Service Commission and voted by the National Assembly. Subordinates Courts are Magistrates' Courts, Kadhi Courts and Courts-Martial. The current chief justice is Martha Koome. Then the Tribunal are bodies which are established by Acts of Parliament to exercise judicial or quasi-judicial functions and these supplement ordinary courts in the administration of justice but do not have penal jurisdiction.",
"title": "Judicial branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Under the 2010 Constitution, Kenya is divided into 47 counties (including the Cities of Nairobi and Mombasa), each comprising a whole number of Parliamentary constituencies. Each county has an elected Assembly, whose members are elected from single-member wards.",
"title": "Administrative divisions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "There are provisions for additional Assembly members to be appointed to improve the gender balance and to represent special groups such as persons with disabilities and youth. Each county is administered by an elected County Governor and Deputy Governor, backed by an Executive Committee.",
"title": "Administrative divisions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Since independence in 1963, Kenya has maintained remarkable stability, despite changes in its political system and crises in neighboring countries. Particularly since the re-emergence of multiparty democracy, Kenyans have enjoyed an increased degree of freedom. A cross-party parliamentary reform initiative in the fall of 1997 revised some oppressive laws inherited from the colonial era that had been used to limit freedom of speech and assembly. This improved public freedoms and contributed to generally credible national elections in December 1997.",
"title": "Political conditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In December 2002, Kenya held democratic and open elections and elected Mwai Kibaki as their new president. The elections, which were judged free and fair by local and international observers, marked an important turning point in Kenya's democratic evolution. President Kibaki campaigned on a policy of generating economic growth, improving education, combating corruption, and implementing a new constitution, the draft of which was produced by Professor Ghai under the Moi regime. Considerable success has been achieved in the first two policy areas, the constitutional process had become mired (see below) and the fight against corruption has been a disaster.",
"title": "Political conditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "There have been major scandals (including Anglo-Leasing), which the government has failed to investigate. John Githongo, then Permanent Secretary to the President on Ethics and Governance, resigned in protest, and donor nations, in particular the British, have made public criticisms of the lack of progress. Following disagreements between the partners in the then-government coalition, constitutional reform proceeded slower than anticipated. The NAK faction (allied to President Kibaki) favored a centralized presidential system, while the LDP faction—which had fewer parliamentary seats in that coalition than NAK—demanded a federal, parliamentary system, referred to in some circles as Majimbo.",
"title": "Political conditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Prior to the 2002 election, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was agreed between NAK and LDP, which laid the basis for the two groups to contest the election under the NARC (Rainbow Alliance) banner. The MoU agreed that a new constitution would be established shortly after the election, which provided for the new role of a strong Prime Minister while weakening the role of the President. Raila Odinga, then leader of LDP, maintained aspirations to become Prime Minister. However, that draft constitution was modified by the government from what was written by Professor Ghai and amended by the Bomas committee.",
"title": "Political conditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "This maintained a strong President, who controls a weaker Prime Minister. This led to a split between NAK and LDP, with the former campaigning for a 'Yes' vote in a 2005 referendum on the constitution and the latter a 'No'. Also supporting a 'No' vote was the majority of Uhuru Kenyatta's KANU party, the sole party of government from independence to 2002. The outcome of that referendum, in which the draft constitution was rejected, signalled a wider re-alignment before the 2007 elections, in which the No team reorganised itself as the Orange Democratic Movement with Raila Odinga as their presidential flag bearer whilst those in the Yes team ended up in several political parties including the Party of National Unity.",
"title": "Political conditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Internal wrangling within that governing coalition also negatively affected other crucial areas of governance, notably the planned large-scale privatisation of government-owned enterprises. The 2007 presidential elections were largely believed to have been flawed with international observers stating that they did not meet regional or international standards. Most observers suggest that the tallying process for the presidential results was rigged to the advantage of the incumbent president, Mwai Kibaki, despite overwhelming indications that his rival and the subsequent Prime Minister of Kenya, Raila Odinga, won the election. In July 2008, exit polls commissioned by the US government were released, revealing that Odinga had won the election by a comfortable margin of 6%, well outside of the poll's 1.3% margin of error.",
"title": "Political conditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "There was significant and widespread violence in Kenya—2007–2008 Kenyan crisis—following the unprecedented announcement of Kibaki as the winner of the 2007 presidential elections. The violence led to the death of almost 1,000 people and the displacement of almost 600,000 people. Some researchers note it allowed the violent settlement of land disputes between ethnic groups over controversial concepts of 'ancestral homelands'.",
"title": "Political conditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "A diplomatic solution was achieved, as the two rivals were later united in a grand coalition government following international mediation, led by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, under a power-sharing National Accord on Reconciliation Act, entrenched in the constitution. Following the agreement, power was shared between President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister, Raila Odinga. Several steps were recommended to ensure stability and peace for the Nation during the negotiations that led to the formation of the Coalition government. One of these reforms was the famous Agenda 4 which deals with reforms in various sectors. A new constitution was identified as a key area in fulfilling Agenda 4. A draft constitution was published and Kenyans adopted it in a vote on 4 August 2010. In 2013 the coalition government was rendered ineffective due to the constitution. General elections were held and the Jubilee coalition with President, Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President, William Samoei Ruto clinched victory. The new constitution also provided for a bicameral house, the Senate and the National Assembly. These were duly filled up with elected candidates. The nation was also divided into counties headed by governors and represented in the Senate by senators. Women in these counties were also represented by electing women Representatives. The five-year term ended on 2017 and the country went in for the elections. The President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy William Samoei Ruto were re-elected on 30 October 2017. This will run up to 2022 when the next elections will be conducted. The historical handshake in March 2018 between President Uhuru Kenyatta and his long-time opponent Raila Odinga meant reconciliation followed by economic growth and increased stability. William Ruto was declared the winner of the 2022 Kenyan general election On 13 September 2022, William Ruto was sworn in as Kenya's fifth president.",
"title": "Political conditions"
}
] |
The politics of Kenya take place in a framework of a presidential representative democratic republic, whereby the president is both head of state and head of government, and of a multi-party system in accordance with a new constitution passed in 2010. Executive power is exercised by the executive branch of government, headed by the President, who chairs the cabinet, which is composed of people chosen from outside parliament. Legislative power is vested exclusively in Parliament. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature. In Kenyan politics, the executive wields considerable power and other institutions have limited means of checking that power. The Economist Intelligence Unit rated Kenya a "hybrid regime" in 2022. The Political terror scale gave the country a rating of 4 meaning that civil and political rights violations had expanded to large numbers of the population. Murders, disappearances, and torture were common parts of life.
|
2001-07-31T09:59:35Z
|
2023-09-10T00:29:17Z
|
[
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Office-table",
"Template:See also",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Further",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Politics of Kenya",
"Template:Citation",
"Template:Curlie",
"Template:Africa in topic",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Democracy Index rating",
"Template:Kenya topics",
"Template:EngvarB",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Cite book"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Kenya
|
16,657 |
Economy of Kenya
|
The economy of Kenya is market-based with a few state enterprises. Kenya has an emerging market and is an averagely industrialised nation ahead of its East African peers. Currently a lower middle income nation, it plans to be a newly industrialised nation by 2030. Major industries include agriculture, forestry, fishing, mining, manufacturing, energy, tourism and financial services. As of 2020, Kenya had the third largest economy in Sub-Saharan Africa, behind Nigeria and South Africa.
The government of Kenya is generally investment-friendly and has enacted several regulatory reforms to simplify foreign and local investment, including the creation of an export processing zone. An increasingly significant portion of Kenya's foreign financial inflows are remittances by non-resident Kenyans who work in the United States, the Middle East, Europe and Asia.
As of September 2018, economic prospects were positive, with above 6% gross domestic product (GDP) growth expected. This growth was attributed largely to expansions in the telecommunications, transport, and construction sectors; a recovery in agriculture; and the rise of small businesses helping to pull the economy. These improvements are supported by a large pool of highly educated professional workers. There is a high level of IT literacy and innovation, especially among young Kenyans.
In 2020, Kenya ranked 56th in the World Bank ease of doing business rating, up from 61st in 2019 (of 190 countries). Compared to its neighbours, Kenya has a well-developed social and physical infrastructure.
Between 70 AD and 1500 AD, trade routes — spanning Africa, Asia and Europe — integrated the Kenyan coastal strip into the world economy. Foreign merchants would bring their merchandise to the Kenyan coast and leave with African goods.
In 1499 AD, Vasco da Gama, a Portuguese explorer, returned to Europe after discovering the sea route to India through South Africa. This new route allowed European nations to dominate the trade economy of the East African coast, with the Portuguese entrenching themselves in the 16th and 17th centuries. In the 18th century, the Portuguese were replaced in this East African economic corridor by Omani Arabs. Eventually, the British replaced the Omani Arabs. In 1895 they dominated the coastal strip; by 1920, they had followed the interior trade routes all the way to the Buganda Kingdom. To make this ancient economic trade route more profitable, the British used Indian labourers to build a railway from Mombasa at the coast to Kampala, the capital of Buganda kingdom, following old trade routes. Major towns were founded along the railway line, backed by European settler farming communities. The Indian labourers who did not return to India after railway construction ended were the first to establish shops (dukawallahs) in these towns.
During the colonial period, the European settler farming community and the Indian dukawallahs established the foundations of the modern formal Kenyan economy. Prominent examples of Asian-Kenyan business owners whose businesses started as dukawallahs include Manu Chandaria and Madatally Manji. While Europeans and Indians enjoyed strong economic growth between 1920 and 1963, Africans were deprived of their land, dehumanised, and forced to work for minimal pay under extremely poor working conditions through a well-established system of racial segregation.
Kenya gained its independence in 1963. Under President Jomo Kenyatta, the Kenyan government promoted africanisation of the Kenyan economy, generating rapid economic growth through public investment, encouragement of smallholder agricultural production, and incentives for private, often foreign, industrial investments. An influential sessional paper authored by Tom Mboya and Mwai Kibaki in 1965 stressed the need for Kenya to avoid both the capitalistic economy of the West and the communism of the East. The paper argued that Kenya should instead concentrate on African socialism, while avoiding linking Kenya's economic fortunes to any country or group of countries. From 1963 to 1973, GDP grew at an annual average rate of 6.6%; during the 1970s, it grew at an average rate of 7.2%. Agricultural production grew by 4.7% annually in the same period, stimulated by redistributing estates, distributing new crop strains, and opening new areas to cultivation. However, the rate of GDP growth declined to 4.2% per year in the 1980s, and 2.2% a year in the 1990s.
Kenya's policy of import substitution, which started in 1946 with European and Asian enterprises, did not achieve the desired result of transforming Kenya's industrial base. In the late 1970s, rising oil prices began to make Kenya's manufacturing sector noncompetitive. In response, the government began a massive intervention in the private sector. Lack of export incentives, tight import controls, and foreign exchange controls made the domestic environment for investment even less attractive.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Kenya signed structural adjustment loans with the World Bank and IMF, the loans were to be given on the condition that Kenya adopts government reforms, a liberal trade and interest rate regime, and an outward-oriented industrial policy, among other reforms . The Kenyan economy performed very poorly during this era of World Bank and IMF-driven liberalisation at the height of Daniel Arap Moi administration.
From 1991 to 1993, Kenya had its worst economic performance since independence. Growth in GDP stagnated, and agricultural production shrank at an annual rate of 3.9%. Inflation reached a record of 100% in August 1993, and the government's budget deficit was over 10% of GDP. As a result of these issues, bilateral and multilateral donors suspended their aid programmes in Kenya in 1991.
In 1993, the Kenyan government began a major programme of economic reform and liberalisation. A new minister of finance and a new governor of the central bank undertook a series of economic measures with the assistance of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The government eliminated price controls and import licensing, removed foreign exchange controls, privatised a number of publicly owned companies, reduced the number of civil servants, and introduced conservative fiscal and monetary policies. From 1994 to 1996, Kenya's real GDP growth rate averaged just over 4% a year.
In 1997, however, the economy entered a period of slowing growth, due in part to adverse weather conditions and reduced economic activity before the general elections in December 1997. In July 1997, the Government of Kenya refused to meet earlier commitments to the IMF on governance reforms. As a result, the IMF suspended lending for three years, and the World Bank put a $90 million structural adjustment credit on hold.
The Kenyan government subsequently took positive steps on reform, including the establishment of the Kenya Anti-Corruption Authority in 1997. The state also implemented measures to improve the transparency of government procurement and reduce the government payroll. In July 2000, the IMF signed a $150 million Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility, and the World Bank followed shortly after with a $157 million Economic and Public Sector Reform credit. However, both were eventually suspended. Despite setbacks, the process of reform established Kenya as East Africa's economic powerhouse and the region's business hub.
Economic growth improved between 2003 and 2008, under the Mwai Kibaki administration. When Kibaki took power in 2003, he immediately established the National Debt Management Department at the treasury, reformed the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) to increase government revenue, reformed financial laws on banking, wrote off the debts of strategic public enterprises, and ensured that 30% of government tax revenue was invested in economic development projects. With these reforms, driven by the National Rainbow Coalition government, the KRA collected more tax revenue in 2004 than was anticipated. The government then initiated investments in infrastructure. By 2005, the Kenyan public debt had reduced from highs of 80% of GDP in 2002 to 27% of GDP in 2005. The financial sector greatly improved, and Equity Bank Kenya became one of the largest banks in East Africa. Economic growth improved from 2% in 2003 to 7% in 2007. In 2008, the growth slumped to 1% due to post-election violence before returning to an average of 5% between 2009 and 2013. However, in 2009, due to drought and the global financial crisis, high input costs as well as a fall in demand for some of the country's exports caused the agriculture sector to contract by 2.7%.
Between 2013 and 2018, under the Jubilee Party government led by Uhuru Kenyatta, GDP growth averaged above 5%. Growth in small businesses is credited with some of the improvement. Real GDP growth (annualised) was 5.7% in Q1 of 2018, 6.0% in Q2 2018 and 6.2% in Q3 2018. Despite this robust growth, concerns remained about Kenya's debt sustainability, current account deficit, fiscal consolidation and revenue growth.
The table below shows the GDP of Kenya estimated by the International Monetary Fund, with exchange rates for Kenyan shillings.
Vision 2030 is Kenya's current blueprint for its exonomic future, with the goal of creating a prosperous, globally-competitive nation with a high quality of life by 2030. The plan aims to transform Kenyan industry and environment in three pillars: economic, social, and political.
Vision 2030 seeks economic growth averaging greater than 10% for 23 years, beginning in the year 2007. Economic areas targeted are tourism, agriculture, wholesale and retail trade, manufacturing, IT-enabled services, and financial services.
To improve the quality of life for Kenyans, Vision 2030 aims to improve human and social welfare programmes, specifically education and training, health, environment, housing and urbanisation, children and social development, and youth and sports. In 2018, President Uhuru Kenyatta established the Big Four Agenda, focusing on universal healthcare, manufacturing, affordable housing and food security.
The political pillar envisions a "democratic system that is issue-based, transparent, people-centred, results-oriented, and accountable to the public". It targets five main areas: the rule of law under the Constitution of Kenya, electoral and political processes, democracy and public service delivery, transparency and accountability, and security, peace building, and conflict management.
The current Constitution of Kenya was inaugurated on 27 August 2010 to drive this pillar.
Kenya's currency is printed by mandate of the Central Bank of Kenya. The bank began printing banknotes in 1996. Several versions of Kenya's banknotes and coinage have been circulated since then. The most recent redesign of Kenya's currency was in 2019.
The exchange rate of the Kenyan Shilling between 2003 and 2010 averaged about KSh74-78 per US Dollar.
The average inflation between 2005 and July 2015 was 8.5%. In July 2015 Kenya's inflation rate was estimated to be 6.62%.
In 2006, Kenyan government revenue totalled US$4.448B and its estimated expenditures totalled US$5.377B. The government budget balance as a percentage of the gross domestic product improved to −2.1% in 2006 from −5.5% in 2004.
In 2012, Kenya set a budget of US$14.59B with a government revenue of approximately US$12B.
The 2018 budget policy report set a budget of US$30B. The government revenue was approximately US$29.5B, and a deficit of US$5B was borrowed.
In the financial year that ended in June 2020, the Kenya Revenue Authority collected a tax revenue that amounted to approximately US$15B.
From 1982, Kenya key public debt indicators rose above critical levels, both measured as a percentage of GDP and as a percentage of government revenue.
In 2002, the last year of Daniel arap Moi's administration, Kenya' s public debt stood at almost 80% of GDP. In the last 10 years of the Moi regime, the government was spending 94% of all its revenue on salaries and debt servicing to the IMF, World Bank and other western countries.
In 2003, Mwai Kibaki's administration instituted a public debt management department within the treasury department to bring Kenya's debt down to sustainable levels.
In 2006, Kenya had a current account deficit of US$1.5B. This figure was a significant increase over 2005, when the current account had a deficit of US$495 million. In 2006, the current account balance as a percentage of gross domestic product was −4.2.
In 2006, Kenya's external debt totalled US$6.7B. With a GDP of US$25.83B in 2006, the public debt level stood at 27% of GDP.
In 2011, the national treasury noted that the debt was rising, growing to 40% of GDP in 2009 and to 54% of GDP by 2012.
In 2019, Kenya's debt had risen to an absolute amount of US$50B against a GDP of US$98B. The public debt level was 51% of GDP in 2019.
In 2021, Kenya's debt had risen to an absolute amount of US$65B against a GDP of US$101B.The public debt level was 65% of GDP in 2021.
Kenya's largest bilateral lender since 2011 has been China, and the largest multilateral lender since 1963 has been the World Bank.
The Kenya Economic Stimulus Programme was introduced in the 2010–2011 budget plan. The initiative aimed to stimulate economic activity in Kenya through investment in long-term solutions to food insecurity, rural unemployment and underdevelopment. Stated improvement objectives included regional development for equity and social stability, infrastructure, education, affordable health-care, environmental conservation, information and communications technology capacity, and access to IT.
The Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) was launched in 2003 as a digital platform for Kenya's financial information and services, and was later re-engineered by the Ministry of Finance to curb fraud and other malpractices. IFMIS enables integrated budget planning, being linked to planning policy objectives and budget allocation.
The Fund for the Inclusion of Informal Sector (FIIS) is a fund that allows businesses in the informal economy to access credit financing and other facilities, including financial and banking services.
The Investor Compensation Fund compensates investors who suffer losses from breaches of duty by a licensed stockbroker or dealer, up to a maximum of Sh.50,000 per investor.
Since independence, Kenya has received substantial foreign investment and significant amounts of development aid. Total aid was $943 million in 2006, 4% of gross national income.
Investments come from China, Japan, Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom, among others. Kenya hosts a large number of foreign multinational companies and international organisations such as the United Nations Environment Programme. China's investments have been increasing, while those of western countries such as the United Kingdom has fallen significantly. Investments from multilateral agencies, particularly the World Bank and the European Development Fund, have also increased. The most active investors currently are the Chinese.
Kenya is active within regional trade blocs such as the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa and the East African Community, a partnership of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan. The aim of the latter is to create a common market of its member states modelled on the European Union. Among the early steps toward integration is the bloc's customs union, which has eliminated duties on goods and non-tariff trade barriers among members.
Kenya's chief exports are horticultural products and tea. In 2005, the combined value of these commodities was US$1,150 million, about 10 times the value of Kenya's third most valuable export, coffee. Kenya's other significant exports are petroleum products, fish, cement, pyrethrum, and sisal. The leading imports are crude petroleum, chemicals, manufactured goods, machinery, and transportation equipment. Africa is Kenya's largest export market, followed by the European Union.
The major destinations for exports are Uganda, Tanzania, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. Major suppliers are China, India, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa. Kenya's main exports to the United States are garments traded under the terms of the African Growth and Opportunity Act. Notwithstanding this, Kenya's apparel industry is struggling to hold its ground against Asian competition and runs a trade deficit with the United States. Many of Kenya's problems relating to the export of goods are believed by economists to be caused by the fact that Kenya's exports are inexpensive items that do not bring substantial amounts of money into the country.
Kenya is the dominant trade partner for Uganda (12.3% exports, 15.6% imports) and Rwanda (30.5% exports, 17.3% imports).
Kenya typically has a substantial trade deficit. The trade balance fluctuates widely because Kenya's main exports are primary commodities subject to the effects of both world prices and weather. In 2005 Kenya's income from exports was about US$3.2 billion. The payment for imports was about US$5.7B, yielding a trade deficit of about US$2.5B.
Kenyan policies on foreign investment generally have been favourable since independence, with occasional tightening of restrictions to promote the africanisation of enterprises. Foreign investors have been guaranteed ownership and the right to remit dividends, royalties, and capital.
Kenya is currently the most important source of foreign direct investments in Uganda and Rwanda. Uganda and its neighbouring regions are the main export destinations for Kenyan products. Kenya has had more success in growing its economy and quality of life levels than many of its neighbours in sub-Saharan Africa.
Kenya produced in 2018:
Agriculture is the second largest contributor to Kenya's GDP, after the service sector, although only 15% of Kenya's total land area has sufficient fertility and rainfall to be farmed, and only 7 or 8% can be classified as first-class land. In 2006, almost 75% of working Kenyans made their living on the land, compared with 80% in 1980. About half of total agricultural output is non-marketed subsistence production.
In 2005, agriculture, including forestry and fishing, accounted for about 24% of GDP, as well as for 18% of wage employment and 50% of revenue from exports. That same year, horticulture accounted for 23% and tea for 22% of total export earnings. The principal cash crops in Kenyan agriculture are tea, horticultural produce, and coffee. Coffee has declined in importance with depressed world prices, accounting for just 5% of export receipts in 2005. The production of major food staples such as corn is subject to sharp weather-related fluctuations. Production downturns also periodically necessitate food aid. In 2004, aid was needed for 1.8 million people because of Kenya's intermittent droughts. However, the expansion of credit to the agricultural sector has enabled farmers to better deal with environmental and pricing risks.
Tea, coffee, sisal, pyrethrum, corn, and wheat are grown in the fertile highlands, one of the most successful agricultural production regions in Africa. Livestock predominates in the semi-arid savanna to the north and east. Coconuts, pineapples, cashew nuts, cotton, sugarcane, sisal, and corn are grown in the lower-lying areas.
Resource degradation has reduced output from forestry. In 2004, roundwood removals came to 22,162,000 cubic meters. Fisheries are of local importance around Lake Victoria and have potential at Lake Turkana. Kenya's total catch in 2004 was 128,000 metric tons. However, output from fishing has been declining because of ecological disruption. Pollution, overfishing, and the use of unauthorised fishing equipment have led to falling catches and have endangered local fish species.
Kenya has no significant mineral endowment. The mining and quarrying sector makes a negligible contribution to the economy, accounting for less than 1% of GDP. The majority of this is contributed by the soda ash operation at Lake Magadi in south-central Kenya. Thanks largely to rising soda ash output, Kenya's mineral production in 2005 reached more than 1 million tons. One of Kenya's largest foreign-investment projects in recent years is the planned expansion of Magadi Soda. Apart from soda ash, the chief minerals produced are limestone, gold, salt, large quantities of niobium, fluorspar, and fossil fuel.
All unextracted minerals are government property, under the Mining Act. The Department of Mines and Geology, under the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, controls exploration and exploitation of minerals.
Although Kenya is the most industrially developed country in East Africa, manufacturing still accounts for only 14% of GDP. This represents only a slight increase since independence. The rapid expansion of the sector immediately after independence stagnated in the 1980s, hampered by shortages in hydroelectric power, high energy costs, dilapidated transport infrastructure, and the dumping of cheap imports. However, due to urbanisation, the industry and manufacturing sectors have become increasingly important to the Kenyan economy, and this has been reflected by an increasing GDP per capita. Industrial activity, concentrated around the three largest urban centres, Nairobi, Mombasa, and Kisumu, is dominated by food-processing industries such as grain milling, beer production, sugarcane crushing, and the fabrication of consumer goods. Kenya also has an oil refinery that processes imported crude petroleum into petroleum products, mainly for the domestic market. In addition, a substantial and expanding informal sector engages in small-scale manufacturing of household goods, motor-vehicle parts, and farm implements.
Kenya's inclusion among the beneficiaries of the US Government's African Growth and Opportunity Act gave a boost to manufacturing. Since the Act took effect in 2000, Kenya's clothing sales to the United States increased from US$44 million to US$270M in 2006. Other initiatives to strengthen manufacturing include favourable tax measures, including the absence of duties for capital equipment and other raw materials.
The largest segment of Kenya's electricity supply comes from hydroelectric stations at dams along the upper Tana River, as well as the Turkwel Gorge Dam in the west. A petroleum-fired plant on the coast, geothermal facilities at Olkaria, and electricity imported from Uganda make up the balance. Kenya's installed capacity stood at 1,142 megawatts a year between 2001 and 2003. The state-owned Kenya Electricity Generating Company, established in 1997 under the name Kenya Power Company, handles the generation of electricity, while the Kenya Power and Lighting Company handles transmission and distribution. Shortfalls of electricity occur periodically when drought reduces water flow. In 1997 and 2000, for example, drought prompted severe power rationing, with economically-damaging 12-hour blackouts. Frequent outages and high costs of power remain serious obstacles to economic activity. Tax and other concessions are planned to encourage investment in hydroelectricity and in geothermal energy, which Kenya has been a pioneer in adopting.
Kenya currently imports all crude petroleum requirements, with petroleum accounting for 20% to 25% of the national import bill. Hydrocarbon reserves have been found in Kenya's semi-arid northern region of Turkana after several decades of intermittent exploration. Offshore prospecting also continues. Kenya Petroleum Refineries, a 50:50 joint venture between the government and several oil majors, operates the country's sole oil refinery in Mombasa. The refinery's production is transported via Kenya's Mombasa–Nairobi pipeline. However, the refinery is currently non-operational. In 2004, oil consumption was estimated at 55,000 barrels (8,700 m) a day.
Kenya's dependence on tourism has greatly reduced over the years. In 2019, foreign tourist revenues stood at $1.76 billion, accounting for only 1.6% of Kenya's GDP and approximately 12% of all international tourism receipts in Eastern Africa.
The growing middle class in Kenya has also led to a significant growth in local tourism over the years, diversifying the sources of revenue for the sector. In 2018, domestic tourists’ occupancy accounted for 52.9% of the total bed occupancy in the country.
Kenya offers numerous large national parks in a wide variety of landscapes. Besides the coast, there are large deserts, steppes and mountains. The national parks and nature reserves contain the natural habitats of many animal species.
Kenya is East Africa's hub for financial services. The Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE) is ranked 4th in Africa in terms of market capitalisation.
The banking sector in Kenya is regulated by The Central Bank Of Kenya. Kenya's banking sector is mainly dominated by local commercial banks, namely Equity Bank, Kenya Commercial Bank, NCBA Bank, Diamond Trust Bank, Cooperative Bank, and National Bank. The Kenya Commercial Bank is the largest bank in Kenya by asset size and branch network as of 2023.
Kenya enjoys the presence of a number of high-profile accounting firms. The Big Four firms, Mazars, Grant Thornton International, and PKF International actively operate within the financial system, and are often responsible for the audit of Nairobi Stock Exchange firms.
Kenya’s first commercial-sized ship to be built from scratch-- not only in Kenya but also in the whole of East Africa-- was launched in October of 2023. The 1800-ton vessel, the MV Uhuru II, will ferry goods and petroleum across Lake Victoria.
In 2022, Kenya's labour force was estimated to include about 24 million workers. In recent years, much of Kenya's labour force has moved from the countryside to cities such as Nairobi, as Kenya becomes increasingly urbanised.
The labour force participation rate in Kenya has been constant from 1997 to 2010 for both women and men. In 1997, 65% of women were employed in some type of labour and 76% of men were employed. In 2005, 60% of women and 70% of men were in the labour force, increasing slightly to 61% of women and 72% of men in 2010.
In the past 20 years, many Kenyans have moved away from family farming towards wage labour, small business entrepreneurship, and informal work. In 1989, 4.5 million Kenyans out of a total working population of 7.3M worked on family farms. In 2009, only 6.5M Kenyans out of a total working population of 14.3M worked on family farms. Of these, 3.8M were women and 2.7M were men.
According to the World Bank 2012 Kenya Economic Update, modern wage jobs include being an "engineer, telecommunication specialist, cut flower worker, teacher, construction worker, housekeepers, professionals, any industrial and manufacturing job, and port and dock workers." In 1989, there were only 1.9M Kenyans employed in wage work. In 2009, this number increased to 5.1M, with 3.4M men and 1.3M women were employed in wage jobs.
In Kenya, the "Jua Kali" sector is another name for the informal economy, also described as non-farming self-employment. Jua Kali is Swahili for "hot sun" and refers to the idea that the workers in the informal economy work under the fierce sun. The informal sector consists of legally unrecognised and unregulated self-employment and wage employment. As a result, informal sector employment does not contribute to Kenya's GDP. Non-farm self-employment has risen from 1989 to 2009.
The World Bank characterises non-farm self-employment to include jobs such as "street vendor, shop owner, dressmaker, assistant, fishmonger, caterer, etc." Non-farm self-employment has risen from a total of 0.9 million workers in 1989 to a total of 2.7 million in 2009. Men make up 1.4 million workers, and women workers number 1.3 million.
As of 2009, Kenya's informal economy accounts for about 80% of the total employment for the country. Most informal workers are self-employed, with few entrepreneurs employing others. The informal sector contributes economic activity equal to 35% of the total GDP in Kenya, and has its own informal finance structure in the form of rotating savings and credit associations. This sector provides an income mainly for those in lower socioeconomic groups.
Drawbacks of the informal economy include the promotion of smuggling and tax evasion and the lack of social and legal protection. Most members of the informal sector have low educational attainment. Rising costs of education and uncertainty about future employment have caused many workers to enter the informal economy, due to lower entry fees as well as shorter and practical training and apprenticeships.
Suda, in 2001, estimated that Kenya had 3 million children working in intolerable conditions and who were visible. The number of invisible child workers, claims Suda, were much larger. The visible child labour in Kenya were engaged in agriculture, tourism industry, quarries and mines, pastoral labour, mining, garbage collection, fishing industry, and the transport sector where they move from place to place as "Matatu" touts.
The government of Kenya estimates there are 8.9 million children aged 5–13 who work, most of whom miss schooling. Agriculture is a major employer; of all labourers employed in coffee plantations, for example, 30% are people younger than age 27.
United Nations, in its country profile report for Kenya in 2009, estimated about one third of all children aged 5–14 were working. Agriculture and fishing were the largest employers, with former accounting for roughly 79% of child labour.
The United States Department of Labor estimated, in its 2010 report, about 32% of all Kenyan children aged 5–14 work, or over 2.9 million. Agriculture and fishing are the predominant employers. The informal sectors witnessing the worst form of child labour include sugarcane plantations, pastoral ranches, tea, coffee, miraa (a stimulant plant), rice, sisal, tobacco, tilapia and sardines fishing. Other economic activities of children in Kenya include scavenging dumpsites, collecting and selling scrap materials, glass and metal, street vending, herding and begging. Forced exploitation of children in sex tourism, the report claims, is prevalent in major cities such as Nairobi, Kisumu, Eldoret and coastal cities of Kenya.
The economy's heavy dependence on rain for its agriculture and the tourism sectors leaves it vulnerable to cycles of boom and bust. The agricultural sector employs nearly 75% of the country's 38 million people. Half of the sector's output remains subsistence production.
Kenya's economic performance had for a long time been hampered by various factors: heavy dependence on a few agricultural exports vulnerable to global price fluctuations; population growth which has outstripped economic growth; prolonged droughts requiring power rationing; deteriorating infrastructure; and extreme income inequality. Some of these factors have been addressed by policies, with GDP growth increasing, population growth slowing, rapid infrastructural improvements being made and increased electrification rates with more stable power supplies.
Poor governance and corruption also have had a negative impact on growth, making it expensive to do business in Kenya. Increased levels of insecurity brought on from terrorism have become one of the largest impediments to sustainable growth. According to Transparency International, Kenya ranks among the world's six most corrupt countries. Bribery and fraud cost Kenya as much as US$1 billion a year. The average Kenyan pay some 16 bribes a month, for two in every three encounters with public officials, even though 23% of them live on less than US$1 per day.
Despite these challenges, two thirds of Kenyans expect living conditions to improve in the coming decades.
This article incorporates public domain material from The World Factbook. CIA.
This article incorporates text from a scholarly publication published under a copyright license that allows anyone to reuse, revise, remix and redistribute the materials in any form for any purpose: Ellis, Amanda; Cutura, Jozefina; Dione, Nouma; Gillson, Ian; Manuel, Clare; Thongori, Judy. 2007. Gender and Economic Growth in Kenya : Unleashing the Power of Women. Directions in Development; Private Sector Development. Washington, DC Please check the source for the exact licensing terms.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The economy of Kenya is market-based with a few state enterprises. Kenya has an emerging market and is an averagely industrialised nation ahead of its East African peers. Currently a lower middle income nation, it plans to be a newly industrialised nation by 2030. Major industries include agriculture, forestry, fishing, mining, manufacturing, energy, tourism and financial services. As of 2020, Kenya had the third largest economy in Sub-Saharan Africa, behind Nigeria and South Africa.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The government of Kenya is generally investment-friendly and has enacted several regulatory reforms to simplify foreign and local investment, including the creation of an export processing zone. An increasingly significant portion of Kenya's foreign financial inflows are remittances by non-resident Kenyans who work in the United States, the Middle East, Europe and Asia.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "As of September 2018, economic prospects were positive, with above 6% gross domestic product (GDP) growth expected. This growth was attributed largely to expansions in the telecommunications, transport, and construction sectors; a recovery in agriculture; and the rise of small businesses helping to pull the economy. These improvements are supported by a large pool of highly educated professional workers. There is a high level of IT literacy and innovation, especially among young Kenyans.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In 2020, Kenya ranked 56th in the World Bank ease of doing business rating, up from 61st in 2019 (of 190 countries). Compared to its neighbours, Kenya has a well-developed social and physical infrastructure.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Between 70 AD and 1500 AD, trade routes — spanning Africa, Asia and Europe — integrated the Kenyan coastal strip into the world economy. Foreign merchants would bring their merchandise to the Kenyan coast and leave with African goods.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In 1499 AD, Vasco da Gama, a Portuguese explorer, returned to Europe after discovering the sea route to India through South Africa. This new route allowed European nations to dominate the trade economy of the East African coast, with the Portuguese entrenching themselves in the 16th and 17th centuries. In the 18th century, the Portuguese were replaced in this East African economic corridor by Omani Arabs. Eventually, the British replaced the Omani Arabs. In 1895 they dominated the coastal strip; by 1920, they had followed the interior trade routes all the way to the Buganda Kingdom. To make this ancient economic trade route more profitable, the British used Indian labourers to build a railway from Mombasa at the coast to Kampala, the capital of Buganda kingdom, following old trade routes. Major towns were founded along the railway line, backed by European settler farming communities. The Indian labourers who did not return to India after railway construction ended were the first to establish shops (dukawallahs) in these towns.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "During the colonial period, the European settler farming community and the Indian dukawallahs established the foundations of the modern formal Kenyan economy. Prominent examples of Asian-Kenyan business owners whose businesses started as dukawallahs include Manu Chandaria and Madatally Manji. While Europeans and Indians enjoyed strong economic growth between 1920 and 1963, Africans were deprived of their land, dehumanised, and forced to work for minimal pay under extremely poor working conditions through a well-established system of racial segregation.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Kenya gained its independence in 1963. Under President Jomo Kenyatta, the Kenyan government promoted africanisation of the Kenyan economy, generating rapid economic growth through public investment, encouragement of smallholder agricultural production, and incentives for private, often foreign, industrial investments. An influential sessional paper authored by Tom Mboya and Mwai Kibaki in 1965 stressed the need for Kenya to avoid both the capitalistic economy of the West and the communism of the East. The paper argued that Kenya should instead concentrate on African socialism, while avoiding linking Kenya's economic fortunes to any country or group of countries. From 1963 to 1973, GDP grew at an annual average rate of 6.6%; during the 1970s, it grew at an average rate of 7.2%. Agricultural production grew by 4.7% annually in the same period, stimulated by redistributing estates, distributing new crop strains, and opening new areas to cultivation. However, the rate of GDP growth declined to 4.2% per year in the 1980s, and 2.2% a year in the 1990s.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Kenya's policy of import substitution, which started in 1946 with European and Asian enterprises, did not achieve the desired result of transforming Kenya's industrial base. In the late 1970s, rising oil prices began to make Kenya's manufacturing sector noncompetitive. In response, the government began a massive intervention in the private sector. Lack of export incentives, tight import controls, and foreign exchange controls made the domestic environment for investment even less attractive.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In the 1980s and 1990s, Kenya signed structural adjustment loans with the World Bank and IMF, the loans were to be given on the condition that Kenya adopts government reforms, a liberal trade and interest rate regime, and an outward-oriented industrial policy, among other reforms . The Kenyan economy performed very poorly during this era of World Bank and IMF-driven liberalisation at the height of Daniel Arap Moi administration.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "From 1991 to 1993, Kenya had its worst economic performance since independence. Growth in GDP stagnated, and agricultural production shrank at an annual rate of 3.9%. Inflation reached a record of 100% in August 1993, and the government's budget deficit was over 10% of GDP. As a result of these issues, bilateral and multilateral donors suspended their aid programmes in Kenya in 1991.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In 1993, the Kenyan government began a major programme of economic reform and liberalisation. A new minister of finance and a new governor of the central bank undertook a series of economic measures with the assistance of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The government eliminated price controls and import licensing, removed foreign exchange controls, privatised a number of publicly owned companies, reduced the number of civil servants, and introduced conservative fiscal and monetary policies. From 1994 to 1996, Kenya's real GDP growth rate averaged just over 4% a year.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In 1997, however, the economy entered a period of slowing growth, due in part to adverse weather conditions and reduced economic activity before the general elections in December 1997. In July 1997, the Government of Kenya refused to meet earlier commitments to the IMF on governance reforms. As a result, the IMF suspended lending for three years, and the World Bank put a $90 million structural adjustment credit on hold.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The Kenyan government subsequently took positive steps on reform, including the establishment of the Kenya Anti-Corruption Authority in 1997. The state also implemented measures to improve the transparency of government procurement and reduce the government payroll. In July 2000, the IMF signed a $150 million Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility, and the World Bank followed shortly after with a $157 million Economic and Public Sector Reform credit. However, both were eventually suspended. Despite setbacks, the process of reform established Kenya as East Africa's economic powerhouse and the region's business hub.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Economic growth improved between 2003 and 2008, under the Mwai Kibaki administration. When Kibaki took power in 2003, he immediately established the National Debt Management Department at the treasury, reformed the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) to increase government revenue, reformed financial laws on banking, wrote off the debts of strategic public enterprises, and ensured that 30% of government tax revenue was invested in economic development projects. With these reforms, driven by the National Rainbow Coalition government, the KRA collected more tax revenue in 2004 than was anticipated. The government then initiated investments in infrastructure. By 2005, the Kenyan public debt had reduced from highs of 80% of GDP in 2002 to 27% of GDP in 2005. The financial sector greatly improved, and Equity Bank Kenya became one of the largest banks in East Africa. Economic growth improved from 2% in 2003 to 7% in 2007. In 2008, the growth slumped to 1% due to post-election violence before returning to an average of 5% between 2009 and 2013. However, in 2009, due to drought and the global financial crisis, high input costs as well as a fall in demand for some of the country's exports caused the agriculture sector to contract by 2.7%.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Between 2013 and 2018, under the Jubilee Party government led by Uhuru Kenyatta, GDP growth averaged above 5%. Growth in small businesses is credited with some of the improvement. Real GDP growth (annualised) was 5.7% in Q1 of 2018, 6.0% in Q2 2018 and 6.2% in Q3 2018. Despite this robust growth, concerns remained about Kenya's debt sustainability, current account deficit, fiscal consolidation and revenue growth.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The table below shows the GDP of Kenya estimated by the International Monetary Fund, with exchange rates for Kenyan shillings.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Vision 2030 is Kenya's current blueprint for its exonomic future, with the goal of creating a prosperous, globally-competitive nation with a high quality of life by 2030. The plan aims to transform Kenyan industry and environment in three pillars: economic, social, and political.",
"title": "Vision 2030 plan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Vision 2030 seeks economic growth averaging greater than 10% for 23 years, beginning in the year 2007. Economic areas targeted are tourism, agriculture, wholesale and retail trade, manufacturing, IT-enabled services, and financial services.",
"title": "Vision 2030 plan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "To improve the quality of life for Kenyans, Vision 2030 aims to improve human and social welfare programmes, specifically education and training, health, environment, housing and urbanisation, children and social development, and youth and sports. In 2018, President Uhuru Kenyatta established the Big Four Agenda, focusing on universal healthcare, manufacturing, affordable housing and food security.",
"title": "Vision 2030 plan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The political pillar envisions a \"democratic system that is issue-based, transparent, people-centred, results-oriented, and accountable to the public\". It targets five main areas: the rule of law under the Constitution of Kenya, electoral and political processes, democracy and public service delivery, transparency and accountability, and security, peace building, and conflict management.",
"title": "Vision 2030 plan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The current Constitution of Kenya was inaugurated on 27 August 2010 to drive this pillar.",
"title": "Vision 2030 plan"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Kenya's currency is printed by mandate of the Central Bank of Kenya. The bank began printing banknotes in 1996. Several versions of Kenya's banknotes and coinage have been circulated since then. The most recent redesign of Kenya's currency was in 2019.",
"title": "Currency, exchange rate, and inflation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The exchange rate of the Kenyan Shilling between 2003 and 2010 averaged about KSh74-78 per US Dollar.",
"title": "Currency, exchange rate, and inflation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The average inflation between 2005 and July 2015 was 8.5%. In July 2015 Kenya's inflation rate was estimated to be 6.62%.",
"title": "Currency, exchange rate, and inflation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In 2006, Kenyan government revenue totalled US$4.448B and its estimated expenditures totalled US$5.377B. The government budget balance as a percentage of the gross domestic product improved to −2.1% in 2006 from −5.5% in 2004.",
"title": "Government finances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In 2012, Kenya set a budget of US$14.59B with a government revenue of approximately US$12B.",
"title": "Government finances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The 2018 budget policy report set a budget of US$30B. The government revenue was approximately US$29.5B, and a deficit of US$5B was borrowed.",
"title": "Government finances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In the financial year that ended in June 2020, the Kenya Revenue Authority collected a tax revenue that amounted to approximately US$15B.",
"title": "Government finances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "From 1982, Kenya key public debt indicators rose above critical levels, both measured as a percentage of GDP and as a percentage of government revenue.",
"title": "Government finances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In 2002, the last year of Daniel arap Moi's administration, Kenya' s public debt stood at almost 80% of GDP. In the last 10 years of the Moi regime, the government was spending 94% of all its revenue on salaries and debt servicing to the IMF, World Bank and other western countries.",
"title": "Government finances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In 2003, Mwai Kibaki's administration instituted a public debt management department within the treasury department to bring Kenya's debt down to sustainable levels.",
"title": "Government finances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In 2006, Kenya had a current account deficit of US$1.5B. This figure was a significant increase over 2005, when the current account had a deficit of US$495 million. In 2006, the current account balance as a percentage of gross domestic product was −4.2.",
"title": "Government finances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In 2006, Kenya's external debt totalled US$6.7B. With a GDP of US$25.83B in 2006, the public debt level stood at 27% of GDP.",
"title": "Government finances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In 2011, the national treasury noted that the debt was rising, growing to 40% of GDP in 2009 and to 54% of GDP by 2012.",
"title": "Government finances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In 2019, Kenya's debt had risen to an absolute amount of US$50B against a GDP of US$98B. The public debt level was 51% of GDP in 2019.",
"title": "Government finances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "In 2021, Kenya's debt had risen to an absolute amount of US$65B against a GDP of US$101B.The public debt level was 65% of GDP in 2021.",
"title": "Government finances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Kenya's largest bilateral lender since 2011 has been China, and the largest multilateral lender since 1963 has been the World Bank.",
"title": "Government finances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "The Kenya Economic Stimulus Programme was introduced in the 2010–2011 budget plan. The initiative aimed to stimulate economic activity in Kenya through investment in long-term solutions to food insecurity, rural unemployment and underdevelopment. Stated improvement objectives included regional development for equity and social stability, infrastructure, education, affordable health-care, environmental conservation, information and communications technology capacity, and access to IT.",
"title": "Government finances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) was launched in 2003 as a digital platform for Kenya's financial information and services, and was later re-engineered by the Ministry of Finance to curb fraud and other malpractices. IFMIS enables integrated budget planning, being linked to planning policy objectives and budget allocation.",
"title": "Government finances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The Fund for the Inclusion of Informal Sector (FIIS) is a fund that allows businesses in the informal economy to access credit financing and other facilities, including financial and banking services.",
"title": "Government finances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The Investor Compensation Fund compensates investors who suffer losses from breaches of duty by a licensed stockbroker or dealer, up to a maximum of Sh.50,000 per investor.",
"title": "Government finances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Since independence, Kenya has received substantial foreign investment and significant amounts of development aid. Total aid was $943 million in 2006, 4% of gross national income.",
"title": "Foreign economic relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Investments come from China, Japan, Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom, among others. Kenya hosts a large number of foreign multinational companies and international organisations such as the United Nations Environment Programme. China's investments have been increasing, while those of western countries such as the United Kingdom has fallen significantly. Investments from multilateral agencies, particularly the World Bank and the European Development Fund, have also increased. The most active investors currently are the Chinese.",
"title": "Foreign economic relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Kenya is active within regional trade blocs such as the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa and the East African Community, a partnership of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan. The aim of the latter is to create a common market of its member states modelled on the European Union. Among the early steps toward integration is the bloc's customs union, which has eliminated duties on goods and non-tariff trade barriers among members.",
"title": "Foreign economic relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Kenya's chief exports are horticultural products and tea. In 2005, the combined value of these commodities was US$1,150 million, about 10 times the value of Kenya's third most valuable export, coffee. Kenya's other significant exports are petroleum products, fish, cement, pyrethrum, and sisal. The leading imports are crude petroleum, chemicals, manufactured goods, machinery, and transportation equipment. Africa is Kenya's largest export market, followed by the European Union.",
"title": "Foreign economic relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The major destinations for exports are Uganda, Tanzania, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. Major suppliers are China, India, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa. Kenya's main exports to the United States are garments traded under the terms of the African Growth and Opportunity Act. Notwithstanding this, Kenya's apparel industry is struggling to hold its ground against Asian competition and runs a trade deficit with the United States. Many of Kenya's problems relating to the export of goods are believed by economists to be caused by the fact that Kenya's exports are inexpensive items that do not bring substantial amounts of money into the country.",
"title": "Foreign economic relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Kenya is the dominant trade partner for Uganda (12.3% exports, 15.6% imports) and Rwanda (30.5% exports, 17.3% imports).",
"title": "Foreign economic relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Kenya typically has a substantial trade deficit. The trade balance fluctuates widely because Kenya's main exports are primary commodities subject to the effects of both world prices and weather. In 2005 Kenya's income from exports was about US$3.2 billion. The payment for imports was about US$5.7B, yielding a trade deficit of about US$2.5B.",
"title": "Foreign economic relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Kenyan policies on foreign investment generally have been favourable since independence, with occasional tightening of restrictions to promote the africanisation of enterprises. Foreign investors have been guaranteed ownership and the right to remit dividends, royalties, and capital.",
"title": "Foreign economic relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Kenya is currently the most important source of foreign direct investments in Uganda and Rwanda. Uganda and its neighbouring regions are the main export destinations for Kenyan products. Kenya has had more success in growing its economy and quality of life levels than many of its neighbours in sub-Saharan Africa.",
"title": "Foreign economic relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Kenya produced in 2018:",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Agriculture is the second largest contributor to Kenya's GDP, after the service sector, although only 15% of Kenya's total land area has sufficient fertility and rainfall to be farmed, and only 7 or 8% can be classified as first-class land. In 2006, almost 75% of working Kenyans made their living on the land, compared with 80% in 1980. About half of total agricultural output is non-marketed subsistence production.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "In 2005, agriculture, including forestry and fishing, accounted for about 24% of GDP, as well as for 18% of wage employment and 50% of revenue from exports. That same year, horticulture accounted for 23% and tea for 22% of total export earnings. The principal cash crops in Kenyan agriculture are tea, horticultural produce, and coffee. Coffee has declined in importance with depressed world prices, accounting for just 5% of export receipts in 2005. The production of major food staples such as corn is subject to sharp weather-related fluctuations. Production downturns also periodically necessitate food aid. In 2004, aid was needed for 1.8 million people because of Kenya's intermittent droughts. However, the expansion of credit to the agricultural sector has enabled farmers to better deal with environmental and pricing risks.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Tea, coffee, sisal, pyrethrum, corn, and wheat are grown in the fertile highlands, one of the most successful agricultural production regions in Africa. Livestock predominates in the semi-arid savanna to the north and east. Coconuts, pineapples, cashew nuts, cotton, sugarcane, sisal, and corn are grown in the lower-lying areas.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Resource degradation has reduced output from forestry. In 2004, roundwood removals came to 22,162,000 cubic meters. Fisheries are of local importance around Lake Victoria and have potential at Lake Turkana. Kenya's total catch in 2004 was 128,000 metric tons. However, output from fishing has been declining because of ecological disruption. Pollution, overfishing, and the use of unauthorised fishing equipment have led to falling catches and have endangered local fish species.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Kenya has no significant mineral endowment. The mining and quarrying sector makes a negligible contribution to the economy, accounting for less than 1% of GDP. The majority of this is contributed by the soda ash operation at Lake Magadi in south-central Kenya. Thanks largely to rising soda ash output, Kenya's mineral production in 2005 reached more than 1 million tons. One of Kenya's largest foreign-investment projects in recent years is the planned expansion of Magadi Soda. Apart from soda ash, the chief minerals produced are limestone, gold, salt, large quantities of niobium, fluorspar, and fossil fuel.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "All unextracted minerals are government property, under the Mining Act. The Department of Mines and Geology, under the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, controls exploration and exploitation of minerals.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Although Kenya is the most industrially developed country in East Africa, manufacturing still accounts for only 14% of GDP. This represents only a slight increase since independence. The rapid expansion of the sector immediately after independence stagnated in the 1980s, hampered by shortages in hydroelectric power, high energy costs, dilapidated transport infrastructure, and the dumping of cheap imports. However, due to urbanisation, the industry and manufacturing sectors have become increasingly important to the Kenyan economy, and this has been reflected by an increasing GDP per capita. Industrial activity, concentrated around the three largest urban centres, Nairobi, Mombasa, and Kisumu, is dominated by food-processing industries such as grain milling, beer production, sugarcane crushing, and the fabrication of consumer goods. Kenya also has an oil refinery that processes imported crude petroleum into petroleum products, mainly for the domestic market. In addition, a substantial and expanding informal sector engages in small-scale manufacturing of household goods, motor-vehicle parts, and farm implements.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Kenya's inclusion among the beneficiaries of the US Government's African Growth and Opportunity Act gave a boost to manufacturing. Since the Act took effect in 2000, Kenya's clothing sales to the United States increased from US$44 million to US$270M in 2006. Other initiatives to strengthen manufacturing include favourable tax measures, including the absence of duties for capital equipment and other raw materials.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "The largest segment of Kenya's electricity supply comes from hydroelectric stations at dams along the upper Tana River, as well as the Turkwel Gorge Dam in the west. A petroleum-fired plant on the coast, geothermal facilities at Olkaria, and electricity imported from Uganda make up the balance. Kenya's installed capacity stood at 1,142 megawatts a year between 2001 and 2003. The state-owned Kenya Electricity Generating Company, established in 1997 under the name Kenya Power Company, handles the generation of electricity, while the Kenya Power and Lighting Company handles transmission and distribution. Shortfalls of electricity occur periodically when drought reduces water flow. In 1997 and 2000, for example, drought prompted severe power rationing, with economically-damaging 12-hour blackouts. Frequent outages and high costs of power remain serious obstacles to economic activity. Tax and other concessions are planned to encourage investment in hydroelectricity and in geothermal energy, which Kenya has been a pioneer in adopting.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Kenya currently imports all crude petroleum requirements, with petroleum accounting for 20% to 25% of the national import bill. Hydrocarbon reserves have been found in Kenya's semi-arid northern region of Turkana after several decades of intermittent exploration. Offshore prospecting also continues. Kenya Petroleum Refineries, a 50:50 joint venture between the government and several oil majors, operates the country's sole oil refinery in Mombasa. The refinery's production is transported via Kenya's Mombasa–Nairobi pipeline. However, the refinery is currently non-operational. In 2004, oil consumption was estimated at 55,000 barrels (8,700 m) a day.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Kenya's dependence on tourism has greatly reduced over the years. In 2019, foreign tourist revenues stood at $1.76 billion, accounting for only 1.6% of Kenya's GDP and approximately 12% of all international tourism receipts in Eastern Africa.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "The growing middle class in Kenya has also led to a significant growth in local tourism over the years, diversifying the sources of revenue for the sector. In 2018, domestic tourists’ occupancy accounted for 52.9% of the total bed occupancy in the country.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Kenya offers numerous large national parks in a wide variety of landscapes. Besides the coast, there are large deserts, steppes and mountains. The national parks and nature reserves contain the natural habitats of many animal species.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Kenya is East Africa's hub for financial services. The Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE) is ranked 4th in Africa in terms of market capitalisation.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "The banking sector in Kenya is regulated by The Central Bank Of Kenya. Kenya's banking sector is mainly dominated by local commercial banks, namely Equity Bank, Kenya Commercial Bank, NCBA Bank, Diamond Trust Bank, Cooperative Bank, and National Bank. The Kenya Commercial Bank is the largest bank in Kenya by asset size and branch network as of 2023.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Kenya enjoys the presence of a number of high-profile accounting firms. The Big Four firms, Mazars, Grant Thornton International, and PKF International actively operate within the financial system, and are often responsible for the audit of Nairobi Stock Exchange firms.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Kenya’s first commercial-sized ship to be built from scratch-- not only in Kenya but also in the whole of East Africa-- was launched in October of 2023. The 1800-ton vessel, the MV Uhuru II, will ferry goods and petroleum across Lake Victoria.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "In 2022, Kenya's labour force was estimated to include about 24 million workers. In recent years, much of Kenya's labour force has moved from the countryside to cities such as Nairobi, as Kenya becomes increasingly urbanised.",
"title": "Labour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "The labour force participation rate in Kenya has been constant from 1997 to 2010 for both women and men. In 1997, 65% of women were employed in some type of labour and 76% of men were employed. In 2005, 60% of women and 70% of men were in the labour force, increasing slightly to 61% of women and 72% of men in 2010.",
"title": "Labour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "In the past 20 years, many Kenyans have moved away from family farming towards wage labour, small business entrepreneurship, and informal work. In 1989, 4.5 million Kenyans out of a total working population of 7.3M worked on family farms. In 2009, only 6.5M Kenyans out of a total working population of 14.3M worked on family farms. Of these, 3.8M were women and 2.7M were men.",
"title": "Labour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "According to the World Bank 2012 Kenya Economic Update, modern wage jobs include being an \"engineer, telecommunication specialist, cut flower worker, teacher, construction worker, housekeepers, professionals, any industrial and manufacturing job, and port and dock workers.\" In 1989, there were only 1.9M Kenyans employed in wage work. In 2009, this number increased to 5.1M, with 3.4M men and 1.3M women were employed in wage jobs.",
"title": "Labour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "In Kenya, the \"Jua Kali\" sector is another name for the informal economy, also described as non-farming self-employment. Jua Kali is Swahili for \"hot sun\" and refers to the idea that the workers in the informal economy work under the fierce sun. The informal sector consists of legally unrecognised and unregulated self-employment and wage employment. As a result, informal sector employment does not contribute to Kenya's GDP. Non-farm self-employment has risen from 1989 to 2009.",
"title": "Labour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "The World Bank characterises non-farm self-employment to include jobs such as \"street vendor, shop owner, dressmaker, assistant, fishmonger, caterer, etc.\" Non-farm self-employment has risen from a total of 0.9 million workers in 1989 to a total of 2.7 million in 2009. Men make up 1.4 million workers, and women workers number 1.3 million.",
"title": "Labour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "As of 2009, Kenya's informal economy accounts for about 80% of the total employment for the country. Most informal workers are self-employed, with few entrepreneurs employing others. The informal sector contributes economic activity equal to 35% of the total GDP in Kenya, and has its own informal finance structure in the form of rotating savings and credit associations. This sector provides an income mainly for those in lower socioeconomic groups.",
"title": "Labour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Drawbacks of the informal economy include the promotion of smuggling and tax evasion and the lack of social and legal protection. Most members of the informal sector have low educational attainment. Rising costs of education and uncertainty about future employment have caused many workers to enter the informal economy, due to lower entry fees as well as shorter and practical training and apprenticeships.",
"title": "Labour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Suda, in 2001, estimated that Kenya had 3 million children working in intolerable conditions and who were visible. The number of invisible child workers, claims Suda, were much larger. The visible child labour in Kenya were engaged in agriculture, tourism industry, quarries and mines, pastoral labour, mining, garbage collection, fishing industry, and the transport sector where they move from place to place as \"Matatu\" touts.",
"title": "Labour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "The government of Kenya estimates there are 8.9 million children aged 5–13 who work, most of whom miss schooling. Agriculture is a major employer; of all labourers employed in coffee plantations, for example, 30% are people younger than age 27.",
"title": "Labour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "United Nations, in its country profile report for Kenya in 2009, estimated about one third of all children aged 5–14 were working. Agriculture and fishing were the largest employers, with former accounting for roughly 79% of child labour.",
"title": "Labour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "The United States Department of Labor estimated, in its 2010 report, about 32% of all Kenyan children aged 5–14 work, or over 2.9 million. Agriculture and fishing are the predominant employers. The informal sectors witnessing the worst form of child labour include sugarcane plantations, pastoral ranches, tea, coffee, miraa (a stimulant plant), rice, sisal, tobacco, tilapia and sardines fishing. Other economic activities of children in Kenya include scavenging dumpsites, collecting and selling scrap materials, glass and metal, street vending, herding and begging. Forced exploitation of children in sex tourism, the report claims, is prevalent in major cities such as Nairobi, Kisumu, Eldoret and coastal cities of Kenya.",
"title": "Labour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "The economy's heavy dependence on rain for its agriculture and the tourism sectors leaves it vulnerable to cycles of boom and bust. The agricultural sector employs nearly 75% of the country's 38 million people. Half of the sector's output remains subsistence production.",
"title": "Challenges"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Kenya's economic performance had for a long time been hampered by various factors: heavy dependence on a few agricultural exports vulnerable to global price fluctuations; population growth which has outstripped economic growth; prolonged droughts requiring power rationing; deteriorating infrastructure; and extreme income inequality. Some of these factors have been addressed by policies, with GDP growth increasing, population growth slowing, rapid infrastructural improvements being made and increased electrification rates with more stable power supplies.",
"title": "Challenges"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Poor governance and corruption also have had a negative impact on growth, making it expensive to do business in Kenya. Increased levels of insecurity brought on from terrorism have become one of the largest impediments to sustainable growth. According to Transparency International, Kenya ranks among the world's six most corrupt countries. Bribery and fraud cost Kenya as much as US$1 billion a year. The average Kenyan pay some 16 bribes a month, for two in every three encounters with public officials, even though 23% of them live on less than US$1 per day.",
"title": "Challenges"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Despite these challenges, two thirds of Kenyans expect living conditions to improve in the coming decades.",
"title": "Challenges"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "This article incorporates public domain material from The World Factbook. CIA.",
"title": "Notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "This article incorporates text from a scholarly publication published under a copyright license that allows anyone to reuse, revise, remix and redistribute the materials in any form for any purpose: Ellis, Amanda; Cutura, Jozefina; Dione, Nouma; Gillson, Ian; Manuel, Clare; Thongori, Judy. 2007. Gender and Economic Growth in Kenya : Unleashing the Power of Women. Directions in Development; Private Sector Development. Washington, DC Please check the source for the exact licensing terms.",
"title": "Notes"
}
] |
The economy of Kenya is market-based with a few state enterprises. Kenya has an emerging market and is an averagely industrialised nation ahead of its East African peers. Currently a lower middle income nation, it plans to be a newly industrialised nation by 2030. Major industries include agriculture, forestry, fishing, mining, manufacturing, energy, tourism and financial services. As of 2020, Kenya had the third largest economy in Sub-Saharan Africa, behind Nigeria and South Africa. The government of Kenya is generally investment-friendly and has enacted several regulatory reforms to simplify foreign and local investment, including the creation of an export processing zone. An increasingly significant portion of Kenya's foreign financial inflows are remittances by non-resident Kenyans who work in the United States, the Middle East, Europe and Asia. As of September 2018, economic prospects were positive, with above 6% gross domestic product (GDP) growth expected. This growth was attributed largely to expansions in the telecommunications, transport, and construction sectors; a recovery in agriculture; and the rise of small businesses helping to pull the economy. These improvements are supported by a large pool of highly educated professional workers. There is a high level of IT literacy and innovation, especially among young Kenyans. In 2020, Kenya ranked 56th in the World Bank ease of doing business rating, up from 61st in 2019. Compared to its neighbours, Kenya has a well-developed social and physical infrastructure.
|
2001-05-11T00:06:22Z
|
2023-12-22T04:49:35Z
|
[
"Template:Africa topic",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Commons category",
"Template:Further",
"Template:When",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:CIA World Factbook",
"Template:Kenya topics",
"Template:Cbignore",
"Template:OA-attribution",
"Template:Economy of Kenya",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:See also",
"Template:Excerpt",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Curlie",
"Template:EngvarB",
"Template:Infobox economy",
"Template:Convert",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Dead link"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Kenya
|
16,658 |
Telecommunications in Kenya
|
Telecommunications in Kenya include radio, television, fixed and mobile telephones, and the Internet.
Radio stations:
Radios: 3.07 million (1997).
Television stations:
Television sets: 730,000 (1997).
Television is the main news source in cities and towns. TV in rural areas is limited by lack of reliable electricity and radio listening dominates in rural areas, where most Kenyans live. A switchover to digital TV is under way. Satellite pay-TV is offered by the Wananchi Group, which operates Zuku TV, and by South Africa's MultiChoice. Entertainment, music and phone-ins dominate the radio scene, which includes Islamic stations and stations broadcasting in local languages.
The BBC World Service is available in Nairobi, Mombasa, and Kisumu.
The state-run Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) is funded from advertising revenue and from the government.
Calling code: +254
International call prefix: 000
Main lines:
Mobile Cellular:
Telephone system: inadequate; fixed-line telephone system is small and inefficient; trunks are primarily microwave radio relay; business data commonly transferred by a very small aperture terminal (VSAT) system; sole fixed-line provider, Telkom Kenya, is slated for privatization; multiple providers in the mobile-cellular segment of the market fostering a boom in mobile-cellular telephone usage with teledensity reaching 65 per 100 persons (2011).
Communications cables: landing point for the Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy), The East African Marine System (TEAMS), and SEACOM fiber-optic submarine cable systems (2011).
Satellite earth stations: 4 Intelsat (2011).
Top-level domain: .ke
Internet users:
Fixed broadband: 43,013 subscriptions, 115th in the world; 0.1% of the population, 167th in the world (2012).
Wireless broadband: 954,896 subscriptions, 72nd in the world; 2.2% of the population, 124th in the world (2012).
Internet hosts: 71,018 hosts, 88th in the world (2012).
IPv4: 1.7 million addresses allocated, 68th in the world, less than 0.05% of the world total, 38.5 addresses per 1000 people (2012).
Internet Service Providers: 66 ISPs (2014).
Kenya was rated as "partly free" in the 2009 and 2011 Freedom on the Net reports from Freedom House with scores of 34 and 32 which is much closer to the "free" rating that ends at 30 then it is to the "not free" rating that starts at 60. In 2012 and 2013 the rating improved to "free" with scores of 29 and 28.
The government does not employ technical filtering or any administrative censorship system to restrict access to political or other content. Citizens engage in the peaceful expression of views via the Internet, including by e-mail, and are able to access a wide range of viewpoints, with the websites of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the U.S.-based Cable News Network (CNN), and Kenya's Daily Nation newspaper the most commonly accessed. There are no government restrictions on access to the Internet, but Internet services are limited in rural areas due to lack of infrastructure.
The constitution protects freedom of expression and the "freedom to communicate ideas and information." However, it also grants the government the authority to punish defamation, protect privileged information, and restrict state employees’ "freedom of expression in the interest of defense, public safety, public order, public morality or public health." In January 2009, the government passed a controversial Communications Amendment Act that established that any person who publishes, transmits, or causes to be published in electronic form obscene information commits an offense. The Act also outlines other forms of illegality associated with the use of information and communication technologies. At the end of 2010, the measure had not been used to prosecute anyone for online expression. Under the Act, the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK), rather than the independent Media Council of Kenya, is responsible for regulating both traditional and online media. The CCK is also independent, but because the CCK has yet to make any decisions affecting the internet, its autonomy and professionalism in making determinations remain to be seen.
In July 2009 the government announced that all cell phone users had to provide the government with their name and identification number. This regulation applies to citizens who access the Internet through cell phone-based services as well.
On 18 May 2018, the Kenya Film Classification Board issued a warning stating that any video intended for public exhibition, including video published online, falls under the Films and Stage Plays Act, and that the creators of such videos must obtain a licence from the KFCB or be subject to fines or imprisonment.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Telecommunications in Kenya include radio, television, fixed and mobile telephones, and the Internet.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Radio stations:",
"title": "Radio and television"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Radios: 3.07 million (1997).",
"title": "Radio and television"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Television stations:",
"title": "Radio and television"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Television sets: 730,000 (1997).",
"title": "Radio and television"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Television is the main news source in cities and towns. TV in rural areas is limited by lack of reliable electricity and radio listening dominates in rural areas, where most Kenyans live. A switchover to digital TV is under way. Satellite pay-TV is offered by the Wananchi Group, which operates Zuku TV, and by South Africa's MultiChoice. Entertainment, music and phone-ins dominate the radio scene, which includes Islamic stations and stations broadcasting in local languages.",
"title": "Radio and television"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The BBC World Service is available in Nairobi, Mombasa, and Kisumu.",
"title": "Radio and television"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The state-run Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) is funded from advertising revenue and from the government.",
"title": "Radio and television"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Calling code: +254",
"title": "Telephones"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "International call prefix: 000",
"title": "Telephones"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Main lines:",
"title": "Telephones"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Mobile Cellular:",
"title": "Telephones"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Telephone system: inadequate; fixed-line telephone system is small and inefficient; trunks are primarily microwave radio relay; business data commonly transferred by a very small aperture terminal (VSAT) system; sole fixed-line provider, Telkom Kenya, is slated for privatization; multiple providers in the mobile-cellular segment of the market fostering a boom in mobile-cellular telephone usage with teledensity reaching 65 per 100 persons (2011).",
"title": "Telephones"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Communications cables: landing point for the Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy), The East African Marine System (TEAMS), and SEACOM fiber-optic submarine cable systems (2011).",
"title": "Telephones"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Satellite earth stations: 4 Intelsat (2011).",
"title": "Telephones"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Top-level domain: .ke",
"title": "Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Internet users:",
"title": "Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Fixed broadband: 43,013 subscriptions, 115th in the world; 0.1% of the population, 167th in the world (2012).",
"title": "Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Wireless broadband: 954,896 subscriptions, 72nd in the world; 2.2% of the population, 124th in the world (2012).",
"title": "Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Internet hosts: 71,018 hosts, 88th in the world (2012).",
"title": "Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "IPv4: 1.7 million addresses allocated, 68th in the world, less than 0.05% of the world total, 38.5 addresses per 1000 people (2012).",
"title": "Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Internet Service Providers: 66 ISPs (2014).",
"title": "Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Kenya was rated as \"partly free\" in the 2009 and 2011 Freedom on the Net reports from Freedom House with scores of 34 and 32 which is much closer to the \"free\" rating that ends at 30 then it is to the \"not free\" rating that starts at 60. In 2012 and 2013 the rating improved to \"free\" with scores of 29 and 28.",
"title": "Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The government does not employ technical filtering or any administrative censorship system to restrict access to political or other content. Citizens engage in the peaceful expression of views via the Internet, including by e-mail, and are able to access a wide range of viewpoints, with the websites of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the U.S.-based Cable News Network (CNN), and Kenya's Daily Nation newspaper the most commonly accessed. There are no government restrictions on access to the Internet, but Internet services are limited in rural areas due to lack of infrastructure.",
"title": "Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The constitution protects freedom of expression and the \"freedom to communicate ideas and information.\" However, it also grants the government the authority to punish defamation, protect privileged information, and restrict state employees’ \"freedom of expression in the interest of defense, public safety, public order, public morality or public health.\" In January 2009, the government passed a controversial Communications Amendment Act that established that any person who publishes, transmits, or causes to be published in electronic form obscene information commits an offense. The Act also outlines other forms of illegality associated with the use of information and communication technologies. At the end of 2010, the measure had not been used to prosecute anyone for online expression. Under the Act, the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK), rather than the independent Media Council of Kenya, is responsible for regulating both traditional and online media. The CCK is also independent, but because the CCK has yet to make any decisions affecting the internet, its autonomy and professionalism in making determinations remain to be seen.",
"title": "Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In July 2009 the government announced that all cell phone users had to provide the government with their name and identification number. This regulation applies to citizens who access the Internet through cell phone-based services as well.",
"title": "Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "On 18 May 2018, the Kenya Film Classification Board issued a warning stating that any video intended for public exhibition, including video published online, falls under the Films and Stage Plays Act, and that the creators of such videos must obtain a licence from the KFCB or be subject to fines or imprisonment.",
"title": "Internet"
}
] |
Telecommunications in Kenya include radio, television, fixed and mobile telephones, and the Internet.
|
2002-02-25T15:43:11Z
|
2023-11-06T10:45:21Z
|
[
"Template:Update after",
"Template:See also",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Economy of Kenya",
"Template:Telecommunications",
"Template:CIA World Factbook",
"Template:US DOS",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Kenya topics",
"Template:Africa topic",
"Template:Internet censorship by country"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_in_Kenya
|
16,659 |
Transport in Kenya
|
Transport in Kenya refers to the transportation structure in Kenya. The country has an extensive network of paved and unpaved roads.
Kenya's railway system links the nation's ports and major cities and connects Kenya with neighbouring Uganda. There are 15 airports with paved runways.
According to the Kenya Roads Board, Kenya has 160,886 kilometres (99,970 mi) of roads.Several paving projects are underway.
They are currently classified into the following categories:
There are around 100,000 matatus (minibuses), which constitute the bulk of the country's public transport system.
Once the largest bus company in Kenya, Kenya Bus Services, ran into financial difficulties, forcing them to reduce the number of buses operated. They are currently operating minibuses within Nairobi city, although new, smaller, city buses offering passengers higher standards of comfort and safety have been introduced on some inner-city routes.
Coast Bus, the oldest bus operator in Kenya, runs a day and night service between Nairobi and the coastal city of Mombasa. Ascott operates minivans offering shuttle service between Nairobi and Kisii; they offer snacks on board. The Guardian bus co. Ltd, a private company which runs the Guardian Bus service, operates day and night passenger bus and courier services to a number of destinations in Western Kenya.
Other bus companies in Kenya include Modern Coast, Nyamira Express, Otange, MASH, Vanga, Simba coach, Xenon dreamline, Messina, MAslah, Amani coaches, west coaches, Horizon, 2nk sacco, Chania Comfort, chania genesis, parrot line, x calibur and Crown Bus but there are a number of other companies which offer inter-city services such as Eldoret Express,Kawere, Climax, Greenline, Western Express, Mbukinya, Kalita Coaches and Palmdam.There also number of shuttle companies operating van to western Kenya such as Sasaline, Blueline, Classic, Khukhu, Royal Rift, Transline msafiri, Transline classic, Premium shuttles, Nyanza shuttle, North Rift, Molo Line and Mash Poa.Taxedo
In February 2004 the Ministry of Transport in Kenya introduced new regulations governing the operation of Matatus. These regulations (famously referred to as "Michuki Rules") include: the compulsory fitting of safety belts and speed governors. In addition, standing on matatus was banned. As a result of these regulations, many matatus were taken off the road, which caused great disruption to public transport, forcing many people to walk to work. Now the situation has stabilised, and the new regulations have resulted in a great reduction of the number of people killed and injured in accidents. Due to lax enforcement after the initial push, the number of deaths in road accidents had increased in recent years.
On 1 December 2012 the government will begin to enforce the recently amended traffic act which has significantly increased the penalties for offences. Matatu operators have protested the move through strike action.
Two routes in the Trans-African Highway network pass through Kenya and the capital, Nairobi:
total: 16
over 3,047 m: 5
2,438 to 3,047 m: 2
1,524 to 2,437 m: 2
914 to 1,523 m: 6
under 914 m: 1 (2013)
Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, is Kenya's largest airport and serves the most destinations. Some international flights go to Moi International Airport in Mombasa. Kisumu Airport was upgraded to an international airport in 2011 and a second phase of expansion is under way. In 2012, US Navy Seebees built a major new tarmac runway at Wajir Airport that can take heavy aircraft.
total: 181
1,524 to 2,437 m: 14
914 to 1,523 m: 107
under 914 m: 60 (2013)
Many airports with unpaved runways serve private purposes, such as private game parks and safari lodges, but are still serviced by airlines like AirKenya
Total: 2,066 km (1,284 mi)
1,000 mm (3 ft 3+3⁄8 in) metre gauge: 2,066 km
The former Uganda Railway, was run by the company East African Railways. It jointly served the present countries of Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. Since the dissolution of the EAR corporation in 1977, the national company Kenya Railways Corporation runs the former Uganda Railway and its branches in Kenya. The most important line in the country runs between the port of Mombasa and Nairobi, sleeping car accommodation is offered for tourists.
In 2006, the Rift Valley Railways Consortium led by South African companies took over the operation of the Kenyan and Ugandan railway network on a contract lasting 25 years, with the opportunity of renewal. After criticism from the Kenya Railways Corporation, RVR doubled the frequency of service, and also imposed restrictions to reduce train derailments caused by the ageing infrastructure.
RVR run passenger trains within Kenya only, primarily from Nairobi to Mombasa but also to local towns such as Kisumu. Passenger services on these lines are offered on peak periods only. Freight services are the bulk of RVR's operations.
In 2008, agreements were made with Uganda about gauge standardisation.
In 2011, Kenya signed a memorandum of understanding with the China Road and Bridge Corporation to build the Mombasa–Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway (SGR). Financing for the US$3.6 billion project was finalised in May 2014, with the Exim Bank of China extending a loan for 90% of the project cost, and the remaining 10% coming from the Kenyan government. Passenger service on the SGR was inaugurated on 31 May 2017. Work to extend the SGR to Suswa is complete. The SGR program is intended to replace the old, inefficient metre-gauge railway system.
The first segment of the SGR, between Mombasa and Nairobi, opened passenger rail service in June 2017, and freight rail service in January 2018.
Part of the Lake Victoria system is within the boundaries of Kenya. Kenya has a major international port at Mombasa, serving both Kenya and Uganda. Kisumu on Lake Victoria is also another major port, which has ferry connections to Uganda and Tanzania.
Total: 3 ships (with a volume of 1,000 gross tonnage (GT) or over) 6,049 GT/7,082 tonnes deadweight (DWT)
By type: passenger/cargo 2, petroleum tanker 1
Registered in other countries: 6 (2006)
Mombasa has the only commercial port that reaches international standards. Mombasa's commercial port is called Kilindini Harbour and is run by the Kenya Ports Authority, it lies on the Indian Ocean.
There are plans to build another international port in Lamu to the north east of Mombasa.
There is an inland port at Kisumu which serves Lake Victoria. In 2015 a new ferry was delivered to Kisumu by road.
This article incorporates public domain material from The World Factbook. CIA.
Regulators
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Transport in Kenya refers to the transportation structure in Kenya. The country has an extensive network of paved and unpaved roads.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Kenya's railway system links the nation's ports and major cities and connects Kenya with neighbouring Uganda. There are 15 airports with paved runways.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "According to the Kenya Roads Board, Kenya has 160,886 kilometres (99,970 mi) of roads.Several paving projects are underway.",
"title": "Roads"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "They are currently classified into the following categories:",
"title": "Roads"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "There are around 100,000 matatus (minibuses), which constitute the bulk of the country's public transport system.",
"title": "Roads"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Once the largest bus company in Kenya, Kenya Bus Services, ran into financial difficulties, forcing them to reduce the number of buses operated. They are currently operating minibuses within Nairobi city, although new, smaller, city buses offering passengers higher standards of comfort and safety have been introduced on some inner-city routes.",
"title": "Roads"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Coast Bus, the oldest bus operator in Kenya, runs a day and night service between Nairobi and the coastal city of Mombasa. Ascott operates minivans offering shuttle service between Nairobi and Kisii; they offer snacks on board. The Guardian bus co. Ltd, a private company which runs the Guardian Bus service, operates day and night passenger bus and courier services to a number of destinations in Western Kenya.",
"title": "Roads"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Other bus companies in Kenya include Modern Coast, Nyamira Express, Otange, MASH, Vanga, Simba coach, Xenon dreamline, Messina, MAslah, Amani coaches, west coaches, Horizon, 2nk sacco, Chania Comfort, chania genesis, parrot line, x calibur and Crown Bus but there are a number of other companies which offer inter-city services such as Eldoret Express,Kawere, Climax, Greenline, Western Express, Mbukinya, Kalita Coaches and Palmdam.There also number of shuttle companies operating van to western Kenya such as Sasaline, Blueline, Classic, Khukhu, Royal Rift, Transline msafiri, Transline classic, Premium shuttles, Nyanza shuttle, North Rift, Molo Line and Mash Poa.Taxedo",
"title": "Roads"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In February 2004 the Ministry of Transport in Kenya introduced new regulations governing the operation of Matatus. These regulations (famously referred to as \"Michuki Rules\") include: the compulsory fitting of safety belts and speed governors. In addition, standing on matatus was banned. As a result of these regulations, many matatus were taken off the road, which caused great disruption to public transport, forcing many people to walk to work. Now the situation has stabilised, and the new regulations have resulted in a great reduction of the number of people killed and injured in accidents. Due to lax enforcement after the initial push, the number of deaths in road accidents had increased in recent years.",
"title": "Roads"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "On 1 December 2012 the government will begin to enforce the recently amended traffic act which has significantly increased the penalties for offences. Matatu operators have protested the move through strike action.",
"title": "Roads"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Two routes in the Trans-African Highway network pass through Kenya and the capital, Nairobi:",
"title": "Roads"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "total: 16",
"title": "Airports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "over 3,047 m: 5",
"title": "Airports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "2,438 to 3,047 m: 2",
"title": "Airports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "1,524 to 2,437 m: 2",
"title": "Airports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "914 to 1,523 m: 6",
"title": "Airports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "under 914 m: 1 (2013)",
"title": "Airports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, is Kenya's largest airport and serves the most destinations. Some international flights go to Moi International Airport in Mombasa. Kisumu Airport was upgraded to an international airport in 2011 and a second phase of expansion is under way. In 2012, US Navy Seebees built a major new tarmac runway at Wajir Airport that can take heavy aircraft.",
"title": "Airports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "total: 181",
"title": "Airports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "1,524 to 2,437 m: 14",
"title": "Airports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "914 to 1,523 m: 107",
"title": "Airports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "under 914 m: 60 (2013)",
"title": "Airports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Many airports with unpaved runways serve private purposes, such as private game parks and safari lodges, but are still serviced by airlines like AirKenya",
"title": "Airports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Total: 2,066 km (1,284 mi)",
"title": "Railways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "1,000 mm (3 ft 3+3⁄8 in) metre gauge: 2,066 km",
"title": "Railways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The former Uganda Railway, was run by the company East African Railways. It jointly served the present countries of Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. Since the dissolution of the EAR corporation in 1977, the national company Kenya Railways Corporation runs the former Uganda Railway and its branches in Kenya. The most important line in the country runs between the port of Mombasa and Nairobi, sleeping car accommodation is offered for tourists.",
"title": "Railways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In 2006, the Rift Valley Railways Consortium led by South African companies took over the operation of the Kenyan and Ugandan railway network on a contract lasting 25 years, with the opportunity of renewal. After criticism from the Kenya Railways Corporation, RVR doubled the frequency of service, and also imposed restrictions to reduce train derailments caused by the ageing infrastructure.",
"title": "Railways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "RVR run passenger trains within Kenya only, primarily from Nairobi to Mombasa but also to local towns such as Kisumu. Passenger services on these lines are offered on peak periods only. Freight services are the bulk of RVR's operations.",
"title": "Railways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In 2008, agreements were made with Uganda about gauge standardisation.",
"title": "Railways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In 2011, Kenya signed a memorandum of understanding with the China Road and Bridge Corporation to build the Mombasa–Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway (SGR). Financing for the US$3.6 billion project was finalised in May 2014, with the Exim Bank of China extending a loan for 90% of the project cost, and the remaining 10% coming from the Kenyan government. Passenger service on the SGR was inaugurated on 31 May 2017. Work to extend the SGR to Suswa is complete. The SGR program is intended to replace the old, inefficient metre-gauge railway system.",
"title": "Railways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The first segment of the SGR, between Mombasa and Nairobi, opened passenger rail service in June 2017, and freight rail service in January 2018.",
"title": "Railways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Part of the Lake Victoria system is within the boundaries of Kenya. Kenya has a major international port at Mombasa, serving both Kenya and Uganda. Kisumu on Lake Victoria is also another major port, which has ferry connections to Uganda and Tanzania.",
"title": "Waterways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Total: 3 ships (with a volume of 1,000 gross tonnage (GT) or over) 6,049 GT/7,082 tonnes deadweight (DWT)",
"title": "Waterways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "By type: passenger/cargo 2, petroleum tanker 1",
"title": "Waterways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Registered in other countries: 6 (2006)",
"title": "Waterways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Mombasa has the only commercial port that reaches international standards. Mombasa's commercial port is called Kilindini Harbour and is run by the Kenya Ports Authority, it lies on the Indian Ocean.",
"title": "Waterways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "There are plans to build another international port in Lamu to the north east of Mombasa.",
"title": "Waterways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "There is an inland port at Kisumu which serves Lake Victoria. In 2015 a new ferry was delivered to Kisumu by road.",
"title": "Waterways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "This article incorporates public domain material from The World Factbook. CIA.",
"title": "References"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Regulators",
"title": "External links"
}
] |
Transport in Kenya refers to the transportation structure in Kenya. The country has an extensive network of paved and unpaved roads. Kenya's railway system links the nation's ports and major cities and connects Kenya with neighbouring Uganda. There are 15 airports with paved runways.
|
2002-02-25T15:43:11Z
|
2023-09-14T21:28:23Z
|
[
"Template:CIA",
"Template:RailGauge",
"Template:Flagicon",
"Template:DWT",
"Template:CIA World Factbook",
"Template:Kenya topics",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Convert",
"Template:Africa in topic",
"Template:US$",
"Template:GT",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Economy of Kenya",
"Template:EngvarB",
"Template:Main",
"Template:See also",
"Template:Update"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Kenya
|
16,660 |
Kenya Defence Forces
|
The Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) (Swahili: Majeshi ya Ulinzi ya Kenya, stylized as "KENYA ARMED FORCES" capitalized on its coat of arms) are the armed forces of the Republic of Kenya. They are made up of the Kenya Army, Kenya Navy, and Kenya Air Force. The current KDF was established, and its composition stipulated, in Article 241 of the 2010 Constitution of Kenya; it is governed by the KDF Act of 2012. Its main mission is the defence and protection of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Kenya, recruitment to the KDF is done on yearly basis. The President of Kenya is the commander-in-chief of the KDF, and the Chief of Defence Forces is the highest-ranking military officer, and the principal military adviser to the President of Kenya.
The Defence Forces, like many Kenyan government institutions, has been tainted by corruption allegations. Because the operations of the military have been traditionally cloaked by the ubiquitous blanket of "state security", the corruption has been less in public view, and thus less subject to public scrutiny and notoriety. But in 2010, credible claims of corruption were made with regard to recruitment, and procurement of Armoured Personnel Carriers. The decision on the Northrop F-5 "Tiger" aircraft procurement have been publicly questioned. In 2015, credible allegations were made that the KDF is involved with sugar smuggling from southern Somalia into Kenya, to avoid import dues.
The KDF is regularly deployed in peacekeeping and warfighting missions, for example the counter-insurgency fight against Al-Shabaab in Somalia since 2011.
The United Kingdom raised and maintained forces in Kenya Colony after it was established, eventually to become the King's African Rifles (KAR). The KAR fought during the two World Wars and in the Mau Mau Uprising. On the other side of the Mau Mau Uprising was the first Kenyan force raised by African themselves, the Kenya Land and Freedom Army.
Kenya's independence on the midnight of 12 December 1963 was an enormous milestone. On independence, the Kenyan Parliament created the Kenya Military Forces (KMF) through the KMF Act 1963. Thus 3 KAR, 5 KAR, and 11 KAR became 3 Kenya Rifles, 5 Kenya Rifles, and 11 Kenya Rifles respectively. The new independence government retained senior British military officers as advisers and trainers to the new Kenyan army. They stayed on, administering the former KAR units as they developed more Kenyan characteristics. The Kenya Regiment composed of British settlers was disbanded.
Between 1963 and 1967, Kenya fought the Shifta War against Somali residents who sought union with their kin in the Somali Republic to the north.
On the evening of 24 January 1964, the failure of the Kenyan Prime Minister to appear on television, where 11th Kenya Rifles junior soldiers had been expecting a televised speech and hoping for a pay rise announcement, caused the men to mutiny. Parsons says it is possible that the speech was only broadcast on the radio in the Nakuru area where Lanet Barracks, home of the battalion, was located. Kenyatta's government held two separate courts-martial for 43 soldiers.
In the aftermath of the mutiny and following courts-martial, the 11th Kenya Rifles was disbanded. A new battalion, 1st Kenya Rifles, was created entirely from 340 Lanet soldiers who had been cleared of participation in the mutiny by the Kenyan Criminal Investigations Division (CID). Hornsby writes that after the mutiny, '[Kenyatta] improved conditions, announced pay rises to the military, speeded Africanisation, and instructed the intelligence services to infiltrate and watch the army for signs of disaffection.'
Discussions began in March 1964 between Kenya and Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations Duncan Sandys on defence, and a formal agreement was signed on 3 June 1964. All British troops would leave by 12 December 1964, the British would assist the army, resource and train a new Kenya Air Force, and create a new Kenya Navy. They would also provide RAF and Army units to support internal security in the north-east. Significant military loans would be cancelled, and much military property made over to the Kenyan Government. In return, British aircraft would be able to transit through Kenya, RN ships of the Far East Fleet and other units could visit Mombasa, communications facilities could be used until 1966, and troops could exercise in Kenya twice a year. Army training deployments have continued up until 2015, as of 2015 supervised by British Army Training Unit Kenya.
Timothy Parsons wrote in 2002–03:
'..Kenyatta did not have to worry about the political reliability of the Kenyan Army because expatriate senior British military advisors ran it along KAR lines throughout the 1960s. Following the lessons of the Lanet protects, African officers assumed operational command of all major units, but a British training team still oversaw the Kenyan Army for most of the decade. More significantly, an informal defence arrangement with Britain reassured Kenyatta that he could rely on direct British military support in the event of an army mutiny or attempted coup.'
Within months of British Brigadier A.J. Hardy leaving the post of Commander Kenya Army and handing over to Brigadier Joseph Ndolo on 1 December 1966, British influence was underlined with the appointment of Major General Bernard Penfold as Chief of the General Staff, a new position as senior officer of the entire armed forces. Ndolo succeeded Penfold as Chief of General Staff in 1969, but was retired on 24 June 1971 after being implicated in a coup plot allegedly organised by Joseph Owino. The service chiefs thereafter reported directly to the Minister of Defence, James Gichuru. The post of Chief of the General Staff was only filled again seven years later when Daniel arap Moi moved Lieutenant General Jackson Mulinge from Army Commander to CGS in November 1978. Mahamoud Mohamed succeeded Mulinge in 1986, and was CGS until 1996. Mohamed was succeeded by General Daudi Tonje, CGS 1996–2000.
Women were first recruited into the armed forces in 1971, with the establishment of the Women's Service Corps. The corps was initially made up of 150 women under Major Patricia Ineson of the British Women's Royal Army Corps, before she was replaced by Phyllis Ikua, formerly of the Kenya Prisons Service. Fatumah Ahmed joined the WSC in 1983.
The South African Institute for Security Studies wrote when Moi was still in power: "the Kenyan armed forces' reputation as a politically neutral establishment has been undermined by irrefutable evidence of tribal favouritism in the appointment of key posts. In the military (and also the Police and GSU), there is a virtual monopoly of President Moi's ethnic group, the Kalenjin, in the top brass. Of 18 military generals, at least a third are Kalenjin; of 20 brigadiers, 7 are Kalenjin—an ethnic group that accounts for only a tenth of Kenya's population. This obviously works to the disadvantage, especially, of the Kikuyu and the Luo."
From the 1990s the Kenya Army became involved in United Nations peacekeeping operations, which, Hornsby says, 'offered both experience and a source of income for the army and its soldiers.' (The United Nations reimburses troop contributing countries for each soldier contributed.) Kenya's first peacekeeping deployment was to the United Nations Iran–Iraq Military Observer Group to supervise the ceasefire; then UNTAG in Namibia. From 1989 to 2001, Kenyan troops took part in UNTAG, UNOSOM, UNPROFOR, UNCRO (Croatia), UNTAES, UNOMIL, UNPREDEP in Macedonia (1996–1999), MONUA in Angola (1997–1999), and UNTAET in East Timor (1999–2001). In 1999–2000, women were integrated into the regular units of the military, and the Women's Service Corps disbanded.
In the early 21st century, the Ministry of State for Defence, just like that of Internal Security and Provincial Administration, is part of the presidential machinery. All but senior military officers are appointed, promoted, and, if necessary, removed by the military's personnel system. The president appoints and retires senior military officers. Under the authority of the president as Commander-in-Chief, the Minister of Defence presides over the National Defence Council. The Chief of General Staff is the tactical, operational and administrative head of the military. Under the 2010 constitution, the defence forces can no longer be deployed for combat operations within Kenya without the approval of Parliament.
In the aftermath of the national elections of December 2007 and the violence that subsequently engulfed the country, a commission of inquiry, the Waki Commission, commended its readiness and adjudged it to "have performed its duty well." Nevertheless, there have been serious allegations of human rights violations, most recently while conducting counter-insurgency operations in the Mt Elgon area and also in the district of Mandera central.
In October 2011, following a weekend preparatory meeting between Kenyan and Somali military officials in the town of Dhobley, Kenya Army units crossed the border to begin Operation Linda Nchi attacking the Al-Shabaab insurgents in southern Somalia. Kenya had coordinated with the transitional government in Mogadishu, and with the Somali militias in the border areas, but the drive on Kismayu was run by the KDF. In early June 2012, Kenyan forces were formally integrated into AMISOM.
As of August 2012 Major General Maurice Oyugi was the army vice commander.
The Kenya Defence Forces is composed of Kenya Army, Kenya Air-force and Kenya Navy.
As of 2006, the Kenya Army had five brigades: two infantry, one with three battalions and one with two battalions; the Kenya Army Armoured Brigade with three battalions; the Kenya Army Artillery Brigade with two battalions; and the Engineer Brigade with two battalions. In addition, the army included an air defense artillery, 20 Parachute Battalion, independent infantry, and the independent 50 Air Cavalry Battalion with 35 armed helicopters at Embakasi.
In February 2014, the official Ministry of State for Defence listed the following Army formations and services:
The Kenya Ranger Strike Force initiative began in 2006 with a request from the Ministry of Defence; creation of KRSF highlighted extensively in KMOD White Paper on Military Cooperation for 2011–2016. The total U.S. investment was $40M. Leveraged IMET courses for Ranger and Ranger Instructor courses, Section 1206 funding to secure training and equipment, multiple Joint Combined Exchange and Training (JCET) events, and East African Regional Security Initiative (EARSI now PREACT) to fund training and equipment. The first class taught by all Kenya Army Ranger Instructors graduated on 18 March 2011. Kenya formed a Special Operations Regiment (Kenya) composed of 20th Parachute Battalion, 30th Special Operations Battalion and 40th Kenya Ranger Strike Force Battalion. Kabete Barracks off Waiyaki Way in Nairobi is reported to house forces which are 'special'.
By 2019–2020, the International Institute for Strategic Studies listed the army's formations as including one armoured brigade (one armoured reconnaissance battalion, two armoured battalions); one special operations battalion; one ranger battalion; one infantry brigade with three infantry battalions, and another infantry brigade with two infantry battalions; one independent infantry battalion; one air cavalry battalion [50 Air Cavalry Battalion]; one airborne battalion; one artillery brigade with two artillery battalions and a mortar battery; one air defence battalion; and one engineer brigade with two engineer battalions (IISS MB 2020, p. 483).
The Kenya Air Force was formed on 1 June 1964, soon after independence, with the assistance of the United Kingdom.
After a failed coup by a group of Air Force officers on 1 August 1982, the Air Force was disbanded. Air Force activity was reconstituted and placed under tighter army control as the 82 Air Force. The Air Force regained its independent status in 1994.
The main airbase operating fighters is Laikipia Air Base in Nanyuki, while Moi Air Base in Eastleigh, Nairobi is the headquarters. Other bases include Wajir Air Base, Forward Operating Base (FOB) Mombasa (Moi International Airport), FOB Mandera, & FOB Nyeri (mainly helicopters/small planes).
The Kenya Navy is the naval branch of the Kenyan Defence Forces. The Navy was established on 12 December 1964, exactly one year after Kenya gained independence. It was preceded by the colonial Royal East African Navy.
The Navy operates several bases, Mtongwe base in Mombasa, Shimoni, Msambweni, Malindi, Kilifi and since 1995 another base located in Manda (part of Lamu Archipelago).
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) (Swahili: Majeshi ya Ulinzi ya Kenya, stylized as \"KENYA ARMED FORCES\" capitalized on its coat of arms) are the armed forces of the Republic of Kenya. They are made up of the Kenya Army, Kenya Navy, and Kenya Air Force. The current KDF was established, and its composition stipulated, in Article 241 of the 2010 Constitution of Kenya; it is governed by the KDF Act of 2012. Its main mission is the defence and protection of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Kenya, recruitment to the KDF is done on yearly basis. The President of Kenya is the commander-in-chief of the KDF, and the Chief of Defence Forces is the highest-ranking military officer, and the principal military adviser to the President of Kenya.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The Defence Forces, like many Kenyan government institutions, has been tainted by corruption allegations. Because the operations of the military have been traditionally cloaked by the ubiquitous blanket of \"state security\", the corruption has been less in public view, and thus less subject to public scrutiny and notoriety. But in 2010, credible claims of corruption were made with regard to recruitment, and procurement of Armoured Personnel Carriers. The decision on the Northrop F-5 \"Tiger\" aircraft procurement have been publicly questioned. In 2015, credible allegations were made that the KDF is involved with sugar smuggling from southern Somalia into Kenya, to avoid import dues.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The KDF is regularly deployed in peacekeeping and warfighting missions, for example the counter-insurgency fight against Al-Shabaab in Somalia since 2011.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The United Kingdom raised and maintained forces in Kenya Colony after it was established, eventually to become the King's African Rifles (KAR). The KAR fought during the two World Wars and in the Mau Mau Uprising. On the other side of the Mau Mau Uprising was the first Kenyan force raised by African themselves, the Kenya Land and Freedom Army.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Kenya's independence on the midnight of 12 December 1963 was an enormous milestone. On independence, the Kenyan Parliament created the Kenya Military Forces (KMF) through the KMF Act 1963. Thus 3 KAR, 5 KAR, and 11 KAR became 3 Kenya Rifles, 5 Kenya Rifles, and 11 Kenya Rifles respectively. The new independence government retained senior British military officers as advisers and trainers to the new Kenyan army. They stayed on, administering the former KAR units as they developed more Kenyan characteristics. The Kenya Regiment composed of British settlers was disbanded.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Between 1963 and 1967, Kenya fought the Shifta War against Somali residents who sought union with their kin in the Somali Republic to the north.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "On the evening of 24 January 1964, the failure of the Kenyan Prime Minister to appear on television, where 11th Kenya Rifles junior soldiers had been expecting a televised speech and hoping for a pay rise announcement, caused the men to mutiny. Parsons says it is possible that the speech was only broadcast on the radio in the Nakuru area where Lanet Barracks, home of the battalion, was located. Kenyatta's government held two separate courts-martial for 43 soldiers.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In the aftermath of the mutiny and following courts-martial, the 11th Kenya Rifles was disbanded. A new battalion, 1st Kenya Rifles, was created entirely from 340 Lanet soldiers who had been cleared of participation in the mutiny by the Kenyan Criminal Investigations Division (CID). Hornsby writes that after the mutiny, '[Kenyatta] improved conditions, announced pay rises to the military, speeded Africanisation, and instructed the intelligence services to infiltrate and watch the army for signs of disaffection.'",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Discussions began in March 1964 between Kenya and Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations Duncan Sandys on defence, and a formal agreement was signed on 3 June 1964. All British troops would leave by 12 December 1964, the British would assist the army, resource and train a new Kenya Air Force, and create a new Kenya Navy. They would also provide RAF and Army units to support internal security in the north-east. Significant military loans would be cancelled, and much military property made over to the Kenyan Government. In return, British aircraft would be able to transit through Kenya, RN ships of the Far East Fleet and other units could visit Mombasa, communications facilities could be used until 1966, and troops could exercise in Kenya twice a year. Army training deployments have continued up until 2015, as of 2015 supervised by British Army Training Unit Kenya.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Timothy Parsons wrote in 2002–03:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "'..Kenyatta did not have to worry about the political reliability of the Kenyan Army because expatriate senior British military advisors ran it along KAR lines throughout the 1960s. Following the lessons of the Lanet protects, African officers assumed operational command of all major units, but a British training team still oversaw the Kenyan Army for most of the decade. More significantly, an informal defence arrangement with Britain reassured Kenyatta that he could rely on direct British military support in the event of an army mutiny or attempted coup.'",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Within months of British Brigadier A.J. Hardy leaving the post of Commander Kenya Army and handing over to Brigadier Joseph Ndolo on 1 December 1966, British influence was underlined with the appointment of Major General Bernard Penfold as Chief of the General Staff, a new position as senior officer of the entire armed forces. Ndolo succeeded Penfold as Chief of General Staff in 1969, but was retired on 24 June 1971 after being implicated in a coup plot allegedly organised by Joseph Owino. The service chiefs thereafter reported directly to the Minister of Defence, James Gichuru. The post of Chief of the General Staff was only filled again seven years later when Daniel arap Moi moved Lieutenant General Jackson Mulinge from Army Commander to CGS in November 1978. Mahamoud Mohamed succeeded Mulinge in 1986, and was CGS until 1996. Mohamed was succeeded by General Daudi Tonje, CGS 1996–2000.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Women were first recruited into the armed forces in 1971, with the establishment of the Women's Service Corps. The corps was initially made up of 150 women under Major Patricia Ineson of the British Women's Royal Army Corps, before she was replaced by Phyllis Ikua, formerly of the Kenya Prisons Service. Fatumah Ahmed joined the WSC in 1983.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The South African Institute for Security Studies wrote when Moi was still in power: \"the Kenyan armed forces' reputation as a politically neutral establishment has been undermined by irrefutable evidence of tribal favouritism in the appointment of key posts. In the military (and also the Police and GSU), there is a virtual monopoly of President Moi's ethnic group, the Kalenjin, in the top brass. Of 18 military generals, at least a third are Kalenjin; of 20 brigadiers, 7 are Kalenjin—an ethnic group that accounts for only a tenth of Kenya's population. This obviously works to the disadvantage, especially, of the Kikuyu and the Luo.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "From the 1990s the Kenya Army became involved in United Nations peacekeeping operations, which, Hornsby says, 'offered both experience and a source of income for the army and its soldiers.' (The United Nations reimburses troop contributing countries for each soldier contributed.) Kenya's first peacekeeping deployment was to the United Nations Iran–Iraq Military Observer Group to supervise the ceasefire; then UNTAG in Namibia. From 1989 to 2001, Kenyan troops took part in UNTAG, UNOSOM, UNPROFOR, UNCRO (Croatia), UNTAES, UNOMIL, UNPREDEP in Macedonia (1996–1999), MONUA in Angola (1997–1999), and UNTAET in East Timor (1999–2001). In 1999–2000, women were integrated into the regular units of the military, and the Women's Service Corps disbanded.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In the early 21st century, the Ministry of State for Defence, just like that of Internal Security and Provincial Administration, is part of the presidential machinery. All but senior military officers are appointed, promoted, and, if necessary, removed by the military's personnel system. The president appoints and retires senior military officers. Under the authority of the president as Commander-in-Chief, the Minister of Defence presides over the National Defence Council. The Chief of General Staff is the tactical, operational and administrative head of the military. Under the 2010 constitution, the defence forces can no longer be deployed for combat operations within Kenya without the approval of Parliament.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In the aftermath of the national elections of December 2007 and the violence that subsequently engulfed the country, a commission of inquiry, the Waki Commission, commended its readiness and adjudged it to \"have performed its duty well.\" Nevertheless, there have been serious allegations of human rights violations, most recently while conducting counter-insurgency operations in the Mt Elgon area and also in the district of Mandera central.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In October 2011, following a weekend preparatory meeting between Kenyan and Somali military officials in the town of Dhobley, Kenya Army units crossed the border to begin Operation Linda Nchi attacking the Al-Shabaab insurgents in southern Somalia. Kenya had coordinated with the transitional government in Mogadishu, and with the Somali militias in the border areas, but the drive on Kismayu was run by the KDF. In early June 2012, Kenyan forces were formally integrated into AMISOM.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "As of August 2012 Major General Maurice Oyugi was the army vice commander.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The Kenya Defence Forces is composed of Kenya Army, Kenya Air-force and Kenya Navy.",
"title": "Service Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "As of 2006, the Kenya Army had five brigades: two infantry, one with three battalions and one with two battalions; the Kenya Army Armoured Brigade with three battalions; the Kenya Army Artillery Brigade with two battalions; and the Engineer Brigade with two battalions. In addition, the army included an air defense artillery, 20 Parachute Battalion, independent infantry, and the independent 50 Air Cavalry Battalion with 35 armed helicopters at Embakasi.",
"title": "Service Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In February 2014, the official Ministry of State for Defence listed the following Army formations and services:",
"title": "Service Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The Kenya Ranger Strike Force initiative began in 2006 with a request from the Ministry of Defence; creation of KRSF highlighted extensively in KMOD White Paper on Military Cooperation for 2011–2016. The total U.S. investment was $40M. Leveraged IMET courses for Ranger and Ranger Instructor courses, Section 1206 funding to secure training and equipment, multiple Joint Combined Exchange and Training (JCET) events, and East African Regional Security Initiative (EARSI now PREACT) to fund training and equipment. The first class taught by all Kenya Army Ranger Instructors graduated on 18 March 2011. Kenya formed a Special Operations Regiment (Kenya) composed of 20th Parachute Battalion, 30th Special Operations Battalion and 40th Kenya Ranger Strike Force Battalion. Kabete Barracks off Waiyaki Way in Nairobi is reported to house forces which are 'special'.",
"title": "Service Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "By 2019–2020, the International Institute for Strategic Studies listed the army's formations as including one armoured brigade (one armoured reconnaissance battalion, two armoured battalions); one special operations battalion; one ranger battalion; one infantry brigade with three infantry battalions, and another infantry brigade with two infantry battalions; one independent infantry battalion; one air cavalry battalion [50 Air Cavalry Battalion]; one airborne battalion; one artillery brigade with two artillery battalions and a mortar battery; one air defence battalion; and one engineer brigade with two engineer battalions (IISS MB 2020, p. 483).",
"title": "Service Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The Kenya Air Force was formed on 1 June 1964, soon after independence, with the assistance of the United Kingdom.",
"title": "Service Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "After a failed coup by a group of Air Force officers on 1 August 1982, the Air Force was disbanded. Air Force activity was reconstituted and placed under tighter army control as the 82 Air Force. The Air Force regained its independent status in 1994.",
"title": "Service Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The main airbase operating fighters is Laikipia Air Base in Nanyuki, while Moi Air Base in Eastleigh, Nairobi is the headquarters. Other bases include Wajir Air Base, Forward Operating Base (FOB) Mombasa (Moi International Airport), FOB Mandera, & FOB Nyeri (mainly helicopters/small planes).",
"title": "Service Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The Kenya Navy is the naval branch of the Kenyan Defence Forces. The Navy was established on 12 December 1964, exactly one year after Kenya gained independence. It was preceded by the colonial Royal East African Navy.",
"title": "Service Branches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The Navy operates several bases, Mtongwe base in Mombasa, Shimoni, Msambweni, Malindi, Kilifi and since 1995 another base located in Manda (part of Lamu Archipelago).",
"title": "Service Branches"
}
] |
The Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) are the armed forces of the Republic of Kenya. They are made up of the Kenya Army, Kenya Navy, and Kenya Air Force. The current KDF was established, and its composition stipulated, in Article 241 of the 2010 Constitution of Kenya; it is governed by the KDF Act of 2012. Its main mission is the defence and protection of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Kenya, recruitment to the KDF is done on yearly basis. The President of Kenya is the commander-in-chief of the KDF, and the Chief of Defence Forces is the highest-ranking military officer, and the principal military adviser to the President of Kenya. The Defence Forces, like many Kenyan government institutions, has been tainted by corruption allegations. Because the operations of the military have been traditionally cloaked by the ubiquitous blanket of "state security", the corruption has been less in public view, and thus less subject to public scrutiny and notoriety. But in 2010, credible claims of corruption were made with regard to recruitment, and procurement of Armoured Personnel Carriers. The decision on the Northrop F-5 "Tiger" aircraft procurement have been publicly questioned. In 2015, credible allegations were made that the KDF is involved with sugar smuggling from southern Somalia into Kenya, to avoid import dues. The KDF is regularly deployed in peacekeeping and warfighting missions, for example the counter-insurgency fight against Al-Shabaab in Somalia since 2011.
|
2002-02-25T15:43:11Z
|
2023-12-28T02:48:18Z
|
[
"Template:Kenya topics",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Military of Kenya",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Lang-sw",
"Template:Sfn",
"Template:For",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:ISBN",
"Template:Military of Africa",
"Template:Infobox national military",
"Template:Cite news"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenya_Defence_Forces
|
16,661 |
Foreign relations of Kenya
|
Kenya maintains relations with various countries around the world. Its closest ties are with its fellow Swahili-speaking neighbors in the African Great Lakes region. Swahili speaking neighbours mainly include countries in the East African Community such as Burundi, the DRC, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.
Kenya's relations with other states vary. The government of Ethiopia established political links in the colonial period with Kenya's then British administration, and today it is one of several national bodies with a diplomatic presence in Nairobi. Relations with Somalia have historically been tense, although there has been some military co-ordination against insurgents.
Elsewhere, the Kenyan government has political ties with China, India, Pakistan, Russia, United Arab Emirates, and Brazil. It also maintains relations with Western countries, particularly the United Kingdom, although political and economic instabilities are often blamed on Western activities (e.g. colonialism, paternalistic engagement, and post-colonial resource exploitation).
Kenya has been a member state of the Commonwealth of Nations since 1963, when it became independent. The nation became a republic in the Commonwealth of Nations in 1964.
Kenya is also a member of the UN and hosts the UN Office in Nairobi, which is the UN Headquarters in Africa. The office was established in 1996.
Uhuru Kenyatta made a 119 International trips to 52 countries during his presidency. The president served two full 5-year terms and made more international official visits than any of his predecessors. Kenyatta mainly made a majority of his visits within Africa and also attended various business forums and multi-lateral international events around the world.
William Ruto made his first international trip in September of 2022 since he began his presidency on 13 September 2022.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Kenya maintains relations with various countries around the world. Its closest ties are with its fellow Swahili-speaking neighbors in the African Great Lakes region. Swahili speaking neighbours mainly include countries in the East African Community such as Burundi, the DRC, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Kenya's relations with other states vary. The government of Ethiopia established political links in the colonial period with Kenya's then British administration, and today it is one of several national bodies with a diplomatic presence in Nairobi. Relations with Somalia have historically been tense, although there has been some military co-ordination against insurgents.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Elsewhere, the Kenyan government has political ties with China, India, Pakistan, Russia, United Arab Emirates, and Brazil. It also maintains relations with Western countries, particularly the United Kingdom, although political and economic instabilities are often blamed on Western activities (e.g. colonialism, paternalistic engagement, and post-colonial resource exploitation).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Kenya has been a member state of the Commonwealth of Nations since 1963, when it became independent. The nation became a republic in the Commonwealth of Nations in 1964.",
"title": "Kenya and the Commonwealth of Nations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Kenya is also a member of the UN and hosts the UN Office in Nairobi, which is the UN Headquarters in Africa. The office was established in 1996.",
"title": "Kenya and the Commonwealth of Nations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Uhuru Kenyatta made a 119 International trips to 52 countries during his presidency. The president served two full 5-year terms and made more international official visits than any of his predecessors. Kenyatta mainly made a majority of his visits within Africa and also attended various business forums and multi-lateral international events around the world.",
"title": "International trips made by presidents of Kenya"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "William Ruto made his first international trip in September of 2022 since he began his presidency on 13 September 2022.",
"title": "International trips made by presidents of Kenya"
}
] |
Kenya maintains relations with various countries around the world. Its closest ties are with its fellow Swahili-speaking neighbors in the African Great Lakes region. Swahili speaking neighbours mainly include countries in the East African Community such as Burundi, the DRC, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. Kenya's relations with other states vary. The government of Ethiopia established political links in the colonial period with Kenya's then British administration, and today it is one of several national bodies with a diplomatic presence in Nairobi. Relations with Somalia have historically been tense, although there has been some military co-ordination against insurgents. Elsewhere, the Kenyan government has political ties with China, India, Pakistan, Russia, United Arab Emirates, and Brazil. It also maintains relations with Western countries, particularly the United Kingdom, although political and economic instabilities are often blamed on Western activities.
|
2001-05-11T00:07:24Z
|
2023-12-27T16:03:24Z
|
[
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:INA",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Kenya topics",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:EngvarB",
"Template:Politics of Kenya",
"Template:Flag",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Citation needed",
"Template:Dts",
"Template:Africa in topic",
"Template:Main",
"Template:POR",
"Template:Further information",
"Template:Clear",
"Template:Foreign relations of Kenya",
"Template:StateDept"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Kenya
|
16,664 |
Kingman Reef
|
Kingman Reef /ˈkɪŋmən/ is a largely submerged, uninhabited, triangle-shaped reef, geologically an atoll, 9.0 nmi (20 km) east-west and 4.5 nmi (8 km) north-south, in the North Pacific Ocean, roughly halfway between the Hawaiian Islands and American Samoa. It has an area of 3 hectares (0.03 km; 7.4 acres) and is a unincorporated territory of the United States in Oceania. The reef is administered by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service as the Kingman Reef National Wildlife Refuge. It was claimed by the US in 1859, and later used briefly as stopover for commercial Pacific flying boat routes in the 1930s, until there was aircraft disaster with one of the flying boats serving the route. It was administered by the Navy from 1934 to 2000, and thereafter the Fish and Wildlife service. It has since become a marine protected area. In the 19th century it was noted as maritime hazard, earning the name Hazard Rocks, and is known to have been hit once in 1876. In the 21st century it has been noted for is marine biodiversity and remote nature.
Kingman Reef was discovered on June 14, 1798, by the American captain Edmund Fanning, of the ship Betsey. It was first described by Captain W. E. Kingman (whose name the island bears) of the ship Shooting Star on November 29, 1853. It was claimed in 1859 by the United States Guano Company, under the name "Dangers Rock," along with a number of other islands. The claim was made under the U.S. Guano Islands Act of 1856, although there is no evidence that guano existed or was ever mined on Kingman Reef. The British steamship Tarta struck the reef in June 1874, and it was later surveyed by HMS Penguin (1876) in 1897, establishing that Kingman Reef was the same hazard previously charted as Caldew Reef and Maria Shoal, among other names.
On May 10, 1922, Lorrin A. Thurston became the first person to raise the American flag on the atoll and read a proclamation of annexation. The Palmyra Copra Co. intended to use Kingman as a fishing base, as demand for copra had declined after World War I and Palmyra Island lacked a suitable anchorage. Thurston formally claimed Kingman for the United States by reading the following declaration while standing on its shore:
Be it known to all people: That on the tenth of May, A.D. 1922, the undersigned agent of the Island of Palmyra Copra Co., Ltd., landed from the motorship Palmyra doth, on this tenth day of May, A.D. 1922, take formal possession of this island, called Kingman Reef, situated in longitude 162 degrees 18' west and 6 degrees 23' north, on behalf of the United States of America and claim the same for said company.
A copy of the declaration, along with a U.S. flag and clippings from The Honolulu Advertiser newspaper, were left on Kingman to document the claim.
On December 29, 1934, the U.S. Navy assumed jurisdiction over Kingman Reef. In 1935, the reef was visited by William T. Miller, representing the U.S. Bureau of Air Commerce.
In 1935, Pan American Airways wanted to expand its routes to the Pacific and include Australia and New Zealand in its "Clipper" air routes, with a stopover in Pago Pago, American Samoa. An additional stopover point was sought, however. It had been decided that the Kingman Reef lagoon, located 1,600 miles (2,600 km) north of Samoa, would be suitable for overnight stops for planes en route from the U.S. to New Zealand. A supply ship, the North Wind, was stationed at Kingman Reef to provide fuel, lodging, and meals. On March 23, 1937, the S42B Pan American Clipper II, named Samoan Clipper and piloted by Captain Ed Musick, en route from Hawaii to American Samoa, became the first flight to land in Kingman Reef's lagoon.
During the next several months, Pan Am successfully used the lagoon several times as a halfway station for its flying boats (Sikorsky S-42B) when they traveled between those two points. However, a Clipper flight on January 11, 1938, ended in tragedy. Shortly after the early-morning takeoff from Pago Pago, as it was bound for New Zealand, the plane exploded. The right outboard engine had developed an oil leak, and the plane burst into flames while dumping fuel; there were no survivors. As a result of the tragedy, Pan Am ended flights to New Zealand via Kingman Reef and Pago Pago. It established a new route in July 1940 that used Canton Island and New Caledonia as stopovers instead.
On February 14, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8682 to create naval defenses areas in the central Pacific territories. The proclamation established "Kingman Reef Naval Defensive Sea Area" which encompassed the territorial waters between the extreme high-water marks and the three-mile marine boundaries surrounding the atoll. "Kingman 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 Kingman Reef unless authorized by the Secretary of the Navy.
In 2012, Kingman Reef Atoll Development LLC, which was owned by descendants of the owners of the Palmyra Copra Co., Ltd., sued the U.S. government over its designation as a national wildlife refuge. The plaintiff sought $54.5 million in compensation for the loss of fishing rights, ecotourism, and other economic activity. However, in 2014, the federal court ruled that any such claim had expired by 1950 at the latest.
In 2016, the ARRL Awards Committee of the American Radio Relay League removed Kingman Reef from its DXCC list, with the reef now considered part of the Palmyra Island / Jarvis Island DXCC Entity.
It is the northernmost of the Northern Line Islands and lies 36 nautical miles (67 km) northwest of the next closest island (Palmyra Atoll), and 930 nautical miles (1,720 km) south of Honolulu.
The reef encloses a lagoon up to 53 fathoms (318 ft; 97 m) deep in its eastern part near the northeastern spit of land. The total area within the outer rim of the reef is 20 sq nmi (70 km). There are two small strips (spits) of dry land composed of coral rubble and giant clamshells on the eastern rim with areas of 2 and 1 acre (0.8 and 0.4 ha) having a coastline of 2 miles (3 km), a short spit on the northeast side of the lagoon and a spit twice as long but thinner on its south side.
The highest point on the reef is less than 5 feet (1.5 m) above sea level, which is wet or awash most of the time, making Kingman Reef a maritime hazard. It has no natural resources and supports no economic activity. In the 1930s it was used as stopover along with Palu Palu for flying boats crossing the Pacific, for commercial airline route.
Kingman Reef has the status of an unincorporated territory of the United States, administered from Washington, D.C., by the U.S. Department of Interior. The atoll is closed to the public. For statistical purposes, Kingman Reef is grouped as part of the United States Minor Outlying Islands. In January 2009, Kingman Reef was designated a marine national monument.
The pre-20th century names Danger Rock, Caldew Reef, Maria Shoal and Crane Shoal refer to this atoll, which at the time was entirely submerged at high tide. Thomas Hale Streets described its state in the 1870s, when it had:
... hardly, as yet, assumed the distinctive features of an island. It is entirely under water at high tide, and but a few coral heads project here and there above the surface at low water. In the course of time, however, it will undoubtedly be added to the [northern Line Islands].
Kingman Reef is considered to be a county-equivalent by the U.S. Census Bureau. With only 0.01 square miles (0.03 square kilometers) of land, Kingman Reef is the smallest county or county-equivalent by land area in the United States.
Kingman Reef supports a vast variety of marine life. Giant clams are abundant in the shallows, and there are approximately 38 genera and 130 species of stony corals present on the reef. This is more than three times the species diversity of corals found in the main Hawaiian Islands. The ecosystem of the reef and its subsequent food chain are known for the distinct quality of being primarily predator-based. Sharks comprised 74% of the top predator biomass (329 g·m) at Kingman Reef and 57% at Palmyra Atoll (97 g·m), and low shark numbers have been observed at Tabuaeran and Kiritimati.
The percentage of the total fish biomass on the reef is made up of 85% apex predators, creating a high level of competition for food and nutrients among local organisms – particularly sharks, jacks, and other carnivores. The threatened green sea turtles that frequent nearby Palmyra Atoll travel to Kingman Reef to forage and bask on the coral rubble spits at low tide.
However, above sea level, the reef is usually barren of macroorganisms. Mainly constructed of dead and dried coral skeletons, providing only calcite as a source of nutrients, the small and narrow strips of dry land are only habitable by a handful of species for short periods of time. Most flora which begin to grow above water – primarily coconut palms – die out quickly due to the fierce tides and lack of resources necessary to sustain plant life.
On September 1, 2000, the Navy relinquished its control over Kingman Reef to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. On January 18, 2001, Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt created the Kingman Reef National Wildlife Refuge during his final days in office with Secretary's Order 3223. It is composed of the emergent coral rubble spits and all waters out to 12 nautical miles (22 km). While there are only 3 acres (0.012 km) of land, 483,754 acres (1,957.68 km) of water area is included in the Refuge. Along with six other islands, the reef was administered 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.
Since the early 1940s, Kingman Reef has had very little human contact, though amateur radio operators from around the world have occasionally visited the reef to put it "on the air" in what is known as a DX-pedition. In 1974, a group of amateurs using the callsign KP6KR sailed to the reef and set up a temporary radio station and antenna. Other groups visited the island in subsequent years, including 1977, 1980, 1981, 1988 and 1993.
More recently, a group of 15 amateur radio operators from the Palmyra DX Group visited the reef in October 2000. Using the FCC-issued special event callsign K5K, the group made more than 80,000 individual contacts with amateurs around the world over a period of 10 days.
Between November 15, 1945, and March 28, 2016, Kingman Reef was considered a discrete entity for the purpose of earning awards such as the DX Century Club. A video shot by amateur radio operators traveling to the K5P DX-pedition on Palmyra in January 2016 appears to show Kingman Reef mostly awash, raising questions as to whether a future activation of Kingman Reef would be possible.
On March 28, 2016, the ARRL DXCC desk deleted Kingman Reef from the list of collectable entities effective March 29, 2016, and deeming Kingman a part of the Palmyra and Jarvis entity due to proximity of the islands and common administration of the islands by the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Wikimedia Atlas of Kingman Reef
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Kingman Reef /ˈkɪŋmən/ is a largely submerged, uninhabited, triangle-shaped reef, geologically an atoll, 9.0 nmi (20 km) east-west and 4.5 nmi (8 km) north-south, in the North Pacific Ocean, roughly halfway between the Hawaiian Islands and American Samoa. It has an area of 3 hectares (0.03 km; 7.4 acres) and is a unincorporated territory of the United States in Oceania. The reef is administered by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service as the Kingman Reef National Wildlife Refuge. It was claimed by the US in 1859, and later used briefly as stopover for commercial Pacific flying boat routes in the 1930s, until there was aircraft disaster with one of the flying boats serving the route. It was administered by the Navy from 1934 to 2000, and thereafter the Fish and Wildlife service. It has since become a marine protected area. In the 19th century it was noted as maritime hazard, earning the name Hazard Rocks, and is known to have been hit once in 1876. In the 21st century it has been noted for is marine biodiversity and remote nature.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Kingman Reef was discovered on June 14, 1798, by the American captain Edmund Fanning, of the ship Betsey. It was first described by Captain W. E. Kingman (whose name the island bears) of the ship Shooting Star on November 29, 1853. It was claimed in 1859 by the United States Guano Company, under the name \"Dangers Rock,\" along with a number of other islands. The claim was made under the U.S. Guano Islands Act of 1856, although there is no evidence that guano existed or was ever mined on Kingman Reef. The British steamship Tarta struck the reef in June 1874, and it was later surveyed by HMS Penguin (1876) in 1897, establishing that Kingman Reef was the same hazard previously charted as Caldew Reef and Maria Shoal, among other names.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "On May 10, 1922, Lorrin A. Thurston became the first person to raise the American flag on the atoll and read a proclamation of annexation. The Palmyra Copra Co. intended to use Kingman as a fishing base, as demand for copra had declined after World War I and Palmyra Island lacked a suitable anchorage. Thurston formally claimed Kingman for the United States by reading the following declaration while standing on its shore:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Be it known to all people: That on the tenth of May, A.D. 1922, the undersigned agent of the Island of Palmyra Copra Co., Ltd., landed from the motorship Palmyra doth, on this tenth day of May, A.D. 1922, take formal possession of this island, called Kingman Reef, situated in longitude 162 degrees 18' west and 6 degrees 23' north, on behalf of the United States of America and claim the same for said company.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "A copy of the declaration, along with a U.S. flag and clippings from The Honolulu Advertiser newspaper, were left on Kingman to document the claim.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "On December 29, 1934, the U.S. Navy assumed jurisdiction over Kingman Reef. In 1935, the reef was visited by William T. Miller, representing the U.S. Bureau of Air Commerce.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In 1935, Pan American Airways wanted to expand its routes to the Pacific and include Australia and New Zealand in its \"Clipper\" air routes, with a stopover in Pago Pago, American Samoa. An additional stopover point was sought, however. It had been decided that the Kingman Reef lagoon, located 1,600 miles (2,600 km) north of Samoa, would be suitable for overnight stops for planes en route from the U.S. to New Zealand. A supply ship, the North Wind, was stationed at Kingman Reef to provide fuel, lodging, and meals. On March 23, 1937, the S42B Pan American Clipper II, named Samoan Clipper and piloted by Captain Ed Musick, en route from Hawaii to American Samoa, became the first flight to land in Kingman Reef's lagoon.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "During the next several months, Pan Am successfully used the lagoon several times as a halfway station for its flying boats (Sikorsky S-42B) when they traveled between those two points. However, a Clipper flight on January 11, 1938, ended in tragedy. Shortly after the early-morning takeoff from Pago Pago, as it was bound for New Zealand, the plane exploded. The right outboard engine had developed an oil leak, and the plane burst into flames while dumping fuel; there were no survivors. As a result of the tragedy, Pan Am ended flights to New Zealand via Kingman Reef and Pago Pago. It established a new route in July 1940 that used Canton Island and New Caledonia as stopovers instead.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "On February 14, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8682 to create naval defenses areas in the central Pacific territories. The proclamation established \"Kingman Reef Naval Defensive Sea Area\" which encompassed the territorial waters between the extreme high-water marks and the three-mile marine boundaries surrounding the atoll. \"Kingman 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 Kingman Reef unless authorized by the Secretary of the Navy.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In 2012, Kingman Reef Atoll Development LLC, which was owned by descendants of the owners of the Palmyra Copra Co., Ltd., sued the U.S. government over its designation as a national wildlife refuge. The plaintiff sought $54.5 million in compensation for the loss of fishing rights, ecotourism, and other economic activity. However, in 2014, the federal court ruled that any such claim had expired by 1950 at the latest.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In 2016, the ARRL Awards Committee of the American Radio Relay League removed Kingman Reef from its DXCC list, with the reef now considered part of the Palmyra Island / Jarvis Island DXCC Entity.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "It is the northernmost of the Northern Line Islands and lies 36 nautical miles (67 km) northwest of the next closest island (Palmyra Atoll), and 930 nautical miles (1,720 km) south of Honolulu.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The reef encloses a lagoon up to 53 fathoms (318 ft; 97 m) deep in its eastern part near the northeastern spit of land. The total area within the outer rim of the reef is 20 sq nmi (70 km). There are two small strips (spits) of dry land composed of coral rubble and giant clamshells on the eastern rim with areas of 2 and 1 acre (0.8 and 0.4 ha) having a coastline of 2 miles (3 km), a short spit on the northeast side of the lagoon and a spit twice as long but thinner on its south side.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The highest point on the reef is less than 5 feet (1.5 m) above sea level, which is wet or awash most of the time, making Kingman Reef a maritime hazard. It has no natural resources and supports no economic activity. In the 1930s it was used as stopover along with Palu Palu for flying boats crossing the Pacific, for commercial airline route.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Kingman Reef has the status of an unincorporated territory of the United States, administered from Washington, D.C., by the U.S. Department of Interior. The atoll is closed to the public. For statistical purposes, Kingman Reef is grouped as part of the United States Minor Outlying Islands. In January 2009, Kingman Reef was designated a marine national monument.",
"title": "Political status"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The pre-20th century names Danger Rock, Caldew Reef, Maria Shoal and Crane Shoal refer to this atoll, which at the time was entirely submerged at high tide. Thomas Hale Streets described its state in the 1870s, when it had:",
"title": "Political status"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "... hardly, as yet, assumed the distinctive features of an island. It is entirely under water at high tide, and but a few coral heads project here and there above the surface at low water. In the course of time, however, it will undoubtedly be added to the [northern Line Islands].",
"title": "Political status"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Kingman Reef is considered to be a county-equivalent by the U.S. Census Bureau. With only 0.01 square miles (0.03 square kilometers) of land, Kingman Reef is the smallest county or county-equivalent by land area in the United States.",
"title": "Political status"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Kingman Reef supports a vast variety of marine life. Giant clams are abundant in the shallows, and there are approximately 38 genera and 130 species of stony corals present on the reef. This is more than three times the species diversity of corals found in the main Hawaiian Islands. The ecosystem of the reef and its subsequent food chain are known for the distinct quality of being primarily predator-based. Sharks comprised 74% of the top predator biomass (329 g·m) at Kingman Reef and 57% at Palmyra Atoll (97 g·m), and low shark numbers have been observed at Tabuaeran and Kiritimati.",
"title": "Ecology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The percentage of the total fish biomass on the reef is made up of 85% apex predators, creating a high level of competition for food and nutrients among local organisms – particularly sharks, jacks, and other carnivores. The threatened green sea turtles that frequent nearby Palmyra Atoll travel to Kingman Reef to forage and bask on the coral rubble spits at low tide.",
"title": "Ecology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "However, above sea level, the reef is usually barren of macroorganisms. Mainly constructed of dead and dried coral skeletons, providing only calcite as a source of nutrients, the small and narrow strips of dry land are only habitable by a handful of species for short periods of time. Most flora which begin to grow above water – primarily coconut palms – die out quickly due to the fierce tides and lack of resources necessary to sustain plant life.",
"title": "Ecology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "On September 1, 2000, the Navy relinquished its control over Kingman Reef to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. On January 18, 2001, Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt created the Kingman Reef National Wildlife Refuge during his final days in office with Secretary's Order 3223. It is composed of the emergent coral rubble spits and all waters out to 12 nautical miles (22 km). While there are only 3 acres (0.012 km) of land, 483,754 acres (1,957.68 km) of water area is included in the Refuge. Along with six other islands, the reef was administered 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": 22,
"text": "Since the early 1940s, Kingman Reef has had very little human contact, though amateur radio operators from around the world have occasionally visited the reef to put it \"on the air\" in what is known as a DX-pedition. In 1974, a group of amateurs using the callsign KP6KR sailed to the reef and set up a temporary radio station and antenna. Other groups visited the island in subsequent years, including 1977, 1980, 1981, 1988 and 1993.",
"title": "Amateur radio expeditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "More recently, a group of 15 amateur radio operators from the Palmyra DX Group visited the reef in October 2000. Using the FCC-issued special event callsign K5K, the group made more than 80,000 individual contacts with amateurs around the world over a period of 10 days.",
"title": "Amateur radio expeditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Between November 15, 1945, and March 28, 2016, Kingman Reef was considered a discrete entity for the purpose of earning awards such as the DX Century Club. A video shot by amateur radio operators traveling to the K5P DX-pedition on Palmyra in January 2016 appears to show Kingman Reef mostly awash, raising questions as to whether a future activation of Kingman Reef would be possible.",
"title": "Amateur radio expeditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "On March 28, 2016, the ARRL DXCC desk deleted Kingman Reef from the list of collectable entities effective March 29, 2016, and deeming Kingman a part of the Palmyra and Jarvis entity due to proximity of the islands and common administration of the islands by the Fish and Wildlife Service.",
"title": "Amateur radio expeditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Wikimedia Atlas of Kingman Reef",
"title": "External links"
}
] |
Kingman Reef is a largely submerged, uninhabited, triangle-shaped reef, geologically an atoll, 9.0 nmi (20 km) east-west and 4.5 nmi (8 km) north-south, in the North Pacific Ocean, roughly halfway between the Hawaiian Islands and American Samoa. It has an area of 3 hectares and is a unincorporated territory of the United States in Oceania. The reef is administered by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service as the Kingman Reef National Wildlife Refuge. It was claimed by the US in 1859, and later used briefly as stopover for commercial Pacific flying boat routes in the 1930s, until there was aircraft disaster with one of the flying boats serving the route. It was administered by the Navy from 1934 to 2000, and thereafter the Fish and Wildlife service. It has since become a marine protected area. In the 19th century it was noted as maritime hazard, earning the name Hazard Rocks, and is known to have been hit once in 1876. In the 21st century it has been noted for is marine biodiversity and remote nature.
|
2002-02-25T15:51:15Z
|
2023-12-06T15:32:54Z
|
[
"Template:Nowrap",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Use mdy dates",
"Template:Convert",
"Template:Sup",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Commons category",
"Template:United States political divisions",
"Template:Protected areas of the United States Minor Outlying Islands",
"Template:IPAc-en",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Wikiatlas",
"Template:National Wildlife Refuges of the United States",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Aut",
"Template:ISBN",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Infobox islands",
"Template:HMS",
"Template:Clear",
"Template:Citation",
"Template:Cite report",
"Template:Cite court",
"Template:Territories of the United States"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingman_Reef
|
16,674 |
Kiribati
|
Kiribati (/ˌkɪrɪˈbæs/ KIRR-ih-BASS), officially the Republic of Kiribati (Gilbertese: [Ribaberiki] Kiribati), is an island country in the Micronesia subregion of Oceania in the central Pacific Ocean. Its permanent population is over 119,000 as of the 2020 census, with more than half living on Tarawa atoll. The state comprises 32 atolls and one remote raised coral island, Banaba. Its total land area is 811 km (313 sq mi) dispersed over 3,441,810 km (1,328,890 sq mi) of ocean.
The islands' spread straddles the equator and the 180th meridian, although the International Date Line goes around Kiribati and swings far to the east, almost reaching 150°W. This brings Kiribati's easternmost islands, the southern Line Islands south of Hawaii, into the same day as the Gilbert Islands and places them in the most advanced time zone on Earth: UTC+14.
Kiribati gained its independence from the United Kingdom and the United States, becoming a sovereign state in 1979. The capital, South Tarawa, now the most populated area, consists of a number of islets, connected by a series of causeways. These comprise about half the area of Tarawa Atoll. Prior to its independence, the country had exported phosphate, but those mines are no longer viable with fisheries and export of copra driving much of the economy. Kiribati is one of the least developed countries in the world and is highly dependent on international aid for its economy.
Kiribati is a member of the Pacific Community, Commonwealth of Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States, and became a full member of the United Nations in 1999. As an island nation, the islands are vulnerable to climate change and tsunamis. Addressing climate change has been a central part of its international policy, as a member of the Alliance of Small Island States.
The name is pronounced /ˌkɪrɪˈbæs/, Kiribass, as -ti in the Gilbertese language represents an s sound. Similarly, the name of its people, the I-Kiribati, is pronounced as e-Kiribass.
The name "Kiribati" was adopted in 1979 at independence. It is the Gilbertese rendition of Gilberts, the plural of the English name of the nation's main archipelago, the Gilbert Islands. It was named îles Gilbert (French for Gilbert Islands) in about 1820 by Russian admiral Adam von Krusenstern and French captain Louis Duperrey, after the British captain Thomas Gilbert. Gilbert and captain John Marshall sighted some of the islands in 1788, while crossing the "outer passage" route from Port Jackson to Canton. Both von Krusenstern's and Duperrey's maps, published in 1824, were written in French.
In French, the Northern Islands were until then called îles Mulgrave and Byron Island was not part of them. In English, the archipelago, particularly the southern part, was often referred to as the Kingsmills in the 19th century, although the name Gilbert Islands was used increasingly, including in the Western Pacific Order in Council of 1877 and in the Pacific Order of 1893.
The name Gilbert, already in the name of the British protectorate since 1892, was incorporated into the name of the entire Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony (GEIC) from 1916 and was retained after the Ellice Islands became the separate nation of Tuvalu in 1976. The spelling of Gilberts in the Gilbertese language as Kiribati may be found in books in Gilbertese prepared by missionaries, but with the meaning of Gilbertese (demonym and language) (see e.g., Hawaiian Board of Missionaries, 1895). The first mention as a dictionary entry of the word Kiribati as the native name of the country was written down in 1952 by Ernest Sabatier in his comprehensive Dictionnaire gilbertin-français.
The indigenous name often suggested for the Gilbert Islands proper is Tungaru (see e.g., Ernest Sabatier, 1952–1953, or Arthur Grimble, 1989). The rendition Kiribati for Gilberts was chosen as the official name of the new independent nation by the chief minister, Sir Ieremia Tabai and his cabinet, on such grounds that it was modern, and to comprehend the inclusion of outer islands (e.g., the Phoenix Group and Line Islands), which were not considered part of the Tungaru (or Gilberts) chain.
The area now called Kiribati, mainly the 16 Gilbert Islands, has been inhabited by Austronesian peoples speaking the same Oceanic language, from north to south, including the southernmost Nui, since sometime between 3000 BCE and 1300 CE. The area was not completely isolated; later, voyagers from Samoa, Tonga, and Fiji introduced some Polynesian and Melanesian cultural aspects, respectively. Intermarriage and intense navigation between the islands tended to blur cultural differences and resulted in a significant degree of cultural homogenization. Local oral historians chiefly in the form of lore keepers suggest that the area was first inhabited by a group of seafaring people from Melanesia, who were described as being dark-skinned, frizzy-haired, and short in stature. These indigenous peoples were then visited by early Austronesian seafarers from the west, a place called Matang, orally described as being tall and fair-skinned. Eventually, both groups intermittently clashed and intermingled until they slowly became a uniform population.
Around 1300 CE, a mass departure occurred from Samoa leading to the addition of Polynesian ancestry into the mix of most Gilbertese people. These Samoans later brought strong features of Polynesian languages and culture, creating clans based on their own Samoan traditions and slowly intertwining with the indigenous clans and powers already dominant in Kiribati. Around the 15th century, starkly contrasting systems of governance arose between the northern islands, primarily under chiefly rule (uea), and the central and southern islands, primarily under the rule of their council of elders (unimwaane). Tabiteuea could be an exception as the sole island that is known as maintaining a traditional egalitarian society. The name Tabiteuea stems from the root phrase Tabu-te-Uea, meaning "chiefs are forbidden". Civil war soon became a factor, with acquisition of land being the main form of conquest. Clans and chiefs began fighting over resources, fueled by hatred and reignited blood feuds, which may have started months, years, or even decades before.
The turmoil lasted well into the European visitation and colonial era, which led to certain islands decimating their foes with the help of guns and cannon-equipped ships that Europeans provided to some I-Kiribati leaders. The typical military arms of the I-Kiribati at this time were shark tooth-embedded wooden spears, knives, and swords, and garbs of armour fashioned from dense coconut fibre. They chiefly used these instead of the gunpowder and weapons of steel available at the time, because of the strong sentimental value of the equipment handed down through generations. Ranged weapons, such as bows, slings, and javelins, were seldom used; hand-to-hand combat was a prominent skill still practised today, though seldom mentioned because of various taboos associated with it, secrecy being the primary one. Abemama's High Chief Tembinok' was the last of the dozens of expansionist chiefs of Gilbert Islands of this period, despite Abemama historically conforming to the traditional southern islands' governance of their respective unimwaane. He was immortalised in Robert Louis Stevenson's book In the South Seas, which delved into the high chief's character and method of rule during Stevenson's stay in Abemama. The 90th anniversary of his arrival in the Gilbert Islands was chosen to celebrate the independence of Kiribati on 12 July 1979.
Chance visits by European ships occurred in the 17th and 18th centuries, while those ships attempted circumnavigations of the world, or sought sailing routes from the south to north Pacific Ocean. A passing trade, whaling the On-The-Line grounds, and labour ships associated with blackbirding of Kanakas workers, visited the islands in large numbers during the 19th century, with social, economic, political, religious and cultural consequences. More than 9,000 workers were sent abroad from 1845 to 1895, most of them not returning.
The passing trade gave rise to European, Indian, Chinese, Samoan, and other residents from the 1830s; they included beachcombers, castaways, traders, and missionaries.
In 1886, an Anglo-German agreement partitioned the "unclaimed" central Pacific, leaving Nauru in the German sphere of influence, while Ocean Island and the future GEIC wound up in the British sphere of influence. In 1892, local Gilbertese authorities (an uea, a chief from the Northern Gilbert Group, and atun te boti or head of clan) on each of the Gilbert Islands agreed to Captain E.H.M. Davis commanding HMS Royalist of the Royal Navy declaring them part of a British protectorate, along with the nearby Ellice Islands. They were administered by a resident commissioner based first on Makin Islands (1893–95), then in Betio, Tarawa (1896–1908) and Ocean Island (1908–1942), protectorate who was under the Western Pacific High Commission based in Fiji. Banaba, known to Europeans as Ocean Island, was added to the protectorate in 1900, because of the phosphate rock of its soil (discovered in 1900). This discovery and the mining ended the contracting of Kanakas workers to farm plantations in Queensland, German Samoa or Central America, with all the needed workers being used in Ocean Island extraction.
The conduct of William Telfer Campbell, the second resident commissioner of the Gilberts and Ellice Islands of 1896 to 1908, was criticised as to his legislative, judicial and administrative management (including allegations of forced labour exacted from islanders) and became the subject of the 1909 report by Arthur Mahaffy. In 1913, an anonymous correspondent to The New Age newspaper described the maladministration of W. Telfer Campbell and questioned the partiality of Arthur Mahaffy, because he was a former colonial official in the Gilberts. The anonymous correspondent also criticised the operations of the Pacific Phosphate Company on Ocean Island.
The islands became the crown colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands in 1916. The Northern Line Islands, including Christmas Island (Kiritimati), were added to the colony in 1919, and the Phoenix Islands were added in 1937 with the purpose of a Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme. On 12 July 1940, Pan Am Airways' American Clipper landed at Canton Island for the first time during a flight from Honolulu to Auckland.
Sir Arthur Grimble was a cadet administrative officer based at Tarawa (1913–1919) and became Resident Commissioner of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony in 1926.
In 1902, the Pacific Cable Board laid the first trans-Pacific telegraph cable from Bamfield, British Columbia, to Fanning Island (Tabuaeran) in the Line Islands, and from Fiji to Fanning Island, thus completing the All Red Line, a series of telegraph lines circumnavigating the globe completely within the British Empire. The location of Fanning Island, one of the closest formations to Hawaii, led to its annexation by the British Empire in 1888. Nearby candidates including Palmyra Island were not favoured due to the lack of adequate landing sites.
The United States eventually incorporated the Northern Line Islands into its territories, and did the same with the Phoenix Islands, which lie between Gilberts and the Line Islands, including Howland, Jarvis, and Baker islands, thus causing a territorial dispute. That was eventually resolved and they finally became part of Kiribati under the Treaty of Tarawa.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, during World War II, Butaritari and Tarawa, and others of the Northern Gilbert group, were occupied by Japan from 1941 to 1943. Betio became an airfield and supply base. The expulsion of the Japanese military in late 1943 involved one of the bloodiest battles in US Marine Corps history. Marines landed in November 1943 and the Battle of Tarawa ensued. Ocean Island, the headquarters of the colony, was bombed, evacuated and occupied by Japan in 1942 and only freed in 1945, after the massacre of all but one of the Gilbertese on the island by the Japanese forces. Funafuti hosted then the provisional headquarters of the colony from 1942 to 1946, when Tarawa returned to host the headquarters, replacing Ocean Island.
At the end of 1945, most of the remaining inhabitants of Banaba, repatriated from Kosrae, Nauru and Tarawa, were relocated to Rabi Island, a land of Fiji that the British government had acquired in 1942 for this purpose.
On 1 January 1953, the British Western Pacific High Commissioner of the colony was transferred from Fiji to the new capital of Honiara, to the British Solomon Islands, with the Gilberts' Resident Commissioner still headquartered in Tarawa.
Further military operations in the colony occurred in the late 1950s and early 1960s when Christmas Island was used by the United States and United Kingdom for nuclear weapons testing including hydrogen bombs.
Institutions of internal self-rule were established on Tarawa from about 1967. The Ellice Islands asked for separation from the rest of the colony in 1974 and granted their own internal self-rule institutions. The separation entered into force on 1 January 1976. In 1978, the Ellice Islands became the independent nation of Tuvalu.
The Gilbert Islands gained independence as the Republic of Kiribati on 12 July 1979. Then, in September, the United States relinquished all claims to the sparsely inhabited Phoenix and Line Islands, in a 1979 treaty of friendship with Kiribati (ratified in 1983). Although the indigenous Gilbertese name for the Gilbert Islands proper is "Tungaru", the new state chose the name "Kiribati", the Gilbertese spelling of "Gilberts", because it was more modern and as an equivalent of the former colony to acknowledge the inclusion of Banaba, the Line Islands, and the Phoenix Islands. The last two archipelagoes were never initially occupied by Gilbertese until the British authorities, and later the Republic Government, resettled Gilbertese there under resettlement schemes. In 1982, the first elections since independence were held. A no-confidence vote provoked the 1983 new election. In the post-independence era, overcrowding has been an issue, at least in British and aid organisations' eyes. In 1988, an announcement was made that 4,700 residents of the main island group would be resettled onto less populated islands. In September 1994, Teburoro Tito from the opposition was elected president.
In 1995, Kiribati unilaterally moved the international date line far to the east to encompass the Line Islands group, so that the nation would no longer be divided by the date line. The move, which fulfilled one of President Tito's campaign promises, was intended to allow businesses across the expansive nation to keep the same business week. This also enabled Kiribati to become the first country to see the dawn of the third millennium, an event of significance for tourism. Tito was re-elected in 1998. In 1999, Kiribati became a full member of the United Nations, 20 years after independence. In 2002, Kiribati passed a controversial law that enabled the government to shut down newspaper publishers. The legislation followed the launching of Kiribati's first successful non-government-run newspaper. President Tito was re-elected in 2003 but was removed from office in March 2003 by a no-confidence vote and replaced by a Council of State. Anote Tong of the opposition party Boutokaan Te Koaua was elected to succeed Tito in July 2003. He was re-elected in 2007 and in 2011.
In June 2008, Kiribati officials asked Australia and New Zealand to accept Kiribati citizens as permanent refugees. Kiribati is expected to be the first country to lose all its land territory to climate change. In June 2008, Kiribati President Anote Tong said that the country had reached "the point of no return." He added, "To plan for the day when you no longer have a country is indeed painful but I think we have to do that."
In January 2012, Anote Tong was re-elected for a third and last successive term. In early 2012, the government of Kiribati purchased the 2,200-hectare Natoavatu Estate on the second largest island of Fiji, Vanua Levu. At the time it was widely reported that the government planned to evacuate the entire population of Kiribati to Fiji. In April 2013, President Tong began urging citizens to evacuate the islands and migrate elsewhere. In May 2014, the Office of the President confirmed the purchase of some 5,460 acres of land on Vanua Levu at a cost of 9.3 million Australian dollars.
In March 2016, Taneti Maamau was elected as the new President of Kiribati. He was the fifth president since the country became independent in 1979. In June 2020, President Maamau won re-election for a second four-year term. President Maamau was considered pro-China and he supported closer ties with Beijing. On 16 November 2021, the Kiribati government announced it would expose the world's largest marine protected area to commercial fishing. The 2022 Kiribati constitutional crisis started with the suspension of all 5 major Justices of the judiciary of Kiribati.
In 2020, Kiribati’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, consistent with most of the COVID-19 responses of Oceania island nations, was to impose strict limits on tourism and commercial travel. Kiribati reported that it remained essentially COVID-free (two cases) until January 2022 when the first commercial international flight in two years included 36 passengers who tested positive. While new restrictions were imposed, Kiribati subsequently reported a total of 3252 cases and 13 deaths.
On 29 January 2023, Kiribati confirmed its intention to rejoin the Pacific Islands Forum, ending a bitter two-year leadership split.
The Constitution of Kiribati, promulgated 12 July 1979, provides for free and open elections in a parliamentary democratic republic.
The executive branch consists of a president (te Beretitenti), a vice-president and a cabinet. The president, who is also chief of the cabinet, is directly elected by the citizens, after the legislature nominates three or four persons from among its members to be candidates in the ensuing presidential election. The president is limited to serving three four-year terms, and remains a member of the assembly. The cabinet is composed of the president, vice-president, and 13 ministers (appointed by the president) who are also ministers of parliament.
The legislative branch is the unicameral Maneaba ni Maungatabu (House of Assembly). Its members are elected, including by constitutional mandate, a nominated representative of the Banaban people in Rabi Island, Fiji (Banaba, former Ocean Island), in addition to, until 2016, the attorney general, who served as an ex officio member from 1979 to 2016. Legislators serve for a four-year term.
The constitutional provisions governing administration of justice are similar to those in other former British possessions in that the judiciary is free from governmental interference. The judicial branch is made up of the High Court (in Betio) and the Court of Appeal. The president appoints the presiding judges.
Local government is through island councils with elected members. Local affairs are handled in a manner similar to town meetings in colonial America. Island councils make their own estimates of revenue and expenditure and generally are free from central government controls. There are a total of 21 inhabited islands in Kiribati. Each inhabited island has its own council. Since independence, Kiribati is no longer divided into districts (see Subdivisions of Kiribati).
Kiribati has formal political parties but their organisation is quite informal. Ad hoc opposition groups tend to coalesce around specific issues. There is universal suffrage at age 18. Today the only recognisable parties are the Boutokaan Kiribati Moa Party, former Boutokaan te Koaua, and Tobwaan Kiribati Party.
Kiribati maintains close relations with its Pacific neighbours, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Fiji. The first three of these provide the bulk of the country's foreign aid. Taiwan and Japan also have specified-period licences to fish in Kiribati's waters. There are three resident diplomatic missions headquartered in South Tarawa: the Embassies of the Republic of China (Taiwan) until 2019, replaced by People's Republic of China in 2020 and the High Commissions of Australia and New Zealand. A US Embassy will open in 2023.
In November 1999, Kiribati agreed to allow Japan's National Space Development Agency to lease land on Kiritimati (formerly Christmas Island) for 20 years, on which to build a spaceport. The agreement stipulated that Japan was to pay US$840,000 per year and would also pay for any damage to roads and the environment. A Japanese-built downrange tracking station operates on Kiritimati and an abandoned airfield on the island was designated as the landing strip for a proposed reusable unmanned space shuttle called HOPE-X. HOPE-X, however, was eventually cancelled by Japan in 2003.
As one of the world's most vulnerable nations to the effects of global warming, Kiribati has been an active participant in international diplomatic efforts relating to climate change, most importantly the UNFCCC conferences of the parties (COP). Kiribati is a member of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), an intergovernmental organisation of low-lying coastal and small island countries. Established in 1990, the main purpose of the alliance is to consolidate the voices of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) to address global warming. AOSIS has been very active from its inception, putting forward the first draft text in the Kyoto Protocol negotiations as early as 1994.
In 2009, President Tong attended the Climate Vulnerable Forum (V11) in the Maldives, with 10 other countries that are vulnerable to climate change, and signed the Bandos Island declaration on 10 November 2009, pledging to show moral leadership and commence greening their economies by voluntarily committing to achieving carbon neutrality.
In November 2010, Kiribati hosted the Tarawa Climate Change Conference (TCCC) to support the president of Kiribati's initiative to hold a consultative forum between vulnerable states and their partners. The conference strove to create an enabling environment for multi-party negotiations under the auspices of the UNFCCC. The conference was a successor event to the Climate Vulnerable Forum. The ultimate objective of TCCC was to reduce the number and intensity of fault lines between parties to the COP process, explore elements of agreement between the parties and thereby to support Kiribati's and other parties' contribution to COP16 held in Cancun, Mexico, from 29 November to 10 December 2010.
In 2013, President Tong spoke of climate-change induced sea level rise as "inevitable". "For our people to survive, then they will have to migrate. Either we can wait for the time when we have to move people en masse or we can prepare them—beginning from now ..." In New York in 2014, per The New Yorker, President Tong told The New York Times that "according to the projections, within this century, the water will be higher than the highest point in our lands". In 2014, President Tong finalised the purchase of a 20 km (7.7 sq mi) stretch of land on Vanua Levu, one of the larger Fiji islands, 2,000 km away. A move described by Tong as an "absolute necessity" should the nation be completely submerged under water.
In 2013, attention was drawn to a claim of a Kiribati man of being a "climate change refugee" under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951). However, this claim was determined by the New Zealand High Court to be untenable. The New Zealand Court of Appeal also rejected the claim in a 2014 decision. On further appeal, the New Zealand Supreme Court confirmed the earlier adverse rulings against the application for refugee status, but rejected the proposition "that environmental degradation resulting from climate change or other natural disasters could never create a pathway into the Refugee Convention or protected person jurisdiction". In 2017, Kiribati signed the UN treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
On 20 September 2019, the government of Kiribati restored its diplomatic relationship with the People's Republic of China and simultaneously stopped its diplomatic relationship with Taiwan. China offered a 737 aircraft and ferries to Kiribati for the decision, according to Taiwan's foreign minister, Joseph Wu.
From 1973 though 2008, a total of almost 500 US Peace Corps volunteers were based on the Islands, as many as 45 in a given year. Activities included assisting in the planning, design and construction of wells, libraries, and other infrastructure, and agricultural, environmental, and community health education. In 2006, volunteer placement was significantly scaled down due to the reduction of consistent air transportation to the outer islands; it was later ended because the associated ability to provide medical care to volunteers could not be assured. In July 2022, US Vice President Harris announced plans to build a new embassy in Kiribati and Tonga and reestablish the Peace Corps presence in the region.
Law enforcement in Kiribati is carried out by the Kiribati Police Service which is responsible for all law enforcement and paramilitary duties for the island nation. There are police posts located on all of the islands. The police have one patrol boat, the Guardian-class patrol boat RKS Teanoai II. Kiribati has no military and relies on both Australia and New Zealand for its defence.
The main prison in Kiribati is located in Betio, named the Walter Betio Prison. There is also a prison in London on Kiritimati.
Male homosexuality is illegal in Kiribati, with a penalty up to 14 years in prison, according to a historical British law, but this law is not enforced. Kiribati has not yet followed the lead of the United Kingdom, following its Wolfenden report, to decriminalise acts of male homosexuality, beginning with provisions in the UK's Sexual Offences Act 1957. Female homosexuality is legal, but lesbians may face violence and discrimination. However, employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is prohibited.
There are 21 inhabited islands in Kiribati. Kiribati can be geographically divided into three archipelagoes or groups of islands, which have no administrative functions. They are:
The original districts before independence were:
Four of the former districts (including Tarawa) lie in the Gilbert Islands, where most of the country's population lives. Five of the Line Islands are uninhabited (Malden Island, Starbuck Island, Millenium Island, Vostok Island and Flint Island). The Phoenix Islands are uninhabited except for Kanton, and have no representation. Banaba itself is sparsely inhabited now. There is also a non-elected representative of the Banabans on Rabi Island in Fiji.
Each of the 21 inhabited islands has its own local council that takes care of daily affairs. There is one council for each inhabited island, with two exceptions: Tarawa Atoll has three councils: Betio Town Council, Teinainano Urban Council [it] (TUC) (for the rest of South Tarawa) and Eutan Tarawa Council (ETC) (for North Tarawa); and Tabiteuea has two councils.
Kiribati consists of 32 atolls and one solitary island (Banaba), extending into the eastern and western hemispheres, as well as the northern and southern hemispheres. Its extensive exclusive economic zone covers three, non-contiguous, traditional geographic subregions: Banaba (Melanesian-Micronesian area), the Gilbert Islands (Micronesia) and the Line and Phoenix Islands (Polynesia). The groups of islands are:
Banaba (or Ocean Island) is a raised-coral island. It was once a rich source of phosphates, but was exhausted in mining before independence. The rest of the land in Kiribati consists of the sand and reef rock islets of atolls or coral islands, which rise only one or two metres above sea level.
The soil is thin and calcareous. It has a low water-holding capacity and low organic matter and nutrient content—except for calcium, sodium, and magnesium. Banaba is one of the least suitable places for agriculture in the world.
Kiritimati (previously Christmas Island) in the Line Islands has the largest land area of any atoll in the world. Based on a 1995 realignment of the International Date Line, the Line Islands were the first area to enter into a new year, including year 2000. For that reason, Caroline Island was renamed Millennium Island in 1997.
According to the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (previously South Pacific Regional Environment Programme), two small uninhabited Kiribati islets, Tebua Tarawa and Abanuea, disappeared underwater in 1999. The sea level at Christmas Island, in the 50 years between 1972 and 2022, has risen .05 meters (50 mm). The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that sea levels will rise by about 50 cm (20 in) by 2100 due to global warming and a further rise would be inevitable. It is thus likely that within a century the nation's arable land will become subject to increased soil salination and will be largely submerged.
The exposure of Kiribati to changes in sea levels is exacerbated by the Pacific decadal oscillation, which is a climate switch phenomenon that results in changes from periods of La Niña to periods of El Niño. This has an effect on sea levels. For example, in 2000, there was a switch from periods of downward pressure of El Niño on sea levels to an upward pressure of La Niña on sea levels, which upward pressure causes more frequent and higher high tide levels. The Perigean spring tide (often called a king tide) can result in seawater flooding low-lying areas of the islands of Kiribati.
The atolls and reef islands can respond to changes in sea-level. Paul Kench at the University of Auckland in New Zealand and Arthur Webb at the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission in Fiji released a study in 2010 on the dynamic response of atolls and reef islands in the central Pacific. Kiribati was mentioned in the study, and Webb and Kench found that the three major urbanised islands in Kiribati—Betio, Bairiki and Nanikai—increased by 30% (36 hectares), 16.3% (5.8 hectares) and 12.5% (0.8 hectares), respectively.
The study by Paul Kench and Arthur Webb recognises that the islands are extremely vulnerable to sea level rise, and concluded that: "This study did not measure vertical growth of the island surface nor does it suggest there is any change in the height of the islands. Since land height has not changed the vulnerability of the greater part of the land area of each island to submergence due to sea level rise is also unchanged and these low-lying atolls remain immediately and extremely vulnerable to inundation or sea water flooding."
The Climate Change in the Pacific Report of 2011 describes Kiribati as having a low risk of cyclones; however in March 2015 Kiribati experienced flooding and destruction of seawalls and coastal infrastructure as the result of Cyclone Pam, a Category 5 cyclone that devastated Vanuatu. Kiribati remains exposed to the risk that cyclones can strip the low-lying islands of their vegetation and soil.
Gradual sea-level rise also allows for coral polyp activity to raise the atolls with the sea level. However, if the increase in sea level occurs at a rate faster than coral growth, or if polyp activity is damaged by ocean acidification, then the resilience of the atolls and reef islands is less certain. Also, coral bleaching has occurred on more than 60% of the coral reefs in the Maldives.
The Human Rights Measurement Initiative finds that the climate crisis has worsened human rights conditions moderately (4.8 out of 6) in Kiribati. Human rights experts reported that the climate crisis has compromised access to food and clean water, as well as women's rights, housing security and cultural integrity.
The Kiribati Adaptation Program (KAP), started in 2003, is a US$5.5 million initiative that was originally enacted by the national government of Kiribati with the support of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program, and the Japanese government. Australia later joined the coalition, donating US$1.5 million to the effort. The program aims to take place over six years, supporting measures that reduce Kiribati's vulnerability to the effects of climate change and sea level rise by raising awareness of climate change, assessing and protecting available water resources, and managing inundation. At the start of the Adaptation Program, representatives from each of the inhabited atolls identified key climatic changes that had taken place over the past 20–40 years and proposed coping mechanisms to deal with these changes under four categories of urgency of need. The program is now focusing on the country's most vulnerable sectors in the most highly populated areas. Initiatives include improving water supply management in and around Tarawa; coastal management protection measures such as mangrove re-plantation and protection of public infrastructure; strengthening laws to reduce coastal erosion; and population settlement planning to reduce personal risks.
The government has taken specific action to ensure food security, as sea level rise, drought, and overfishing have created food and water shortages. This has involved diversifying food sources and ensuring existing resources are managed sustainably.
The issue of plastic pollution has also been a key challenge for Kiribati as it hurts both its marine biodiversity and its economy that relies primarily on tourism and fishery. As a result, the government of Kiribati, more specifically the Environment and Conservation Division (ECD) which forms part of the Kiribati Government's Ministry of Environment, Lands and Agricultural Development, has made efforts to tackle this issue nationally through environment acts, and state policy papers. To a further extent, it has also recognized the global nature of plastic pollution, and consequently, has promoted international cooperation and multilateral solutions. This is notably observable during the current negotiations of the Global Plastic Pollution Treaty planned to be finally drafted by the end of 2024.
Kiribati has a tropical rainforest climate (Af). From April to October, there are predominant northeastern winds and stable temperatures close to 30 °C (86 °F). From November to April, western gales bring rain.
Kiribati wet season (te Auu-Meang) also recognized as the Tropical cyclone (TC) (te Angibuaka) season starts from November to April every year. Kiribati therefore typically experiences more extreme weather events associated with Tropical disturbances (TD) or Tropical cyclones during te Auu-Meang. But Tropical cyclones rarely develop or pass along the equator where Kiribati is located. However, based on past events, Kiribati has been impacted from distant Tropical cyclone (TC) and the impacts were observed while the systems are in their development stages (Tropical Low/disturbance) or even before they reach Tropical cyclone category.
The fair season starts when Ten Rimwimata (Antares) appears in the sky after sunset, from May to November, when more gentle winds and currents and less rain. Then towards December, when Nei Auti (Pleiades) replaces Antares, the season of sudden westerly winds and more heavy rain discourages any far travel from island to island.
Kiribati does not experience cyclones but effects may occasionally be experienced during cyclone seasons affecting nearby Pacific Island countries such as Fiji.
Precipitation varies significantly between islands. For example, the annual average is 3,000 mm (120 in) in the north and 500 mm (20 in) in the south of the Gilbert Islands. Most of these islands are in the dry belt of the equatorial oceanic climatic zone and experience prolonged droughts.
Kiribati contains three ecosystems: Central Polynesian tropical moist forests, Eastern Micronesia tropical moist forests, and Western Polynesian tropical moist forests.
Because of the relatively young geological age of the islands and atolls and high level of soil salination, the flora of Kiribati is somewhat unhealthy. The Gilbert Islands contain about 83 indigenous and 306 introduced plants, whereas the corresponding numbers for Line and Phoenix Islands are 67 and 283. None of these species are endemic, and about half of the indigenous ones have a limited distribution and became endangered or nearly extinct due to human activities such as phosphate mining.
Coconut, pandanus palms and breadfruit trees are the most common wild plants, whereas the five most cultivated crops but the traditional Babai, Cyrtosperma merkusii, are imported Chinese cabbage, pumpkin, tomato, watermelon and cucumber. Over eighty per cent of the population participates in either farming or fishing.
Seaweed farming is an important part of the economy , with two major species Eucheuma alcarezii and Eucheuma spinosium introduced to the local lagoons from the Philippines in 1977. It competes with collection of the black-lipped pearl oyster (Pinctada margaritifera) and shellfish, which are dominated by the strombid gastropod (Strombus luhuanus) and Anadara cockles (Anadara uropigimelana), whereas the stocks of the giant clam (Tridacna gigas) have been largely exhausted.
Kiribati has a few land mammals, none being indigenous or endemic. They include the Polynesian rat (Rattus exulans), dogs, cats and pigs. Among the 75 bird species, the Bokikokiko (Acrocephalus aequinoctialis) is endemic to Kiritimati.
There are 600–800 species of inshore and pelagic finfish, some 200 species of corals and about 1000 species of shellfish. Fishing mostly targets the family Scombridae, particularly the skipjack tuna and yellowfin tuna as well as flying fish (Cypselurus spp.).
Dogs were already accompanying the first inhabitants but were re-introduced by European settlers: they have continued to grow in numbers and are roaming in traditional packs, particularly around South Tarawa.
Kiribati has few natural resources. Commercially viable phosphate deposits on Banaba were exhausted at the time of independence. Copra and fish now represent the bulk of production and exports. Kiribati has the lowest GDP out of any sovereign state in Oceania, and is considered one of the least developed countries in the world.
In one form or another, Kiribati gets a large portion of its income from abroad. Examples include fishing licences, development assistance, workers' remittances, especially the seafarers issued from Marine Training Centre, and a few tourists. Given Kiribati's limited domestic production ability, it must import nearly all of its essential foodstuffs and manufactured items; it depends on these external sources of income for financing.
The economy of Kiribati benefits from international development assistance programs. The multilateral donors providing development assistance in 2009 were the European Union (A$9 million), the United Nations Development Programme (A$3.7 million), UNICEF, and the World Health Organization (A$100,000). The bilateral donors providing development assistance in 2009 were Australia (A$11 million), Japan (A$2 million), New Zealand (A$6.6 million), Taiwan (A$10.6 million), and other donors providing A$16.2 million, including technical assistance grants from the Asian Development Bank.
The major donors in 2010/2011 were Australia (A$15 million), Taiwan (A$11 million); New Zealand (A$6 million), the World Bank (A$4 million) and the Asian Development Bank.
In 1956, Gilbert and Ellice Islands established a sovereign wealth fund to act as a store of wealth for the country's earnings from phosphate mining. In 2008, the Revenue Equalization Reserve Fund was valued at US$400 million. The RERF assets declined from A$637 million (420% of GDP) in 2007 to A$570.5 million (350% of GDP) in 2009 as the result of the global financial crisis and exposure to failed Icelandic banks. In addition, draw-downs were made by the government of Kiribati to finance budgetary shortfalls during this period.
In May 2011, the IMF country report assessment of the economy of Kiribati is that "After two years of contraction, the economy recovered in the second half of 2010 and inflation pressure dissipated. It is estimated to have grown by 1.75% for the year. Despite a weather-related drop in copra production, private sector activity appears to have picked up, especially in retail. Tourist arrivals rebounded by 20% compared to 2009, although from a very low base. Despite the rise in world food and fuel prices, inflation has bounced from 2008 crisis-highs into negative territory, reflecting the strong appreciation of the Australian dollar, which is used as the domestic currency, and a decline in the world price of rice. Credit growth in the overall economy declined in 2009 as economic activity stalled. But it started to pick up in the second half of 2010 as the recovery gained traction".
A major Australian bank, ANZ, maintains a presence on Kiribati with a number of branches and ATM units.
Kiribati is a major exporter of hand-caught ornamental fish. There are eight licensed operators based on Kiritimati (Christmas Island). At the end of 2005, the number of pet fish exported was 110,000. All operators have a land-based facility but fish are kept in containers on the reef until the day before the shipment. This is to reduce the running cost and the mortality of pet fish to be exported. The flame angelfish (Centropyge loriculus) is the major species exported.
Kiribati has had two domestic airlines: Air Kiribati and Coral Sun Airways. Both airlines are based in Tarawa's Bonriki International Airport and serve destinations across the Gilbert Islands and Line Islands only: Banaba and the Phoenix Islands are not served by the domestic carriers.
Cassidy International Airport on Kiritimati has an international service provided by Fiji Airways: Nadi to Cassidy Airport and then to Honolulu.
The islands’ remote location in the Central Pacific at approximately the International Date Line and spanning hundreds of miles north and south of the equator has meant that communications between them has always been challenging and conducted primarily by radio and print media. TV Kiribati Ltd, was owned by the government operated between 2004 and mid-2012, but could not reach all of the Islands. Radio Kiribati, based on Tarawa and operated by the government's Broadcasting and Publications Authority (BPA) on 1440 kHz AM is the only form of mass media that reaches all the major islands. Transmission hours are limited and local content in Gilbertese is supplemented by English summaries and BBC News. The BPA and a private broadcaster also operate FM stations accessible on Tarawa.
Inter-island communications for many years relied on a centralized shortwave radio network operated by Telecom Services Kiribati, Ltd (TSKL) based in each Island's Council Headquarters. Numerous issues including low availability, maintenance, privacy, and only one per island led TSKL to adopt satellite-based telephones. However, the system is more expensive and still only located at Council Headquarters.
Print weeklies in Gilbertese include the Te Uekara published by the government, Te Mauri published by the Kiribati Protestant Church, and the Kiribati Independent, published from Auckland as well as the Kiribati Newstar, published in English.
In December 2019, SpaceX launched the Kacific1 broadband satellite that provides 100Mbit/s mobile and broadband service to 25 countries throughout to the Asia-Pacific region including Kiribati. Three of the satellite's 56 spot beams provide overlapping coverage of the Gilbert Islands and Tuvalu; however, the more eastern regions of the country, the Phoenix and Line Islands, are outside of the satellite's coverage.
The Southern Cross NEXT cable system, which entered service in July 2022, connects the US to Australia and provides service to eastern part of Kiribati (Kiritimati island) through the 234-mile (377 km) Kiritimati Branch with one fiber pair. The network, which is an upgrade to the existing Southern Cross Cable, also connects to Samoa, Fiji, and New Zealand.
In June 2021, the World Bank-backed procurement for the East Micronesian Cable system was cancelled due to security concerns. The undersea fiberoptic system, which would have originated in Guam, was "designed to improve the communications in the island nations of Nauru, Kiribati and Federated States of Micronesia (FSM)." In January 2023, ministers from the three Pacific island nations signed a joint communiqué for moving forward with the stalled project. Funded by the U.S., Japan and Australia the project is valued at $70 million. In early 2023, it was reported that Kiribati became the first Pacific island nation to receive Starlink services.
The November 2020 census showed a population of 119,940. About 90% lived in the Gilbert Islands, with 52.9% of them on South Tarawa, including Betio, the biggest township.
Until recently, people lived mostly in villages with populations between 50 and 3,000 on the outer islands. Most houses are made of materials obtained from coconut and pandanus trees. Frequent droughts and infertile soil hinder reliable large-scale agriculture, so the islanders have largely turned to the sea for livelihood and subsistence. Most are outrigger sailors and fishermen. Copra plantations serve as a second source of employment. In recent years, large numbers of citizens have moved to the more urban island capital of Tarawa, where Betio is the largest town and South Tarawa reunites larger towns like Bikenibeu or Teaoraereke. Increasing urbanisation has raised the population of South Tarawa to 63,017.
The native people of Kiribati are called I-Kiribati. Ethnically, the I-Kiribati are Oceanians, a sub-ethnicity of Austronesians. Recent archaeological evidence indicates that Austronesians originally settled the islands thousands of years ago . Around the 14th century, Fijians, Samoans, and Tongans invaded the islands, thus diversifying the ethnic range and introducing Polynesian linguistic traits. Intermarriage among all ancestral groups, however, has led to a population reasonably homogeneous in appearance and traditions.
The people of Kiribati speak Gilbertese, an Oceanic language. English is the other official language, but is not used very often outside the island capital of Tarawa. It is more likely that some English words are mixed in their use with Gilbertese. Older generations of I-Kiribati tend to use more complicated versions of the language. Several words in Gilbertese have been adopted from European settlers, for instance, kamea is one of the Gilbertese words for dog, kiri being the Oceanic one, which has its origins in the I-Kiribati people hearing the European settlers saying "come here" to their dogs, and adopting that as kamea.
Many other loanwords have been adopted (like buun, spoon, moko, smoke, beeki, pig, batoro, bottle) but some typical Gilbertese words are quite common, even for European objects (like wanikiba, plane – the flying canoe, rebwerebwe, motorbike – for the motor noise, kauniwae, shoes – the cow for the feet).
Christianity is the major religion in Kiribati, having been lately introduced by missionaries, because of its remoteness and the absence of any significant European presence until the latter half of the 19th century. The population is predominantly Roman Catholic (58.9%), with two main Protestant denominations (Kiribati Protestant Church 8.4% and Kiribati Uniting Church 21.2%) accounting for 29.6%. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (5.6%), Baháʼí Faith (2.1%), Seventh-day Adventist Church (2.1%), Pentecostals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and other small faiths together account for less than 2% (2020 census).
The Gilbert Islands where 90% of the Kiribati population live, boast some of the highest population densities in the Pacific, rivalling, without any tall building, cities like Hong Kong or Singapore. This overcrowding produces a great amount of pollution, worsening the quality and length of life. Due to insufficient sanitation and water filtration systems, worsened by the fragility of the water lens of the atolls and by climate change, only about 66% have access to clean water. Waterborne diseases grow at record levels throughout the islands. Poor sanitation has led to an increase in cases of conjunctivitis, diarrhoea, dysentery, and fungal infections. Kiribati is the country with the third highest prevalence of smoking in the world, with 54–57% of the population reported as smokers. Due to this and other "lifestyle diseases," such as type 2 diabetes, there has been a drastic spike in amputations on the islands, doubling in a few years.
As a consequence, the population of Kiribati has a quite low life expectancy at birth of 68.46 years. Even if this data is of only 66.9 years, provided elsewhere, Kiribati ranks last in life expectancy out of the 20 nations of Oceania. This life expectancy is 64.3 for males, and 69.5 for females and there is an infant mortality rate of 41 deaths per 1,000 live births. Tuberculosis has a small presence in the country, with 365 cases per 100,000 a year. Government expenditure on health was at US$268 per capita (PPP) in 2006. In 1990–2007, there were 23 physicians per 100,000 persons. Since the arrival of Cuban doctors in 2006, the infant mortality rate has decreased significantly.
Most health problems are related to consumption of semi-raw seafood, limited food storage facilities, and bacterial contamination of fresh water supplies. In the early 2000s, between 1 and 7% of the population, depending on the island, were annually treated for food poisoning in a hospital. Modernization and cross-cultural exchange of the late 20th century brought new issues of unhealthy diet and lifestyle, heavy smoking, especially among the young, and external infections, including HIV/AIDS.
Fresh water remains a concern of Kiribati – during the dry season (Aumaiaki), water has been drilled for instead of using rain water tanks. In recent years, there has been a longer than usual Aumaikai season resulting in additional water having to be drilled from beneath the water table. This has introduced water-borne illnesses, compounding the health problems within Kiribati.
The Human Rights Measurement Initiative finds that Kiribati is fulfilling 77.2% of what it should be fulfilling for the right to health based on its level of income. When looking at the right to health with respect to children, Kiribati achieves 93.8% of what is expected based on its current income. In regards to the right to health amongst the adult population, the country achieves 92.2% of what is expected based on the nation's level of income. Kiribati falls into the "very bad" category when evaluating the right to reproductive health because the nation is fulfilling only 45.5% of what the nation is expected to achieve based on the resources (income) it has available.
Primary education is free and compulsory for the first nine years, beginning at age six. Mission schools are slowly being absorbed into the government primary school system. Higher education is expanding; students may seek technical, teacher or marine training, or study in other countries. Most choosing to do the latter have gone to Fiji to attend the University of the South Pacific, and those wishing to complete medical training have been sent to Australia, New Zealand or Cuba.
The education system is organised as follows:
Kiribati Ministry of Education is the education ministry. The government high schools are King George V and Elaine Bernacchi School, Tabiteuea North Senior Secondary School, and Melaengi Tabai Secondary School. Thirteen high schools are operated by Christian churches.
The University of the South Pacific has a campus in Teaoraereke for distant/flexible learning, but also to provide preparatory studies towards obtaining certificates, diplomas and degrees at other campus sites.
The other prominent schools in Kiribati are:
Songs (te anene) and above all, dances (te mwaie), are held in high regard.
Kiribati folk music is generally based on chanting or other forms of vocalising, accompanied by body percussion. Public performances in modern Kiribati are generally performed by a seated chorus, accompanied by a guitar. However, during formal performances of the standing dance (Te Kaimatoa) or the hip dance (Te Buki), a wooden box is used as a percussion instrument. This box is constructed to give a hollow and reverberating tone when struck simultaneously by a chorus of men sitting around it. Traditional songs are often love-themed, but there are also competitive, religious, children's, patriotic, war and wedding songs. There are also stick dances which accompany legends and semi-historical stories. These stick dances or "tirere" (pronounced seerere) are performed only during major festivals.
The uniqueness of Kiribati when compared with other forms of Pacific island dance is its emphasis on the outstretched arms of the dancer and the sudden birdlike movement of the head. The Frigate bird (Fregata minor) on the Kiribati flag refers to this bird-like style of Kiribati dancing. Most dances are in the standing or sitting position with movement limited and staggered. Smiling whilst dancing is generally considered vulgar within the context of Kiribati dancing. This is due to its origin of not being solely as a form of entertainment but as a form of storytelling and a display of the skill, beauty and endurance of the dancer.
Traditionally, the staple diet of the I-Kiribati was the abundance of seafood and coconuts. Starch-based carbohydrate sources were not plentiful due to the hostile climate of the atolls with only the northernmost atolls being viable for constant agriculture. The national crop bwabwai was only eaten during special celebrations along with pork.
To complement the rather low consumption of carbohydrates in their diets, the I-Kiribati processed the sap and fruit of the abundant pandanus and coconut trees into different beverages and foods such as te karewe (fresh daily sap of the coconut tree) or te tuae (dried pandanus cake) and te kabubu (dried pandanus flour) from pandanus fruit pulp and te kamaimai (coconut sap syrup) from coconut sap.
After World War II, rice became a daily staple in most households, which is still the case today. The majority of seafood, fish in particular, is eaten sashimi-style with either coconut sap, soy sauce or vinegar-based dressings, often combined with chillies and onions.
Coconut crabs and mud crabs are traditionally given to breastfeeding mothers, with the belief that the meat stimulates the production of high-quality breast milk.
Kiribati has competed at the Commonwealth Games since 1998 and the Summer Olympics since 2004. It sent three competitors to its first Olympics, two sprinters and a weightlifter. Kiribati won its first ever Commonwealth Games medal at the 2014 Commonwealth Games when weightlifter David Katoatau won Gold in the 105 kg Group.
Football is the most popular sport. Kiribati Islands Football Federation (KIFF) is an associate member of the Oceania Football Confederation, but not of world-governing body FIFA. Instead, they are member of ConIFA. Kiribati National team has played ten matches, all of which it has lost, and all at the Pacific Games from 1979 to 2011. The Kiribati football stadium is Bairiki National Stadium, which has a capacity of 2,500.
The Betio Soccer Field [pl] is home to a number of local sporting teams.
Edward Carlyon Eliot, who was Resident Commissioner of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands (now Kiribati and Tuvalu) from 1913 to 1920, describes this period in his book Broken Atoms (autobiographical reminiscences) Pub. G. Bles, London, 1938.
Sir Arthur Grimble wrote about his time working in the British colonial service in Kiribati (then the Gilbert Islands) from 1914 to 1932 in two popular books A Pattern of Islands (1952) and Return to the Islands (1957). He also undertook academic studies of Gilbertese culture.
John Smith, the last governor of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, wrote his memoir An Island in the Autumn (2011).
J. Maarten Troost's more recent autobiographical experiences in Tarawa are documented in his book The Sex Lives of Cannibals (2004).
Alice Piciocchi's illustrated essay, Kiribati. Cronache illustrate da una terra (s)perduta, (2016) Milan: 24 ORE Cultura, also translated into French (2018, éditions du Rouergue), tries to write and portray a comprehensive encyclopaedic book of modern Kiribati.
1°25′N 173°00′E / 1.417°N 173.000°E / 1.417; 173.000
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Kiribati (/ˌkɪrɪˈbæs/ KIRR-ih-BASS), officially the Republic of Kiribati (Gilbertese: [Ribaberiki] Kiribati), is an island country in the Micronesia subregion of Oceania in the central Pacific Ocean. Its permanent population is over 119,000 as of the 2020 census, with more than half living on Tarawa atoll. The state comprises 32 atolls and one remote raised coral island, Banaba. Its total land area is 811 km (313 sq mi) dispersed over 3,441,810 km (1,328,890 sq mi) of ocean.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The islands' spread straddles the equator and the 180th meridian, although the International Date Line goes around Kiribati and swings far to the east, almost reaching 150°W. This brings Kiribati's easternmost islands, the southern Line Islands south of Hawaii, into the same day as the Gilbert Islands and places them in the most advanced time zone on Earth: UTC+14.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Kiribati gained its independence from the United Kingdom and the United States, becoming a sovereign state in 1979. The capital, South Tarawa, now the most populated area, consists of a number of islets, connected by a series of causeways. These comprise about half the area of Tarawa Atoll. Prior to its independence, the country had exported phosphate, but those mines are no longer viable with fisheries and export of copra driving much of the economy. Kiribati is one of the least developed countries in the world and is highly dependent on international aid for its economy.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Kiribati is a member of the Pacific Community, Commonwealth of Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States, and became a full member of the United Nations in 1999. As an island nation, the islands are vulnerable to climate change and tsunamis. Addressing climate change has been a central part of its international policy, as a member of the Alliance of Small Island States.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The name is pronounced /ˌkɪrɪˈbæs/, Kiribass, as -ti in the Gilbertese language represents an s sound. Similarly, the name of its people, the I-Kiribati, is pronounced as e-Kiribass.",
"title": "Etymology and pronunciation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The name \"Kiribati\" was adopted in 1979 at independence. It is the Gilbertese rendition of Gilberts, the plural of the English name of the nation's main archipelago, the Gilbert Islands. It was named îles Gilbert (French for Gilbert Islands) in about 1820 by Russian admiral Adam von Krusenstern and French captain Louis Duperrey, after the British captain Thomas Gilbert. Gilbert and captain John Marshall sighted some of the islands in 1788, while crossing the \"outer passage\" route from Port Jackson to Canton. Both von Krusenstern's and Duperrey's maps, published in 1824, were written in French.",
"title": "Etymology and pronunciation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In French, the Northern Islands were until then called îles Mulgrave and Byron Island was not part of them. In English, the archipelago, particularly the southern part, was often referred to as the Kingsmills in the 19th century, although the name Gilbert Islands was used increasingly, including in the Western Pacific Order in Council of 1877 and in the Pacific Order of 1893.",
"title": "Etymology and pronunciation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The name Gilbert, already in the name of the British protectorate since 1892, was incorporated into the name of the entire Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony (GEIC) from 1916 and was retained after the Ellice Islands became the separate nation of Tuvalu in 1976. The spelling of Gilberts in the Gilbertese language as Kiribati may be found in books in Gilbertese prepared by missionaries, but with the meaning of Gilbertese (demonym and language) (see e.g., Hawaiian Board of Missionaries, 1895). The first mention as a dictionary entry of the word Kiribati as the native name of the country was written down in 1952 by Ernest Sabatier in his comprehensive Dictionnaire gilbertin-français.",
"title": "Etymology and pronunciation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The indigenous name often suggested for the Gilbert Islands proper is Tungaru (see e.g., Ernest Sabatier, 1952–1953, or Arthur Grimble, 1989). The rendition Kiribati for Gilberts was chosen as the official name of the new independent nation by the chief minister, Sir Ieremia Tabai and his cabinet, on such grounds that it was modern, and to comprehend the inclusion of outer islands (e.g., the Phoenix Group and Line Islands), which were not considered part of the Tungaru (or Gilberts) chain.",
"title": "Etymology and pronunciation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The area now called Kiribati, mainly the 16 Gilbert Islands, has been inhabited by Austronesian peoples speaking the same Oceanic language, from north to south, including the southernmost Nui, since sometime between 3000 BCE and 1300 CE. The area was not completely isolated; later, voyagers from Samoa, Tonga, and Fiji introduced some Polynesian and Melanesian cultural aspects, respectively. Intermarriage and intense navigation between the islands tended to blur cultural differences and resulted in a significant degree of cultural homogenization. Local oral historians chiefly in the form of lore keepers suggest that the area was first inhabited by a group of seafaring people from Melanesia, who were described as being dark-skinned, frizzy-haired, and short in stature. These indigenous peoples were then visited by early Austronesian seafarers from the west, a place called Matang, orally described as being tall and fair-skinned. Eventually, both groups intermittently clashed and intermingled until they slowly became a uniform population.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Around 1300 CE, a mass departure occurred from Samoa leading to the addition of Polynesian ancestry into the mix of most Gilbertese people. These Samoans later brought strong features of Polynesian languages and culture, creating clans based on their own Samoan traditions and slowly intertwining with the indigenous clans and powers already dominant in Kiribati. Around the 15th century, starkly contrasting systems of governance arose between the northern islands, primarily under chiefly rule (uea), and the central and southern islands, primarily under the rule of their council of elders (unimwaane). Tabiteuea could be an exception as the sole island that is known as maintaining a traditional egalitarian society. The name Tabiteuea stems from the root phrase Tabu-te-Uea, meaning \"chiefs are forbidden\". Civil war soon became a factor, with acquisition of land being the main form of conquest. Clans and chiefs began fighting over resources, fueled by hatred and reignited blood feuds, which may have started months, years, or even decades before.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The turmoil lasted well into the European visitation and colonial era, which led to certain islands decimating their foes with the help of guns and cannon-equipped ships that Europeans provided to some I-Kiribati leaders. The typical military arms of the I-Kiribati at this time were shark tooth-embedded wooden spears, knives, and swords, and garbs of armour fashioned from dense coconut fibre. They chiefly used these instead of the gunpowder and weapons of steel available at the time, because of the strong sentimental value of the equipment handed down through generations. Ranged weapons, such as bows, slings, and javelins, were seldom used; hand-to-hand combat was a prominent skill still practised today, though seldom mentioned because of various taboos associated with it, secrecy being the primary one. Abemama's High Chief Tembinok' was the last of the dozens of expansionist chiefs of Gilbert Islands of this period, despite Abemama historically conforming to the traditional southern islands' governance of their respective unimwaane. He was immortalised in Robert Louis Stevenson's book In the South Seas, which delved into the high chief's character and method of rule during Stevenson's stay in Abemama. The 90th anniversary of his arrival in the Gilbert Islands was chosen to celebrate the independence of Kiribati on 12 July 1979.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Chance visits by European ships occurred in the 17th and 18th centuries, while those ships attempted circumnavigations of the world, or sought sailing routes from the south to north Pacific Ocean. A passing trade, whaling the On-The-Line grounds, and labour ships associated with blackbirding of Kanakas workers, visited the islands in large numbers during the 19th century, with social, economic, political, religious and cultural consequences. More than 9,000 workers were sent abroad from 1845 to 1895, most of them not returning.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The passing trade gave rise to European, Indian, Chinese, Samoan, and other residents from the 1830s; they included beachcombers, castaways, traders, and missionaries.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In 1886, an Anglo-German agreement partitioned the \"unclaimed\" central Pacific, leaving Nauru in the German sphere of influence, while Ocean Island and the future GEIC wound up in the British sphere of influence. In 1892, local Gilbertese authorities (an uea, a chief from the Northern Gilbert Group, and atun te boti or head of clan) on each of the Gilbert Islands agreed to Captain E.H.M. Davis commanding HMS Royalist of the Royal Navy declaring them part of a British protectorate, along with the nearby Ellice Islands. They were administered by a resident commissioner based first on Makin Islands (1893–95), then in Betio, Tarawa (1896–1908) and Ocean Island (1908–1942), protectorate who was under the Western Pacific High Commission based in Fiji. Banaba, known to Europeans as Ocean Island, was added to the protectorate in 1900, because of the phosphate rock of its soil (discovered in 1900). This discovery and the mining ended the contracting of Kanakas workers to farm plantations in Queensland, German Samoa or Central America, with all the needed workers being used in Ocean Island extraction.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The conduct of William Telfer Campbell, the second resident commissioner of the Gilberts and Ellice Islands of 1896 to 1908, was criticised as to his legislative, judicial and administrative management (including allegations of forced labour exacted from islanders) and became the subject of the 1909 report by Arthur Mahaffy. In 1913, an anonymous correspondent to The New Age newspaper described the maladministration of W. Telfer Campbell and questioned the partiality of Arthur Mahaffy, because he was a former colonial official in the Gilberts. The anonymous correspondent also criticised the operations of the Pacific Phosphate Company on Ocean Island.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The islands became the crown colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands in 1916. The Northern Line Islands, including Christmas Island (Kiritimati), were added to the colony in 1919, and the Phoenix Islands were added in 1937 with the purpose of a Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme. On 12 July 1940, Pan Am Airways' American Clipper landed at Canton Island for the first time during a flight from Honolulu to Auckland.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Sir Arthur Grimble was a cadet administrative officer based at Tarawa (1913–1919) and became Resident Commissioner of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony in 1926.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In 1902, the Pacific Cable Board laid the first trans-Pacific telegraph cable from Bamfield, British Columbia, to Fanning Island (Tabuaeran) in the Line Islands, and from Fiji to Fanning Island, thus completing the All Red Line, a series of telegraph lines circumnavigating the globe completely within the British Empire. The location of Fanning Island, one of the closest formations to Hawaii, led to its annexation by the British Empire in 1888. Nearby candidates including Palmyra Island were not favoured due to the lack of adequate landing sites.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The United States eventually incorporated the Northern Line Islands into its territories, and did the same with the Phoenix Islands, which lie between Gilberts and the Line Islands, including Howland, Jarvis, and Baker islands, thus causing a territorial dispute. That was eventually resolved and they finally became part of Kiribati under the Treaty of Tarawa.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "After the attack on Pearl Harbor, during World War II, Butaritari and Tarawa, and others of the Northern Gilbert group, were occupied by Japan from 1941 to 1943. Betio became an airfield and supply base. The expulsion of the Japanese military in late 1943 involved one of the bloodiest battles in US Marine Corps history. Marines landed in November 1943 and the Battle of Tarawa ensued. Ocean Island, the headquarters of the colony, was bombed, evacuated and occupied by Japan in 1942 and only freed in 1945, after the massacre of all but one of the Gilbertese on the island by the Japanese forces. Funafuti hosted then the provisional headquarters of the colony from 1942 to 1946, when Tarawa returned to host the headquarters, replacing Ocean Island.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "At the end of 1945, most of the remaining inhabitants of Banaba, repatriated from Kosrae, Nauru and Tarawa, were relocated to Rabi Island, a land of Fiji that the British government had acquired in 1942 for this purpose.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "On 1 January 1953, the British Western Pacific High Commissioner of the colony was transferred from Fiji to the new capital of Honiara, to the British Solomon Islands, with the Gilberts' Resident Commissioner still headquartered in Tarawa.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Further military operations in the colony occurred in the late 1950s and early 1960s when Christmas Island was used by the United States and United Kingdom for nuclear weapons testing including hydrogen bombs.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Institutions of internal self-rule were established on Tarawa from about 1967. The Ellice Islands asked for separation from the rest of the colony in 1974 and granted their own internal self-rule institutions. The separation entered into force on 1 January 1976. In 1978, the Ellice Islands became the independent nation of Tuvalu.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The Gilbert Islands gained independence as the Republic of Kiribati on 12 July 1979. Then, in September, the United States relinquished all claims to the sparsely inhabited Phoenix and Line Islands, in a 1979 treaty of friendship with Kiribati (ratified in 1983). Although the indigenous Gilbertese name for the Gilbert Islands proper is \"Tungaru\", the new state chose the name \"Kiribati\", the Gilbertese spelling of \"Gilberts\", because it was more modern and as an equivalent of the former colony to acknowledge the inclusion of Banaba, the Line Islands, and the Phoenix Islands. The last two archipelagoes were never initially occupied by Gilbertese until the British authorities, and later the Republic Government, resettled Gilbertese there under resettlement schemes. In 1982, the first elections since independence were held. A no-confidence vote provoked the 1983 new election. In the post-independence era, overcrowding has been an issue, at least in British and aid organisations' eyes. In 1988, an announcement was made that 4,700 residents of the main island group would be resettled onto less populated islands. In September 1994, Teburoro Tito from the opposition was elected president.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In 1995, Kiribati unilaterally moved the international date line far to the east to encompass the Line Islands group, so that the nation would no longer be divided by the date line. The move, which fulfilled one of President Tito's campaign promises, was intended to allow businesses across the expansive nation to keep the same business week. This also enabled Kiribati to become the first country to see the dawn of the third millennium, an event of significance for tourism. Tito was re-elected in 1998. In 1999, Kiribati became a full member of the United Nations, 20 years after independence. In 2002, Kiribati passed a controversial law that enabled the government to shut down newspaper publishers. The legislation followed the launching of Kiribati's first successful non-government-run newspaper. President Tito was re-elected in 2003 but was removed from office in March 2003 by a no-confidence vote and replaced by a Council of State. Anote Tong of the opposition party Boutokaan Te Koaua was elected to succeed Tito in July 2003. He was re-elected in 2007 and in 2011.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In June 2008, Kiribati officials asked Australia and New Zealand to accept Kiribati citizens as permanent refugees. Kiribati is expected to be the first country to lose all its land territory to climate change. In June 2008, Kiribati President Anote Tong said that the country had reached \"the point of no return.\" He added, \"To plan for the day when you no longer have a country is indeed painful but I think we have to do that.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In January 2012, Anote Tong was re-elected for a third and last successive term. In early 2012, the government of Kiribati purchased the 2,200-hectare Natoavatu Estate on the second largest island of Fiji, Vanua Levu. At the time it was widely reported that the government planned to evacuate the entire population of Kiribati to Fiji. In April 2013, President Tong began urging citizens to evacuate the islands and migrate elsewhere. In May 2014, the Office of the President confirmed the purchase of some 5,460 acres of land on Vanua Levu at a cost of 9.3 million Australian dollars.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In March 2016, Taneti Maamau was elected as the new President of Kiribati. He was the fifth president since the country became independent in 1979. In June 2020, President Maamau won re-election for a second four-year term. President Maamau was considered pro-China and he supported closer ties with Beijing. On 16 November 2021, the Kiribati government announced it would expose the world's largest marine protected area to commercial fishing. The 2022 Kiribati constitutional crisis started with the suspension of all 5 major Justices of the judiciary of Kiribati.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In 2020, Kiribati’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, consistent with most of the COVID-19 responses of Oceania island nations, was to impose strict limits on tourism and commercial travel. Kiribati reported that it remained essentially COVID-free (two cases) until January 2022 when the first commercial international flight in two years included 36 passengers who tested positive. While new restrictions were imposed, Kiribati subsequently reported a total of 3252 cases and 13 deaths.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "On 29 January 2023, Kiribati confirmed its intention to rejoin the Pacific Islands Forum, ending a bitter two-year leadership split.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The Constitution of Kiribati, promulgated 12 July 1979, provides for free and open elections in a parliamentary democratic republic.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The executive branch consists of a president (te Beretitenti), a vice-president and a cabinet. The president, who is also chief of the cabinet, is directly elected by the citizens, after the legislature nominates three or four persons from among its members to be candidates in the ensuing presidential election. The president is limited to serving three four-year terms, and remains a member of the assembly. The cabinet is composed of the president, vice-president, and 13 ministers (appointed by the president) who are also ministers of parliament.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The legislative branch is the unicameral Maneaba ni Maungatabu (House of Assembly). Its members are elected, including by constitutional mandate, a nominated representative of the Banaban people in Rabi Island, Fiji (Banaba, former Ocean Island), in addition to, until 2016, the attorney general, who served as an ex officio member from 1979 to 2016. Legislators serve for a four-year term.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The constitutional provisions governing administration of justice are similar to those in other former British possessions in that the judiciary is free from governmental interference. The judicial branch is made up of the High Court (in Betio) and the Court of Appeal. The president appoints the presiding judges.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Local government is through island councils with elected members. Local affairs are handled in a manner similar to town meetings in colonial America. Island councils make their own estimates of revenue and expenditure and generally are free from central government controls. There are a total of 21 inhabited islands in Kiribati. Each inhabited island has its own council. Since independence, Kiribati is no longer divided into districts (see Subdivisions of Kiribati).",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Kiribati has formal political parties but their organisation is quite informal. Ad hoc opposition groups tend to coalesce around specific issues. There is universal suffrage at age 18. Today the only recognisable parties are the Boutokaan Kiribati Moa Party, former Boutokaan te Koaua, and Tobwaan Kiribati Party.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Kiribati maintains close relations with its Pacific neighbours, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Fiji. The first three of these provide the bulk of the country's foreign aid. Taiwan and Japan also have specified-period licences to fish in Kiribati's waters. There are three resident diplomatic missions headquartered in South Tarawa: the Embassies of the Republic of China (Taiwan) until 2019, replaced by People's Republic of China in 2020 and the High Commissions of Australia and New Zealand. A US Embassy will open in 2023.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "In November 1999, Kiribati agreed to allow Japan's National Space Development Agency to lease land on Kiritimati (formerly Christmas Island) for 20 years, on which to build a spaceport. The agreement stipulated that Japan was to pay US$840,000 per year and would also pay for any damage to roads and the environment. A Japanese-built downrange tracking station operates on Kiritimati and an abandoned airfield on the island was designated as the landing strip for a proposed reusable unmanned space shuttle called HOPE-X. HOPE-X, however, was eventually cancelled by Japan in 2003.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "As one of the world's most vulnerable nations to the effects of global warming, Kiribati has been an active participant in international diplomatic efforts relating to climate change, most importantly the UNFCCC conferences of the parties (COP). Kiribati is a member of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), an intergovernmental organisation of low-lying coastal and small island countries. Established in 1990, the main purpose of the alliance is to consolidate the voices of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) to address global warming. AOSIS has been very active from its inception, putting forward the first draft text in the Kyoto Protocol negotiations as early as 1994.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "In 2009, President Tong attended the Climate Vulnerable Forum (V11) in the Maldives, with 10 other countries that are vulnerable to climate change, and signed the Bandos Island declaration on 10 November 2009, pledging to show moral leadership and commence greening their economies by voluntarily committing to achieving carbon neutrality.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "In November 2010, Kiribati hosted the Tarawa Climate Change Conference (TCCC) to support the president of Kiribati's initiative to hold a consultative forum between vulnerable states and their partners. The conference strove to create an enabling environment for multi-party negotiations under the auspices of the UNFCCC. The conference was a successor event to the Climate Vulnerable Forum. The ultimate objective of TCCC was to reduce the number and intensity of fault lines between parties to the COP process, explore elements of agreement between the parties and thereby to support Kiribati's and other parties' contribution to COP16 held in Cancun, Mexico, from 29 November to 10 December 2010.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "In 2013, President Tong spoke of climate-change induced sea level rise as \"inevitable\". \"For our people to survive, then they will have to migrate. Either we can wait for the time when we have to move people en masse or we can prepare them—beginning from now ...\" In New York in 2014, per The New Yorker, President Tong told The New York Times that \"according to the projections, within this century, the water will be higher than the highest point in our lands\". In 2014, President Tong finalised the purchase of a 20 km (7.7 sq mi) stretch of land on Vanua Levu, one of the larger Fiji islands, 2,000 km away. A move described by Tong as an \"absolute necessity\" should the nation be completely submerged under water.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "In 2013, attention was drawn to a claim of a Kiribati man of being a \"climate change refugee\" under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951). However, this claim was determined by the New Zealand High Court to be untenable. The New Zealand Court of Appeal also rejected the claim in a 2014 decision. On further appeal, the New Zealand Supreme Court confirmed the earlier adverse rulings against the application for refugee status, but rejected the proposition \"that environmental degradation resulting from climate change or other natural disasters could never create a pathway into the Refugee Convention or protected person jurisdiction\". In 2017, Kiribati signed the UN treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "On 20 September 2019, the government of Kiribati restored its diplomatic relationship with the People's Republic of China and simultaneously stopped its diplomatic relationship with Taiwan. China offered a 737 aircraft and ferries to Kiribati for the decision, according to Taiwan's foreign minister, Joseph Wu.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "From 1973 though 2008, a total of almost 500 US Peace Corps volunteers were based on the Islands, as many as 45 in a given year. Activities included assisting in the planning, design and construction of wells, libraries, and other infrastructure, and agricultural, environmental, and community health education. In 2006, volunteer placement was significantly scaled down due to the reduction of consistent air transportation to the outer islands; it was later ended because the associated ability to provide medical care to volunteers could not be assured. In July 2022, US Vice President Harris announced plans to build a new embassy in Kiribati and Tonga and reestablish the Peace Corps presence in the region.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Law enforcement in Kiribati is carried out by the Kiribati Police Service which is responsible for all law enforcement and paramilitary duties for the island nation. There are police posts located on all of the islands. The police have one patrol boat, the Guardian-class patrol boat RKS Teanoai II. Kiribati has no military and relies on both Australia and New Zealand for its defence.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "The main prison in Kiribati is located in Betio, named the Walter Betio Prison. There is also a prison in London on Kiritimati.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Male homosexuality is illegal in Kiribati, with a penalty up to 14 years in prison, according to a historical British law, but this law is not enforced. Kiribati has not yet followed the lead of the United Kingdom, following its Wolfenden report, to decriminalise acts of male homosexuality, beginning with provisions in the UK's Sexual Offences Act 1957. Female homosexuality is legal, but lesbians may face violence and discrimination. However, employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is prohibited.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "There are 21 inhabited islands in Kiribati. Kiribati can be geographically divided into three archipelagoes or groups of islands, which have no administrative functions. They are:",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The original districts before independence were:",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Four of the former districts (including Tarawa) lie in the Gilbert Islands, where most of the country's population lives. Five of the Line Islands are uninhabited (Malden Island, Starbuck Island, Millenium Island, Vostok Island and Flint Island). The Phoenix Islands are uninhabited except for Kanton, and have no representation. Banaba itself is sparsely inhabited now. There is also a non-elected representative of the Banabans on Rabi Island in Fiji.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Each of the 21 inhabited islands has its own local council that takes care of daily affairs. There is one council for each inhabited island, with two exceptions: Tarawa Atoll has three councils: Betio Town Council, Teinainano Urban Council [it] (TUC) (for the rest of South Tarawa) and Eutan Tarawa Council (ETC) (for North Tarawa); and Tabiteuea has two councils.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Kiribati consists of 32 atolls and one solitary island (Banaba), extending into the eastern and western hemispheres, as well as the northern and southern hemispheres. Its extensive exclusive economic zone covers three, non-contiguous, traditional geographic subregions: Banaba (Melanesian-Micronesian area), the Gilbert Islands (Micronesia) and the Line and Phoenix Islands (Polynesia). The groups of islands are:",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Banaba (or Ocean Island) is a raised-coral island. It was once a rich source of phosphates, but was exhausted in mining before independence. The rest of the land in Kiribati consists of the sand and reef rock islets of atolls or coral islands, which rise only one or two metres above sea level.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The soil is thin and calcareous. It has a low water-holding capacity and low organic matter and nutrient content—except for calcium, sodium, and magnesium. Banaba is one of the least suitable places for agriculture in the world.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Kiritimati (previously Christmas Island) in the Line Islands has the largest land area of any atoll in the world. Based on a 1995 realignment of the International Date Line, the Line Islands were the first area to enter into a new year, including year 2000. For that reason, Caroline Island was renamed Millennium Island in 1997.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "According to the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (previously South Pacific Regional Environment Programme), two small uninhabited Kiribati islets, Tebua Tarawa and Abanuea, disappeared underwater in 1999. The sea level at Christmas Island, in the 50 years between 1972 and 2022, has risen .05 meters (50 mm). The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that sea levels will rise by about 50 cm (20 in) by 2100 due to global warming and a further rise would be inevitable. It is thus likely that within a century the nation's arable land will become subject to increased soil salination and will be largely submerged.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The exposure of Kiribati to changes in sea levels is exacerbated by the Pacific decadal oscillation, which is a climate switch phenomenon that results in changes from periods of La Niña to periods of El Niño. This has an effect on sea levels. For example, in 2000, there was a switch from periods of downward pressure of El Niño on sea levels to an upward pressure of La Niña on sea levels, which upward pressure causes more frequent and higher high tide levels. The Perigean spring tide (often called a king tide) can result in seawater flooding low-lying areas of the islands of Kiribati.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "The atolls and reef islands can respond to changes in sea-level. Paul Kench at the University of Auckland in New Zealand and Arthur Webb at the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission in Fiji released a study in 2010 on the dynamic response of atolls and reef islands in the central Pacific. Kiribati was mentioned in the study, and Webb and Kench found that the three major urbanised islands in Kiribati—Betio, Bairiki and Nanikai—increased by 30% (36 hectares), 16.3% (5.8 hectares) and 12.5% (0.8 hectares), respectively.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "The study by Paul Kench and Arthur Webb recognises that the islands are extremely vulnerable to sea level rise, and concluded that: \"This study did not measure vertical growth of the island surface nor does it suggest there is any change in the height of the islands. Since land height has not changed the vulnerability of the greater part of the land area of each island to submergence due to sea level rise is also unchanged and these low-lying atolls remain immediately and extremely vulnerable to inundation or sea water flooding.\"",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "The Climate Change in the Pacific Report of 2011 describes Kiribati as having a low risk of cyclones; however in March 2015 Kiribati experienced flooding and destruction of seawalls and coastal infrastructure as the result of Cyclone Pam, a Category 5 cyclone that devastated Vanuatu. Kiribati remains exposed to the risk that cyclones can strip the low-lying islands of their vegetation and soil.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Gradual sea-level rise also allows for coral polyp activity to raise the atolls with the sea level. However, if the increase in sea level occurs at a rate faster than coral growth, or if polyp activity is damaged by ocean acidification, then the resilience of the atolls and reef islands is less certain. Also, coral bleaching has occurred on more than 60% of the coral reefs in the Maldives.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "The Human Rights Measurement Initiative finds that the climate crisis has worsened human rights conditions moderately (4.8 out of 6) in Kiribati. Human rights experts reported that the climate crisis has compromised access to food and clean water, as well as women's rights, housing security and cultural integrity.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "The Kiribati Adaptation Program (KAP), started in 2003, is a US$5.5 million initiative that was originally enacted by the national government of Kiribati with the support of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program, and the Japanese government. Australia later joined the coalition, donating US$1.5 million to the effort. The program aims to take place over six years, supporting measures that reduce Kiribati's vulnerability to the effects of climate change and sea level rise by raising awareness of climate change, assessing and protecting available water resources, and managing inundation. At the start of the Adaptation Program, representatives from each of the inhabited atolls identified key climatic changes that had taken place over the past 20–40 years and proposed coping mechanisms to deal with these changes under four categories of urgency of need. The program is now focusing on the country's most vulnerable sectors in the most highly populated areas. Initiatives include improving water supply management in and around Tarawa; coastal management protection measures such as mangrove re-plantation and protection of public infrastructure; strengthening laws to reduce coastal erosion; and population settlement planning to reduce personal risks.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "The government has taken specific action to ensure food security, as sea level rise, drought, and overfishing have created food and water shortages. This has involved diversifying food sources and ensuring existing resources are managed sustainably.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "The issue of plastic pollution has also been a key challenge for Kiribati as it hurts both its marine biodiversity and its economy that relies primarily on tourism and fishery. As a result, the government of Kiribati, more specifically the Environment and Conservation Division (ECD) which forms part of the Kiribati Government's Ministry of Environment, Lands and Agricultural Development, has made efforts to tackle this issue nationally through environment acts, and state policy papers. To a further extent, it has also recognized the global nature of plastic pollution, and consequently, has promoted international cooperation and multilateral solutions. This is notably observable during the current negotiations of the Global Plastic Pollution Treaty planned to be finally drafted by the end of 2024.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Kiribati has a tropical rainforest climate (Af). From April to October, there are predominant northeastern winds and stable temperatures close to 30 °C (86 °F). From November to April, western gales bring rain.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Kiribati wet season (te Auu-Meang) also recognized as the Tropical cyclone (TC) (te Angibuaka) season starts from November to April every year. Kiribati therefore typically experiences more extreme weather events associated with Tropical disturbances (TD) or Tropical cyclones during te Auu-Meang. But Tropical cyclones rarely develop or pass along the equator where Kiribati is located. However, based on past events, Kiribati has been impacted from distant Tropical cyclone (TC) and the impacts were observed while the systems are in their development stages (Tropical Low/disturbance) or even before they reach Tropical cyclone category.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "The fair season starts when Ten Rimwimata (Antares) appears in the sky after sunset, from May to November, when more gentle winds and currents and less rain. Then towards December, when Nei Auti (Pleiades) replaces Antares, the season of sudden westerly winds and more heavy rain discourages any far travel from island to island.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Kiribati does not experience cyclones but effects may occasionally be experienced during cyclone seasons affecting nearby Pacific Island countries such as Fiji.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Precipitation varies significantly between islands. For example, the annual average is 3,000 mm (120 in) in the north and 500 mm (20 in) in the south of the Gilbert Islands. Most of these islands are in the dry belt of the equatorial oceanic climatic zone and experience prolonged droughts.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Kiribati contains three ecosystems: Central Polynesian tropical moist forests, Eastern Micronesia tropical moist forests, and Western Polynesian tropical moist forests.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Because of the relatively young geological age of the islands and atolls and high level of soil salination, the flora of Kiribati is somewhat unhealthy. The Gilbert Islands contain about 83 indigenous and 306 introduced plants, whereas the corresponding numbers for Line and Phoenix Islands are 67 and 283. None of these species are endemic, and about half of the indigenous ones have a limited distribution and became endangered or nearly extinct due to human activities such as phosphate mining.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Coconut, pandanus palms and breadfruit trees are the most common wild plants, whereas the five most cultivated crops but the traditional Babai, Cyrtosperma merkusii, are imported Chinese cabbage, pumpkin, tomato, watermelon and cucumber. Over eighty per cent of the population participates in either farming or fishing.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Seaweed farming is an important part of the economy , with two major species Eucheuma alcarezii and Eucheuma spinosium introduced to the local lagoons from the Philippines in 1977. It competes with collection of the black-lipped pearl oyster (Pinctada margaritifera) and shellfish, which are dominated by the strombid gastropod (Strombus luhuanus) and Anadara cockles (Anadara uropigimelana), whereas the stocks of the giant clam (Tridacna gigas) have been largely exhausted.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Kiribati has a few land mammals, none being indigenous or endemic. They include the Polynesian rat (Rattus exulans), dogs, cats and pigs. Among the 75 bird species, the Bokikokiko (Acrocephalus aequinoctialis) is endemic to Kiritimati.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "There are 600–800 species of inshore and pelagic finfish, some 200 species of corals and about 1000 species of shellfish. Fishing mostly targets the family Scombridae, particularly the skipjack tuna and yellowfin tuna as well as flying fish (Cypselurus spp.).",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Dogs were already accompanying the first inhabitants but were re-introduced by European settlers: they have continued to grow in numbers and are roaming in traditional packs, particularly around South Tarawa.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Kiribati has few natural resources. Commercially viable phosphate deposits on Banaba were exhausted at the time of independence. Copra and fish now represent the bulk of production and exports. Kiribati has the lowest GDP out of any sovereign state in Oceania, and is considered one of the least developed countries in the world.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "In one form or another, Kiribati gets a large portion of its income from abroad. Examples include fishing licences, development assistance, workers' remittances, especially the seafarers issued from Marine Training Centre, and a few tourists. Given Kiribati's limited domestic production ability, it must import nearly all of its essential foodstuffs and manufactured items; it depends on these external sources of income for financing.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "The economy of Kiribati benefits from international development assistance programs. The multilateral donors providing development assistance in 2009 were the European Union (A$9 million), the United Nations Development Programme (A$3.7 million), UNICEF, and the World Health Organization (A$100,000). The bilateral donors providing development assistance in 2009 were Australia (A$11 million), Japan (A$2 million), New Zealand (A$6.6 million), Taiwan (A$10.6 million), and other donors providing A$16.2 million, including technical assistance grants from the Asian Development Bank.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "The major donors in 2010/2011 were Australia (A$15 million), Taiwan (A$11 million); New Zealand (A$6 million), the World Bank (A$4 million) and the Asian Development Bank.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "In 1956, Gilbert and Ellice Islands established a sovereign wealth fund to act as a store of wealth for the country's earnings from phosphate mining. In 2008, the Revenue Equalization Reserve Fund was valued at US$400 million. The RERF assets declined from A$637 million (420% of GDP) in 2007 to A$570.5 million (350% of GDP) in 2009 as the result of the global financial crisis and exposure to failed Icelandic banks. In addition, draw-downs were made by the government of Kiribati to finance budgetary shortfalls during this period.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "In May 2011, the IMF country report assessment of the economy of Kiribati is that \"After two years of contraction, the economy recovered in the second half of 2010 and inflation pressure dissipated. It is estimated to have grown by 1.75% for the year. Despite a weather-related drop in copra production, private sector activity appears to have picked up, especially in retail. Tourist arrivals rebounded by 20% compared to 2009, although from a very low base. Despite the rise in world food and fuel prices, inflation has bounced from 2008 crisis-highs into negative territory, reflecting the strong appreciation of the Australian dollar, which is used as the domestic currency, and a decline in the world price of rice. Credit growth in the overall economy declined in 2009 as economic activity stalled. But it started to pick up in the second half of 2010 as the recovery gained traction\".",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "A major Australian bank, ANZ, maintains a presence on Kiribati with a number of branches and ATM units.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Kiribati is a major exporter of hand-caught ornamental fish. There are eight licensed operators based on Kiritimati (Christmas Island). At the end of 2005, the number of pet fish exported was 110,000. All operators have a land-based facility but fish are kept in containers on the reef until the day before the shipment. This is to reduce the running cost and the mortality of pet fish to be exported. The flame angelfish (Centropyge loriculus) is the major species exported.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Kiribati has had two domestic airlines: Air Kiribati and Coral Sun Airways. Both airlines are based in Tarawa's Bonriki International Airport and serve destinations across the Gilbert Islands and Line Islands only: Banaba and the Phoenix Islands are not served by the domestic carriers.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Cassidy International Airport on Kiritimati has an international service provided by Fiji Airways: Nadi to Cassidy Airport and then to Honolulu.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "The islands’ remote location in the Central Pacific at approximately the International Date Line and spanning hundreds of miles north and south of the equator has meant that communications between them has always been challenging and conducted primarily by radio and print media. TV Kiribati Ltd, was owned by the government operated between 2004 and mid-2012, but could not reach all of the Islands. Radio Kiribati, based on Tarawa and operated by the government's Broadcasting and Publications Authority (BPA) on 1440 kHz AM is the only form of mass media that reaches all the major islands. Transmission hours are limited and local content in Gilbertese is supplemented by English summaries and BBC News. The BPA and a private broadcaster also operate FM stations accessible on Tarawa.",
"title": "Communications and media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Inter-island communications for many years relied on a centralized shortwave radio network operated by Telecom Services Kiribati, Ltd (TSKL) based in each Island's Council Headquarters. Numerous issues including low availability, maintenance, privacy, and only one per island led TSKL to adopt satellite-based telephones. However, the system is more expensive and still only located at Council Headquarters.",
"title": "Communications and media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "Print weeklies in Gilbertese include the Te Uekara published by the government, Te Mauri published by the Kiribati Protestant Church, and the Kiribati Independent, published from Auckland as well as the Kiribati Newstar, published in English.",
"title": "Communications and media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "In December 2019, SpaceX launched the Kacific1 broadband satellite that provides 100Mbit/s mobile and broadband service to 25 countries throughout to the Asia-Pacific region including Kiribati. Three of the satellite's 56 spot beams provide overlapping coverage of the Gilbert Islands and Tuvalu; however, the more eastern regions of the country, the Phoenix and Line Islands, are outside of the satellite's coverage.",
"title": "Communications and media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "The Southern Cross NEXT cable system, which entered service in July 2022, connects the US to Australia and provides service to eastern part of Kiribati (Kiritimati island) through the 234-mile (377 km) Kiritimati Branch with one fiber pair. The network, which is an upgrade to the existing Southern Cross Cable, also connects to Samoa, Fiji, and New Zealand.",
"title": "Communications and media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "In June 2021, the World Bank-backed procurement for the East Micronesian Cable system was cancelled due to security concerns. The undersea fiberoptic system, which would have originated in Guam, was \"designed to improve the communications in the island nations of Nauru, Kiribati and Federated States of Micronesia (FSM).\" In January 2023, ministers from the three Pacific island nations signed a joint communiqué for moving forward with the stalled project. Funded by the U.S., Japan and Australia the project is valued at $70 million. In early 2023, it was reported that Kiribati became the first Pacific island nation to receive Starlink services.",
"title": "Communications and media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "The November 2020 census showed a population of 119,940. About 90% lived in the Gilbert Islands, with 52.9% of them on South Tarawa, including Betio, the biggest township.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "Until recently, people lived mostly in villages with populations between 50 and 3,000 on the outer islands. Most houses are made of materials obtained from coconut and pandanus trees. Frequent droughts and infertile soil hinder reliable large-scale agriculture, so the islanders have largely turned to the sea for livelihood and subsistence. Most are outrigger sailors and fishermen. Copra plantations serve as a second source of employment. In recent years, large numbers of citizens have moved to the more urban island capital of Tarawa, where Betio is the largest town and South Tarawa reunites larger towns like Bikenibeu or Teaoraereke. Increasing urbanisation has raised the population of South Tarawa to 63,017.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "The native people of Kiribati are called I-Kiribati. Ethnically, the I-Kiribati are Oceanians, a sub-ethnicity of Austronesians. Recent archaeological evidence indicates that Austronesians originally settled the islands thousands of years ago . Around the 14th century, Fijians, Samoans, and Tongans invaded the islands, thus diversifying the ethnic range and introducing Polynesian linguistic traits. Intermarriage among all ancestral groups, however, has led to a population reasonably homogeneous in appearance and traditions.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "The people of Kiribati speak Gilbertese, an Oceanic language. English is the other official language, but is not used very often outside the island capital of Tarawa. It is more likely that some English words are mixed in their use with Gilbertese. Older generations of I-Kiribati tend to use more complicated versions of the language. Several words in Gilbertese have been adopted from European settlers, for instance, kamea is one of the Gilbertese words for dog, kiri being the Oceanic one, which has its origins in the I-Kiribati people hearing the European settlers saying \"come here\" to their dogs, and adopting that as kamea.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "Many other loanwords have been adopted (like buun, spoon, moko, smoke, beeki, pig, batoro, bottle) but some typical Gilbertese words are quite common, even for European objects (like wanikiba, plane – the flying canoe, rebwerebwe, motorbike – for the motor noise, kauniwae, shoes – the cow for the feet).",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "Christianity is the major religion in Kiribati, having been lately introduced by missionaries, because of its remoteness and the absence of any significant European presence until the latter half of the 19th century. The population is predominantly Roman Catholic (58.9%), with two main Protestant denominations (Kiribati Protestant Church 8.4% and Kiribati Uniting Church 21.2%) accounting for 29.6%. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (5.6%), Baháʼí Faith (2.1%), Seventh-day Adventist Church (2.1%), Pentecostals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and other small faiths together account for less than 2% (2020 census).",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "The Gilbert Islands where 90% of the Kiribati population live, boast some of the highest population densities in the Pacific, rivalling, without any tall building, cities like Hong Kong or Singapore. This overcrowding produces a great amount of pollution, worsening the quality and length of life. Due to insufficient sanitation and water filtration systems, worsened by the fragility of the water lens of the atolls and by climate change, only about 66% have access to clean water. Waterborne diseases grow at record levels throughout the islands. Poor sanitation has led to an increase in cases of conjunctivitis, diarrhoea, dysentery, and fungal infections. Kiribati is the country with the third highest prevalence of smoking in the world, with 54–57% of the population reported as smokers. Due to this and other \"lifestyle diseases,\" such as type 2 diabetes, there has been a drastic spike in amputations on the islands, doubling in a few years.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "As a consequence, the population of Kiribati has a quite low life expectancy at birth of 68.46 years. Even if this data is of only 66.9 years, provided elsewhere, Kiribati ranks last in life expectancy out of the 20 nations of Oceania. This life expectancy is 64.3 for males, and 69.5 for females and there is an infant mortality rate of 41 deaths per 1,000 live births. Tuberculosis has a small presence in the country, with 365 cases per 100,000 a year. Government expenditure on health was at US$268 per capita (PPP) in 2006. In 1990–2007, there were 23 physicians per 100,000 persons. Since the arrival of Cuban doctors in 2006, the infant mortality rate has decreased significantly.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "Most health problems are related to consumption of semi-raw seafood, limited food storage facilities, and bacterial contamination of fresh water supplies. In the early 2000s, between 1 and 7% of the population, depending on the island, were annually treated for food poisoning in a hospital. Modernization and cross-cultural exchange of the late 20th century brought new issues of unhealthy diet and lifestyle, heavy smoking, especially among the young, and external infections, including HIV/AIDS.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "Fresh water remains a concern of Kiribati – during the dry season (Aumaiaki), water has been drilled for instead of using rain water tanks. In recent years, there has been a longer than usual Aumaikai season resulting in additional water having to be drilled from beneath the water table. This has introduced water-borne illnesses, compounding the health problems within Kiribati.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "The Human Rights Measurement Initiative finds that Kiribati is fulfilling 77.2% of what it should be fulfilling for the right to health based on its level of income. When looking at the right to health with respect to children, Kiribati achieves 93.8% of what is expected based on its current income. In regards to the right to health amongst the adult population, the country achieves 92.2% of what is expected based on the nation's level of income. Kiribati falls into the \"very bad\" category when evaluating the right to reproductive health because the nation is fulfilling only 45.5% of what the nation is expected to achieve based on the resources (income) it has available.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "Primary education is free and compulsory for the first nine years, beginning at age six. Mission schools are slowly being absorbed into the government primary school system. Higher education is expanding; students may seek technical, teacher or marine training, or study in other countries. Most choosing to do the latter have gone to Fiji to attend the University of the South Pacific, and those wishing to complete medical training have been sent to Australia, New Zealand or Cuba.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "The education system is organised as follows:",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "Kiribati Ministry of Education is the education ministry. The government high schools are King George V and Elaine Bernacchi School, Tabiteuea North Senior Secondary School, and Melaengi Tabai Secondary School. Thirteen high schools are operated by Christian churches.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "The University of the South Pacific has a campus in Teaoraereke for distant/flexible learning, but also to provide preparatory studies towards obtaining certificates, diplomas and degrees at other campus sites.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "The other prominent schools in Kiribati are:",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "Songs (te anene) and above all, dances (te mwaie), are held in high regard.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "Kiribati folk music is generally based on chanting or other forms of vocalising, accompanied by body percussion. Public performances in modern Kiribati are generally performed by a seated chorus, accompanied by a guitar. However, during formal performances of the standing dance (Te Kaimatoa) or the hip dance (Te Buki), a wooden box is used as a percussion instrument. This box is constructed to give a hollow and reverberating tone when struck simultaneously by a chorus of men sitting around it. Traditional songs are often love-themed, but there are also competitive, religious, children's, patriotic, war and wedding songs. There are also stick dances which accompany legends and semi-historical stories. These stick dances or \"tirere\" (pronounced seerere) are performed only during major festivals.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "The uniqueness of Kiribati when compared with other forms of Pacific island dance is its emphasis on the outstretched arms of the dancer and the sudden birdlike movement of the head. The Frigate bird (Fregata minor) on the Kiribati flag refers to this bird-like style of Kiribati dancing. Most dances are in the standing or sitting position with movement limited and staggered. Smiling whilst dancing is generally considered vulgar within the context of Kiribati dancing. This is due to its origin of not being solely as a form of entertainment but as a form of storytelling and a display of the skill, beauty and endurance of the dancer.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "Traditionally, the staple diet of the I-Kiribati was the abundance of seafood and coconuts. Starch-based carbohydrate sources were not plentiful due to the hostile climate of the atolls with only the northernmost atolls being viable for constant agriculture. The national crop bwabwai was only eaten during special celebrations along with pork.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "To complement the rather low consumption of carbohydrates in their diets, the I-Kiribati processed the sap and fruit of the abundant pandanus and coconut trees into different beverages and foods such as te karewe (fresh daily sap of the coconut tree) or te tuae (dried pandanus cake) and te kabubu (dried pandanus flour) from pandanus fruit pulp and te kamaimai (coconut sap syrup) from coconut sap.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "After World War II, rice became a daily staple in most households, which is still the case today. The majority of seafood, fish in particular, is eaten sashimi-style with either coconut sap, soy sauce or vinegar-based dressings, often combined with chillies and onions.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "Coconut crabs and mud crabs are traditionally given to breastfeeding mothers, with the belief that the meat stimulates the production of high-quality breast milk.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "Kiribati has competed at the Commonwealth Games since 1998 and the Summer Olympics since 2004. It sent three competitors to its first Olympics, two sprinters and a weightlifter. Kiribati won its first ever Commonwealth Games medal at the 2014 Commonwealth Games when weightlifter David Katoatau won Gold in the 105 kg Group.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "Football is the most popular sport. Kiribati Islands Football Federation (KIFF) is an associate member of the Oceania Football Confederation, but not of world-governing body FIFA. Instead, they are member of ConIFA. Kiribati National team has played ten matches, all of which it has lost, and all at the Pacific Games from 1979 to 2011. The Kiribati football stadium is Bairiki National Stadium, which has a capacity of 2,500.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "The Betio Soccer Field [pl] is home to a number of local sporting teams.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "Edward Carlyon Eliot, who was Resident Commissioner of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands (now Kiribati and Tuvalu) from 1913 to 1920, describes this period in his book Broken Atoms (autobiographical reminiscences) Pub. G. Bles, London, 1938.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "Sir Arthur Grimble wrote about his time working in the British colonial service in Kiribati (then the Gilbert Islands) from 1914 to 1932 in two popular books A Pattern of Islands (1952) and Return to the Islands (1957). He also undertook academic studies of Gilbertese culture.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "John Smith, the last governor of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, wrote his memoir An Island in the Autumn (2011).",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 125,
"text": "J. Maarten Troost's more recent autobiographical experiences in Tarawa are documented in his book The Sex Lives of Cannibals (2004).",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 126,
"text": "Alice Piciocchi's illustrated essay, Kiribati. Cronache illustrate da una terra (s)perduta, (2016) Milan: 24 ORE Cultura, also translated into French (2018, éditions du Rouergue), tries to write and portray a comprehensive encyclopaedic book of modern Kiribati.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 127,
"text": "1°25′N 173°00′E / 1.417°N 173.000°E / 1.417; 173.000",
"title": "External links"
}
] |
Kiribati, officially the Republic of Kiribati, is an island country in the Micronesia subregion of Oceania in the central Pacific Ocean. Its permanent population is over 119,000 as of the 2020 census, with more than half living on Tarawa atoll. The state comprises 32 atolls and one remote raised coral island, Banaba. Its total land area is 811 km2 (313 sq mi) dispersed over 3,441,810 km2 (1,328,890 sq mi) of ocean. The islands' spread straddles the equator and the 180th meridian, although the International Date Line goes around Kiribati and swings far to the east, almost reaching 150°W. This brings Kiribati's easternmost islands, the southern Line Islands south of Hawaii, into the same day as the Gilbert Islands and places them in the most advanced time zone on Earth: UTC+14. Kiribati gained its independence from the United Kingdom and the United States, becoming a sovereign state in 1979. The capital, South Tarawa, now the most populated area, consists of a number of islets, connected by a series of causeways. These comprise about half the area of Tarawa Atoll. Prior to its independence, the country had exported phosphate, but those mines are no longer viable with fisheries and export of copra driving much of the economy. Kiribati is one of the least developed countries in the world and is highly dependent on international aid for its economy. Kiribati is a member of the Pacific Community, Commonwealth of Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States, and became a full member of the United Nations in 1999. As an island nation, the islands are vulnerable to climate change and tsunamis. Addressing climate change has been a central part of its international policy, as a member of the Alliance of Small Island States.
|
2001-09-19T02:49:33Z
|
2023-12-20T11:23:37Z
|
[
"Template:Sfn",
"Template:Ill",
"Template:Weather box",
"Template:Kiribati geography",
"Template:IPAc-en",
"Template:Respell",
"Template:Convert",
"Template:Interlanguage link",
"Template:Wikiatlas",
"Template:Sclass2",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Abbr",
"Template:Citation-attribution",
"Template:NoteTag",
"Template:Cvt",
"Template:Curlie",
"Template:Pp-move",
"Template:Cite encyclopedia",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Cite magazine",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Page needed",
"Template:EngvarB",
"Template:See also",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Sister project links",
"Template:Other uses",
"Template:Further",
"Template:NoteFoot",
"Template:Why",
"Template:Pacific Islands Forum (PIF)",
"Template:More citations needed",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Portal",
"Template:Kiribati topics",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Infobox country",
"Template:Bar box",
"Template:Cite press release",
"Template:Citation needed",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:ISBN",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Refbegin",
"Template:The Commonwealth",
"Template:Cite report",
"Template:Lang-gil",
"Template:Circa",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Coord",
"Template:Self-published source",
"Template:Refend",
"Template:Countries and territories of Oceania"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiribati
|
16,675 |
History of Kiribati
|
The islands which now form the Republic of Kiribati have been inhabited for at least seven hundred years, and possibly much longer. The initial Austronesian peoples’ population, which remains the overwhelming majority today, was visited by Polynesian and Melanesian invaders before the first European sailors visited the islands in the 17th century. For much of the subsequent period, the main island chain, the Gilbert Islands, was ruled as part of the British Empire. The country gained its independence in 1979 and has since been known as Kiribati.
For several millennia, the islands were inhabited by Austronesian peoples who had arrived from the Solomon Islands or Vanuatu. The I-Kiribati or Gilbertese people settled what would become known as the Gilbert Islands (named for British captain Thomas Gilbert by von Krusenstern in 1820) some time in between 3000 BC and 1300 AD. Subsequent invasions by Samoans and Tongans introduced Polynesian elements to the existing Micronesian culture, and invasions by Fijians introduced Melanesian elements. Extensive intermarriage produced a population reasonably homogeneous in appearance, language and traditions.
In 1606 Pedro Fernandes de Queirós sighted Butaritari and Makin, which he named the Buen Viaje ('good trip' in Spanish) Islands.
Captain John Byron passed through the islands in 1764 during his circumnavigation of the globe as captain of HMS Dolphin.
In 1788, Captain Thomas Gilbert in Charlotte and Captain John Marshall in Scarborough. Messrs. Gilbert and Marshall crossed through Abemama, Kuria, Aranuka, Tarawa, Abaiang, Butaritari, and Makin without attempting to land on shore.
In 1820, the islands were named the îles Gilbert (in French, Gilbert Islands) by Adam Johann von Krusenstern, a Russian admiral of the Czar after the British Captain Thomas Gilbert, who crossed the archipelago in 1788. In 1824, French captain Louis-Isidore Duperrey was the first to map the whole Gilbert Islands archipelago. He commanded La Coquille on its circumnavigation of the earth (1822–1825).
Two ships of the United States Exploring Expedition, USS Peacock (1828) and USS Flying Fish (1838), under the command of Captain Hudson, visited many of the Gilbert Islands (then called the Kingsmill Islands or Kingsmill Group in English). While in the Gilberts, they devoted considerable time to mapping and charting reefs and anchorages. Alfred Thomas Agate made drawings of men of Butaritari and Makin.
Whalers, blackbirders, and merchant vessels arrived in great numbers in the 19th century, and the resulting upheaval fomented local tribal conflicts and introduced damaging European diseases. In an effort to restore a measure of order, the Gilbert Islands and the neighboring Ellice Islands (now Tuvalu) were declared as the British Protectorate by Captain E.H.M. Davis of HMS Royalist (1883) on 27 May 1892.
The British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT) were administered by a High Commissioner resident in Fiji until 1952, then in Honiara. A Resident Commissioner, Charles Swayne, was appointed in 1893 following the protectorate on the Gilbert group and on the Ellice group becoming formal and effective in 1892. The protectorate's headquarters was established on Tarawa in 1896, where Resident Commissioner William Telfer Campbell presided from 1896 until 1908. The headquarters were then moved to Ocean Island (now Banaba), and continued upon the transition to a Crown Colony. This move in headquarters arose from the operations of the Pacific Phosphate Company resulting in good shipping connections to Ocean Island, and in any case the role of the British colonial authorities emphasised the procurement of labour for the mining and shipping of phosphate and keeping order among the workers.
Ocean Island (now Banaba) was included in the protectorate in 1900 and then in the colony in 1916. In the same year, Fanning Island and Washington Island were included in it together with the islands of the Union Islands (now Tokelau).
In 1916, the administration of the BWTP changed as the islands became a Crown Colony on 12 January 1916. But the new colony remained under the jurisdiction of BWTP until 1971.
The islands became a Crown Colony on 12 January 1916 by the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Order in Council, 1915. Christmas Island was included in the colony in 1919 although it was contested by the U.S. under the Guano Islands Act of 1856. The Union Islands were unofficially transferred to New Zealand administration in 1926 and officially in 1948. The Phoenix Islands were added in 1937 and the five islands of the Central and Southern Line Islands were added in 1972.
The Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony continued to be administered by a Resident Commissioner. One very famous colonial officer in the colony was Sir Arthur Grimble (1888–1956), at first as a cadet officer in 1914, under Edward Carlyon Eliot who was Resident Commissioner of the BWPT then the colony from 1913 to 1920. This period is described in Eliot's book "Broken Atoms" (autobiographical reminiscences) (Pub. G. Bles, London, 1938) and in Sir Arthur Grimble's "A Pattern of Islands" (Pub. John Murray, London, 1952). Arthur Grimble became the Resident Commissioner of the colony in 1926. In 1930 Grimble, issued revised laws, Regulations for the good Order and Cleanliness of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, which replaced laws created during the BWPT.
Ocean Island remained the headquarters of the colony until the British evacuation in 1942 because of the Japanese occupation of the Gilbert Islands. After World War II, the colony headquarters was re-established on Tarawa, first on Betio islet (then occupied by American forces following the Battle for Tarawa) and subsequently on Bairiki.
Japan seized part of the islands during World War II to form part of their island defenses. On 20 November 1943, Allied forces threw themselves against Japanese positions at Tarawa and Makin in the Gilberts, resulting in some of the bloodiest fighting of the Pacific campaign. The Battle of Tarawa and the Battle of Makin (in fact Butaritari) were a major turning point in the war for the Allies, which battles were the implementation of "Operation Galvanic".
The formation of the United Nations Organisation after World War II resulted in the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization committing to a process of decolonisation; as a consequence the British colonies in the Pacific started on a path to self-determination.
As a consequence of the 1974 Ellice Islands self-determination referendum, separation occurred in two stages. The Tuvaluan Order 1975 made by the Privy Council, which took effect on 1 October 1975, recognised Tuvalu as a separate British dependency with its own government. The second stage occurred on 1 January 1976 when separate administrations were created out of the civil service of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony.
The Gilberts obtained internal self-government in 1977 and held general elections in February 1978 which saw Ieremia Tabai elected Chief Minister at only age 27. Kiribati attained independence as a republic within the Commonwealth of Nations on 12 July 1979 by the Kiribati Independence Order 1979 made by the Privy Council of the United Kingdom.
Although the indigenous Gilbertese language name for the Gilbert Islands proper is Tungaru, the new state chose the name "Kiribati," the Gilbertese rendition of "Gilberts," as an equivalent of the former colony to acknowledge the inclusion of islands which were never considered part of the Gilberts chain. The United States gave up its claims to 14 islands of the Line and Phoenix chains (previously asserted under the Guano Islands Act) in the 1979 Treaty of Tarawa.
Following independence, the Kiribati head of state was Ieremia Tabai. At 29-years-old, Tabai served three terms as Beretitenti (President), from 1979 to 1991. Tabai was the youngest head of state in the Commonwealth of Nations.
In 1994, Teburoro Tito was elected Beretitenti. He was reelected in 1998 and 2002 but was ousted in a no-confidence vote in March 2003, and having served the maximum three terms, he is barred by the constitution from running for another term. Tito's temporary replacement was Tion Otang, the Council of State chairman. In 2003, a new presidential election was held, in which two brothers, Anote and Harry Tong, were the two main candidates (a third candidate, Banuera Berina, won just 9.1% of the vote.
Anote Tong, a London School of Economics graduate, won on 4 July 2003, and was sworn in as President soon afterward. He was re-elected in 2007 and in 2012 for a third term.
In March 2016, Taneti Maamau was elected as the new President of Kiribati. He was the fifth president since the country became independent in 1979. In June 2020, President Maamau won re-election for second four-year term. President Maamau was considered pro-China and he supported closer ties with Beijing.
An emotional issue has been the protracted bid by the residents of Banaba to secede and have their island placed under the protection of Fiji. Because Banaba was devastated by phosphate mining, the vast majority of Banabans was deported to the island of Rabi in the Fiji Islands in the 1940s where they now number some 5,000 and enjoy full Fijian citizenship. The Kiribati government has responded by including several special provisions in the Constitution, such as the designation of a Banaban seat in the legislature and the return of land previously acquired by the government for phosphate mining. Only around 300 people remain on Banaba. Despite being part of Kiribati, Banaba's municipal administration is by the Rabi Council of Leaders and Elders, which is based on Rabi. In 2006, Teitirake Corrie, the Rabi Island Council's representative to the Parliament of Kiribati, called for Banaba to secede from Kiribati and join Fiji.
When the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020, Kiribati closed off its borders, to the extent that citizens living abroad were prevented from returning. The nation remained free of the infection and in late 2021, as the case rate seemed to be declining in many countries, the government considered relaxing restrictions. By that time, 33 percent of the nation's residents had been fully vaccinated against infection. In January 2022, a group of Kiribati citizens who had been living and travelling abroad as missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when the pandemic began returned to Kiribati on a chartered plane. Despite negative tests for the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 before and after arrival, and a quarantine period, 36 of the 54 passengers tested positive soon after their arrival. Within a few days, the viral infection had spread to more than 180 members of the community.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The islands which now form the Republic of Kiribati have been inhabited for at least seven hundred years, and possibly much longer. The initial Austronesian peoples’ population, which remains the overwhelming majority today, was visited by Polynesian and Melanesian invaders before the first European sailors visited the islands in the 17th century. For much of the subsequent period, the main island chain, the Gilbert Islands, was ruled as part of the British Empire. The country gained its independence in 1979 and has since been known as Kiribati.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "For several millennia, the islands were inhabited by Austronesian peoples who had arrived from the Solomon Islands or Vanuatu. The I-Kiribati or Gilbertese people settled what would become known as the Gilbert Islands (named for British captain Thomas Gilbert by von Krusenstern in 1820) some time in between 3000 BC and 1300 AD. Subsequent invasions by Samoans and Tongans introduced Polynesian elements to the existing Micronesian culture, and invasions by Fijians introduced Melanesian elements. Extensive intermarriage produced a population reasonably homogeneous in appearance, language and traditions.",
"title": "Pre-history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In 1606 Pedro Fernandes de Queirós sighted Butaritari and Makin, which he named the Buen Viaje ('good trip' in Spanish) Islands.",
"title": "Contact with other cultures"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Captain John Byron passed through the islands in 1764 during his circumnavigation of the globe as captain of HMS Dolphin.",
"title": "Contact with other cultures"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In 1788, Captain Thomas Gilbert in Charlotte and Captain John Marshall in Scarborough. Messrs. Gilbert and Marshall crossed through Abemama, Kuria, Aranuka, Tarawa, Abaiang, Butaritari, and Makin without attempting to land on shore.",
"title": "Contact with other cultures"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In 1820, the islands were named the îles Gilbert (in French, Gilbert Islands) by Adam Johann von Krusenstern, a Russian admiral of the Czar after the British Captain Thomas Gilbert, who crossed the archipelago in 1788. In 1824, French captain Louis-Isidore Duperrey was the first to map the whole Gilbert Islands archipelago. He commanded La Coquille on its circumnavigation of the earth (1822–1825).",
"title": "Further exploration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Two ships of the United States Exploring Expedition, USS Peacock (1828) and USS Flying Fish (1838), under the command of Captain Hudson, visited many of the Gilbert Islands (then called the Kingsmill Islands or Kingsmill Group in English). While in the Gilberts, they devoted considerable time to mapping and charting reefs and anchorages. Alfred Thomas Agate made drawings of men of Butaritari and Makin.",
"title": "Further exploration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Whalers, blackbirders, and merchant vessels arrived in great numbers in the 19th century, and the resulting upheaval fomented local tribal conflicts and introduced damaging European diseases. In an effort to restore a measure of order, the Gilbert Islands and the neighboring Ellice Islands (now Tuvalu) were declared as the British Protectorate by Captain E.H.M. Davis of HMS Royalist (1883) on 27 May 1892.",
"title": "Colonial era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT) were administered by a High Commissioner resident in Fiji until 1952, then in Honiara. A Resident Commissioner, Charles Swayne, was appointed in 1893 following the protectorate on the Gilbert group and on the Ellice group becoming formal and effective in 1892. The protectorate's headquarters was established on Tarawa in 1896, where Resident Commissioner William Telfer Campbell presided from 1896 until 1908. The headquarters were then moved to Ocean Island (now Banaba), and continued upon the transition to a Crown Colony. This move in headquarters arose from the operations of the Pacific Phosphate Company resulting in good shipping connections to Ocean Island, and in any case the role of the British colonial authorities emphasised the procurement of labour for the mining and shipping of phosphate and keeping order among the workers.",
"title": "Colonial era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Ocean Island (now Banaba) was included in the protectorate in 1900 and then in the colony in 1916. In the same year, Fanning Island and Washington Island were included in it together with the islands of the Union Islands (now Tokelau).",
"title": "Colonial era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In 1916, the administration of the BWTP changed as the islands became a Crown Colony on 12 January 1916. But the new colony remained under the jurisdiction of BWTP until 1971.",
"title": "Colonial era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The islands became a Crown Colony on 12 January 1916 by the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Order in Council, 1915. Christmas Island was included in the colony in 1919 although it was contested by the U.S. under the Guano Islands Act of 1856. The Union Islands were unofficially transferred to New Zealand administration in 1926 and officially in 1948. The Phoenix Islands were added in 1937 and the five islands of the Central and Southern Line Islands were added in 1972.",
"title": "Colonial era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony continued to be administered by a Resident Commissioner. One very famous colonial officer in the colony was Sir Arthur Grimble (1888–1956), at first as a cadet officer in 1914, under Edward Carlyon Eliot who was Resident Commissioner of the BWPT then the colony from 1913 to 1920. This period is described in Eliot's book \"Broken Atoms\" (autobiographical reminiscences) (Pub. G. Bles, London, 1938) and in Sir Arthur Grimble's \"A Pattern of Islands\" (Pub. John Murray, London, 1952). Arthur Grimble became the Resident Commissioner of the colony in 1926. In 1930 Grimble, issued revised laws, Regulations for the good Order and Cleanliness of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, which replaced laws created during the BWPT.",
"title": "Colonial era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Ocean Island remained the headquarters of the colony until the British evacuation in 1942 because of the Japanese occupation of the Gilbert Islands. After World War II, the colony headquarters was re-established on Tarawa, first on Betio islet (then occupied by American forces following the Battle for Tarawa) and subsequently on Bairiki.",
"title": "Colonial era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Japan seized part of the islands during World War II to form part of their island defenses. On 20 November 1943, Allied forces threw themselves against Japanese positions at Tarawa and Makin in the Gilberts, resulting in some of the bloodiest fighting of the Pacific campaign. The Battle of Tarawa and the Battle of Makin (in fact Butaritari) were a major turning point in the war for the Allies, which battles were the implementation of \"Operation Galvanic\".",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The formation of the United Nations Organisation after World War II resulted in the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization committing to a process of decolonisation; as a consequence the British colonies in the Pacific started on a path to self-determination.",
"title": "Self-determination"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "As a consequence of the 1974 Ellice Islands self-determination referendum, separation occurred in two stages. The Tuvaluan Order 1975 made by the Privy Council, which took effect on 1 October 1975, recognised Tuvalu as a separate British dependency with its own government. The second stage occurred on 1 January 1976 when separate administrations were created out of the civil service of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony.",
"title": "Self-determination"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The Gilberts obtained internal self-government in 1977 and held general elections in February 1978 which saw Ieremia Tabai elected Chief Minister at only age 27. Kiribati attained independence as a republic within the Commonwealth of Nations on 12 July 1979 by the Kiribati Independence Order 1979 made by the Privy Council of the United Kingdom.",
"title": "Self-determination"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Although the indigenous Gilbertese language name for the Gilbert Islands proper is Tungaru, the new state chose the name \"Kiribati,\" the Gilbertese rendition of \"Gilberts,\" as an equivalent of the former colony to acknowledge the inclusion of islands which were never considered part of the Gilberts chain. The United States gave up its claims to 14 islands of the Line and Phoenix chains (previously asserted under the Guano Islands Act) in the 1979 Treaty of Tarawa.",
"title": "Self-determination"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Following independence, the Kiribati head of state was Ieremia Tabai. At 29-years-old, Tabai served three terms as Beretitenti (President), from 1979 to 1991. Tabai was the youngest head of state in the Commonwealth of Nations.",
"title": "Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In 1994, Teburoro Tito was elected Beretitenti. He was reelected in 1998 and 2002 but was ousted in a no-confidence vote in March 2003, and having served the maximum three terms, he is barred by the constitution from running for another term. Tito's temporary replacement was Tion Otang, the Council of State chairman. In 2003, a new presidential election was held, in which two brothers, Anote and Harry Tong, were the two main candidates (a third candidate, Banuera Berina, won just 9.1% of the vote.",
"title": "Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Anote Tong, a London School of Economics graduate, won on 4 July 2003, and was sworn in as President soon afterward. He was re-elected in 2007 and in 2012 for a third term.",
"title": "Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In March 2016, Taneti Maamau was elected as the new President of Kiribati. He was the fifth president since the country became independent in 1979. In June 2020, President Maamau won re-election for second four-year term. President Maamau was considered pro-China and he supported closer ties with Beijing.",
"title": "Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "An emotional issue has been the protracted bid by the residents of Banaba to secede and have their island placed under the protection of Fiji. Because Banaba was devastated by phosphate mining, the vast majority of Banabans was deported to the island of Rabi in the Fiji Islands in the 1940s where they now number some 5,000 and enjoy full Fijian citizenship. The Kiribati government has responded by including several special provisions in the Constitution, such as the designation of a Banaban seat in the legislature and the return of land previously acquired by the government for phosphate mining. Only around 300 people remain on Banaba. Despite being part of Kiribati, Banaba's municipal administration is by the Rabi Council of Leaders and Elders, which is based on Rabi. In 2006, Teitirake Corrie, the Rabi Island Council's representative to the Parliament of Kiribati, called for Banaba to secede from Kiribati and join Fiji.",
"title": "The Banaba issue"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "When the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020, Kiribati closed off its borders, to the extent that citizens living abroad were prevented from returning. The nation remained free of the infection and in late 2021, as the case rate seemed to be declining in many countries, the government considered relaxing restrictions. By that time, 33 percent of the nation's residents had been fully vaccinated against infection. In January 2022, a group of Kiribati citizens who had been living and travelling abroad as missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when the pandemic began returned to Kiribati on a chartered plane. Despite negative tests for the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 before and after arrival, and a quarantine period, 36 of the 54 passengers tested positive soon after their arrival. Within a few days, the viral infection had spread to more than 180 members of the community.",
"title": "COVID-19 pandemic"
}
] |
The islands which now form the Republic of Kiribati have been inhabited for at least seven hundred years, and possibly much longer. The initial Austronesian peoples’ population, which remains the overwhelming majority today, was visited by Polynesian and Melanesian invaders before the first European sailors visited the islands in the 17th century. For much of the subsequent period, the main island chain, the Gilbert Islands, was ruled as part of the British Empire. The country gained its independence in 1979 and has since been known as Kiribati.
|
2001-05-11T00:14:07Z
|
2023-10-16T13:39:37Z
|
[
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:ISBN",
"Template:USS",
"Template:Further",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:History of Oceania",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Kiribati geography",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Ship",
"Template:Main",
"Template:HMS",
"Template:Portal"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Kiribati
|
16,676 |
Geography of Kiribati
|
1°25′N 173°00′E / 1.417°N 173.000°E / 1.417; 173.000
Kiribati consists of 32 atolls and one island in an expanse of ocean equivalent in size to the contiguous United States. The islands are scattered such that Kiribati has territory located in each of the four hemispheres. The islands of Kiribati lie roughly halfway between Hawaii and Australia in the Micronesian and Polynesian regions of the South Pacific. The three main island groupings are the Gilbert Islands, Phoenix Islands, and Line Islands. On 1 January 1995 Kiribati moved the International Date Line to include its easternmost islands and make it the same day throughout the country.
Kiribati includes Kiritimati (Christmas Atoll; in the Line Islands), the largest coral atoll (in terms of land area, not dimensions) in the world, and Banaba (Ocean Island), one of the three great phosphate rock islands in the Pacific.
Kiribati straddles the equator in the Pacific Ocean, about one-half of the way from Hawaii to Australia. On 1 January 1995, Kiribati unilaterally moved the International Date Line from the middle of the country to include its easternmost islands and make it the same day throughout the country.
The total land area mass total 811 km (313 sq mi). It includes three island groups - Gilbert Islands, Line Islands, Phoenix Islands. Most of the land on these islands is less than two metres above sea level. Including the amount of water, the total water and land area is 2485 square miles. A 1989 United Nations report identified Kiribati as one of the countries that could completely disappear in the 21st century if steps are not taken to address global climate change.
The coastline of the islands total 1,143 km (710 mi) in length. Kiribati has the 12th largest exclusive economic zone of 3,441,810 km (1,328,890 sq mi) (200 nautical miles). The islands are relatively flat and very spread out. The highest point, on Banaba Island, is 265 feet above sea level.
Due to its location, Kiribati exhibits a maritime climate. Temperatures range between 26 and 32 °C year-round, with the water temperature sitting on a comfortable year-round 28-29 °C. The dry season is from December to March while the wet season last from February to May and from September to November. In the driest years, the islands have received 150mm of rainfall while its wettest years have seen upwards of 4000mm.
The amount of arable land is at 2.5%. Crop usage stands at about 40% of the available land. A few trees exist and occupy 10% of the land. About 50% of the land is used for housing and commercial use.
Kiribati is part of three terrestrial ecoregions:
Much of the natural resources have been exhausted before its 1979 independence. On the island of Banaba, the British mined phosphorus for guano, until exhaustion of supply, an event that was before independence.
Cyclones can occur any time, but usually November to March; occasional tornadoes; low level of some of the islands make them very sensitive to changes in sea level. The Climate Change in the Pacific Report (2011) describes Kiribati as having a low risk of cyclones; however in March 2015 Kiribati experienced flooding and destruction of seawalls and coastal infrastructure as the result of Cyclone Pam, a Category 5 cyclone that devastated Vanuatu.
The island of Banaba has suffered greatly from the after effects of the massive phosphorus mining. Most of the population were forced to evacuate to the island country of Fiji due to its effects. In addition, the atoll near the island of Tarawa is vulnerable to the effects of solid waste disposal. A report by the United Nations say the wildlife from the region are endangered. The islands are very sensitive to the damaging effects.
The country signed the Convention on Diversity on 6 August 1994.
It also signed conventions on the Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol, Desertification, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Marine Dumping, Ozone Layer Protection.
The Phoenix Islands Protected Area constitutes 11.34% of Kiribati's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) with a size of 408,250 km (157,630 sq mi). This is the second largest marine protected area (MPA) in the Pacific Ocean.
21 of the 33 islands are inhabited.
Banaba (Ocean Island) in Kiribati is one of the three great phosphate rock islands in the Pacific Ocean.
Kiribati is the only country in the world whose land exists in all four hemispheres.
This is a list of the extreme points of Kiribati, the points that are farther north, south, east or west than any other location.
This article incorporates public domain material from The World Factbook. CIA.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "1°25′N 173°00′E / 1.417°N 173.000°E / 1.417; 173.000",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Kiribati consists of 32 atolls and one island in an expanse of ocean equivalent in size to the contiguous United States. The islands are scattered such that Kiribati has territory located in each of the four hemispheres. The islands of Kiribati lie roughly halfway between Hawaii and Australia in the Micronesian and Polynesian regions of the South Pacific. The three main island groupings are the Gilbert Islands, Phoenix Islands, and Line Islands. On 1 January 1995 Kiribati moved the International Date Line to include its easternmost islands and make it the same day throughout the country.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Kiribati includes Kiritimati (Christmas Atoll; in the Line Islands), the largest coral atoll (in terms of land area, not dimensions) in the world, and Banaba (Ocean Island), one of the three great phosphate rock islands in the Pacific.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Kiribati straddles the equator in the Pacific Ocean, about one-half of the way from Hawaii to Australia. On 1 January 1995, Kiribati unilaterally moved the International Date Line from the middle of the country to include its easternmost islands and make it the same day throughout the country.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The total land area mass total 811 km (313 sq mi). It includes three island groups - Gilbert Islands, Line Islands, Phoenix Islands. Most of the land on these islands is less than two metres above sea level. Including the amount of water, the total water and land area is 2485 square miles. A 1989 United Nations report identified Kiribati as one of the countries that could completely disappear in the 21st century if steps are not taken to address global climate change.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The coastline of the islands total 1,143 km (710 mi) in length. Kiribati has the 12th largest exclusive economic zone of 3,441,810 km (1,328,890 sq mi) (200 nautical miles). The islands are relatively flat and very spread out. The highest point, on Banaba Island, is 265 feet above sea level.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Due to its location, Kiribati exhibits a maritime climate. Temperatures range between 26 and 32 °C year-round, with the water temperature sitting on a comfortable year-round 28-29 °C. The dry season is from December to March while the wet season last from February to May and from September to November. In the driest years, the islands have received 150mm of rainfall while its wettest years have seen upwards of 4000mm.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The amount of arable land is at 2.5%. Crop usage stands at about 40% of the available land. A few trees exist and occupy 10% of the land. About 50% of the land is used for housing and commercial use.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Kiribati is part of three terrestrial ecoregions:",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Much of the natural resources have been exhausted before its 1979 independence. On the island of Banaba, the British mined phosphorus for guano, until exhaustion of supply, an event that was before independence.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Cyclones can occur any time, but usually November to March; occasional tornadoes; low level of some of the islands make them very sensitive to changes in sea level. The Climate Change in the Pacific Report (2011) describes Kiribati as having a low risk of cyclones; however in March 2015 Kiribati experienced flooding and destruction of seawalls and coastal infrastructure as the result of Cyclone Pam, a Category 5 cyclone that devastated Vanuatu.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The island of Banaba has suffered greatly from the after effects of the massive phosphorus mining. Most of the population were forced to evacuate to the island country of Fiji due to its effects. In addition, the atoll near the island of Tarawa is vulnerable to the effects of solid waste disposal. A report by the United Nations say the wildlife from the region are endangered. The islands are very sensitive to the damaging effects.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The country signed the Convention on Diversity on 6 August 1994.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "It also signed conventions on the Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol, Desertification, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Marine Dumping, Ozone Layer Protection.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The Phoenix Islands Protected Area constitutes 11.34% of Kiribati's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) with a size of 408,250 km (157,630 sq mi). This is the second largest marine protected area (MPA) in the Pacific Ocean.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "21 of the 33 islands are inhabited.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Banaba (Ocean Island) in Kiribati is one of the three great phosphate rock islands in the Pacific Ocean.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Kiribati is the only country in the world whose land exists in all four hemispheres.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "This is a list of the extreme points of Kiribati, the points that are farther north, south, east or west than any other location.",
"title": "Extreme points"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "This article incorporates public domain material from The World Factbook. CIA.",
"title": "References"
}
] |
Kiribati consists of 32 atolls and one island in an expanse of ocean equivalent in size to the contiguous United States. The islands are scattered such that Kiribati has territory located in each of the four hemispheres. The islands of Kiribati lie roughly halfway between Hawaii and Australia in the Micronesian and Polynesian regions of the South Pacific. The three main island groupings are the Gilbert Islands, Phoenix Islands, and Line Islands. On 1 January 1995 Kiribati moved the International Date Line to include its easternmost islands and make it the same day throughout the country.
|
2001-05-11T05:39:04Z
|
2023-09-06T12:49:32Z
|
[
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Convert",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Geography of Oceania",
"Template:Kiribati geography",
"Template:Coord",
"Template:Infobox place geography",
"Template:Weather box",
"Template:See also",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:CIA World Factbook"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Kiribati
|
16,677 |
Demographics of Kiribati
|
Demographic features of the population of Kiribati include population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.
The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated.
From 2015 Census:
This article incorporates public domain material from The World Factbook. CIA.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Demographic features of the population of Kiribati include 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 following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated.",
"title": "Statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "From 2015 Census:",
"title": "Statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "This article incorporates public domain material from The World Factbook. CIA.",
"title": "References"
}
] |
Demographic features of the population of Kiribati include population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.
|
2002-02-25T15:43:11Z
|
2023-12-15T08:14:43Z
|
[
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:CIA World Factbook",
"Template:Kiribati geography",
"Template:Largest cities",
"Template:Hidden end",
"Template:Hidden begin",
"Template:Historical populations",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Oceania topic",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Infobox place demographics"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Kiribati
|
16,678 |
Politics of Kiribati
|
Politics of Kiribati takes place in a framework of a parliamentary representative democratic republic, whereby the Beretitenti, President of Kiribati, is both the head of state and head of government, and of a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government, Beretitenti, and his cabinet, all MPs. Legislative power is exercised by the House of Assembly. The Judiciary of Kiribati is independent of the executive and the legislature. The Constitution of Kiribati, promulgated at independence on 12 July 1979, establishes the Republic of Kiribati as a sovereign democratic republic and guarantees the fundamental rights of its citizens and residents.
After each general election, the new-elected Maneaba ni Maungatabu (House of Assembly) nominates not less than three nor more than four of its own members to stand as candidates for President (Beretitenti). The voting public then elects the Beretitenti from among these candidates. On 22 June 2020, for the first election ever since 1979 Independence, two candidates only have been nominated — unless Section 32(2) of the Constitution writes “not less than 3”. On 17 June 2020, Judgment of Sir John Muria, the Chief Justice on Civil Case 56, allowed this reading of the Constitution. The elected Beretitenti appoints a Kauoman-ni-Beretitenti (vice-president) and up to ten other Cabinet Ministers from among the members of the Maneaba.
The Cabinet is the top decision-making body in Kiribati, through which all functions of the government get their authority. Parliament can undo Cabinet decisions through a vote of no confidence, triggering a new election.
The current Cabinet consists of the following Ministers:
The first nine ministers sworn in on 2 July 2020 at the State House in Bairiki (South Tarawa) and include Dr Teuea Toatu, Willie Tokataake, Ruateki Tekaiara, Ribanataake Awira, Dr Tinte Itinteang, Boutu Bateriki, Booti Nauan, Martin Moreti and Taabeta Teakaiao.
The remaining four ministers who are stranded in the outer islands, at their respective island, which include Alexander Teabo, Tarakabu Martin, Tekeeua Tarati and Mikarite Temari, have been sworn later.
In Kiribati, the Attorney-General is defined by section 42 of the Constitution as "the principal legal adviser to the Government." The Constitution specifies: "No person shall be qualified to hold or to act in the office of Attorney-General unless he is qualified to practise in Kiribati as an advocate in the High Court."
The Attorney-General of Kiribati was also until October 2016 a member of Cabinet of Kiribati and a member of the Maneaba ni Maungatabu as an ex-officio member of parliament. According to a 2005 source, the Attorney-General "is designated by the Republic of Kiribati as the Central Authority who shall have the responsibility and power to receive requests for mutual legal assistance."
In a Westminster system, the unicameral House of Assembly (Maneaba ni Maungatabu) has 45 members: 44 elected in single-seat and multi-seat constituencies; one appointed member from the Banaban community on Rabi Island in Fiji. The Attorney general was no longer an ex officio member. The elected members of the Maneaba ni Maungatabu serve four-year terms. The Speaker of the Maneaba ni Maungatabu is elected by the members of the Maneaba from outside of its membership. The total number of the Legisters is forty four from the island in Kiribati and one representative nominated from Rabi Council representing the people in Rabi island in Fiji.
All citizens of Kiribati are eligible to vote at the age of 18.
The Chapter VI of the Constitution of 1979 describes the Judiciary of Kiribati. The judicial system consists of magistrates' courts, the High Court and the Kiribati Court of Appeal. The Beretitenti (President), acting in accordance with the advice of the Public Service Commission, makes all judicial appointments, and amongst them, the Chief Justice, the main judge of the High Court. The High Court is in Betio. Sir John Muria was the Chief Justice of Kiribati until his replacement by Bill Hastings in August 2021, after a 8 months vacancy. On 30 June 2022, Hastings was abruptly suspended from his office during the 2022 Kiribati constitutional crisis.
The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London, England has jurisdiction only if a case involves constitutional rights. Appeals are taken directly to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council itself.
The Court of Appeal of Kiribati is otherwise the supreme court in Kiribati.
The People's Lawyer of Kiribati represents disadvantaged residents and those who are unable to access legal representation. Accordingly, the office represents clients in "Land, Civil and Criminal Matters and act for them in the Magistrates and High Court as well as the Court of Appeal." The position had long been filled by expatriate lawyers who were volunteering from either Australia or New Zealand with the "role...funded by the Australian Government through [the] Australian Volunteers International." In 2015, the role of The People's Lawyer changed in that it was now filled by a Kiribati citizen: Raweita Beniata (male lawyer; 2015- ).
Political parties have existed since 1965 but are more similar to informal coalitions in behaviour. They do not have official platforms or party structures. Most candidates formally present themselves as independents, then they joined one party at the first meeting of the House. The website of the House of Assembly explains that in this way:
Kiribati Tabomoa Party ("National Progressive Party") and Christian Democratic Party merged into Maneaban Te Mauri (MMP, "Protect the Maneaba") in 2003, which later merged with Kiribati Independent Party into Karikirakean Te I-Kiribati (KTK, "United Coalition Party") in 2010, which later merged with Maurin Kiribati Party (MKP) to form Tobwaan Kiribati Party (TKP), the only one facing Boutokaan Te Koaua (BTK, "Pillars of Truth").
A major source of conflict has been the protracted bid by the residents of Banaba Island to secede and have their island placed under the protection of Fiji. The government's attempts to placate the Banabans include several special provisions in the constitution, such as the designation of a Banaban seat in the legislature and the return of land previously acquired by the government for phosphate mining.
There is no solid tradition of formally organized political parties in Kiribati, even if the 2 first political parties were founded in 1965; they more closely resemble factions or interest groups with no formal platforms:
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Politics of Kiribati takes place in a framework of a parliamentary representative democratic republic, whereby the Beretitenti, President of Kiribati, is both the head of state and head of government, and of a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government, Beretitenti, and his cabinet, all MPs. Legislative power is exercised by the House of Assembly. The Judiciary of Kiribati is independent of the executive and the legislature. The Constitution of Kiribati, promulgated at independence on 12 July 1979, establishes the Republic of Kiribati as a sovereign democratic republic and guarantees the fundamental rights of its citizens and residents.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "After each general election, the new-elected Maneaba ni Maungatabu (House of Assembly) nominates not less than three nor more than four of its own members to stand as candidates for President (Beretitenti). The voting public then elects the Beretitenti from among these candidates. On 22 June 2020, for the first election ever since 1979 Independence, two candidates only have been nominated — unless Section 32(2) of the Constitution writes “not less than 3”. On 17 June 2020, Judgment of Sir John Muria, the Chief Justice on Civil Case 56, allowed this reading of the Constitution. The elected Beretitenti appoints a Kauoman-ni-Beretitenti (vice-president) and up to ten other Cabinet Ministers from among the members of the Maneaba.",
"title": "Executive branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The Cabinet is the top decision-making body in Kiribati, through which all functions of the government get their authority. Parliament can undo Cabinet decisions through a vote of no confidence, triggering a new election.",
"title": "Executive branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The current Cabinet consists of the following Ministers:",
"title": "Executive branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The first nine ministers sworn in on 2 July 2020 at the State House in Bairiki (South Tarawa) and include Dr Teuea Toatu, Willie Tokataake, Ruateki Tekaiara, Ribanataake Awira, Dr Tinte Itinteang, Boutu Bateriki, Booti Nauan, Martin Moreti and Taabeta Teakaiao.",
"title": "Executive branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The remaining four ministers who are stranded in the outer islands, at their respective island, which include Alexander Teabo, Tarakabu Martin, Tekeeua Tarati and Mikarite Temari, have been sworn later.",
"title": "Executive branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In Kiribati, the Attorney-General is defined by section 42 of the Constitution as \"the principal legal adviser to the Government.\" The Constitution specifies: \"No person shall be qualified to hold or to act in the office of Attorney-General unless he is qualified to practise in Kiribati as an advocate in the High Court.\"",
"title": "Executive branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The Attorney-General of Kiribati was also until October 2016 a member of Cabinet of Kiribati and a member of the Maneaba ni Maungatabu as an ex-officio member of parliament. According to a 2005 source, the Attorney-General \"is designated by the Republic of Kiribati as the Central Authority who shall have the responsibility and power to receive requests for mutual legal assistance.\"",
"title": "Executive branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In a Westminster system, the unicameral House of Assembly (Maneaba ni Maungatabu) has 45 members: 44 elected in single-seat and multi-seat constituencies; one appointed member from the Banaban community on Rabi Island in Fiji. The Attorney general was no longer an ex officio member. The elected members of the Maneaba ni Maungatabu serve four-year terms. The Speaker of the Maneaba ni Maungatabu is elected by the members of the Maneaba from outside of its membership. The total number of the Legisters is forty four from the island in Kiribati and one representative nominated from Rabi Council representing the people in Rabi island in Fiji.",
"title": "Legislative branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "All citizens of Kiribati are eligible to vote at the age of 18.",
"title": "Legislative branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The Chapter VI of the Constitution of 1979 describes the Judiciary of Kiribati. The judicial system consists of magistrates' courts, the High Court and the Kiribati Court of Appeal. The Beretitenti (President), acting in accordance with the advice of the Public Service Commission, makes all judicial appointments, and amongst them, the Chief Justice, the main judge of the High Court. The High Court is in Betio. Sir John Muria was the Chief Justice of Kiribati until his replacement by Bill Hastings in August 2021, after a 8 months vacancy. On 30 June 2022, Hastings was abruptly suspended from his office during the 2022 Kiribati constitutional crisis.",
"title": "Judiciary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London, England has jurisdiction only if a case involves constitutional rights. Appeals are taken directly to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council itself.",
"title": "Judiciary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The Court of Appeal of Kiribati is otherwise the supreme court in Kiribati.",
"title": "Judiciary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The People's Lawyer of Kiribati represents disadvantaged residents and those who are unable to access legal representation. Accordingly, the office represents clients in \"Land, Civil and Criminal Matters and act for them in the Magistrates and High Court as well as the Court of Appeal.\" The position had long been filled by expatriate lawyers who were volunteering from either Australia or New Zealand with the \"role...funded by the Australian Government through [the] Australian Volunteers International.\" In 2015, the role of The People's Lawyer changed in that it was now filled by a Kiribati citizen: Raweita Beniata (male lawyer; 2015- ).",
"title": "Judiciary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Political parties have existed since 1965 but are more similar to informal coalitions in behaviour. They do not have official platforms or party structures. Most candidates formally present themselves as independents, then they joined one party at the first meeting of the House. The website of the House of Assembly explains that in this way:",
"title": "Political conditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Kiribati Tabomoa Party (\"National Progressive Party\") and Christian Democratic Party merged into Maneaban Te Mauri (MMP, \"Protect the Maneaba\") in 2003, which later merged with Kiribati Independent Party into Karikirakean Te I-Kiribati (KTK, \"United Coalition Party\") in 2010, which later merged with Maurin Kiribati Party (MKP) to form Tobwaan Kiribati Party (TKP), the only one facing Boutokaan Te Koaua (BTK, \"Pillars of Truth\").",
"title": "Political conditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "A major source of conflict has been the protracted bid by the residents of Banaba Island to secede and have their island placed under the protection of Fiji. The government's attempts to placate the Banabans include several special provisions in the constitution, such as the designation of a Banaban seat in the legislature and the return of land previously acquired by the government for phosphate mining.",
"title": "Political conditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "There is no solid tradition of formally organized political parties in Kiribati, even if the 2 first political parties were founded in 1965; they more closely resemble factions or interest groups with no formal platforms:",
"title": "Political parties and elections"
}
] |
Politics of Kiribati takes place in a framework of a parliamentary representative democratic republic, whereby the Beretitenti, President of Kiribati, is both the head of state and head of government, and of a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government, Beretitenti, and his cabinet, all MPs. Legislative power is exercised by the House of Assembly. The Judiciary of Kiribati is independent of the executive and the legislature.
The Constitution of Kiribati, promulgated at independence on 12 July 1979, establishes the Republic of Kiribati as a sovereign democratic republic and guarantees the fundamental rights of its citizens and residents.
|
2001-05-11T00:14:57Z
|
2023-09-18T10:42:39Z
|
[
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Politics of Kiribati",
"Template:Election results",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Elect",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Oceania in topic",
"Template:Kiribati geography",
"Template:KiribatiPresidents"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Kiribati
|
16,681 |
Transport in Kiribati
|
The following article outlines transport in Kiribati.
There are 670 km of highways in Kiribati (1996 est.) of which 27 km are paved in South Tarawa (2001). The longest stretch of road travels from South Tarawa to North Tarawa.
Ports and harbours include Banaba, Betio, English Harbor, and Kanton. There is a small network of canals, totaling 5 km, in the Line Islands. The Merchant marine includes the ships of the Kiribati JMR Group that operates the Coral Sea Shipping Line, which has three ships: Coral Sea number 1, Coral Sea number 2 and Coral Sea number 3. One merchant ship connects, from time to time, the Line Islands (Kiritimati, Fanning and Washington) and makes stops en route at the Phoenix Islands.
2 small aeroplanes fly out of the Gilbert Islands, except for Banaba. Beginning in January 2009, Kiribati has two domestic airlines: Air Kiribati and Coral Sun Airways. Both airlines are based in Tarawa's Bonriki International Airport and serve destinations across the Gilbert Islands only. Neither the Phoenix nor Line Islands are served by the domestic carriers. The only served airport by any airline is Cassidy International Airport on Kiritimati. Fiji's national carrier Fiji Airways provides an international service from Fiji's main airport, Nadi International Airport to Cassidy Airport as well as to Bonriki Airport. Fiji Airways currently flies a twice weekly flight from Nadi International Airport to Bonriki, Kiribati.
As of 2010, there are 23 airports in Kiribati, of which 4 have paved runways, the only international ones being Bonriki International Airport and Cassidy International Airport. Bonriki International Airport is currently undergoing an upgrade program to bring airport security up to IATA standards - this includes the construction of a fence around the entire perimeter.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The following article outlines transport in Kiribati.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "There are 670 km of highways in Kiribati (1996 est.) of which 27 km are paved in South Tarawa (2001). The longest stretch of road travels from South Tarawa to North Tarawa.",
"title": "Roadways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Ports and harbours include Banaba, Betio, English Harbor, and Kanton. There is a small network of canals, totaling 5 km, in the Line Islands. The Merchant marine includes the ships of the Kiribati JMR Group that operates the Coral Sea Shipping Line, which has three ships: Coral Sea number 1, Coral Sea number 2 and Coral Sea number 3. One merchant ship connects, from time to time, the Line Islands (Kiritimati, Fanning and Washington) and makes stops en route at the Phoenix Islands.",
"title": "Water transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "2 small aeroplanes fly out of the Gilbert Islands, except for Banaba. Beginning in January 2009, Kiribati has two domestic airlines: Air Kiribati and Coral Sun Airways. Both airlines are based in Tarawa's Bonriki International Airport and serve destinations across the Gilbert Islands only. Neither the Phoenix nor Line Islands are served by the domestic carriers. The only served airport by any airline is Cassidy International Airport on Kiritimati. Fiji's national carrier Fiji Airways provides an international service from Fiji's main airport, Nadi International Airport to Cassidy Airport as well as to Bonriki Airport. Fiji Airways currently flies a twice weekly flight from Nadi International Airport to Bonriki, Kiribati.",
"title": "Air travel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "As of 2010, there are 23 airports in Kiribati, of which 4 have paved runways, the only international ones being Bonriki International Airport and Cassidy International Airport. Bonriki International Airport is currently undergoing an upgrade program to bring airport security up to IATA standards - this includes the construction of a fence around the entire perimeter.",
"title": "Air travel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "",
"title": "References"
}
] |
The following article outlines transport in Kiribati.
|
2022-08-20T18:54:36Z
|
[
"Template:Oceania in topic",
"Template:Kiribati-stub",
"Template:Commons category",
"Template:More footnotes",
"Template:CIA",
"Template:Clear",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite web"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Kiribati
|
|
16,683 |
Foreign relations of Kiribati
|
Kiribati is a full member of the Commonwealth, the IMF and the World Bank, and became a full member of the United Nations in 1999. Kiribati hosted the Thirty-First Pacific Islands Forum in October 2000. Kiribati has Least Developed Country Status and its interests rarely extend beyond the region. Through accession to the Lomé Convention, then Cotonou Agreement, Kiribati is also a member of the African Caribbean and Pacific Group. Kiribati maintains good relations with most countries and has particularly close ties to Pacific neighbours Japan, Australia, South Korea and New Zealand. Kiribati briefly suspended its relations with France in 1995 over that country's decision to renew nuclear testing in the South Pacific.
Kiribati established diplomatic relations with Taiwan in November 2003, but cut off all relations in September 2019 when Kiribati switched diplomatic recognition to Beijing. Taiwan's foreign minister stated that Kiribati had "unrealistic" expectations from China and ordered the embassy to evacuate.
Kiribati maintains strong regional ties in the Pacific. Until recently it was a full member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission, the South Pacific Tourism Organisation, the Pacific Regional Environment Programme and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community. Kiribati is one of the eight signatories of the Nauru Agreement Concerning Cooperation in the Management of Fisheries of Common Interest which collectively controls 25–30% of the world's tuna supply and approximately 60% of the western and central Pacific tuna supply . In 1985, Kiribati was one of the nine initial endorsers of the Treaty of Rarotonga creating the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty.
Kiribati was admitted to the Commonwealth of Nations in 1979 upon its independence, and to the United Nations in 1999.
Additionally outside the region, Kiribati is a member or participant of the ACP (Lomé Convention), the Asian Development Bank, the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Civil Aviation Organization, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the International Development Association, the International Finance Corporation, the IMF, International Maritime Organization, International Olympic Committee, International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Universal Postal Union and the World Meteorological Organization. Finally, while Kiribati is not a member of the World Trade Organization, it does retain observer status.
List of countries which Kiribati maintains diplomatic relations with:
Kiribati receives development aid from the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Canada, USA, the Asian Development Bank, UN agencies and (until 2019) Taiwan. In recent years it has accounted for 20–25% of Kiribati's GDP. Recent projects and notable inputs by the EU have included telecommunications (improvement of telephone exchanges and provision of radio and navigation equipment), the development of seaweed as an export crop, solar energy systems for the outer islands, the upgrading of the Control Tower and fire fighting services at Tarawa's Bonriki International Airport, outer island social development, health services and extensive support for the Kiribati Vocational Training Programme. Additionally, Cuba provides doctors, as well as scholarships for I-Kiribati medical students.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Kiribati is a full member of the Commonwealth, the IMF and the World Bank, and became a full member of the United Nations in 1999. Kiribati hosted the Thirty-First Pacific Islands Forum in October 2000. Kiribati has Least Developed Country Status and its interests rarely extend beyond the region. Through accession to the Lomé Convention, then Cotonou Agreement, Kiribati is also a member of the African Caribbean and Pacific Group. Kiribati maintains good relations with most countries and has particularly close ties to Pacific neighbours Japan, Australia, South Korea and New Zealand. Kiribati briefly suspended its relations with France in 1995 over that country's decision to renew nuclear testing in the South Pacific.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Kiribati established diplomatic relations with Taiwan in November 2003, but cut off all relations in September 2019 when Kiribati switched diplomatic recognition to Beijing. Taiwan's foreign minister stated that Kiribati had \"unrealistic\" expectations from China and ordered the embassy to evacuate.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Kiribati maintains strong regional ties in the Pacific. Until recently it was a full member of the Pacific Islands Forum, the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission, the South Pacific Tourism Organisation, the Pacific Regional Environment Programme and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community. Kiribati is one of the eight signatories of the Nauru Agreement Concerning Cooperation in the Management of Fisheries of Common Interest which collectively controls 25–30% of the world's tuna supply and approximately 60% of the western and central Pacific tuna supply . In 1985, Kiribati was one of the nine initial endorsers of the Treaty of Rarotonga creating the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty.",
"title": "Regional relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Kiribati was admitted to the Commonwealth of Nations in 1979 upon its independence, and to the United Nations in 1999.",
"title": "Regional relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Additionally outside the region, Kiribati is a member or participant of the ACP (Lomé Convention), the Asian Development Bank, the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Civil Aviation Organization, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the International Development Association, the International Finance Corporation, the IMF, International Maritime Organization, International Olympic Committee, International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Universal Postal Union and the World Meteorological Organization. Finally, while Kiribati is not a member of the World Trade Organization, it does retain observer status.",
"title": "Regional relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "List of countries which Kiribati maintains diplomatic relations with:",
"title": "Diplomatic relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Kiribati receives development aid from the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Canada, USA, the Asian Development Bank, UN agencies and (until 2019) Taiwan. In recent years it has accounted for 20–25% of Kiribati's GDP. Recent projects and notable inputs by the EU have included telecommunications (improvement of telephone exchanges and provision of radio and navigation equipment), the development of seaweed as an export crop, solar energy systems for the outer islands, the upgrading of the Control Tower and fire fighting services at Tarawa's Bonriki International Airport, outer island social development, health services and extensive support for the Kiribati Vocational Training Programme. Additionally, Cuba provides doctors, as well as scholarships for I-Kiribati medical students.",
"title": "Aid & Development"
}
] |
Kiribati is a full member of the Commonwealth, the IMF and the World Bank, and became a full member of the United Nations in 1999. Kiribati hosted the Thirty-First Pacific Islands Forum in October 2000. Kiribati has Least Developed Country Status and its interests rarely extend beyond the region. Through accession to the Lomé Convention, then Cotonou Agreement, Kiribati is also a member of the African Caribbean and Pacific Group. Kiribati maintains good relations with most countries and has particularly close ties to Pacific neighbours Japan, Australia, South Korea and New Zealand. Kiribati briefly suspended its relations with France in 1995 over that country's decision to renew nuclear testing in the South Pacific. Kiribati established diplomatic relations with Taiwan in November 2003, but cut off all relations in September 2019 when Kiribati switched diplomatic recognition to Beijing. Taiwan's foreign minister stated that Kiribati had "unrealistic" expectations from China and ordered the embassy to evacuate.
|
2001-05-11T00:16:15Z
|
2023-12-19T18:24:16Z
|
[
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Politics of Kiribati",
"Template:Main",
"Template:As of",
"Template:Foreign relations of the Commonwealth of Nations",
"Template:Foreign relations of Kiribati",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Portal",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Flag",
"Template:Dts",
"Template:Dead link",
"Template:Foreign relations of Oceania",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Pacific Islands Forum"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Kiribati
|
16,685 |
History of Kuwait
|
Kuwait is a sovereign state in Western Asia located at the head of the Persian Gulf. The geographical region of Kuwait has been occupied by humans since antiquity, particularly due to its strategic location at the head of the Persian Gulf. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Kuwait was a prosperous maritime port city and the most important trade port in the northern Gulf region. In the modern era, Kuwait is best known for the Persian Gulf War (1990–1991).
Following the post-glacial flooding of the Persian Gulf basin, debris from the Tigris–Euphrates river formed a substantial delta, creating most of the land in present-day Kuwait and establishing the present coastlines. One of the earliest evidence of human habitation in Kuwait dates back to 8000 BC where Mesolithic tools were found in Burgan. During the Ubaid period (6500 BC), Kuwait was the central site of interaction between the peoples of Mesopotamia and Neolithic Eastern Arabia, including Bahra 1 and site H3 in Subiya. The Neolithic inhabitants of Kuwait were among the world's earliest maritime traders. One of the world's earliest reed-boats was discovered at site H3 dating back to the Ubaid period. Other Neolithic sites in Kuwait are located in Khiran and Sulaibikhat.
Mesopotamians first settled in the Kuwaiti island of Failaka in 2000 B.C. Traders from the Sumerian city of Ur inhabited Failaka and ran a mercantile business. The island had many Mesopotamian-style buildings typical of those found in Iraq dating from around 2000 B.C.
In 4000 BC until 2000 BC, the bay of Kuwait was home to the Dilmun civilization. Dilmun included Al-Shadadiya, Akkaz, Umm an Namil, and Failaka. Dilmun first appears in Sumerian cuneiform clay tablets dated to the end of fourth millennium BC, found in the temple of goddess Inanna in the city of Uruk. The adjective Dilmun is used to describe a type of axe and one specific official; in addition there are lists of rations of wool issued to people connected with Dilmun.
Dilmun was mentioned in two letters dated to the reign of Burna-Buriash II (c. 1370 BC) recovered from Nippur, during the Kassite dynasty of Babylon. These letters were from a provincial official, Ilī-ippašra, in Dilmun to his friend Enlil-kidinni in Mesopotamia. The names referred to are Akkadian.
There is both literary and archaeological evidence of extensive trade between ancient Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley civilization (probably correctly identified with the land called Meluhha in Akkadian). Impressions of clay seals from the Indus Valley city of Harappa were evidently used to seal bundles of merchandise, as clay seal impressions with cord or sack marks on the reverse side testify. A number of these Indus Valley seals have turned up at Ur and other Mesopotamian sites.
The "Persian Gulf" types of circular, stamped (rather than rolled) seals known from Dilmun, that appear at Lothal in Gujarat, India, and Failaka, as well as in central Mesopotamia, are convincing corroboration of the long-distance sea trade. What the commerce consisted of is less known: timber and precious woods, ivory, lapis lazuli, gold, and luxury goods such as carnelian and glazed stone beads, pearls from the Persian Gulf, shell and bone inlays, were among the goods sent to Mesopotamia in exchange for silver, tin, woolen textiles, olive oil and grains. Copper ingots from Oman and bitumen which occurred naturally in Mesopotamia may have been exchanged for cotton textiles and domestic fowl, major products of the Indus region that are not native to Mesopotamia. Instances of all of these trade goods have been found. The importance of this trade is shown by the fact that the weights and measures used at Dilmun were in fact identical to those used by the Indus, and were not those used in Southern Mesopotamia.
Mesopotamian trade documents, lists of goods, and official inscriptions mentioning Meluhha supplement Harappan seals and archaeological finds. Literary references to Meluhhan trade date from the Akkadian Empire, the Third Dynasty of Ur, and Isin-Larsa Periods (c. 2350–1800 BC), but the trade probably started in the Early Dynastic Period (c. 2600 BC). Some Meluhhan vessels may have sailed directly to Mesopotamian ports, but by the Isin-Larsa Period, Dilmun monopolized the trade.
In the Mesopotamian epic poem Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh had to pass through Mount Mashu to reach Dilmun, Mount Mashu is usually identified with the whole of the parallel Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon ranges, with the narrow gap between these mountains constituting the tunnel.
Dilmun, sometimes described as "the place where the sun rises" and "the Land of the Living", is the scene of some versions of the Sumerian creation myth, and the place where the deified Sumerian hero of the flood, Utnapishtim (Ziusudra), was taken by the gods to live forever. Thorkild Jacobsen's translation of the Eridu Genesis calls it "Mount Dilmun" which he locates as a "faraway, half-mythical place". Dilmun is also described in the epic story of Enki and Ninhursag as the site at which the Creation occurred. The promise of Enki to Ninhursag, the Earth Mother:
The Sumerian goddess of air and wind Ninlil had her home in Dilmun. It is also featured in the Epic of Gilgamesh. However, in the early epic Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, the main events, which center on Enmerkar's construction of the ziggurats in Uruk and Eridu, are described as taking place in a world "before Dilmun had yet been settled".
From about 1650 BC there is a further inscription on a seal found at Failaka and preserving a king's name. The short text readsː [La]'ù-la Panipa, daughter of Sumu-lěl, the servant of Inzak of Akarum. Sumu-lěl was evidently a third king of Dilmun belonging to about this period. Servant of Inzak of Akarum was the king's title in Dilmun. The names of these later rulers are Amoritic.
Despite the scholarly consensus that ancient Dilmun encompasses three modern locations - the eastern littoral of Arabia from the vicinity of modern Kuwait to Bahrain; the island of Bahrain; the island of Failaka of Kuwait - few researchers have taken into account the radically different geography of the basin represented by the Persian Gulf before its reflooding as sea levels rose about 6000 BCE. During the Dilmun era (from ca. 3000 BC), Failaka was known as "Agarum", the land of Enzak, a great god in the Dilmun civilization according to Sumerian cuneiform texts found on the island. During the Neo-Babylonian Period, Enzak was identified with Nabu, the ancient Mesopotamian patron god of literacy, the rational arts, scribes and wisdom. As part of Dilmun, Failaka became a hub for the civilization from the end of the 3rd to the middle of the 1st millennium BC. Failaka was settled following 2000 BC after a drop in sea level.
After the Dilmun civilization, Failaka was inhabited by the Kassites of Mesopotamia, and was formally under the control of the Kassite dynasty of Babylon. Studies indicate traces of human settlement can be found on Failaka dating back to as early as the end of the 3rd millennium BC, and extending until the 20th century AD. Many of the artifacts found in Falaika are linked to Mesopotamian civilizations and seem to show that Failaka was gradually drawn toward the civilization based in Antioch.
Under Nebuchadnezzar II, the bay of Kuwait was under Babylonian control. Cuneiform documents found in Failaka indicate the presence of Babylonians in the island's population. Babylonian Kings were present in Failaka during the Neo-Babylonian Empire period, Nabonidus had a governor in Failaka and Nebuchadnezzar II had a palace and temple in Falaika. Failaka also contained temples dedicated to the worship of Shamash, the Mesopotamian sun god in the Babylonian pantheon.
Most of present-day Kuwait is still archaeologically unexplored. Although there is no scholarly consensus, several famous archaeologists and geologists have proposed that Kuwait was likely the original location of the Pishon River which watered the Garden of Eden. Juris Zarins argued that the Garden of Eden was situated at the head of the Persian Gulf (present-day Kuwait), where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers run into the sea, from his research on this area using information from many different sources, including LANDSAT images from space. His suggestion about the Pishon River was supported by James A. Sauer of the American Center of Oriental Research. Sauer made an argument from geology and history that Pishon River was the now-defunct Kuwait River. With the aid of satellite photos, Farouk El-Baz traced the dry channel from Kuwait up the Wadi al-Batin.
After an apparent abandonment of about seven centuries, the bay of Kuwait was repopulated during the Achaemenid period (c. 550‒330 BC). In 4th century BC, the ancient Greeks colonized the bay of Kuwait under Alexander the Great, the ancient Greeks named mainland Kuwait Larissa and Failaka was named Ikaros.
According to Strabo and Arrian, Alexander the Great named Failaka Ikaros because it resembled the Aegean island of that name in size and shape. Various elements of Greek mythology were mixed with the local cults in Failaka. "Ikaros" was also the name of a prominent city situated in Failaka.
According to another account, having returned from his Indian campaign to Persia, Alexander the Great ordered the island to be called Icarus, after the Icarus island in the Aegean Sea. This was likely a Hellenization of the local name Akar (Aramaic 'KR), derived from the ancient bronze-age toponym Agarum. Another suggestion is that the name Ikaros was influenced by the local É-kara temple, dedicated to the Babylonian sun-god Shamash. That both Failaka and the Aegean Icarus housed bull cults would have made the identification tempting all the more.
During Hellenistic times, there was a temple of Artemis on the island. The wild animals on the island were dedicated to goddess and no one should harm them. Strabo wrote that on the island there was a temple of Apollo and an oracle of Artemis (Tauropolus) (μαντεῖον Ταυροπόλου). The island is also mentioned by Stephanus of Byzantium and Ptolemaeus.
Remains of the settlement include a large Hellenistic fort and two Greek temples. Failaka was also a trading post (emporion) of the kingdom of Characene. Archaeological remains of Greek colonization were also discovered in Akkaz, Umm an Namil, and Subiya. At the Hellenistic fortress in Failaka, pigs represented 20 percent of the total population, but no pig remains were found in nearby Akkaz.
Nearchos was likely the first Greek to have explored Failaka. The island was further visited and inspected by Archias, Androsthenes of Thasos, and Hiero during three exploration expeditions ordered by Alexander the Great during 324 BC. Failaka might have been fortified and settled during the days of Seleucus I or Antiochos I.
At the time of Alexander the Great, the mouth of the Euphrates River was located in northern Kuwait. The Euphrates river flowed directly into the Persian Gulf via Khor Subiya which was a river channel at the time. Failaka was located 15 kilometers from the mouth of the Euphrates river. By the first century BC, the Khor Subiya river channel dried out completely.
During the Achaemenid period (c. 550‒330 BC), the bay of Kuwait was repopulated. Failaka was under the control of the Achaemenid Empire as evidenced by the archaeological discovery of Achaemenid strata. There are Aramaic inscriptions that testify Achaemenid presence.
In 127 BC, Kuwait was part of the Parthian Empire and the kingdom of Characene was established around Teredon in present-day Kuwait. Characene was centered in the region encompassing southern Mesopotamia, Characene coins were discovered in Akkaz, Umm an Namil, and Failaka. A busy Parthian era Characene commercial station existed in Kuwait.
The earliest recorded mention of Kuwait was in 150 AD in the geographical treatise Geography by Greek scholar Ptolemy. Ptolemy mentioned the Bay of Kuwait as Hieros Kolpos (Sacer Sinus in the Latin versions).
In 224 AD, Kuwait became part of the Sassanid Empire. At the time of the Sassanid Empire, Kuwait was known as Meshan, which was an alternative name of the kingdom of Characene.
Late Sassanian settlements were discovered in Failaka.
Akkaz was a Partho-Sassanian site; the Sassanid religion's tower of silence was discovered in northern Akkaz.
In Bubiyan, there is archaeological evidence of Sassanian periods of human presence as evidenced by the recent discovery of torpedo-jar pottery sherds on several prominent beach ridges.
In 636 AD, the Battle of Chains between the Sassanid Empire and Rashidun Caliphate was fought in Kuwait near Kazma. At the time, Kuwait was under the control of the Sassanid Empire. The Battle of Chains was the first battle of the Rashidun Caliphate in which the Muslim army sought to extend its frontiers.
As a result of Rashidun victory in 636 AD, the bay of Kuwait was home to the city of Kazma (also known as "Kadhima" or "Kāzimah") in the early Islamic era. Medieval Arabic sources contain multiple references to the bay of Kuwait in the early Islamic period. The city functioned as a trade port and resting place for pilgrims on their way from Iraq to Hejaz. The city was controlled by the kingdom of Al-Hirah in Iraq. In the early Islamic period, the bay of Kuwait was known for being a fertile area.
The Kuwaiti city of Kazma was a stop for caravans coming from Persia and Mesopotamia en route to the Arabian Peninsula. The poet Al-Farazdaq was born in the Kuwaiti city of Kazma. Al-Farazdaq is recognized as one of the greatest classical poets of the Arabs.
Early to late Islamic settlements were discovered in Subiya, Akkaz, Kharaib al-Dasht, Umm al-Aish, Al-Rawdatain, Al Qusur, Umm an Namil, Miskan, and Kuwait's side of Wadi al-Batin.
There is archaeological evidence of early Islamic periods of human presence in Bubiyan.
Christian Nestorian settlements flourished in the bay of Kuwait from the 5th century until the 9th century. Excavations have revealed several farms, villages and two large churches dating from the 5th and 6th century. Archaeologists are currently excavating nearby sites to understand the extent of the settlements that flourished in the eighth and ninth centuries A.D. An old island tradition is that a community grew up around a Christian mystic and hermit. The small farms and villages were eventually abandoned. Parts of Kuwait came under the Roman Empire. Remains of Byzantine era Nestorian churches were found in Akkaz and Al-Qusur. Pottery at the Al-Qusur site can be dated from as early as the first half of the 7th century through the 9th century.
In 1521, Kuwait was under Portuguese control. In the late 16th century, the Portuguese built a defensive settlement in Kuwait. In 1613, Kuwait City was founded as a fishing village predominantly populated by fishermen. Administratively, it was a sheikhdom, ruled by local sheikhs from Bani Khalid clan. In 1682 or 1716, the Bani Utbah settled in Kuwait City, which at this time was still inhabited by fishermen and primarily functioned as a fishing village under Bani Khalid control. Sometime after the death of the Bani Khalid's leader Barrak Bin Urair and the fall of the Bani Khalid Emirate, the Utub were able to wrest control of Kuwait as a result of successive matrimonial alliances.
In the eighteenth century, Kuwait prospered and rapidly became the principal commercial center for the transit of goods between India, Muscat, Baghdad, and Arabia. By the mid-1700s, Kuwait had already established itself as the major trading route from the Persian Gulf to Aleppo. During the Persian siege of Basra in 1775–1779, Iraqi merchants took refuge in Kuwait and were partly instrumental in the expansion of Kuwait's boatbuilding and trading activities. As a result, Kuwait's maritime commerce boomed.
Between the years 1775 and 1779, the Indian trade routes with Baghdad, Aleppo, Smyrna and Constantinople were diverted to Kuwait. The East India Company was diverted to Kuwait in 1792. The East India Company secured the sea routes between Kuwait, India and the east coasts of Africa. After the Persians withdrew from Basra in 1779, Kuwait continued to attract trade away from Basra. The flight of many of Basra's leading merchants to Kuwait continued to play a significant role in Basra's commercial stagnation well into the 1850s.
Regional geopolitical turbulence helped foster economic prosperity in Kuwait in the second half of the 18th century. Kuwait became prosperous due to Basra's instability in the late 18th century. In the late 18th century, Kuwait partly functioned as a haven for Basra's merchants fleeing Ottoman government persecution. Kuwait was the center of boat building in the Persian Gulf region. Kuwaiti ship vessels were renowned throughout the Indian Ocean. Kuwaitis also developed a reputation as the best sailors in the Persian Gulf. In the 19th century, Kuwait became significant in the horse trade, horses were regularly shipped by the way of sailing boats from Kuwait. In the mid 19th century, it was estimated that Kuwait was exporting an average of 800 horses to India annually.
During the reign of Mubarak, Kuwait was dubbed the "Marseilles of the Persian Gulf" because its economic vitality attracted a large variety of people. The population was cosmopolitan and ethnically diverse, including Arabs, Persians, Africans, Jews, and Armenians. Kuwait was known for its religious tolerance.
In the first decades of the twentieth century, Kuwait had a well-established elite: wealthy trading families who were linked by marriage and shared economic interests. The elite were long-settled, urban, Sunni families, the majority of which claim descent from the original 30 Bani Utubi families. The wealthiest families were trade merchants who acquired their wealth from long-distance commerce, shipbuilding and pearling. They were a cosmopolitan elite, they traveled extensively to India, Africa and Europe. The elite educated their sons abroad more than other Gulf Arab elite. Western visitors noted that the Kuwaiti elite used European office systems, typewriters and followed European culture with curiosity. The richest families were involved in general trade. The merchant families of Al-Ghanim and Al-Hamad were estimated to be worth millions before the 1940s.
In the early 20th century, Kuwait immensely declined in regional economic importance, mainly due to many trade blockades and the world economic depression. Before Mary Bruins Allison visited Kuwait in 1934, Kuwait lost its prominence in long-distance trade. During World War I, the British Empire imposed a trade blockade against Kuwait because Kuwait's ruler supported the Ottoman Empire. The British economic blockade heavily damaged Kuwait's economy.
The Great Depression negatively impacted Kuwait's economy starting in the late 1920s. International trading was one of Kuwait's main sources of income before oil. Kuwaiti merchants were mostly intermediary merchants. As a result of European decline of demand for goods from India and Africa, the economy of Kuwait suffered. The decline in international trade resulted in an increase in gold smuggling by Kuwaiti ships to India. Some Kuwaiti merchant families became rich due to gold smuggling to India.
Kuwait's pearling industry also collapsed as a result of the worldwide economic depression. At its height, Kuwait's pearling industry led the world's luxury market, regularly sending out between 750 and 800 ship vessels to meet the European elite's need for luxuries pearls. During the economic depression, luxuries like pearls were in little demand. The Japanese invention of cultured pearls also contributed to the collapse of Kuwait's pearling industry.
Following the Kuwait–Najd War of 1919–20, Ibn Saud imposed a tight trade blockade against Kuwait from the years 1923 until 1937. The goal of the Saudi economic and military attacks on Kuwait was to annex as much of Kuwait's territory as possible. At the Uqair conference in 1922, the boundaries of Kuwait and Najd were set. Kuwait had no representative at the Uqair conference. After the Uqair conference, Kuwait was still subjected to a Saudi economic blockade and intermittent Saudi raiding.
In 1937, Freya Stark wrote about the extent of poverty in Kuwait at the time:
Poverty has settled in Kuwait more heavily since my last visit five years ago, both by sea, where the pearl trade continues to decline, and by land, where the blockade established by Saudi Arabia now harms the merchants.
Some merchant families left Kuwait in the early 1930s due to the prevalence of economic hardship. At the time of the discovery of oil in 1937, most of Kuwait's inhabitants were impoverished.
Merchants had the most economic power in Kuwait before oil. Al Sabah family rule remained limited until well into the 1930s because the merchants, owing to their financial power, were the primary sources of income in Kuwait. The inauguration of the oil era freed the rulers from their financial dependency on merchant wealth.
Al Sabah became Kuwait's dynastic monarchy in 1938. One tradition has it that political power went to the Sabahs as part of an explicit agreement in 1890; merchant families focused on the trade while the House of Sabah and other notable Kuwaiti families provided protection of city housed within Kuwait's wall. The man chosen was a Sabah, Sabah I bin Jaber. Sabah diplomacy may have also been important with neighbouring tribes, especially as Bani Khalid power declined. This selection is usually dated to 1752.
In 1776, Sabah I died and was succeeded by his youngest son, Abdullah. Shortly before Sabah's death, in 1766, the al-Khalifa and, soon after, the al-Jalahima, left Kuwait en masse for Zubara in Qatar. Domestically, the al-Khalifa and al-Jalahima had been among the top contenders for power. Their emigration left the Sabahs in undisputed control, and by the end of Abdullah I's long rule (1776-1814), Sabah rule was secure, and the political hierarchy in Kuwait was well established, the merchants deferring to direct orders from the Shaikh. By the 19th century, not only was the ruling Sabah much stronger than a desert Shaikh but also capable of naming his son successor. This influence was not just internal but enabled the al-Sabah to conduct foreign diplomacy. They soon established good relations with the British East India Company in 1775.
Although Kuwait was technically governed from Basra, the Kuwaitis had traditionally maintained a somewhat moderate degree of autonomous status. In the 1870s, Ottoman officials were reasserting their presence in the Persian Gulf, with a military intervention in 1871—which was not effectively pursued—where family rivalries in Kuwait were breeding chaos. The Ottomans were bankrupt and when the European banks took control of the Ottoman budget in 1881, additional income was required from Kuwait and the Arabian peninsula. Midhat Pasha, the governor of Iraq, demanded that Kuwait submit to Ottoman rule. The al-Sabah found diplomatic allies in the British Foreign Office. However, under Abdullah II Al-Sabah, Kuwait pursued a general pro-Ottoman foreign policy, formally taking the title of Ottoman provincial governor, this relationship with the Ottoman Empire did result in Ottoman interference with Kuwaiti laws and selection or rulers. In May 1896, Shaikh Muhammad Al-Sabah was assassinated by his half-brother, Mubarak, who, in early 1897, was recognized, by the Ottoman sultan, as the qaimmaqam (provincial sub-governor) of Kuwait.
Mubarak's seizure of the throne via murder left his brother's former allies as a threat to his rule, especially as his opponents gained the backing of the Ottomans. In July, Mubarak invited the British to deploy gunboats along the Kuwaiti coast. Britain saw Mubarak's desire for an alliance as an opportunity to counteract German influence in the region and so agreed. This led to what is known as the First Kuwaiti Crisis, in which the Ottomans demanded that the British stop interfering with their empire. In the end, the Ottoman Empire backed down, rather than go to war.
In January 1899, Mubarak signed an agreement with the British which pledged that Kuwait would never cede any territory nor receive agents or representatives of any foreign power without the British Government's consent. In essence, this policy gave Britain control of Kuwait's foreign policy. The treaty also gave Britain responsibility for Kuwait's national security. In return, Britain agreed to grant an annual subsidy of 15,000 Indian rupees (£1,500) to the ruling family. In 1911, Mubarak raised taxes. Therefore, three wealthy business men Ibrahim Al-Mudhaf, Helal Al-Mutairi, and Shamlan Ali bin Saif Al-Roumi (brother of Hussain Ali bin Saif Al-Roumi), led a protest against Mubarak by making Bahrain their main trade point, which negatively affected the Kuwaiti economy. However, Mubarak went to Bahrain and apologized for raising taxes and the three business men returned to Kuwait. In 1915, Mubarak the Great died and was succeeded by his son Jaber II Al-Sabah, who reigned for just over one year until his death in early 1917. His brother Sheikh Salim Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah succeeded him.
In the Anglo-Ottoman Convention of 1913, the British concurred with the Ottoman Empire in defining Kuwait as an autonomous kaza of the Ottoman Empire and that the Shaikhs of Kuwait were not independent leaders, but rather qaimmaqams (provincial sub-governors) of the Ottoman government.
The convention ruled that Sheikh Mubarak had authority over an area extending out to a radius of 80 km, from the capital. This region was marked by a red circle and included the islands of Auhah, Bubiyan, Failaka, Kubbar, Mashian, and Warbah. A green circle designated an area extending out an additional 100 km, in radius, within which the qaimmaqam was authorized to collect tribute and taxes from the natives.
World War I disrupted elements of Kuwait's politics, society, economy and trans-regional networks.
On 6 November 1914, British offensive action began with the naval bombardment of the old fort at Fao in Iraq, located at the point where the Shatt-al-Arab meets the Persian Gulf. At the Fao Landing, the British Indian Expeditionary Force D (IEF D), comprising the 6th (Poona) Division led by Lieutenant General Arthur Barrett with Sir Percy Cox as Political Officer, was opposed by 350 Ottoman troops and 4 guns. After a sharp engagement, the fort was overrun. By mid-November the Poona Division was fully ashore and began moving towards the city of Basra.
The same month, the ruler of Kuwait, Sheikh Mubarak Al-Sabah, contributed to the Allied war effort by sending forces to attack Ottoman troops at Umm Qasr, Safwan, Bubiyan, and Basra. In exchange the British government recognised Kuwait as an "independent government under British protection." There is no report on the exact size and nature of Mubarak's attack, though Ottoman forces did retreat from those positions weeks later. Mubarak soon removed the Ottoman symbol from the Kuwaiti flag and replaced it with "Kuwait" written in Arabic script. Mubarak's participation and previous exploits in obstructing the completion of the Baghdad railway helped the British safeguard the Persian Gulf by preventing Ottoman and German reinforcement.
The Kuwait-Najd War erupted in the aftermath of World War I, when the Ottoman Empire was defeated and the British invalidated the Anglo-Ottoman Convention. The power vacuum, left by the fall of the Ottomans, sharpened the conflict between Kuwait and Najd (Ikhwan). The war resulted in sporadic border clashes throughout 1919–20.
The Battle of Jahra was a battle during the Kuwait-Najd War. The battle took place in Al Jahra, west of Kuwait City on 10 October 1920 between Salim Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah ruler of Kuwait and Ikhwan Wahhabi followers of Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia, king of Saudi Arabia.
A force of 4,000 Saudi Ikhwan, led by Faisal Al-Dawish, attacked the Kuwait Red Fort at Al-Jahra, defended by 2,000 Kuwaiti men. The Kuwaitis were largely outnumbered by the Ikhwan of Najd.
When Percy Cox was informed of the border clashes in Kuwait, he sent a letter to Mohammerah Sheikh Khazʽal Ibn Jabir offering the Kuwaiti throne to either him or one of his heirs, knowing that Khaz'al would be a wiser ruler than the Al Sabah family. Khaz'al, who considered the Al Sabah as his own family, replied "Do you expect me to allow the stepping down of Al Mubarak from the throne of Kuwait? Do you think I can accept this?" He then asked:
...even so, do you think that you have come to me with something new? Al Mubarak's position as ruler of Kuwait means that I am the true ruler of Kuwait. So there is no difference between myself and them, for they are like the dearest of my children and you are aware of this. Had someone else come to me with this offer, I would have complained about them to you. So how do you come to me with this offer when you are well aware that myself and Al Mubarak are one soul and one house, what affects them affects me, whether good or evil.
In response to tribal raids, the British High Commissioner in Baghdad, Percy Cox, imposed the Uqair Protocol of 1922 which defined the boundaries between Iraq, Kuwait and Nejd. In April 1923, Shaikh Ahmad al-Sabah wrote the British Political Agent in Kuwait, Major John More, "I still do not know what the border between Iraq and Kuwait is, I shall be glad if you will kindly give me this information." More, upon learning that al-Sabah claimed the outer green line of the Anglo-Ottoman Convention (4 April), would relay the information to Sir Percy.
On 19 April, Sir Percy stated that the British government recognized the outer line of the convention as the border between Iraq and Kuwait. This decision limited Iraq's access to the Persian Gulf at 58 km of mostly marshy and swampy coastline. As this would make it difficult for Iraq to become a naval power (the territory did not include any deepwater harbours), the Iraqi King Faisal I (whom the British installed as a puppet king in Iraq) did not agree to the plan. However, as his country was under British mandate, he had little say in the matter. Iraq and Kuwait would formally ratify the border in August. The border was re-recognized in 1932.
Attempts by Faisal I to build an Iraqi railway to Kuwait and port facilities on the Gulf were rejected by Britain. These and other similar British colonial policies made Kuwait a focus of the Arab national movement in Iraq, and a symbol of Iraqi humiliation at the hands of the British.
In 1913, Kuwait was recognized as a separate province from Iraq and given autonomy under Ottoman suzerainty in the draft Anglo-Ottoman Convention, however this was not signed before the outbreak of the first World War. The border was revisited by a memorandum sent by the British high commissioner for Iraq in 1923, which became the basis for Kuwait's northern border. In Iraq's 1932 application to the League of Nations it included information about its borders, including its border with Kuwait, where it accepted the boundary established in 1923.
Throughout the 1930s, Kuwaiti people opposed the British imposed separation of Kuwait from Iraq.
In the 1930s, a popular movement emerged in Kuwait which called for the reunification of the country with Iraq. This movement coalesced into the Free Kuwaiti Movement in 1938, which was established by Kuwaiti youths who were opposed to British influence in the region. The movement submitted a petition to the Iraqi government demanding that it support the reunification of Kuwait and Iraq. Fearing that the movement would turn into an armed rebellion, the Al Sabah family agreed to the establishment of a legislative council to represent the Free Kuwaiti Movement and its political demands. The council's first meeting in 1938 resulted in a unanimous resolution demanding the reunification of Kuwait and Iraq.
In March 1939, an armed rebellion broke out in Kuwait by supporters of the movement, seeking to reunify Kuwait with Iraq by force. Supported by the British, the Al Sabah family rapidly suppressed the rebellion, imprisoning numerous supporters of the movement. King Ghazi of Iraq publicly demanded that the prisoners be released and the Al Sabah family end their repressive policies towards members of the Free Kuwaiti Movement.
Between 1946 and 1982, Kuwait experienced a period of prosperity driven by oil and its liberal atmosphere; this period is called the "golden era". In 1950, a major public-work programme allowed Kuwaitis to enjoy a modern standard of living. By 1952, the country became the largest oil exporter in the Persian Gulf. This massive growth attracted many foreign workers, especially from Palestine, Egypt, and India.
In June 1961, Kuwait became independent with the end of the British protectorate and the sheikh Abdullah Al-Salim Al-Sabah became an Emir. Under the terms of the newly drafted constitution, Kuwait held its first parliamentary elections in 1963. Kuwait was the first Arab state in the Persian Gulf to establish a constitution and parliament.
Although Kuwait formally gained independence in 1961, Iraq initially refused to recognize the country's independence by maintaining that Kuwait is part of Iraq, albeit Iraq later briefly backed down following a show of force by Britain and Arab League support of Kuwait's independence. The short-lived Operation Vantage crisis evolved in July 1961, as the Iraqi government threatened to invade Kuwait and the invasion was finally averted following plans by the Arab League to form an international Arab force against the potential Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. As a result of Operation Vantage, the Arab League took over the border security of Kuwait and the British had withdrawn their forces by 19 October. Iraqi prime minister Abd al-Karim Qasim was killed in a coup in 1963 but, although Iraq recognised Kuwaiti independence and the military threat was perceived to be reduced, Britain continued to monitor the situation and kept forces available to protect Kuwait until 1971. There had been no Iraqi military action against Kuwait at the time: this was attributed to the political and military situation within Iraq which continued to be unstable. A treaty of friendship between Iraq and Kuwait was signed in 1963 by which Iraq recognised the 1932 border of Kuwait. The Kuwait-Iraq 1973 Sanita border skirmish evolved on 20 March 1973, when Iraqi army units occupied El-Samitah near the Kuwaiti border, which evoked an international crisis.
On 6 February 1974, Palestinian militants occupied the Japanese embassy in Kuwait, taking the ambassador and ten others hostage. The militants' motive was to support the Japanese Red Army members and Palestinian militants who were holding hostages on a Singaporean ferry in what is known as the Laju incident. Ultimately, the hostages were released, and the guerrillas allowed to fly to Aden. This was the first time Palestinian guerrillas struck in Kuwait as the Al Sabah ruling family, headed by Sheikh Sabah Al-Salim Al-Sabah, funded the Palestinian resistance movement. Kuwait had been a regular endpoint for Palestinian plane hijacking in the past and had considered itself safe.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Kuwait was the most developed country in the region. Kuwait was first Middle East country to diversify its revenue away from oil exports, establishing the Kuwait Investment Authority as the world's first sovereign wealth fund. From the 1970s onward, Kuwait scored highest of all Arab countries on the Human Development Index, and Kuwait University, founded in 1966, attracted students from neighboring countries. Kuwait's theatre industry was renowned throughout the Arab world.
At the time, Kuwait's press was described as one of the freest in the world. Kuwait was the pioneer in the literary renaissance in the Arab region. In 1958, Al Arabi magazine was first published, the magazine went on to become the most popular magazine in the Arab world. Additionally, Kuwait became a haven for writers and journalists in the region, and many, like the Iraqi poet Ahmed Matar, moved to Kuwait for its strong freedom of expression laws, which surpassed those of any other country in the region.
Kuwaiti society embraced liberal and Western attitudes throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Most Kuwaiti women did not wear the hijab in the 1960s and 1970s. At Kuwait University, mini-skirts were more common than the hijab. Oil and the social structure of Kuwait were closely interlinked. According to an authoritative of the region such a structure resembled a form of "new slavery" with a "viciously reactionary character". 90 per cent of the capital generated from oil for investment abroad was concentrated in the hands of eighteen families. The manual as well as a significant section of the managerial workforce was predominantly foreign, mainly Palestinians who were denied citizenship. Major investment was made into developing new architectural projects reflecting a new liberal economy whilst advancing passive cooling and attempts at weaving in local styles and decoration.
In August 1976, in reaction to heightened assembly opposition to his policies, the emir suspended four articles of the constitution concerned with political and civil rights (freedom of the press and dissolution of the legislature) and the assembly itself. In 1980, however, the suspended articles of the constitution were reinstated along with the National Assembly. In 1982 the government submitted sixteen constitutional amendments that, among other things, would have allowed the emir to declare martial law for an extended period and would have increased both the size of the legislature and the length of terms of office. In May 1983, the proposals were formally dropped after several months of debate. Nonetheless, the issue of constitutional revisions continued as a topic of discussion in both the National Assembly and the palace.
In the early 1980s, Kuwait experienced a major economic crisis after the Souk Al-Manakh stock market crash and decrease in oil price.
During the Iran–Iraq War, Kuwait supported Iraq. Throughout the 1980s, there were several terror attacks in Kuwait, including the 1983 Kuwait bombings, hijacking of several Kuwait Airways planes and attempted assassination of Emir Jaber in 1985. Kuwait was a regional hub of science and technology in the 1960s and 1970s up until the early 1980s, the scientific research sector significantly suffered due to the terror attacks.
In 1986, the constitution was again suspended, along with the National Assembly. As with the previous suspension, popular opposition to this move emerged; indeed, the prodemocracy movement of 1989-90 took its name, the Constitutional Movement, from the demand for a return to constitutional life.
After the Iran–Iraq War ended, Kuwait declined an Iraqi request to forgive its US$65 billion debt. An economic rivalry between the two countries ensued after Kuwait increased its oil production by 40 percent.
The Iraq–Kuwait dispute also involved historical claims to Kuwait's territory. Kuwait had been a part of the Ottoman Empire's province of Basra, something that Iraq said made Kuwait rightful Iraqi territory. Kuwait's ruling dynasty, the Al Sabah family, had concluded a protectorate agreement in 1899 that assigned responsibility for Kuwait's foreign affairs to the United Kingdom. The UK drew the border between Kuwait and Iraq in 1922, making Iraq almost entirely landlocked by limiting its access to the Persian Gulf coastline. Kuwait rejected Iraq's attempts to secure further coastline provisions in the region. Iraq accused Kuwait of exceeding its OPEC quotas for oil production. In order for the cartel to maintain its desired price of $18 per barrel, discipline was required. Kuwait was consistently overproducing; in part to repair infrastructure losses caused by the Iran–Iraq War attacks on Kuwait and to pay for the losses of economic scandals. The result was a slump in the oil price – as low as $10 per barrel ($63/m) – with a resulting loss of $7 billion a year to Iraq, equal to its 1989 balance of payments deficit. Resulting revenues struggled to support the government's basic costs, let alone repair Iraq's damaged infrastructure. Iraq looked for more discipline, with little success. The Iraqi government described it as a form of economic warfare, which it claimed was aggravated by Kuwait slant-drilling across the border into Iraq's Rumaila oil field. At the same time, Saddam looked for closer ties with those Arab states that had supported Iraq in the war. This move was supported by the US, who believed that Iraqi ties with pro-Western Gulf states would help bring and maintain Iraq inside the US' sphere of influence.
In 1989, it appeared that Iraq–Kuwait relations, strong during the war, would be maintained. A pact of non-interference and non-aggression was signed between the countries, followed by a Kuwaiti-Iraqi deal for Iraq to supply Kuwait with water for drinking and irrigation, although a request for Kuwait to lease Iraq Umm Qasr was rejected. GCC-backed development projects were hampered by Iraq's large debts, even with the demobilization of 200,000 soldiers. Iraq also looked to increase arms production so as to become an exporter, although the success of these projects was also restrained by Iraq's obligations; in Iraq, resentment to OPEC's controls mounted.
Iraq's relations with its other Arab neighbors were degraded by mounting violence in Iraq against expatriate groups, who were well-employed during the war, by unemployed Iraqis, among them demobilized soldiers. These events drew little notice outside the Arab world because of fast-moving events directly related to the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. However, the US did begin to condemn Iraq's human rights record, including the well-known use of torture. The UK also condemned the execution of Farzad Bazoft, a journalist working for the British newspaper The Observer. Following Saddam's declaration that "binary chemical weapons" would be used on Israel if it used military force against Iraq, Washington halted part of its funding. A UN mission to the Israeli-occupied territories, where riots had resulted in Palestinian deaths, was vetoed by the US, making Iraq deeply skeptical of US foreign policy aims in the region, combined with the reliance of the US on Middle Eastern energy reserves.
Tensions increased further in summer 1990, after Iraq complained to OPEC claiming that Kuwait was stealing its oil from a field near the border by slant drilling of the Rumaila field. In early July 1990, Iraq complained about Kuwait's behavior, such as not respecting their quota, and openly threatened to take military action. On the 23rd, the CIA reported that Iraq had moved 30,000 troops to the Iraq-Kuwait border, and the US naval fleet in the Persian Gulf was placed on alert. Saddam believed an anti-Iraq conspiracy was developing – Kuwait had begun talks with Iran, and Iraq's rival Syria had arranged a visit to Egypt. Upon review by the Secretary of Defense, it was found that Syria indeed planned a strike against Iraq in the coming days. Saddam immediately used funding to incorporate central intelligence into Syria and ultimately prevented the impending air strike. On 15 July 1990, Saddam's government laid out its combined objections to the Arab League, including that policy moves were costing Iraq $1 billion a year, that Kuwait was still using the Rumaila oil field, that loans made by the UAE and Kuwait could not be considered debts to its "Arab brothers". He threatened force against Kuwait and the UAE, saying: "The policies of some Arab rulers are American ... They are inspired by America to undermine Arab interests and security." The US sent aerial refuelling planes and combat ships to the Persian Gulf in response to these threats. Discussions in Jeddah mediated on the Arab League's behalf by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, were held on 31 July and led Mubarak to believe that a peaceful course could be established.
On the 25th, Saddam met with April Glaspie, the US Ambassador to Iraq, in Baghdad. The Iraqi leader attacked American policy with regards to Kuwait and the UAE:
So what can it mean when America says it will now protect its friends? It can only mean prejudice against Iraq. This stance plus maneuvers and statements which have been made has encouraged the UAE and Kuwait to disregard Iraqi rights ... If you use pressure, we will deploy pressure and force. We know that you can harm us although we do not threaten you. But we too can harm you. Everyone can cause harm according to their ability and their size. We cannot come all the way to you in the United States, but individual Arabs may reach you ... We do not place America among the enemies. We place it where we want our friends to be and we try to be friends. But repeated American statements last year made it apparent that America did not regard us as friends.
Glaspie replied:
I know you need funds. We understand that and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait ... Frankly, we can only see that you have deployed massive troops in the south. Normally that would not be any of our business. But when this happens in the context of what you said on your national day, then when we read the details in the two letters of the Foreign Minister, then when we see the Iraqi point of view that the measures taken by the UAE and Kuwait is, in the final analysis, parallel to military aggression against Iraq, then it would be reasonable for me to be concerned.
Saddam stated that he would attempt last-ditch negotiations with the Kuwaitis but Iraq "would not accept death".
According to Glaspie's own account, she stated in reference to the precise border between Kuwait and Iraq. Glaspie similarly believed that war was not imminent.
The invasion of Kuwait and annexation by Iraq took place on 2 August 1990. The initial casus belli was claimed to be support for a Kuwaiti rebellion against the Al Sabah family.
An Iraqi-backed Kuwaiti puppet leader named Alaa Hussein Ali was installed as head of the "Provisional Government of Free Kuwait." Iraq annexed Kuwait on 8 August. The war was traumatic to both countries.
Kuwaiti civilians founded a local armed resistance movement [ar] following the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. The Kuwaiti resistance's casualty rate far exceeded that of the coalition military forces and Western hostages. The resistance predominantly consisted of ordinary citizens who lacked any form of training and supervision.
The underground resistance was punished by summary executions and torture. Almost all Kuwaitis at the time lost some family member. In addition, half the population, including native and foreign-born fled Kuwait to escape persecution.
George H. W. Bush condemned the invasion, and led efforts to drive out the Iraqi forces. Authorized by the United Nations Security Council, an American-led coalition of 34 nations fought the Gulf War to liberate Kuwait. Aerial bombardments began on 17 January 1991, and after several weeks a U.S.-led United Nations (UN) coalition began a ground assault on 23 February 1991 that achieved a complete removal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait in four days.
On 23 January 1991, Iraq dumped 400 million US gallons (1,500,000 m) of crude oil into the Persian Gulf, causing the largest offshore oil spill in history at that time. It was reported as a deliberate natural resources attack to keep US Marines from coming ashore (Missouri and Wisconsin had shelled Failaka Island during the war to reinforce the idea that there would be an amphibious assault attempt). About 30–40% of this came from allied raids on Iraqi coastal targets.
The land based Kuwait oil spill surpassed the Lakeview Gusher, which spilled nine million barrels in 1910, as the largest oil spill in recorded history.
The Kuwaiti oil fires were caused by the Iraqi military setting fire to 700 oil wells as part of a scorched earth policy while retreating from Kuwait in 1991 after conquering the country but being driven out by coalition forces. The fires started in January and February 1991, and the last one was extinguished by November.
The resulting fires burned uncontrollably because of the dangers of sending in firefighting crews. Land mines had been placed in areas around the oil wells, and a military cleaning of the areas was necessary before the fires could be put out. Somewhere around 6 million barrels (950,000 m) of oil were lost each day. Eventually, privately contracted crews extinguished the fires, at a total cost of US$1.5 billion to Kuwait. By that time, however, the fires had burned for approximately 10 months, causing widespread pollution in Kuwait.
The Kuwaiti Oil Minister estimated between twenty-five and fifty million barrels of unburned oil from damaged facilities pooled to create approximately 300 oil lakes, that contaminated around 40 million tons of sand and earth. The mixture of desert sand, unignited oil spilled and soot generated by the burning oil wells formed layers of hard "tarcrete", which covered nearly five percent of Kuwait's land mass.
Cleaning efforts were led by the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research and the Arab Oil Co., who tested a number of technologies including the use of petroleum-degrading bacteria on the oil lakes.
Vegetation in most of the contaminated areas adjoining the oil lakes began recovering by the mid-1990s, but the dry climate has also partially solidified some of the lakes. Over time the oil has continued to sink into the sand, with potential consequences for Kuwait's small groundwater resources.
On the night of 26–27 February 1991, several Iraqi forces began leaving Kuwait on the main highway north of Al Jahra in a column of some 1,400 vehicles. A patrolling E-8 Joint STARS aircraft observed the retreating forces and relayed the information to the DDM-8 air operations center in Saudi Arabia. These vehicles and the retreating soldiers were subsequently attacked by two A-10 aircraft, resulting in a 60 km stretch of highway strewn with debris—the Highway of Death. New York Times reporter Maureen Dowd wrote, "With the Iraqi leader facing military defeat, Mr. Bush decided that he would rather gamble on a violent and potentially unpopular ground war than risk the alternative: an imperfect settlement hammered out by the Soviets and Iraqis that world opinion might accept as tolerable."
Chuck Horner, Commander of US and allied air operations, has written:
[By February 26], the Iraqis totally lost heart and started to evacuate occupied Kuwait, but airpower halted the caravan of Iraqi Army and plunderers fleeing toward Basra. This event was later called by the media "The Highway of Death." There were certainly a lot of dead vehicles, but not so many dead Iraqis. They'd already learned to scamper off into the desert when our aircraft started to attack. Nevertheless, some people back home wrongly chose to believe we were cruelly and unusually punishing our already whipped foes.
...
By February 27, talk had turned toward terminating the hostilities. Kuwait was free. We were not interested in governing Iraq. So the question became "How do we stop the killing."
The Nayirah testimony was a false testimony given before the United States Congressional Human Rights Caucus in October 1990 by a 15-year-old girl who was publicly identified by only her first name, Nayirah. The testimony was widely publicized in the American media and was cited numerous times by United States senators and President George H. W. Bush in their rationale to back Kuwait in the Gulf War. In 1992, it was revealed that Nayirah's last name was Al-Ṣabaḥ (Arabic: نيرة الصباح) and that she was the daughter of Saud bin Nasir Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. Furthermore, it was revealed that her testimony was organized as part of the Citizens for a Free Kuwait public relations campaign, which was run by the American public relations firm Hill & Knowlton for the Kuwaiti government. Following this, al-Sabah's testimony has come to be regarded as a classic example of modern atrocity propaganda.
In her emotional testimony, Nayirah claimed that after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers take babies out of incubators in a Kuwaiti hospital, take the incubators, and leave the babies to die.
Her story was initially corroborated by Amnesty International, a British NGO, which published several independent reports about the killings and testimony from evacuees. Following the liberation of Kuwait, reporters were given access to the country. An ABC report found that "patients, including premature babies, did die, when many of Kuwait's nurses and doctors ... fled" but Iraqi troops "almost certainly had not stolen hospital incubators and left hundreds of Kuwaiti babies to die." Amnesty International reacted by issuing a correction, with executive director John Healey subsequently accusing the Bush administration of "opportunistic manipulation of the international human rights movement".
Significant demographic changes occurred in Kuwait as a result of the Gulf War. During the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, 200,000 Palestinians voluntarily fled Kuwait due to various reasons (fear or persecution, food shortages, medical care difficulties, financial shortages, fear of arrest and mistreatment at roadblocks by Iraqis). After the Gulf War in 1991, nearly 200,000 Palestinians fled Kuwait, partly due to economic burdens, regulations on residence and fear of abuse by Kuwaiti security forces.
Prior to the Gulf War, Palestinians numbered 400,000 of Kuwait's population of 2.2 million. The Palestinians who fled Kuwait were mostly Jordanian citizens. In 2012, relations resumed and 80,000 Palestinians resided in Kuwait.
Immediately after liberation in 1991, the United Nations, under Security Council Resolution 687, demarcated the Iraq-Kuwait boundary on the basis of the 1932 and the 1963 agreements between the two states. In November 1994, Iraq formally accepted the UN-demarcated border with Kuwait, which had been further spelled out in Security Council Resolutions 773 (1992) and 833 (1993).
Criticism of the Al Sabah family in Kuwait became more pronounced following the country's return to sovereignty in 1991. The Al Sabah family were criticized for their actions during the Iraqi occupation. They were the first to flee Kuwait during the invasion. In early 1992, many press restrictions were lifted in Kuwait. After the October 1992 election, the National Assembly exercised a constitutional right to review all emiri decrees promulgated while the assembly was in dissolution. It has been suggested that the United States significantly pressured Kuwait to implement a more "democratic" political system as a condition for the country's liberation in 1991.
The United Nations Security Council has passed nearly 60 resolutions on Iraq and Kuwait since Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The most relevant to this issue is Resolution 678, passed on 29 November 1990. It authorizes "member states co-operating with the Government of Kuwait ... to use all necessary means" to (1) implement Security Council Resolution 660 and other resolutions calling for the end of Iraq's occupation of Kuwait and withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwaiti territory and (2) "restore international peace and security in the area". Resolution 678 has not been rescinded or nullified by succeeding resolutions and Iraq was not alleged after 1991 to invade Kuwait or to threaten to do so.
In March 2003, Kuwait became the springboard for the US-led invasion of Iraq. In preparation for the invasion, 100,000 U.S. troops assembled in Kuwait by 18 February.
From 2006 onwards, Kuwait has suffered from chronic political deadlocks and longstanding periods of cabinet reshuffles and dissolutions. This has significantly hampered investment and economic reforms in Kuwait, making the country's economy much more dependent on oil.
On 15 January 2006, Emir Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmed died and his crown prince, Sheikh Saad Al-Abdullah of the Salem branch was named Emir. On 23 January 2006, the assembly unanimously voted in favor of Sheikh Saad Al-Abdullah abdicating in favor of Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmed, citing his illness with a form of dementia. Instead of naming a successor from the Salem branch as per convention, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmed named his half-brother Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmed as crown prince and his nephew Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammed as prime minister.
In August 2011, supporters of Sheikh Ahmed Al-Fahad Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah "discovered" documents that incriminated up to one-third of Kuwaiti politicians in what quickly became the largest political corruption scandal in Kuwaiti history. By October 2011, 16 Kuwaiti politicians were alleged to have received payments of $350m in return for their support of government policy.
In December 2013, allies of Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad claimed to possess tapes purportedly showing that Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammed Al-Sabah and Jassem Al-Kharafi were discussing plans to topple the Kuwaiti government. Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad appeared on local channel Al-Watan TV describing his claims.
In March 2014, David S. Cohen, then Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, accused Kuwait of funding terrorism. Since the end of the Gulf War in 1991, accusations of Kuwait funding terrorism have been very common and come from a wide variety of sources including intelligence reports, Western government officials, scholarly research, and renowned journalists. From 2014 to 2015, Kuwait was frequently described as the world's biggest source of terrorism funding, particularly for ISIS and Al-Qaeda.
In April 2014, the Kuwaiti government imposed a total media blackout to ban any reporting or discussion on the issue. In March 2015, Kuwait's public prosecutor dropped all investigations into the alleged coup plot and Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad read a public apology on Kuwait state television renouncing the coup allegations. Since then, "numerous associates of his have been targeted and detained by the Kuwaiti authorities on various charges," most notably members of the so-called "Fintas Group" that had allegedly been the original circulators of the fake coup video.
On 26 June 2015, a suicide bombing took place at a Shia Muslim mosque in Kuwait. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant claimed responsibility for the attack. Twenty-seven people were killed and 227 people were wounded. In the aftermath, a lawsuit was filed accusing the Kuwaiti government of negligence and direct responsibility for the terror attack.
In December 2015, Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad was convicted of "disrespect to the public prosecutor and attributing a remark to the country's ruler without a special permission from the emir's court," issuing a suspended six-month prison sentence and a fine of 1,000 Kuwaiti Dinar. In January 2016, the Kuwaiti appeals court overturned the prior ruling and cleared Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad of all charges.
In November 2018, Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad, along with four other defendants, were charged in Switzerland with forgery related to the fake coup video. Shortly thereafter, Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad temporarily stepped aside from his role at the International Olympic Committee, pending an ethics committee hearing into the allegations.
In June 2019, government official Fahad Al Rajaan and his spouse were given life sentences in absentia by the Kuwait criminal court; personal property was confiscated, and they were ordered to repay $82 million, as well as being fined "twice that amount.
In November 2019, former deputy prime minister and minister of interior Sheikh Khaled Al Jarrah Al Sabah was dismissed from office after minister of defense Sheikh Nasser Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah filed a complaint with the Kuwaiti Attorney General alleging embezzlement of 240 million Kuwaiti dinars ($794.5 million) of Kuwait government funds had taken place during Khaled's tenure as minister of defense.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated Kuwait's economic crisis. Kuwait's economy faced a budget deficit of $46 billion in 2020. Kuwait was downgraded by S&P Global Ratings two times in less than two years because of declining oil revenue and delayed fiscal reforms.
In July 2020, the US Department of Justice filed an asset forfeiture claim against The Mountain Beverly Hills and other real property in the United States, alleging a group of three Kuwaiti officials, including Sheikh Khaled Al Jarrah, set up unauthorized accounts in the name of the country's Military Attache Office in London, known as the 'Army Fund.' They allegedly funded the accounts with over $100m of Kuwaiti public money and used it for their own purposes.
In September 2020, Kuwait's Crown Prince Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah became the 16th Emir of Kuwait and the successor to Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, who died at the age of 91. In October 2020, Sheikh Mishal Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah was appointed as the Crown Prince.
Since January 2021, Kuwait has been experiencing its worst political crisis in many decades. Kuwait is also facing a looming debt crisis according to various media sources. Kuwait is widely considered the region's most oil-dependent country with the least amount of economic diversification. According to the World Economic Forum, Kuwait is the least economically developed Gulf country. Kuwait has the weakest infrastructure in the entire GCC region.
In March 2021, the Kuwaiti ministerial court ordered the detention of Sheikh Khaled Al Jarrah, who was then arrested and imprisoned.
On April 13, 2021, a Kuwaiti court ordered the detention of former prime minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Hamad Al-Sabah on corruption charges related to the 'Army Fund.' He is the first former Kuwaiti prime minister to face pre-trial detention over graft charges. The crimes allegedly took place during Jaber Al-Sabah's 2001–11 term as defense minister.
In August 2021, Sheikh Ahmed Al-Fahad attended court in Switzerland alongside three of the other four defendants. In September 2021, the Swiss court convicted Sheikh Ahmed Al-Fahad of forgery along with the four other defendants. He denied wrongdoing and plans to appeal. On 16 December, 2023 Sheikh Mishal Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah appointed as 17th Emir of Kuwait after the death of Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Kuwait is a sovereign state in Western Asia located at the head of the Persian Gulf. The geographical region of Kuwait has been occupied by humans since antiquity, particularly due to its strategic location at the head of the Persian Gulf. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Kuwait was a prosperous maritime port city and the most important trade port in the northern Gulf region. In the modern era, Kuwait is best known for the Persian Gulf War (1990–1991).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Following the post-glacial flooding of the Persian Gulf basin, debris from the Tigris–Euphrates river formed a substantial delta, creating most of the land in present-day Kuwait and establishing the present coastlines. One of the earliest evidence of human habitation in Kuwait dates back to 8000 BC where Mesolithic tools were found in Burgan. During the Ubaid period (6500 BC), Kuwait was the central site of interaction between the peoples of Mesopotamia and Neolithic Eastern Arabia, including Bahra 1 and site H3 in Subiya. The Neolithic inhabitants of Kuwait were among the world's earliest maritime traders. One of the world's earliest reed-boats was discovered at site H3 dating back to the Ubaid period. Other Neolithic sites in Kuwait are located in Khiran and Sulaibikhat.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Mesopotamians first settled in the Kuwaiti island of Failaka in 2000 B.C. Traders from the Sumerian city of Ur inhabited Failaka and ran a mercantile business. The island had many Mesopotamian-style buildings typical of those found in Iraq dating from around 2000 B.C.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In 4000 BC until 2000 BC, the bay of Kuwait was home to the Dilmun civilization. Dilmun included Al-Shadadiya, Akkaz, Umm an Namil, and Failaka. Dilmun first appears in Sumerian cuneiform clay tablets dated to the end of fourth millennium BC, found in the temple of goddess Inanna in the city of Uruk. The adjective Dilmun is used to describe a type of axe and one specific official; in addition there are lists of rations of wool issued to people connected with Dilmun.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Dilmun was mentioned in two letters dated to the reign of Burna-Buriash II (c. 1370 BC) recovered from Nippur, during the Kassite dynasty of Babylon. These letters were from a provincial official, Ilī-ippašra, in Dilmun to his friend Enlil-kidinni in Mesopotamia. The names referred to are Akkadian.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "There is both literary and archaeological evidence of extensive trade between ancient Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley civilization (probably correctly identified with the land called Meluhha in Akkadian). Impressions of clay seals from the Indus Valley city of Harappa were evidently used to seal bundles of merchandise, as clay seal impressions with cord or sack marks on the reverse side testify. A number of these Indus Valley seals have turned up at Ur and other Mesopotamian sites.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The \"Persian Gulf\" types of circular, stamped (rather than rolled) seals known from Dilmun, that appear at Lothal in Gujarat, India, and Failaka, as well as in central Mesopotamia, are convincing corroboration of the long-distance sea trade. What the commerce consisted of is less known: timber and precious woods, ivory, lapis lazuli, gold, and luxury goods such as carnelian and glazed stone beads, pearls from the Persian Gulf, shell and bone inlays, were among the goods sent to Mesopotamia in exchange for silver, tin, woolen textiles, olive oil and grains. Copper ingots from Oman and bitumen which occurred naturally in Mesopotamia may have been exchanged for cotton textiles and domestic fowl, major products of the Indus region that are not native to Mesopotamia. Instances of all of these trade goods have been found. The importance of this trade is shown by the fact that the weights and measures used at Dilmun were in fact identical to those used by the Indus, and were not those used in Southern Mesopotamia.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Mesopotamian trade documents, lists of goods, and official inscriptions mentioning Meluhha supplement Harappan seals and archaeological finds. Literary references to Meluhhan trade date from the Akkadian Empire, the Third Dynasty of Ur, and Isin-Larsa Periods (c. 2350–1800 BC), but the trade probably started in the Early Dynastic Period (c. 2600 BC). Some Meluhhan vessels may have sailed directly to Mesopotamian ports, but by the Isin-Larsa Period, Dilmun monopolized the trade.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In the Mesopotamian epic poem Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh had to pass through Mount Mashu to reach Dilmun, Mount Mashu is usually identified with the whole of the parallel Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon ranges, with the narrow gap between these mountains constituting the tunnel.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Dilmun, sometimes described as \"the place where the sun rises\" and \"the Land of the Living\", is the scene of some versions of the Sumerian creation myth, and the place where the deified Sumerian hero of the flood, Utnapishtim (Ziusudra), was taken by the gods to live forever. Thorkild Jacobsen's translation of the Eridu Genesis calls it \"Mount Dilmun\" which he locates as a \"faraway, half-mythical place\". Dilmun is also described in the epic story of Enki and Ninhursag as the site at which the Creation occurred. The promise of Enki to Ninhursag, the Earth Mother:",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The Sumerian goddess of air and wind Ninlil had her home in Dilmun. It is also featured in the Epic of Gilgamesh. However, in the early epic Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, the main events, which center on Enmerkar's construction of the ziggurats in Uruk and Eridu, are described as taking place in a world \"before Dilmun had yet been settled\".",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "From about 1650 BC there is a further inscription on a seal found at Failaka and preserving a king's name. The short text readsː [La]'ù-la Panipa, daughter of Sumu-lěl, the servant of Inzak of Akarum. Sumu-lěl was evidently a third king of Dilmun belonging to about this period. Servant of Inzak of Akarum was the king's title in Dilmun. The names of these later rulers are Amoritic.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Despite the scholarly consensus that ancient Dilmun encompasses three modern locations - the eastern littoral of Arabia from the vicinity of modern Kuwait to Bahrain; the island of Bahrain; the island of Failaka of Kuwait - few researchers have taken into account the radically different geography of the basin represented by the Persian Gulf before its reflooding as sea levels rose about 6000 BCE. During the Dilmun era (from ca. 3000 BC), Failaka was known as \"Agarum\", the land of Enzak, a great god in the Dilmun civilization according to Sumerian cuneiform texts found on the island. During the Neo-Babylonian Period, Enzak was identified with Nabu, the ancient Mesopotamian patron god of literacy, the rational arts, scribes and wisdom. As part of Dilmun, Failaka became a hub for the civilization from the end of the 3rd to the middle of the 1st millennium BC. Failaka was settled following 2000 BC after a drop in sea level.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "After the Dilmun civilization, Failaka was inhabited by the Kassites of Mesopotamia, and was formally under the control of the Kassite dynasty of Babylon. Studies indicate traces of human settlement can be found on Failaka dating back to as early as the end of the 3rd millennium BC, and extending until the 20th century AD. Many of the artifacts found in Falaika are linked to Mesopotamian civilizations and seem to show that Failaka was gradually drawn toward the civilization based in Antioch.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Under Nebuchadnezzar II, the bay of Kuwait was under Babylonian control. Cuneiform documents found in Failaka indicate the presence of Babylonians in the island's population. Babylonian Kings were present in Failaka during the Neo-Babylonian Empire period, Nabonidus had a governor in Failaka and Nebuchadnezzar II had a palace and temple in Falaika. Failaka also contained temples dedicated to the worship of Shamash, the Mesopotamian sun god in the Babylonian pantheon.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Most of present-day Kuwait is still archaeologically unexplored. Although there is no scholarly consensus, several famous archaeologists and geologists have proposed that Kuwait was likely the original location of the Pishon River which watered the Garden of Eden. Juris Zarins argued that the Garden of Eden was situated at the head of the Persian Gulf (present-day Kuwait), where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers run into the sea, from his research on this area using information from many different sources, including LANDSAT images from space. His suggestion about the Pishon River was supported by James A. Sauer of the American Center of Oriental Research. Sauer made an argument from geology and history that Pishon River was the now-defunct Kuwait River. With the aid of satellite photos, Farouk El-Baz traced the dry channel from Kuwait up the Wadi al-Batin.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "After an apparent abandonment of about seven centuries, the bay of Kuwait was repopulated during the Achaemenid period (c. 550‒330 BC). In 4th century BC, the ancient Greeks colonized the bay of Kuwait under Alexander the Great, the ancient Greeks named mainland Kuwait Larissa and Failaka was named Ikaros.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "According to Strabo and Arrian, Alexander the Great named Failaka Ikaros because it resembled the Aegean island of that name in size and shape. Various elements of Greek mythology were mixed with the local cults in Failaka. \"Ikaros\" was also the name of a prominent city situated in Failaka.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "According to another account, having returned from his Indian campaign to Persia, Alexander the Great ordered the island to be called Icarus, after the Icarus island in the Aegean Sea. This was likely a Hellenization of the local name Akar (Aramaic 'KR), derived from the ancient bronze-age toponym Agarum. Another suggestion is that the name Ikaros was influenced by the local É-kara temple, dedicated to the Babylonian sun-god Shamash. That both Failaka and the Aegean Icarus housed bull cults would have made the identification tempting all the more.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "During Hellenistic times, there was a temple of Artemis on the island. The wild animals on the island were dedicated to goddess and no one should harm them. Strabo wrote that on the island there was a temple of Apollo and an oracle of Artemis (Tauropolus) (μαντεῖον Ταυροπόλου). The island is also mentioned by Stephanus of Byzantium and Ptolemaeus.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Remains of the settlement include a large Hellenistic fort and two Greek temples. Failaka was also a trading post (emporion) of the kingdom of Characene. Archaeological remains of Greek colonization were also discovered in Akkaz, Umm an Namil, and Subiya. At the Hellenistic fortress in Failaka, pigs represented 20 percent of the total population, but no pig remains were found in nearby Akkaz.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Nearchos was likely the first Greek to have explored Failaka. The island was further visited and inspected by Archias, Androsthenes of Thasos, and Hiero during three exploration expeditions ordered by Alexander the Great during 324 BC. Failaka might have been fortified and settled during the days of Seleucus I or Antiochos I.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "At the time of Alexander the Great, the mouth of the Euphrates River was located in northern Kuwait. The Euphrates river flowed directly into the Persian Gulf via Khor Subiya which was a river channel at the time. Failaka was located 15 kilometers from the mouth of the Euphrates river. By the first century BC, the Khor Subiya river channel dried out completely.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "During the Achaemenid period (c. 550‒330 BC), the bay of Kuwait was repopulated. Failaka was under the control of the Achaemenid Empire as evidenced by the archaeological discovery of Achaemenid strata. There are Aramaic inscriptions that testify Achaemenid presence.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In 127 BC, Kuwait was part of the Parthian Empire and the kingdom of Characene was established around Teredon in present-day Kuwait. Characene was centered in the region encompassing southern Mesopotamia, Characene coins were discovered in Akkaz, Umm an Namil, and Failaka. A busy Parthian era Characene commercial station existed in Kuwait.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The earliest recorded mention of Kuwait was in 150 AD in the geographical treatise Geography by Greek scholar Ptolemy. Ptolemy mentioned the Bay of Kuwait as Hieros Kolpos (Sacer Sinus in the Latin versions).",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In 224 AD, Kuwait became part of the Sassanid Empire. At the time of the Sassanid Empire, Kuwait was known as Meshan, which was an alternative name of the kingdom of Characene.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Late Sassanian settlements were discovered in Failaka.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Akkaz was a Partho-Sassanian site; the Sassanid religion's tower of silence was discovered in northern Akkaz.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In Bubiyan, there is archaeological evidence of Sassanian periods of human presence as evidenced by the recent discovery of torpedo-jar pottery sherds on several prominent beach ridges.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In 636 AD, the Battle of Chains between the Sassanid Empire and Rashidun Caliphate was fought in Kuwait near Kazma. At the time, Kuwait was under the control of the Sassanid Empire. The Battle of Chains was the first battle of the Rashidun Caliphate in which the Muslim army sought to extend its frontiers.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "As a result of Rashidun victory in 636 AD, the bay of Kuwait was home to the city of Kazma (also known as \"Kadhima\" or \"Kāzimah\") in the early Islamic era. Medieval Arabic sources contain multiple references to the bay of Kuwait in the early Islamic period. The city functioned as a trade port and resting place for pilgrims on their way from Iraq to Hejaz. The city was controlled by the kingdom of Al-Hirah in Iraq. In the early Islamic period, the bay of Kuwait was known for being a fertile area.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The Kuwaiti city of Kazma was a stop for caravans coming from Persia and Mesopotamia en route to the Arabian Peninsula. The poet Al-Farazdaq was born in the Kuwaiti city of Kazma. Al-Farazdaq is recognized as one of the greatest classical poets of the Arabs.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Early to late Islamic settlements were discovered in Subiya, Akkaz, Kharaib al-Dasht, Umm al-Aish, Al-Rawdatain, Al Qusur, Umm an Namil, Miskan, and Kuwait's side of Wadi al-Batin.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "There is archaeological evidence of early Islamic periods of human presence in Bubiyan.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Christian Nestorian settlements flourished in the bay of Kuwait from the 5th century until the 9th century. Excavations have revealed several farms, villages and two large churches dating from the 5th and 6th century. Archaeologists are currently excavating nearby sites to understand the extent of the settlements that flourished in the eighth and ninth centuries A.D. An old island tradition is that a community grew up around a Christian mystic and hermit. The small farms and villages were eventually abandoned. Parts of Kuwait came under the Roman Empire. Remains of Byzantine era Nestorian churches were found in Akkaz and Al-Qusur. Pottery at the Al-Qusur site can be dated from as early as the first half of the 7th century through the 9th century.",
"title": "Antiquity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "In 1521, Kuwait was under Portuguese control. In the late 16th century, the Portuguese built a defensive settlement in Kuwait. In 1613, Kuwait City was founded as a fishing village predominantly populated by fishermen. Administratively, it was a sheikhdom, ruled by local sheikhs from Bani Khalid clan. In 1682 or 1716, the Bani Utbah settled in Kuwait City, which at this time was still inhabited by fishermen and primarily functioned as a fishing village under Bani Khalid control. Sometime after the death of the Bani Khalid's leader Barrak Bin Urair and the fall of the Bani Khalid Emirate, the Utub were able to wrest control of Kuwait as a result of successive matrimonial alliances.",
"title": "Founding of modern Kuwait (1613–1716)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In the eighteenth century, Kuwait prospered and rapidly became the principal commercial center for the transit of goods between India, Muscat, Baghdad, and Arabia. By the mid-1700s, Kuwait had already established itself as the major trading route from the Persian Gulf to Aleppo. During the Persian siege of Basra in 1775–1779, Iraqi merchants took refuge in Kuwait and were partly instrumental in the expansion of Kuwait's boatbuilding and trading activities. As a result, Kuwait's maritime commerce boomed.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Between the years 1775 and 1779, the Indian trade routes with Baghdad, Aleppo, Smyrna and Constantinople were diverted to Kuwait. The East India Company was diverted to Kuwait in 1792. The East India Company secured the sea routes between Kuwait, India and the east coasts of Africa. After the Persians withdrew from Basra in 1779, Kuwait continued to attract trade away from Basra. The flight of many of Basra's leading merchants to Kuwait continued to play a significant role in Basra's commercial stagnation well into the 1850s.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Regional geopolitical turbulence helped foster economic prosperity in Kuwait in the second half of the 18th century. Kuwait became prosperous due to Basra's instability in the late 18th century. In the late 18th century, Kuwait partly functioned as a haven for Basra's merchants fleeing Ottoman government persecution. Kuwait was the center of boat building in the Persian Gulf region. Kuwaiti ship vessels were renowned throughout the Indian Ocean. Kuwaitis also developed a reputation as the best sailors in the Persian Gulf. In the 19th century, Kuwait became significant in the horse trade, horses were regularly shipped by the way of sailing boats from Kuwait. In the mid 19th century, it was estimated that Kuwait was exporting an average of 800 horses to India annually.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "During the reign of Mubarak, Kuwait was dubbed the \"Marseilles of the Persian Gulf\" because its economic vitality attracted a large variety of people. The population was cosmopolitan and ethnically diverse, including Arabs, Persians, Africans, Jews, and Armenians. Kuwait was known for its religious tolerance.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "In the first decades of the twentieth century, Kuwait had a well-established elite: wealthy trading families who were linked by marriage and shared economic interests. The elite were long-settled, urban, Sunni families, the majority of which claim descent from the original 30 Bani Utubi families. The wealthiest families were trade merchants who acquired their wealth from long-distance commerce, shipbuilding and pearling. They were a cosmopolitan elite, they traveled extensively to India, Africa and Europe. The elite educated their sons abroad more than other Gulf Arab elite. Western visitors noted that the Kuwaiti elite used European office systems, typewriters and followed European culture with curiosity. The richest families were involved in general trade. The merchant families of Al-Ghanim and Al-Hamad were estimated to be worth millions before the 1940s.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "In the early 20th century, Kuwait immensely declined in regional economic importance, mainly due to many trade blockades and the world economic depression. Before Mary Bruins Allison visited Kuwait in 1934, Kuwait lost its prominence in long-distance trade. During World War I, the British Empire imposed a trade blockade against Kuwait because Kuwait's ruler supported the Ottoman Empire. The British economic blockade heavily damaged Kuwait's economy.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The Great Depression negatively impacted Kuwait's economy starting in the late 1920s. International trading was one of Kuwait's main sources of income before oil. Kuwaiti merchants were mostly intermediary merchants. As a result of European decline of demand for goods from India and Africa, the economy of Kuwait suffered. The decline in international trade resulted in an increase in gold smuggling by Kuwaiti ships to India. Some Kuwaiti merchant families became rich due to gold smuggling to India.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Kuwait's pearling industry also collapsed as a result of the worldwide economic depression. At its height, Kuwait's pearling industry led the world's luxury market, regularly sending out between 750 and 800 ship vessels to meet the European elite's need for luxuries pearls. During the economic depression, luxuries like pearls were in little demand. The Japanese invention of cultured pearls also contributed to the collapse of Kuwait's pearling industry.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Following the Kuwait–Najd War of 1919–20, Ibn Saud imposed a tight trade blockade against Kuwait from the years 1923 until 1937. The goal of the Saudi economic and military attacks on Kuwait was to annex as much of Kuwait's territory as possible. At the Uqair conference in 1922, the boundaries of Kuwait and Najd were set. Kuwait had no representative at the Uqair conference. After the Uqair conference, Kuwait was still subjected to a Saudi economic blockade and intermittent Saudi raiding.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "In 1937, Freya Stark wrote about the extent of poverty in Kuwait at the time:",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Poverty has settled in Kuwait more heavily since my last visit five years ago, both by sea, where the pearl trade continues to decline, and by land, where the blockade established by Saudi Arabia now harms the merchants.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Some merchant families left Kuwait in the early 1930s due to the prevalence of economic hardship. At the time of the discovery of oil in 1937, most of Kuwait's inhabitants were impoverished.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Merchants had the most economic power in Kuwait before oil. Al Sabah family rule remained limited until well into the 1930s because the merchants, owing to their financial power, were the primary sources of income in Kuwait. The inauguration of the oil era freed the rulers from their financial dependency on merchant wealth.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Al Sabah became Kuwait's dynastic monarchy in 1938. One tradition has it that political power went to the Sabahs as part of an explicit agreement in 1890; merchant families focused on the trade while the House of Sabah and other notable Kuwaiti families provided protection of city housed within Kuwait's wall. The man chosen was a Sabah, Sabah I bin Jaber. Sabah diplomacy may have also been important with neighbouring tribes, especially as Bani Khalid power declined. This selection is usually dated to 1752.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "In 1776, Sabah I died and was succeeded by his youngest son, Abdullah. Shortly before Sabah's death, in 1766, the al-Khalifa and, soon after, the al-Jalahima, left Kuwait en masse for Zubara in Qatar. Domestically, the al-Khalifa and al-Jalahima had been among the top contenders for power. Their emigration left the Sabahs in undisputed control, and by the end of Abdullah I's long rule (1776-1814), Sabah rule was secure, and the political hierarchy in Kuwait was well established, the merchants deferring to direct orders from the Shaikh. By the 19th century, not only was the ruling Sabah much stronger than a desert Shaikh but also capable of naming his son successor. This influence was not just internal but enabled the al-Sabah to conduct foreign diplomacy. They soon established good relations with the British East India Company in 1775.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Although Kuwait was technically governed from Basra, the Kuwaitis had traditionally maintained a somewhat moderate degree of autonomous status. In the 1870s, Ottoman officials were reasserting their presence in the Persian Gulf, with a military intervention in 1871—which was not effectively pursued—where family rivalries in Kuwait were breeding chaos. The Ottomans were bankrupt and when the European banks took control of the Ottoman budget in 1881, additional income was required from Kuwait and the Arabian peninsula. Midhat Pasha, the governor of Iraq, demanded that Kuwait submit to Ottoman rule. The al-Sabah found diplomatic allies in the British Foreign Office. However, under Abdullah II Al-Sabah, Kuwait pursued a general pro-Ottoman foreign policy, formally taking the title of Ottoman provincial governor, this relationship with the Ottoman Empire did result in Ottoman interference with Kuwaiti laws and selection or rulers. In May 1896, Shaikh Muhammad Al-Sabah was assassinated by his half-brother, Mubarak, who, in early 1897, was recognized, by the Ottoman sultan, as the qaimmaqam (provincial sub-governor) of Kuwait.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Mubarak's seizure of the throne via murder left his brother's former allies as a threat to his rule, especially as his opponents gained the backing of the Ottomans. In July, Mubarak invited the British to deploy gunboats along the Kuwaiti coast. Britain saw Mubarak's desire for an alliance as an opportunity to counteract German influence in the region and so agreed. This led to what is known as the First Kuwaiti Crisis, in which the Ottomans demanded that the British stop interfering with their empire. In the end, the Ottoman Empire backed down, rather than go to war.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "In January 1899, Mubarak signed an agreement with the British which pledged that Kuwait would never cede any territory nor receive agents or representatives of any foreign power without the British Government's consent. In essence, this policy gave Britain control of Kuwait's foreign policy. The treaty also gave Britain responsibility for Kuwait's national security. In return, Britain agreed to grant an annual subsidy of 15,000 Indian rupees (£1,500) to the ruling family. In 1911, Mubarak raised taxes. Therefore, three wealthy business men Ibrahim Al-Mudhaf, Helal Al-Mutairi, and Shamlan Ali bin Saif Al-Roumi (brother of Hussain Ali bin Saif Al-Roumi), led a protest against Mubarak by making Bahrain their main trade point, which negatively affected the Kuwaiti economy. However, Mubarak went to Bahrain and apologized for raising taxes and the three business men returned to Kuwait. In 1915, Mubarak the Great died and was succeeded by his son Jaber II Al-Sabah, who reigned for just over one year until his death in early 1917. His brother Sheikh Salim Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah succeeded him.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "In the Anglo-Ottoman Convention of 1913, the British concurred with the Ottoman Empire in defining Kuwait as an autonomous kaza of the Ottoman Empire and that the Shaikhs of Kuwait were not independent leaders, but rather qaimmaqams (provincial sub-governors) of the Ottoman government.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The convention ruled that Sheikh Mubarak had authority over an area extending out to a radius of 80 km, from the capital. This region was marked by a red circle and included the islands of Auhah, Bubiyan, Failaka, Kubbar, Mashian, and Warbah. A green circle designated an area extending out an additional 100 km, in radius, within which the qaimmaqam was authorized to collect tribute and taxes from the natives.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "World War I disrupted elements of Kuwait's politics, society, economy and trans-regional networks.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "On 6 November 1914, British offensive action began with the naval bombardment of the old fort at Fao in Iraq, located at the point where the Shatt-al-Arab meets the Persian Gulf. At the Fao Landing, the British Indian Expeditionary Force D (IEF D), comprising the 6th (Poona) Division led by Lieutenant General Arthur Barrett with Sir Percy Cox as Political Officer, was opposed by 350 Ottoman troops and 4 guns. After a sharp engagement, the fort was overrun. By mid-November the Poona Division was fully ashore and began moving towards the city of Basra.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The same month, the ruler of Kuwait, Sheikh Mubarak Al-Sabah, contributed to the Allied war effort by sending forces to attack Ottoman troops at Umm Qasr, Safwan, Bubiyan, and Basra. In exchange the British government recognised Kuwait as an \"independent government under British protection.\" There is no report on the exact size and nature of Mubarak's attack, though Ottoman forces did retreat from those positions weeks later. Mubarak soon removed the Ottoman symbol from the Kuwaiti flag and replaced it with \"Kuwait\" written in Arabic script. Mubarak's participation and previous exploits in obstructing the completion of the Baghdad railway helped the British safeguard the Persian Gulf by preventing Ottoman and German reinforcement.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "The Kuwait-Najd War erupted in the aftermath of World War I, when the Ottoman Empire was defeated and the British invalidated the Anglo-Ottoman Convention. The power vacuum, left by the fall of the Ottomans, sharpened the conflict between Kuwait and Najd (Ikhwan). The war resulted in sporadic border clashes throughout 1919–20.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "The Battle of Jahra was a battle during the Kuwait-Najd War. The battle took place in Al Jahra, west of Kuwait City on 10 October 1920 between Salim Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah ruler of Kuwait and Ikhwan Wahhabi followers of Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia, king of Saudi Arabia.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "A force of 4,000 Saudi Ikhwan, led by Faisal Al-Dawish, attacked the Kuwait Red Fort at Al-Jahra, defended by 2,000 Kuwaiti men. The Kuwaitis were largely outnumbered by the Ikhwan of Najd.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "When Percy Cox was informed of the border clashes in Kuwait, he sent a letter to Mohammerah Sheikh Khazʽal Ibn Jabir offering the Kuwaiti throne to either him or one of his heirs, knowing that Khaz'al would be a wiser ruler than the Al Sabah family. Khaz'al, who considered the Al Sabah as his own family, replied \"Do you expect me to allow the stepping down of Al Mubarak from the throne of Kuwait? Do you think I can accept this?\" He then asked:",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "...even so, do you think that you have come to me with something new? Al Mubarak's position as ruler of Kuwait means that I am the true ruler of Kuwait. So there is no difference between myself and them, for they are like the dearest of my children and you are aware of this. Had someone else come to me with this offer, I would have complained about them to you. So how do you come to me with this offer when you are well aware that myself and Al Mubarak are one soul and one house, what affects them affects me, whether good or evil.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "In response to tribal raids, the British High Commissioner in Baghdad, Percy Cox, imposed the Uqair Protocol of 1922 which defined the boundaries between Iraq, Kuwait and Nejd. In April 1923, Shaikh Ahmad al-Sabah wrote the British Political Agent in Kuwait, Major John More, \"I still do not know what the border between Iraq and Kuwait is, I shall be glad if you will kindly give me this information.\" More, upon learning that al-Sabah claimed the outer green line of the Anglo-Ottoman Convention (4 April), would relay the information to Sir Percy.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "On 19 April, Sir Percy stated that the British government recognized the outer line of the convention as the border between Iraq and Kuwait. This decision limited Iraq's access to the Persian Gulf at 58 km of mostly marshy and swampy coastline. As this would make it difficult for Iraq to become a naval power (the territory did not include any deepwater harbours), the Iraqi King Faisal I (whom the British installed as a puppet king in Iraq) did not agree to the plan. However, as his country was under British mandate, he had little say in the matter. Iraq and Kuwait would formally ratify the border in August. The border was re-recognized in 1932.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Attempts by Faisal I to build an Iraqi railway to Kuwait and port facilities on the Gulf were rejected by Britain. These and other similar British colonial policies made Kuwait a focus of the Arab national movement in Iraq, and a symbol of Iraqi humiliation at the hands of the British.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "In 1913, Kuwait was recognized as a separate province from Iraq and given autonomy under Ottoman suzerainty in the draft Anglo-Ottoman Convention, however this was not signed before the outbreak of the first World War. The border was revisited by a memorandum sent by the British high commissioner for Iraq in 1923, which became the basis for Kuwait's northern border. In Iraq's 1932 application to the League of Nations it included information about its borders, including its border with Kuwait, where it accepted the boundary established in 1923.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Throughout the 1930s, Kuwaiti people opposed the British imposed separation of Kuwait from Iraq.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "In the 1930s, a popular movement emerged in Kuwait which called for the reunification of the country with Iraq. This movement coalesced into the Free Kuwaiti Movement in 1938, which was established by Kuwaiti youths who were opposed to British influence in the region. The movement submitted a petition to the Iraqi government demanding that it support the reunification of Kuwait and Iraq. Fearing that the movement would turn into an armed rebellion, the Al Sabah family agreed to the establishment of a legislative council to represent the Free Kuwaiti Movement and its political demands. The council's first meeting in 1938 resulted in a unanimous resolution demanding the reunification of Kuwait and Iraq.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "In March 1939, an armed rebellion broke out in Kuwait by supporters of the movement, seeking to reunify Kuwait with Iraq by force. Supported by the British, the Al Sabah family rapidly suppressed the rebellion, imprisoning numerous supporters of the movement. King Ghazi of Iraq publicly demanded that the prisoners be released and the Al Sabah family end their repressive policies towards members of the Free Kuwaiti Movement.",
"title": "Early growth (1716–1945)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Between 1946 and 1982, Kuwait experienced a period of prosperity driven by oil and its liberal atmosphere; this period is called the \"golden era\". In 1950, a major public-work programme allowed Kuwaitis to enjoy a modern standard of living. By 1952, the country became the largest oil exporter in the Persian Gulf. This massive growth attracted many foreign workers, especially from Palestine, Egypt, and India.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "In June 1961, Kuwait became independent with the end of the British protectorate and the sheikh Abdullah Al-Salim Al-Sabah became an Emir. Under the terms of the newly drafted constitution, Kuwait held its first parliamentary elections in 1963. Kuwait was the first Arab state in the Persian Gulf to establish a constitution and parliament.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Although Kuwait formally gained independence in 1961, Iraq initially refused to recognize the country's independence by maintaining that Kuwait is part of Iraq, albeit Iraq later briefly backed down following a show of force by Britain and Arab League support of Kuwait's independence. The short-lived Operation Vantage crisis evolved in July 1961, as the Iraqi government threatened to invade Kuwait and the invasion was finally averted following plans by the Arab League to form an international Arab force against the potential Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. As a result of Operation Vantage, the Arab League took over the border security of Kuwait and the British had withdrawn their forces by 19 October. Iraqi prime minister Abd al-Karim Qasim was killed in a coup in 1963 but, although Iraq recognised Kuwaiti independence and the military threat was perceived to be reduced, Britain continued to monitor the situation and kept forces available to protect Kuwait until 1971. There had been no Iraqi military action against Kuwait at the time: this was attributed to the political and military situation within Iraq which continued to be unstable. A treaty of friendship between Iraq and Kuwait was signed in 1963 by which Iraq recognised the 1932 border of Kuwait. The Kuwait-Iraq 1973 Sanita border skirmish evolved on 20 March 1973, when Iraqi army units occupied El-Samitah near the Kuwaiti border, which evoked an international crisis.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "On 6 February 1974, Palestinian militants occupied the Japanese embassy in Kuwait, taking the ambassador and ten others hostage. The militants' motive was to support the Japanese Red Army members and Palestinian militants who were holding hostages on a Singaporean ferry in what is known as the Laju incident. Ultimately, the hostages were released, and the guerrillas allowed to fly to Aden. This was the first time Palestinian guerrillas struck in Kuwait as the Al Sabah ruling family, headed by Sheikh Sabah Al-Salim Al-Sabah, funded the Palestinian resistance movement. Kuwait had been a regular endpoint for Palestinian plane hijacking in the past and had considered itself safe.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "In the 1960s and 1970s, Kuwait was the most developed country in the region. Kuwait was first Middle East country to diversify its revenue away from oil exports, establishing the Kuwait Investment Authority as the world's first sovereign wealth fund. From the 1970s onward, Kuwait scored highest of all Arab countries on the Human Development Index, and Kuwait University, founded in 1966, attracted students from neighboring countries. Kuwait's theatre industry was renowned throughout the Arab world.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "At the time, Kuwait's press was described as one of the freest in the world. Kuwait was the pioneer in the literary renaissance in the Arab region. In 1958, Al Arabi magazine was first published, the magazine went on to become the most popular magazine in the Arab world. Additionally, Kuwait became a haven for writers and journalists in the region, and many, like the Iraqi poet Ahmed Matar, moved to Kuwait for its strong freedom of expression laws, which surpassed those of any other country in the region.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Kuwaiti society embraced liberal and Western attitudes throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Most Kuwaiti women did not wear the hijab in the 1960s and 1970s. At Kuwait University, mini-skirts were more common than the hijab. Oil and the social structure of Kuwait were closely interlinked. According to an authoritative of the region such a structure resembled a form of \"new slavery\" with a \"viciously reactionary character\". 90 per cent of the capital generated from oil for investment abroad was concentrated in the hands of eighteen families. The manual as well as a significant section of the managerial workforce was predominantly foreign, mainly Palestinians who were denied citizenship. Major investment was made into developing new architectural projects reflecting a new liberal economy whilst advancing passive cooling and attempts at weaving in local styles and decoration.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "In August 1976, in reaction to heightened assembly opposition to his policies, the emir suspended four articles of the constitution concerned with political and civil rights (freedom of the press and dissolution of the legislature) and the assembly itself. In 1980, however, the suspended articles of the constitution were reinstated along with the National Assembly. In 1982 the government submitted sixteen constitutional amendments that, among other things, would have allowed the emir to declare martial law for an extended period and would have increased both the size of the legislature and the length of terms of office. In May 1983, the proposals were formally dropped after several months of debate. Nonetheless, the issue of constitutional revisions continued as a topic of discussion in both the National Assembly and the palace.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "In the early 1980s, Kuwait experienced a major economic crisis after the Souk Al-Manakh stock market crash and decrease in oil price.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "During the Iran–Iraq War, Kuwait supported Iraq. Throughout the 1980s, there were several terror attacks in Kuwait, including the 1983 Kuwait bombings, hijacking of several Kuwait Airways planes and attempted assassination of Emir Jaber in 1985. Kuwait was a regional hub of science and technology in the 1960s and 1970s up until the early 1980s, the scientific research sector significantly suffered due to the terror attacks.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "In 1986, the constitution was again suspended, along with the National Assembly. As with the previous suspension, popular opposition to this move emerged; indeed, the prodemocracy movement of 1989-90 took its name, the Constitutional Movement, from the demand for a return to constitutional life.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "After the Iran–Iraq War ended, Kuwait declined an Iraqi request to forgive its US$65 billion debt. An economic rivalry between the two countries ensued after Kuwait increased its oil production by 40 percent.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "The Iraq–Kuwait dispute also involved historical claims to Kuwait's territory. Kuwait had been a part of the Ottoman Empire's province of Basra, something that Iraq said made Kuwait rightful Iraqi territory. Kuwait's ruling dynasty, the Al Sabah family, had concluded a protectorate agreement in 1899 that assigned responsibility for Kuwait's foreign affairs to the United Kingdom. The UK drew the border between Kuwait and Iraq in 1922, making Iraq almost entirely landlocked by limiting its access to the Persian Gulf coastline. Kuwait rejected Iraq's attempts to secure further coastline provisions in the region. Iraq accused Kuwait of exceeding its OPEC quotas for oil production. In order for the cartel to maintain its desired price of $18 per barrel, discipline was required. Kuwait was consistently overproducing; in part to repair infrastructure losses caused by the Iran–Iraq War attacks on Kuwait and to pay for the losses of economic scandals. The result was a slump in the oil price – as low as $10 per barrel ($63/m) – with a resulting loss of $7 billion a year to Iraq, equal to its 1989 balance of payments deficit. Resulting revenues struggled to support the government's basic costs, let alone repair Iraq's damaged infrastructure. Iraq looked for more discipline, with little success. The Iraqi government described it as a form of economic warfare, which it claimed was aggravated by Kuwait slant-drilling across the border into Iraq's Rumaila oil field. At the same time, Saddam looked for closer ties with those Arab states that had supported Iraq in the war. This move was supported by the US, who believed that Iraqi ties with pro-Western Gulf states would help bring and maintain Iraq inside the US' sphere of influence.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "In 1989, it appeared that Iraq–Kuwait relations, strong during the war, would be maintained. A pact of non-interference and non-aggression was signed between the countries, followed by a Kuwaiti-Iraqi deal for Iraq to supply Kuwait with water for drinking and irrigation, although a request for Kuwait to lease Iraq Umm Qasr was rejected. GCC-backed development projects were hampered by Iraq's large debts, even with the demobilization of 200,000 soldiers. Iraq also looked to increase arms production so as to become an exporter, although the success of these projects was also restrained by Iraq's obligations; in Iraq, resentment to OPEC's controls mounted.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Iraq's relations with its other Arab neighbors were degraded by mounting violence in Iraq against expatriate groups, who were well-employed during the war, by unemployed Iraqis, among them demobilized soldiers. These events drew little notice outside the Arab world because of fast-moving events directly related to the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. However, the US did begin to condemn Iraq's human rights record, including the well-known use of torture. The UK also condemned the execution of Farzad Bazoft, a journalist working for the British newspaper The Observer. Following Saddam's declaration that \"binary chemical weapons\" would be used on Israel if it used military force against Iraq, Washington halted part of its funding. A UN mission to the Israeli-occupied territories, where riots had resulted in Palestinian deaths, was vetoed by the US, making Iraq deeply skeptical of US foreign policy aims in the region, combined with the reliance of the US on Middle Eastern energy reserves.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Tensions increased further in summer 1990, after Iraq complained to OPEC claiming that Kuwait was stealing its oil from a field near the border by slant drilling of the Rumaila field. In early July 1990, Iraq complained about Kuwait's behavior, such as not respecting their quota, and openly threatened to take military action. On the 23rd, the CIA reported that Iraq had moved 30,000 troops to the Iraq-Kuwait border, and the US naval fleet in the Persian Gulf was placed on alert. Saddam believed an anti-Iraq conspiracy was developing – Kuwait had begun talks with Iran, and Iraq's rival Syria had arranged a visit to Egypt. Upon review by the Secretary of Defense, it was found that Syria indeed planned a strike against Iraq in the coming days. Saddam immediately used funding to incorporate central intelligence into Syria and ultimately prevented the impending air strike. On 15 July 1990, Saddam's government laid out its combined objections to the Arab League, including that policy moves were costing Iraq $1 billion a year, that Kuwait was still using the Rumaila oil field, that loans made by the UAE and Kuwait could not be considered debts to its \"Arab brothers\". He threatened force against Kuwait and the UAE, saying: \"The policies of some Arab rulers are American ... They are inspired by America to undermine Arab interests and security.\" The US sent aerial refuelling planes and combat ships to the Persian Gulf in response to these threats. Discussions in Jeddah mediated on the Arab League's behalf by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, were held on 31 July and led Mubarak to believe that a peaceful course could be established.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "On the 25th, Saddam met with April Glaspie, the US Ambassador to Iraq, in Baghdad. The Iraqi leader attacked American policy with regards to Kuwait and the UAE:",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "So what can it mean when America says it will now protect its friends? It can only mean prejudice against Iraq. This stance plus maneuvers and statements which have been made has encouraged the UAE and Kuwait to disregard Iraqi rights ... If you use pressure, we will deploy pressure and force. We know that you can harm us although we do not threaten you. But we too can harm you. Everyone can cause harm according to their ability and their size. We cannot come all the way to you in the United States, but individual Arabs may reach you ... We do not place America among the enemies. We place it where we want our friends to be and we try to be friends. But repeated American statements last year made it apparent that America did not regard us as friends.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "Glaspie replied:",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "I know you need funds. We understand that and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait ... Frankly, we can only see that you have deployed massive troops in the south. Normally that would not be any of our business. But when this happens in the context of what you said on your national day, then when we read the details in the two letters of the Foreign Minister, then when we see the Iraqi point of view that the measures taken by the UAE and Kuwait is, in the final analysis, parallel to military aggression against Iraq, then it would be reasonable for me to be concerned.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "Saddam stated that he would attempt last-ditch negotiations with the Kuwaitis but Iraq \"would not accept death\".",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "According to Glaspie's own account, she stated in reference to the precise border between Kuwait and Iraq. Glaspie similarly believed that war was not imminent.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "The invasion of Kuwait and annexation by Iraq took place on 2 August 1990. The initial casus belli was claimed to be support for a Kuwaiti rebellion against the Al Sabah family.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "An Iraqi-backed Kuwaiti puppet leader named Alaa Hussein Ali was installed as head of the \"Provisional Government of Free Kuwait.\" Iraq annexed Kuwait on 8 August. The war was traumatic to both countries.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "Kuwaiti civilians founded a local armed resistance movement [ar] following the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. The Kuwaiti resistance's casualty rate far exceeded that of the coalition military forces and Western hostages. The resistance predominantly consisted of ordinary citizens who lacked any form of training and supervision.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "The underground resistance was punished by summary executions and torture. Almost all Kuwaitis at the time lost some family member. In addition, half the population, including native and foreign-born fled Kuwait to escape persecution.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "George H. W. Bush condemned the invasion, and led efforts to drive out the Iraqi forces. Authorized by the United Nations Security Council, an American-led coalition of 34 nations fought the Gulf War to liberate Kuwait. Aerial bombardments began on 17 January 1991, and after several weeks a U.S.-led United Nations (UN) coalition began a ground assault on 23 February 1991 that achieved a complete removal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait in four days.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "On 23 January 1991, Iraq dumped 400 million US gallons (1,500,000 m) of crude oil into the Persian Gulf, causing the largest offshore oil spill in history at that time. It was reported as a deliberate natural resources attack to keep US Marines from coming ashore (Missouri and Wisconsin had shelled Failaka Island during the war to reinforce the idea that there would be an amphibious assault attempt). About 30–40% of this came from allied raids on Iraqi coastal targets.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "The land based Kuwait oil spill surpassed the Lakeview Gusher, which spilled nine million barrels in 1910, as the largest oil spill in recorded history.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "The Kuwaiti oil fires were caused by the Iraqi military setting fire to 700 oil wells as part of a scorched earth policy while retreating from Kuwait in 1991 after conquering the country but being driven out by coalition forces. The fires started in January and February 1991, and the last one was extinguished by November.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "The resulting fires burned uncontrollably because of the dangers of sending in firefighting crews. Land mines had been placed in areas around the oil wells, and a military cleaning of the areas was necessary before the fires could be put out. Somewhere around 6 million barrels (950,000 m) of oil were lost each day. Eventually, privately contracted crews extinguished the fires, at a total cost of US$1.5 billion to Kuwait. By that time, however, the fires had burned for approximately 10 months, causing widespread pollution in Kuwait.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "The Kuwaiti Oil Minister estimated between twenty-five and fifty million barrels of unburned oil from damaged facilities pooled to create approximately 300 oil lakes, that contaminated around 40 million tons of sand and earth. The mixture of desert sand, unignited oil spilled and soot generated by the burning oil wells formed layers of hard \"tarcrete\", which covered nearly five percent of Kuwait's land mass.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "Cleaning efforts were led by the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research and the Arab Oil Co., who tested a number of technologies including the use of petroleum-degrading bacteria on the oil lakes.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "Vegetation in most of the contaminated areas adjoining the oil lakes began recovering by the mid-1990s, but the dry climate has also partially solidified some of the lakes. Over time the oil has continued to sink into the sand, with potential consequences for Kuwait's small groundwater resources.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "On the night of 26–27 February 1991, several Iraqi forces began leaving Kuwait on the main highway north of Al Jahra in a column of some 1,400 vehicles. A patrolling E-8 Joint STARS aircraft observed the retreating forces and relayed the information to the DDM-8 air operations center in Saudi Arabia. These vehicles and the retreating soldiers were subsequently attacked by two A-10 aircraft, resulting in a 60 km stretch of highway strewn with debris—the Highway of Death. New York Times reporter Maureen Dowd wrote, \"With the Iraqi leader facing military defeat, Mr. Bush decided that he would rather gamble on a violent and potentially unpopular ground war than risk the alternative: an imperfect settlement hammered out by the Soviets and Iraqis that world opinion might accept as tolerable.\"",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "Chuck Horner, Commander of US and allied air operations, has written:",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "[By February 26], the Iraqis totally lost heart and started to evacuate occupied Kuwait, but airpower halted the caravan of Iraqi Army and plunderers fleeing toward Basra. This event was later called by the media \"The Highway of Death.\" There were certainly a lot of dead vehicles, but not so many dead Iraqis. They'd already learned to scamper off into the desert when our aircraft started to attack. Nevertheless, some people back home wrongly chose to believe we were cruelly and unusually punishing our already whipped foes.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "...",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "By February 27, talk had turned toward terminating the hostilities. Kuwait was free. We were not interested in governing Iraq. So the question became \"How do we stop the killing.\"",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "The Nayirah testimony was a false testimony given before the United States Congressional Human Rights Caucus in October 1990 by a 15-year-old girl who was publicly identified by only her first name, Nayirah. The testimony was widely publicized in the American media and was cited numerous times by United States senators and President George H. W. Bush in their rationale to back Kuwait in the Gulf War. In 1992, it was revealed that Nayirah's last name was Al-Ṣabaḥ (Arabic: نيرة الصباح) and that she was the daughter of Saud bin Nasir Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. Furthermore, it was revealed that her testimony was organized as part of the Citizens for a Free Kuwait public relations campaign, which was run by the American public relations firm Hill & Knowlton for the Kuwaiti government. Following this, al-Sabah's testimony has come to be regarded as a classic example of modern atrocity propaganda.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "In her emotional testimony, Nayirah claimed that after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers take babies out of incubators in a Kuwaiti hospital, take the incubators, and leave the babies to die.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "Her story was initially corroborated by Amnesty International, a British NGO, which published several independent reports about the killings and testimony from evacuees. Following the liberation of Kuwait, reporters were given access to the country. An ABC report found that \"patients, including premature babies, did die, when many of Kuwait's nurses and doctors ... fled\" but Iraqi troops \"almost certainly had not stolen hospital incubators and left hundreds of Kuwaiti babies to die.\" Amnesty International reacted by issuing a correction, with executive director John Healey subsequently accusing the Bush administration of \"opportunistic manipulation of the international human rights movement\".",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "Significant demographic changes occurred in Kuwait as a result of the Gulf War. During the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, 200,000 Palestinians voluntarily fled Kuwait due to various reasons (fear or persecution, food shortages, medical care difficulties, financial shortages, fear of arrest and mistreatment at roadblocks by Iraqis). After the Gulf War in 1991, nearly 200,000 Palestinians fled Kuwait, partly due to economic burdens, regulations on residence and fear of abuse by Kuwaiti security forces.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "Prior to the Gulf War, Palestinians numbered 400,000 of Kuwait's population of 2.2 million. The Palestinians who fled Kuwait were mostly Jordanian citizens. In 2012, relations resumed and 80,000 Palestinians resided in Kuwait.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "Immediately after liberation in 1991, the United Nations, under Security Council Resolution 687, demarcated the Iraq-Kuwait boundary on the basis of the 1932 and the 1963 agreements between the two states. In November 1994, Iraq formally accepted the UN-demarcated border with Kuwait, which had been further spelled out in Security Council Resolutions 773 (1992) and 833 (1993).",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "Criticism of the Al Sabah family in Kuwait became more pronounced following the country's return to sovereignty in 1991. The Al Sabah family were criticized for their actions during the Iraqi occupation. They were the first to flee Kuwait during the invasion. In early 1992, many press restrictions were lifted in Kuwait. After the October 1992 election, the National Assembly exercised a constitutional right to review all emiri decrees promulgated while the assembly was in dissolution. It has been suggested that the United States significantly pressured Kuwait to implement a more \"democratic\" political system as a condition for the country's liberation in 1991.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "The United Nations Security Council has passed nearly 60 resolutions on Iraq and Kuwait since Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The most relevant to this issue is Resolution 678, passed on 29 November 1990. It authorizes \"member states co-operating with the Government of Kuwait ... to use all necessary means\" to (1) implement Security Council Resolution 660 and other resolutions calling for the end of Iraq's occupation of Kuwait and withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwaiti territory and (2) \"restore international peace and security in the area\". Resolution 678 has not been rescinded or nullified by succeeding resolutions and Iraq was not alleged after 1991 to invade Kuwait or to threaten to do so.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "In March 2003, Kuwait became the springboard for the US-led invasion of Iraq. In preparation for the invasion, 100,000 U.S. troops assembled in Kuwait by 18 February.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "From 2006 onwards, Kuwait has suffered from chronic political deadlocks and longstanding periods of cabinet reshuffles and dissolutions. This has significantly hampered investment and economic reforms in Kuwait, making the country's economy much more dependent on oil.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "On 15 January 2006, Emir Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmed died and his crown prince, Sheikh Saad Al-Abdullah of the Salem branch was named Emir. On 23 January 2006, the assembly unanimously voted in favor of Sheikh Saad Al-Abdullah abdicating in favor of Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmed, citing his illness with a form of dementia. Instead of naming a successor from the Salem branch as per convention, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmed named his half-brother Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmed as crown prince and his nephew Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammed as prime minister.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "In August 2011, supporters of Sheikh Ahmed Al-Fahad Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah \"discovered\" documents that incriminated up to one-third of Kuwaiti politicians in what quickly became the largest political corruption scandal in Kuwaiti history. By October 2011, 16 Kuwaiti politicians were alleged to have received payments of $350m in return for their support of government policy.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "In December 2013, allies of Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad claimed to possess tapes purportedly showing that Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammed Al-Sabah and Jassem Al-Kharafi were discussing plans to topple the Kuwaiti government. Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad appeared on local channel Al-Watan TV describing his claims.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "In March 2014, David S. Cohen, then Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, accused Kuwait of funding terrorism. Since the end of the Gulf War in 1991, accusations of Kuwait funding terrorism have been very common and come from a wide variety of sources including intelligence reports, Western government officials, scholarly research, and renowned journalists. From 2014 to 2015, Kuwait was frequently described as the world's biggest source of terrorism funding, particularly for ISIS and Al-Qaeda.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 125,
"text": "In April 2014, the Kuwaiti government imposed a total media blackout to ban any reporting or discussion on the issue. In March 2015, Kuwait's public prosecutor dropped all investigations into the alleged coup plot and Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad read a public apology on Kuwait state television renouncing the coup allegations. Since then, \"numerous associates of his have been targeted and detained by the Kuwaiti authorities on various charges,\" most notably members of the so-called \"Fintas Group\" that had allegedly been the original circulators of the fake coup video.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 126,
"text": "On 26 June 2015, a suicide bombing took place at a Shia Muslim mosque in Kuwait. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant claimed responsibility for the attack. Twenty-seven people were killed and 227 people were wounded. In the aftermath, a lawsuit was filed accusing the Kuwaiti government of negligence and direct responsibility for the terror attack.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 127,
"text": "In December 2015, Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad was convicted of \"disrespect to the public prosecutor and attributing a remark to the country's ruler without a special permission from the emir's court,\" issuing a suspended six-month prison sentence and a fine of 1,000 Kuwaiti Dinar. In January 2016, the Kuwaiti appeals court overturned the prior ruling and cleared Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad of all charges.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 128,
"text": "In November 2018, Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad, along with four other defendants, were charged in Switzerland with forgery related to the fake coup video. Shortly thereafter, Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad temporarily stepped aside from his role at the International Olympic Committee, pending an ethics committee hearing into the allegations.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 129,
"text": "In June 2019, government official Fahad Al Rajaan and his spouse were given life sentences in absentia by the Kuwait criminal court; personal property was confiscated, and they were ordered to repay $82 million, as well as being fined \"twice that amount.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 130,
"text": "In November 2019, former deputy prime minister and minister of interior Sheikh Khaled Al Jarrah Al Sabah was dismissed from office after minister of defense Sheikh Nasser Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah filed a complaint with the Kuwaiti Attorney General alleging embezzlement of 240 million Kuwaiti dinars ($794.5 million) of Kuwait government funds had taken place during Khaled's tenure as minister of defense.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 131,
"text": "The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated Kuwait's economic crisis. Kuwait's economy faced a budget deficit of $46 billion in 2020. Kuwait was downgraded by S&P Global Ratings two times in less than two years because of declining oil revenue and delayed fiscal reforms.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 132,
"text": "In July 2020, the US Department of Justice filed an asset forfeiture claim against The Mountain Beverly Hills and other real property in the United States, alleging a group of three Kuwaiti officials, including Sheikh Khaled Al Jarrah, set up unauthorized accounts in the name of the country's Military Attache Office in London, known as the 'Army Fund.' They allegedly funded the accounts with over $100m of Kuwaiti public money and used it for their own purposes.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 133,
"text": "In September 2020, Kuwait's Crown Prince Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah became the 16th Emir of Kuwait and the successor to Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, who died at the age of 91. In October 2020, Sheikh Mishal Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah was appointed as the Crown Prince.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 134,
"text": "Since January 2021, Kuwait has been experiencing its worst political crisis in many decades. Kuwait is also facing a looming debt crisis according to various media sources. Kuwait is widely considered the region's most oil-dependent country with the least amount of economic diversification. According to the World Economic Forum, Kuwait is the least economically developed Gulf country. Kuwait has the weakest infrastructure in the entire GCC region.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 135,
"text": "In March 2021, the Kuwaiti ministerial court ordered the detention of Sheikh Khaled Al Jarrah, who was then arrested and imprisoned.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 136,
"text": "On April 13, 2021, a Kuwaiti court ordered the detention of former prime minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Hamad Al-Sabah on corruption charges related to the 'Army Fund.' He is the first former Kuwaiti prime minister to face pre-trial detention over graft charges. The crimes allegedly took place during Jaber Al-Sabah's 2001–11 term as defense minister.",
"title": "Modern era"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 137,
"text": "In August 2021, Sheikh Ahmed Al-Fahad attended court in Switzerland alongside three of the other four defendants. In September 2021, the Swiss court convicted Sheikh Ahmed Al-Fahad of forgery along with the four other defendants. He denied wrongdoing and plans to appeal. On 16 December, 2023 Sheikh Mishal Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah appointed as 17th Emir of Kuwait after the death of Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah.",
"title": "Modern era"
}
] |
Kuwait is a sovereign state in Western Asia located at the head of the Persian Gulf. The geographical region of Kuwait has been occupied by humans since antiquity, particularly due to its strategic location at the head of the Persian Gulf. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Kuwait was a prosperous maritime port city and the most important trade port in the northern Gulf region. In the modern era, Kuwait is best known for the Persian Gulf War (1990–1991).
|
2001-05-11T00:24:38Z
|
2023-12-29T10:06:00Z
|
[
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Kuwait topics",
"Template:Convert",
"Template:Cbignore",
"Template:Refend",
"Template:Ill",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:ISBN",
"Template:Cite thesis",
"Template:Citation-attribution",
"Template:Snd",
"Template:Lang-ar",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Citation needed",
"Template:Cite magazine",
"Template:Harvnb",
"Template:Refbegin",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:History of Kuwait",
"Template:See also",
"Template:Blockquote",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:History of Asia",
"Template:Sfn",
"Template:Commons category",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Citation"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Kuwait
|
16,686 |
Geography of Kuwait
|
Kuwait is a country in West Asia, bordering the Persian Gulf, between Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Kuwait is located at the far northwestern corner of the Persian Gulf. Kuwait is 17,820 square kilometres in size. At its most distant points, it is about 200 km (120 mi) north to south, and 170 km (110 mi) east to west. Kuwait has 10 islands. Kuwait's area consists mostly of desert.
As previously mentioned, Kuwait borders the Persian Gulf with 195 km (121 mi) of coast. Within its territory are ten islands, two of which, Bubiyan (the largest) and Warbah, are strategically important.
Kuwait's most prominent geographic feature is Kuwait Bay (Jun al Kuwayt), which indents the shoreline for about forty kilometers, providing natural protection for the port of Kuwait, and accounts for nearly one third of the country's shoreline.
To the north and northwest, there is the historically contested border between Kuwait and Iraq. Although the Iraqi government, which had first asserted a claim to rule Kuwait in 1938, recognized the borders with Kuwait in 1963 (based on agreements made earlier in the century), it continued to press Kuwait for control over Bubiyan and Warbah islands through the 1960s and 1970s.
To the south and southwest, Kuwait shares a 250-km border with Saudi Arabia. The boundary between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia was set by the Treaty of Al Uqayr in 1922, which also established the Saudi–Kuwaiti neutral zone of 5,700 square kilometers between the two nations. In 1966, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia agreed to divide the neutral zone; the partitioning agreement making each country responsible for administration in its portion was signed in December 1969. The resources in the area, now known as the Divided Zone, are not affected by the agreement. The oil from onshore and offshore fields continues to be shared equally between the two countries.
In August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait and, shortly thereafter, formally incorporated the entire country into Iraq. Under United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution 687, after the restoration of Kuwaiti sovereignty in 1991, a UN commission undertook formal demarcation of the borders on the basis of those agreed to in 1963. The boundary was demarcated in 1992. Iraq initially refused to accept the commission's findings but ultimately accepted them in November 1994.
Kuwait has an arid climate. Rainfall in the nation varies from 75 to 150 millimeters (2.95 to 5.91 in) a year. Actual rainfall has ranged from 25 millimeters (0.98 in) a year to as much as 325 millimeters (12.8 in). In summer, average daily high temperatures range from 42 to 46 °C (108 to 115 °F); the highest ever temperature recorded in Kuwait was 54 °C (129 °F) at Mitribah on 21 July 2016 which is the highest recorded temperature in Asia and also the third highest in the world. The summers are relentlessly long, punctuated mainly by dramatic dust storms in June and July when northwesterly winds cover the cities in sand. In late summer, which is more humid, there are occasional sharp, brief thunderstorms.
By November summer is over, and colder winter weather sets in, dropping temperatures to as low as 3 °C (37 °F) at night; daytime temperatures are in the upper 20s °C (upper 70s to low 80s °F). Frost rarely occurs; rain is more common and falls mostly in the spring.
Kuwait's winter is colder than in other Persian Gulf countries, such as Bahrain, Qatar or United Arab Emirates. Kuwait experiences colder weather because it is situated farther north, and because of cold winds blowing from upper Iraq and Iran.
At present, there are five protected areas in Kuwait recognized by the IUCN. In response to Kuwait becoming the 169th signatory of the Ramsar Convention, Bubiyan Island's Mubarak al-Kabeer reserve was designated as the country's first Wetland of International Importance. The 50,948 ha reserve consists of small lagoons and shallow salt marshes and is important as a stop-over for migrating birds on two migration routes. The reserve is home to the world's largest breeding colony of crab-plover.
Currently, 444 species of birds have been recorded in Kuwait, 18 species of which breed in the country. Due to its location at the head of the Persian Gulf near the mouth of the Tigris–Euphrates river, Kuwait is situated at the crossroads of many major bird migration routes and between two and three million birds pass each year. Kuwait's marine and littoral ecosystems contain the bulk of the country's biodiversity heritage. The marshes in northern Kuwait and Jahra have become increasingly important as a refuge for passage migrants.
Twenty eight species of mammal are found in Kuwait; animals such as gerboa, desert rabbits and hedgehogs are common in the desert. Large carnivores, such as the wolf, caracal and jackal, are longer present. Among the endangered mammalian species are the red fox and wild cat. Forty reptile species have been recorded although none are endemic to Kuwait.
Kuwait, Oman and Yemen are the only locations where the endangered smoothtooth blacktip shark is confirmed as occurring.
Kuwaiti islands are important breeding areas for four species of tern and the socotra cormorant. Kubbar Island has been recognised an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International because it supports a breeding colony of white-cheeked terns.
The land was formed in a recent geologic era. In the south, limestone rises in a long, north-oriented dome that lies beneath the surface. It is within and below this formation that the principal oil fields, Kuwait's most important natural resource, are located. In the west and north, layers of sand, gravel, silt, and clay overlie the limestone to a depth of more than 210 meters. The upper portions of these beds are part of a mass of sediment deposited by a great wadi whose most recent channel was the Wadi al Batin, the broad shallow valley forming the western boundary of the country.
On the western side of the Al Rawdatayn geological formation, a freshwater aquifer was discovered in 1960 and became Kuwait's principal water source. The supply is insufficient to support extensive irrigation, but it is tapped to supplement the distilled water supply that fills most of the country's needs. The only other exploited aquifer lies in the permeable zone in the top of the limestone of the Ash Shuaybah field south and east of the city of Kuwait. Unlike water from the Al Rawdatayn aquifer, water from the Ash Shuaybah aquifer is brackish. Millions of liters a day of this water are pumped for commercial and household purposes.
Kuwait is part of the Tigris–Euphrates river system basin. Several Tigris–Euphrates confluences form parts of the Kuwait–Iraq border. Bubiyan Island is part of the Shatt al-Arab delta. Kuwait is partially part of the Mesopotamian Marshes. Kuwait does not currently have any permanent rivers within its territory. However, Kuwait does have several wadis, the most notable of which is Wadi al-Batin which forms the border between Kuwait and Iraq. Kuwait also has several river-like marine channels around Bubiyan Island, most notably Khawr Abd Allah which is now an estuary, but once was the point where the Shatt al-Arab emptied into the Persian Gulf. Khawr Abd Allah is located in southern Iraq and northern Kuwait, the Iraq-Kuwait border divides the lower portion of the estuary, but adjacent to the port of Umm Qasr the estuary becomes wholly Iraqi. It forms the northeast coastline of Bubiyan Island and the north coastline of Warbah Island.
Kuwait relies on water desalination as a primary source of fresh water for drinking and domestic purposes. There are currently more than six desalination plants. Kuwait was the first country in the world to use desalination to supply water for large-scale domestic use. The history of desalination in Kuwait dates back to 1951 when the first distillation plant was commissioned.
Kuwait's fresh water resources are limited to groundwater, desalinated seawater, and treated wastewater effluents. There are three major municipal wastewater treatment plants. Most water demand is currently satisfied through seawater desalination plants. Sewage disposal is handled by a national sewage network that covers 98% of facilities in the country.
The bulk of the Kuwaiti population lives in the coastal capital of the city of Kuwait. Smaller populations inhabit the nearby city of Al Jahrah, smaller desert and coastal towns, and, prior to the Persian Gulf War, some of the several nearby gulf islands, notably Faylakah.
Attribution:
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Kuwait is a country in West Asia, bordering the Persian Gulf, between Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Kuwait is located at the far northwestern corner of the Persian Gulf. Kuwait is 17,820 square kilometres in size. At its most distant points, it is about 200 km (120 mi) north to south, and 170 km (110 mi) east to west. Kuwait has 10 islands. Kuwait's area consists mostly of desert.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "As previously mentioned, Kuwait borders the Persian Gulf with 195 km (121 mi) of coast. Within its territory are ten islands, two of which, Bubiyan (the largest) and Warbah, are strategically important.",
"title": "Boundaries and geographic features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Kuwait's most prominent geographic feature is Kuwait Bay (Jun al Kuwayt), which indents the shoreline for about forty kilometers, providing natural protection for the port of Kuwait, and accounts for nearly one third of the country's shoreline.",
"title": "Boundaries and geographic features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "To the north and northwest, there is the historically contested border between Kuwait and Iraq. Although the Iraqi government, which had first asserted a claim to rule Kuwait in 1938, recognized the borders with Kuwait in 1963 (based on agreements made earlier in the century), it continued to press Kuwait for control over Bubiyan and Warbah islands through the 1960s and 1970s.",
"title": "Boundaries and geographic features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "To the south and southwest, Kuwait shares a 250-km border with Saudi Arabia. The boundary between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia was set by the Treaty of Al Uqayr in 1922, which also established the Saudi–Kuwaiti neutral zone of 5,700 square kilometers between the two nations. In 1966, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia agreed to divide the neutral zone; the partitioning agreement making each country responsible for administration in its portion was signed in December 1969. The resources in the area, now known as the Divided Zone, are not affected by the agreement. The oil from onshore and offshore fields continues to be shared equally between the two countries.",
"title": "Boundaries and geographic features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait and, shortly thereafter, formally incorporated the entire country into Iraq. Under United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution 687, after the restoration of Kuwaiti sovereignty in 1991, a UN commission undertook formal demarcation of the borders on the basis of those agreed to in 1963. The boundary was demarcated in 1992. Iraq initially refused to accept the commission's findings but ultimately accepted them in November 1994.",
"title": "Boundaries and geographic features"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Kuwait has an arid climate. Rainfall in the nation varies from 75 to 150 millimeters (2.95 to 5.91 in) a year. Actual rainfall has ranged from 25 millimeters (0.98 in) a year to as much as 325 millimeters (12.8 in). In summer, average daily high temperatures range from 42 to 46 °C (108 to 115 °F); the highest ever temperature recorded in Kuwait was 54 °C (129 °F) at Mitribah on 21 July 2016 which is the highest recorded temperature in Asia and also the third highest in the world. The summers are relentlessly long, punctuated mainly by dramatic dust storms in June and July when northwesterly winds cover the cities in sand. In late summer, which is more humid, there are occasional sharp, brief thunderstorms.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "By November summer is over, and colder winter weather sets in, dropping temperatures to as low as 3 °C (37 °F) at night; daytime temperatures are in the upper 20s °C (upper 70s to low 80s °F). Frost rarely occurs; rain is more common and falls mostly in the spring.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Kuwait's winter is colder than in other Persian Gulf countries, such as Bahrain, Qatar or United Arab Emirates. Kuwait experiences colder weather because it is situated farther north, and because of cold winds blowing from upper Iraq and Iran.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "At present, there are five protected areas in Kuwait recognized by the IUCN. In response to Kuwait becoming the 169th signatory of the Ramsar Convention, Bubiyan Island's Mubarak al-Kabeer reserve was designated as the country's first Wetland of International Importance. The 50,948 ha reserve consists of small lagoons and shallow salt marshes and is important as a stop-over for migrating birds on two migration routes. The reserve is home to the world's largest breeding colony of crab-plover.",
"title": "Nature reserves"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Currently, 444 species of birds have been recorded in Kuwait, 18 species of which breed in the country. Due to its location at the head of the Persian Gulf near the mouth of the Tigris–Euphrates river, Kuwait is situated at the crossroads of many major bird migration routes and between two and three million birds pass each year. Kuwait's marine and littoral ecosystems contain the bulk of the country's biodiversity heritage. The marshes in northern Kuwait and Jahra have become increasingly important as a refuge for passage migrants.",
"title": "Biodiversity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Twenty eight species of mammal are found in Kuwait; animals such as gerboa, desert rabbits and hedgehogs are common in the desert. Large carnivores, such as the wolf, caracal and jackal, are longer present. Among the endangered mammalian species are the red fox and wild cat. Forty reptile species have been recorded although none are endemic to Kuwait.",
"title": "Biodiversity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Kuwait, Oman and Yemen are the only locations where the endangered smoothtooth blacktip shark is confirmed as occurring.",
"title": "Biodiversity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Kuwaiti islands are important breeding areas for four species of tern and the socotra cormorant. Kubbar Island has been recognised an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International because it supports a breeding colony of white-cheeked terns.",
"title": "Biodiversity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The land was formed in a recent geologic era. In the south, limestone rises in a long, north-oriented dome that lies beneath the surface. It is within and below this formation that the principal oil fields, Kuwait's most important natural resource, are located. In the west and north, layers of sand, gravel, silt, and clay overlie the limestone to a depth of more than 210 meters. The upper portions of these beds are part of a mass of sediment deposited by a great wadi whose most recent channel was the Wadi al Batin, the broad shallow valley forming the western boundary of the country.",
"title": "Geology and aquifers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "On the western side of the Al Rawdatayn geological formation, a freshwater aquifer was discovered in 1960 and became Kuwait's principal water source. The supply is insufficient to support extensive irrigation, but it is tapped to supplement the distilled water supply that fills most of the country's needs. The only other exploited aquifer lies in the permeable zone in the top of the limestone of the Ash Shuaybah field south and east of the city of Kuwait. Unlike water from the Al Rawdatayn aquifer, water from the Ash Shuaybah aquifer is brackish. Millions of liters a day of this water are pumped for commercial and household purposes.",
"title": "Geology and aquifers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Kuwait is part of the Tigris–Euphrates river system basin. Several Tigris–Euphrates confluences form parts of the Kuwait–Iraq border. Bubiyan Island is part of the Shatt al-Arab delta. Kuwait is partially part of the Mesopotamian Marshes. Kuwait does not currently have any permanent rivers within its territory. However, Kuwait does have several wadis, the most notable of which is Wadi al-Batin which forms the border between Kuwait and Iraq. Kuwait also has several river-like marine channels around Bubiyan Island, most notably Khawr Abd Allah which is now an estuary, but once was the point where the Shatt al-Arab emptied into the Persian Gulf. Khawr Abd Allah is located in southern Iraq and northern Kuwait, the Iraq-Kuwait border divides the lower portion of the estuary, but adjacent to the port of Umm Qasr the estuary becomes wholly Iraqi. It forms the northeast coastline of Bubiyan Island and the north coastline of Warbah Island.",
"title": "Water and marshes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Kuwait relies on water desalination as a primary source of fresh water for drinking and domestic purposes. There are currently more than six desalination plants. Kuwait was the first country in the world to use desalination to supply water for large-scale domestic use. The history of desalination in Kuwait dates back to 1951 when the first distillation plant was commissioned.",
"title": "Water and marshes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Kuwait's fresh water resources are limited to groundwater, desalinated seawater, and treated wastewater effluents. There are three major municipal wastewater treatment plants. Most water demand is currently satisfied through seawater desalination plants. Sewage disposal is handled by a national sewage network that covers 98% of facilities in the country.",
"title": "Water and marshes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The bulk of the Kuwaiti population lives in the coastal capital of the city of Kuwait. Smaller populations inhabit the nearby city of Al Jahrah, smaller desert and coastal towns, and, prior to the Persian Gulf War, some of the several nearby gulf islands, notably Faylakah.",
"title": "Human geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Attribution:",
"title": "References"
}
] |
Kuwait is a country in West Asia, bordering the Persian Gulf, between Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Kuwait is located at the far northwestern corner of the Persian Gulf. Kuwait is 17,820 square kilometres in size. At its most distant points, it is about 200 km (120 mi) north to south, and 170 km (110 mi) east to west. Kuwait has 10 islands. Kuwait's area consists mostly of desert.
|
2001-05-11T00:24:53Z
|
2023-12-18T19:12:33Z
|
[
"Template:Asia topic",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Cite encyclopedia",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Infobox country geography",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:CIA World Factbook",
"Template:See also",
"Template:Weather box",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Citation-attribution",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Kuwait topics",
"Template:Geography of Asia",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Convert"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Kuwait
|
16,687 |
Demographics of Kuwait
|
This is a demography of the population of Kuwait (Arabic: سكان الكويت).
Expatriates account for around 60% of Kuwait's total population, with Kuwaitis constituting 38%-42% of the total population. The government and some Kuwaiti citizens consider the proportion of expatriates (which has been relatively stable since the mid-1970s) to be a problem, and in 2016 the number of deportations increased.
Kuwait consists of six governorates: Hawalli, Asimah, Farwaniyah, Jahra, Ahmadi and Mubarak Al-Kabeer. Most people in Kuwait live in the governorates of Hawalli, Asimah, and Farwaniyah.
The biggest population difficulty in Kuwait involves the Bedoon, stateless people. According to Human Rights Watch in 1995, Kuwait has produced 300,000 stateless Bedoon. Kuwait has the largest number of stateless people in the entire region. The Bedoon issue in Kuwait is largely sectarian.
Structure of the population (1.01.2020) (Census - provisional):
Source: UN World Population Prospects
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "This is a demography of the population of Kuwait (Arabic: سكان الكويت).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Expatriates account for around 60% of Kuwait's total population, with Kuwaitis constituting 38%-42% of the total population. The government and some Kuwaiti citizens consider the proportion of expatriates (which has been relatively stable since the mid-1970s) to be a problem, and in 2016 the number of deportations increased.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Kuwait consists of six governorates: Hawalli, Asimah, Farwaniyah, Jahra, Ahmadi and Mubarak Al-Kabeer. Most people in Kuwait live in the governorates of Hawalli, Asimah, and Farwaniyah.",
"title": "Governorates"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The biggest population difficulty in Kuwait involves the Bedoon, stateless people. According to Human Rights Watch in 1995, Kuwait has produced 300,000 stateless Bedoon. Kuwait has the largest number of stateless people in the entire region. The Bedoon issue in Kuwait is largely sectarian.",
"title": "Historical populations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "",
"title": "Vital statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "",
"title": "Vital statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Structure of the population (1.01.2020) (Census - provisional):",
"title": "Vital statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Source: UN World Population Prospects",
"title": "Vital statistics"
}
] |
This is a demography of the population of Kuwait. Expatriates account for around 60% of Kuwait's total population, with Kuwaitis constituting 38%-42% of the total population. The government and some Kuwaiti citizens consider the proportion of expatriates to be a problem, and in 2016 the number of deportations increased.
|
2002-02-25T15:43:11Z
|
2023-11-16T09:56:06Z
|
[
"Template:Update",
"Template:GraphChart",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Immigration to Kuwait",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Asia topic",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Further",
"Template:Demographics of Kuwait",
"Template:Asia in topic",
"Template:Infobox place demographics",
"Template:Lang-ar",
"Template:Historical populations",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Kuwait topics"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Kuwait
|
16,688 |
Government of Kuwait
|
Kuwait is an emirate with a political system consisting of an appointed judiciary, appointed government (dominated by the Al Sabah ruling family), and nominally elected parliament.
The Constitution of Kuwait was approved and promulgated on 17 November 1962.
The prime minister chooses the cabinet of ministers, which form the government. The prime minister is a member of the ruling family and is appointed by the Emir.
The Emir's powers are defined by the 1961 constitution. These powers include appointing the prime minister, who in turn chooses the cabinet of ministers (government). Upon the death of the Emir, the crown prince succeeds.
The judiciary in Kuwait is not independent of the government, the Emir appoints all the judges and many judges are foreign nationals from Egypt. In each administrative district of Kuwait, there is a Summary Court (also called Courts of First Instance which are composed of one or more divisions, like a Traffic Court or an Administrative Court); then there is Court of Appeals; Cassation Court, and lastly - a Constitutional Court which interprets the constitution and deals with disputes related to the constitutionality of laws. Kuwait has a civil law legal system.
The National Assembly is the legislature in Kuwait, established in 1963. Its predecessor, the 1938 National Assembly was formally dissolved in 1939 after "one member, Sulaiman al-Adasani, in possession of a letter, signed by other Assembly members, addressed to Iraq's King Ghazi, requesting Kuwait's immediate incorporation into Iraq". This demand came after the merchant members of the Assembly attempted to extract oil money from Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, a suggestion refused by him and upon which he instigated a crackdown which arrested the Assembly members in 1939.
The National Assembly can have up to 50 MPs. Deputies are elected by one non-transferable vote to serve four-year terms. Members of the cabinet also sit in the parliament as deputies. The constitution limits the size of the cabinet to 16. The cabinet ministers have the same rights as the elected MPs, with the following two exceptions: they do not participate in the work of committees, and they cannot vote when an interpolation leads to a no-confidence vote against one of the cabinet members. In 2001, George Washington University's Nathan J. Brown claimed Kuwait's National Assembly is the most independent parliament in the Arab world; in 2009, Israeli scholar Eran Segal claimed it is among the "strongest" parliaments in the Middle East.
During the 1990-1991 Gulf War, Saddam Hussein attempted to make Kuwait the 19th province of Iraq (known as Kuwait Governorate). During the Iraqi occupation, Ali Hassan al-Majid became the governor and took over what was left of the original government.
The State of Kuwait operates several VIP jets used mainly by the Amir of Kuwait:
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Kuwait is an emirate with a political system consisting of an appointed judiciary, appointed government (dominated by the Al Sabah ruling family), and nominally elected parliament.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The Constitution of Kuwait was approved and promulgated on 17 November 1962.",
"title": "Executive branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The prime minister chooses the cabinet of ministers, which form the government. The prime minister is a member of the ruling family and is appointed by the Emir.",
"title": "Executive branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The Emir's powers are defined by the 1961 constitution. These powers include appointing the prime minister, who in turn chooses the cabinet of ministers (government). Upon the death of the Emir, the crown prince succeeds.",
"title": "Executive branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The judiciary in Kuwait is not independent of the government, the Emir appoints all the judges and many judges are foreign nationals from Egypt. In each administrative district of Kuwait, there is a Summary Court (also called Courts of First Instance which are composed of one or more divisions, like a Traffic Court or an Administrative Court); then there is Court of Appeals; Cassation Court, and lastly - a Constitutional Court which interprets the constitution and deals with disputes related to the constitutionality of laws. Kuwait has a civil law legal system.",
"title": "Judicial branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The National Assembly is the legislature in Kuwait, established in 1963. Its predecessor, the 1938 National Assembly was formally dissolved in 1939 after \"one member, Sulaiman al-Adasani, in possession of a letter, signed by other Assembly members, addressed to Iraq's King Ghazi, requesting Kuwait's immediate incorporation into Iraq\". This demand came after the merchant members of the Assembly attempted to extract oil money from Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, a suggestion refused by him and upon which he instigated a crackdown which arrested the Assembly members in 1939.",
"title": "Legislative branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The National Assembly can have up to 50 MPs. Deputies are elected by one non-transferable vote to serve four-year terms. Members of the cabinet also sit in the parliament as deputies. The constitution limits the size of the cabinet to 16. The cabinet ministers have the same rights as the elected MPs, with the following two exceptions: they do not participate in the work of committees, and they cannot vote when an interpolation leads to a no-confidence vote against one of the cabinet members. In 2001, George Washington University's Nathan J. Brown claimed Kuwait's National Assembly is the most independent parliament in the Arab world; in 2009, Israeli scholar Eran Segal claimed it is among the \"strongest\" parliaments in the Middle East.",
"title": "Legislative branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "During the 1990-1991 Gulf War, Saddam Hussein attempted to make Kuwait the 19th province of Iraq (known as Kuwait Governorate). During the Iraqi occupation, Ali Hassan al-Majid became the governor and took over what was left of the original government.",
"title": "Gulf War"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The State of Kuwait operates several VIP jets used mainly by the Amir of Kuwait:",
"title": "VIP Flight"
}
] |
Kuwait is an emirate with a political system consisting of an appointed judiciary, appointed government, and nominally elected parliament.
|
2002-02-25T15:43:11Z
|
2023-12-18T13:55:19Z
|
[
"Template:Politics of Kuwait",
"Template:Citation",
"Template:Kuwait topics",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Asia topic"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_of_Kuwait
|
16,689 |
Economy of Kuwait
|
The economy of Kuwait is a wealthy petroleum-based economy. Kuwait is one of the richest countries in the world. The Kuwaiti dinar is the highest-valued unit of currency in the world. According to the World Bank, Kuwait is the fifth richest country in the world by gross national income per capita. Kuwait's economy is the world's twentieth-largest by GDP per capita. As a result of various diversification policies, petroleum now accounts for 43% of the total GDP and 70% of export earnings. Steel manufacturing is Kuwait's second biggest industry. Kuwait is self-sufficient in steel.
In 2019, Kuwait's main export products were mineral fuels including oil (89.1% of total exports), aircraft and spacecraft (4.3%), organic chemicals (3.2%), plastics (1.2%), iron and steel (0.2%), gems and precious metals (0.1%), machinery including computers (0.1%), aluminum (0.1%), copper (0.1%), and salt, sulphur, stone and cement (0.1%). Kuwait was the world's biggest exporter of sulfonated, nitrated and nitrosated hydrocarbons in 2019. Kuwait was ranked 63rd out of 157 countries in the 2019 Economic Complexity Index (ECI). Iraq was Kuwait's leading export market in 2019 and food/agricultural products accounted for 94.2% of total export commodities.
In 1934, the Emir of Kuwait granted an oil concession to the Kuwait Oil Co. (KOC), jointly owned by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (later British Petroleum Company) and Gulf Oil Corporation In 1976, the Kuwaiti Government nationalized KOC.
The Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC), an integrated international oil company, is the parent company of the government's operations in the petroleum sector, and includes Kuwait Oil Company, which produced oil and gas; Kuwait National Petroleum Co., refining and domestic sales; Petrochemical Industries Co., producing ammonia and urea; Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Co., with several concessions in developing countries; Kuwait Oil Tanker Co.; and Santa Fe International Corp. The latter, purchased outright in 1982, gives KPC a worldwide presence in the petroleum industry.
KPC also has purchased from Gulf Oil Co. refineries and associated service stations in the Benelux nations and Scandinavia, as well as storage facilities and a network of service stations in Italy. In 1987, KPC bought a 19% share in British Petroleum, which was later reduced to 10%. KPC markets its products in Europe under the brand Q8 and is interested in the markets of the United States and Japan.
Kuwait has about 94 billion barrels (14.9 km) of recoverable oil reserves. Estimated capacity, before the war, was about 2.4 million barrels per day (380×10^ m/d). During the Iraqi occupation, Kuwait's oil-producing capacity was reduced to practically nothing. However, tremendous recovery and improvements have been made since. Oil production was 1.5 million barrels per day (240×10^ m/d) by the end of 1992, and pre-war capacity was restored in 1993. Kuwait's production capacity is estimated to be 2.5 million barrels per day (400×10^ m/d). Kuwait plans to increase its capacity to 3.5 million barrels per day (560×10^ m/d) by 2005.
As part of Kuwait Vision 2035, Kuwait aims to position itself as a global hub for the petrochemical industry. Al Zour Refinery is the largest refinery in the Middle East. It is Kuwait's largest environmental friendly oil refinery. Al Zour Refinery is a Kuwait-China cooperation project under the Belt and Road Initiative.
Al Zour LNG Terminal is the Middle East's largest import terminal for liquefied natural gas. It is the world's largest capacity LNG storage and regasification green field project. The project has attracted investments worth US$3 billion. Other megaprojects include biofuel and clean fuels. Sulaibiya Wastewater Treatment Plant is the world's largest wastewater purification plant using energy efficient membrane technology. Umm Al Hayman Wastewater Treatment Plant is one of the world's largest ecologically sustainable sewage treatment plants. With an estimated value of US$1.8 billion, it is a pioneering PPP megaproject. It was the region's fourth largest megaproject awarded in 2020.
Kuwait Environmental Remediation Programme (KERP) is the largest environmental remediation project in the world. There are various other major infrastructure projects under Kuwait Vision 2035. Kuwait is currently building the largest judicial building in the Middle East, the new judicial complexes are environment friendly. Other major landmark developments include KIPCO's Hessah Al Mubarak District.
As part of Kuwait Vision 2035, Kuwait inaugurated its largest renewable energy park, Shagaya Renewable Energy Park, which includes concentrated solar power, solar photovoltaic, and wind power plants. The park consists of four phases with a target capacity of 4,000 MW. It is set to be one of the largest renewable energy parks in the world.
Steel manufacturing is Kuwait's second biggest industry. United Steel Industrial Company (KWT Steel) is Kuwait's main steel manufacturing company, the company caters to all of Kuwait's domestic market demands (particularly construction). Kuwait is self-sufficient in steel.
In 2016, Kuwait's food self-sufficiency ratio was 49.5% in vegetables, 38.7% in meat, 12.4% in diary, 24.9% in fruits, and 0.4% in cereals. 8.5% of Kuwait's entire territory consists of agricultural land, while arable land covers 0.6% of Kuwait's entire territory. Historically, Jahra was a predominantly agricultural area. There are currently various farms in Jahra.
In 2017, agriculture (including fisheries) accounted for almost 0.4 percent of the gross domestic product. Around 4 percent of the economically active population works in agriculture, almost all foreigners. The majority of farm owners are investors. The total agricultural land covered 1,521 sq km in 2014.
The agriculture industry is hampered by the limited water and arable land. The government has experimented in growing food through hydroponics and carefully managed farms. However, most of the soil which was suitable for farming in south central Kuwait was destroyed when Iraqi troops set fire to oil wells in the area and created vast "oil lakes". Fish and shrimp are plentiful in territorial waters, and largescale commercial fishing has been undertaken locally and in the Indian Ocean.
Kuwait has a leading position in the financial industry in the GCC. The Emir has promoted the idea that Kuwait should focus its energies, in terms of economic development, on the financial industry.
The historical preeminence of Kuwait (among the Gulf monarchies) in finance dates back to the founding of the National Bank of Kuwait in 1952. The bank was the first local publicly traded corporation in the Gulf. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, an alternative stock market, trading in shares of Gulf companies, emerged in Kuwait, the Souk Al-Manakh. At its peak, its market capitalization was the third highest in the world, behind only the U.S. and Japan, and ahead of the UK and France.
Kuwait has a large wealth-management industry that stands out in the region. Kuwaiti investment companies administer more assets than those of any other GCC country, save the much larger Saudi Arabia. The Kuwait Financial Centre, in a rough calculation, estimated that Kuwaiti firms accounted for over one-third of the total assets under management in the GCC.
The relative strength of Kuwait in the financial industry extends to its stock market. For many years, the total valuation of all companies listed on the Kuwaiti exchange far exceeded the value of those on any other GCC bourse, except Saudi Arabia. In 2011, financial and banking companies made up more than half of the market capitalization of the Kuwaiti bourse; among all the Gulf states, the market capitalization of Kuwaiti financial-sector firms was, in total, behind only that of Saudi Arabia. In recent years, Kuwaiti investment companies have invested large percentages of their assets abroad, and their foreign assets have become substantially larger than their domestic assets.
Kuwait is a major source of foreign economic assistance to other states through the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development, an autonomous state institution created in 1961 on the pattern of Western and international development agencies. Over the years aid was annually provided to Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, as well as the Palestine Liberation Organization. In 1974, the fund's lending mandate was expanded to include all developing countries in the world.
The Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) is Kuwait's sovereign wealth fund specializing in foreign investment. The KIA is the world's oldest sovereign wealth fund. Since 1953, the Kuwaiti government has directed investments into Europe, United States and Asia Pacific. In 2021, the holdings were valued at around $700 billion in assets. It was the 3rd largest sovereign wealth fund in the world.
The KIA manages two funds: the General Reserve Fund (GRF) and Future Generations Fund (FGF). The GRF is the main treasurer for the government. It receives all state revenues and all national expenditures are paid out of this fund. The KIA does not disclose its financial assets in public, but it is estimated that the KIA has $410 billion in assets as of February 2014.
The KIA was the main source of capital for the Kuwaiti government during the Gulf War. The Kuwaiti government relied on the KIA to pay for coalition expenses and postwar reconstruction. The KIA was worth $100 billion prior to 1990, KIA funds were depleted to $40–$50 billion after the Gulf War.
In July 2023, Kuwait plans to create a new sovereign fund, Ciyada, in partnership with the Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA). While the value of the fund has not been specified, the KIA, which currently manages over $800 billion in assets, will play a significant role in studying and implementing the proposed fund. The aim is to develop the local economy, attract foreign investment, and finance major projects to promote economic diversification in Kuwait.
The Future Generations Fund (FGF) was created in 1976 by transferring 50% from the general reserve fund at that time. The FGF is a saving funds for future generations. 25% of all state revenues are annually transferred to the fund.
All of the FGF is invested abroad, with an estimated 75% invested in the US and Europe and the rest in emerging markets, mainly China and India.
Kuwait has a growing scientific research sector. According to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Kuwait has registered 448 patents as of 31 December 2015, Kuwait is the second largest patent producer in the world. In the early 2010s, Kuwait produced the largest number of scientific publications and patents per capita in the Arab world and OIC. The Kuwaiti government has implemented various programs to foster innovation resulting in patent rights. Between 2010 and 2014, Kuwait registered the highest growth in patents in the Arab world. The WIPO Global Innovation Index found that Kuwait ranks relatively high for its innovation efficiency ratio (which shows how much innovation output a country is getting for its inputs).
Kuwait was the first country in the region to implement 5G technology. Kuwait is among the world's leading countries in 5G penetration. The Chinese company Huawei has a $1.7 billion investment license in Kuwait to develop the country's ICT sector in line with the Kuwait Vision 2035 strategy.
Kuwait has an emerging space industry driven by the private sector.
Kuwait's Orbital Space in collaboration with the Space Challenges Program and EnduroSat introduced an international initiative called "Code in Space". The initiative allows students from around the world to send and execute their own code in space. The code is transmitted from a satellite ground station to a cubesat (nanosatellite) orbiting Earth 500 km (310 mi) above sea level. The code is then executed by the satellite's onboard computer and tested under real space environment conditions. The nanosatellite is called "QMR-KWT" (Arabic: قمر الكويت) which means "Moon of Kuwait", translated from Arabic.
QMR-KWT launched to space on 30 June 2021 on SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket and was part of the payload of a satellite carrier called ION SCV Dauntless David by D-Orbit. It was deployed into its final orbit (Sun-synchronous orbit) on 16 July 2021. QMR-KWT is Kuwait's first satellite.
Seven years after the launch of the world's first communications satellite, Telstar 1, Kuwait in October 1969 inaugurated the first satellite ground station in the Middle East, "Um Alaish". The Um Alaish satellite station complex housed several satellite ground stations including Um Alaish 1 (1969), Um Alaish 2 (1977), and Um Alaish 3 (1981). It provided satellite communication services in Kuwait until 1990 when it was destroyed by the Iraqi armed forces during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. In 2019, Kuwait's Orbital Space established an amateur satellite ground station to provide free access to signals from satellites in orbit passing over Kuwait. The station was named Um Alaish 4 to continue the legacy of "Um Alaish" satellite station. Um Alaish 4 is member of FUNcube distributed ground station network and the Satellite Networked Open Ground Station project (SatNOGS).
The Kuwait Space Rocket (KSR) is a Kuwaiti project to build and launch the first suborbital liquid bi-propellant rocket in Arabia. The project is divided into two phases with two separate vehicles: an initial testing phase with KSR-1 as a test vehicle capable of reaching an altitude of 8 km (5.0 mi) and a more expansive suborbital test phase with the KSR-2 planned to fly to an altitude of 100 km (62 mi).
Kuwait's Orbital Space in collaboration with the Kuwait Scientific Center (TSCK) introduced for the first time in Kuwait the opportunity for students to send a science experiment to space. The objectives of this initiative was to allow students to learn about (a) how science space missions are done; (b) microgravity (weightlessness) environment; (c) how to do science like a real scientist. This opportunity was made possible through Orbital Space agreement with DreamUp PBC and Nanoracks LLC, which are collaborating with NASA under a Space Act Agreement. The students' experiment was named "Kuwait’s Experiment: E.coli Consuming Carbon Dioxide to Combat Climate Change". The experiment was launched on SpaceX CRS-21 (SpX-21) spaceflight to the International Space Station (ISS) on 6 December 2020. Astronauts Shannon Walker (member of the ISS Expedition 64) conducted the experiment on behalf of the students.
In July 2021, Kuwait University announced that it is launching a national satellite project as part of state-led efforts to pioneer the country's sustainable space sector.
Kuwait has a state-funded healthcare system, which provides treatment without charge to Kuwaiti nationals. There are outpatient clinics in every residential area in Kuwait. A public insurance scheme exists to provide reduced cost healthcare to expatriates. Private healthcare providers also run medical facilities in the country, available to members of their insurance schemes. As part of Kuwait Vision 2035, many new hospitals have opened. In the years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, Kuwait invested in its health care system at a rate that was proportionally higher than most other GCC countries. As a result, the public hospital sector significantly increased its capacity. Kuwait currently has 20 public hospitals. The new Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Hospital is considered the largest hospital in the Middle East. Kuwait also has 16 private hospitals.
In the past five years, there has been a significant rise in entrepreneurship and small business creation in Kuwait. The informal sector is also on the rise, mainly due to the popularity of Instagram businesses. In 2020, Kuwait ranked fourth in the MENA region in startup funding after the UAE, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Many Kuwaiti entrepreneurs use the Instagram-based business model.
In 2020, Kuwait's domestic travel and tourism spending reached $6.1 billion (up from $1.6 billion in 2019) with family tourism a rapidly growing segment. The WTTC named Kuwait as one of the world's fastest-growing countries in travel and tourism GDP in 2019, with 11.6% year-on-year growth. In 2016, the tourism industry generated nearly $500 million in revenue. In 2015, tourism accounted for 1.5 percent of the GDP.
The Amiri Diwan recently inaugurated the new Kuwait National Cultural District (KNCD), which comprises Sheikh Abdullah Al Salem Cultural Centre, Sheikh Jaber Al Ahmad Cultural Centre, Al Shaheed Park, and Al Salam Palace. With a capital cost of more than US$1 billion, the project is one of the largest cultural investments in the world. In November 2016, the Sheikh Jaber Al Ahmad Cultural Centre opened. It is the largest cultural centre and opera house in the Middle East. The Kuwait National Cultural District is a member of the Global Cultural Districts Network. The annual "Hala Febrayer" festival attracts many tourists from neighboring GCC countries, and includes a variety of events including music concerts, parades, and carnivals. The festival is a month-long commemoration of the liberation of Kuwait, and runs from 1 to 28 February. Liberation Day itself is celebrated on 26 February.
Kuwait has an extensive and modern network of highways. Roadways extended 5,749 km (3,572 mi), of which 4,887 km (3,037 mi) is paved. There are more than 2 million passenger cars, and 500,000 commercial taxis, buses, and trucks in use. On major highways the maximum speed is 120 km/h (75 mph). Since there is no railway system in the country, most people travel by automobiles.
The country's public transportation network consists almost entirely of bus routes. The state owned Kuwait Public Transportation Company was established in 1962. It runs local bus routes across Kuwait as well as longer distance services to other Gulf states. The main private bus company is CityBus, which operates about 20 routes across the country. Another private bus company, Kuwait Gulf Link Public Transport Services, was started in 2006. It runs local bus routes across Kuwait and longer distance services to neighbouring Arab countries.
There are two airports in Kuwait. Kuwait International Airport serves as the principal hub for international air travel. State-owned Kuwait Airways is the largest airline in the country. A portion of the airport complex is designated as Al Mubarak Air Base, which contains the headquarters of the Kuwait Air Force, as well as the Kuwait Air Force Museum. In 2004, the first private airline of Kuwait, Jazeera Airways, was launched. In 2005, the second private airline, Wataniya Airways was founded.
Kuwait has one of the largest shipping industries in the region. The Kuwait Ports Public Authority manages and operates ports across Kuwait. The country’s principal commercial seaports are Shuwaikh and Shuaiba which handled combined cargo of 753,334 TEU in 2006. Mina Al-Ahmadi, the largest port in the country, handles most of Kuwait's oil exports. Mubarak Al Kabeer Port in Bubiyan Island is currently under construction. The port is expected to handle 2 million TEU when operations start.
The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2017.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The economy of Kuwait is a wealthy petroleum-based economy. Kuwait is one of the richest countries in the world. The Kuwaiti dinar is the highest-valued unit of currency in the world. According to the World Bank, Kuwait is the fifth richest country in the world by gross national income per capita. Kuwait's economy is the world's twentieth-largest by GDP per capita. As a result of various diversification policies, petroleum now accounts for 43% of the total GDP and 70% of export earnings. Steel manufacturing is Kuwait's second biggest industry. Kuwait is self-sufficient in steel.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "In 2019, Kuwait's main export products were mineral fuels including oil (89.1% of total exports), aircraft and spacecraft (4.3%), organic chemicals (3.2%), plastics (1.2%), iron and steel (0.2%), gems and precious metals (0.1%), machinery including computers (0.1%), aluminum (0.1%), copper (0.1%), and salt, sulphur, stone and cement (0.1%). Kuwait was the world's biggest exporter of sulfonated, nitrated and nitrosated hydrocarbons in 2019. Kuwait was ranked 63rd out of 157 countries in the 2019 Economic Complexity Index (ECI). Iraq was Kuwait's leading export market in 2019 and food/agricultural products accounted for 94.2% of total export commodities.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In 1934, the Emir of Kuwait granted an oil concession to the Kuwait Oil Co. (KOC), jointly owned by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (later British Petroleum Company) and Gulf Oil Corporation In 1976, the Kuwaiti Government nationalized KOC.",
"title": "Petroleum and natural gas"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC), an integrated international oil company, is the parent company of the government's operations in the petroleum sector, and includes Kuwait Oil Company, which produced oil and gas; Kuwait National Petroleum Co., refining and domestic sales; Petrochemical Industries Co., producing ammonia and urea; Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Co., with several concessions in developing countries; Kuwait Oil Tanker Co.; and Santa Fe International Corp. The latter, purchased outright in 1982, gives KPC a worldwide presence in the petroleum industry.",
"title": "Petroleum and natural gas"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "KPC also has purchased from Gulf Oil Co. refineries and associated service stations in the Benelux nations and Scandinavia, as well as storage facilities and a network of service stations in Italy. In 1987, KPC bought a 19% share in British Petroleum, which was later reduced to 10%. KPC markets its products in Europe under the brand Q8 and is interested in the markets of the United States and Japan.",
"title": "Petroleum and natural gas"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Kuwait has about 94 billion barrels (14.9 km) of recoverable oil reserves. Estimated capacity, before the war, was about 2.4 million barrels per day (380×10^ m/d). During the Iraqi occupation, Kuwait's oil-producing capacity was reduced to practically nothing. However, tremendous recovery and improvements have been made since. Oil production was 1.5 million barrels per day (240×10^ m/d) by the end of 1992, and pre-war capacity was restored in 1993. Kuwait's production capacity is estimated to be 2.5 million barrels per day (400×10^ m/d). Kuwait plans to increase its capacity to 3.5 million barrels per day (560×10^ m/d) by 2005.",
"title": "Petroleum and natural gas"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "As part of Kuwait Vision 2035, Kuwait aims to position itself as a global hub for the petrochemical industry. Al Zour Refinery is the largest refinery in the Middle East. It is Kuwait's largest environmental friendly oil refinery. Al Zour Refinery is a Kuwait-China cooperation project under the Belt and Road Initiative.",
"title": "Environmental sustainability"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Al Zour LNG Terminal is the Middle East's largest import terminal for liquefied natural gas. It is the world's largest capacity LNG storage and regasification green field project. The project has attracted investments worth US$3 billion. Other megaprojects include biofuel and clean fuels. Sulaibiya Wastewater Treatment Plant is the world's largest wastewater purification plant using energy efficient membrane technology. Umm Al Hayman Wastewater Treatment Plant is one of the world's largest ecologically sustainable sewage treatment plants. With an estimated value of US$1.8 billion, it is a pioneering PPP megaproject. It was the region's fourth largest megaproject awarded in 2020.",
"title": "Environmental sustainability"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Kuwait Environmental Remediation Programme (KERP) is the largest environmental remediation project in the world. There are various other major infrastructure projects under Kuwait Vision 2035. Kuwait is currently building the largest judicial building in the Middle East, the new judicial complexes are environment friendly. Other major landmark developments include KIPCO's Hessah Al Mubarak District.",
"title": "Environmental sustainability"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "As part of Kuwait Vision 2035, Kuwait inaugurated its largest renewable energy park, Shagaya Renewable Energy Park, which includes concentrated solar power, solar photovoltaic, and wind power plants. The park consists of four phases with a target capacity of 4,000 MW. It is set to be one of the largest renewable energy parks in the world.",
"title": "Environmental sustainability"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Steel manufacturing is Kuwait's second biggest industry. United Steel Industrial Company (KWT Steel) is Kuwait's main steel manufacturing company, the company caters to all of Kuwait's domestic market demands (particularly construction). Kuwait is self-sufficient in steel.",
"title": "Steel manufacturing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In 2016, Kuwait's food self-sufficiency ratio was 49.5% in vegetables, 38.7% in meat, 12.4% in diary, 24.9% in fruits, and 0.4% in cereals. 8.5% of Kuwait's entire territory consists of agricultural land, while arable land covers 0.6% of Kuwait's entire territory. Historically, Jahra was a predominantly agricultural area. There are currently various farms in Jahra.",
"title": "Agriculture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In 2017, agriculture (including fisheries) accounted for almost 0.4 percent of the gross domestic product. Around 4 percent of the economically active population works in agriculture, almost all foreigners. The majority of farm owners are investors. The total agricultural land covered 1,521 sq km in 2014.",
"title": "Agriculture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The agriculture industry is hampered by the limited water and arable land. The government has experimented in growing food through hydroponics and carefully managed farms. However, most of the soil which was suitable for farming in south central Kuwait was destroyed when Iraqi troops set fire to oil wells in the area and created vast \"oil lakes\". Fish and shrimp are plentiful in territorial waters, and largescale commercial fishing has been undertaken locally and in the Indian Ocean.",
"title": "Agriculture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Kuwait has a leading position in the financial industry in the GCC. The Emir has promoted the idea that Kuwait should focus its energies, in terms of economic development, on the financial industry.",
"title": "Finance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The historical preeminence of Kuwait (among the Gulf monarchies) in finance dates back to the founding of the National Bank of Kuwait in 1952. The bank was the first local publicly traded corporation in the Gulf. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, an alternative stock market, trading in shares of Gulf companies, emerged in Kuwait, the Souk Al-Manakh. At its peak, its market capitalization was the third highest in the world, behind only the U.S. and Japan, and ahead of the UK and France.",
"title": "Finance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Kuwait has a large wealth-management industry that stands out in the region. Kuwaiti investment companies administer more assets than those of any other GCC country, save the much larger Saudi Arabia. The Kuwait Financial Centre, in a rough calculation, estimated that Kuwaiti firms accounted for over one-third of the total assets under management in the GCC.",
"title": "Finance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The relative strength of Kuwait in the financial industry extends to its stock market. For many years, the total valuation of all companies listed on the Kuwaiti exchange far exceeded the value of those on any other GCC bourse, except Saudi Arabia. In 2011, financial and banking companies made up more than half of the market capitalization of the Kuwaiti bourse; among all the Gulf states, the market capitalization of Kuwaiti financial-sector firms was, in total, behind only that of Saudi Arabia. In recent years, Kuwaiti investment companies have invested large percentages of their assets abroad, and their foreign assets have become substantially larger than their domestic assets.",
"title": "Finance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Kuwait is a major source of foreign economic assistance to other states through the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development, an autonomous state institution created in 1961 on the pattern of Western and international development agencies. Over the years aid was annually provided to Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, as well as the Palestine Liberation Organization. In 1974, the fund's lending mandate was expanded to include all developing countries in the world.",
"title": "Finance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) is Kuwait's sovereign wealth fund specializing in foreign investment. The KIA is the world's oldest sovereign wealth fund. Since 1953, the Kuwaiti government has directed investments into Europe, United States and Asia Pacific. In 2021, the holdings were valued at around $700 billion in assets. It was the 3rd largest sovereign wealth fund in the world.",
"title": "Finance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The KIA manages two funds: the General Reserve Fund (GRF) and Future Generations Fund (FGF). The GRF is the main treasurer for the government. It receives all state revenues and all national expenditures are paid out of this fund. The KIA does not disclose its financial assets in public, but it is estimated that the KIA has $410 billion in assets as of February 2014.",
"title": "Finance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The KIA was the main source of capital for the Kuwaiti government during the Gulf War. The Kuwaiti government relied on the KIA to pay for coalition expenses and postwar reconstruction. The KIA was worth $100 billion prior to 1990, KIA funds were depleted to $40–$50 billion after the Gulf War.",
"title": "Finance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In July 2023, Kuwait plans to create a new sovereign fund, Ciyada, in partnership with the Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA). While the value of the fund has not been specified, the KIA, which currently manages over $800 billion in assets, will play a significant role in studying and implementing the proposed fund. The aim is to develop the local economy, attract foreign investment, and finance major projects to promote economic diversification in Kuwait.",
"title": "Finance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The Future Generations Fund (FGF) was created in 1976 by transferring 50% from the general reserve fund at that time. The FGF is a saving funds for future generations. 25% of all state revenues are annually transferred to the fund.",
"title": "Finance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "All of the FGF is invested abroad, with an estimated 75% invested in the US and Europe and the rest in emerging markets, mainly China and India.",
"title": "Finance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Kuwait has a growing scientific research sector. According to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Kuwait has registered 448 patents as of 31 December 2015, Kuwait is the second largest patent producer in the world. In the early 2010s, Kuwait produced the largest number of scientific publications and patents per capita in the Arab world and OIC. The Kuwaiti government has implemented various programs to foster innovation resulting in patent rights. Between 2010 and 2014, Kuwait registered the highest growth in patents in the Arab world. The WIPO Global Innovation Index found that Kuwait ranks relatively high for its innovation efficiency ratio (which shows how much innovation output a country is getting for its inputs).",
"title": "Science and technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Kuwait was the first country in the region to implement 5G technology. Kuwait is among the world's leading countries in 5G penetration. The Chinese company Huawei has a $1.7 billion investment license in Kuwait to develop the country's ICT sector in line with the Kuwait Vision 2035 strategy.",
"title": "Science and technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Kuwait has an emerging space industry driven by the private sector.",
"title": "Space"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Kuwait's Orbital Space in collaboration with the Space Challenges Program and EnduroSat introduced an international initiative called \"Code in Space\". The initiative allows students from around the world to send and execute their own code in space. The code is transmitted from a satellite ground station to a cubesat (nanosatellite) orbiting Earth 500 km (310 mi) above sea level. The code is then executed by the satellite's onboard computer and tested under real space environment conditions. The nanosatellite is called \"QMR-KWT\" (Arabic: قمر الكويت) which means \"Moon of Kuwait\", translated from Arabic.",
"title": "Space"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "QMR-KWT launched to space on 30 June 2021 on SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket and was part of the payload of a satellite carrier called ION SCV Dauntless David by D-Orbit. It was deployed into its final orbit (Sun-synchronous orbit) on 16 July 2021. QMR-KWT is Kuwait's first satellite.",
"title": "Space"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Seven years after the launch of the world's first communications satellite, Telstar 1, Kuwait in October 1969 inaugurated the first satellite ground station in the Middle East, \"Um Alaish\". The Um Alaish satellite station complex housed several satellite ground stations including Um Alaish 1 (1969), Um Alaish 2 (1977), and Um Alaish 3 (1981). It provided satellite communication services in Kuwait until 1990 when it was destroyed by the Iraqi armed forces during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. In 2019, Kuwait's Orbital Space established an amateur satellite ground station to provide free access to signals from satellites in orbit passing over Kuwait. The station was named Um Alaish 4 to continue the legacy of \"Um Alaish\" satellite station. Um Alaish 4 is member of FUNcube distributed ground station network and the Satellite Networked Open Ground Station project (SatNOGS).",
"title": "Space"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The Kuwait Space Rocket (KSR) is a Kuwaiti project to build and launch the first suborbital liquid bi-propellant rocket in Arabia. The project is divided into two phases with two separate vehicles: an initial testing phase with KSR-1 as a test vehicle capable of reaching an altitude of 8 km (5.0 mi) and a more expansive suborbital test phase with the KSR-2 planned to fly to an altitude of 100 km (62 mi).",
"title": "Space"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Kuwait's Orbital Space in collaboration with the Kuwait Scientific Center (TSCK) introduced for the first time in Kuwait the opportunity for students to send a science experiment to space. The objectives of this initiative was to allow students to learn about (a) how science space missions are done; (b) microgravity (weightlessness) environment; (c) how to do science like a real scientist. This opportunity was made possible through Orbital Space agreement with DreamUp PBC and Nanoracks LLC, which are collaborating with NASA under a Space Act Agreement. The students' experiment was named \"Kuwait’s Experiment: E.coli Consuming Carbon Dioxide to Combat Climate Change\". The experiment was launched on SpaceX CRS-21 (SpX-21) spaceflight to the International Space Station (ISS) on 6 December 2020. Astronauts Shannon Walker (member of the ISS Expedition 64) conducted the experiment on behalf of the students.",
"title": "Space"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In July 2021, Kuwait University announced that it is launching a national satellite project as part of state-led efforts to pioneer the country's sustainable space sector.",
"title": "Space"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Kuwait has a state-funded healthcare system, which provides treatment without charge to Kuwaiti nationals. There are outpatient clinics in every residential area in Kuwait. A public insurance scheme exists to provide reduced cost healthcare to expatriates. Private healthcare providers also run medical facilities in the country, available to members of their insurance schemes. As part of Kuwait Vision 2035, many new hospitals have opened. In the years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, Kuwait invested in its health care system at a rate that was proportionally higher than most other GCC countries. As a result, the public hospital sector significantly increased its capacity. Kuwait currently has 20 public hospitals. The new Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Hospital is considered the largest hospital in the Middle East. Kuwait also has 16 private hospitals.",
"title": "Health"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In the past five years, there has been a significant rise in entrepreneurship and small business creation in Kuwait. The informal sector is also on the rise, mainly due to the popularity of Instagram businesses. In 2020, Kuwait ranked fourth in the MENA region in startup funding after the UAE, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.",
"title": "Entrepreneurship"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Many Kuwaiti entrepreneurs use the Instagram-based business model.",
"title": "Entrepreneurship"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In 2020, Kuwait's domestic travel and tourism spending reached $6.1 billion (up from $1.6 billion in 2019) with family tourism a rapidly growing segment. The WTTC named Kuwait as one of the world's fastest-growing countries in travel and tourism GDP in 2019, with 11.6% year-on-year growth. In 2016, the tourism industry generated nearly $500 million in revenue. In 2015, tourism accounted for 1.5 percent of the GDP.",
"title": "Tourism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "The Amiri Diwan recently inaugurated the new Kuwait National Cultural District (KNCD), which comprises Sheikh Abdullah Al Salem Cultural Centre, Sheikh Jaber Al Ahmad Cultural Centre, Al Shaheed Park, and Al Salam Palace. With a capital cost of more than US$1 billion, the project is one of the largest cultural investments in the world. In November 2016, the Sheikh Jaber Al Ahmad Cultural Centre opened. It is the largest cultural centre and opera house in the Middle East. The Kuwait National Cultural District is a member of the Global Cultural Districts Network. The annual \"Hala Febrayer\" festival attracts many tourists from neighboring GCC countries, and includes a variety of events including music concerts, parades, and carnivals. The festival is a month-long commemoration of the liberation of Kuwait, and runs from 1 to 28 February. Liberation Day itself is celebrated on 26 February.",
"title": "Tourism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Kuwait has an extensive and modern network of highways. Roadways extended 5,749 km (3,572 mi), of which 4,887 km (3,037 mi) is paved. There are more than 2 million passenger cars, and 500,000 commercial taxis, buses, and trucks in use. On major highways the maximum speed is 120 km/h (75 mph). Since there is no railway system in the country, most people travel by automobiles.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The country's public transportation network consists almost entirely of bus routes. The state owned Kuwait Public Transportation Company was established in 1962. It runs local bus routes across Kuwait as well as longer distance services to other Gulf states. The main private bus company is CityBus, which operates about 20 routes across the country. Another private bus company, Kuwait Gulf Link Public Transport Services, was started in 2006. It runs local bus routes across Kuwait and longer distance services to neighbouring Arab countries.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "There are two airports in Kuwait. Kuwait International Airport serves as the principal hub for international air travel. State-owned Kuwait Airways is the largest airline in the country. A portion of the airport complex is designated as Al Mubarak Air Base, which contains the headquarters of the Kuwait Air Force, as well as the Kuwait Air Force Museum. In 2004, the first private airline of Kuwait, Jazeera Airways, was launched. In 2005, the second private airline, Wataniya Airways was founded.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Kuwait has one of the largest shipping industries in the region. The Kuwait Ports Public Authority manages and operates ports across Kuwait. The country’s principal commercial seaports are Shuwaikh and Shuaiba which handled combined cargo of 753,334 TEU in 2006. Mina Al-Ahmadi, the largest port in the country, handles most of Kuwait's oil exports. Mubarak Al Kabeer Port in Bubiyan Island is currently under construction. The port is expected to handle 2 million TEU when operations start.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2017.",
"title": "Macro-Economic"
}
] |
The economy of Kuwait is a wealthy petroleum-based economy. Kuwait is one of the richest countries in the world. The Kuwaiti dinar is the highest-valued unit of currency in the world. According to the World Bank, Kuwait is the fifth richest country in the world by gross national income per capita. Kuwait's economy is the world's twentieth-largest by GDP per capita. As a result of various diversification policies, petroleum now accounts for 43% of the total GDP and 70% of export earnings. Steel manufacturing is Kuwait's second biggest industry. Kuwait is self-sufficient in steel. In 2019, Kuwait's main export products were mineral fuels including oil, aircraft and spacecraft (4.3%), organic chemicals (3.2%), plastics (1.2%), iron and steel (0.2%), gems and precious metals (0.1%), machinery including computers (0.1%), aluminum (0.1%), copper (0.1%), and salt, sulphur, stone and cement (0.1%). Kuwait was the world's biggest exporter of sulfonated, nitrated and nitrosated hydrocarbons in 2019. Kuwait was ranked 63rd out of 157 countries in the 2019 Economic Complexity Index (ECI). Iraq was Kuwait's leading export market in 2019 and food/agricultural products accounted for 94.2% of total export commodities.
|
2002-02-25T15:43:11Z
|
2023-12-30T15:11:55Z
|
[
"Template:Main",
"Template:See",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Kuwait topics",
"Template:Asia in topic",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Infobox economy",
"Template:Convert",
"Template:Cvt",
"Template:World Trade Organization",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Curlie",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:OPEC",
"Template:Cite web"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Kuwait
|
16,690 |
Telecommunications in Kuwait
|
Telecommunications in Kuwait provides information about the telephone, Internet, radio, and television infrastructure in Kuwait.
Telephones - main lines in use: 514,700 (2011), 510,300 (2005)
Telephones - mobile cellular: 4.9 million (2011), 2.7 million (2007)
Telephone system:
Radio broadcast stations: AM 6, FM 11, shortwave 1 (1998)
Radios: 1.175 million (1997)
Television broadcast stations: 13 (plus several satellite channels) (1997)
Televisions: 875,000 (1997)
Internet Service Providers (ISPs): 5 (2011) Which are: Fasttelco, Gulfnet, KEMS, Mada, and Qualitynet
Internet users: 1,925,956 or 74.2% of the population (2011), 700,000 (2005)
Top-level domain: .kw
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Telecommunications in Kuwait provides information about the telephone, Internet, radio, and television infrastructure in Kuwait.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Telephones - main lines in use: 514,700 (2011), 510,300 (2005)",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Telephones - mobile cellular: 4.9 million (2011), 2.7 million (2007)",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Telephone system:",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Radio broadcast stations: AM 6, FM 11, shortwave 1 (1998)",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Radios: 1.175 million (1997)",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Television broadcast stations: 13 (plus several satellite channels) (1997)",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Televisions: 875,000 (1997)",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Internet Service Providers (ISPs): 5 (2011) Which are: Fasttelco, Gulfnet, KEMS, Mada, and Qualitynet",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Internet users: 1,925,956 or 74.2% of the population (2011), 700,000 (2005)",
"title": "Infrastructure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Top-level domain: .kw",
"title": "Infrastructure"
}
] |
Telecommunications in Kuwait provides information about the telephone, Internet, radio, and television infrastructure in Kuwait.
|
2021-01-24T18:37:35Z
|
[
"Template:Telecommunications",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Kuwait topics",
"Template:Asia topic"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_in_Kuwait
|
|
16,691 |
Transport in Kuwait
|
As a small country, local transport in Kuwait is largely road-based with one car for every 2.25 people. Bus services make up Kuwait's entire public transport network. There are seven airports in Kuwait, the largest of which and solely allocated for civil use is Kuwait International Airport. The Gulf Railway is currently under planning in Kuwait. The metro for Kuwait City is currently in the design phase. Kuwait has several maritime ports along the coast of the Persian Gulf, the largest port is Mubarak Al Kabeer Port which is currently under construction.
During the First Gulf War, a lot of Kuwait's infrastructure was damaged or destroyed.
As a nation with one car per 2.25 people, Kuwait relies heavily on its road network for transportation. The total length of paved and unpaved roads was 6,524 km in 2009. Traffic congestion is common throughout the day, particularly in Kuwait City.
The country's public transport network consists entirely of bus routes. The state-owned Kuwait Public Transportation Company was established in 1962. It runs local bus routes across Kuwait. The main private bus company is CityBus, which operates about 28 routes across the country. Another private bus company, Kuwait Gulf Link Public Transport Services, was started in 2006. It runs local bus routes across Kuwait and longer distance services to neighbouring Arab countries.
Kuwait lies on the Persian Gulf and ports include: Ash Shu'aybah, Ash Shuwaykh, Kuwait, Mina' 'Abd Allah, Mina' al Ahmadi, Mina' Su'ud, and Mubarak Al Kabeer Port.
Under China's Belt and Road Initiative, the Mubarak Al Kabeer Port is part of the first phase of the Silk City project. As of 2021, the Mubarak Al Kabeer Port is currently under construction. In September 2020, it was reported that the port is 53% complete. In March 2021, it was announced that Kuwait and Pakistan will develop linkages between Gwadar Port and Mubarak Al Kabeer Port. In April 2021, the port's first phase was completed (4 berths). As part of Mubarak Al Kabeer Port's development, Bubiyan Island will contain power plants and substations. A 5,000-megawatt power plant has already been built in Subiya, the Subiya power plant is the largest power plant in Kuwait. Mubarak Al Kabeer Port is among Kuwait's largest infrastructure projects in 2021. There is a current road project connecting Mubarak Al Kabeer Port's first phase to the existing road network in Bubiyan Island. Mubarak Al Kabeer Port's fire stations are currently under development. The port is set to be environmentally sustainable.
total: 38 ships (1000 GT or over) 2,294,233 GT/3,730,776 DWT ships by type: bulk carrier 2, cargo 1, container 6, liquefied gas 5, livestock carrier 4, petroleum tanker 20 foreign-owned: 1 (Iran 1) registered in other countries:29 (Bahrain 3, Comoros 1, Liberia 1, Libya 1, Panama 2, Qatar 7, Saudi Arabia 6, UAE 8) (2005)
There are seven airports, the largest of which and solely allocated for civil use is Kuwait International Airport. Kuwait International Airport recently inaugurated two new terminals to cater to Kuwait-based airlines. Moreover, the largest Kuwait International Airport terminal (Terminal 2) is currently under construction and will expand the airport's overall capacity by 25–50 million passengers per year. The new terminal is environmentally sustainable. It is one of the world's largest environment friendly airport projects.
This is a list of airlines currently operating in Kuwait.
The increasing congestion to the country's roads has led to several railway megaprojects in Kuwait.
Kuwait City will form one terminus of the Gulf Railway, a 2,000 km (1,200 mi) railway network which will run from Kuwait to Oman, via cities across the Persian Gulf. As of 2021, the Gulf Railway project is currently under construction in Kuwait.
Mubarak Al Kabeer Port in Bubiyan Island is part of the Gulf Railway.
The Kuwait Metropolitan Rapid Transit System Project is a planned four-line metro network which will total 160 km with 69 stations. According to MEED in 2021, the metro project is currently in the design stage. It is now a PPP project under the management of the Kuwait Authority for Partnership Projects (KAPP). The government will own 10% of the project and raise 50% of the funds through an initial public offer. The remaining 40% will be held by the private developer.
Media related to Transport in Kuwait at Wikimedia Commons
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "As a small country, local transport in Kuwait is largely road-based with one car for every 2.25 people. Bus services make up Kuwait's entire public transport network. There are seven airports in Kuwait, the largest of which and solely allocated for civil use is Kuwait International Airport. The Gulf Railway is currently under planning in Kuwait. The metro for Kuwait City is currently in the design phase. Kuwait has several maritime ports along the coast of the Persian Gulf, the largest port is Mubarak Al Kabeer Port which is currently under construction.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "During the First Gulf War, a lot of Kuwait's infrastructure was damaged or destroyed.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "As a nation with one car per 2.25 people, Kuwait relies heavily on its road network for transportation. The total length of paved and unpaved roads was 6,524 km in 2009. Traffic congestion is common throughout the day, particularly in Kuwait City.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The country's public transport network consists entirely of bus routes. The state-owned Kuwait Public Transportation Company was established in 1962. It runs local bus routes across Kuwait. The main private bus company is CityBus, which operates about 28 routes across the country. Another private bus company, Kuwait Gulf Link Public Transport Services, was started in 2006. It runs local bus routes across Kuwait and longer distance services to neighbouring Arab countries.",
"title": "Road transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Kuwait lies on the Persian Gulf and ports include: Ash Shu'aybah, Ash Shuwaykh, Kuwait, Mina' 'Abd Allah, Mina' al Ahmadi, Mina' Su'ud, and Mubarak Al Kabeer Port.",
"title": "Ports and harbors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Under China's Belt and Road Initiative, the Mubarak Al Kabeer Port is part of the first phase of the Silk City project. As of 2021, the Mubarak Al Kabeer Port is currently under construction. In September 2020, it was reported that the port is 53% complete. In March 2021, it was announced that Kuwait and Pakistan will develop linkages between Gwadar Port and Mubarak Al Kabeer Port. In April 2021, the port's first phase was completed (4 berths). As part of Mubarak Al Kabeer Port's development, Bubiyan Island will contain power plants and substations. A 5,000-megawatt power plant has already been built in Subiya, the Subiya power plant is the largest power plant in Kuwait. Mubarak Al Kabeer Port is among Kuwait's largest infrastructure projects in 2021. There is a current road project connecting Mubarak Al Kabeer Port's first phase to the existing road network in Bubiyan Island. Mubarak Al Kabeer Port's fire stations are currently under development. The port is set to be environmentally sustainable.",
"title": "Ports and harbors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "total: 38 ships (1000 GT or over) 2,294,233 GT/3,730,776 DWT ships by type: bulk carrier 2, cargo 1, container 6, liquefied gas 5, livestock carrier 4, petroleum tanker 20 foreign-owned: 1 (Iran 1) registered in other countries:29 (Bahrain 3, Comoros 1, Liberia 1, Libya 1, Panama 2, Qatar 7, Saudi Arabia 6, UAE 8) (2005)",
"title": "Ports and harbors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "There are seven airports, the largest of which and solely allocated for civil use is Kuwait International Airport. Kuwait International Airport recently inaugurated two new terminals to cater to Kuwait-based airlines. Moreover, the largest Kuwait International Airport terminal (Terminal 2) is currently under construction and will expand the airport's overall capacity by 25–50 million passengers per year. The new terminal is environmentally sustainable. It is one of the world's largest environment friendly airport projects.",
"title": "Airports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "This is a list of airlines currently operating in Kuwait.",
"title": "Airports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The increasing congestion to the country's roads has led to several railway megaprojects in Kuwait.",
"title": "Railways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Kuwait City will form one terminus of the Gulf Railway, a 2,000 km (1,200 mi) railway network which will run from Kuwait to Oman, via cities across the Persian Gulf. As of 2021, the Gulf Railway project is currently under construction in Kuwait.",
"title": "Railways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Mubarak Al Kabeer Port in Bubiyan Island is part of the Gulf Railway.",
"title": "Railways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The Kuwait Metropolitan Rapid Transit System Project is a planned four-line metro network which will total 160 km with 69 stations. According to MEED in 2021, the metro project is currently in the design stage. It is now a PPP project under the management of the Kuwait Authority for Partnership Projects (KAPP). The government will own 10% of the project and raise 50% of the funds through an initial public offer. The remaining 40% will be held by the private developer.",
"title": "Railways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Media related to Transport in Kuwait at Wikimedia Commons",
"title": "External links"
}
] |
As a small country, local transport in Kuwait is largely road-based with one car for every 2.25 people. Bus services make up Kuwait's entire public transport network. There are seven airports in Kuwait, the largest of which and solely allocated for civil use is Kuwait International Airport. The Gulf Railway is currently under planning in Kuwait. The metro for Kuwait City is currently in the design phase. Kuwait has several maritime ports along the coast of the Persian Gulf, the largest port is Mubarak Al Kabeer Port which is currently under construction. During the First Gulf War, a lot of Kuwait's infrastructure was damaged or destroyed.
|
2002-02-25T15:43:11Z
|
2023-12-29T23:03:40Z
|
[
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Cite magazine",
"Template:Commons category-inline",
"Template:Convert",
"Template:Portal",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Citation",
"Template:Cbignore",
"Template:Asia topic",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Kuwait topics"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Kuwait
|
16,692 |
Kuwait Armed Forces
|
The Kuwait Armed Forces (Arabic: القوات المسلحة الكويتية, romanized: Al-Quwwat Al-Musallahah Al-Kuwaitiyah) are the military forces of the State of Kuwait. They consist of the Kuwait Air Force, the Kuwait Army, the Kuwait Navy & the Kuwait National Guard. The governing bodies are the Kuwait Ministry of Defense, the Kuwait Ministry of Interior, and the Kuwait Fire Service Directorate. The Emir of Kuwait is the commander-in-chief of all defense forces while the Crown Prince is the deputy commander.
The early military structured organization which first dealt with security and the military following the engagements of Kuwait Army's infantry and cavalry protecting the three mounted defensive walls (third defensive wall mounted in 1920) of Kuwait prior and following to The Great War, was the Directorate of Public Security Force, formed during the Interwar period and mainly after World War II. The Directorate of Public Security Force already included the partnership integration of the Kuwait Army and Directorate of Police as independent forces following the formation of the first cabinet on June 17, 1962, after the independence. In 1953, the Kuwait Army split from the Directorate of Public Security Force; the latter merged with the Directorate of Police in 1959, giving formation to the newly established Kuwait Ministry of Interior. The Ministry of Interior includes the Kuwait Coast Guard and has several military commanders, designated by government protocol as assistant ministers undersecretaries, each reporting to the Minister of Interior who is designated by protocol as Deputy Prime Minister of the State of Kuwait.
Upon splitting from the Directorate of Public Security Force in 1953, the Kuwait Army acted as the de facto command leadership of the available armed forces since establishment. The Kuwait Army was created in 1949, thirteen years before the ministry and partly mainly at the time composed almost entirely of land force components with the Kuwait Air Force being created in 1953. With the creation of the Kuwait Armed Forces in 1963, the Kuwait Ministry of Defense eventually became and is the governing body of the Kuwait Armed Forces, which includes the Kuwait Land Force, the Kuwait 25th Commando Brigade, the Kuwait Military Police Authority, the Kuwait Emiri Guard Authority, the Kuwait Air Force, the Kuwait Naval Force, the Kuwait Military Fire Service Directorate and others. Each armed force at disposition of the respective combat commander, reports to the Chief of General Staff of the Kuwait Armed Forces who later reports to the Minister of Defense, designated also by protocol as Deputy Prime Minister of the State of Kuwait.
The Kuwait National Guard, however, is an independent combat institution from the Ministry of Defense and Interior and acts independently under the guidance, discretion and disposition of the respective leadership, supporting the Military of the State of Kuwait as needed and required. The Kuwait Fire Service Directorate, is also an independent public fire fighting body with military ranks and ribbons identifications.
The three main military arms of Kuwait are the Kuwait Land Force, the Kuwait Air Force, and the Kuwait Naval Force, which includes the Kuwait Commando Marine Units. In addition, there are other independent and ancillary military formations. The independent formations include the Kuwait Emiri Guard, which is an independent combat force dating back to the eighteenth century (as the Rulers own Guards); and the 25th Commando Brigade, an independent commando combat brigade. Ancillary formations include the Kuwait Military Police and the Kuwait Military Fire Service Directorate.
The Kuwait National Guard, considered a combat formation, is independent of the Kuwait Armed Forces (and the Kuwait Ministry of Interior, which maintains several formations of its own, including the Kuwait Land Border Force and the Kuwait Coast Guard) and is the main internal and border protection security force.
According to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, in 2007, the Kuwait Land Force had around 11,000 personnel, the Kuwait Air Force 2,500, and the Kuwait Navy 10 patrol and coastal craft, and there were 23,000 reservists for all services not including uniformed men and women of the Ministry of Interior and military of the Fire Service Directorate. There were 6,600 paramilitary Kuwait National Guard forces. It was considered that, although the Military of the State of Kuwait remained small per speculated policies and analysis, training and military readiness were taken seriously and were effective at the brigade and squadron level. The combat operational doctrine is different amongst the various combat forces forming and is highly dependent on operational capabilities and general manning formations within sizes and types of equipment packing.
In 1950 Emir Abdullah Al-Salim Al-Sabah ordered the capabilities of the Armed Forces to be developed to deal with external threats. Accordingly, Abdullah Mubarak Al-Sabah was appointed Commander General of the Kuwait Public Security Force, the newly designated Kuwait Army and the initial forming of the Armed services.
In 1951 the Bren Gun entered into service with the Kuwait Public Security Department, followed in 1952 by the Daimler Armoured Car, both primarily with the Army (future land force).
In 1953 the border and security force was named the Kuwait Army and split from the Directorate of Public Security Force, and the latter merged with the Directorate of Police to form the preliminaries of the Ministry of Interior. Members of the previous forces became members either of the army or merged with police forces and the Directorate of Public Security Force within the Interior Ministry. The Kuwait Army was headed by Mubarak Abdullah Al-Jaber Al-Sabah who had recently returned from military training in the United Kingdom and reported to Abdullah Mubarak Al-Sabah.
In 1953 Abdullah Mubarak Al-Sabah established the first Kuwait Flying Club. The flying club was part of the Civil Aviation Directorate and graduated the first batch of Kuwaiti pilots in 1954; these later attended advanced training in the United Kingdom.
In 1954, Mubarak Abdullah Al-Jaber Al-Sabah was appointed Deputy head commander of the Kuwait Army, reporting to Abdullah Mubarak Al-Sabah. During that same year, Saleh Al-Mohammed Al-Sabah returned from the United Kingdom and was assigned as commanding officer at headquarters. Also in 1954 eight Auster aircraft entered into service with the Kuwait Flying Club for purposes of preliminary training.
In 1956, the Kuwait Army officially moved to headquarters and was equipped with artillery for the first time. Also during the same year, a new training center was established for the Kuwait Army.
The Kuwait Army split from the Directorate of Public Security Force in 1953; subsequently, the latter merged with Directorate of Police to form Directorate of Public Security and Police in 1959; following the demolition of the third defensive wall of Kuwait in 1957 through a ministerial decree for the expansion of Kuwait City; which later formed the Kuwait Ministry of Interior including the Kuwait Police. The Army was the first branch of what became the Armed Forces formed mainly of land force components. In the same year, the Army signed on the procurement of the Centurion tank, and two de Havilland DH.104 Dove monoplanes entered into service in the newly formed Air Force.
In 1958 Kuwaiti officers were sent to the Military Academies in Egypt and Iraq to train, and the Kuwait Army underwent its first alert following the coup of Abdul Karim Qasim. In 1959 the Kuwait Army set up its first mechanized combat brigade, the Kuwait 6th Mechanized Brigade, known later as the Kuwait 6th Liberation Mechanized Brigade, following the liberation of Kuwait during the Gulf War.
After 62 years as a British protectorate, Kuwait declared independence in 1961. Iraq immediately claimed that Kuwait was actually an Iraqi province, and threatened to invade to implement the claim. Britain flew troops into the newly independent country to forestall Iraq, an operation called Operation Vantage.
In 1961, Field Marshal Abdullah Mubarak Al-Sabah, the Commander General of the Army was followed by the leadership of Brigadier General Mubarak Abdullah Al-Jaber Al-Sabah and his deputy Colonel Saleh Mohammed Al-Sabah who stepped in to take part in Operation Vantage along with the already active Kuwait 25th Commando Brigade as the Army was put on their second alert phase. Also during the same year, the Kuwait Flying Club was separated from the Civilian Aviation Directorate and the Kuwait Air Force was officially enacted. Also in 1961, the Universal Carrier was retired from the Kuwait Army. Over the following years and through combat experiences; Kuwait built a small effective military force including a land force, navy, air force, national guard, existing police force and fire service directorate.
In 1962 the Kuwait Army activated both the Kuwait 35th Shaheed Armored Brigade and the Kuwait 15th Mubarak Armored Brigade which were considered the second and third functioning armored brigades in service.
During that same year, the Kuwait Army held the first military parade in recognition of the independence of Kuwait, and the BAC Jet Provost entered into service with the Kuwaiti Air Force. Also in 1962, the Kuwait Police became an integral component of the Kuwait Ministry of Interior.
In 1963, an organizational Amiri Decree was issued, enacting officially Chief of General Staff Headquarters of the Kuwait Armed Forces.
Similarly, an Amiri Decree was issued to appoint Major General Mubarak Abdullah Al-Jaber Al-Sabah to the position of Chief of General Staff of the newly formed Kuwait Armed Forces. During the same year, the subsonic British Hawker Hunter jet aircraft and the de Havilland Canada DHC-4 Caribou transport aircraft entered into service with the Kuwait Air Force.
In 1965 Brigadier General Saleh Al-Mohammed Al-Sabah was appointed as the first Deputy Chief of General Staff of the Kuwait Armed Forces.
In 1966, the headquarters of the Kuwait Military Hospital was opened. In 1967, the Chief of General Staff Major General Mubarak Abdullah Al-Jaber Al-Sabah appointed his deputy Brigadier General Saleh Mohammed Al-Sabah as acting commander of a hand-picked brigade from the Kuwait Armed Forces, mainly the elite of the Kuwait Army. Attached also to the elite brigade was Sheikh Fahad Al-Ahmed Al-Jaber Al-Sabah as acting commander by delegation of the 2nd Commando Battalion of the Kuwait 25th Commando Brigade. In 1967 several Arab nations were at war with the State of Israel in the Six-Day War. Kuwait did not openly participate, but a contingent from the Army took part in fighting in the central sector; Kuwaiti participation was too small to have any significant impact; nevertheless, going from the principle of Arab solidarity, the various combat operational unit assets of the Kuwait Army exercised their principle of solidarity and completed their mission. The assembled Yarmouk Brigade participated on the Egyptian Front, the first Kuwaiti military unit to fight outside the territory of Kuwait.
On June 6, 1967, the Kuwait National Guard was established under the leadership of and guidance of Sheikh Salem Al-Ali Al-Sabah. On July 1, the War of Attrition against the State of Israel commenced while the Yarmouk brigade was engaged on the Egyptian Front. In 1968, Kuwaiti military authorities established the Kuwait Military Academy.
In 1969, the Kuwait Armed Forces placed the English Electric Lightning supersonic jet fighter aircraft and the Bell 206 and Bell 204/205 (mainly the 205) helicopters into service with the Kuwaiti Air Force.
In 1970, the Kuwait Armed Forces suffered seventeen fatalities in fighting against Israeli forces in Egypt. One man was killed in April and sixteen more were killed in June. During the same year, the Kuwait Air Force placed BAC Strikemaster light attack jets into service and the following year took delivery of Lockheed C-130 Hercules transport aircraft.
In 1972, the Kuwait Army introduced the Vickers MBT main battle tank series, and the Kuwait Armed Forces trained Egyptian pilots and technicians through the Kuwait Air Force on the English Electric Lightning.
In 1973, the Kuwait Armed Forces entered into their third alert phase with the beginning of the 1973 Samita border skirmish which led to a significant change in the operational capabilities of the Armed Forces.
Also in 1973, the leadership of the Armed Forces found itself battle readying on two fronts. While components of the Armed Forces were readying to fight following the skirmish on the Kuwaiti border, Kuwait sent a token force to participate on the West Bank of the Jordan River alongside the Iraqi Armed Forces on the Egyptian and Syrian fronts during the 1973 October War against the State of Israel (also known as the Yom Kippur war), being especially heavily combat engaged on the Syrian front. As in 1967, Kuwaiti participation was too small to have any significant impact; nevertheless as in 1967, the various combat operational unit assets forming, exercised their Arab principle of solidarity and completed their mission. During 1973 the Kuwait Armed Forces officially enacted the Kuwait Naval Armed Service; mainly the Kuwait Navy.
In 1973 the leadership of the Armed Forces led a double fronted war with and against the same forming Arab belligerent for the State of Kuwait. The leadership led the Kuwait Armed Forces brigades through their combat commanders engaged on both Syrian and Egyptian fronts during the war against Israel with and alongside the Iraqi Armed Forces while simultaneously part leading and engaging the remainder of the Kuwaiti forces on the Kuwaiti border due to the effects of the 1973 Sanita combat engagement.
One year later in 1974 and as a result of unpredictable conflicting crises, authorities enacted a new plan to expand the Kuwait Armed Forces even further. During the same year, Kuwait Armed Forces introduced the Aérospatiale Gazelle and Puma series helicopters to the Kuwait Air Force.
With the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, units of the Kuwait 25th Commando Brigade were sent to Lebanon to protect mainly the State of Kuwait Embassy mission in Beirut. On another hand, a United Nations multinational peace deterrence force was formed by the United Kingdom, United States, France and Italy. The United Kingdom's contingents of the Multinational Force in Lebanon included Her Majesty's 1st The Queen's Dragoon Guards. United States formations featured contingents of the U.S. Navy including the United States Marine Corps, Air Force and Army. France's components included the French Air Force, French Army, French Navy including Aéronavale and French Regular and Foreign paratrooper regiments, companies, units including the 1st Parachute Hussard Regiment, the 17th Parachute Engineer Regiment, the 35th Parachute Artillery Regiment, the 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment, others along with the 1st Foreign Regiment, the 1st Foreign Cavalry Regiment and the 2nd Foreign Infantry Regiment of the French Foreign Legion. The Multinational Force in Lebanon also included Italian paratroopers from the Folgore Brigade, infantry units from the Bersaglieri regiments and Italian Marines of the San Marco Battalion.
In the parallel diplomatical couloir of the United Nations peace initiative force and mainly at the level of leading Arab international diplomacy and humanitarianism; the State of Kuwait support participated in bringing the Lebanese Civil War to a halt (1975–1990).
A mission for this purpose was led by Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, then Minister of Foreign Affairs of the State of Kuwait, during the reign of Emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah.
During 1975, Kuwait defense authorities enacted the establishment of the first Kuwait naval base. During the same year, Kuwait Armed Forces signed on the delivery of the MIM-23 Hawk surface-to-air missile system and merged the Air Defense component to the Kuwait Air Force. The de Havilland Canada DHC-4 Caribou was retired from service.
In 1976, the Kuwait Armed Forces took delivery of Dassault Mirage F1s to be operated by the Kuwait Air Force. During the same year, the Kuwait Air Force retired the Bell 206 and Bell 204/205 from service.
In 1977, the Kuwait Armed Forces initiated the first drill training with the United States Armed Forces. During the same year, authorities enacted the Ahmed Al Jaber Air Base, officially opened in 1979, and Ali Al Salem Air Base, officially opened in 1980. During the year of 1977, the Kuwait Armed Forces retired several equipment operated by the Air Force and Army and gained one new operating equipment. The English Electric Lightning and Hawker Hunter were retired by the Kuwait Air Force and Douglas A-4 Skyhawks were introduced; while the Centurion Tanks were given to Somalia by the Army, as deliveries of Chieftain MBT started to arrive.
In 1978, the Kuwait Navy was created and designated as the sea-based component of the Kuwait Armed Forces. During the same period, the Kuwait Army entered into service the M113 armored personnel carrier, the 9K52 Luna-M short-range artillery rocket system and the M109 howitzer.
In 1980, the Iran–Iraq War broke out and the Kuwait Armed Forces entered into their fourth alert phase. During the same year, the Kuwait Armed Forces signed on the procurement of naval warships for the Kuwait Navy.
In 1983, the Kuwait Armed Forces carried out the first air joint training with the Royal Saudi Air Force using Douglas A-4 Skyhawks.
In 1984, the Kuwait Armed Forces enter the short-range tactical surface-to-air missile system 9K33 Osa in service to be operated by the Kuwait Air Force. During the same year, the ordered naval warships arrived and were directly commissioned by the Kuwait Naval Force.
In 1988, the Kuwait Land Force was officially designated as the land component of the Kuwait Armed Forces. The Kuwait Armed Forces were removed from their alert phase with the ending of the Iran-Iraq War. The eight-year fourth alert phase was the longest in the Armed Forces' history. With the ending of the Iran-Iraq War, the Kuwait Army adopted the BMP-2 infantry combat vehicle.
In 1989, the Kuwait Armed Forces signed on the delivery of F/A-18 Hornets and launched the opening of the new Kuwaiti Military Hospital.
On 2 August 1990, Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait. The larger Iraqi army brushed aside resistance by the 20,000-strong Kuwait Armed Forces with heavy casualties; after two days, Kuwait had been fully conquered. There were some instances of especially heroic resistance, particularly by combat aircraft pilots. Kuwaiti Forces, principally the Kuwait 35th Shaheed (Martyr) Armored Brigade of the Kuwait Army, engaged in the Battle of the Bridges near Al Jahra under Colonel Salem Masoud Al-Sorour, and the Kuwait Emiri Guards were engaged in the Battle of Dasman Palace with the Emir's half-brother Sheikh Fahad Al-Ahmed Al-Jaber Al-Sabah.
Iraqi forces seized most of the heavy military equipment of the Kuwaiti military and used it against the coalition forces. This included the entire navy, which was sunk by coalition forces; tanks and armoured personnel carriers were also seized. While the Iraqis were required to return seized equipment after their defeat, most of it was damaged beyond repair. Only the air force escaped destruction, as many of its aircraft had escaped to Saudi Arabia.
In the same year, Kuwait was part of a U.S.-led military coalition formed in response to the invasion which expelled Iraq from Kuwait in what became known as the Gulf War or First Persian Gulf War. Operation Desert Storm was launched by the coalition. Douglas A-4 Skyhawks of the Kuwait Air Force destroyed several Iraqi Naval ships trying to infiltrate into Bubiyan Island. The Kuwait Armed Forces commissioned and entered into service the M-84 battle tank during the attack on Iraqi forces in Saudi Arabia.
After the four-week air campaign, coalition forces launched the ground offensive. They quickly penetrated deep into Iraq, with the Legion taking the Al Salman Airport, meeting little resistance. The war ended after a hundred hours of fighting on the ground, which resulted in very light casualties for the Legion.
U.S. President George H. W. Bush condemned the invasion and led efforts to drive out the Iraqi forces. Authorized by the United Nations Security Council, an American-led coalition of 34 nations led by Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr. fought the Gulf War to liberate Kuwait. Following several weeks of aerial bombardment, a U.S.-led United Nations (UN) coalition began a ground assault on 23 February 1991 that completely removed Iraqi forces from Kuwait in four days. After liberation, the UN, under Security Council Resolution 687, demarcated the Iraq-Kuwait boundary on the basis of the 1932 and the 1963 agreements between the two states. In November 1994, Iraq formally accepted the UN-demarcated border with Kuwait, which had been further spelled out in Security Council Resolutions 773 (1992) and 833 (1993).
There was an exodus of Palestinian from Kuwait during and after the Gulf War. During the Iraqi occupation more than 200,000 Palestinians fled Kuwait due to harassment, intimidation by Iraqi security forces, and being dismissed from their employment due to Iraqi influence. After the Gulf War, the Kuwaiti authorities forcibly pressured nearly 200,000 Palestinians to leave Kuwait in 1991. This was in response to the alignment of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and the PLO with Iraqi dictator and invader of Kuwait Saddam Hussein. The Palestinians who fled Kuwait were Jordanians naturalized citizens.
After the liberation, Kuwait became a close military partner of the United States, Britain and France.
Kuwait entered into a ten-year defense cooperation agreement with the United States in September 1991, and later with the United Kingdom and France. The defense cooperation with the United States, the United Kingdom and France is done at the training level in the foreign country and the joint military exercise level on Kuwaiti soil.
The agreement with the United States also includes port access, military equipment storage, and joint training and exercises. The agreement did not officially provide for the stationing of United States service personnel in Kuwait, as the 1,500 US personnel remaining after the Gulf War were scheduled to leave within a few months.
In 1992, the Kuwait Armed Forces initiated joint structuring of its various Armed Forces. In the same year, F/A-18 Hornet aircraft were delivered and entered official service with the Kuwaiti Air Force.
In 1994, the Kuwait Armed Forces entered their fifth alert phase with the beginning of the Iraq disarmament crisis in October, and the Kuwait Air Force signed on the delivery of Starburst missile systems.
In 1995, the Desert Warrior tracked armoured vehicle and the BM-30 Smerch System entered into service with the Kuwait Army.
In 1996, the M1A2 Abrams main battle tank and the BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicle entered Kuwaiti service. During the same year, the Mubarak al-Abdullah Joint Command and Staff College (Arabic: كلية مبارك العبدالله للقيادة و الأركان المشتركة - دولة الكويت), named in memory of Lieutenant General Mubarak Abdullah Al-Jaber Al-Sabah (1934–1987), opened.
Following Operation Desert Strike in 1996, Kuwait agreed to a United States Battalion Task Force to be permanently stationed in Kuwait. These US Army Intrinsic Action (later called Operation Desert Spring on 1 October 1999) rotations and US Marine Corps EAGER MACE rotations conducted combined training with the Kuwait Land Forces and other coalition partners. In addition, US Special Operations Forces conducted Iris Gold rotations to train and assist other Kuwaiti military units.
In 1997, the Kuwait Armed Forces entered into service the MIM-104 Patriot surface-to-air missile (SAM) system with the Kuwait Air Force.
In 1998, the Kuwait Armed Forces made an organizational change in command between the Chief of General Staff and his various assistants through the chains of command. During the same year, the Kuwait Armed Forces enter into their sixth alert phase with the December 1998 bombing of Iraq (code-named Operation Desert Fox) between the United States, the United Kingdom and Iraq.
In 1999, during the reign of Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, the General Staff Headquarters of the Kuwait Army commemorated the 50th Anniversary Golden jubilee of the Kuwait Armed Forces under the leadership of the Commander-in-chief, the Emir of Kuwait, and the directives of the Chief of the General Staff. Newly ordered armored Naval warships were received and directly commissioned by the Kuwait Navy and Coast Guard.
After the War on Terror began with military campaigns following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Kuwait was declared one of fifteen major non-NATO allies of the United States by US President George W. Bush.
During the Iraq War, the Military of Kuwait played an important role in supporting the logistical operations of the United States Armed Forces engaged in military operations in Iraq.
In May 2003, the Kuwait Air Force commemorated their 50th Anniversary Golden jubilee under the leadership of the Commander-in-chief, the Emir of Kuwait.
In June 2011, the Kuwait Emiri Guard commemorated their 50th Anniversary Golden jubilee under the leadership of the Commander-in-chief, and the Emir of Kuwait.
In November 2011, the Kuwait Naval Force commemorated their 50th Anniversary Golden jubilee under the leadership of the Commander-in-chief, the Emir of Kuwait.
The Military of Kuwait went on alert as a result of the 2015 Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen by a coalition of forces of Arab countries including Kuwait, which contributed aircraft of the Kuwaiti Air Force. The military, National Guard, Kuwait Police, and Fire Service Directorate activated defense plans to strengthen internal security measures. Defense measures also included intensifying security around oil installations in Kuwait and abroad.
In June 2017, the Kuwait National Guard commemorated their 50th Anniversary Golden jubilee under the leadership of the Commander-in-chief, the Emir of Kuwait, and directives of Sheikh Salem Al-Ali Al-Sabah.
The Kuwait Navy Force is the main sea deterring force with naval warships sailors. The navy includes the Kuwait Marine Corps and units of the Kuwait Commando Marine Units.
According to Jane's World's Air Forces the operational doctrine of the Kuwaiti Air Force is to provide air support to ground forces as part of a coalition, rather than alone. It is made up of 2,500 people organized into two fighter/ground attack squadrons, two fixed-wing transport squadrons, two helicopter squadrons, a utility squadron and a training/attack helicopter squadron. Although comparatively small in size, it is well equipped and trained, with Kuwaiti pilots averaging 210 flying hours per year. It does not constitute any offensive threat, but can support ground forces in defensive operations.
The Kuwait Land Force consists of active-duty personnel organized into three armored brigades, two mechanized infantry brigades, a mechanized reconnaissance brigade, an artillery brigade, a combat engineering brigade, a reserve brigade, and various other commands. The brigades are small by western standards, roughly the equivalent of small regiments or large battalions. They are "cadre forces", kept up to 80 percent of full strength, with the balance made up of reserves in case of war. Although the threat from Iraq was replaced by the War on Terror, forces structure has remained largely unchanged since 2000.
The Kuwait Emiri Guard is an independent combat authority in the Kuwait Armed Forces.
The 25th Commando Brigade is an independent commando combat brigade part of the Kuwait Armed Forces.
The Kuwait Commando Marine Units are independent commando combat units part of the Kuwait Navy in the Kuwait Armed Forces.
The Kuwaiti Military Police is an independent combat authority in the Kuwait Armed Forces.
The Kuwait National Guard, considered a combat institution, is an independent body from the Kuwait Armed Forces and is a main internal and border combating security force.
The Kuwaiti Ministry of Interior is the governing body of the Kuwait Police, considered an institution, is an independent corps from the Kuwait Armed Forces and is an internal, coastal and border security force with combating and non-combatant elements.
The Kuwait Land Border Force of the interior is a border component of the Kuwait Police.
The Kuwait Coast Guard is a sea-based component of the Kuwait Police.
The Kuwait military fire service are the military firefighters of the Kuwait Armed Forces.
The Kuwait Fire Service Directorate are the public firefighters with military ranks and ribbon identifications.
An analysis of the U.S.-Kuwaiti strategic relationship after the Iraqi invasion was published in 2007 by the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute.
The United States of America has thousands of troops stationed in Kuwait as part of a defence agreement. The largest part is the US Army Central Command (ARCENT), part of the United States Central Command (USCENTCOM).
Active US Forces facilities:
Inactive US Forces facilities:
The United States has provided military and defence technical assistance to Kuwait from both Foreign Military Sales (FMS) and commercial sources, with all transactions made by direct cash sale. The US Office of Military Cooperation in Kuwait is attached to the American Embassy and manages the FMS program. US military sales to Kuwait total US$5.5 billion since 2004. Principal US military systems purchased by the Kuwait Defence Forces as of 2014 are the Patriot missile system, F-18 Hornet fighters, and the M1A2 Main Battle Tank.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Kuwait Armed Forces (Arabic: القوات المسلحة الكويتية, romanized: Al-Quwwat Al-Musallahah Al-Kuwaitiyah) are the military forces of the State of Kuwait. They consist of the Kuwait Air Force, the Kuwait Army, the Kuwait Navy & the Kuwait National Guard. The governing bodies are the Kuwait Ministry of Defense, the Kuwait Ministry of Interior, and the Kuwait Fire Service Directorate. The Emir of Kuwait is the commander-in-chief of all defense forces while the Crown Prince is the deputy commander.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The early military structured organization which first dealt with security and the military following the engagements of Kuwait Army's infantry and cavalry protecting the three mounted defensive walls (third defensive wall mounted in 1920) of Kuwait prior and following to The Great War, was the Directorate of Public Security Force, formed during the Interwar period and mainly after World War II. The Directorate of Public Security Force already included the partnership integration of the Kuwait Army and Directorate of Police as independent forces following the formation of the first cabinet on June 17, 1962, after the independence. In 1953, the Kuwait Army split from the Directorate of Public Security Force; the latter merged with the Directorate of Police in 1959, giving formation to the newly established Kuwait Ministry of Interior. The Ministry of Interior includes the Kuwait Coast Guard and has several military commanders, designated by government protocol as assistant ministers undersecretaries, each reporting to the Minister of Interior who is designated by protocol as Deputy Prime Minister of the State of Kuwait.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Upon splitting from the Directorate of Public Security Force in 1953, the Kuwait Army acted as the de facto command leadership of the available armed forces since establishment. The Kuwait Army was created in 1949, thirteen years before the ministry and partly mainly at the time composed almost entirely of land force components with the Kuwait Air Force being created in 1953. With the creation of the Kuwait Armed Forces in 1963, the Kuwait Ministry of Defense eventually became and is the governing body of the Kuwait Armed Forces, which includes the Kuwait Land Force, the Kuwait 25th Commando Brigade, the Kuwait Military Police Authority, the Kuwait Emiri Guard Authority, the Kuwait Air Force, the Kuwait Naval Force, the Kuwait Military Fire Service Directorate and others. Each armed force at disposition of the respective combat commander, reports to the Chief of General Staff of the Kuwait Armed Forces who later reports to the Minister of Defense, designated also by protocol as Deputy Prime Minister of the State of Kuwait.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The Kuwait National Guard, however, is an independent combat institution from the Ministry of Defense and Interior and acts independently under the guidance, discretion and disposition of the respective leadership, supporting the Military of the State of Kuwait as needed and required. The Kuwait Fire Service Directorate, is also an independent public fire fighting body with military ranks and ribbons identifications.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The three main military arms of Kuwait are the Kuwait Land Force, the Kuwait Air Force, and the Kuwait Naval Force, which includes the Kuwait Commando Marine Units. In addition, there are other independent and ancillary military formations. The independent formations include the Kuwait Emiri Guard, which is an independent combat force dating back to the eighteenth century (as the Rulers own Guards); and the 25th Commando Brigade, an independent commando combat brigade. Ancillary formations include the Kuwait Military Police and the Kuwait Military Fire Service Directorate.",
"title": "Organization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The Kuwait National Guard, considered a combat formation, is independent of the Kuwait Armed Forces (and the Kuwait Ministry of Interior, which maintains several formations of its own, including the Kuwait Land Border Force and the Kuwait Coast Guard) and is the main internal and border protection security force.",
"title": "Organization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "According to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, in 2007, the Kuwait Land Force had around 11,000 personnel, the Kuwait Air Force 2,500, and the Kuwait Navy 10 patrol and coastal craft, and there were 23,000 reservists for all services not including uniformed men and women of the Ministry of Interior and military of the Fire Service Directorate. There were 6,600 paramilitary Kuwait National Guard forces. It was considered that, although the Military of the State of Kuwait remained small per speculated policies and analysis, training and military readiness were taken seriously and were effective at the brigade and squadron level. The combat operational doctrine is different amongst the various combat forces forming and is highly dependent on operational capabilities and general manning formations within sizes and types of equipment packing.",
"title": "Organization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In 1950 Emir Abdullah Al-Salim Al-Sabah ordered the capabilities of the Armed Forces to be developed to deal with external threats. Accordingly, Abdullah Mubarak Al-Sabah was appointed Commander General of the Kuwait Public Security Force, the newly designated Kuwait Army and the initial forming of the Armed services.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In 1951 the Bren Gun entered into service with the Kuwait Public Security Department, followed in 1952 by the Daimler Armoured Car, both primarily with the Army (future land force).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In 1953 the border and security force was named the Kuwait Army and split from the Directorate of Public Security Force, and the latter merged with the Directorate of Police to form the preliminaries of the Ministry of Interior. Members of the previous forces became members either of the army or merged with police forces and the Directorate of Public Security Force within the Interior Ministry. The Kuwait Army was headed by Mubarak Abdullah Al-Jaber Al-Sabah who had recently returned from military training in the United Kingdom and reported to Abdullah Mubarak Al-Sabah.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In 1953 Abdullah Mubarak Al-Sabah established the first Kuwait Flying Club. The flying club was part of the Civil Aviation Directorate and graduated the first batch of Kuwaiti pilots in 1954; these later attended advanced training in the United Kingdom.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In 1954, Mubarak Abdullah Al-Jaber Al-Sabah was appointed Deputy head commander of the Kuwait Army, reporting to Abdullah Mubarak Al-Sabah. During that same year, Saleh Al-Mohammed Al-Sabah returned from the United Kingdom and was assigned as commanding officer at headquarters. Also in 1954 eight Auster aircraft entered into service with the Kuwait Flying Club for purposes of preliminary training.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In 1956, the Kuwait Army officially moved to headquarters and was equipped with artillery for the first time. Also during the same year, a new training center was established for the Kuwait Army.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The Kuwait Army split from the Directorate of Public Security Force in 1953; subsequently, the latter merged with Directorate of Police to form Directorate of Public Security and Police in 1959; following the demolition of the third defensive wall of Kuwait in 1957 through a ministerial decree for the expansion of Kuwait City; which later formed the Kuwait Ministry of Interior including the Kuwait Police. The Army was the first branch of what became the Armed Forces formed mainly of land force components. In the same year, the Army signed on the procurement of the Centurion tank, and two de Havilland DH.104 Dove monoplanes entered into service in the newly formed Air Force.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In 1958 Kuwaiti officers were sent to the Military Academies in Egypt and Iraq to train, and the Kuwait Army underwent its first alert following the coup of Abdul Karim Qasim. In 1959 the Kuwait Army set up its first mechanized combat brigade, the Kuwait 6th Mechanized Brigade, known later as the Kuwait 6th Liberation Mechanized Brigade, following the liberation of Kuwait during the Gulf War.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "After 62 years as a British protectorate, Kuwait declared independence in 1961. Iraq immediately claimed that Kuwait was actually an Iraqi province, and threatened to invade to implement the claim. Britain flew troops into the newly independent country to forestall Iraq, an operation called Operation Vantage.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In 1961, Field Marshal Abdullah Mubarak Al-Sabah, the Commander General of the Army was followed by the leadership of Brigadier General Mubarak Abdullah Al-Jaber Al-Sabah and his deputy Colonel Saleh Mohammed Al-Sabah who stepped in to take part in Operation Vantage along with the already active Kuwait 25th Commando Brigade as the Army was put on their second alert phase. Also during the same year, the Kuwait Flying Club was separated from the Civilian Aviation Directorate and the Kuwait Air Force was officially enacted. Also in 1961, the Universal Carrier was retired from the Kuwait Army. Over the following years and through combat experiences; Kuwait built a small effective military force including a land force, navy, air force, national guard, existing police force and fire service directorate.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In 1962 the Kuwait Army activated both the Kuwait 35th Shaheed Armored Brigade and the Kuwait 15th Mubarak Armored Brigade which were considered the second and third functioning armored brigades in service.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "During that same year, the Kuwait Army held the first military parade in recognition of the independence of Kuwait, and the BAC Jet Provost entered into service with the Kuwaiti Air Force. Also in 1962, the Kuwait Police became an integral component of the Kuwait Ministry of Interior.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In 1963, an organizational Amiri Decree was issued, enacting officially Chief of General Staff Headquarters of the Kuwait Armed Forces.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Similarly, an Amiri Decree was issued to appoint Major General Mubarak Abdullah Al-Jaber Al-Sabah to the position of Chief of General Staff of the newly formed Kuwait Armed Forces. During the same year, the subsonic British Hawker Hunter jet aircraft and the de Havilland Canada DHC-4 Caribou transport aircraft entered into service with the Kuwait Air Force.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In 1965 Brigadier General Saleh Al-Mohammed Al-Sabah was appointed as the first Deputy Chief of General Staff of the Kuwait Armed Forces.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In 1966, the headquarters of the Kuwait Military Hospital was opened. In 1967, the Chief of General Staff Major General Mubarak Abdullah Al-Jaber Al-Sabah appointed his deputy Brigadier General Saleh Mohammed Al-Sabah as acting commander of a hand-picked brigade from the Kuwait Armed Forces, mainly the elite of the Kuwait Army. Attached also to the elite brigade was Sheikh Fahad Al-Ahmed Al-Jaber Al-Sabah as acting commander by delegation of the 2nd Commando Battalion of the Kuwait 25th Commando Brigade. In 1967 several Arab nations were at war with the State of Israel in the Six-Day War. Kuwait did not openly participate, but a contingent from the Army took part in fighting in the central sector; Kuwaiti participation was too small to have any significant impact; nevertheless, going from the principle of Arab solidarity, the various combat operational unit assets of the Kuwait Army exercised their principle of solidarity and completed their mission. The assembled Yarmouk Brigade participated on the Egyptian Front, the first Kuwaiti military unit to fight outside the territory of Kuwait.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "On June 6, 1967, the Kuwait National Guard was established under the leadership of and guidance of Sheikh Salem Al-Ali Al-Sabah. On July 1, the War of Attrition against the State of Israel commenced while the Yarmouk brigade was engaged on the Egyptian Front. In 1968, Kuwaiti military authorities established the Kuwait Military Academy.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In 1969, the Kuwait Armed Forces placed the English Electric Lightning supersonic jet fighter aircraft and the Bell 206 and Bell 204/205 (mainly the 205) helicopters into service with the Kuwaiti Air Force.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In 1970, the Kuwait Armed Forces suffered seventeen fatalities in fighting against Israeli forces in Egypt. One man was killed in April and sixteen more were killed in June. During the same year, the Kuwait Air Force placed BAC Strikemaster light attack jets into service and the following year took delivery of Lockheed C-130 Hercules transport aircraft.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In 1972, the Kuwait Army introduced the Vickers MBT main battle tank series, and the Kuwait Armed Forces trained Egyptian pilots and technicians through the Kuwait Air Force on the English Electric Lightning.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In 1973, the Kuwait Armed Forces entered into their third alert phase with the beginning of the 1973 Samita border skirmish which led to a significant change in the operational capabilities of the Armed Forces.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Also in 1973, the leadership of the Armed Forces found itself battle readying on two fronts. While components of the Armed Forces were readying to fight following the skirmish on the Kuwaiti border, Kuwait sent a token force to participate on the West Bank of the Jordan River alongside the Iraqi Armed Forces on the Egyptian and Syrian fronts during the 1973 October War against the State of Israel (also known as the Yom Kippur war), being especially heavily combat engaged on the Syrian front. As in 1967, Kuwaiti participation was too small to have any significant impact; nevertheless as in 1967, the various combat operational unit assets forming, exercised their Arab principle of solidarity and completed their mission. During 1973 the Kuwait Armed Forces officially enacted the Kuwait Naval Armed Service; mainly the Kuwait Navy.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In 1973 the leadership of the Armed Forces led a double fronted war with and against the same forming Arab belligerent for the State of Kuwait. The leadership led the Kuwait Armed Forces brigades through their combat commanders engaged on both Syrian and Egyptian fronts during the war against Israel with and alongside the Iraqi Armed Forces while simultaneously part leading and engaging the remainder of the Kuwaiti forces on the Kuwaiti border due to the effects of the 1973 Sanita combat engagement.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "One year later in 1974 and as a result of unpredictable conflicting crises, authorities enacted a new plan to expand the Kuwait Armed Forces even further. During the same year, Kuwait Armed Forces introduced the Aérospatiale Gazelle and Puma series helicopters to the Kuwait Air Force.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "With the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, units of the Kuwait 25th Commando Brigade were sent to Lebanon to protect mainly the State of Kuwait Embassy mission in Beirut. On another hand, a United Nations multinational peace deterrence force was formed by the United Kingdom, United States, France and Italy. The United Kingdom's contingents of the Multinational Force in Lebanon included Her Majesty's 1st The Queen's Dragoon Guards. United States formations featured contingents of the U.S. Navy including the United States Marine Corps, Air Force and Army. France's components included the French Air Force, French Army, French Navy including Aéronavale and French Regular and Foreign paratrooper regiments, companies, units including the 1st Parachute Hussard Regiment, the 17th Parachute Engineer Regiment, the 35th Parachute Artillery Regiment, the 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment, others along with the 1st Foreign Regiment, the 1st Foreign Cavalry Regiment and the 2nd Foreign Infantry Regiment of the French Foreign Legion. The Multinational Force in Lebanon also included Italian paratroopers from the Folgore Brigade, infantry units from the Bersaglieri regiments and Italian Marines of the San Marco Battalion.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In the parallel diplomatical couloir of the United Nations peace initiative force and mainly at the level of leading Arab international diplomacy and humanitarianism; the State of Kuwait support participated in bringing the Lebanese Civil War to a halt (1975–1990).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "A mission for this purpose was led by Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, then Minister of Foreign Affairs of the State of Kuwait, during the reign of Emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "During 1975, Kuwait defense authorities enacted the establishment of the first Kuwait naval base. During the same year, Kuwait Armed Forces signed on the delivery of the MIM-23 Hawk surface-to-air missile system and merged the Air Defense component to the Kuwait Air Force. The de Havilland Canada DHC-4 Caribou was retired from service.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In 1976, the Kuwait Armed Forces took delivery of Dassault Mirage F1s to be operated by the Kuwait Air Force. During the same year, the Kuwait Air Force retired the Bell 206 and Bell 204/205 from service.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "In 1977, the Kuwait Armed Forces initiated the first drill training with the United States Armed Forces. During the same year, authorities enacted the Ahmed Al Jaber Air Base, officially opened in 1979, and Ali Al Salem Air Base, officially opened in 1980. During the year of 1977, the Kuwait Armed Forces retired several equipment operated by the Air Force and Army and gained one new operating equipment. The English Electric Lightning and Hawker Hunter were retired by the Kuwait Air Force and Douglas A-4 Skyhawks were introduced; while the Centurion Tanks were given to Somalia by the Army, as deliveries of Chieftain MBT started to arrive.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In 1978, the Kuwait Navy was created and designated as the sea-based component of the Kuwait Armed Forces. During the same period, the Kuwait Army entered into service the M113 armored personnel carrier, the 9K52 Luna-M short-range artillery rocket system and the M109 howitzer.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "In 1980, the Iran–Iraq War broke out and the Kuwait Armed Forces entered into their fourth alert phase. During the same year, the Kuwait Armed Forces signed on the procurement of naval warships for the Kuwait Navy.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "In 1983, the Kuwait Armed Forces carried out the first air joint training with the Royal Saudi Air Force using Douglas A-4 Skyhawks.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In 1984, the Kuwait Armed Forces enter the short-range tactical surface-to-air missile system 9K33 Osa in service to be operated by the Kuwait Air Force. During the same year, the ordered naval warships arrived and were directly commissioned by the Kuwait Naval Force.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "In 1988, the Kuwait Land Force was officially designated as the land component of the Kuwait Armed Forces. The Kuwait Armed Forces were removed from their alert phase with the ending of the Iran-Iraq War. The eight-year fourth alert phase was the longest in the Armed Forces' history. With the ending of the Iran-Iraq War, the Kuwait Army adopted the BMP-2 infantry combat vehicle.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "In 1989, the Kuwait Armed Forces signed on the delivery of F/A-18 Hornets and launched the opening of the new Kuwaiti Military Hospital.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "On 2 August 1990, Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait. The larger Iraqi army brushed aside resistance by the 20,000-strong Kuwait Armed Forces with heavy casualties; after two days, Kuwait had been fully conquered. There were some instances of especially heroic resistance, particularly by combat aircraft pilots. Kuwaiti Forces, principally the Kuwait 35th Shaheed (Martyr) Armored Brigade of the Kuwait Army, engaged in the Battle of the Bridges near Al Jahra under Colonel Salem Masoud Al-Sorour, and the Kuwait Emiri Guards were engaged in the Battle of Dasman Palace with the Emir's half-brother Sheikh Fahad Al-Ahmed Al-Jaber Al-Sabah.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Iraqi forces seized most of the heavy military equipment of the Kuwaiti military and used it against the coalition forces. This included the entire navy, which was sunk by coalition forces; tanks and armoured personnel carriers were also seized. While the Iraqis were required to return seized equipment after their defeat, most of it was damaged beyond repair. Only the air force escaped destruction, as many of its aircraft had escaped to Saudi Arabia.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In the same year, Kuwait was part of a U.S.-led military coalition formed in response to the invasion which expelled Iraq from Kuwait in what became known as the Gulf War or First Persian Gulf War. Operation Desert Storm was launched by the coalition. Douglas A-4 Skyhawks of the Kuwait Air Force destroyed several Iraqi Naval ships trying to infiltrate into Bubiyan Island. The Kuwait Armed Forces commissioned and entered into service the M-84 battle tank during the attack on Iraqi forces in Saudi Arabia.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "After the four-week air campaign, coalition forces launched the ground offensive. They quickly penetrated deep into Iraq, with the Legion taking the Al Salman Airport, meeting little resistance. The war ended after a hundred hours of fighting on the ground, which resulted in very light casualties for the Legion.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "U.S. President George H. W. Bush condemned the invasion and led efforts to drive out the Iraqi forces. Authorized by the United Nations Security Council, an American-led coalition of 34 nations led by Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr. fought the Gulf War to liberate Kuwait. Following several weeks of aerial bombardment, a U.S.-led United Nations (UN) coalition began a ground assault on 23 February 1991 that completely removed Iraqi forces from Kuwait in four days. After liberation, the UN, under Security Council Resolution 687, demarcated the Iraq-Kuwait boundary on the basis of the 1932 and the 1963 agreements between the two states. In November 1994, Iraq formally accepted the UN-demarcated border with Kuwait, which had been further spelled out in Security Council Resolutions 773 (1992) and 833 (1993).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "There was an exodus of Palestinian from Kuwait during and after the Gulf War. During the Iraqi occupation more than 200,000 Palestinians fled Kuwait due to harassment, intimidation by Iraqi security forces, and being dismissed from their employment due to Iraqi influence. After the Gulf War, the Kuwaiti authorities forcibly pressured nearly 200,000 Palestinians to leave Kuwait in 1991. This was in response to the alignment of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and the PLO with Iraqi dictator and invader of Kuwait Saddam Hussein. The Palestinians who fled Kuwait were Jordanians naturalized citizens.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "After the liberation, Kuwait became a close military partner of the United States, Britain and France.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Kuwait entered into a ten-year defense cooperation agreement with the United States in September 1991, and later with the United Kingdom and France. The defense cooperation with the United States, the United Kingdom and France is done at the training level in the foreign country and the joint military exercise level on Kuwaiti soil.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The agreement with the United States also includes port access, military equipment storage, and joint training and exercises. The agreement did not officially provide for the stationing of United States service personnel in Kuwait, as the 1,500 US personnel remaining after the Gulf War were scheduled to leave within a few months.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "In 1992, the Kuwait Armed Forces initiated joint structuring of its various Armed Forces. In the same year, F/A-18 Hornet aircraft were delivered and entered official service with the Kuwaiti Air Force.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "In 1994, the Kuwait Armed Forces entered their fifth alert phase with the beginning of the Iraq disarmament crisis in October, and the Kuwait Air Force signed on the delivery of Starburst missile systems.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "In 1995, the Desert Warrior tracked armoured vehicle and the BM-30 Smerch System entered into service with the Kuwait Army.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "In 1996, the M1A2 Abrams main battle tank and the BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicle entered Kuwaiti service. During the same year, the Mubarak al-Abdullah Joint Command and Staff College (Arabic: كلية مبارك العبدالله للقيادة و الأركان المشتركة - دولة الكويت), named in memory of Lieutenant General Mubarak Abdullah Al-Jaber Al-Sabah (1934–1987), opened.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Following Operation Desert Strike in 1996, Kuwait agreed to a United States Battalion Task Force to be permanently stationed in Kuwait. These US Army Intrinsic Action (later called Operation Desert Spring on 1 October 1999) rotations and US Marine Corps EAGER MACE rotations conducted combined training with the Kuwait Land Forces and other coalition partners. In addition, US Special Operations Forces conducted Iris Gold rotations to train and assist other Kuwaiti military units.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "In 1997, the Kuwait Armed Forces entered into service the MIM-104 Patriot surface-to-air missile (SAM) system with the Kuwait Air Force.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "In 1998, the Kuwait Armed Forces made an organizational change in command between the Chief of General Staff and his various assistants through the chains of command. During the same year, the Kuwait Armed Forces enter into their sixth alert phase with the December 1998 bombing of Iraq (code-named Operation Desert Fox) between the United States, the United Kingdom and Iraq.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "In 1999, during the reign of Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, the General Staff Headquarters of the Kuwait Army commemorated the 50th Anniversary Golden jubilee of the Kuwait Armed Forces under the leadership of the Commander-in-chief, the Emir of Kuwait, and the directives of the Chief of the General Staff. Newly ordered armored Naval warships were received and directly commissioned by the Kuwait Navy and Coast Guard.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "After the War on Terror began with military campaigns following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Kuwait was declared one of fifteen major non-NATO allies of the United States by US President George W. Bush.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "During the Iraq War, the Military of Kuwait played an important role in supporting the logistical operations of the United States Armed Forces engaged in military operations in Iraq.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "In May 2003, the Kuwait Air Force commemorated their 50th Anniversary Golden jubilee under the leadership of the Commander-in-chief, the Emir of Kuwait.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "In June 2011, the Kuwait Emiri Guard commemorated their 50th Anniversary Golden jubilee under the leadership of the Commander-in-chief, and the Emir of Kuwait.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "In November 2011, the Kuwait Naval Force commemorated their 50th Anniversary Golden jubilee under the leadership of the Commander-in-chief, the Emir of Kuwait.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "The Military of Kuwait went on alert as a result of the 2015 Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen by a coalition of forces of Arab countries including Kuwait, which contributed aircraft of the Kuwaiti Air Force. The military, National Guard, Kuwait Police, and Fire Service Directorate activated defense plans to strengthen internal security measures. Defense measures also included intensifying security around oil installations in Kuwait and abroad.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "In June 2017, the Kuwait National Guard commemorated their 50th Anniversary Golden jubilee under the leadership of the Commander-in-chief, the Emir of Kuwait, and directives of Sheikh Salem Al-Ali Al-Sabah.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "The Kuwait Navy Force is the main sea deterring force with naval warships sailors. The navy includes the Kuwait Marine Corps and units of the Kuwait Commando Marine Units.",
"title": "Order of battle"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "According to Jane's World's Air Forces the operational doctrine of the Kuwaiti Air Force is to provide air support to ground forces as part of a coalition, rather than alone. It is made up of 2,500 people organized into two fighter/ground attack squadrons, two fixed-wing transport squadrons, two helicopter squadrons, a utility squadron and a training/attack helicopter squadron. Although comparatively small in size, it is well equipped and trained, with Kuwaiti pilots averaging 210 flying hours per year. It does not constitute any offensive threat, but can support ground forces in defensive operations.",
"title": "Order of battle"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "The Kuwait Land Force consists of active-duty personnel organized into three armored brigades, two mechanized infantry brigades, a mechanized reconnaissance brigade, an artillery brigade, a combat engineering brigade, a reserve brigade, and various other commands. The brigades are small by western standards, roughly the equivalent of small regiments or large battalions. They are \"cadre forces\", kept up to 80 percent of full strength, with the balance made up of reserves in case of war. Although the threat from Iraq was replaced by the War on Terror, forces structure has remained largely unchanged since 2000.",
"title": "Order of battle"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "The Kuwait Emiri Guard is an independent combat authority in the Kuwait Armed Forces.",
"title": "Order of battle"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "The 25th Commando Brigade is an independent commando combat brigade part of the Kuwait Armed Forces.",
"title": "Order of battle"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "The Kuwait Commando Marine Units are independent commando combat units part of the Kuwait Navy in the Kuwait Armed Forces.",
"title": "Order of battle"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "The Kuwaiti Military Police is an independent combat authority in the Kuwait Armed Forces.",
"title": "Order of battle"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "The Kuwait National Guard, considered a combat institution, is an independent body from the Kuwait Armed Forces and is a main internal and border combating security force.",
"title": "Order of battle"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "The Kuwaiti Ministry of Interior is the governing body of the Kuwait Police, considered an institution, is an independent corps from the Kuwait Armed Forces and is an internal, coastal and border security force with combating and non-combatant elements.",
"title": "Order of battle"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "The Kuwait Land Border Force of the interior is a border component of the Kuwait Police.",
"title": "Order of battle"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "The Kuwait Coast Guard is a sea-based component of the Kuwait Police.",
"title": "Order of battle"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "The Kuwait military fire service are the military firefighters of the Kuwait Armed Forces.",
"title": "Order of battle"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "The Kuwait Fire Service Directorate are the public firefighters with military ranks and ribbon identifications.",
"title": "Order of battle"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "An analysis of the U.S.-Kuwaiti strategic relationship after the Iraqi invasion was published in 2007 by the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute.",
"title": "Relationship with the United States Armed Forces"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "The United States of America has thousands of troops stationed in Kuwait as part of a defence agreement. The largest part is the US Army Central Command (ARCENT), part of the United States Central Command (USCENTCOM).",
"title": "Relationship with the United States Armed Forces"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Active US Forces facilities:",
"title": "Relationship with the United States Armed Forces"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Inactive US Forces facilities:",
"title": "Relationship with the United States Armed Forces"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "The United States has provided military and defence technical assistance to Kuwait from both Foreign Military Sales (FMS) and commercial sources, with all transactions made by direct cash sale. The US Office of Military Cooperation in Kuwait is attached to the American Embassy and manages the FMS program. US military sales to Kuwait total US$5.5 billion since 2004. Principal US military systems purchased by the Kuwait Defence Forces as of 2014 are the Patriot missile system, F-18 Hornet fighters, and the M1A2 Main Battle Tank.",
"title": "Relationship with the United States Armed Forces"
}
] |
The Kuwait Armed Forces are the military forces of the State of Kuwait. They consist of the Kuwait Air Force, the Kuwait Army, the Kuwait Navy & the Kuwait National Guard. The governing bodies are the Kuwait Ministry of Defense, the Kuwait Ministry of Interior, and the Kuwait Fire Service Directorate. The Emir of Kuwait is the commander-in-chief of all defense forces while the Crown Prince is the deputy commander. The early military structured organization which first dealt with security and the military following the engagements of Kuwait Army's infantry and cavalry protecting the three mounted defensive walls of Kuwait prior and following to The Great War, was the Directorate of Public Security Force, formed during the Interwar period and mainly after World War II. The Directorate of Public Security Force already included the partnership integration of the Kuwait Army and Directorate of Police as independent forces following the formation of the first cabinet on June 17, 1962, after the independence. In 1953, the Kuwait Army split from the Directorate of Public Security Force; the latter merged with the Directorate of Police in 1959, giving formation to the newly established Kuwait Ministry of Interior. The Ministry of Interior includes the Kuwait Coast Guard and has several military commanders, designated by government protocol as assistant ministers undersecretaries, each reporting to the Minister of Interior who is designated by protocol as Deputy Prime Minister of the State of Kuwait. Upon splitting from the Directorate of Public Security Force in 1953, the Kuwait Army acted as the de facto command leadership of the available armed forces since establishment. The Kuwait Army was created in 1949, thirteen years before the ministry and partly mainly at the time composed almost entirely of land force components with the Kuwait Air Force being created in 1953. With the creation of the Kuwait Armed Forces in 1963, the Kuwait Ministry of Defense eventually became and is the governing body of the Kuwait Armed Forces, which includes the Kuwait Land Force, the Kuwait 25th Commando Brigade, the Kuwait Military Police Authority, the Kuwait Emiri Guard Authority, the Kuwait Air Force, the Kuwait Naval Force, the Kuwait Military Fire Service Directorate and others. Each armed force at disposition of the respective combat commander, reports to the Chief of General Staff of the Kuwait Armed Forces who later reports to the Minister of Defense, designated also by protocol as Deputy Prime Minister of the State of Kuwait. The Kuwait National Guard, however, is an independent combat institution from the Ministry of Defense and Interior and acts independently under the guidance, discretion and disposition of the respective leadership, supporting the Military of the State of Kuwait as needed and required. The Kuwait Fire Service Directorate, is also an independent public fire fighting body with military ranks and ribbons identifications.
|
2002-02-25T15:43:11Z
|
2023-12-16T19:42:43Z
|
[
"Template:Infobox national military",
"Template:As of",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Dead link",
"Template:Kuwait topics",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Lang-ar",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Commons category",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:ISBN",
"Template:Military of Asia",
"Template:Military of the Arab world",
"Template:Rp",
"Template:Citation needed"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuwait_Armed_Forces
|
16,693 |
Foreign relations of Kuwait
|
Since its independence in 1961, Kuwait maintained strong international relations with most countries, especially nations within the Arab world. Its vast oil reserves gives it a prominent voice in global economic forums and organizations like the OPEC. Kuwait is also a major ally of ASEAN, a regional ally of China, and a major non-NATO ally.
Regionally, Kuwait has a unique foreign policy that is characterized by neutrality. Kuwait's relationship with neighboring Iraq formed the core of its foreign policy from late 1980s onwards. Its first major foreign policy problem arose when Iraq claimed Kuwaiti territory. Iraq threatened invasion, but was dissuaded by the United Kingdom's ready response to the Amir's request for assistance. Kuwait presented its case before the United Nations and successfully preserved its sovereignty. UK forces were later withdrawn and replaced by troops from Arab League nations, which were withdrawn in 1963 at Kuwait's request.
On 2 August 1990, Iraq invaded and occupied Kuwait. A multinational coalition was assembled and under UN auspices, initiated military action against Iraq to liberate Kuwait. Arab states, especially the other five members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates), Egypt, and Syria, supported Kuwait by sending troops to fight with the coalition. Many European and East Asian states sent troops, equipment, and/or financial support.
After its liberation, Kuwait largely directed its diplomatic and cooperative efforts toward states that had participated in the multinational coalition. Notably, many of these states were given key roles in the reconstruction of Kuwait. Conversely, Kuwait's relations with nations that had supported Iraq, among them Jordan, Sudan, Yemen, Greece and Cuba, have proved to be strained.
Since the conclusion of the Gulf War, Kuwait has made efforts to secure allies throughout the world, particularly United Nations Security Council members. In addition to the United States, defense arrangements have been concluded with Russia, the United Kingdom, and France. Close ties to other key Arab members of the Gulf War coalition — Egypt and Syria — also have been sustained.
Kuwait's foreign policy has been dominated for some time by its economic dependence on oil and natural gas. As a developing nation, its various economies are insufficient to independently support it. As a result, Kuwait has directed considerable attention toward oil or natural gas related issues. With the outbreak of the War on Iraq, Kuwait has taken a pro-U.S. stance, having been the nation from which the war was actually launched. It supported the Coalition Provisional Authority, with particular stress upon strict border controls and adequate U.S. troop presence. Kuwait also has good relations with Iran.
Kuwait is a member of the UN and some of its specialized and related agencies, including the World Bank (IBRD), International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Trade Organization (WTO), General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT); African Development Bank (AFDB), Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development (AFESD), Arab League, Arab Monetary Fund (AMF), Council of Arab Economic Unity (CAEU), Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), Group of 77 (G-77), Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), INMARSAT, International Development Association (IDA), International Finance Corporation, International Fund for Agricultural Development, International Labour Organization (ILO), International Marine Organization, Interpol, IOC, Islamic Development Bank (IDB), League of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (LORCS), Non-Aligned Movement, Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC), Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
In November 1994, Iraq formally accepted the UN-demarcated border with Kuwait which had been spelled out in Security Council Resolutions 687 (1991), 773 (1992), and 883 (1993); this formally ends earlier claims to Kuwait and to Bubiyan and Warbah Island islands; ownership of Qaruh and Umm al Maradim islands disputed by Saudi Arabia. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia continue negotiating a joint maritime boundary with Iran; no maritime boundary exists with Iraq in the Persian Gulf.
List of countries which Kuwait maintains diplomatic relations with:
Kuwait, is a member of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf, which includes, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman. These countries, have solid, and unbreakable bilateral relations. Citizens of these countries, may enter other GCC, country with their national ID. GCC citizens are allowed to reside at any other GCC, nation an unlimited period of time. They also follow the same economic plan, and give each other military, and Intelligence support. They also have similar, educational, social, plans. The GCC countries, discuss their foreign policies, as they try to maintain similar foreign policies. These six monarchies are also known as the oil-rich countries of the Middle East.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Since its independence in 1961, Kuwait maintained strong international relations with most countries, especially nations within the Arab world. Its vast oil reserves gives it a prominent voice in global economic forums and organizations like the OPEC. Kuwait is also a major ally of ASEAN, a regional ally of China, and a major non-NATO ally.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Regionally, Kuwait has a unique foreign policy that is characterized by neutrality. Kuwait's relationship with neighboring Iraq formed the core of its foreign policy from late 1980s onwards. Its first major foreign policy problem arose when Iraq claimed Kuwaiti territory. Iraq threatened invasion, but was dissuaded by the United Kingdom's ready response to the Amir's request for assistance. Kuwait presented its case before the United Nations and successfully preserved its sovereignty. UK forces were later withdrawn and replaced by troops from Arab League nations, which were withdrawn in 1963 at Kuwait's request.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "On 2 August 1990, Iraq invaded and occupied Kuwait. A multinational coalition was assembled and under UN auspices, initiated military action against Iraq to liberate Kuwait. Arab states, especially the other five members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates), Egypt, and Syria, supported Kuwait by sending troops to fight with the coalition. Many European and East Asian states sent troops, equipment, and/or financial support.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "After its liberation, Kuwait largely directed its diplomatic and cooperative efforts toward states that had participated in the multinational coalition. Notably, many of these states were given key roles in the reconstruction of Kuwait. Conversely, Kuwait's relations with nations that had supported Iraq, among them Jordan, Sudan, Yemen, Greece and Cuba, have proved to be strained.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Since the conclusion of the Gulf War, Kuwait has made efforts to secure allies throughout the world, particularly United Nations Security Council members. In addition to the United States, defense arrangements have been concluded with Russia, the United Kingdom, and France. Close ties to other key Arab members of the Gulf War coalition — Egypt and Syria — also have been sustained.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Kuwait's foreign policy has been dominated for some time by its economic dependence on oil and natural gas. As a developing nation, its various economies are insufficient to independently support it. As a result, Kuwait has directed considerable attention toward oil or natural gas related issues. With the outbreak of the War on Iraq, Kuwait has taken a pro-U.S. stance, having been the nation from which the war was actually launched. It supported the Coalition Provisional Authority, with particular stress upon strict border controls and adequate U.S. troop presence. Kuwait also has good relations with Iran.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Kuwait is a member of the UN and some of its specialized and related agencies, including the World Bank (IBRD), International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Trade Organization (WTO), General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT); African Development Bank (AFDB), Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development (AFESD), Arab League, Arab Monetary Fund (AMF), Council of Arab Economic Unity (CAEU), Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), Group of 77 (G-77), Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), INMARSAT, International Development Association (IDA), International Finance Corporation, International Fund for Agricultural Development, International Labour Organization (ILO), International Marine Organization, Interpol, IOC, Islamic Development Bank (IDB), League of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (LORCS), Non-Aligned Movement, Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC), Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In November 1994, Iraq formally accepted the UN-demarcated border with Kuwait which had been spelled out in Security Council Resolutions 687 (1991), 773 (1992), and 883 (1993); this formally ends earlier claims to Kuwait and to Bubiyan and Warbah Island islands; ownership of Qaruh and Umm al Maradim islands disputed by Saudi Arabia. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia continue negotiating a joint maritime boundary with Iran; no maritime boundary exists with Iraq in the Persian Gulf.",
"title": "International disputes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "List of countries which Kuwait maintains diplomatic relations with:",
"title": "Diplomatic relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Kuwait, is a member of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf, which includes, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman. These countries, have solid, and unbreakable bilateral relations. Citizens of these countries, may enter other GCC, country with their national ID. GCC citizens are allowed to reside at any other GCC, nation an unlimited period of time. They also follow the same economic plan, and give each other military, and Intelligence support. They also have similar, educational, social, plans. The GCC countries, discuss their foreign policies, as they try to maintain similar foreign policies. These six monarchies are also known as the oil-rich countries of the Middle East.",
"title": "Bilateral relations"
}
] |
Since its independence in 1961, Kuwait maintained strong international relations with most countries, especially nations within the Arab world. Its vast oil reserves gives it a prominent voice in global economic forums and organizations like the OPEC. Kuwait is also a major ally of ASEAN, a regional ally of China, and a major non-NATO ally.
|
2002-02-25T15:51:15Z
|
2023-12-28T20:41:12Z
|
[
"Template:Flag",
"Template:Dts",
"Template:GER",
"Template:Dead link",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Kuwait topics",
"Template:Foreign relations of Kuwait",
"Template:Cbignore",
"Template:Asia in topic",
"Template:DTS",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Convert",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Politics of Kuwait",
"Template:Legend",
"Template:Date table sorting"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Kuwait
|
16,695 |
History of Kyrgyzstan
|
The history of the Kyrgyz people and the land now called Kyrgyzstan goes back more than 3,000 years. Although geographically isolated by its mountainous location, it had an important role as part of the historical Silk Road trade route. Turkic nomads, who trace their ancestry to many Turkic states such as the First and Second Turkic Khaganates, have inhabited the country throughout its history. In the 13th century, Kyrgyzstan was conquered by the Mongols; subsequently it regained independence but was invaded by Kalmyks, Manchus, and Uzbeks. In 1876, it became part of the Russian Empire, remaining in the USSR as the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic after the Russian Revolution. Following Mikhael Gorbachev's democratic reforms in the USSR, in 1990 pro-independence candidate Askar Akayev was elected president of the SSR. On 31 August 1991, Kyrgyzstan declared independence from Moscow, and a democratic government was subsequently established.
Stone implements found in the Tian Shan mountains indicate the presence of early humans in what is now Kyrgyzstan as many as 200,000 to 300,000 years ago. The first written records of a civilization in the area occupied by Kyrgyzstan appear in Chinese chronicles beginning about 2000 BC.
The Yenisei Kirghiz lived in the upper Yenisey River valley, central Siberia. Chinese sources of the 2nd century BC and Muslim sources of the 7th–12th centuries AD describe the Kyrgyz as red-haired with fair complexion and green (blue) eyes. First appearing in Chinese Records of the Grand Historian as Gekun or Jiankun (鬲昆 or 隔昆), and later as part of the Tiele tribes, they came under the rule of the Göktürks and Uyghurs. Later Kyrgyzstan was part of the Kushan empire during Buddhism. The early Kyrgyz state reached its greatest expansion after defeating the Uyghur Khaganate in 840 AD. Then Kyrgyz quickly moved as far as the Tian Shan range and maintained their dominance over this territory for about 200 years. In the 12th century, however, the Kyrgyz domination had shrunk to the Altay Range and the Sayan Mountains as a result of the rising Mongol expansion. With the rise of the Mongol Empire in the 13th century, the Kyrgyz migrated south. Plano Carpin, an envoy of the Papal states, and William Rubruck, an envoy of France, all wrote about their life under the Mongols. Various Turkic peoples ruled them until 1685, when they came under the control of the Oirats (Dzungars).
63% of the modern Kyrgyz men carry Haplogroup R1a1 (Y-DNA), comparable to the prevalence of the haplogroup among the Tajiks (64%).
The first Turks to form a state in the territory of Central Asia (including Kyrgyzstan) were Göktürks or Kök-Türks. Known in medieval Chinese sources as Tujue (突厥 tú jué), the Göktürks under the leadership of Bumin/Tuman Khan/Khaghan (d. 552) of Ashina tribe or dynasty and his sons established the first known Turkic state in 551 in the general area of territory that had earlier been occupied by the Xiongnu, and expanded rapidly to rule wide territories in Central Asia. The Göktürks split into two rival Khanates, of which the western one disintegrated in 744.
The first kingdom to emerge from the Göktürk Khaganate was the Buddhist Uyghur Empire that flourished in the territory encompassing most of Central Asia from 744 to 840.
After the Uyghur empire disintegrated a branch of the Uyghurs migrated to oasis settlements in the Tarim Basin and Gansu, such as Gaochang (Karakhoja) and Hami City (Kumul), and set up a confederation of decentralized Buddhist states called Kara-Khoja. Others, mainly closely related to the Uyghurs (the Karluks), occupying the western Tarim Basin, Ferghana Valley, Jungaria and parts of modern Kazakhstan bordering the Muslim Turco-Tajik Khwarazm Sultanate, converted to Islam no later than the 10th century and built a federation with Muslim institutions called Kara-Khanlik, whose princely dynasties are called Karakhanids by most historians. Its capital, Balasagun flourished as a cultural and economic centre.
The Islamized Karluk princely clan, the Balasagunlu Ashinalar (or the Karakhanids) gravitated toward the Persian Islamic cultural zone after their political autonomy and suzerainty over Central Asia was secured during the 9–10th century.
As they became increasingly Persianized they settled in the more Indo-Iranian sedentary centers such as Kashgaria, and became detached from the nomadic traditions of fellow Karluks, many of whom retained cultural elements of the Uyghur Khanate.
The principality was significantly weakened by the early 12th century and the territory of modern Kyrgyzstan was conquered by the Mongolic Khitan people. The Kara-Khitan Khanate (simplified Chinese: 西辽; traditional Chinese: 西遼; pinyin: Xī Liáo; 1124–1218), also known as Western Liao, was established by Yelü Dashi (耶律大石) who led around 100,000 Khitan remnants after escaping the Jurchen conquest of their native country, the Khitan dynasty.
The Khitay conquest of Central Asia can thus be seen as an internecine struggle within the Karluk nomadic tribe, played out as dynastic conflict between the conquering Buddhist Khitay elites and the defending Kara-Khanid princes, resulting in the subjugation of the latter by the former, and in the subjugation of the Muslim Karluks by their Nestorian/Buddhist kin.
The Mongol invasion of Central Asia in the 13th century devastated the territory of Kyrgyzstan, costing its people their independence and their written language. The son of Genghis Khan, Juche, conquered the Kyrgyz tribes of the Yenisey region, who by this time had become disunited. At the same time, the area of present-day Kyrgyzstan was an important link in the Silk Road, as attested by several Nestorian gravestones. For the next 200 years, the Kyrgyz remained under the Golden Horde, Chagatai Khanate and the Oirats as well as Dzungars that succeeded that regime. Freedom was regained in 1510, but Kyrgyz tribes were overrun in the seventeenth century by the Kalmyks, in the mid-eighteenth century by the Manchus, and in the early nineteenth century by the Uzbeks.
The Mongol Empire (1206-1294/1368) was the largest contiguous empire and the second largest empire overall in world history. It emerged from the unification of Mongol and Turkic tribes in modern-day Mongolia, and grew through invasion, after Genghis Khan had been proclaimed ruler of all Mongols in 1206. It is often identified as the "Mongol World Empire" because it spanned much of Eurasia. However, the Mongol Empire began to split following the succession war in 1260–1264, with the Golden Horde and the Chagatai Khanate being de facto independent and refusing to accept Kublai Khan (1260–1294) as Khagan. By the time of Kublai's death, the Mongol Empire had already fractured into four separate khanates or empires, each pursuing its own separate interests and objectives. The kagans of the Yuan dynasty assumed the role of Chinese emperors and fixed their capital at Khanbaliq (modern-day Beijing) from the old Mongol capital Karakorum. Although other khanates accepted them as their titular suzerains and sent tributes and some support after the peace treaty in 1304, the three western khanates were virtually independent, and they each continued their own separate developments as sovereign states. Eventually the Mongol rule in China fell in 1368 and was replaced by the Ming dynasty though the Genghisid Borjigin dynasty survived in Mongolia until the 17th century. Temujin, the son of a Mongol chieftain, who suffered a difficult childhood, united the nomadic, previously ever-rivaling Mongol-Turkic tribes under his rule through political manipulation and military might. In 1203–1205, the Mongols under Temujin destroyed all the remaining rival tribes (Kereyd, Merkits) and brought them under his sway. In 1206, Temujin was crowned as the Kagan of the Yekhe Mongol Ulus (Great Mongol Nation) at a Kurultai (general assembly) and assumed the title "Chingis Khan" (or more commonly known as "Genghis Khan" probably meaning Universal ruler) instead of the old tribal tities such as Gur Khan or Tayang Khan. This event essentially marked the start of the Mongol Empire under the leadership of Genghis Khan (1206–1227). Genghis Khan appointed his loyal friends as the heads of army units and households. He also divided his nation into arbans (each with 10 people), zuuns (100), myangans (1000) and tumens (10,000) of decimal organization. The Kheshig or the Imperial guard was founded and divided into day and night guards. Genghis Khan rewarded those who had been loyal to him and placed them in high positions. Most of those people were hailed from very low-rank clans. He proclaimed new law of the empire Yassa and codified everything related to the everyday life and political affairs of the nomads at the time. For example, he forbade the hunting of animals during the breeding time, the selling of women, theft of other's properties as well as fighting between the Mongols, by his law. He quickly came into conflict with the Jin dynasty of the Jurchens and the Western Xia of the Tanguts in northern China. Under the provocation of the Muslim Khwarezmid Empire, he moved into Central Asia as well, devastating Transoxiana and eastern Persia, and then raiding into Kievan Rus' and the Caucasus. Before his death, Genghis divided his empire among his sons and immediate family, but as custom made clear, it remained the joint property of the entire imperial family who, along with the Mongol aristocracy, constituted the ruling class. In 1207 Kyrgyz possessions on the Yenisei, in Tuva and Altai were entered into part of Mongol Empire. But in 1273–1293 Kyrgyz rulers restored their independence after repeated rebellions Kyrgyz tribes against Mongols power in 1217, 1218, 1273–1280. In 1218 the east Turkestan and Semirechie were conquered by Mongols. Genghis Khan's empire was inherited by his third son, Ugedei, the designated Great Khan who personally controlled the lands east of Lake Balkhash as far as Mongolia. Tolui, the youngest, the keeper of the hearth, was granted the northern Mongolian homeland. Chagatai, the second son, received Transoxania, between the Amur-Darya and Syr-Darya rivers in modern Uzbekistan, and the area around Kashgar. He made his capital at Almalik near what is now Kulja in northwestern China. Apart from problems of lineage and inheritance, the Mongol Empire was endangered by the great cultural and ethnic divide between the Mongols themselves and their mostly Islamic Turkic subjects. * In 1269 during the common meeting of khans of Chagatai and Ugedei uluses Khaidu (1269- 1301) was officially chosen to be a Khan. His lands extended from Altai to Amur-Darya, including the territory of the modern Kyrgyzstan and the Eastern Turkestan (an extensive region of central Asia between Siberia in the north and Tibet, India, Afghanistan, and Iran in the south: formerły divided into West (Russian) Turkestan (also called Soviet Central Asia), comprising present-day Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan and the South part of Kazakhstan, and East Turkestan consisting of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (Chinese).
The Kyrgyz in the north were never totally subjugated by Timurlane. In the southern region, however, his conquests and influence had a unifying role. In the 15th century, a tribe of Uzbeks, originally from the Golden horde, arrived in this region.
In 1775, Atake Tynay Biy Uulu, one of the leaders of Sarybagysh tribe, established first diplomatic ties with the Russian Empire by sending his envoys to Catherine the Great in Saint Petersburg. In the early 19th century, the territory of Kyrgyzstan came under the control of the Khanate of Kokand, but the territory was occupied and formally annexed by the Russian Empire in 1876. The Russian takeover instigated numerous revolts against tsarist authority, and many Kyrgyz opted to move into the Pamir Mountains or to Afghanistan. The ruthless suppression of the 1916 rebellion in Central Asia, triggered by the Russian imposition of the military draft on the Kyrgyz and other Central Asian peoples, caused many Kyrgyz to flee to China. For Russian expansion into central Asia see Russian conquest of Turkestan.
Soviet power was initially established in the region in 1918, and in 1924, the Kara-Kyrgyz Autonomous Oblast was created within the Russian SFSR. (The term Kara-Kyrgyz was used until the mid-1920s by the Russians to distinguish them from the Kazakhs, who were also referred to as Kyrgyz.) In 1926, it became the Kirghiz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. On December 5, 1936, the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) was established as a full Union Republic of the USSR.
During the 1920s, Kyrgyzstan saw considerable cultural, educational, and social change. Economic and social development also was notable. Literacy increased, and a standard literary language was introduced. The Kyrgyz language belongs to the Kipchak Turkic group of languages. In 1924, an Arabic-based Kyrgyz alphabet was introduced, which was replaced by Latin script in 1928. In 1941 Cyrillic script was adopted. Many aspects of the Kyrgyz national culture were retained despite suppression of nationalist activity under Joseph Stalin, who controlled the Soviet Union from the late 1920s until 1953.
Modern Kyrgyz religious affiliation is eclectically Muslim for a majority of the population. Typical Kyrgyz families vary in their devotion to Islam.
Russian and Kyrgyz cultures differ in respect to family, religious identity, and social structure. Kyrgyzstan is a country in transition. The current social dilemma is one that has emerged from the controlling body mainly relying on classic Russian ethnicities, to Kyrgyz or Turkic ethnic groups shaping and forming the infrastructure of Kyrgyzstan. This has resulted in a measurable degree of instability and chaos associated with a social transition.
The ancestral Kyrgyz social structure was dominated by nomadic traditions, governing political philosophies, and socialization. As classical Russian ethnic groups were injected into the Soviet Republic of Kyrgyzstan, the urbanization process began and was mainly authored by the Russian communities placed within the Soviet Republic, mostly by policies created by the communist party. It is unclear why these policies were created and it is only clear that these policies forced Russians of certain descent to populate the Republic.
On 11 March 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev was chosen by the Politburo as the new General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev immediately launched his new liberalizing policies of glasnost and perestroika, although they had little immediate impact on the political climate in Kyrgyzstan. On 2 November 1985 Gorbachev replaced Turdakun Usubaliyev the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kirghizia, who had been in power for 24 years, with Absamat Masaliyev. The republic's press was permitted to adopt a more liberal stance and to establish a new publication, Literaturny Kyrgyzstan, by the Union of Writers. Unofficial political groups were forbidden, but several groups that emerged in 1989 to deal with an acute housing crisis were permitted to function.
Gorbachev's policy of separating Party and State began to impact at the Soviet Republic level in early 1991 when each SSR held competitive elections to their respective legislative Supreme Soviets, shortly after the CPSU had given up its 'leading role'. This meant that real local power moved from the position of Communist Party Leader to that of Chairman of the Supreme Soviet, the official Head of State of the SSR. Between January and April 1990 each of the Communist Party leaders of the five states of Soviet Central Asia assumed the position of Chairman of the Supreme Soviet in their respective SSRs, without any difficulty from the still weak opposition forces in the region.
In Kirghizia the 1990 elections were held on 25 February, with a second round on 7 April. As the Communists were the only political party contesting the elections it is not surprising that they received 90% of the vote. Absamat Masaliyev the Communist leader was voted by the new Parliament as Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of Kirghizia on 10 April 1990.
However events quickly began to slip from the Communists control. On 1 May 1990 the opposition groups held their first big demonstration in Frunze in competition with the officially sanctioned May Day celebrations, and on 25–26 May 1990 the opposition groups formed the Kyrgyzstan Democratic Movement as a bloc of several anti-Communist political parties, movements and nongovernment organizations. Then on 4 June 1990, ethnic tensions between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz surfaced in an area of the Osh Region where Uzbeks form a majority of the population. Violent confrontations ensued, and a state of emergency and curfew were introduced. Order was not restored until August 1990.
The Kyrgyzstan Democratic Movement swiftly developed into a significant political force with growing support in parliament. On 27 October 1990 in an upset victory, Askar Akayev, the president of the Kyrgyz Academy of Sciences and reformist Communist Party member, was elected to the newly created presidency defeating Communist Party leader Absamat Masaliyev. Kirghizia was the only one of the five states of Soviet Central Asia that voted their established Communist leadership out of power in 1990.
On 15 December 1990, the Supreme Soviet voted to change the republic's name to the Republic of Kyrgyzstan. In January 1991, Akayev introduced new government structures and appointed a government consisting mainly of younger, reform-oriented politicians. On 5 February 1991, the name of the capital, Frunze, was changed to Bishkek.
Despite these moves toward independence, economic realities seemed to work against secession from the Soviet Union In a referendum on the preservation of the USSR, in March 1991, 88.7% of the voters approved a proposal to remain part of the union as a "renewed federation."
On August 19, 1991, when the State Emergency Committee assumed power in Moscow, there was an attempt to depose Akayev in Kyrgyzstan. After the coup collapsed the following week, Akayev and Vice President German Kuznetsov announced their resignations from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), and the entire politburo and secretariat resigned. This was followed by the Supreme Soviet vote declaring independence from the Soviet Union on 31 August 1991, becoming the first of the five Republics of Soviet Central Asia to break away.
Kyrgyz was announced as the state language in September 1991. In October 1991, Akayev ran unopposed and was elected President of the new independent republic by direct ballot, receiving 95% of the votes cast. Together with the representatives of seven other republics, he signed the Treaty of the New Economic Communists that same month. On December 21, 1991, Kyrgyzstan formally entered the new Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
As in many former Soviet republics, after Kyrgyzstan regained independence in August 1991 many individuals, organizations, and political parties sought to reestablish (and, to a certain extent, to create from scratch) a Kyrgyz national cultural identity; often one that included a backlash against Russians.
In 1993, allegations of corruption against Akayev's closest political associates blossomed into a major scandal. One of those accused of improprieties was Prime Minister Tursunbek Chyngyshev, who was dismissed for ethical reasons in December. Following Chyngyshev's dismissal, Akayev dismissed the government and called upon the last communist premier, Apas Djumagulov, to form a new one. In January 1994, Akayev initiated a referendum asking for a renewed mandate to complete his term of office. He received 96.2% of the vote.
A new constitution was passed by the parliament in May 1993 and the Republic of Kyrgyzstan was renamed the Kyrgyz Republic. In 1994, however, the parliament failed to produce a quorum for its last scheduled session prior to the expiration of its term in February 1995. President Akayev was widely accused of having manipulated a boycott by a majority of the parliamentarians. Akayev, in turn, asserted that the communists had caused a political crisis by preventing the legislature from fulfilling its role. Akayev scheduled an October 1994 referendum, overwhelmingly approved by voters, which proposed two amendments to the constitution—one that would allow the constitution to be amended by means of a referendum, and the other creating a new bicameral parliament called the Jogorku Kenesh.
Elections for the two legislative chambers—a 35-seat full-time assembly and a 70-seat part-time assembly—were held in February 1995 after campaigns considered remarkably free and open by most international observers, although the election-day proceedings were marred by widespread irregularities. Independent candidates won most of the seats, suggesting that personalities prevailed over ideologies. The new parliament convened its initial session in March 1995. One of its first orders of business was the approval of the precise constitutional language on the role of the legislature.
On December 24, 1995, President Akayev was reelected for another 5-year term with wide support (75% of vote) over two opposing candidates. He used government resources and state-owned media to carry out his campaign. Three (out of six) candidates were de-registered shortly before the election.
A February 1996 referendum—in violation of the constitution and the law on referendums—amended the constitution to give President Akayev more power. Although the changes gave the president the power to dissolve parliament, it also more clearly defined the parliament's powers. Since that time, the parliament has demonstrated real independence from the executive branch.
An October 1998 referendum approved constitutional changes, including increasing the number of deputies in the lower house, reducing the number of deputies in the upper house, providing for 25% of lower house deputies to be elected by party lists, rolling back parliamentary immunity, introducing private property, prohibiting adoption of laws restricting freedom of speech and mass media, and reforming the state budget.
Two rounds of parliamentary elections were held on February 20, 2000, and March 12, 2000. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) reported that the elections failed to comply with commitments to free and fair elections and hence were invalid. Questionable judicial proceedings against opposition candidates and parties limited the choice of candidates available to Kyrgyz voters, while state-controlled media only reported favorably on official candidates. Government officials put pressure on independent media outlets that favored the opposition. The presidential election that followed later in 2000 also was marred by irregularities and was not declared free and fair by international observers. In December 2001, through a constitutional amendment, the Russian language was given official status.
The OSCE found that the parliamentary elections held on 27 February and 13 March 2005 failed to comply with commitments to free and fair elections; however, there were improvements over the 2000 elections, notably the use of indelible ink, transparent ballot boxes, and generally good access by election observers.
Sporadic protests against perceived manipulation and fraud during the elections of February 27, 2005, erupted into widespread calls for the government to resign, which started in the southern provinces. On March 24, 15,000 pro-opposition demonstrators in Bishkek called for the resignation of the President and his regime. Protesters seized the main government building, and Akayev hurriedly fled the country, first to neighboring Kazakhstan and then to Moscow. Initially refusing to resign and denouncing the events as a coup, he subsequently resigned his office on April 4.
Kurmanbek Bakiyev won the 10 July ballot for the presidential election with 89% of the vote with a 53% turnout. Bakiyev's term in office was marred by the murder of several prominent politicians, prison riots, economic ills and battles for control of lucrative businesses. In 2006, Bakiyev faced a political crisis as thousands of people participated in a series of protests in Bishkek. He was accused of not following through with his promises to limit presidential power, give more authority to parliament and the prime minister, and eradicate corruption and crime. Bakiyev claimed that the opposition was plotting a coup against him.
In April 2007, the opposition held protests demanding Bakiyev's resignation, with a large protest beginning on April 11 in Bishkek. Bakiyev signed constitutional amendments to reduce his own power on April 10, but the protest went ahead, with protesters saying that they would remain until he resigned. Clashes broke out between protesters and police on April 19, after which the protests ended.
Bakiyev was re-elected in the 2009 presidential election. After the re-election in 2009, some people in Kyrgyzstan said that he would now deal with political and economic reform. Others were skeptical. The Eurasian Daily Monitor wrote on September 10 that his style resembled other leaders such as Vladimir Putin and Nursultan Nazarbayev. However, he lacked resources and Kyrgyz people were anxious about the risk of renewed power shortages and blackouts like in the winter 2008–2009.
During the winter of 2010 Kyrgyzstan has suffered from rolling blackouts and cutoffs occurring regularly while energy prices have risen.
The arrest of an opposition figure on 6 April 2010 in the town of Talas led opposition supporters to protest. The protestors took control of a governmental building, demanding a new government. Riot police were sent from Bishkek, and managed to temporarily regain control of the building. Later the same day several more opposition figures were arrested, while the government claimed to have regained control of the situation. The following day, however, hundreds of opposition supporters gathered in Bishkek and marched on the government headquarters. Security personnel attempted to disperse the protestors with the use of stun grenades and live rounds, at the cost of dozens of lives. The protests continued, however, resulting in the flight of President Bakiyev to his southern stronghold of Jalalabad, and the freeing later the same day of the arrested opposition figures. A new government was formed under opposition leader Roza Otunbayeva, while Bakiyev remained for several days in southern Kyrgyzstan, before fleeing to Belarus, where he was given asylum by President Lukashenko. The new interim government held consultations on a new constitution, intended to increase the powers of the parliament and reduce those of the president. A referendum was held on the resulting document on 27 June 2010, and was approved by over 90% of voters, with a turnout of 72%. Elections were subsequently held on 10 October 2010. These elections resulted in five parties reaching the 5% threshold necessary to enter parliament.
Almazbek Atambayev ran in 2011 to succeed Roza Otunbayeva as President of Kyrgyzstan. On election day, 30 October 2011, he won in a landslide, defeating Adakhan Madumarov from the Butun Kyrgyzstan party and Kamchybek Tashiev from the Ata-Zhurt party with 63% of the vote, and with about 60% of the eligible Kyrgyz population voting.
In 2011 soon after becoming president, Atambayev travelled to Turkey and signed an agreement with the Turkish President agreeing to increase trade from $300 million in 2011 to $1 billion by 2015, with Turkey also agreeing to attract Turkish investment to Kyrgyzstan to the amount of $450 million within the next few years.
Atambayev has repeatedly presented himself as a pro-Russian politician. He positively supports Kyrgyzstan's Membership of the Russian led Eurasian Customs Union and secured the withdrawal of the American military base from the country in 2014. He has spoken of the need for closer economic relations with Russia, which temporarily employs about 500,000 citizens of Kyrgyzstan; however, he also expressed his wish to achieve greater economic and energy independence from it.
Sooronbay Jeenbekov was sworn in as president on 24 November 2017 at the Ala Archa State Residence. In the hours since assuming office, he made his first decree to confer the title of Hero of the Kyrgyz Republic to his predecessor. The following May, he conducted his first foreign visit after assuming the presidency was to Russia where he met with Vladimir Putin. In April 2018, Jeenbekov fired Prime Minister Sapar Isakov and his entire government following a vote of no confidence from Supreme Council.
In his first year, Jeenbekov participated in 30 international meetings, where he signed a total of 77 bilateral agreements and 414 multilateral documents. That same year, he ordered the foreign ministry to establish diplomatic relations with four foreign countries. The draft of a new co-operation agreement with the United States is currently being reconciled.
Since Jeenbekov took power, he has had a somewhat adversarial relationship with former President Atambayev, who strongly backed Jeenbekov against his opponent Ömürbek Babanov during the 2017 election, even referring to comparing himself as an “older brother” to Jeenbekov when referring to their relationship. Despite this, a rift grew between the two politicians as Atambayev became more involved in politics, eventually rising to the Chairmanship of the Social Democratic Party of Kyrgyzstan, of which Jeenbekov is a member of. While in this post, he criticized Jeenbekov for his handling many controversies and state emergencies, including the Bishkek power plant failure and his refusal to force his brother to resign from parliament. In early April 2018, Jeenbekov dismissed two high-ranking officials in the State Committee for National Security (GKNB) who are considered to be close to Atambayev, which was seen as an apparent jab at Atambayev and his former government. Jeenbekov has on many occasions accused Atambayev of indirectly trying to influence his presidency, saying in November 2018 that he has attempted to turn him into "a puppet leader through some third individuals" Even with the accusations, he denies any type of rivalry with the former president, saying the following month that he "does not consider anyone a rival".
Mass protests began on 5 October 2020 in response to the parliamentary election that was perceived by protestors as unfair. In the early morning of 6 October 2020, the protesters reclaimed control of the Ala-Too Square in central Bishkek. They also managed to seize the White House and Supreme Council buildings nearby, throwing paper from windows and setting them on fire, also entering the President's offices. A protestor died and 590 others were injured. Protestors freed former president Almazbek Atambayev and opposition politician Sadyr Japarov from prison.
On 6 October, following the protests, the electoral authorities in the country annulled the results of the parliamentary elections. Likely due to pressure from the protest, Prime Minister Kubatbek Boronov resigned, citing parliamentary deputy Myktybek Abdyldayev as the new speaker. Following the resignation of Prime Minister Boronov, former lawmaker Sadyr Japarov was appointed to replace him. Opposition parties rejected the legitimacy of Japarov's status and instead put forward their own candidate for prime minister, Tilek Toktogaziyev. Japarov claimed that he was already the "legitimate prime minister" and that he was appointed by "the parliament's majority."
President Sooronbay Jeenbekov resigned on 15 October 2020, leading Japarov to declare himself as acting president. Despite the Kyrgyzstan Constitution stating that the speaker of the Supreme Council should succeed the role, Kanatbek Isaev refused to assume office, resulting in Japarov becoming the acting president.
Sadyr Japarov resigned his post of prime minister to run for the presidency in January 2021. He successfully defeating Adakhan Madumarov in a landslide win and assumed office on 28 January 2021.
A constitutional referendum was held in Kyrgyzstan on 11 April 2021. The draft new constitution adopted by the referendum replaces the parliamentary system with a presidential one, with presidents limited to two five years terms instead of a single six-year term.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The history of the Kyrgyz people and the land now called Kyrgyzstan goes back more than 3,000 years. Although geographically isolated by its mountainous location, it had an important role as part of the historical Silk Road trade route. Turkic nomads, who trace their ancestry to many Turkic states such as the First and Second Turkic Khaganates, have inhabited the country throughout its history. In the 13th century, Kyrgyzstan was conquered by the Mongols; subsequently it regained independence but was invaded by Kalmyks, Manchus, and Uzbeks. In 1876, it became part of the Russian Empire, remaining in the USSR as the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic after the Russian Revolution. Following Mikhael Gorbachev's democratic reforms in the USSR, in 1990 pro-independence candidate Askar Akayev was elected president of the SSR. On 31 August 1991, Kyrgyzstan declared independence from Moscow, and a democratic government was subsequently established.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Stone implements found in the Tian Shan mountains indicate the presence of early humans in what is now Kyrgyzstan as many as 200,000 to 300,000 years ago. The first written records of a civilization in the area occupied by Kyrgyzstan appear in Chinese chronicles beginning about 2000 BC.",
"title": "Early history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The Yenisei Kirghiz lived in the upper Yenisey River valley, central Siberia. Chinese sources of the 2nd century BC and Muslim sources of the 7th–12th centuries AD describe the Kyrgyz as red-haired with fair complexion and green (blue) eyes. First appearing in Chinese Records of the Grand Historian as Gekun or Jiankun (鬲昆 or 隔昆), and later as part of the Tiele tribes, they came under the rule of the Göktürks and Uyghurs. Later Kyrgyzstan was part of the Kushan empire during Buddhism. The early Kyrgyz state reached its greatest expansion after defeating the Uyghur Khaganate in 840 AD. Then Kyrgyz quickly moved as far as the Tian Shan range and maintained their dominance over this territory for about 200 years. In the 12th century, however, the Kyrgyz domination had shrunk to the Altay Range and the Sayan Mountains as a result of the rising Mongol expansion. With the rise of the Mongol Empire in the 13th century, the Kyrgyz migrated south. Plano Carpin, an envoy of the Papal states, and William Rubruck, an envoy of France, all wrote about their life under the Mongols. Various Turkic peoples ruled them until 1685, when they came under the control of the Oirats (Dzungars).",
"title": "Origins of the Kyrgyz people"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "63% of the modern Kyrgyz men carry Haplogroup R1a1 (Y-DNA), comparable to the prevalence of the haplogroup among the Tajiks (64%).",
"title": "Origins of the Kyrgyz people"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The first Turks to form a state in the territory of Central Asia (including Kyrgyzstan) were Göktürks or Kök-Türks. Known in medieval Chinese sources as Tujue (突厥 tú jué), the Göktürks under the leadership of Bumin/Tuman Khan/Khaghan (d. 552) of Ashina tribe or dynasty and his sons established the first known Turkic state in 551 in the general area of territory that had earlier been occupied by the Xiongnu, and expanded rapidly to rule wide territories in Central Asia. The Göktürks split into two rival Khanates, of which the western one disintegrated in 744.",
"title": "Early medieval times"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The first kingdom to emerge from the Göktürk Khaganate was the Buddhist Uyghur Empire that flourished in the territory encompassing most of Central Asia from 744 to 840.",
"title": "Early medieval times"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "After the Uyghur empire disintegrated a branch of the Uyghurs migrated to oasis settlements in the Tarim Basin and Gansu, such as Gaochang (Karakhoja) and Hami City (Kumul), and set up a confederation of decentralized Buddhist states called Kara-Khoja. Others, mainly closely related to the Uyghurs (the Karluks), occupying the western Tarim Basin, Ferghana Valley, Jungaria and parts of modern Kazakhstan bordering the Muslim Turco-Tajik Khwarazm Sultanate, converted to Islam no later than the 10th century and built a federation with Muslim institutions called Kara-Khanlik, whose princely dynasties are called Karakhanids by most historians. Its capital, Balasagun flourished as a cultural and economic centre.",
"title": "Early medieval times"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The Islamized Karluk princely clan, the Balasagunlu Ashinalar (or the Karakhanids) gravitated toward the Persian Islamic cultural zone after their political autonomy and suzerainty over Central Asia was secured during the 9–10th century.",
"title": "Early medieval times"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "As they became increasingly Persianized they settled in the more Indo-Iranian sedentary centers such as Kashgaria, and became detached from the nomadic traditions of fellow Karluks, many of whom retained cultural elements of the Uyghur Khanate.",
"title": "Early medieval times"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The principality was significantly weakened by the early 12th century and the territory of modern Kyrgyzstan was conquered by the Mongolic Khitan people. The Kara-Khitan Khanate (simplified Chinese: 西辽; traditional Chinese: 西遼; pinyin: Xī Liáo; 1124–1218), also known as Western Liao, was established by Yelü Dashi (耶律大石) who led around 100,000 Khitan remnants after escaping the Jurchen conquest of their native country, the Khitan dynasty.",
"title": "Early medieval times"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The Khitay conquest of Central Asia can thus be seen as an internecine struggle within the Karluk nomadic tribe, played out as dynastic conflict between the conquering Buddhist Khitay elites and the defending Kara-Khanid princes, resulting in the subjugation of the latter by the former, and in the subjugation of the Muslim Karluks by their Nestorian/Buddhist kin.",
"title": "Early medieval times"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The Mongol invasion of Central Asia in the 13th century devastated the territory of Kyrgyzstan, costing its people their independence and their written language. The son of Genghis Khan, Juche, conquered the Kyrgyz tribes of the Yenisey region, who by this time had become disunited. At the same time, the area of present-day Kyrgyzstan was an important link in the Silk Road, as attested by several Nestorian gravestones. For the next 200 years, the Kyrgyz remained under the Golden Horde, Chagatai Khanate and the Oirats as well as Dzungars that succeeded that regime. Freedom was regained in 1510, but Kyrgyz tribes were overrun in the seventeenth century by the Kalmyks, in the mid-eighteenth century by the Manchus, and in the early nineteenth century by the Uzbeks.",
"title": "Mongol domination"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The Mongol Empire (1206-1294/1368) was the largest contiguous empire and the second largest empire overall in world history. It emerged from the unification of Mongol and Turkic tribes in modern-day Mongolia, and grew through invasion, after Genghis Khan had been proclaimed ruler of all Mongols in 1206. It is often identified as the \"Mongol World Empire\" because it spanned much of Eurasia. However, the Mongol Empire began to split following the succession war in 1260–1264, with the Golden Horde and the Chagatai Khanate being de facto independent and refusing to accept Kublai Khan (1260–1294) as Khagan. By the time of Kublai's death, the Mongol Empire had already fractured into four separate khanates or empires, each pursuing its own separate interests and objectives. The kagans of the Yuan dynasty assumed the role of Chinese emperors and fixed their capital at Khanbaliq (modern-day Beijing) from the old Mongol capital Karakorum. Although other khanates accepted them as their titular suzerains and sent tributes and some support after the peace treaty in 1304, the three western khanates were virtually independent, and they each continued their own separate developments as sovereign states. Eventually the Mongol rule in China fell in 1368 and was replaced by the Ming dynasty though the Genghisid Borjigin dynasty survived in Mongolia until the 17th century. Temujin, the son of a Mongol chieftain, who suffered a difficult childhood, united the nomadic, previously ever-rivaling Mongol-Turkic tribes under his rule through political manipulation and military might. In 1203–1205, the Mongols under Temujin destroyed all the remaining rival tribes (Kereyd, Merkits) and brought them under his sway. In 1206, Temujin was crowned as the Kagan of the Yekhe Mongol Ulus (Great Mongol Nation) at a Kurultai (general assembly) and assumed the title \"Chingis Khan\" (or more commonly known as \"Genghis Khan\" probably meaning Universal ruler) instead of the old tribal tities such as Gur Khan or Tayang Khan. This event essentially marked the start of the Mongol Empire under the leadership of Genghis Khan (1206–1227). Genghis Khan appointed his loyal friends as the heads of army units and households. He also divided his nation into arbans (each with 10 people), zuuns (100), myangans (1000) and tumens (10,000) of decimal organization. The Kheshig or the Imperial guard was founded and divided into day and night guards. Genghis Khan rewarded those who had been loyal to him and placed them in high positions. Most of those people were hailed from very low-rank clans. He proclaimed new law of the empire Yassa and codified everything related to the everyday life and political affairs of the nomads at the time. For example, he forbade the hunting of animals during the breeding time, the selling of women, theft of other's properties as well as fighting between the Mongols, by his law. He quickly came into conflict with the Jin dynasty of the Jurchens and the Western Xia of the Tanguts in northern China. Under the provocation of the Muslim Khwarezmid Empire, he moved into Central Asia as well, devastating Transoxiana and eastern Persia, and then raiding into Kievan Rus' and the Caucasus. Before his death, Genghis divided his empire among his sons and immediate family, but as custom made clear, it remained the joint property of the entire imperial family who, along with the Mongol aristocracy, constituted the ruling class. In 1207 Kyrgyz possessions on the Yenisei, in Tuva and Altai were entered into part of Mongol Empire. But in 1273–1293 Kyrgyz rulers restored their independence after repeated rebellions Kyrgyz tribes against Mongols power in 1217, 1218, 1273–1280. In 1218 the east Turkestan and Semirechie were conquered by Mongols. Genghis Khan's empire was inherited by his third son, Ugedei, the designated Great Khan who personally controlled the lands east of Lake Balkhash as far as Mongolia. Tolui, the youngest, the keeper of the hearth, was granted the northern Mongolian homeland. Chagatai, the second son, received Transoxania, between the Amur-Darya and Syr-Darya rivers in modern Uzbekistan, and the area around Kashgar. He made his capital at Almalik near what is now Kulja in northwestern China. Apart from problems of lineage and inheritance, the Mongol Empire was endangered by the great cultural and ethnic divide between the Mongols themselves and their mostly Islamic Turkic subjects. * In 1269 during the common meeting of khans of Chagatai and Ugedei uluses Khaidu (1269- 1301) was officially chosen to be a Khan. His lands extended from Altai to Amur-Darya, including the territory of the modern Kyrgyzstan and the Eastern Turkestan (an extensive region of central Asia between Siberia in the north and Tibet, India, Afghanistan, and Iran in the south: formerły divided into West (Russian) Turkestan (also called Soviet Central Asia), comprising present-day Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan and the South part of Kazakhstan, and East Turkestan consisting of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (Chinese).",
"title": "Mongol domination"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The Kyrgyz in the north were never totally subjugated by Timurlane. In the southern region, however, his conquests and influence had a unifying role. In the 15th century, a tribe of Uzbeks, originally from the Golden horde, arrived in this region.",
"title": "Timurids and Uzbeks"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In 1775, Atake Tynay Biy Uulu, one of the leaders of Sarybagysh tribe, established first diplomatic ties with the Russian Empire by sending his envoys to Catherine the Great in Saint Petersburg. In the early 19th century, the territory of Kyrgyzstan came under the control of the Khanate of Kokand, but the territory was occupied and formally annexed by the Russian Empire in 1876. The Russian takeover instigated numerous revolts against tsarist authority, and many Kyrgyz opted to move into the Pamir Mountains or to Afghanistan. The ruthless suppression of the 1916 rebellion in Central Asia, triggered by the Russian imposition of the military draft on the Kyrgyz and other Central Asian peoples, caused many Kyrgyz to flee to China. For Russian expansion into central Asia see Russian conquest of Turkestan.",
"title": "Russian Empire: 1876–1917"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Soviet power was initially established in the region in 1918, and in 1924, the Kara-Kyrgyz Autonomous Oblast was created within the Russian SFSR. (The term Kara-Kyrgyz was used until the mid-1920s by the Russians to distinguish them from the Kazakhs, who were also referred to as Kyrgyz.) In 1926, it became the Kirghiz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. On December 5, 1936, the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) was established as a full Union Republic of the USSR.",
"title": "The Soviet Era: 1917–1991"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "During the 1920s, Kyrgyzstan saw considerable cultural, educational, and social change. Economic and social development also was notable. Literacy increased, and a standard literary language was introduced. The Kyrgyz language belongs to the Kipchak Turkic group of languages. In 1924, an Arabic-based Kyrgyz alphabet was introduced, which was replaced by Latin script in 1928. In 1941 Cyrillic script was adopted. Many aspects of the Kyrgyz national culture were retained despite suppression of nationalist activity under Joseph Stalin, who controlled the Soviet Union from the late 1920s until 1953.",
"title": "The Soviet Era: 1917–1991"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Modern Kyrgyz religious affiliation is eclectically Muslim for a majority of the population. Typical Kyrgyz families vary in their devotion to Islam.",
"title": "The Soviet Era: 1917–1991"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Russian and Kyrgyz cultures differ in respect to family, religious identity, and social structure. Kyrgyzstan is a country in transition. The current social dilemma is one that has emerged from the controlling body mainly relying on classic Russian ethnicities, to Kyrgyz or Turkic ethnic groups shaping and forming the infrastructure of Kyrgyzstan. This has resulted in a measurable degree of instability and chaos associated with a social transition.",
"title": "The Soviet Era: 1917–1991"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The ancestral Kyrgyz social structure was dominated by nomadic traditions, governing political philosophies, and socialization. As classical Russian ethnic groups were injected into the Soviet Republic of Kyrgyzstan, the urbanization process began and was mainly authored by the Russian communities placed within the Soviet Republic, mostly by policies created by the communist party. It is unclear why these policies were created and it is only clear that these policies forced Russians of certain descent to populate the Republic.",
"title": "The Soviet Era: 1917–1991"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "On 11 March 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev was chosen by the Politburo as the new General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev immediately launched his new liberalizing policies of glasnost and perestroika, although they had little immediate impact on the political climate in Kyrgyzstan. On 2 November 1985 Gorbachev replaced Turdakun Usubaliyev the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kirghizia, who had been in power for 24 years, with Absamat Masaliyev. The republic's press was permitted to adopt a more liberal stance and to establish a new publication, Literaturny Kyrgyzstan, by the Union of Writers. Unofficial political groups were forbidden, but several groups that emerged in 1989 to deal with an acute housing crisis were permitted to function.",
"title": "The Soviet Era: 1917–1991"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Gorbachev's policy of separating Party and State began to impact at the Soviet Republic level in early 1991 when each SSR held competitive elections to their respective legislative Supreme Soviets, shortly after the CPSU had given up its 'leading role'. This meant that real local power moved from the position of Communist Party Leader to that of Chairman of the Supreme Soviet, the official Head of State of the SSR. Between January and April 1990 each of the Communist Party leaders of the five states of Soviet Central Asia assumed the position of Chairman of the Supreme Soviet in their respective SSRs, without any difficulty from the still weak opposition forces in the region.",
"title": "The Soviet Era: 1917–1991"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In Kirghizia the 1990 elections were held on 25 February, with a second round on 7 April. As the Communists were the only political party contesting the elections it is not surprising that they received 90% of the vote. Absamat Masaliyev the Communist leader was voted by the new Parliament as Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of Kirghizia on 10 April 1990.",
"title": "The Soviet Era: 1917–1991"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "However events quickly began to slip from the Communists control. On 1 May 1990 the opposition groups held their first big demonstration in Frunze in competition with the officially sanctioned May Day celebrations, and on 25–26 May 1990 the opposition groups formed the Kyrgyzstan Democratic Movement as a bloc of several anti-Communist political parties, movements and nongovernment organizations. Then on 4 June 1990, ethnic tensions between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz surfaced in an area of the Osh Region where Uzbeks form a majority of the population. Violent confrontations ensued, and a state of emergency and curfew were introduced. Order was not restored until August 1990.",
"title": "The Soviet Era: 1917–1991"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The Kyrgyzstan Democratic Movement swiftly developed into a significant political force with growing support in parliament. On 27 October 1990 in an upset victory, Askar Akayev, the president of the Kyrgyz Academy of Sciences and reformist Communist Party member, was elected to the newly created presidency defeating Communist Party leader Absamat Masaliyev. Kirghizia was the only one of the five states of Soviet Central Asia that voted their established Communist leadership out of power in 1990.",
"title": "The Soviet Era: 1917–1991"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "On 15 December 1990, the Supreme Soviet voted to change the republic's name to the Republic of Kyrgyzstan. In January 1991, Akayev introduced new government structures and appointed a government consisting mainly of younger, reform-oriented politicians. On 5 February 1991, the name of the capital, Frunze, was changed to Bishkek.",
"title": "The Soviet Era: 1917–1991"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Despite these moves toward independence, economic realities seemed to work against secession from the Soviet Union In a referendum on the preservation of the USSR, in March 1991, 88.7% of the voters approved a proposal to remain part of the union as a \"renewed federation.\"",
"title": "The Soviet Era: 1917–1991"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "On August 19, 1991, when the State Emergency Committee assumed power in Moscow, there was an attempt to depose Akayev in Kyrgyzstan. After the coup collapsed the following week, Akayev and Vice President German Kuznetsov announced their resignations from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), and the entire politburo and secretariat resigned. This was followed by the Supreme Soviet vote declaring independence from the Soviet Union on 31 August 1991, becoming the first of the five Republics of Soviet Central Asia to break away.",
"title": "The Soviet Era: 1917–1991"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Kyrgyz was announced as the state language in September 1991. In October 1991, Akayev ran unopposed and was elected President of the new independent republic by direct ballot, receiving 95% of the votes cast. Together with the representatives of seven other republics, he signed the Treaty of the New Economic Communists that same month. On December 21, 1991, Kyrgyzstan formally entered the new Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).",
"title": "Independence and the Akayev presidency: 1991–2005"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "As in many former Soviet republics, after Kyrgyzstan regained independence in August 1991 many individuals, organizations, and political parties sought to reestablish (and, to a certain extent, to create from scratch) a Kyrgyz national cultural identity; often one that included a backlash against Russians.",
"title": "Independence and the Akayev presidency: 1991–2005"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In 1993, allegations of corruption against Akayev's closest political associates blossomed into a major scandal. One of those accused of improprieties was Prime Minister Tursunbek Chyngyshev, who was dismissed for ethical reasons in December. Following Chyngyshev's dismissal, Akayev dismissed the government and called upon the last communist premier, Apas Djumagulov, to form a new one. In January 1994, Akayev initiated a referendum asking for a renewed mandate to complete his term of office. He received 96.2% of the vote.",
"title": "Independence and the Akayev presidency: 1991–2005"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "A new constitution was passed by the parliament in May 1993 and the Republic of Kyrgyzstan was renamed the Kyrgyz Republic. In 1994, however, the parliament failed to produce a quorum for its last scheduled session prior to the expiration of its term in February 1995. President Akayev was widely accused of having manipulated a boycott by a majority of the parliamentarians. Akayev, in turn, asserted that the communists had caused a political crisis by preventing the legislature from fulfilling its role. Akayev scheduled an October 1994 referendum, overwhelmingly approved by voters, which proposed two amendments to the constitution—one that would allow the constitution to be amended by means of a referendum, and the other creating a new bicameral parliament called the Jogorku Kenesh.",
"title": "Independence and the Akayev presidency: 1991–2005"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Elections for the two legislative chambers—a 35-seat full-time assembly and a 70-seat part-time assembly—were held in February 1995 after campaigns considered remarkably free and open by most international observers, although the election-day proceedings were marred by widespread irregularities. Independent candidates won most of the seats, suggesting that personalities prevailed over ideologies. The new parliament convened its initial session in March 1995. One of its first orders of business was the approval of the precise constitutional language on the role of the legislature.",
"title": "Independence and the Akayev presidency: 1991–2005"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "On December 24, 1995, President Akayev was reelected for another 5-year term with wide support (75% of vote) over two opposing candidates. He used government resources and state-owned media to carry out his campaign. Three (out of six) candidates were de-registered shortly before the election.",
"title": "Independence and the Akayev presidency: 1991–2005"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "A February 1996 referendum—in violation of the constitution and the law on referendums—amended the constitution to give President Akayev more power. Although the changes gave the president the power to dissolve parliament, it also more clearly defined the parliament's powers. Since that time, the parliament has demonstrated real independence from the executive branch.",
"title": "Independence and the Akayev presidency: 1991–2005"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "An October 1998 referendum approved constitutional changes, including increasing the number of deputies in the lower house, reducing the number of deputies in the upper house, providing for 25% of lower house deputies to be elected by party lists, rolling back parliamentary immunity, introducing private property, prohibiting adoption of laws restricting freedom of speech and mass media, and reforming the state budget.",
"title": "Independence and the Akayev presidency: 1991–2005"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Two rounds of parliamentary elections were held on February 20, 2000, and March 12, 2000. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) reported that the elections failed to comply with commitments to free and fair elections and hence were invalid. Questionable judicial proceedings against opposition candidates and parties limited the choice of candidates available to Kyrgyz voters, while state-controlled media only reported favorably on official candidates. Government officials put pressure on independent media outlets that favored the opposition. The presidential election that followed later in 2000 also was marred by irregularities and was not declared free and fair by international observers. In December 2001, through a constitutional amendment, the Russian language was given official status.",
"title": "Independence and the Akayev presidency: 1991–2005"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The OSCE found that the parliamentary elections held on 27 February and 13 March 2005 failed to comply with commitments to free and fair elections; however, there were improvements over the 2000 elections, notably the use of indelible ink, transparent ballot boxes, and generally good access by election observers.",
"title": "Independence and the Akayev presidency: 1991–2005"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Sporadic protests against perceived manipulation and fraud during the elections of February 27, 2005, erupted into widespread calls for the government to resign, which started in the southern provinces. On March 24, 15,000 pro-opposition demonstrators in Bishkek called for the resignation of the President and his regime. Protesters seized the main government building, and Akayev hurriedly fled the country, first to neighboring Kazakhstan and then to Moscow. Initially refusing to resign and denouncing the events as a coup, he subsequently resigned his office on April 4.",
"title": "Tulip Revolution: 2005"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Kurmanbek Bakiyev won the 10 July ballot for the presidential election with 89% of the vote with a 53% turnout. Bakiyev's term in office was marred by the murder of several prominent politicians, prison riots, economic ills and battles for control of lucrative businesses. In 2006, Bakiyev faced a political crisis as thousands of people participated in a series of protests in Bishkek. He was accused of not following through with his promises to limit presidential power, give more authority to parliament and the prime minister, and eradicate corruption and crime. Bakiyev claimed that the opposition was plotting a coup against him.",
"title": "Bakiyev presidency: 2005–2010"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In April 2007, the opposition held protests demanding Bakiyev's resignation, with a large protest beginning on April 11 in Bishkek. Bakiyev signed constitutional amendments to reduce his own power on April 10, but the protest went ahead, with protesters saying that they would remain until he resigned. Clashes broke out between protesters and police on April 19, after which the protests ended.",
"title": "Bakiyev presidency: 2005–2010"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Bakiyev was re-elected in the 2009 presidential election. After the re-election in 2009, some people in Kyrgyzstan said that he would now deal with political and economic reform. Others were skeptical. The Eurasian Daily Monitor wrote on September 10 that his style resembled other leaders such as Vladimir Putin and Nursultan Nazarbayev. However, he lacked resources and Kyrgyz people were anxious about the risk of renewed power shortages and blackouts like in the winter 2008–2009.",
"title": "Bakiyev presidency: 2005–2010"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "During the winter of 2010 Kyrgyzstan has suffered from rolling blackouts and cutoffs occurring regularly while energy prices have risen.",
"title": "Bakiyev presidency: 2005–2010"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The arrest of an opposition figure on 6 April 2010 in the town of Talas led opposition supporters to protest. The protestors took control of a governmental building, demanding a new government. Riot police were sent from Bishkek, and managed to temporarily regain control of the building. Later the same day several more opposition figures were arrested, while the government claimed to have regained control of the situation. The following day, however, hundreds of opposition supporters gathered in Bishkek and marched on the government headquarters. Security personnel attempted to disperse the protestors with the use of stun grenades and live rounds, at the cost of dozens of lives. The protests continued, however, resulting in the flight of President Bakiyev to his southern stronghold of Jalalabad, and the freeing later the same day of the arrested opposition figures. A new government was formed under opposition leader Roza Otunbayeva, while Bakiyev remained for several days in southern Kyrgyzstan, before fleeing to Belarus, where he was given asylum by President Lukashenko. The new interim government held consultations on a new constitution, intended to increase the powers of the parliament and reduce those of the president. A referendum was held on the resulting document on 27 June 2010, and was approved by over 90% of voters, with a turnout of 72%. Elections were subsequently held on 10 October 2010. These elections resulted in five parties reaching the 5% threshold necessary to enter parliament.",
"title": "Revolution 2010"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Almazbek Atambayev ran in 2011 to succeed Roza Otunbayeva as President of Kyrgyzstan. On election day, 30 October 2011, he won in a landslide, defeating Adakhan Madumarov from the Butun Kyrgyzstan party and Kamchybek Tashiev from the Ata-Zhurt party with 63% of the vote, and with about 60% of the eligible Kyrgyz population voting.",
"title": "Atambayev presidency: 2011-to 2017"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In 2011 soon after becoming president, Atambayev travelled to Turkey and signed an agreement with the Turkish President agreeing to increase trade from $300 million in 2011 to $1 billion by 2015, with Turkey also agreeing to attract Turkish investment to Kyrgyzstan to the amount of $450 million within the next few years.",
"title": "Atambayev presidency: 2011-to 2017"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Atambayev has repeatedly presented himself as a pro-Russian politician. He positively supports Kyrgyzstan's Membership of the Russian led Eurasian Customs Union and secured the withdrawal of the American military base from the country in 2014. He has spoken of the need for closer economic relations with Russia, which temporarily employs about 500,000 citizens of Kyrgyzstan; however, he also expressed his wish to achieve greater economic and energy independence from it.",
"title": "Atambayev presidency: 2011-to 2017"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Sooronbay Jeenbekov was sworn in as president on 24 November 2017 at the Ala Archa State Residence. In the hours since assuming office, he made his first decree to confer the title of Hero of the Kyrgyz Republic to his predecessor. The following May, he conducted his first foreign visit after assuming the presidency was to Russia where he met with Vladimir Putin. In April 2018, Jeenbekov fired Prime Minister Sapar Isakov and his entire government following a vote of no confidence from Supreme Council.",
"title": "Jeenbekov presidency: 2017–2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "In his first year, Jeenbekov participated in 30 international meetings, where he signed a total of 77 bilateral agreements and 414 multilateral documents. That same year, he ordered the foreign ministry to establish diplomatic relations with four foreign countries. The draft of a new co-operation agreement with the United States is currently being reconciled.",
"title": "Jeenbekov presidency: 2017–2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Since Jeenbekov took power, he has had a somewhat adversarial relationship with former President Atambayev, who strongly backed Jeenbekov against his opponent Ömürbek Babanov during the 2017 election, even referring to comparing himself as an “older brother” to Jeenbekov when referring to their relationship. Despite this, a rift grew between the two politicians as Atambayev became more involved in politics, eventually rising to the Chairmanship of the Social Democratic Party of Kyrgyzstan, of which Jeenbekov is a member of. While in this post, he criticized Jeenbekov for his handling many controversies and state emergencies, including the Bishkek power plant failure and his refusal to force his brother to resign from parliament. In early April 2018, Jeenbekov dismissed two high-ranking officials in the State Committee for National Security (GKNB) who are considered to be close to Atambayev, which was seen as an apparent jab at Atambayev and his former government. Jeenbekov has on many occasions accused Atambayev of indirectly trying to influence his presidency, saying in November 2018 that he has attempted to turn him into \"a puppet leader through some third individuals\" Even with the accusations, he denies any type of rivalry with the former president, saying the following month that he \"does not consider anyone a rival\".",
"title": "Jeenbekov presidency: 2017–2020"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Mass protests began on 5 October 2020 in response to the parliamentary election that was perceived by protestors as unfair. In the early morning of 6 October 2020, the protesters reclaimed control of the Ala-Too Square in central Bishkek. They also managed to seize the White House and Supreme Council buildings nearby, throwing paper from windows and setting them on fire, also entering the President's offices. A protestor died and 590 others were injured. Protestors freed former president Almazbek Atambayev and opposition politician Sadyr Japarov from prison.",
"title": "October 2020 protests"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "On 6 October, following the protests, the electoral authorities in the country annulled the results of the parliamentary elections. Likely due to pressure from the protest, Prime Minister Kubatbek Boronov resigned, citing parliamentary deputy Myktybek Abdyldayev as the new speaker. Following the resignation of Prime Minister Boronov, former lawmaker Sadyr Japarov was appointed to replace him. Opposition parties rejected the legitimacy of Japarov's status and instead put forward their own candidate for prime minister, Tilek Toktogaziyev. Japarov claimed that he was already the \"legitimate prime minister\" and that he was appointed by \"the parliament's majority.\"",
"title": "October 2020 protests"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "President Sooronbay Jeenbekov resigned on 15 October 2020, leading Japarov to declare himself as acting president. Despite the Kyrgyzstan Constitution stating that the speaker of the Supreme Council should succeed the role, Kanatbek Isaev refused to assume office, resulting in Japarov becoming the acting president.",
"title": "October 2020 protests"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Sadyr Japarov resigned his post of prime minister to run for the presidency in January 2021. He successfully defeating Adakhan Madumarov in a landslide win and assumed office on 28 January 2021.",
"title": "Japarov presidency: 2021–present"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "A constitutional referendum was held in Kyrgyzstan on 11 April 2021. The draft new constitution adopted by the referendum replaces the parliamentary system with a presidential one, with presidents limited to two five years terms instead of a single six-year term.",
"title": "Japarov presidency: 2021–present"
}
] |
The history of the Kyrgyz people and the land now called Kyrgyzstan goes back more than 3,000 years. Although geographically isolated by its mountainous location, it had an important role as part of the historical Silk Road trade route. Turkic nomads, who trace their ancestry to many Turkic states such as the First and Second Turkic Khaganates, have inhabited the country throughout its history. In the 13th century, Kyrgyzstan was conquered by the Mongols; subsequently it regained independence but was invaded by Kalmyks, Manchus, and Uzbeks. In 1876, it became part of the Russian Empire, remaining in the USSR as the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic after the Russian Revolution. Following Mikhael Gorbachev's democratic reforms in the USSR, in 1990 pro-independence candidate Askar Akayev was elected president of the SSR. On 31 August 1991, Kyrgyzstan declared independence from Moscow, and a democratic government was subsequently established.
|
2002-02-25T15:43:11Z
|
2023-12-07T01:37:26Z
|
[
"Template:Div col",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Further",
"Template:Infobox country",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Citation needed",
"Template:Better source needed",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:See also",
"Template:Div col end",
"Template:Years in Kyrgyzstan",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Dead link",
"Template:Fall of Communism",
"Template:More citations needed",
"Template:Zh",
"Template:Transliteration",
"Template:Portal",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:ISBN",
"Template:History of Asia"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Kyrgyzstan
|
16,696 |
Geography of Kyrgyzstan
|
Kyrgyzstan is a landlocked nation in Central Asia, west of the People's Republic of China. Less than a ninth the size of Kazakhstan, at 199,951 square kilometers, Kyrgyzstan is one of the smaller Central Asian states. The national territory extends about 900 km (560 mi) from east to west and 410 km (250 mi) from north to south.
Kyrgyzstan is bordered on the east and southeast by China, on the north by Kazakhstan, on the west by Uzbekistan and on the south by Tajikistan. The borders with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in the Fergana Valley are rather difficult. One consequence of the Stalinist division of Central Asia into five republics is that many ethnic Kyrgyz people do not live in Kyrgyzstan. Three enclaves, legally part of the territory of Kyrgyzstan but geographically removed by several kilometers, have been established, two in Uzbekistan and one in Tajikistan.
The terrain of Kyrgyzstan is dominated by the Tian Shan and Pamir mountain systems, which together occupy about 65% of national territory. The Alay range portion of the Tian Shan system dominates the southwestern crescent of the country, and, to the east, the main Tian Shan range runs along the boundary between southern Kyrgyzstan and China before extending farther east into China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Kyrgyzstan's average elevation is 2,750 m (9,020 ft), ranging from 7,439 m (24,406 ft) at Peak Jengish Chokusu to 394 m (1,293 ft) in the Fergana Valley near Osh. Almost 90% of the country lies more than 1,500 m (4,900 ft) above sea level.
The mountains of Kyrgyzstan are geologically young, so that the physical terrain is marked by sharply uplifted peaks separated by deep valleys. There is also considerable glaciation, with the largest glacier being the Engilchek Glacier. Kyrgyzstan's 6,500 distinct glaciers are estimated to hold about 650 cubic kilometres (160 cu mi) of water and cover 8,048 square kilometers (5,000 square miles) or 4.2% of Kyrgyzstan. Only around the Chüy, Talas, and Fergana valleys is there relatively flat land suitable for large-scale agriculture.
Because the high peaks function as moisture catchers, Kyrgyzstan is relatively well watered by the streams that descend from them. None of the rivers of Kyrgyzstan are navigable, however. The majority are small, rapid, runoff streams. Most of Kyrgyzstan's rivers are tributaries of the Syr Darya, which has its headwaters in the western Tian Shan along the Chinese border. Another large runoff system forms the Chu (Chüy), which arises in northern Kyrgyzstan, then flows northwest and disappears into the deserts of southern Kazakhstan. Ysyk-Köl is the second largest body of water in Central Asia, after the Aral Sea, but the saline lake has been shrinking steadily, and its mineral content has been rising gradually. Kyrgyzstan has a total of about 2,000 lakes with a total surface area of 7,000 square kilometres (2,700 sq mi), mostly located at altitudes of 3,000 to 4,000 meters. Only the largest three, however, occupy more than 500 square kilometres (190 sq mi) each. The second- and third-largest lakes, Song-Köl and Chatyr-Köl (the latter of which also is saline), are located in the Naryn River Basin.
Natural disasters have been frequent and varied. Overgrazing and deforestation of steep mountain slopes have increased the occurrence of mudslides and avalanches, which occasionally have swallowed entire villages. In August 1992, a severe earthquake left several thousand people homeless in the southwestern city of Jalal-Abad.
The country's climate is influenced chiefly by the mountains, Kyrgyzstan's position near the middle of the Eurasian landmass, and the absence of any body of water large enough to influence weather patterns. Those factors create a distinctly continental climate that has significant local variations. Although the mountains tend to collect clouds and block sunlight (reducing some narrow valleys at certain times of year to no more than three or four hours of sunlight per day), the country is generally sunny, receiving as much as 2,900 hours of sunlight per year in some areas. The same conditions also affect temperatures, which can vary significantly from place to place. In January the warmest average temperature (−4 °C or 25 °F) occurs around the southern city of Osh, and around Ysyk-Köl. The latter, which has a volume of 1,738 cubic kilometers (417 cu mi), does not freeze in winter. Indeed, its name means "hot lake" in Kyrgyz. The coldest temperatures are in mountain valleys. There, readings can fall to −30 °C (−22 °F) or lower; the record is −53.6 °C (−64.5 °F). The average temperature for July similarly varies from 27 °C (80.6 °F) in the Fergana Valley, where the record high is 44 °C (111 °F), to a low of −10 °C (14 °F) on the highest mountain peaks. Precipitation varies from 2,000 millimeters (78.7 in) per year in the mountains above the Fergana Valley to less than 100 millimeters (3.9 in) per year on the west bank of Ysyk-Köl.
Kyrgyzstan has been spared many of the enormous environmental problems faced by its Central Asian neighbors, primarily because its designated roles in the Soviet system involved neither heavy industry nor large-scale cotton production. Also, the economic downturn of the early 1990s reduced some of the more serious effects of industrial and agricultural policy. Nevertheless, Kyrgyzstan has serious problems because of inefficient use and pollution of water resources, land degradation, and improper agricultural practices. The country is prone to earthquakes, and major flooding occurs during the snow melt.
The Kyrgyz Republic is the only Central Asian state where water resources are fully generated within its own territory. The water originates from the often glacier covered mountain ranges and its abundance is a vital component for agriculture and the production of hydro‐electric power. The mountainous Kyrgyz Republic is an essential "water tower" for irrigated arable farming on arid plain territories. In addition, the impressive glacierized mountain landscape implies a considerable potential for tourism.
Although Kyrgyzstan has abundant water running through it, its water supply is determined by a post-Soviet sharing agreement among the five Central Asian republics. As in the Soviet era, Kyrgyzstan has the right to 25% of the water that originates in its territory, but the new agreement allows Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan unlimited use of the water that flows into them from Kyrgyzstan, with no compensation for the nation at the source. Kyrgyzstan uses the entire amount to which the agreement entitles it, but utilization is skewed heavily in favor of agricultural irrigation. During the Soviet era, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan shared their abundant water resources with Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan during summer, and these three nations shared oil and gas with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in winter. According to the International Crisis Group, the skewed system that is currently in place could cause irreversible regional destabilization, and needs to be dealt with by international actors to avoid a crisis in Central Asia. In 1994 agriculture accounted for about 88% of total water consumption, compared with 8% by industry and 4% by municipal water distribution systems. According to World Bank experts, Kyrgyzstan has an adequate supply of high-quality water for future use, provided the resource is prudently managed. However, in Central Asia water problems are on the rise. The Kyrgyz Republic exports water to irrigate the neighbouring states Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. To prevent conflicts, water allocation and use, and in particular the role of agriculture as major water user, have become very important questions in the development discourse in recent years, and will continue to be in the future.
Irrigation is extremely wasteful of water because the distribution infrastructure is old and poorly maintained. In 1993 only an estimated 5% of required maintenance expenditures was allocated. As of 1997, an estimated 70% of the nation's water supply network is in need of repair or replacement. The quality of drinking water from this aging system is poorly monitored—the water management staff has been cut drastically because of inadequate funds. Further, there is no money to buy new water disinfection equipment when it is needed. Some aquifers near industrial and mining centers have been contaminated by heavy metals, oils, and sanitary wastes. In addition, many localities rely on surface sources, making users vulnerable to agricultural runoff and livestock waste, which seep gradually downward from the surface. The areas of lowest water quality are the heavily populated regions of the Chui Valley and Osh and Jalal-Abad Regions, and areas along the rivers flowing into Ysyk-Köl.
In towns, wastewater collection provides about 70% of the water supply. Although towns have biological treatment equipment, as much as 50% of such equipment is rated as ineffective. The major sources of toxic waste in the water supply are the mercury mining combine at Haidarkan; the antimony mine at Kadamzai; the Kadzyi Sai uranium mine, which ceased extraction in 1967 but which continues to leach toxic materials into nearby Ysyk Köl; the Kara-Balta Uranium Recovery Plant; the Min Kush deposit of mine tailings; and the Kyrgyz Mining and Metallurgy Plant at Orlovka.
The most important problems in land use are soil erosion and salinization in improperly irrigated farmland. An estimated 60% of Kyrgyzstan's land is affected by topsoil loss, and 6% by salinization, both problems with more serious long-term than short-term effects. In 1994 the size of livestock herds averaged twice the carrying capacity of pasturage land, continuing the serious overgrazing problem and consequent soil erosion that began when the herds were at their peak in the late 1980s. Uncertain land tenure and overall financial insecurity have caused many private farmers to concentrate their capital in the traditional form—livestock—thus subjecting new land to the overgrazing problem.
The inherent land shortage in Kyrgyzstan is exacerbated by the flooding of agricultural areas for hydroelectric projects. The creation of Toktogul Reservoir on the Naryn River, for example, involved the flooding of 130 km² of fertile land. Such projects have the additional effect of constricting downstream water supply; Toktogul deprives the lower reaches of the Syr Darya in Uzbekistan and the Aral Sea Basin of substantial amounts of water. Because the Naryn Basin, where many hydroelectric projects are located, is very active seismically, flooding is also a danger should a dam be broken by an earthquake.
Environment - current issues: Nuclear waste left behind by the Soviet Union in many open-air pits in hazardous locations. Water pollution; many people get their water directly from contaminated streams and wells; as a result, water-borne diseases are prevalent; increasing soil salinity from faulty irrigation practices. Illegal hunting of very rare species such as the snow leopard and the Marco Polo sheep.
Environment - international agreements: party to: Air Pollution, Biodiversity, Desertification, Hazardous Wastes, Ozone Layer Protection, Wetlands
In response to the internationally recognized environmental crisis of the rapid desiccation of the Aral Sea, the five states sharing the Aral Sea Basin (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) are developing a strategy to end the crisis. The World Bank and agencies of the United Nations (UN) have developed an Aral Sea Program, the first stage of which is funded by the five countries and external donors. That stage has seven areas of focus, one of which—land and water management in the upper watersheds—is of primary concern to Kyrgyzstan. Among the conditions detrimental to the Aral Sea's environment are erosion from deforestation and overgrazing, contamination from poorly managed irrigation systems, and uncontrolled waste from mining and municipal effluents. Kyrgyzstan's National Environmental Action Plan (NEAP) has addressed these problems as part of its first-phase priorities in cooperation with the Aral Sea Program.
The NEAP, adopted in 1994, is the basic blueprint for environmental protection. The plan focuses on solving a small number of critical problems, collecting reliable information to aid in that process, and integrating environmental measures with economic and social development strategy. The initial planning period is to end in 1997. The main targets of that phase are inefficient water resource management, land degradation, overexploitation of forest reserves, loss of biodiversity, and pollution from inefficient mining and refining practices.
Because of severe budget constraints, most of the funds for NEAP operations come from international sources, including official institutions such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank and numerous international nongovernmental organizations. Implementation is guided by a committee of state ministers and by a NEAP Expert Working Group, both established in 1994 by executive order. A NEAP office in Bishkek was set up with funds from Switzerland.
The main environmental protection agency of the Kyrgyzstan government is the State Committee on Environmental Protection, still known by its Soviet-era acronym, Goskompriroda. Established by the old regime in 1988, the agency's post-Soviet responsibilities have been described in a series of decrees beginning in 1991. In 1994 the state committee had a central office in Bishkek, one branch in each of the seven regions, and a total staff of about 150 persons. Because of poorly defined lines of responsibility, administrative conflicts often occur between local and national authorities of Goskompriroda and between Goskompriroda and a second national agency, the Hydrometeorological Administration (Gidromet), which is the main monitoring agency for air, water, and soil quality. In general, the vertical hierarchy structure, a relic of Soviet times, has led to poor coordination and duplication of effort among environmental protection agencies.
A number of protected nature areas have been designated by the government of the republic. As of the end of 2004, they included:
Area: total: 198,951 km² land: 191,801 km² water: 8,150 km²
Land boundaries: total: 5,473 km border countries: the People's Republic of China 1,063 km, Kazakhstan 1,212 km, Tajikistan 984 km, Uzbekistan 1,314 km
Coastline: 0 km (landlocked)
Elevation extremes: lowest point: Kara-Darya 132 m highest point: Peak Jengish Chokusu 7,439 m
Terrain: peaks of Tien Shan and associated valleys and basins encompass entire nation
Natural resources: abundant hydropower; significant deposits of gold and rare earth metals; locally exploitable coal, petroleum, and natural gas; other deposits of nepheline, mercury, bismuth, lead, and zinc.
Land use: arable land: 6.7% permanent crops: 0.4% permanent pasture: 48.3% forest: 5.1% other: 93.24% (2011) note: Kyrgyzstan has the world's largest natural growth walnut forest, Arslanbob, located in Jalal-Abad Region with an enormous variety of different genetic characteristics. It is believed that most of the world's walnut varieties derive from the original species still found here.
Irrigated land: 10,210 km² (2005)
Total renewable water resources: 23.62 km (2011)
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Kyrgyzstan is a landlocked nation in Central Asia, west of the People's Republic of China. Less than a ninth the size of Kazakhstan, at 199,951 square kilometers, Kyrgyzstan is one of the smaller Central Asian states. The national territory extends about 900 km (560 mi) from east to west and 410 km (250 mi) from north to south.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Kyrgyzstan is bordered on the east and southeast by China, on the north by Kazakhstan, on the west by Uzbekistan and on the south by Tajikistan. The borders with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in the Fergana Valley are rather difficult. One consequence of the Stalinist division of Central Asia into five republics is that many ethnic Kyrgyz people do not live in Kyrgyzstan. Three enclaves, legally part of the territory of Kyrgyzstan but geographically removed by several kilometers, have been established, two in Uzbekistan and one in Tajikistan.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The terrain of Kyrgyzstan is dominated by the Tian Shan and Pamir mountain systems, which together occupy about 65% of national territory. The Alay range portion of the Tian Shan system dominates the southwestern crescent of the country, and, to the east, the main Tian Shan range runs along the boundary between southern Kyrgyzstan and China before extending farther east into China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Kyrgyzstan's average elevation is 2,750 m (9,020 ft), ranging from 7,439 m (24,406 ft) at Peak Jengish Chokusu to 394 m (1,293 ft) in the Fergana Valley near Osh. Almost 90% of the country lies more than 1,500 m (4,900 ft) above sea level.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The mountains of Kyrgyzstan are geologically young, so that the physical terrain is marked by sharply uplifted peaks separated by deep valleys. There is also considerable glaciation, with the largest glacier being the Engilchek Glacier. Kyrgyzstan's 6,500 distinct glaciers are estimated to hold about 650 cubic kilometres (160 cu mi) of water and cover 8,048 square kilometers (5,000 square miles) or 4.2% of Kyrgyzstan. Only around the Chüy, Talas, and Fergana valleys is there relatively flat land suitable for large-scale agriculture.",
"title": "Topography and drainage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Because the high peaks function as moisture catchers, Kyrgyzstan is relatively well watered by the streams that descend from them. None of the rivers of Kyrgyzstan are navigable, however. The majority are small, rapid, runoff streams. Most of Kyrgyzstan's rivers are tributaries of the Syr Darya, which has its headwaters in the western Tian Shan along the Chinese border. Another large runoff system forms the Chu (Chüy), which arises in northern Kyrgyzstan, then flows northwest and disappears into the deserts of southern Kazakhstan. Ysyk-Köl is the second largest body of water in Central Asia, after the Aral Sea, but the saline lake has been shrinking steadily, and its mineral content has been rising gradually. Kyrgyzstan has a total of about 2,000 lakes with a total surface area of 7,000 square kilometres (2,700 sq mi), mostly located at altitudes of 3,000 to 4,000 meters. Only the largest three, however, occupy more than 500 square kilometres (190 sq mi) each. The second- and third-largest lakes, Song-Köl and Chatyr-Köl (the latter of which also is saline), are located in the Naryn River Basin.",
"title": "Topography and drainage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Natural disasters have been frequent and varied. Overgrazing and deforestation of steep mountain slopes have increased the occurrence of mudslides and avalanches, which occasionally have swallowed entire villages. In August 1992, a severe earthquake left several thousand people homeless in the southwestern city of Jalal-Abad.",
"title": "Topography and drainage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The country's climate is influenced chiefly by the mountains, Kyrgyzstan's position near the middle of the Eurasian landmass, and the absence of any body of water large enough to influence weather patterns. Those factors create a distinctly continental climate that has significant local variations. Although the mountains tend to collect clouds and block sunlight (reducing some narrow valleys at certain times of year to no more than three or four hours of sunlight per day), the country is generally sunny, receiving as much as 2,900 hours of sunlight per year in some areas. The same conditions also affect temperatures, which can vary significantly from place to place. In January the warmest average temperature (−4 °C or 25 °F) occurs around the southern city of Osh, and around Ysyk-Köl. The latter, which has a volume of 1,738 cubic kilometers (417 cu mi), does not freeze in winter. Indeed, its name means \"hot lake\" in Kyrgyz. The coldest temperatures are in mountain valleys. There, readings can fall to −30 °C (−22 °F) or lower; the record is −53.6 °C (−64.5 °F). The average temperature for July similarly varies from 27 °C (80.6 °F) in the Fergana Valley, where the record high is 44 °C (111 °F), to a low of −10 °C (14 °F) on the highest mountain peaks. Precipitation varies from 2,000 millimeters (78.7 in) per year in the mountains above the Fergana Valley to less than 100 millimeters (3.9 in) per year on the west bank of Ysyk-Köl.",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Kyrgyzstan has been spared many of the enormous environmental problems faced by its Central Asian neighbors, primarily because its designated roles in the Soviet system involved neither heavy industry nor large-scale cotton production. Also, the economic downturn of the early 1990s reduced some of the more serious effects of industrial and agricultural policy. Nevertheless, Kyrgyzstan has serious problems because of inefficient use and pollution of water resources, land degradation, and improper agricultural practices. The country is prone to earthquakes, and major flooding occurs during the snow melt.",
"title": "Environmental issues"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The Kyrgyz Republic is the only Central Asian state where water resources are fully generated within its own territory. The water originates from the often glacier covered mountain ranges and its abundance is a vital component for agriculture and the production of hydro‐electric power. The mountainous Kyrgyz Republic is an essential \"water tower\" for irrigated arable farming on arid plain territories. In addition, the impressive glacierized mountain landscape implies a considerable potential for tourism.",
"title": "Environmental issues"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Although Kyrgyzstan has abundant water running through it, its water supply is determined by a post-Soviet sharing agreement among the five Central Asian republics. As in the Soviet era, Kyrgyzstan has the right to 25% of the water that originates in its territory, but the new agreement allows Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan unlimited use of the water that flows into them from Kyrgyzstan, with no compensation for the nation at the source. Kyrgyzstan uses the entire amount to which the agreement entitles it, but utilization is skewed heavily in favor of agricultural irrigation. During the Soviet era, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan shared their abundant water resources with Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan during summer, and these three nations shared oil and gas with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in winter. According to the International Crisis Group, the skewed system that is currently in place could cause irreversible regional destabilization, and needs to be dealt with by international actors to avoid a crisis in Central Asia. In 1994 agriculture accounted for about 88% of total water consumption, compared with 8% by industry and 4% by municipal water distribution systems. According to World Bank experts, Kyrgyzstan has an adequate supply of high-quality water for future use, provided the resource is prudently managed. However, in Central Asia water problems are on the rise. The Kyrgyz Republic exports water to irrigate the neighbouring states Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. To prevent conflicts, water allocation and use, and in particular the role of agriculture as major water user, have become very important questions in the development discourse in recent years, and will continue to be in the future.",
"title": "Environmental issues"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Irrigation is extremely wasteful of water because the distribution infrastructure is old and poorly maintained. In 1993 only an estimated 5% of required maintenance expenditures was allocated. As of 1997, an estimated 70% of the nation's water supply network is in need of repair or replacement. The quality of drinking water from this aging system is poorly monitored—the water management staff has been cut drastically because of inadequate funds. Further, there is no money to buy new water disinfection equipment when it is needed. Some aquifers near industrial and mining centers have been contaminated by heavy metals, oils, and sanitary wastes. In addition, many localities rely on surface sources, making users vulnerable to agricultural runoff and livestock waste, which seep gradually downward from the surface. The areas of lowest water quality are the heavily populated regions of the Chui Valley and Osh and Jalal-Abad Regions, and areas along the rivers flowing into Ysyk-Köl.",
"title": "Environmental issues"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In towns, wastewater collection provides about 70% of the water supply. Although towns have biological treatment equipment, as much as 50% of such equipment is rated as ineffective. The major sources of toxic waste in the water supply are the mercury mining combine at Haidarkan; the antimony mine at Kadamzai; the Kadzyi Sai uranium mine, which ceased extraction in 1967 but which continues to leach toxic materials into nearby Ysyk Köl; the Kara-Balta Uranium Recovery Plant; the Min Kush deposit of mine tailings; and the Kyrgyz Mining and Metallurgy Plant at Orlovka.",
"title": "Environmental issues"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The most important problems in land use are soil erosion and salinization in improperly irrigated farmland. An estimated 60% of Kyrgyzstan's land is affected by topsoil loss, and 6% by salinization, both problems with more serious long-term than short-term effects. In 1994 the size of livestock herds averaged twice the carrying capacity of pasturage land, continuing the serious overgrazing problem and consequent soil erosion that began when the herds were at their peak in the late 1980s. Uncertain land tenure and overall financial insecurity have caused many private farmers to concentrate their capital in the traditional form—livestock—thus subjecting new land to the overgrazing problem.",
"title": "Environmental issues"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The inherent land shortage in Kyrgyzstan is exacerbated by the flooding of agricultural areas for hydroelectric projects. The creation of Toktogul Reservoir on the Naryn River, for example, involved the flooding of 130 km² of fertile land. Such projects have the additional effect of constricting downstream water supply; Toktogul deprives the lower reaches of the Syr Darya in Uzbekistan and the Aral Sea Basin of substantial amounts of water. Because the Naryn Basin, where many hydroelectric projects are located, is very active seismically, flooding is also a danger should a dam be broken by an earthquake.",
"title": "Environmental issues"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Environment - current issues: Nuclear waste left behind by the Soviet Union in many open-air pits in hazardous locations. Water pollution; many people get their water directly from contaminated streams and wells; as a result, water-borne diseases are prevalent; increasing soil salinity from faulty irrigation practices. Illegal hunting of very rare species such as the snow leopard and the Marco Polo sheep.",
"title": "Environmental issues"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Environment - international agreements: party to: Air Pollution, Biodiversity, Desertification, Hazardous Wastes, Ozone Layer Protection, Wetlands",
"title": "Environmental issues"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In response to the internationally recognized environmental crisis of the rapid desiccation of the Aral Sea, the five states sharing the Aral Sea Basin (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) are developing a strategy to end the crisis. The World Bank and agencies of the United Nations (UN) have developed an Aral Sea Program, the first stage of which is funded by the five countries and external donors. That stage has seven areas of focus, one of which—land and water management in the upper watersheds—is of primary concern to Kyrgyzstan. Among the conditions detrimental to the Aral Sea's environment are erosion from deforestation and overgrazing, contamination from poorly managed irrigation systems, and uncontrolled waste from mining and municipal effluents. Kyrgyzstan's National Environmental Action Plan (NEAP) has addressed these problems as part of its first-phase priorities in cooperation with the Aral Sea Program.",
"title": "Environmental issues"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The NEAP, adopted in 1994, is the basic blueprint for environmental protection. The plan focuses on solving a small number of critical problems, collecting reliable information to aid in that process, and integrating environmental measures with economic and social development strategy. The initial planning period is to end in 1997. The main targets of that phase are inefficient water resource management, land degradation, overexploitation of forest reserves, loss of biodiversity, and pollution from inefficient mining and refining practices.",
"title": "Environmental issues"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Because of severe budget constraints, most of the funds for NEAP operations come from international sources, including official institutions such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank and numerous international nongovernmental organizations. Implementation is guided by a committee of state ministers and by a NEAP Expert Working Group, both established in 1994 by executive order. A NEAP office in Bishkek was set up with funds from Switzerland.",
"title": "Environmental issues"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The main environmental protection agency of the Kyrgyzstan government is the State Committee on Environmental Protection, still known by its Soviet-era acronym, Goskompriroda. Established by the old regime in 1988, the agency's post-Soviet responsibilities have been described in a series of decrees beginning in 1991. In 1994 the state committee had a central office in Bishkek, one branch in each of the seven regions, and a total staff of about 150 persons. Because of poorly defined lines of responsibility, administrative conflicts often occur between local and national authorities of Goskompriroda and between Goskompriroda and a second national agency, the Hydrometeorological Administration (Gidromet), which is the main monitoring agency for air, water, and soil quality. In general, the vertical hierarchy structure, a relic of Soviet times, has led to poor coordination and duplication of effort among environmental protection agencies.",
"title": "Environmental issues"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "A number of protected nature areas have been designated by the government of the republic. As of the end of 2004, they included:",
"title": "Environmental issues"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Area: total: 198,951 km² land: 191,801 km² water: 8,150 km²",
"title": "Area and boundaries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Land boundaries: total: 5,473 km border countries: the People's Republic of China 1,063 km, Kazakhstan 1,212 km, Tajikistan 984 km, Uzbekistan 1,314 km",
"title": "Area and boundaries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Coastline: 0 km (landlocked)",
"title": "Area and boundaries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Elevation extremes: lowest point: Kara-Darya 132 m highest point: Peak Jengish Chokusu 7,439 m",
"title": "Area and boundaries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Terrain: peaks of Tien Shan and associated valleys and basins encompass entire nation",
"title": "Resources and land use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Natural resources: abundant hydropower; significant deposits of gold and rare earth metals; locally exploitable coal, petroleum, and natural gas; other deposits of nepheline, mercury, bismuth, lead, and zinc.",
"title": "Resources and land use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Land use: arable land: 6.7% permanent crops: 0.4% permanent pasture: 48.3% forest: 5.1% other: 93.24% (2011) note: Kyrgyzstan has the world's largest natural growth walnut forest, Arslanbob, located in Jalal-Abad Region with an enormous variety of different genetic characteristics. It is believed that most of the world's walnut varieties derive from the original species still found here.",
"title": "Resources and land use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Irrigated land: 10,210 km² (2005)",
"title": "Resources and land use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Total renewable water resources: 23.62 km (2011)",
"title": "Resources and land use"
}
] |
Kyrgyzstan is a landlocked nation in Central Asia, west of the People's Republic of China. Less than a ninth the size of Kazakhstan, at 199,951 square kilometers, Kyrgyzstan is one of the smaller Central Asian states. The national territory extends about 900 km (560 mi) from east to west and 410 km (250 mi) from north to south. Kyrgyzstan is bordered on the east and southeast by China, on the north by Kazakhstan, on the west by Uzbekistan and on the south by Tajikistan. The borders with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in the Fergana Valley are rather difficult. One consequence of the Stalinist division of Central Asia into five republics is that many ethnic Kyrgyz people do not live in Kyrgyzstan. Three enclaves, legally part of the territory of Kyrgyzstan but geographically removed by several kilometers, have been established, two in Uzbekistan and one in Tajikistan. The terrain of Kyrgyzstan is dominated by the Tian Shan and Pamir mountain systems, which together occupy about 65% of national territory. The Alay range portion of the Tian Shan system dominates the southwestern crescent of the country, and, to the east, the main Tian Shan range runs along the boundary between southern Kyrgyzstan and China before extending farther east into China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Kyrgyzstan's average elevation is 2,750 m (9,020 ft), ranging from 7,439 m (24,406 ft) at Peak Jengish Chokusu to 394 m (1,293 ft) in the Fergana Valley near Osh. Almost 90% of the country lies more than 1,500 m (4,900 ft) above sea level.
|
2002-02-25T15:43:11Z
|
2023-12-24T14:27:36Z
|
[
"Template:CIA World Factbook",
"Template:Weather box",
"Template:Asof",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Convert",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Portal",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Geography of Asia",
"Template:Asia topic",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Clarify",
"Template:Excerpt",
"Template:Citation-attribution",
"Template:In lang",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Location map ",
"Template:Citation needed",
"Template:Commons category"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Kyrgyzstan
|
16,697 |
Demographics of Kyrgyzstan
|
The Demographics of Kyrgyzstan is about the demographic features of the population of Kyrgyzstan, including population growth, population density, ethnicity, education level, health, economic status, religious affiliations , and other aspects of the population. The name Kyrgyz, both for the people and the country, means "forty tribes", a reference to the epic hero Manas who unified forty tribes against the Oirats, as symbolized by the 40-ray sun on the flag of Kyrgyzstan.
Kyrgyzstan's population increased from 2.1 million to 4.8 million between the censuses of 1959 and 1999. Official estimates set the population at 6,389,500 in 2019. Of those, 34.4% are under the age of 15 and 6.2% are over the age of 65. The country is rural: only about one-third of Kyrgyzstan's population live in urban areas. The average population density is 27.4 inhabitants per square kilometre (71/sq mi).
The nation's largest ethnic group are the Kyrgyz, a Turkic people, which comprise 73.2% of the population (2018 census). Other ethnic groups include Russians (5.8%) concentrated in the north and Uzbeks (14.5%) living in the south. Small but noticeable minorities include Dungans (1.1%), Uyghurs (1.1%), Tajiks (0.9%), Kazakhs (0.7%) and Ukrainians (0.5%), and other smaller ethnic minorities (1.7%). Of the formerly sizable Volga German community, exiled here by Joseph Stalin from their earlier homes in the Volga German Republic, most have returned to Germany, and only a few small groups remain. A small percentage of the population are also Koreans, who are the descendants of the Koreans deported in 1937 from the Soviet Far East to Central Asia.
Kyrgyzstan has undergone a pronounced change in its ethnic composition since independence. The percentage of ethnic Kyrgyz increased from around 50% in 1979 to nearly 73% in 2018, while the percentage of Slavic ethnic groups (Russians, Ukrainians) dropped from 35% to about 6%.
The Kyrgyz have historically been semi-nomadic herders, living in round tents called yurts and tending sheep, horses and yaks. This nomadic tradition continues to function seasonally (see transhumance) as herding families return to the high mountain pasture (or jailoo) in the summer. The retention of this nomadic heritage and the freedoms that it implies continue to affect the political atmosphere in the country.
Statistics are taken from the United Nations Demographic Yearbook, the National Statistical Committee of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan, the Demographic Annual of the Kyrgyz Republic, and Demoskop Weekly.
Population Estimates by Sex and Age Group (01.VII.2020) (Data refer to annual average population.):
2.95 children born/woman (2017 est.)
The differences in the number of children by nationality are significant: Uzbeks (3.0 children), Tajiks (3.0 children), Turks (2.9), Kyrgyz (2.9), Dungans (2.8) Russians (1.7), Koreans (1.7), Germans (1.8), Ukrainians (2.1), Tatars (2.1), Kazakhs (2.3) and Uyghurs (2.5). The TFR for Russians, Ukrainians, Germans, and Koreans in Kyrgyzstan are considerably higher than in their home countries.
According to the 2021 census, the ethnic composition of the population was as follows: Kyrgyz 73.8%, Uzbeks 14.8%, Russians 5.1%, Dungans 1.1%, Uyghurs 0.9%, other 4.3%, including Tajiks 0.9% and Turks 0.7%. Most Russians, Ukrainians, Tatars, Germans, and Koreans lived in northeast, especially around the city of Karakol. Most of the Dungans and Uyghurs are found along the Chinese border. Most of the Tajiks and Uzbeks live in and around Fergana valley. The emigration of non-Turkic people to Russia, Ukraine, and Germany is now negligible, in part because most of them left prior to 1999. For example, the number of Germans has fallen by over 90% between the 1989 and 2009 censuses. Kyrgyzstan decided to postpone its census scheduled for March 2020 by one month due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with further delays possible.
The table shows the ethnic composition of Kyrgyzstan's population according to all population censuses between 1926 and 2009. There has been a sharp decline in the European ethnic groups (Russians, Ukrainians, Germans) and also Tatars since independence (as captured in the 1989, 1999 and 2009 censuses).
(2021 est.)
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Demographics of Kyrgyzstan is about the demographic features of the population of Kyrgyzstan, including population growth, population density, ethnicity, education level, health, economic status, religious affiliations , and other aspects of the population. The name Kyrgyz, both for the people and the country, means \"forty tribes\", a reference to the epic hero Manas who unified forty tribes against the Oirats, as symbolized by the 40-ray sun on the flag of Kyrgyzstan.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Kyrgyzstan's population increased from 2.1 million to 4.8 million between the censuses of 1959 and 1999. Official estimates set the population at 6,389,500 in 2019. Of those, 34.4% are under the age of 15 and 6.2% are over the age of 65. The country is rural: only about one-third of Kyrgyzstan's population live in urban areas. The average population density is 27.4 inhabitants per square kilometre (71/sq mi).",
"title": "Demographic trends"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The nation's largest ethnic group are the Kyrgyz, a Turkic people, which comprise 73.2% of the population (2018 census). Other ethnic groups include Russians (5.8%) concentrated in the north and Uzbeks (14.5%) living in the south. Small but noticeable minorities include Dungans (1.1%), Uyghurs (1.1%), Tajiks (0.9%), Kazakhs (0.7%) and Ukrainians (0.5%), and other smaller ethnic minorities (1.7%). Of the formerly sizable Volga German community, exiled here by Joseph Stalin from their earlier homes in the Volga German Republic, most have returned to Germany, and only a few small groups remain. A small percentage of the population are also Koreans, who are the descendants of the Koreans deported in 1937 from the Soviet Far East to Central Asia.",
"title": "Demographic trends"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Kyrgyzstan has undergone a pronounced change in its ethnic composition since independence. The percentage of ethnic Kyrgyz increased from around 50% in 1979 to nearly 73% in 2018, while the percentage of Slavic ethnic groups (Russians, Ukrainians) dropped from 35% to about 6%.",
"title": "Demographic trends"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The Kyrgyz have historically been semi-nomadic herders, living in round tents called yurts and tending sheep, horses and yaks. This nomadic tradition continues to function seasonally (see transhumance) as herding families return to the high mountain pasture (or jailoo) in the summer. The retention of this nomadic heritage and the freedoms that it implies continue to affect the political atmosphere in the country.",
"title": "Demographic trends"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "",
"title": "Demographic trends"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Statistics are taken from the United Nations Demographic Yearbook, the National Statistical Committee of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan, the Demographic Annual of the Kyrgyz Republic, and Demoskop Weekly.",
"title": "Vital statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "",
"title": "Vital statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Population Estimates by Sex and Age Group (01.VII.2020) (Data refer to annual average population.):",
"title": "Vital statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "2.95 children born/woman (2017 est.)",
"title": "Vital statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The differences in the number of children by nationality are significant: Uzbeks (3.0 children), Tajiks (3.0 children), Turks (2.9), Kyrgyz (2.9), Dungans (2.8) Russians (1.7), Koreans (1.7), Germans (1.8), Ukrainians (2.1), Tatars (2.1), Kazakhs (2.3) and Uyghurs (2.5). The TFR for Russians, Ukrainians, Germans, and Koreans in Kyrgyzstan are considerably higher than in their home countries.",
"title": "Vital statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "According to the 2021 census, the ethnic composition of the population was as follows: Kyrgyz 73.8%, Uzbeks 14.8%, Russians 5.1%, Dungans 1.1%, Uyghurs 0.9%, other 4.3%, including Tajiks 0.9% and Turks 0.7%. Most Russians, Ukrainians, Tatars, Germans, and Koreans lived in northeast, especially around the city of Karakol. Most of the Dungans and Uyghurs are found along the Chinese border. Most of the Tajiks and Uzbeks live in and around Fergana valley. The emigration of non-Turkic people to Russia, Ukraine, and Germany is now negligible, in part because most of them left prior to 1999. For example, the number of Germans has fallen by over 90% between the 1989 and 2009 censuses. Kyrgyzstan decided to postpone its census scheduled for March 2020 by one month due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with further delays possible.",
"title": "Ethnic groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The table shows the ethnic composition of Kyrgyzstan's population according to all population censuses between 1926 and 2009. There has been a sharp decline in the European ethnic groups (Russians, Ukrainians, Germans) and also Tatars since independence (as captured in the 1989, 1999 and 2009 censuses).",
"title": "Ethnic groups"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "(2021 est.)",
"title": "Languages"
}
] |
The Demographics of Kyrgyzstan is about the demographic features of the population of Kyrgyzstan, including population growth, population density, ethnicity, education level, health, economic status, religious affiliations, and other aspects of the population. The name Kyrgyz, both for the people and the country, means "forty tribes", a reference to the epic hero Manas who unified forty tribes against the Oirats, as symbolized by the 40-ray sun on the flag of Kyrgyzstan.
|
2002-02-25T15:43:11Z
|
2023-12-15T16:00:57Z
|
[
"Template:Short description",
"Template:In lang",
"Template:Asia topic",
"Template:Convert",
"Template:GraphChart",
"Template:Increase",
"Template:DecreasePositive",
"Template:Redirect",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Portal",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Infobox place demographics",
"Template:Citation needed",
"Template:Cn",
"Template:Demographics of Kyrgyzstan",
"Template:Asia in topic"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Kyrgyzstan
|
16,698 |
Politics of Kyrgyzstan
|
The politics of Kyrgyzstan, officially known as the Kyrgyz Republic, takes place in the framework of a presidential system representative democratic republic, whereby the President is head of state and the Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers is head of government. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and parliament. The Economist Intelligence Unit rated Kyrgyzstan an "authoritarian regime" in 2022.
Unlike its authoritarian neighbors – Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan – Kyrgyzstan has had a more pluralistic political system since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Kyrgyzstan has swung between authoritarian and democratic forms of government. Three authoritarian presidents have been ousted from office since 2005 due to popular protests.
In the first years of Kyrgyzstan's full independence, President Askar Akayev appeared wholeheartedly committed to the reform process. However, despite the backing of major Western donors, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kyrgyzstan had consequential economic difficulties from the outset. These came mainly as a result of the breakup of the Soviet trade bloc, which impeded the Republic's smooth transfer to a free-market economy.
In 1993, allegations of corruption against Akayev's closest political associates blossomed into a major scandal. One of those accused of improprieties was Vice President Feliks Kulov, who resigned for ethical reasons in December. Following Kulov's resignation, Akayev dismissed the government and called upon the last communist premier, Apas Djumagulov, to form a new one. In January 1994, Akayev initiated a referendum asking for a renewed mandate to complete his term of office. He received 96.2% of the vote.
A new Constitution was passed by the Parliament in May 1993. In 1994, however, the Parliament failed to produce a quorum for its last scheduled session prior to the expiration of its term (February 1995). President Akayev was widely accused of having manipulated a boycott by a majority of the parliamentarians. Akayev, in turn, asserted that the communists had caused a political crisis by preventing the legislature from fulfilling its role. Akayev scheduled an October 1994 referendum, overwhelmingly approved by voters, that proposed two amendments to the Constitution, one that would allow the Constitution to be amended by means of a referendum, and the other creating a new bicameral parliament called the Jogorku Keņesh.
Elections for the two legislative chambers – a 35-seat full-time assembly and a 70-seat part-time assembly – were held in February 1995 after campaigns considered remarkably free and open by most international observers, although the election-day proceedings were marred by widespread irregularities. Independent candidates won most of the seats, suggesting that personalities prevailed over ideologies. The new Parliament convened its initial session in March 1995. One of its first orders of business was the approval of the precise constitutional language on the role of the legislature.
Kyrgyzstan's independent political parties competed in the 1996 parliamentary elections. A February 1996 referendum – in violation of the Constitution and the law on referendums – amended the Constitution to give President Akayev more power. It also removed the clause that parliamentarians be directly elected by universal suffrage. Although the changes gave the President the power to dissolve Parliament, it also more clearly defined Parliament's powers. Since that time, Parliament has demonstrated real independence from the executive branch.
An October 1998 referendum approved constitutional changes, including increasing the number of deputies in the upper house, reducing the number of deputies in the lower house, rolling back Parliamentary immunity, reforming land tender rules, and reforming the state budget.
Two rounds of Parliamentary elections were held on 20 February 2000 and 12 March 2000. With the full backing of the United States, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) reported that the elections failed to comply with commitments to free and fair elections and hence were invalid. Questionable judicial proceedings against opposition candidates and parties limited the choice of candidates available to Kyrgyz voters, while state-controlled media reported favorably on official candidates only and government officials put pressure on independent media outlets that favored the opposition.
In 2002 Azimbek Beknazarov, a leading opposition figure, was imprisoned by the local authorities, in what many believe to be politically motivated circumstances. This led to protests resulting in clashes with police forces, culminating in the death of five people in Jalal-Abad.
As May approached the authorities further extended their hold on power, imprisoning the vocal former presidential ally, Feliks Kulov, to ten years for alleged "abuses of office". During the same month the entire government resigned, accepting blame for the loss of life during the protests earlier in the year. A new government led by Nikolay Tanayev was then formed.
In November the President faced yet more protests, as the opposition announced it would march on the capital and demand his resignation. The police reacted by arresting large amounts of demonstrators, further adding to international disapproval at the authoritarian nature of Akayev's government.
By June 2003, the lower house of Parliament announced that President Akayev and two other leaders of Kyrgyzstan, from the Soviet era, would be given lifetime immunity from prosecution, raising the prospect of Akayev finally stepping down.
In 2005, following disputed results of the 2005 parliamentary elections, Kyrgyzstan was thrown into a state of political turmoil, with different parties claiming that they were the legitimate government. On 10 July 2005 interim President and opposition People's Movement leader Kurmanbek Bakiyev won the presidential election in a landslide victory. (See: Tulip Revolution).
In 2006, Bakiyev faced a political crisis as thousands of people demonstrated in a series of protests in Bishkek. They accused him of reneging on promised constitutional reforms limiting presidential power and giving more authority to the parliament and cabinet. They also accused him of failing to eradicate corruption, crime, and poverty. Bakiyev in turn accused the opposition of plotting a coup against him. Several parliamentarians had been killed during the political unrest.
Presidential elections, originally expected in 2010, were rescheduled for 23 July 2009. President Bakiyev was widely expected to retain his mandate, while the opposition United People's Movement (OND) announced on 20 April 2009 that it would field a single candidate – Social Democratic Party leader Almaz Atambayev. The election turnout was reported at 79.3%. As of 00:45 local time in Kyrgyzstan on 25 July 2009 (with 2058 of 2330 polling districts reporting), Bakiyev had won the election with 83.8% of the vote.
In assessing the election, the OSCE stated that Bakiyev had gained an "unfair advantage" and that media bias "did not allow voters to make an informed choice." Additionally, they found that the election was "marred by many problems and irregularities", citing ballot stuffing and problems with the counting of votes. On polling day Atambayev withdrew his candidacy claiming widespread fraud, stating "due to massive, unprecedented violations, we consider these elections illegitimate and a new election should be held." An opposition rally of 1,000 people in Balykchy on election day was broken up by riot police.
The arrest of an opposition figure on 6 April 2010 in the town of Talas led opposition supporters to protest. The protestors took control of a governmental building, demanding a new government. Riot police were sent from Bishkek, and managed to temporarily regain control of the building. Later the same day several more opposition figures were arrested, while the government claimed to have regained control of the situation. The following day, however, hundreds of opposition supporters gathered in Bishkek and marched on the government headquarters. Security personnel attempted to disperse the protestors with the use of stun grenades and live rounds, at the cost of dozens of lives. The protests continued, however, resulting in the flight of President Bakiyev to his southern stronghold of Jalalabad, and the freeing later the same day of the arrested opposition figures. A new government was formed under opposition leader Roza Otunbayeva, while Bakiyev remained for several days in southern Kyrgyzstan, before fleeing to Belarus, where he was given asylum by President Lukashenko. The new interim government held consultations on a new constitution, intended to increase the powers of the parliament and reduce those of the president. A referendum was held on the resulting document on 27 June 2010, and was approved by over 90% of voters, with a turnout of 72%. Elections were subsequently held on 10 October 2010. These elections resulted in five parties reaching the 5% threshold necessary to enter parliament.
Presidential elections were held in 2011, resulting in the victory of Almazbek Atambayev. In 2017, he endorsed Prime minister Sooronbay Jeenbekov for President, who won that year's presidential contest. After Atambayev retired from presidency, he began criticizing Jeenbekov and their relations worsened over time. Soon Atambayev was accused of corruption by the Jeenbekov administration. Clashes grew between security forces and Atambayev supporters, exacerbating political turmoil. Political insurgency in Kyrgyzstan amplified following controversy about the conduct of October 2020 Kyrgyz parliamentary election, where only four parties met the 7% threshold to achieve parliamentary representation, three of whom were closely aligned with the government. Opposition supporters claimed that these elections were tainted by vote buying and many other forms of irregularities. The protests resulted in en masse resignation of government officials. In October 2020, President Sooronbay Jeenbekov resigned after protests caused by irregularities in parliamentary elections on 4 October 2020. In January 2021, Sadyr Japarov was elected as the new president after winning the presidential election by landslide.
In April 2021, the majority of voters approved in the constitutional referendum a new constitution that would give new powers to the president, strengthening significantly the presidency.
The president is elected by popular vote for a maximum of two five-year terms. The chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers is appointed by the president and approved by the Supreme Council.
Since 13 October 2021:
In the Soviet era, Kyrgyzstan had a unicameral legislature which was replaced in 1995 by the bicameral Supreme Council (Joghorku Keneš). The Supreme Council consisted of the Assembly of People's Representatives (45 seats; members were elected by popular vote from single member constituencies) and the Legislative Assembly (60 seats; 45 members of which were elected by popular vote from single member constituencies, and 15 of which were from national party lists on a proportional basis with a 5% threshold). All legislative terms were five years.
In 2005, as part of the 2005 election process and in accordance with a 2003 referendum, the Parliament again became unicameral. The Legislative Assembly (Myizam Chygaruu Jyiyny) had 75 members, elected for five-year terms from single-seat constituencies.
However, because of the political unrest, a new constitutional referendum was held on 21 October 2007 which approved a new electoral system, enlarged the parliament to 90 members and introducing party-list voting. Party-list voting is a proportional representation system of voting, where candidates are selected from central party lists rather than locally elected. Early parliamentary elections were held on 16 December 2007.
Although the constitution provides for an independent judiciary, Kyrgyzstan's court system is widely seen as under the influence of the prosecutor's office. Low salaries make the bribery of judges commonplace. Most cases originate in local courts; they then can move via the appeals process to municipal or regional courts, with the Supreme Court the final court of appeals. Property and family law disputes and low-level criminal cases are heard by traditional elders' courts, which are loosely supervised by the prosecutor's office. Economic disputes and military cases are heard in specialized courts. The constitutional amendments of 2003 expanded the scope of the Supreme Court in civil, criminal, and administrative proceedings. Many protections of Western jurisprudence are not present in Kyrgyzstan's system, which retains many features of the Soviet system. The right to counsel and the presumption of innocence of the accused are guaranteed by law but often not practiced. There is no trial by jury. Reform legislation under consideration in 2006 would establish a jury system and bolster the independence of the judicial branch.
The Prosecutor General's Office of Kyrgyzstan oversees the enforcement of the Kyrgyz legal system and the activities of law enforcement agencies and the sentencing of criminals in concert with the judiciary.
Kyrgyzstan is divided into seven Regions (oblustar, singular – oblus) and two region-level cities* (shaar):
note: administrative center names in parentheses
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The politics of Kyrgyzstan, officially known as the Kyrgyz Republic, takes place in the framework of a presidential system representative democratic republic, whereby the President is head of state and the Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers is head of government. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and parliament. The Economist Intelligence Unit rated Kyrgyzstan an \"authoritarian regime\" in 2022.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Unlike its authoritarian neighbors – Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan – Kyrgyzstan has had a more pluralistic political system since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Kyrgyzstan has swung between authoritarian and democratic forms of government. Three authoritarian presidents have been ousted from office since 2005 due to popular protests.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In the first years of Kyrgyzstan's full independence, President Askar Akayev appeared wholeheartedly committed to the reform process. However, despite the backing of major Western donors, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kyrgyzstan had consequential economic difficulties from the outset. These came mainly as a result of the breakup of the Soviet trade bloc, which impeded the Republic's smooth transfer to a free-market economy.",
"title": "Political history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In 1993, allegations of corruption against Akayev's closest political associates blossomed into a major scandal. One of those accused of improprieties was Vice President Feliks Kulov, who resigned for ethical reasons in December. Following Kulov's resignation, Akayev dismissed the government and called upon the last communist premier, Apas Djumagulov, to form a new one. In January 1994, Akayev initiated a referendum asking for a renewed mandate to complete his term of office. He received 96.2% of the vote.",
"title": "Political history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "A new Constitution was passed by the Parliament in May 1993. In 1994, however, the Parliament failed to produce a quorum for its last scheduled session prior to the expiration of its term (February 1995). President Akayev was widely accused of having manipulated a boycott by a majority of the parliamentarians. Akayev, in turn, asserted that the communists had caused a political crisis by preventing the legislature from fulfilling its role. Akayev scheduled an October 1994 referendum, overwhelmingly approved by voters, that proposed two amendments to the Constitution, one that would allow the Constitution to be amended by means of a referendum, and the other creating a new bicameral parliament called the Jogorku Keņesh.",
"title": "Political history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Elections for the two legislative chambers – a 35-seat full-time assembly and a 70-seat part-time assembly – were held in February 1995 after campaigns considered remarkably free and open by most international observers, although the election-day proceedings were marred by widespread irregularities. Independent candidates won most of the seats, suggesting that personalities prevailed over ideologies. The new Parliament convened its initial session in March 1995. One of its first orders of business was the approval of the precise constitutional language on the role of the legislature.",
"title": "Political history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Kyrgyzstan's independent political parties competed in the 1996 parliamentary elections. A February 1996 referendum – in violation of the Constitution and the law on referendums – amended the Constitution to give President Akayev more power. It also removed the clause that parliamentarians be directly elected by universal suffrage. Although the changes gave the President the power to dissolve Parliament, it also more clearly defined Parliament's powers. Since that time, Parliament has demonstrated real independence from the executive branch.",
"title": "Political history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "An October 1998 referendum approved constitutional changes, including increasing the number of deputies in the upper house, reducing the number of deputies in the lower house, rolling back Parliamentary immunity, reforming land tender rules, and reforming the state budget.",
"title": "Political history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Two rounds of Parliamentary elections were held on 20 February 2000 and 12 March 2000. With the full backing of the United States, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) reported that the elections failed to comply with commitments to free and fair elections and hence were invalid. Questionable judicial proceedings against opposition candidates and parties limited the choice of candidates available to Kyrgyz voters, while state-controlled media reported favorably on official candidates only and government officials put pressure on independent media outlets that favored the opposition.",
"title": "Political history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In 2002 Azimbek Beknazarov, a leading opposition figure, was imprisoned by the local authorities, in what many believe to be politically motivated circumstances. This led to protests resulting in clashes with police forces, culminating in the death of five people in Jalal-Abad.",
"title": "Political history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "As May approached the authorities further extended their hold on power, imprisoning the vocal former presidential ally, Feliks Kulov, to ten years for alleged \"abuses of office\". During the same month the entire government resigned, accepting blame for the loss of life during the protests earlier in the year. A new government led by Nikolay Tanayev was then formed.",
"title": "Political history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In November the President faced yet more protests, as the opposition announced it would march on the capital and demand his resignation. The police reacted by arresting large amounts of demonstrators, further adding to international disapproval at the authoritarian nature of Akayev's government.",
"title": "Political history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "By June 2003, the lower house of Parliament announced that President Akayev and two other leaders of Kyrgyzstan, from the Soviet era, would be given lifetime immunity from prosecution, raising the prospect of Akayev finally stepping down.",
"title": "Political history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In 2005, following disputed results of the 2005 parliamentary elections, Kyrgyzstan was thrown into a state of political turmoil, with different parties claiming that they were the legitimate government. On 10 July 2005 interim President and opposition People's Movement leader Kurmanbek Bakiyev won the presidential election in a landslide victory. (See: Tulip Revolution).",
"title": "Political history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In 2006, Bakiyev faced a political crisis as thousands of people demonstrated in a series of protests in Bishkek. They accused him of reneging on promised constitutional reforms limiting presidential power and giving more authority to the parliament and cabinet. They also accused him of failing to eradicate corruption, crime, and poverty. Bakiyev in turn accused the opposition of plotting a coup against him. Several parliamentarians had been killed during the political unrest.",
"title": "Political history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Presidential elections, originally expected in 2010, were rescheduled for 23 July 2009. President Bakiyev was widely expected to retain his mandate, while the opposition United People's Movement (OND) announced on 20 April 2009 that it would field a single candidate – Social Democratic Party leader Almaz Atambayev. The election turnout was reported at 79.3%. As of 00:45 local time in Kyrgyzstan on 25 July 2009 (with 2058 of 2330 polling districts reporting), Bakiyev had won the election with 83.8% of the vote.",
"title": "Political history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In assessing the election, the OSCE stated that Bakiyev had gained an \"unfair advantage\" and that media bias \"did not allow voters to make an informed choice.\" Additionally, they found that the election was \"marred by many problems and irregularities\", citing ballot stuffing and problems with the counting of votes. On polling day Atambayev withdrew his candidacy claiming widespread fraud, stating \"due to massive, unprecedented violations, we consider these elections illegitimate and a new election should be held.\" An opposition rally of 1,000 people in Balykchy on election day was broken up by riot police.",
"title": "Political history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The arrest of an opposition figure on 6 April 2010 in the town of Talas led opposition supporters to protest. The protestors took control of a governmental building, demanding a new government. Riot police were sent from Bishkek, and managed to temporarily regain control of the building. Later the same day several more opposition figures were arrested, while the government claimed to have regained control of the situation. The following day, however, hundreds of opposition supporters gathered in Bishkek and marched on the government headquarters. Security personnel attempted to disperse the protestors with the use of stun grenades and live rounds, at the cost of dozens of lives. The protests continued, however, resulting in the flight of President Bakiyev to his southern stronghold of Jalalabad, and the freeing later the same day of the arrested opposition figures. A new government was formed under opposition leader Roza Otunbayeva, while Bakiyev remained for several days in southern Kyrgyzstan, before fleeing to Belarus, where he was given asylum by President Lukashenko. The new interim government held consultations on a new constitution, intended to increase the powers of the parliament and reduce those of the president. A referendum was held on the resulting document on 27 June 2010, and was approved by over 90% of voters, with a turnout of 72%. Elections were subsequently held on 10 October 2010. These elections resulted in five parties reaching the 5% threshold necessary to enter parliament.",
"title": "Political history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Presidential elections were held in 2011, resulting in the victory of Almazbek Atambayev. In 2017, he endorsed Prime minister Sooronbay Jeenbekov for President, who won that year's presidential contest. After Atambayev retired from presidency, he began criticizing Jeenbekov and their relations worsened over time. Soon Atambayev was accused of corruption by the Jeenbekov administration. Clashes grew between security forces and Atambayev supporters, exacerbating political turmoil. Political insurgency in Kyrgyzstan amplified following controversy about the conduct of October 2020 Kyrgyz parliamentary election, where only four parties met the 7% threshold to achieve parliamentary representation, three of whom were closely aligned with the government. Opposition supporters claimed that these elections were tainted by vote buying and many other forms of irregularities. The protests resulted in en masse resignation of government officials. In October 2020, President Sooronbay Jeenbekov resigned after protests caused by irregularities in parliamentary elections on 4 October 2020. In January 2021, Sadyr Japarov was elected as the new president after winning the presidential election by landslide.",
"title": "Political history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In April 2021, the majority of voters approved in the constitutional referendum a new constitution that would give new powers to the president, strengthening significantly the presidency.",
"title": "Political history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The president is elected by popular vote for a maximum of two five-year terms. The chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers is appointed by the president and approved by the Supreme Council.",
"title": "Executive branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Since 13 October 2021:",
"title": "Executive branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In the Soviet era, Kyrgyzstan had a unicameral legislature which was replaced in 1995 by the bicameral Supreme Council (Joghorku Keneš). The Supreme Council consisted of the Assembly of People's Representatives (45 seats; members were elected by popular vote from single member constituencies) and the Legislative Assembly (60 seats; 45 members of which were elected by popular vote from single member constituencies, and 15 of which were from national party lists on a proportional basis with a 5% threshold). All legislative terms were five years.",
"title": "Legislative branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In 2005, as part of the 2005 election process and in accordance with a 2003 referendum, the Parliament again became unicameral. The Legislative Assembly (Myizam Chygaruu Jyiyny) had 75 members, elected for five-year terms from single-seat constituencies.",
"title": "Legislative branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "However, because of the political unrest, a new constitutional referendum was held on 21 October 2007 which approved a new electoral system, enlarged the parliament to 90 members and introducing party-list voting. Party-list voting is a proportional representation system of voting, where candidates are selected from central party lists rather than locally elected. Early parliamentary elections were held on 16 December 2007.",
"title": "Legislative branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Although the constitution provides for an independent judiciary, Kyrgyzstan's court system is widely seen as under the influence of the prosecutor's office. Low salaries make the bribery of judges commonplace. Most cases originate in local courts; they then can move via the appeals process to municipal or regional courts, with the Supreme Court the final court of appeals. Property and family law disputes and low-level criminal cases are heard by traditional elders' courts, which are loosely supervised by the prosecutor's office. Economic disputes and military cases are heard in specialized courts. The constitutional amendments of 2003 expanded the scope of the Supreme Court in civil, criminal, and administrative proceedings. Many protections of Western jurisprudence are not present in Kyrgyzstan's system, which retains many features of the Soviet system. The right to counsel and the presumption of innocence of the accused are guaranteed by law but often not practiced. There is no trial by jury. Reform legislation under consideration in 2006 would establish a jury system and bolster the independence of the judicial branch.",
"title": "Judicial branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The Prosecutor General's Office of Kyrgyzstan oversees the enforcement of the Kyrgyz legal system and the activities of law enforcement agencies and the sentencing of criminals in concert with the judiciary.",
"title": "Judicial branch"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Kyrgyzstan is divided into seven Regions (oblustar, singular – oblus) and two region-level cities* (shaar):",
"title": "Administrative divisions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "note: administrative center names in parentheses",
"title": "Administrative divisions"
}
] |
The politics of Kyrgyzstan, officially known as the Kyrgyz Republic, takes place in the framework of a presidential system representative democratic republic, whereby the President is head of state and the Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers is head of government. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and parliament. The Economist Intelligence Unit rated Kyrgyzstan an "authoritarian regime" in 2022. Unlike its authoritarian neighbors – Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan – Kyrgyzstan has had a more pluralistic political system since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Kyrgyzstan has swung between authoritarian and democratic forms of government. Three authoritarian presidents have been ousted from office since 2005 due to popular protests.
|
2002-02-25T15:43:11Z
|
2023-09-27T04:34:24Z
|
[
"Template:More citations needed",
"Template:Office-table",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Democracy Index rating",
"Template:Elect",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:ISBN",
"Template:Politics of Kyrgyzstan",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Dead link",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Portal",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Asia topic",
"Template:Who"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Kyrgyzstan
|
16,699 |
Economy of Kyrgyzstan
|
The economy of Kyrgyzstan is heavily dependent on the agricultural sector. Cotton, tobacco, wool, and meat are the main agricultural products, although only tobacco and cotton are exported in any quantity. According to Healy Consultants, Kyrgyzstan's economy relies heavily on the strength of industrial exports, with plentiful reserves of gold, mercury and uranium. The economy also relies heavily on remittances from foreign workers. Following independence, Kyrgyzstan was progressive in carrying out market reforms, such as an improved regulatory system and land reform. In 1998, Kyrgyzstan was the first Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) country to be accepted into the World Trade Organization. Much of the government's stock in enterprises has been sold. Kyrgyzstan's economic performance has been hindered by widespread corruption, low foreign investment and general regional instability. Despite those issues, Kyrgyzstan is ranked 70th (as of 2019) on the ease of doing business index.
In October 2012, International reserves and Foreign Currency Liquidity of Kyrgyzstan National Bank have reached US$1.96 bln, 8.6% of which is in gold. In 2012, to diversify the assets of Kyrgyzstan, the basket of currencies has been expanded by means of the Chinese yuan and the Singapore dollar. In 2012, 1 billion soms are to be spent for the purchase of gold. Gold proportion in international reserves has already grown to 8.6%. The National Bank plans to increase it to 12-15% in future.
Agriculture remains a vital part of Kyrgyzstan's economy and a refuge for workers displaced from industry. Subsistence farming has increased in the early 2000s. After sharp reductions in the early 1990s, by the early 2000s agricultural production was approaching 1991 levels. Grain production in the lower valleys and livestock grazing on upland pastures occupy the largest share of the agricultural workforce. Farmers are shifting to grain and away from cotton and tobacco. Other important products are dairy products, hay, animal feed, potatoes, vegetables, and sugar beets. Agricultural output comes from private household plots (55 percent of the total), private farms (40 percent), and state farms (5 percent). Further expansion of the sector depends on banking reform to increase investment, and on market reform to streamline the distribution of inputs. Land reform, a controversial issue in Kyrgyzstan, has proceeded very slowly since initial legislation in 1998. The irrigation infrastructure is in poor condition. Agriculture contributes about one-third of the GDP and more than one-third of employment.
Kyrgyzstan produced in 2018:
In addition to smaller productions of other agricultural products, like apricot (25 thousand tons).
Only 4 percent of Kyrgyzstan is classified as forested. All of that area is state-owned, and none is classified as available for wood supply. The main commercial product of the forests is walnuts.
Kyrgyzstan does not have a significant fishing industry. In 2002 aquaculture contributed 66 percent of the country's total output of 142 metric tons of fish, but in 2003 the aquaculture industry collapsed, producing only 12 of the country's total of 26 metric tons.
In the post-Soviet era, mining has been an increasingly important economic activity. The Kumtor Gold Mine, which opened in 1997, is one of the largest gold deposits in the world. New gold mines are planned at Jerooy and Taldy–Bulak, and a major gold discovery was announced in late 2006 at Tokhtonysay. The state agency Kyrgyzaltyn owns all mines, many of which are operated as joint ventures with foreign companies. Uranium and antimony, important mineral outputs of the Soviet era, no longer are produced in significant amounts. Although between 1992 and 2003 coal output dropped from about 2.4 million tons to 411,000 tons, the government plans to increase exploitation of Kyrgyzstan's considerable remaining deposits (estimated at 2.5 billion tons) in order to reduce dependency on foreign energy sources. A particular target of this policy is the Kara–Keche deposit in northern Kyrgyzstan, whose annual output capability is estimated at between 500,000 and 1 million tons. The small domestic output of oil and natural gas does not meet national needs.
In the post-Soviet era, Kyrgyzstan's industries suffered sharp reductions in productivity because the supply of raw materials and fuels was disrupted, and Soviet markets disappeared. The sector has not recovered appreciably from that reduction; if gold production is not counted, in 2005 industry contributed only 14 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). Investment and restructuring have remained at low levels, and the electricity industry (traditionally an important part of industry's contribution to GDP) has stagnated in recent years. Government support is moving away from the machine industries, which were a major contributor to the Soviet economy, toward clothing and textiles. Food processing accounted for 10 to 15 percent of industrial production until encountering a slump in 2004. In recent years, the glass industry has surpassed clothing and textiles in investment received and as a contributor to GDP. In the early 2000s, the construction industry has grown steadily because of large infrastructure projects such as highways and new gold mines. Housing construction, however, has lagged because of low investment.
More than ninety percent of electricity produced is hydroelectric and the country could produce much more of such clean energy and export to its neighbors and the region. Even though Kyrgyzstan has abundant hydro resources, only less than ten percent of its potential has been developed so far. It has limited deposits of fossil fuels and most of its natural gas imports come from Uzbekistan, with which Kyrgyzstan has had a series of imperfect barter agreements. Per capita energy consumption is high considering average income, and the government has no comprehensive plan to reduce demand. Up to 45 percent of electricity generated, especially in winter time, is diverted illegally or leaks from the distribution system. Hydroelectric plants generate some 92.5 percent of domestically consumed electricity, and three commercial thermoelectric plants are in operation. Because of its rich supply of hydroelectric power, Kyrgyzstan sends electricity to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in return for fossil fuels. A new hydroelectric plant on the Naryn River at Kambar–Ata would supply power to parts of China and Russia, improving Kyrgyzstan's export situation and domestic energy supply. The plant was completed on August 30, 2010. An antiquated infrastructure and poor management make Kyrgyzstan more dependent on foreign energy in winter when water levels are low. In the early 2000s, Kyrgyzstan was exploiting only an estimated 10 percent of its hydroelectric power potential. In 2001 Kyrgyzstan had about 70,000 kilometers of power transmission lines served by about 500 substations. Kyrgyzstan would be a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation's Asian Energy Club, which Russia proposed in 2006 to unify oil, gas, and electricity producers, consumers, and transit countries in the Central Asian region in a bloc that is self-sufficient in energy. Other members would be China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
Kyrgyzstan is a partner country of the EU INOGATE energy programme, which has four key topics: enhancing energy security, convergence of member state energy markets on the basis of EU internal energy market principles, supporting sustainable energy development, and attracting investment for energy projects of common and regional interest.
The South Korean style manufactured bituminous coal called yeontan (йонтан) is gaining popularity in Kyrgyzstan's energy industrial scene.
Substantial post-Soviet growth in the services sector is mainly attributable to the appearance of small private enterprises. The central bank is the National Bank of the Kyrgyz Republic, which nominally is independent but follows government policy. Although the banking system has been reformed several times since 1991, it does not play a significant role in investment. High interest rates have discouraged borrowing. A stock market opened in 1995, but its main function is trading in government securities. Because of the Akayev regime's economic reforms, many small trade and catering enterprises have opened in the post-Soviet era. Although Kyrgyzstan's mountains and lakes are an attractive tourist destination, the tourism industry has grown very slowly because it has received little investment. In the early 2000s, an average of about 450,000 tourists visited annually, mainly from countries of the former Soviet Union.
Kyrgyzstan's principal exports, which go overwhelmingly to other CIS countries, are nonferrous metals and minerals, woolen goods and other agricultural products, electric energy, and certain engineering goods. In turn, the Republic relies on other former Soviet states for petroleum and natural gas, ferrous metals, chemicals, most machinery, wood and paper products, some foods, and most construction materials. In 1999, Kyrgyz exports to the U.S. totaled $11.2 million, and imports from the U.S. totaled $54.2 million. In 2017, Kyrgyzstan exports were estimated to be worth $1.84 billion, while their imports were at an estimated $4.187 billion. Kyrgyzstan's major exports include gold, cotton, wool, garments, meat, mercury, uranium, electricity, machinery, and shoes. Major imports include oil and gas, machinery and equipment, chemicals, and foodstuffs.
Reexport of China-made consumer goods to Kazakhstan and Russia, centered on Dordoy Bazaar in Bishkek, and to Uzbekistan, centered on Kara-Suu Bazaar in Osh Region, is particularly important; it is thought by some economists to be one of the country's two largest economic activities.
The Kyrgyzstan Government has reduced expenditures, ended most price subsidies, and introduced a value added tax. Overall, the government appears committed to transferring to a free market economic system by stabilizing the economy and implementing reforms, which will encourage long-term growth. These reforms led to Kyrgyzstan's accession to the WTO on December 20, 1998.
The stock market capitalisation of listed companies in Kyrgyzstan was valued at $42 million in 2005 by the World Bank.
The tax regime in the Kyrgyz Republic is administered by the State Tax Service. Collected taxes reached 18.1% of GDP in 2012.
This is a chart of trend of gross domestic product of Kyrgyzstan at market prices estimated by the International Monetary Fund and EconStats with figures in millions of Kyrgyz Soms.
For purchasing power parity comparisons, the international dollar is exchanged at 9.40 Soms only.
Current GDP per capita of Kyrgyzstan shrank by 54% in the 1990s. Mean wages were $0.85 per man-hour in 2009 and this rate represented underemployment when compared to effective market pay. In the first half of 2012, Kyrgyz economy shrank by 5.8%. This downturn was largely due to decline in gold production at the Kumtor mine.
The budget deficit in mid-2012 was 23-billion soms and accounted for 7% of GDP while the target was to reduce it to 6%.
The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1992–2017.
Investment (gross fixed): 17% of GDP (2004 est.)
Household income or consumption by percentage share:
Distribution of family income - Gini index: 27.3 (2017)
Agriculture - products: tobacco, cotton, potatoes, vegetables, grapes, fruits and berries; sheep, goats, cattle, wool, dairy products
Industrial production growth rate: 6% (2000 est.)
Electricity
Electricity - production by source:
Oil:
Natural gas:
Current account balance: $-87.92 million (2004 est.)
Exports - commodities: cotton, wool, meat, tobacco; gold, mercury, uranium, natural gas, hydropower; machinery; shoes
Imports - commodities: oil and gas, machinery and equipment, chemicals, foodstuffs
Reserves of foreign exchange & gold: $498.7 million (2004 est.)
Exchange rates: soms per US dollar - 41.731 (2004), 43.6484 (2003), 46.9371 (2002), 48.378 (2001), 47.7038 (2000), 69.85 (2020)
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The economy of Kyrgyzstan is heavily dependent on the agricultural sector. Cotton, tobacco, wool, and meat are the main agricultural products, although only tobacco and cotton are exported in any quantity. According to Healy Consultants, Kyrgyzstan's economy relies heavily on the strength of industrial exports, with plentiful reserves of gold, mercury and uranium. The economy also relies heavily on remittances from foreign workers. Following independence, Kyrgyzstan was progressive in carrying out market reforms, such as an improved regulatory system and land reform. In 1998, Kyrgyzstan was the first Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) country to be accepted into the World Trade Organization. Much of the government's stock in enterprises has been sold. Kyrgyzstan's economic performance has been hindered by widespread corruption, low foreign investment and general regional instability. Despite those issues, Kyrgyzstan is ranked 70th (as of 2019) on the ease of doing business index.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "In October 2012, International reserves and Foreign Currency Liquidity of Kyrgyzstan National Bank have reached US$1.96 bln, 8.6% of which is in gold. In 2012, to diversify the assets of Kyrgyzstan, the basket of currencies has been expanded by means of the Chinese yuan and the Singapore dollar. In 2012, 1 billion soms are to be spent for the purchase of gold. Gold proportion in international reserves has already grown to 8.6%. The National Bank plans to increase it to 12-15% in future.",
"title": "Finance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Agriculture remains a vital part of Kyrgyzstan's economy and a refuge for workers displaced from industry. Subsistence farming has increased in the early 2000s. After sharp reductions in the early 1990s, by the early 2000s agricultural production was approaching 1991 levels. Grain production in the lower valleys and livestock grazing on upland pastures occupy the largest share of the agricultural workforce. Farmers are shifting to grain and away from cotton and tobacco. Other important products are dairy products, hay, animal feed, potatoes, vegetables, and sugar beets. Agricultural output comes from private household plots (55 percent of the total), private farms (40 percent), and state farms (5 percent). Further expansion of the sector depends on banking reform to increase investment, and on market reform to streamline the distribution of inputs. Land reform, a controversial issue in Kyrgyzstan, has proceeded very slowly since initial legislation in 1998. The irrigation infrastructure is in poor condition. Agriculture contributes about one-third of the GDP and more than one-third of employment.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Kyrgyzstan produced in 2018:",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In addition to smaller productions of other agricultural products, like apricot (25 thousand tons).",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Only 4 percent of Kyrgyzstan is classified as forested. All of that area is state-owned, and none is classified as available for wood supply. The main commercial product of the forests is walnuts.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Kyrgyzstan does not have a significant fishing industry. In 2002 aquaculture contributed 66 percent of the country's total output of 142 metric tons of fish, but in 2003 the aquaculture industry collapsed, producing only 12 of the country's total of 26 metric tons.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In the post-Soviet era, mining has been an increasingly important economic activity. The Kumtor Gold Mine, which opened in 1997, is one of the largest gold deposits in the world. New gold mines are planned at Jerooy and Taldy–Bulak, and a major gold discovery was announced in late 2006 at Tokhtonysay. The state agency Kyrgyzaltyn owns all mines, many of which are operated as joint ventures with foreign companies. Uranium and antimony, important mineral outputs of the Soviet era, no longer are produced in significant amounts. Although between 1992 and 2003 coal output dropped from about 2.4 million tons to 411,000 tons, the government plans to increase exploitation of Kyrgyzstan's considerable remaining deposits (estimated at 2.5 billion tons) in order to reduce dependency on foreign energy sources. A particular target of this policy is the Kara–Keche deposit in northern Kyrgyzstan, whose annual output capability is estimated at between 500,000 and 1 million tons. The small domestic output of oil and natural gas does not meet national needs.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In the post-Soviet era, Kyrgyzstan's industries suffered sharp reductions in productivity because the supply of raw materials and fuels was disrupted, and Soviet markets disappeared. The sector has not recovered appreciably from that reduction; if gold production is not counted, in 2005 industry contributed only 14 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). Investment and restructuring have remained at low levels, and the electricity industry (traditionally an important part of industry's contribution to GDP) has stagnated in recent years. Government support is moving away from the machine industries, which were a major contributor to the Soviet economy, toward clothing and textiles. Food processing accounted for 10 to 15 percent of industrial production until encountering a slump in 2004. In recent years, the glass industry has surpassed clothing and textiles in investment received and as a contributor to GDP. In the early 2000s, the construction industry has grown steadily because of large infrastructure projects such as highways and new gold mines. Housing construction, however, has lagged because of low investment.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "More than ninety percent of electricity produced is hydroelectric and the country could produce much more of such clean energy and export to its neighbors and the region. Even though Kyrgyzstan has abundant hydro resources, only less than ten percent of its potential has been developed so far. It has limited deposits of fossil fuels and most of its natural gas imports come from Uzbekistan, with which Kyrgyzstan has had a series of imperfect barter agreements. Per capita energy consumption is high considering average income, and the government has no comprehensive plan to reduce demand. Up to 45 percent of electricity generated, especially in winter time, is diverted illegally or leaks from the distribution system. Hydroelectric plants generate some 92.5 percent of domestically consumed electricity, and three commercial thermoelectric plants are in operation. Because of its rich supply of hydroelectric power, Kyrgyzstan sends electricity to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in return for fossil fuels. A new hydroelectric plant on the Naryn River at Kambar–Ata would supply power to parts of China and Russia, improving Kyrgyzstan's export situation and domestic energy supply. The plant was completed on August 30, 2010. An antiquated infrastructure and poor management make Kyrgyzstan more dependent on foreign energy in winter when water levels are low. In the early 2000s, Kyrgyzstan was exploiting only an estimated 10 percent of its hydroelectric power potential. In 2001 Kyrgyzstan had about 70,000 kilometers of power transmission lines served by about 500 substations. Kyrgyzstan would be a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation's Asian Energy Club, which Russia proposed in 2006 to unify oil, gas, and electricity producers, consumers, and transit countries in the Central Asian region in a bloc that is self-sufficient in energy. Other members would be China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Kyrgyzstan is a partner country of the EU INOGATE energy programme, which has four key topics: enhancing energy security, convergence of member state energy markets on the basis of EU internal energy market principles, supporting sustainable energy development, and attracting investment for energy projects of common and regional interest.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The South Korean style manufactured bituminous coal called yeontan (йонтан) is gaining popularity in Kyrgyzstan's energy industrial scene.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Substantial post-Soviet growth in the services sector is mainly attributable to the appearance of small private enterprises. The central bank is the National Bank of the Kyrgyz Republic, which nominally is independent but follows government policy. Although the banking system has been reformed several times since 1991, it does not play a significant role in investment. High interest rates have discouraged borrowing. A stock market opened in 1995, but its main function is trading in government securities. Because of the Akayev regime's economic reforms, many small trade and catering enterprises have opened in the post-Soviet era. Although Kyrgyzstan's mountains and lakes are an attractive tourist destination, the tourism industry has grown very slowly because it has received little investment. In the early 2000s, an average of about 450,000 tourists visited annually, mainly from countries of the former Soviet Union.",
"title": "Industries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Kyrgyzstan's principal exports, which go overwhelmingly to other CIS countries, are nonferrous metals and minerals, woolen goods and other agricultural products, electric energy, and certain engineering goods. In turn, the Republic relies on other former Soviet states for petroleum and natural gas, ferrous metals, chemicals, most machinery, wood and paper products, some foods, and most construction materials. In 1999, Kyrgyz exports to the U.S. totaled $11.2 million, and imports from the U.S. totaled $54.2 million. In 2017, Kyrgyzstan exports were estimated to be worth $1.84 billion, while their imports were at an estimated $4.187 billion. Kyrgyzstan's major exports include gold, cotton, wool, garments, meat, mercury, uranium, electricity, machinery, and shoes. Major imports include oil and gas, machinery and equipment, chemicals, and foodstuffs.",
"title": "External trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Reexport of China-made consumer goods to Kazakhstan and Russia, centered on Dordoy Bazaar in Bishkek, and to Uzbekistan, centered on Kara-Suu Bazaar in Osh Region, is particularly important; it is thought by some economists to be one of the country's two largest economic activities.",
"title": "External trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The Kyrgyzstan Government has reduced expenditures, ended most price subsidies, and introduced a value added tax. Overall, the government appears committed to transferring to a free market economic system by stabilizing the economy and implementing reforms, which will encourage long-term growth. These reforms led to Kyrgyzstan's accession to the WTO on December 20, 1998.",
"title": "External trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The stock market capitalisation of listed companies in Kyrgyzstan was valued at $42 million in 2005 by the World Bank.",
"title": "Investment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The tax regime in the Kyrgyz Republic is administered by the State Tax Service. Collected taxes reached 18.1% of GDP in 2012.",
"title": "Taxation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "This is a chart of trend of gross domestic product of Kyrgyzstan at market prices estimated by the International Monetary Fund and EconStats with figures in millions of Kyrgyz Soms.",
"title": "Macro-economic trend"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "For purchasing power parity comparisons, the international dollar is exchanged at 9.40 Soms only.",
"title": "Macro-economic trend"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Current GDP per capita of Kyrgyzstan shrank by 54% in the 1990s. Mean wages were $0.85 per man-hour in 2009 and this rate represented underemployment when compared to effective market pay. In the first half of 2012, Kyrgyz economy shrank by 5.8%. This downturn was largely due to decline in gold production at the Kumtor mine.",
"title": "Macro-economic trend"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The budget deficit in mid-2012 was 23-billion soms and accounted for 7% of GDP while the target was to reduce it to 6%.",
"title": "Macro-economic trend"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1992–2017.",
"title": "Macro-economic trend"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Investment (gross fixed): 17% of GDP (2004 est.)",
"title": "Other statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Household income or consumption by percentage share:",
"title": "Other statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Distribution of family income - Gini index: 27.3 (2017)",
"title": "Other statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Agriculture - products: tobacco, cotton, potatoes, vegetables, grapes, fruits and berries; sheep, goats, cattle, wool, dairy products",
"title": "Other statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Industrial production growth rate: 6% (2000 est.)",
"title": "Other statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Electricity",
"title": "Other statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Electricity - production by source:",
"title": "Other statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Oil:",
"title": "Other statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Natural gas:",
"title": "Other statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Current account balance: $-87.92 million (2004 est.)",
"title": "Other statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Exports - commodities: cotton, wool, meat, tobacco; gold, mercury, uranium, natural gas, hydropower; machinery; shoes",
"title": "Other statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Imports - commodities: oil and gas, machinery and equipment, chemicals, foodstuffs",
"title": "Other statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Reserves of foreign exchange & gold: $498.7 million (2004 est.)",
"title": "Other statistics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Exchange rates: soms per US dollar - 41.731 (2004), 43.6484 (2003), 46.9371 (2002), 48.378 (2001), 47.7038 (2000), 69.85 (2020)",
"title": "Other statistics"
}
] |
The economy of Kyrgyzstan is heavily dependent on the agricultural sector. Cotton, tobacco, wool, and meat are the main agricultural products, although only tobacco and cotton are exported in any quantity. According to Healy Consultants, Kyrgyzstan's economy relies heavily on the strength of industrial exports, with plentiful reserves of gold, mercury and uranium. The economy also relies heavily on remittances from foreign workers. Following independence, Kyrgyzstan was progressive in carrying out market reforms, such as an improved regulatory system and land reform. In 1998, Kyrgyzstan was the first Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) country to be accepted into the World Trade Organization. Much of the government's stock in enterprises has been sold. Kyrgyzstan's economic performance has been hindered by widespread corruption, low foreign investment and general regional instability. Despite those issues, Kyrgyzstan is ranked 70th on the ease of doing business index.
|
2002-02-25T15:43:11Z
|
2023-12-26T11:20:04Z
|
[
"Template:Portal",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Asia in topic",
"Template:See also",
"Template:Convert",
"Template:World Trade Organization",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Citation needed",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Infobox economy",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Cite journal"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Kyrgyzstan
|
16,700 |
Telecommunications in Kyrgyzstan
|
Telecommunications in Kyrgyzstan include fixed and mobile telephones and the Internet.
The long-term goal of the government's information and communications technology strategy is for the telecommunications sector to contribute 5 percent to gross domestic product by 2010. The June 2006 launch of the KazSat communications satellite from Kazakhstan was expected to reduce the dependence of all the Central Asian countries on European and U.S. telecommunications satellites. Launch of a second KazSat is planned for 2009.
In the early 2000s, Kyrgyzstan used international investment support to restructure its telecommunications system, which had 7.7 telephone lines per 100 inhabitants in 2002 and 1,100,000 cellular phones in use in 2007. As part of the upgrading process, the government has attempted to sell a majority interest in the state-owned telecommunications company, Kyrgyztelecom, to foreign bidders. Companies from Russia, Sweden, and Turkey have been possible buyers. However, in 2005 an estimated 100,000 applicants were waiting for telephone line installation.
In the early 2000s, Internet use has expanded rapidly. Between 1999 and 2005, the number of Internet subscribers increased from 3,000 to 263,000. In 2004 some 12,300 Internet hosts were in operation. The country code top level domain is .kg.
Variable upload/download speeds through xDSL are available through state telephone company Kyrgyz Telecom (up to 8 Mbit/s downlink) and private ISPs (up to 10 Mbit/s downlink). There is typically a monthly cap on the amount of data transferred, with separate caps depending on whether the data stays within Kyrgyzstan or travels beyond the border. Broadband internet access with unlimited international traffic is rarely offered by ISPs to the market at significantly higher price. This is probably due to the lack of country's telecommunications bandwidth capacity.
ISPs provide internet access through satellite backbone communication lines linked to Russia, Germany, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. There is a major telecommunications project under construction - The Trans-Asia-Europe Fiber Optic Line, connecting Shanghai, China and Frankfurt, Germany, with the capacity of 622 Mbit/s, where Kyrgyzstan has completed its part. Completion of this project might affect broadband internet prices in Kyrgyzstan.
There are several ISPs that provide broadband internet access using different technologies such as xDSL, ISDN, Leased Line, and Ethernet. ISPs in Kyrgyzstan include Kyrgyz Telecom, Elcat, Asiainfo, Transfer Ltd, Totel, Megaline, Aknet, Intranet, Saima Telecom, My4G, Rikonet, AlaTV, ExNET, and IPSWICH.
Listed as engaged in selective Internet filtering in the political and social areas and as little or no evidence of filtering in the conflict/security and Internet tools areas by the OpenNet Initiative (ONI) in December 2010.
Access to the Internet in Kyrgyzstan has deteriorated as heightened political tensions have led to more frequent instances of second- and third-generation controls. The government has become more sensitive to the Internet's influence on domestic politics and enacted laws that increase its authority to regulate the sector.
Liberalisation of the telecommunications market in Kyrgyzstan has made the Internet affordable for the majority of the population. However, Kyrgyzstan is an effectively cyberlocked country dependent on purchasing bandwidth from Kazakhstan and Russia. The increasingly authoritarian regime in Kazakhstan is shifting toward more restrictive Internet controls, which is leading to instances of "upstream filtering" affecting ISPs in Kyrgyzstan.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Telecommunications in Kyrgyzstan include fixed and mobile telephones and the Internet.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The long-term goal of the government's information and communications technology strategy is for the telecommunications sector to contribute 5 percent to gross domestic product by 2010. The June 2006 launch of the KazSat communications satellite from Kazakhstan was expected to reduce the dependence of all the Central Asian countries on European and U.S. telecommunications satellites. Launch of a second KazSat is planned for 2009.",
"title": "Communications policy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In the early 2000s, Kyrgyzstan used international investment support to restructure its telecommunications system, which had 7.7 telephone lines per 100 inhabitants in 2002 and 1,100,000 cellular phones in use in 2007. As part of the upgrading process, the government has attempted to sell a majority interest in the state-owned telecommunications company, Kyrgyztelecom, to foreign bidders. Companies from Russia, Sweden, and Turkey have been possible buyers. However, in 2005 an estimated 100,000 applicants were waiting for telephone line installation.",
"title": "Telephones"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In the early 2000s, Internet use has expanded rapidly. Between 1999 and 2005, the number of Internet subscribers increased from 3,000 to 263,000. In 2004 some 12,300 Internet hosts were in operation. The country code top level domain is .kg.",
"title": "Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Variable upload/download speeds through xDSL are available through state telephone company Kyrgyz Telecom (up to 8 Mbit/s downlink) and private ISPs (up to 10 Mbit/s downlink). There is typically a monthly cap on the amount of data transferred, with separate caps depending on whether the data stays within Kyrgyzstan or travels beyond the border. Broadband internet access with unlimited international traffic is rarely offered by ISPs to the market at significantly higher price. This is probably due to the lack of country's telecommunications bandwidth capacity.",
"title": "Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "ISPs provide internet access through satellite backbone communication lines linked to Russia, Germany, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. There is a major telecommunications project under construction - The Trans-Asia-Europe Fiber Optic Line, connecting Shanghai, China and Frankfurt, Germany, with the capacity of 622 Mbit/s, where Kyrgyzstan has completed its part. Completion of this project might affect broadband internet prices in Kyrgyzstan.",
"title": "Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "There are several ISPs that provide broadband internet access using different technologies such as xDSL, ISDN, Leased Line, and Ethernet. ISPs in Kyrgyzstan include Kyrgyz Telecom, Elcat, Asiainfo, Transfer Ltd, Totel, Megaline, Aknet, Intranet, Saima Telecom, My4G, Rikonet, AlaTV, ExNET, and IPSWICH.",
"title": "Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Listed as engaged in selective Internet filtering in the political and social areas and as little or no evidence of filtering in the conflict/security and Internet tools areas by the OpenNet Initiative (ONI) in December 2010.",
"title": "Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Access to the Internet in Kyrgyzstan has deteriorated as heightened political tensions have led to more frequent instances of second- and third-generation controls. The government has become more sensitive to the Internet's influence on domestic politics and enacted laws that increase its authority to regulate the sector.",
"title": "Internet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Liberalisation of the telecommunications market in Kyrgyzstan has made the Internet affordable for the majority of the population. However, Kyrgyzstan is an effectively cyberlocked country dependent on purchasing bandwidth from Kazakhstan and Russia. The increasingly authoritarian regime in Kazakhstan is shifting toward more restrictive Internet controls, which is leading to instances of \"upstream filtering\" affecting ISPs in Kyrgyzstan.",
"title": "Internet"
}
] |
Telecommunications in Kyrgyzstan include fixed and mobile telephones and the Internet.
|
2023-02-27T12:43:18Z
|
[
"Template:Update after",
"Template:Asia topic",
"Template:Telecommunications",
"Template:Multiple issues",
"Template:For",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:-",
"Template:Internet censorship by country",
"Template:Kyrgyzstan topics",
"Template:Short description"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_in_Kyrgyzstan
|
|
16,701 |
Transport in Kyrgyzstan
|
Transport in Kyrgyzstan is severely constrained by the country's alpine topography. Roads have to snake up steep valleys, cross passes of 3,000 m (9,843 ft) altitude and more, and are subject to frequent mud slides and snow avalanches. Winter travel is close to impossible in many of the more remote and high-altitude regions. Additional problems are because many roads and railway lines built during the Soviet period are today intersected by international boundaries, requiring time-consuming border formalities to cross where they are not completely closed. The horse is still a much used transport option, especially in rural and inaccessible areas, as it does not depend on imported fuel.
The Kyrgyz Railway is currently responsible for railway development and maintenance in the country. The Chüy Valley in the north and the Fergana Valley in the south were endpoints of the Soviet Union's rail system in Central Asia. Following the emergence of independent post-Soviet states, the rail lines which were built without regard for administrative boundaries have been cut by borders, and traffic is therefore severely curtailed. The small bits of rail lines within Kyrgyzstan, about 370 km of 1,520 mm (4 ft 11+27⁄32 in) broad gauge in total, have little economic value in the absence of the former bulk traffic over long distances to and from such centers as Tashkent, Almaty and the cities of Russia.
There are vague plans about extending rail lines from Balykchy in the north and/or from Osh in the south into the People's Republic of China, but the cost of construction would be enormous.
With support from the Asian Development Bank, a major road linking the north and southwest from Bishkek to Osh has recently been completed. This considerably eases communication between the two major population centers of the country—the Chüy Valley in the north and the Fergana Valley in the South. An offshoot of this road branches off across a 3,500 meter pass into the Talas Valley in the northwest. Plans are now being formulated to build a major road from Osh into the People's Republic of China.
The total length of the road network in Kyrgyzstan is approximately 34,000 km. Of them, 18,810 km are public roads directly subordinated to the Ministry of Transport and Communications, and 15,190 km - other roads (village, agricultural, industrial etc.). By their status the roads of the Ministry of Transport and Communications are classified as:
By nature of surface there can be distinguished:
Frequent bus and, more commonly, minibus, service connects country's major cities. Minibuses provide public transit in cities and between cities to neighboring villages.
The condition of the road network is generally bad, though repairs have been made recently. Usually, only the main roads of population centres are illuminated, and drain lids might be missing on both streets and sidewalks. The roads are often not plowed during winters. Fuel stations are rare outside Bishkek and Osh.
The limitations of Kyrgyzstan's pipeline system are a major impediment to fuel distribution. In 2006 the country had 367 kilometers of natural gas pipeline and 16 kilometers of oil pipeline, after adding 167 kilometers of natural gas pipeline in 2003.
Water transport exists only on Issyk Kul Lake, and has drastically shrunk since the end of the Soviet Union.
Kyrgyzstan's only port is Balykchy, a fishing town on Issyk Kul Lake. None of Kyrgyzstan's rivers are navigable, and the country has no canals.
At the end of the Soviet period there were about 50 airports and airstrips in Kyrgyzstan, many of them built primarily to serve military purposes in this border region so close to China. Only a few of them remain in service today.
There are four airports with international flights, namely in Bishkek, Osh, Tamchy and Karakol.
total: 21 over 3,047 m: 1 (Bishkek-Manas) 2,438 to 3,047 m: 3 (Osh, Kant and Tokmok) 1,524 to 2,437 m: 11 (Jalal-Abad, Karakol International, Kerben, Kazarman, Isfana, Batken, Naryn, Talas, Issyk-Kul International, Kyzyl-Kiya and Cholpon-Ata) under 914 m: 6 (Tamga, Toktogul, Kanysh-Kiya, Pokrovka, Aravan and Sakaldy) (2012)
total: 29 2,438 to 3,047 m: 3 1,524 to 2,437 m: 5 914 to 1,523 m: 6 (Gulcha, Daroot-Korgon, Ala-Buka, At-Bashy, Suzak and Chatkal) under 914 m: 15 (2012)
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Transport in Kyrgyzstan is severely constrained by the country's alpine topography. Roads have to snake up steep valleys, cross passes of 3,000 m (9,843 ft) altitude and more, and are subject to frequent mud slides and snow avalanches. Winter travel is close to impossible in many of the more remote and high-altitude regions. Additional problems are because many roads and railway lines built during the Soviet period are today intersected by international boundaries, requiring time-consuming border formalities to cross where they are not completely closed. The horse is still a much used transport option, especially in rural and inaccessible areas, as it does not depend on imported fuel.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The Kyrgyz Railway is currently responsible for railway development and maintenance in the country. The Chüy Valley in the north and the Fergana Valley in the south were endpoints of the Soviet Union's rail system in Central Asia. Following the emergence of independent post-Soviet states, the rail lines which were built without regard for administrative boundaries have been cut by borders, and traffic is therefore severely curtailed. The small bits of rail lines within Kyrgyzstan, about 370 km of 1,520 mm (4 ft 11+27⁄32 in) broad gauge in total, have little economic value in the absence of the former bulk traffic over long distances to and from such centers as Tashkent, Almaty and the cities of Russia.",
"title": "Railways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "There are vague plans about extending rail lines from Balykchy in the north and/or from Osh in the south into the People's Republic of China, but the cost of construction would be enormous.",
"title": "Railways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "With support from the Asian Development Bank, a major road linking the north and southwest from Bishkek to Osh has recently been completed. This considerably eases communication between the two major population centers of the country—the Chüy Valley in the north and the Fergana Valley in the South. An offshoot of this road branches off across a 3,500 meter pass into the Talas Valley in the northwest. Plans are now being formulated to build a major road from Osh into the People's Republic of China.",
"title": "Highways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The total length of the road network in Kyrgyzstan is approximately 34,000 km. Of them, 18,810 km are public roads directly subordinated to the Ministry of Transport and Communications, and 15,190 km - other roads (village, agricultural, industrial etc.). By their status the roads of the Ministry of Transport and Communications are classified as:",
"title": "Highways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "By nature of surface there can be distinguished:",
"title": "Highways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Frequent bus and, more commonly, minibus, service connects country's major cities. Minibuses provide public transit in cities and between cities to neighboring villages.",
"title": "Highways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The condition of the road network is generally bad, though repairs have been made recently. Usually, only the main roads of population centres are illuminated, and drain lids might be missing on both streets and sidewalks. The roads are often not plowed during winters. Fuel stations are rare outside Bishkek and Osh.",
"title": "Highways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The limitations of Kyrgyzstan's pipeline system are a major impediment to fuel distribution. In 2006 the country had 367 kilometers of natural gas pipeline and 16 kilometers of oil pipeline, after adding 167 kilometers of natural gas pipeline in 2003.",
"title": "Pipelines"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Water transport exists only on Issyk Kul Lake, and has drastically shrunk since the end of the Soviet Union.",
"title": "Waterways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Kyrgyzstan's only port is Balykchy, a fishing town on Issyk Kul Lake. None of Kyrgyzstan's rivers are navigable, and the country has no canals.",
"title": "Ports and waterways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "At the end of the Soviet period there were about 50 airports and airstrips in Kyrgyzstan, many of them built primarily to serve military purposes in this border region so close to China. Only a few of them remain in service today.",
"title": "Airports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "There are four airports with international flights, namely in Bishkek, Osh, Tamchy and Karakol.",
"title": "Airports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "total: 21 over 3,047 m: 1 (Bishkek-Manas) 2,438 to 3,047 m: 3 (Osh, Kant and Tokmok) 1,524 to 2,437 m: 11 (Jalal-Abad, Karakol International, Kerben, Kazarman, Isfana, Batken, Naryn, Talas, Issyk-Kul International, Kyzyl-Kiya and Cholpon-Ata) under 914 m: 6 (Tamga, Toktogul, Kanysh-Kiya, Pokrovka, Aravan and Sakaldy) (2012)",
"title": "Airports"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "total: 29 2,438 to 3,047 m: 3 1,524 to 2,437 m: 5 914 to 1,523 m: 6 (Gulcha, Daroot-Korgon, Ala-Buka, At-Bashy, Suzak and Chatkal) under 914 m: 15 (2012)",
"title": "Airports"
}
] |
Transport in Kyrgyzstan is severely constrained by the country's alpine topography. Roads have to snake up steep valleys, cross passes of 3,000 m (9,843 ft) altitude and more, and are subject to frequent mud slides and snow avalanches. Winter travel is close to impossible in many of the more remote and high-altitude regions. Additional problems are because many roads and railway lines built during the Soviet period are today intersected by international boundaries, requiring time-consuming border formalities to cross where they are not completely closed. The horse is still a much used transport option, especially in rural and inaccessible areas, as it does not depend on imported fuel.
|
2023-05-12T03:56:42Z
|
[
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Refimprove",
"Template:Convert",
"Template:Cn",
"Template:Asia topic",
"Template:Unreferenced section",
"Template:RailGauge",
"Template:When",
"Template:See also",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Commons category"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Kyrgyzstan
|
|
16,702 |
Armed Forces of the Kyrgyz Republic
|
The Armed Forces of the Kyrgyz Republic (Kyrgyz: Кыргыз Республикасынын Куралдуу Күчтөрү; Kırgız Respublikasının Kuralduu Küçtörü) is the national military of Kyrgyzstan. It was originally formed from the former Soviet forces of the Turkestan Military District stationed in newly independent Kyrgyzstan. It consists of the Ground Forces, the Air Force and the National Guard. Affiliated security forces to the armed forces included the Internal Troops, the State Committee for National Security and the Border Troops.
The Armed Forces were formed on 29 May 1992 when President of the Kyrgyz SSR Askar Akayev signed a decree which effectively consolidated all the formations and units of the Soviet Army deployed in the territory of the new republic under the jurisdiction of Bishkek and not Moscow. Until 1988, these troops were part of the Central Asian Military District. 29 May is today celebrated as the Day of the Armed Forces. In 1993, the State Defense Committee was renamed to the Ministry of Defense on the basis of the headquarters of the 17th Army Corps. In 1998, the 1st Koy Tash, 2nd Osh, and 3rd Balykchinsk Infantry Brigades were created on the basis of the 8th Guards Motor Rifle Division. In August 1999, the Batken Conflict occurred in southwestern Kyrgyzstan, during which militants of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) made incursions of into Uzbek and Kyrgyz territory from their camps in Tajikistan.
In 2006, the Air Force and Air Defense Forces were combined to form the Kyrgyz Air Force. The same year, the term of service was reduced from 18 to 12 months (1 year). In February 2014, the Armed Forces General Staff was expanded to have complete control over the military apparatus, with the ministry of defense becoming a state defense committee which plays a smaller and more administrative role. Despite this arrangement, many former military/security officials such as Taalaibek Omuraliev and Adyl Kurbanov were in favor of returning the military to its former organization.
Following the inauguration of President Sadyr Japarov in early February 2021, the Ministry of Defense was reestablished following a 7 year hiatus. After signing the new Constitution of Kyrgyzstan in May 2021, President Japarov called for reform in the military, particularly the need to "organize the army according to the principle of special units, fully trained and technologically equipped to conduct military operations in mountainous conditions." He also at the same time called for the creation of "people’s guards", which according to him, will provide mobilization readiness amongst the population living in border areas.
National Guardee of Kyrgyz Republic/NGKR Кыргыз Республикасынын Улуттук Уланы/КРУУ
For much of the Soviet period, since 1967, the 8th Guards 'Panfilov' Motor Rifle Division was the main military force in the country. In 1967 the division had been moved to Bishkek from the Baltic Military District, where it had previously been based. It was only disbanded in January 2003. However, in 2011 reports said the division had been reformed with its headquarters in Tokmak. The Army of Kyrgyzstan includes the 1st Motor Rifle Brigade (Mountain) at Osh, a brigade at Koy-Tash, in the Bishkek area, the 25th Special Forces Brigade, independent battalions at Karakol and Naryn, a brigade at Balykchi, and other units. Two Groups of Forces, the Southern, and more recently the Northern, have been active during Kyrgyzstan's history. In 2004, the Northern Group of Forces was reported as consisting of the Balykchynsky brigade, the brigade deployed in suburb of Bishkek, separate battalions in Karakol and Naryn, and other army units.
The Army controls the Combat Training Center and Training Center "Ala-Too".
Kyrgyzstan's air arm was inherited from the central Soviet air force training school. This presented the nation a fleet of nearly 70 L-39s, dismantled MiG-21's and several Mi-8's and Mi-24's. However, only a few L-39s and the helicopters are capable of flight. All Kyrgyz military aircraft are reportedly based at Kant, alongside the Russian 999th Air Base. Because of expense and military doctrine, Kyrgyzstan has not developed its air capability; a large number of the MiG-21 interceptors that it borrowed from Russia were returned in 1993, although a number of former Soviet air bases remain available. In 1996 about 100 decommissioned MiG-21s remained in Kyrgyzstan, as of 2017 only 29 MiG-21s are in working order, in service along with ninety-six L-39 trainers and sixty-five helicopters. The air defense forces have received aid from Russia, which has sent military advisory units to establish a defense system. The Russians also help patrol Kyrgyz airspace as part of the Joint CIS Air Defence System. Presently Kyrgyzstan has twenty-six SA-2 and SA-3 surface-to-air missiles in its air defense arsenal. In 2002 the Kyrgyzstan government allowed the United States to use Manas air base for support operations in the War on terror. This agreement lasted until June 2014.
The National Guard of Kyrgyzstan was founded on December 6, 1991 and took their first oath July 20 the following year. In 2014, the Internal Troops were absorbed into the National Guard as a result of the ongoing military reforms. This would remain this way until September 2018 when they were separated once again.
In terms of foreign presence, the U.S.-led Operation Enduring Freedom coalition used the Manas Air Base (Bishkek's international airport) until June 2014. In response, Russia set up the 999th Air Base at Kant to counter the American military presence in the former Soviet state. Moscow is believed to have promised Bishkek $1.1 billion for modernizing its army. Agreements to this effect were reached during the visits to Bishkek by Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov in August and President Vladimir Putin in September 2012. As of fall 2023, Russia supplies various military equipment and also begins to form a joint air defense system. Since May 1992, Kyrgyzstan has been a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization. In addition, its leaders work within the framework of the Council of Ministers of Defense of the CIS. Kyrgyzstan hosted the Second CIS Military Sports Games in 2017 in Balykchy. The games included various competition in shooting, fighting, etc. On 16 July 2018, the opening of the Kyrgyz-Indian Mountain Training Center took place in Balykchy at the Edelweiss Training Center, built with funds allocated by the Government of India.
The personnel of the armed forces also take part in UN peacekeeping missions. Currently, Kyrgyz forces are serving in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan, East Timor, Ethiopia and Kosovo.
The main military educational institutions include:
Kyrgyzstan has an agreement with the Russian Federation, according to which Kyrgyz soldiers are trained in military academies in Russia. The training of officers is carried out in the military educational institutions of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Republic of Turkey and the People's Republic of China.
The Center for Advanced Training of Officers and NCOs of the Defense Ministry was opened in early 2007. It was designed to offer one month professional training courses. In 2005, the NCO Training School of the Combined Arms Training Center of the Armed Forces was opened at the base of the 2nd Independent Motorized Rifle Brigade. In 2013, the border guard opened classes at more than 100 secondary schools. The Edelweiss Training Center operates in the Issyk-Kul Region.
The Kyrgyz State National Military Lyceum and MVD High School are secondary schools that trains middle-tier commanders in the armed forces.
The Military Faculty of Kyrgyz State Medical Academy was created in the beginning of the Second World War, specifically in October 1941 when there was a shortage of medical personnel in the medical service. Originally it was the Sanitary Department of Defence, and in 1942 it was renamed to the Department of Military and Health Training, and has since 1944 been known as the Department of Military Medical Training. It currently engages in the military training of students of medical, pediatric, dental, sanitary and pharmaceutical departments of the armed forces.
Kyrgyz Armed Forces have inherited conscription from the Armed Forces of USSR. The length of conscription was reduced to 12 months from initial 18 in 2006. Today, Kyrgyz Armed Forces employ a policy of reducing the service period for university graduates to 9 months. Alternative service exists, however, it is only offered to conscripts who belong to certain religious groups.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Armed Forces of the Kyrgyz Republic (Kyrgyz: Кыргыз Республикасынын Куралдуу Күчтөрү; Kırgız Respublikasının Kuralduu Küçtörü) is the national military of Kyrgyzstan. It was originally formed from the former Soviet forces of the Turkestan Military District stationed in newly independent Kyrgyzstan. It consists of the Ground Forces, the Air Force and the National Guard. Affiliated security forces to the armed forces included the Internal Troops, the State Committee for National Security and the Border Troops.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The Armed Forces were formed on 29 May 1992 when President of the Kyrgyz SSR Askar Akayev signed a decree which effectively consolidated all the formations and units of the Soviet Army deployed in the territory of the new republic under the jurisdiction of Bishkek and not Moscow. Until 1988, these troops were part of the Central Asian Military District. 29 May is today celebrated as the Day of the Armed Forces. In 1993, the State Defense Committee was renamed to the Ministry of Defense on the basis of the headquarters of the 17th Army Corps. In 1998, the 1st Koy Tash, 2nd Osh, and 3rd Balykchinsk Infantry Brigades were created on the basis of the 8th Guards Motor Rifle Division. In August 1999, the Batken Conflict occurred in southwestern Kyrgyzstan, during which militants of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) made incursions of into Uzbek and Kyrgyz territory from their camps in Tajikistan.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In 2006, the Air Force and Air Defense Forces were combined to form the Kyrgyz Air Force. The same year, the term of service was reduced from 18 to 12 months (1 year). In February 2014, the Armed Forces General Staff was expanded to have complete control over the military apparatus, with the ministry of defense becoming a state defense committee which plays a smaller and more administrative role. Despite this arrangement, many former military/security officials such as Taalaibek Omuraliev and Adyl Kurbanov were in favor of returning the military to its former organization.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Following the inauguration of President Sadyr Japarov in early February 2021, the Ministry of Defense was reestablished following a 7 year hiatus. After signing the new Constitution of Kyrgyzstan in May 2021, President Japarov called for reform in the military, particularly the need to \"organize the army according to the principle of special units, fully trained and technologically equipped to conduct military operations in mountainous conditions.\" He also at the same time called for the creation of \"people’s guards\", which according to him, will provide mobilization readiness amongst the population living in border areas.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "National Guardee of Kyrgyz Republic/NGKR Кыргыз Республикасынын Улуттук Уланы/КРУУ",
"title": "Special forces units list"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "For much of the Soviet period, since 1967, the 8th Guards 'Panfilov' Motor Rifle Division was the main military force in the country. In 1967 the division had been moved to Bishkek from the Baltic Military District, where it had previously been based. It was only disbanded in January 2003. However, in 2011 reports said the division had been reformed with its headquarters in Tokmak. The Army of Kyrgyzstan includes the 1st Motor Rifle Brigade (Mountain) at Osh, a brigade at Koy-Tash, in the Bishkek area, the 25th Special Forces Brigade, independent battalions at Karakol and Naryn, a brigade at Balykchi, and other units. Two Groups of Forces, the Southern, and more recently the Northern, have been active during Kyrgyzstan's history. In 2004, the Northern Group of Forces was reported as consisting of the Balykchynsky brigade, the brigade deployed in suburb of Bishkek, separate battalions in Karakol and Naryn, and other army units.",
"title": "Army"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The Army controls the Combat Training Center and Training Center \"Ala-Too\".",
"title": "Army"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Kyrgyzstan's air arm was inherited from the central Soviet air force training school. This presented the nation a fleet of nearly 70 L-39s, dismantled MiG-21's and several Mi-8's and Mi-24's. However, only a few L-39s and the helicopters are capable of flight. All Kyrgyz military aircraft are reportedly based at Kant, alongside the Russian 999th Air Base. Because of expense and military doctrine, Kyrgyzstan has not developed its air capability; a large number of the MiG-21 interceptors that it borrowed from Russia were returned in 1993, although a number of former Soviet air bases remain available. In 1996 about 100 decommissioned MiG-21s remained in Kyrgyzstan, as of 2017 only 29 MiG-21s are in working order, in service along with ninety-six L-39 trainers and sixty-five helicopters. The air defense forces have received aid from Russia, which has sent military advisory units to establish a defense system. The Russians also help patrol Kyrgyz airspace as part of the Joint CIS Air Defence System. Presently Kyrgyzstan has twenty-six SA-2 and SA-3 surface-to-air missiles in its air defense arsenal. In 2002 the Kyrgyzstan government allowed the United States to use Manas air base for support operations in the War on terror. This agreement lasted until June 2014.",
"title": "Air Force"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The National Guard of Kyrgyzstan was founded on December 6, 1991 and took their first oath July 20 the following year. In 2014, the Internal Troops were absorbed into the National Guard as a result of the ongoing military reforms. This would remain this way until September 2018 when they were separated once again.",
"title": "National Guard"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In terms of foreign presence, the U.S.-led Operation Enduring Freedom coalition used the Manas Air Base (Bishkek's international airport) until June 2014. In response, Russia set up the 999th Air Base at Kant to counter the American military presence in the former Soviet state. Moscow is believed to have promised Bishkek $1.1 billion for modernizing its army. Agreements to this effect were reached during the visits to Bishkek by Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov in August and President Vladimir Putin in September 2012. As of fall 2023, Russia supplies various military equipment and also begins to form a joint air defense system. Since May 1992, Kyrgyzstan has been a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization. In addition, its leaders work within the framework of the Council of Ministers of Defense of the CIS. Kyrgyzstan hosted the Second CIS Military Sports Games in 2017 in Balykchy. The games included various competition in shooting, fighting, etc. On 16 July 2018, the opening of the Kyrgyz-Indian Mountain Training Center took place in Balykchy at the Edelweiss Training Center, built with funds allocated by the Government of India.",
"title": "Foreign military presence and international cooperation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The personnel of the armed forces also take part in UN peacekeeping missions. Currently, Kyrgyz forces are serving in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan, East Timor, Ethiopia and Kosovo.",
"title": "Foreign military presence and international cooperation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The main military educational institutions include:",
"title": "Personnel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Kyrgyzstan has an agreement with the Russian Federation, according to which Kyrgyz soldiers are trained in military academies in Russia. The training of officers is carried out in the military educational institutions of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Republic of Turkey and the People's Republic of China.",
"title": "Personnel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The Center for Advanced Training of Officers and NCOs of the Defense Ministry was opened in early 2007. It was designed to offer one month professional training courses. In 2005, the NCO Training School of the Combined Arms Training Center of the Armed Forces was opened at the base of the 2nd Independent Motorized Rifle Brigade. In 2013, the border guard opened classes at more than 100 secondary schools. The Edelweiss Training Center operates in the Issyk-Kul Region.",
"title": "Personnel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The Kyrgyz State National Military Lyceum and MVD High School are secondary schools that trains middle-tier commanders in the armed forces.",
"title": "Personnel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The Military Faculty of Kyrgyz State Medical Academy was created in the beginning of the Second World War, specifically in October 1941 when there was a shortage of medical personnel in the medical service. Originally it was the Sanitary Department of Defence, and in 1942 it was renamed to the Department of Military and Health Training, and has since 1944 been known as the Department of Military Medical Training. It currently engages in the military training of students of medical, pediatric, dental, sanitary and pharmaceutical departments of the armed forces.",
"title": "Personnel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Kyrgyz Armed Forces have inherited conscription from the Armed Forces of USSR. The length of conscription was reduced to 12 months from initial 18 in 2006. Today, Kyrgyz Armed Forces employ a policy of reducing the service period for university graduates to 9 months. Alternative service exists, however, it is only offered to conscripts who belong to certain religious groups.",
"title": "Personnel"
}
] |
The Armed Forces of the Kyrgyz Republic is the national military of Kyrgyzstan. It was originally formed from the former Soviet forces of the Turkestan Military District stationed in newly independent Kyrgyzstan. It consists of the Ground Forces, the Air Force and the National Guard. Affiliated security forces to the armed forces included the Internal Troops, the State Committee for National Security and the Border Troops.
|
2002-02-25T15:43:11Z
|
2023-12-25T18:37:50Z
|
[
"Template:Lang-ky",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Military of Asia",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:In lang",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Lang-ru",
"Template:Flag",
"Template:UAE",
"Template:Infobox national military",
"Template:TUR",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Cite web"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_Forces_of_the_Kyrgyz_Republic
|
16,703 |
Foreign relations of Kyrgyzstan
|
Kyrgyzstan has close relations with other members of the Commonwealth of Independent States, particularly Kazakhstan and Russia, given the historical legacy of the Soviet Union. It also has close relations with Turkey as well, given their shared heritage as Turkic languages.
While Kyrgyzstan was initially determined to stay in the ruble zone, the stringent conditions set forth by the Russian Government prompted Kyrgyzstan to introduce its own currency, the som, in May 1993. Kyrgyzstan's withdrawal from the ruble zone was done with little prior notification and initially caused tensions in the region. Both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan temporarily suspended trade, and Uzbekistan even introduced restrictions tantamount to economic sanctions. Both nations feared an influx of rubles and an increase in inflation. Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan's hostility toward Kyrgyzstan was short-lived, and the three nations signed an agreement in January 1994 creating an economic union. This led to the relaxation of border restrictions between the nations the following month. Kyrgyzstan also has contributed to the CIS peacekeeping forces in Tajikistan.
Turkey has sought to capitalize on its cultural and ethnic links to the region and has found Kyrgyzstan receptive to cultivating bilateral relations. The Kyrgyz Republic also has experienced a dramatic increase in trade with the People's Republic of China, its southern neighbor. Kyrgyzstan has been active in furthering regional cooperation, such as joint military exercises with Uzbek and Kazakh troops.
In January 1999, a new OSCE office opened in Bishkek; on February 18, 2000, the OSCE announced that an additional office would open in Osh to assist Bishkek in carrying out its work. Kyrgyzstan is a member of the OSCE, the CIS, and the United Nations.
List of countries which Kyrgyzstan maintains diplomatic relations with:
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Kyrgyzstan has close relations with other members of the Commonwealth of Independent States, particularly Kazakhstan and Russia, given the historical legacy of the Soviet Union. It also has close relations with Turkey as well, given their shared heritage as Turkic languages.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "While Kyrgyzstan was initially determined to stay in the ruble zone, the stringent conditions set forth by the Russian Government prompted Kyrgyzstan to introduce its own currency, the som, in May 1993. Kyrgyzstan's withdrawal from the ruble zone was done with little prior notification and initially caused tensions in the region. Both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan temporarily suspended trade, and Uzbekistan even introduced restrictions tantamount to economic sanctions. Both nations feared an influx of rubles and an increase in inflation. Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan's hostility toward Kyrgyzstan was short-lived, and the three nations signed an agreement in January 1994 creating an economic union. This led to the relaxation of border restrictions between the nations the following month. Kyrgyzstan also has contributed to the CIS peacekeeping forces in Tajikistan.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Turkey has sought to capitalize on its cultural and ethnic links to the region and has found Kyrgyzstan receptive to cultivating bilateral relations. The Kyrgyz Republic also has experienced a dramatic increase in trade with the People's Republic of China, its southern neighbor. Kyrgyzstan has been active in furthering regional cooperation, such as joint military exercises with Uzbek and Kazakh troops.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In January 1999, a new OSCE office opened in Bishkek; on February 18, 2000, the OSCE announced that an additional office would open in Osh to assist Bishkek in carrying out its work. Kyrgyzstan is a member of the OSCE, the CIS, and the United Nations.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "List of countries which Kyrgyzstan maintains diplomatic relations with:",
"title": "Diplomatic relations"
}
] |
Kyrgyzstan has close relations with other members of the Commonwealth of Independent States, particularly Kazakhstan and Russia, given the historical legacy of the Soviet Union. It also has close relations with Turkey as well, given their shared heritage as Turkic languages. While Kyrgyzstan was initially determined to stay in the ruble zone, the stringent conditions set forth by the Russian Government prompted Kyrgyzstan to introduce its own currency, the som, in May 1993. Kyrgyzstan's withdrawal from the ruble zone was done with little prior notification and initially caused tensions in the region. Both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan temporarily suspended trade, and Uzbekistan even introduced restrictions tantamount to economic sanctions. Both nations feared an influx of rubles and an increase in inflation. Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan's hostility toward Kyrgyzstan was short-lived, and the three nations signed an agreement in January 1994 creating an economic union. This led to the relaxation of border restrictions between the nations the following month. Kyrgyzstan also has contributed to the CIS peacekeeping forces in Tajikistan. Turkey has sought to capitalize on its cultural and ethnic links to the region and has found Kyrgyzstan receptive to cultivating bilateral relations. The Kyrgyz Republic also has experienced a dramatic increase in trade with the People's Republic of China, its southern neighbor. Kyrgyzstan has been active in furthering regional cooperation, such as joint military exercises with Uzbek and Kazakh troops. In January 1999, a new OSCE office opened in Bishkek; on February 18, 2000, the OSCE announced that an additional office would open in Osh to assist Bishkek in carrying out its work. Kyrgyzstan is a member of the OSCE, the CIS, and the United Nations.
|
2002-02-25T15:51:15Z
|
2023-12-27T23:39:36Z
|
[
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Flag",
"Template:Date table sorting",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Foreign relations of Kyrgyzstan",
"Template:Foreign relations of Asia",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Politics of Kyrgyzstan",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Webarchive"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Kyrgyzstan
|
16,705 |
Kool Keith
|
Keith Matthew Thornton (born October 7, 1963), better known by his stage name Kool Keith, is an American rapper and record producer from The Bronx, New York City, known for his surreal, abstract and often profane or incomprehensible lyrics. Kool Keith has recorded prolifically both as a solo artist and in group collaborations. Kool Keith is generally considered to be one of hip-hop's most eccentric and unusual personalities.
Kool Keith was a cofounding member of Ultramagnetic MCs, whose debut Critical Beatdown was released in 1988. After two more albums with the group, Funk Your Head Up and The Four Horsemen, Kool Keith released his critically acclaimed solo debut album, Dr. Octagonecologyst under the name Dr. Octagon in 1996. He subsequently released a series of further independently released hip hop albums, including Sex Style, First Come, First Served (as Dr. Dooom), and most recently Keith.
After releasing only one album on a major label, Black Elvis/Lost in Space, Kool Keith subsequently returned to independently releasing music, producing further efforts as a solo artist and in collaboration with groups such as Analog Brothers, Masters of Illusion, Thee Undatakerz and Project Polaroid. Kool Keith has also made guest appearances in collaboration with Peeping Tom and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. He was also featured on the short track DDT on Jurassic 5's album Power in Numbers. The Prodigy's hit "Smack My Bitch Up" was based on a sample of Kool Keith's voice saying "Change my pitch up. Smack my bitch up" on Give The Drummer Some by Ultramagnetic MC's.
Thornton began his career with the group Ultramagnetic MCs under the pseudonym Kool Keith in 1984. Four years later, their release of the album Critical Beatdown was critically acclaimed and later became recognized as widely influential for its innovative production, complex rhymes, and chopped sampling. Just after its release, Thornton was reportedly institutionalized in Bellevue Hospital Center. However, he later said that the idea that he was institutionalized came from a flippant remark made during an interview, and he never expected the story to become so well known.
Ultramagnetic MCs would release two more albums (1992's Funk Your Head Up and 1993's The Four Horsemen) with little commercial success due to West Coast hip hop's changing landscape. They went on hiatus for years, leading Thorton to embark on a solo career.
Thornton released his first notable solo single, "Earth People", in 1995, under the name Dr. Octagon. This was followed by the release of the concept album Dr. Octagonecologyst the following year. The album's production by Dan the Automator and Kutmasta Kurt, with scratching by DJ Qbert was acclaimed by critics, and the album was released nationally by DreamWorks Records in 1997, after an initial release on the smaller Bulk Recordings label (as, simply, Dr. Octagon) a year prior. Dr. Octagonecologyst was considered a departure from old school hip hop to abstract hip hop, with surrealistic, horror, science-fiction, and sexual themes. DreamWorks also issued an instrumental version of the album, titled Instrumentalyst (Octagon Beats).
In 1996, Thornton collaborated with Tim Dog for the single "The Industry is Wack", performing under the name Ultra—the album Big Time soon followed. The following year, Thornton followed the release the sophomore album, Sex Style under the name Kool Keith. Being a dirty rap concept album, Thornton described it as "pornocore", filled with sexual metaphors to diss other rappers. An instrumental version was also released. This year, a collaborative album with Godfather Don titled Cenobites, was released as an LP.
In 1999, he released the album First Come, First Served under the name "Dr. Dooom", in which the album's main character killed off Dr. Octagon on the album's opening track. The same year, on August 10, 1999, Thornton released Black Elvis/Lost in Space, under the major record labels Ruffhouse and Columbia. It peaked at #10 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart, #74 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, and #180 on the Billboard 200, Despite standing out as Thornton's most commercially successful project to date, he was disappointed with the album's delays and promotional efforts, even though a promotional video was made for the lead single, "Livin' Astro", which aired on a few episodes of the MTV show Amp in early 2000. Its sequel, Black Elvis 2, was released in 2023.
On June 5, 2001, Thornton released the album Spankmaster on TVT and Gothom Records. It peaked at #16 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart, #11 on the Top Independent Albums chart and #48 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. The album has yet to be on streaming.
On July 25, 2000, Thornton released the album Matthew. It peaked at #47 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart. The following month, Thornton collaborated with Ice-T, Marc Live, Black Silver and Pimp Rex for the album Pimp to Eat, under the group name Analog Brothers, with Keith performing as Keith Korg and Ice-T as Ice Oscillator. The album was re-released by Mello Music Group on streaming, CD, and LP in 2016. Masters of Illusion, a collaboration with KutMasta Kurt and Motion Man, followed a few months later.
Thornton, Marc Live and H-Bomb formed the group KHM, releasing the album Game on November 19, 2002. They later changed their name to "Clayborne Family" by the release of their second album two years later. During the same year (2004) that Clayborne Family was released in, Kool Keith Presents Thee Undatakerz (with Reverend Tom (Kool Keith) Al Bury-U (BIG NONAME), M-Balmer and The Funeral Director) and Diesel Truckers, another collaboration with KutMasta Kurt.
In 2002, Thornton began recording The Resurrection of Dr. Octagon with producer Fanatik J, signing a contract with CMH Records to release the album, which was eventually completed without much input from Thornton, due to a falling out over contractual terms.
On October 12, 2004, Real Talk Entertainment issued the album Dr. Octagon Part 2. The album was discontinued by court order. On June 27, The Return of Dr. Octagon was released by OCD International, an imprint of CMH, advertised as the official follow-up to Dr. Octagonecologyst. Some critics felt that it was not as good as its predecessor. Thornton stated that he liked the album, but felt that it hurt his reputation as a musician. In August, Thornton performed under the Dr. Octagon billing, but did not acknowledge the release of the OCD album.
On April 25, 2006, Thornton released the album Nogatco Rd. under the name Mr. Nogatco, and Project Polaroid, a collaboration with TomC3. The Return of Dr. Octagon, the sequel to Dr. Octagonecologyst, was released two months later, as well as a Dr. Dooom sequel titled Dr. Dooom 2 being released two years later.
In 2007, Ultramagnetic MCs released the reunion album The Best Kept Secret. In 2009, Kool Keith released the concept album Tashan Dorrsett; a follow-up, The Legend of Tashan Dorrsett, followed two years later. In 2012, Kool Keith performed at the Gathering of the Juggalos. He has stated that he is considering retiring from music. In 2013, Keith appeared as Dr. Octagon on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs song "Buried Alive", from their album Mosquito. In 2015, Keith released "Time? Astonishing!" with producer L'Orange and began the start of his relationship with Mello Music Group. Since then, Keith also re-issued his group album with the Analog Brothers (Ice-T, Pimp Rex, Marc Live, Silver Synth) "Pimp To Eat" with Mello Music. Kool Keith's recent solo album Feature Magnetic was dropped on September 16, 2016 and it features MF DOOM, Slug from Atmosphere, Dirt Nasty and many others. Artwork for the "Feature Magnetic" album was produced by Marc Santo.
In 2018, Keith collaborated once again with Dan the Automator and DJ Qbert for another Dr. Octagon album. Moosebumps: An Exploration Into Modern Day Horripilation was released on streaming services on April 6, 2018, with the physical release scheduled for Record Store Day, April 21, 2018. The Record Store Day release includes both vinyl and CD copies. Using his Deltron persona, Del the Funky Homosapien guests on "3030 Meets the Doc, Pt. 1". NPR offered a first look at the album on March 29, 2018. Kool Keith appears on "Western" by the bluegrass-rap group Gangstagrass, performing as himself. Throughout five years, Thornton released Controller of Trap, Keith, Computer Technology, Saks 5th Ave, Space Goretex (with Thetan), Keith's Salon, Subatomic (with Del the Funky Homosapien), Serpent (with Real Bad Man), and Black Elvis 2.
Thornton's fan site refers to his discography of roughly fifty album releases, most of which have been commercially released. Singles such as "Spectrum" continue to appear online under the artist's name, on sites such as SoundCloud and Spotify.
Thornton's lyrics are often abstract, surreal, and filled with non-sequiturs and profane humor. For example, "Technical Difficulties," from the album Dr. Octagonecologyst, contains the following lyrics: "Intestines, investments, hide money in your stomach / Who can stop Pepto-Bismol? Only a Gremlin eatin' in Larry Parker like Gizmo." Thornton is also known for an explicit style focusing on sexual themes, which Thornton has referred to as "pornocore". In a 2007 interview, Thornton claims to have "invented horrorcore".
Kool Keith is known for his many alter egos. As of 2012, Kool Keith had at least 58 such alter egos: these include well-known aliases such as Dr. Octagon, Dr. Dooom, and Black Elvis, which appeared on albums bearing their names; and the more obscure, such as firearms dealer "Crazy Lou" and "Exotron Geiger Counter One Plus Megatron," as he introduced himself in an appearance on Marley Marl's radio show In Control. Some of Kool Keith's monikers have only existed on album artwork, such as "Mr. Green" and "Elvin Presley."
In reference to his relationship between himself and his various stage personalities, Keith has said, "I don't even feel like I'm a human being anymore".
Solo albums
Collaborative albums
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Keith Matthew Thornton (born October 7, 1963), better known by his stage name Kool Keith, is an American rapper and record producer from The Bronx, New York City, known for his surreal, abstract and often profane or incomprehensible lyrics. Kool Keith has recorded prolifically both as a solo artist and in group collaborations. Kool Keith is generally considered to be one of hip-hop's most eccentric and unusual personalities.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Kool Keith was a cofounding member of Ultramagnetic MCs, whose debut Critical Beatdown was released in 1988. After two more albums with the group, Funk Your Head Up and The Four Horsemen, Kool Keith released his critically acclaimed solo debut album, Dr. Octagonecologyst under the name Dr. Octagon in 1996. He subsequently released a series of further independently released hip hop albums, including Sex Style, First Come, First Served (as Dr. Dooom), and most recently Keith.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "After releasing only one album on a major label, Black Elvis/Lost in Space, Kool Keith subsequently returned to independently releasing music, producing further efforts as a solo artist and in collaboration with groups such as Analog Brothers, Masters of Illusion, Thee Undatakerz and Project Polaroid. Kool Keith has also made guest appearances in collaboration with Peeping Tom and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. He was also featured on the short track DDT on Jurassic 5's album Power in Numbers. The Prodigy's hit \"Smack My Bitch Up\" was based on a sample of Kool Keith's voice saying \"Change my pitch up. Smack my bitch up\" on Give The Drummer Some by Ultramagnetic MC's.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Thornton began his career with the group Ultramagnetic MCs under the pseudonym Kool Keith in 1984. Four years later, their release of the album Critical Beatdown was critically acclaimed and later became recognized as widely influential for its innovative production, complex rhymes, and chopped sampling. Just after its release, Thornton was reportedly institutionalized in Bellevue Hospital Center. However, he later said that the idea that he was institutionalized came from a flippant remark made during an interview, and he never expected the story to become so well known.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Ultramagnetic MCs would release two more albums (1992's Funk Your Head Up and 1993's The Four Horsemen) with little commercial success due to West Coast hip hop's changing landscape. They went on hiatus for years, leading Thorton to embark on a solo career.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Thornton released his first notable solo single, \"Earth People\", in 1995, under the name Dr. Octagon. This was followed by the release of the concept album Dr. Octagonecologyst the following year. The album's production by Dan the Automator and Kutmasta Kurt, with scratching by DJ Qbert was acclaimed by critics, and the album was released nationally by DreamWorks Records in 1997, after an initial release on the smaller Bulk Recordings label (as, simply, Dr. Octagon) a year prior. Dr. Octagonecologyst was considered a departure from old school hip hop to abstract hip hop, with surrealistic, horror, science-fiction, and sexual themes. DreamWorks also issued an instrumental version of the album, titled Instrumentalyst (Octagon Beats).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In 1996, Thornton collaborated with Tim Dog for the single \"The Industry is Wack\", performing under the name Ultra—the album Big Time soon followed. The following year, Thornton followed the release the sophomore album, Sex Style under the name Kool Keith. Being a dirty rap concept album, Thornton described it as \"pornocore\", filled with sexual metaphors to diss other rappers. An instrumental version was also released. This year, a collaborative album with Godfather Don titled Cenobites, was released as an LP.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In 1999, he released the album First Come, First Served under the name \"Dr. Dooom\", in which the album's main character killed off Dr. Octagon on the album's opening track. The same year, on August 10, 1999, Thornton released Black Elvis/Lost in Space, under the major record labels Ruffhouse and Columbia. It peaked at #10 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart, #74 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, and #180 on the Billboard 200, Despite standing out as Thornton's most commercially successful project to date, he was disappointed with the album's delays and promotional efforts, even though a promotional video was made for the lead single, \"Livin' Astro\", which aired on a few episodes of the MTV show Amp in early 2000. Its sequel, Black Elvis 2, was released in 2023.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "On June 5, 2001, Thornton released the album Spankmaster on TVT and Gothom Records. It peaked at #16 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart, #11 on the Top Independent Albums chart and #48 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. The album has yet to be on streaming.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "On July 25, 2000, Thornton released the album Matthew. It peaked at #47 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart. The following month, Thornton collaborated with Ice-T, Marc Live, Black Silver and Pimp Rex for the album Pimp to Eat, under the group name Analog Brothers, with Keith performing as Keith Korg and Ice-T as Ice Oscillator. The album was re-released by Mello Music Group on streaming, CD, and LP in 2016. Masters of Illusion, a collaboration with KutMasta Kurt and Motion Man, followed a few months later.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Thornton, Marc Live and H-Bomb formed the group KHM, releasing the album Game on November 19, 2002. They later changed their name to \"Clayborne Family\" by the release of their second album two years later. During the same year (2004) that Clayborne Family was released in, Kool Keith Presents Thee Undatakerz (with Reverend Tom (Kool Keith) Al Bury-U (BIG NONAME), M-Balmer and The Funeral Director) and Diesel Truckers, another collaboration with KutMasta Kurt.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In 2002, Thornton began recording The Resurrection of Dr. Octagon with producer Fanatik J, signing a contract with CMH Records to release the album, which was eventually completed without much input from Thornton, due to a falling out over contractual terms.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "On October 12, 2004, Real Talk Entertainment issued the album Dr. Octagon Part 2. The album was discontinued by court order. On June 27, The Return of Dr. Octagon was released by OCD International, an imprint of CMH, advertised as the official follow-up to Dr. Octagonecologyst. Some critics felt that it was not as good as its predecessor. Thornton stated that he liked the album, but felt that it hurt his reputation as a musician. In August, Thornton performed under the Dr. Octagon billing, but did not acknowledge the release of the OCD album.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "On April 25, 2006, Thornton released the album Nogatco Rd. under the name Mr. Nogatco, and Project Polaroid, a collaboration with TomC3. The Return of Dr. Octagon, the sequel to Dr. Octagonecologyst, was released two months later, as well as a Dr. Dooom sequel titled Dr. Dooom 2 being released two years later.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In 2007, Ultramagnetic MCs released the reunion album The Best Kept Secret. In 2009, Kool Keith released the concept album Tashan Dorrsett; a follow-up, The Legend of Tashan Dorrsett, followed two years later. In 2012, Kool Keith performed at the Gathering of the Juggalos. He has stated that he is considering retiring from music. In 2013, Keith appeared as Dr. Octagon on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs song \"Buried Alive\", from their album Mosquito. In 2015, Keith released \"Time? Astonishing!\" with producer L'Orange and began the start of his relationship with Mello Music Group. Since then, Keith also re-issued his group album with the Analog Brothers (Ice-T, Pimp Rex, Marc Live, Silver Synth) \"Pimp To Eat\" with Mello Music. Kool Keith's recent solo album Feature Magnetic was dropped on September 16, 2016 and it features MF DOOM, Slug from Atmosphere, Dirt Nasty and many others. Artwork for the \"Feature Magnetic\" album was produced by Marc Santo.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In 2018, Keith collaborated once again with Dan the Automator and DJ Qbert for another Dr. Octagon album. Moosebumps: An Exploration Into Modern Day Horripilation was released on streaming services on April 6, 2018, with the physical release scheduled for Record Store Day, April 21, 2018. The Record Store Day release includes both vinyl and CD copies. Using his Deltron persona, Del the Funky Homosapien guests on \"3030 Meets the Doc, Pt. 1\". NPR offered a first look at the album on March 29, 2018. Kool Keith appears on \"Western\" by the bluegrass-rap group Gangstagrass, performing as himself. Throughout five years, Thornton released Controller of Trap, Keith, Computer Technology, Saks 5th Ave, Space Goretex (with Thetan), Keith's Salon, Subatomic (with Del the Funky Homosapien), Serpent (with Real Bad Man), and Black Elvis 2.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Thornton's fan site refers to his discography of roughly fifty album releases, most of which have been commercially released. Singles such as \"Spectrum\" continue to appear online under the artist's name, on sites such as SoundCloud and Spotify.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Thornton's lyrics are often abstract, surreal, and filled with non-sequiturs and profane humor. For example, \"Technical Difficulties,\" from the album Dr. Octagonecologyst, contains the following lyrics: \"Intestines, investments, hide money in your stomach / Who can stop Pepto-Bismol? Only a Gremlin eatin' in Larry Parker like Gizmo.\" Thornton is also known for an explicit style focusing on sexual themes, which Thornton has referred to as \"pornocore\". In a 2007 interview, Thornton claims to have \"invented horrorcore\".",
"title": "Lyrical and performance style"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Kool Keith is known for his many alter egos. As of 2012, Kool Keith had at least 58 such alter egos: these include well-known aliases such as Dr. Octagon, Dr. Dooom, and Black Elvis, which appeared on albums bearing their names; and the more obscure, such as firearms dealer \"Crazy Lou\" and \"Exotron Geiger Counter One Plus Megatron,\" as he introduced himself in an appearance on Marley Marl's radio show In Control. Some of Kool Keith's monikers have only existed on album artwork, such as \"Mr. Green\" and \"Elvin Presley.\"",
"title": "Alter egos"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In reference to his relationship between himself and his various stage personalities, Keith has said, \"I don't even feel like I'm a human being anymore\".",
"title": "Alter egos"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Solo albums",
"title": "Discography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Collaborative albums",
"title": "Discography"
}
] |
Keith Matthew Thornton, better known by his stage name Kool Keith, is an American rapper and record producer from The Bronx, New York City, known for his surreal, abstract and often profane or incomprehensible lyrics. Kool Keith has recorded prolifically both as a solo artist and in group collaborations. Kool Keith is generally considered to be one of hip-hop's most eccentric and unusual personalities. Kool Keith was a cofounding member of Ultramagnetic MCs, whose debut Critical Beatdown was released in 1988. After two more albums with the group, Funk Your Head Up and The Four Horsemen, Kool Keith released his critically acclaimed solo debut album, Dr. Octagonecologyst under the name Dr. Octagon in 1996. He subsequently released a series of further independently released hip hop albums, including Sex Style, First Come, First Served, and most recently Keith. After releasing only one album on a major label, Black Elvis/Lost in Space, Kool Keith subsequently returned to independently releasing music, producing further efforts as a solo artist and in collaboration with groups such as Analog Brothers, Masters of Illusion, Thee Undatakerz and Project Polaroid. Kool Keith has also made guest appearances in collaboration with Peeping Tom and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. He was also featured on the short track DDT on Jurassic 5's album Power in Numbers.
The Prodigy's hit "Smack My Bitch Up" was based on a sample of Kool Keith's voice saying "Change my pitch up. Smack my bitch up" on Give The Drummer Some by Ultramagnetic MC's.
|
2001-05-13T20:40:39Z
|
2023-12-12T01:57:28Z
|
[
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:AllMusic",
"Template:Discogs artist",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Kool Keith",
"Template:Use mdy dates",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Cc",
"Template:Infobox musical artist",
"Template:Citation needed",
"Template:See also",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Cite magazine"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kool_Keith
|
16,707 |
Kurt Cobain
|
Kurt Donald Cobain (February 20, 1967 – c. April 5, 1994) was an American musician, singer, and songwriter. He became known as the co-founder, lead vocalist, guitarist, and primary songwriter of the rock band Nirvana. Through his angst-fueled songwriting and anti-establishment persona, his compositions widened the thematic conventions of mainstream rock music. He was heralded as a spokesman of Generation X and is widely recognized as one of the most influential alternative rock musicians.
Cobain formed Nirvana with Krist Novoselic and Aaron Burckhard in 1987, establishing themselves as part of the Seattle music scene that later became known as grunge. Burckhard was replaced by Chad Channing before the band released their debut album Bleach (1989) on Sub Pop, after which Channing was in turn replaced by Dave Grohl. With this finalized line-up, the band signed with DGC and found commercial success with the single "Smells Like Teen Spirit" from their critically acclaimed second album Nevermind (1991). Cobain wrote many other hit Nirvana songs such as "About a Girl", "All Apologies", "Aneurysm", "Come as You Are", "Heart-Shaped Box", "In Bloom", "Lithium", "Something in the Way", and "You Know You're Right". Although he was hailed as the voice of Generation X following Nirvana's sudden success, he resented this and believed his message and artistic vision had been misinterpreted by the public.
During his final years, Cobain struggled with a heroin addiction and chronic depression. He also struggled with the personal and professional pressures of fame, and was often in the spotlight for his tumultuous marriage to fellow musician Courtney Love, with whom he had a daughter named Frances. In March 1994, he overdosed on a combination of champagne and Rohypnol, subsequently undergoing an intervention and detox program. On April 8, 1994, he was found dead in the garage of his Seattle home at the age of 27, with police concluding that he had died around three days earlier from a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head.
Cobain was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, alongside Nirvana bandmates Novoselic and Grohl, in their first year of eligibility in 2014. Rolling Stone included him on its lists of the 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time, 100 Greatest Guitarists, and 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. He was ranked 7th by MTV in the "22 Greatest Voices in Music", and was placed 20th by Hit Parader on their 2006 list of the "100 Greatest Metal Singers of All Time".
Kurt Donald Cobain was born at Grays Harbor Hospital in Aberdeen, Washington, on February 20, 1967, the son of waitress Wendy Elizabeth (née Fradenburg; born 1948) and car mechanic Donald Leland Cobain (born 1946). His parents married in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, on July 31, 1965. Cobain had Dutch, English, French, German, Irish, and Scottish ancestry. The Cobain surname comes from his Irish ancestors, who emigrated from the Northern Irish town of Carrickmore in 1875. Researchers found that they were shoemakers, originally surnamed Cobane, and came from the Inishatieve area of Carrickmore. They first settled in Canada, where they lived in Cornwall, Ontario, before moving to Washington. Cobain mistakenly believed that his Irish ancestors came from County Cork. His younger sister, Kimberly, was born on April 24, 1970.
Cobain's family had a musical background. His maternal uncle, Chuck Fradenburg, played in a band called the Beachcombers; his aunt, Mari Earle, played guitar and performed in bands throughout Grays Harbor County; and his great-uncle, Delbert, had a career as an Irish tenor, making an appearance in the 1930 film King of Jazz. Kurt was described as a happy and excitable child, who also exhibited sensitivity and care. His talent as an artist was evident from an early age, as he would draw his favorite characters from films and cartoons, such as the Creature from the Black Lagoon and Donald Duck, in his bedroom. He was encouraged by his grandmother, Iris Cobain, a professional artist. Cobain developed an interest in music at a young age. According to his aunt Mari, he began singing at the age of two. At age four, he started playing the piano and singing, writing a song about a trip to a park. He listened to artists including Electric Light Orchestra (ELO), and, from a young age, would sing songs including Arlo Guthrie's "Motorcycle Song", the Beatles' "Hey Jude", Terry Jacks' "Seasons in the Sun", and the theme song to the Monkees television show.
When Cobain was nine years old, his parents divorced. He later said the divorce had a profound effect on his life, and his mother noted that his personality changed dramatically; Cobain became defiant and withdrawn. In a 1993 interview, he said he felt "ashamed" of his parents as a child and had desperately wanted to have a "typical family ... I wanted that security, so I resented my parents for quite a few years because of that." His parents found new partners after the divorce. Although his father had promised not to remarry, he married Jenny Westeby, to Kurt's dismay. Cobain, his father, Westeby, and her two children, Mindy and James, moved into a new household. Cobain liked Westeby at first, as she gave him the maternal attention he desired. In January 1979, Westeby gave birth to a boy, Chad Cobain. This new family, which Cobain insisted was not his real one, was in stark contrast to the attention Cobain was used to receiving as an only boy, and he became resentful of his stepmother. Cobain's mother dated a man who was abusive; Cobain witnessed the domestic violence inflicted upon her, with one incident resulting in her being hospitalized with a broken arm. Wendy refused to press charges, remaining committed to the relationship.
Cobain behaved insolently toward adults during this period and began bullying another boy at school. His father and Westeby took him to a therapist who concluded that he would benefit from a single-family environment. Both sides of the family unsuccessfully attempted to reunite his parents. On June 28, 1979, Cobain's mother granted full custody to his father. Cobain's teenage rebellion quickly became overwhelming for his father who placed him in the care of family and friends. While living with the born-again Christian family of his friend Jesse Reed, Cobain became a devout Christian and regularly attended church services. He later renounced Christianity, engaging in what was described as "anti-God" rants. The song "Lithium" is about his experience while living with the Reed family. Religion remained an important part of his personal life and beliefs. Although uninterested in sports, Cobain was enrolled in a junior high school wrestling team at the insistence of his father. He was a skilled wrestler but despised the experience. Because of the ridicule he endured from his teammates and coach, he allowed himself to be pinned in an attempt to sadden his father. Later, his father enlisted him in a Little League Baseball team, where Cobain would intentionally strike out to avoid playing. Cobain befriended a gay student at school and was bullied by peers who concluded that he was gay. In an interview, he said that he liked being associated with a gay identity because he did not like people, and when they thought he was gay they left him alone. He said, "I started being really proud of the fact that I was gay even though I wasn't." His friend tried to kiss him, and Cobain backed away, explaining to his friend that he was not gay, but remained friends with him. According to Cobain, he used to spray paint "God Is Gay" on pickup trucks in the Aberdeen area. Police records show that Cobain was arrested for spray painting the phrase "ain't got no how watchamacallit" on vehicles.
Cobain often drew during classes. When given a caricature assignment for an art course, Cobain drew Michael Jackson but was told by the teacher that the image was inappropriate for a school hallway. He then drew an image of then-President Ronald Reagan that was seen as "unflattering". Through art and electronics classes, Cobain met Roger "Buzz" Osborne, singer and guitarist of the Melvins, who became his friend and introduced him to punk rock and hardcore music. As attested to by several of Cobain's classmates and family members, the first concert he attended was Sammy Hagar and Quarterflash, held at the Seattle Center Coliseum in 1983. Cobain, however, claimed that the first live show he attended was the Melvins, when they played a free concert outside the Thriftway supermarket where Osborne worked. Cobain wrote in his journals of this experience, as well as in interviews, singling out the impact it had on him. As a teenager living in Montesano, Washington, Cobain eventually found escape through the thriving Pacific Northwest punk scene, going to punk rock shows in Seattle.
During his second year in high school, Cobain began living with his mother in Aberdeen. Two weeks prior to graduation, he dropped out of Aberdeen High School upon realizing that he did not have enough credits to graduate. His mother gave him an ultimatum: find employment or leave. After one week, Cobain found his clothes and other belongings packed away in boxes. Feeling banished, Cobain stayed with friends, occasionally sneaking back into his mother's basement. Cobain also claimed that, during periods of homelessness, he lived under a bridge over the Wishkah River, an experience that inspired the song "Something in the Way". His future bandmate Krist Novoselic later said, "He hung out there, but you couldn't live on those muddy banks, with the tides coming up and down. That was his own revisionism." In late 1986, Cobain moved into an apartment, paying his rent by working at the Polynesian Resort, a themed resort on the Pacific coast at Ocean Shores, Washington approximately 20 miles (32 km) west of Aberdeen. During this period, he traveled frequently to Olympia, Washington, to go to rock concerts. During his visits to Olympia, Cobain formed a relationship with Tracy Marander. Their relationship was close but strained by financial problems and Cobain's absence when touring. Marander supported the couple by working at the cafeteria of the Boeing plant in Auburn, Washington, often stealing food. Cobain spent most of his time sleeping into the late evening, watching television, and concentrating on art projects.
Marander's insistence that he get a job caused arguments that influenced Cobain to write the song "About a Girl", which appeared on the Nirvana album Bleach. Marander is credited with having taken the cover photo for the album, as well as the front and back cover photos of their Blew single. She did not become aware that Cobain wrote "About a Girl" about her until years after his death. Soon after his separation from Marander, Cobain began dating Tobi Vail, an influential punk zinester of the riot grrrl band Bikini Kill who embraced the DIY ethos. After meeting Vail, Cobain vomited, overwhelmed with anxiety caused by his infatuation with her. This event inspired the lyric "love you so much it makes me sick" in the song "Aneurysm". While Cobain regarded Vail as his female counterpart, his relationship with her waned; he desired the maternal comfort of a traditional relationship, which Vail regarded as sexist within a countercultural punk rock community. Vail's lovers were described by her friend Alice Wheeler as "fashion accessories". Cobain wrote many of his songs about Vail.
On his 14th birthday on February 20, 1981, Cobain's uncle offered him either a bike or a used guitar; Kurt chose the guitar. Soon, he was trying to play Led Zeppelin's song "Stairway to Heaven". He also learned how to play "Louie Louie", Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust", and the Cars' "My Best Friend's Girl", before he began working on his own songs. Cobain played left-handed, despite being forced to write right-handed.
In early 1985, Cobain formed Fecal Matter after he had dropped out of Aberdeen High School. One of "several joke bands" that arose from the circle of friends associated with the Melvins, it initially featured Cobain singing and playing guitar, Melvins drummer Dale Crover playing bass, and Greg Hokanson playing drums. They spent several months rehearsing original material and covers, including songs by the Ramones, Led Zeppelin, and Jimi Hendrix.
During high school, Cobain rarely found anyone with whom he could play music. While hanging out at the Melvins' practice space, he met Krist Novoselic, a fellow devotee of punk rock. Novoselic's mother owned a hair salon, and the pair occasionally practiced in the upstairs room of the salon. A few years later, Cobain tried to convince Novoselic to form a band with him by lending him a copy of a home demo recorded by Fecal Matter. After months of asking, Novoselic agreed to join Cobain, forming the beginnings of Nirvana. Religion appeared to remain a significant muse to Cobain during this time as he often used Christian imagery in his work and developed an interest in Jainism and Buddhist philosophy.
Cobain became disenchanted after early touring because of the band's inability to draw substantial crowds and the difficulty in supporting themselves financially. During their first few years playing together, Novoselic and Cobain were hosts to a succession of drummers. Eventually, the band settled on Chad Channing with whom Nirvana recorded the album Bleach, released on Sub Pop Records in 1989. Cobain, however, became dissatisfied with Channing's style and subsequently fired him. He and Novoselic eventually hired Dave Grohl to replace Channing. Grohl helped the band record their 1991 major-label debut, Nevermind. With Nevermind's lead single, "Smells Like Teen Spirit", Nirvana quickly entered the mainstream, popularizing a subgenre of alternative rock called "grunge". Since their debut, Nirvana has sold over 28 million albums in the United States alone and over 75 million worldwide. The success of Nevermind provided numerous Seattle bands, such as Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden, access to wider audiences. As a result, alternative rock became a dominant genre on radio and music television in the U.S. during the first half of the 1990s. Nirvana was considered the "flagship band of Generation X", and Cobain found himself reluctantly anointed by the media as the generation's "spokesman". He resented this characterization since he believed his artistic message had been misinterpreted by the public.
When you're in the public eye, you have no choice but to be raped over and over again – they'll take every ounce of blood out of you until you're exhausted. ... I'm looking forward to the future. It will only be another year and then everyone will forget about it.
—Kurt Cobain on the overwhelming media attention after Nevermind, 1992
Cobain struggled to reconcile the massive success of Nirvana with his underground roots and vision. He also felt persecuted by the media, comparing himself to Frances Farmer whom he named a song after. He began to harbor resentment against people who claimed to be fans of the band yet refused to acknowledge, or misinterpreted, the band's social and political views. A vocal opponent of sexism, racism, sexual assault, and homophobia, he was publicly proud that Nirvana had played at a gay rights benefit concert that was held to oppose Oregon's 1992 Ballot Measure 9, which would have directed Oregon schools to teach that homosexuality was "abnormal, wrong, unnatural and perverse". Cobain was a vocal supporter of the pro-choice movement, and Nirvana was involved in L7's Rock for Choice campaign. He received death threats from a small number of anti-abortion activists for participating in the pro-choice campaign, with one activist threatening to shoot Cobain as soon as he stepped on a stage.
In 1989, members of Nirvana and fellow American alternative rock band Screaming Trees formed a side project known as the Jury. The band featured Cobain on vocals and guitar, Mark Lanegan on vocals, Krist Novoselic on bass, and Mark Pickerel on drums. Over two days of recording sessions, on August 20 and 28, 1989, the band recorded four songs also performed by Lead Belly; "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?", an instrumental version of "Grey Goose", "Ain't It a Shame", and "They Hung Him on a Cross", the latter of which featured Cobain performing solo. Cobain was inspired to record the songs after receiving a copy of Lead Belly's Last Sessions from friend Slim Moon; after hearing it, he "felt a connection to Leadbelly's almost physical expressions of longing and desire."
In 1990, Cobain and his girlfriend, Tobi Vail of the riot grrrl band Bikini Kill, collaborated on a musical project called Bathtub is Real in which they both sang and played guitar and drums. They recorded their songs on a four-track tape machine that belonged to Vail's father. In Everett True's 2009 book Nirvana: The Biography, Vail is quoted as saying that Cobain "would play the songs he was writing, I would play the songs I was writing and we'd record them on my dad's four-track. Sometimes I'd sing on the songs he was writing and play drums on them ... He was really into the fact that I was creative and into music. I don't think he'd ever played music with a girl before. He was super-inspiring and fun to play with." The musician Slim Moon described their sound as "like the minimal quiet pop songs that Olympia is known for. Both of them sang; it was really good."
In 1992, Cobain contacted William S. Burroughs about a possible collaboration. Burroughs responded by sending him a recording of "The Junky's Christmas" (which he recorded in his studio in Lawrence, Kansas). Two months later at a studio in Seattle, Cobain added guitar backing based on "Silent Night" and "To Anacreon in Heaven". The two would meet shortly later in Lawrence, Kansas and produce "The 'Priest' They Called Him", a spoken word version of "The Junky's Christmas".
The Beatles were an early and lasting influence on Cobain; his aunt Mari remembers him singing "Hey Jude" at the age of two. "My aunts would give me Beatles records", Cobain told Jon Savage in 1993, "so for the most part [I listened to] the Beatles [as a child], and if I was lucky, I'd be able to buy a single." Cobain expressed a particular fondness for John Lennon, whom he called his "idol" in his posthumously released journals, and he said that he wrote the song "About a Girl", from Nirvana's 1989 debut album Bleach, after spending three hours listening to Meet the Beatles!.
Cobain was also a fan of 1970s hard rock and heavy metal bands, including Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Aerosmith, Queen, and Kiss. Nirvana occasionally played cover songs by these bands, including Led Zeppelin's "Heartbreaker", "Moby Dick" and "Immigrant Song", Black Sabbath's "Hand of Doom", and Kiss' "Do You Love Me?" and wrote the Incesticide song "Aero Zeppelin" as a tribute to Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith. Recollecting touring with his band, Cobain stated, "I used to take a nap in the van and listen to Queen. Over and over again and drain the battery on the van. We'd be stuck with a dead battery because I'd listened to Queen too much".
He was introduced to punk rock and hardcore music by his Aberdeen classmate Buzz Osborne, lead singer and guitarist of the Melvins, who taught Cobain about punk by loaning him records and old copies of the Detroit-based magazine Creem. Punk rock proved to be a profound influence on a teenaged Cobain's attitude and artistic style. His first punk rock album was Sandinista! by The Clash, but he became a bigger fan of fellow 1970s British punk band the Sex Pistols, describing them as "one million times more important than the Clash" in his journals. He quickly discovered contemporary American hardcore bands like Black Flag, Bad Brains, Millions of Dead Cops and Flipper. The Melvins themselves were a major early musical influence on Cobain; his admiration for them led him to drive their van on tour and help them to carry their equipment. He and Novoselic watched hundreds of Melvins rehearsals and "learned almost everything from them", as stated by Cobain. The Melvins' heavy, grungey sound was mimicked by Nirvana on many songs from Bleach; in an early interview given by Nirvana, Cobain stated that their biggest fear was to be perceived as a "Melvins rip-off". After their commercial success, the members of Nirvana would constantly talk about the Melvins' importance to them in the press.
Cobain was also a fan of protopunk acts like the Stooges, whose 1973 album Raw Power he listed as his favorite of all time in his journals, and The Velvet Underground, whose 1968 song "Here She Comes Now" the band covered both live and in the studio.
The 1980s American alternative rock band Pixies were instrumental in helping an adult Cobain develop his own songwriting style. In a 1992 interview with Melody Maker, Cobain said that hearing their 1988 debut album, Surfer Rosa, "convinced him to abandon his more Black Flag-influenced songwriting in favor of the Iggy Pop/Aerosmith–type songwriting that appeared on Nevermind. In a 1993 interview with Rolling Stone, he said that "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was his attempt at "trying to rip off the Pixies. I have to admit it. When I heard the Pixies for the first time, I connected with that band so heavily that I should have been in that band—or at least a Pixies cover band. We used their sense of dynamics, being soft and quiet and then loud and hard".
Cobain's appreciation of early alternative rock bands also extended to Sonic Youth and R.E.M., both of which the members of Nirvana befriended and looked up to for advice. It was under recommendation from Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon that Nirvana signed to DGC in 1990, and both bands did a two-week tour of Europe in the summer of 1991, as documented in the 1992 documentary, 1991: The Year Punk Broke. In 1993, Cobain said of R.E.M.: "If I could write just a couple of songs as good as what they've written... I don't know how that band does what they do. God, they're the greatest. They've dealt with their success like saints, and they keep delivering great music".
After attaining mainstream success, Cobain became a devoted champion of lesser known indie bands, covering songs by The Vaselines, Meat Puppets, Wipers and Fang onstage and/or in the studio, wearing Daniel Johnston T-shirts during photo shoots, having the K Records logo tattooed on his forearm, and enlisting bands like Butthole Surfers, Shonen Knife, Chokebore and Half Japanese along for the In Utero tour in late 1993 and early 1994. Cobain even invited his favorite musicians to perform with him: ex-Germs guitarist Pat Smear joined the band in 1993, and the Meat Puppets appeared onstage during Nirvana's 1993 MTV Unplugged appearance to perform three songs from their second album, Meat Puppets II.
Nirvana's Unplugged set includes renditions of "The Man Who Sold the World", by David Bowie, and the American folk song, "Where Did You Sleep Last Night", as adapted by Lead Belly. Cobain introduced the latter by calling Lead Belly his favorite performer, and in a 1993 interview revealed he had been introduced to him from reading the American author William S. Burroughs, saying: "I remember [Burroughs] saying in an interview, 'These new rock'n'roll kids should just throw away their guitars and listen to something with real soul, like Leadbelly.' I'd never heard about Leadbelly before so I bought a couple of records, and now he turns out to be my absolute favorite of all time in music. I absolutely love it more than any rock'n'roll I ever heard." The album MTV Unplugged in New York was released posthumously in 1994. It has drawn comparisons to R.E.M.'s 1992 release, Automatic for the People. In 1993, Cobain had predicted that the next Nirvana album would be "pretty ethereal, acoustic, like R.E.M.'s last album".
"Yeah, he talked a lot about what direction he was heading in", Cobain's friend, R.E.M.'s lead singer Michael Stipe, told Newsweek in 1994. "I mean, I know what the next Nirvana recording was going to sound like. It was going to be very quiet and acoustic, with lots of stringed instruments. It was going to be an amazing fucking record, and I'm a little bit angry at him for killing himself. He and I were going to record a trial run of the album, a demo tape. It was all set up. He had a plane ticket. He had a car picking him up. And at the last minute he called and said, 'I can't come.'" Stipe was chosen as the godfather of Cobain's and Courtney Love's daughter, Frances Bean Cobain.
According to Grohl, Cobain believed that music comes first and lyrics second; he focused primarily on the melodies. He complained when fans and rock journalists attempted to decipher his singing and extract meaning from his lyrics, writing: "Why in the hell do journalists insist on coming up with a second-rate Freudian evaluation of my lyrics, when 90 percent of the time they've transcribed them incorrectly?" Though Cobain insisted on the subjectivity and unimportance of his lyrics, he labored and procrastinated in writing them, often changing the content and order of lyrics during performances. Cobain would describe his own lyrics as "a big pile of contradictions. They're split down the middle between very sincere opinions that I have and sarcastic opinions and feelings that I have and sarcastic and hopeful, humorous rebuttals toward cliché bohemian ideals that have been exhausted for years."
Cobain originally wanted Nevermind to be divided into two sides: a "Boy" side, for the songs written about the experiences of his early life and childhood, and a "Girl" side, for the songs written about his dysfunctional relationship with Vail. Charles R. Cross wrote, "In the four months following their break-up, Kurt would write a half dozen of his most memorable songs, all of them about Tobi Vail." Though Cobain wrote "Lithium" before meeting Vail, he wrote the lyrics to reference her. Cobain said in an interview with Musician that he wrote about "some of my very personal experiences, like breaking up with girlfriends and having bad relationships, feeling that death void that the person in the song is feeling. Very lonely, sick." While Cobain regarded In Utero as "for the most part very impersonal", its lyrics deal with his parents' divorce, his newfound fame and the public image and perception of himself and Courtney Love on "Serve the Servants", with his enamored relationship with Love conveyed through lyrical themes of pregnancy and the female anatomy on "Heart-Shaped Box."
Cobain was affected enough to write "Polly" from Nevermind after reading a newspaper story of an incident in 1987, when a 14-year-old girl was kidnapped after attending a punk rock show then raped and tortured with a blowtorch. She escaped after gaining the trust of her captor Gerald Friend through flirting with him. After seeing Nirvana perform, Bob Dylan cited "Polly" as the best of Nirvana's songs, and said of Cobain, "the kid has heart". Patrick Süskind's novel Perfume: The Story of a Murderer inspired Cobain to write the song "Scentless Apprentice" from In Utero. The book is a historical horror novel about a perfumer's apprentice born with no body odor of his own but with a highly developed sense of smell, and who attempts to create the "ultimate perfume" by killing virginal women and taking their scent.
Cobain immersed himself in artistic projects throughout his life, as much so as he did in songwriting. The sentiments of his artwork followed the same subjects of his lyrics, often expressed through a dark and macabre sense of humor. Noted were his fascination with physiology, his own rare medical conditions, and the human anatomy. According to Novoselic, "Kurt said that he never liked literal things. He liked cryptic things. He would cut out pictures of meat from grocery-store fliers, then paste these orchids on them ... And all this stuff on [In Utero] about the body – there was something about anatomy. He really liked that. You look at his art – there are these people, and they're all weird, like mutants. And dolls – creepy dolls."
Cobain contributed backing guitar for a spoken word recording of beat poet William S. Burroughs' entitled The "Priest" They Called Him. Cobain regarded Burroughs as a hero. During Nirvana's European tour Cobain kept a copy of Burroughs' Naked Lunch, purchased from a London bookstall. Cobain met with Burroughs at his home in Lawrence, Kansas in October 1993. Burroughs expressed no surprise at Cobain's death: "It wasn't an act of will for Kurt to kill himself. As far as I was concerned, he was dead already."
In a Guitar World retrospective, Cobain's guitar tone was deemed "one of the most iconic" in the history of the electric guitar, while noting that rather than relying on expensive or vintage items, Cobain used "an eccentric cache of budget models, low-end imports and pawn shop prizes." Cobain stated in a 1992 interview, "Junk is always best," but denied this was a punk statement and claimed it was a necessity, as he had trouble finding high quality lefthanded guitars.
Cobain's first guitar was a used electric guitar from Sears that he received on his 14th birthday. He took guitar lessons long enough to learn AC/DC's "Back in Black" and began playing with local kids. Cobain found the guitar smashed after leaving it in a locker, but he was able to purchase new equipment, including a Peavey amp, by recovering and selling his stepfather's gun collection, which his mother had dumped in a river after discovering his infidelity. Upon forming what would be Nirvana, Cobain was playing a Fender Champ amplifier and a righthanded Univox Hi-Flier guitar he flipped over and strung for lefthanded playing.
For the recording of Bleach, Cobain needed to borrow a Fender Twin Reverb due to his main amplifier, a solid-state Randall, being repaired at the time, but as the Twin Reverb's speakers were blown, he was forced to pair it with an external cabinet featuring two 12" speakers. He used a Boss DS-1 for distortion, while playing Hi-Flier guitars, which cost him $100 each. Nirvana embarked on their first American tour in 1989, at the start of which Cobain played an Epiphone ET270; however, he destroyed the guitar onstage during a show, a subsequent habit that forced label Sub Pop to have to call local pawn shops looking for replacement guitars. Cobain's first acoustic guitar, a Stella 12-string, cost him $31.21. Cobain strung it with six (or sometimes five) strings, and while the guitar's tuners had to be held together with duct tape, it sounded good enough that the guitar was later used to record the Nevermind tracks "Polly" and "Something in the Way."
Despite receiving a $287,000 advance upon signing with Geffen Records, Cobain retained a preference for inexpensive gear. He became a fan of Japanese-made Fender guitars ahead of recording Nevermind, due to their slim necks and wide availability in lefthanded orientation. These included several Stratocasters fitted with humbucker pickups in the bridge positions, as well as a 1965 Jaguar with DiMarzio pickups and a 1969 Competition Mustang, the latter of which Cobain cited as his favorite, despite noting, "They're cheap and totally inefficient, and they sound like crap and are very small." For the album, Cobain used a rackmount system featuring a Mesa/Boogie Studio preamp, a Crown power amp, and Marshall cabinets. He also used a Vox AC30 and a Fender Bassman. Producer Butch Vig preferred to avoid pedals, but allowed Cobain to use his Boss DS-1, which Cobain considered a key part of his sound, as well as an Electro-Harmonix Big Muff fuzz pedal and a Small Clone chorus, which can be heard on songs like "Smells Like Teen Spirit," "Come As You Are," and "Aneurysm."
Cobain used his '69 Mustang, '65 Jaguar, a custom Jaguar/Mustang, and a Hi-Flier for the In Utero recording sessions. To tour behind the album, Cobain placed an order for 10 Mustangs split between Fiesta Red and Sonic Blue. As the Fender Custom Shop was new, the guitars were to be shipped out two at a time over a period of months. By the time of his death, Cobain had received six of the guitars. The remaining four, waiting to be shipped, were instead sold as regular stock at Japanese music stores without informing buyers the guitars had been made for Cobain.
For Nirvana's Unplugged performance, Cobain played a righthanded 1959 Martin D-18E acoustic guitar modified for lefthanded playing. The guitar became the most expensive ever sold when it fetched over $6 million at auction in 2020. Cobain's 1969 Competition Mustang, which he also played in the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" music video, sold at a 2022 auction to Jim Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts, for $4.5 million, with an original estimate of $600,000.
There are differing accounts of exactly when and how Kurt Cobain first met Courtney Love. In his 1993 authorized biography of Nirvana Michael Azerrad cites a January 21, 1989, Dharma Bums gig in Portland where Nirvana played as support, while the Charles R. Cross 2001 Cobain biography has Love and Cobain meeting at the same Satyricon nightclub venue in Portland but a different Nirvana show, January 12, 1990, when both still led ardent underground rock bands. Love made advances soon after they met, but Cobain was evasive. Early in their interactions, Cobain broke off dates and ignored Love's advances because he was unsure if he wanted a relationship. Cobain noted, "I was determined to be a bachelor for a few months [...] But I knew that I liked Courtney so much right away that it was a really hard struggle to stay away from her for so many months." Everett True, who was an associate of both Cobain and Love, disputes those versions of events in his 2006 book, claiming that he himself introduced the couple on May 17, 1991.
Cobain was already aware of Love through her role in the 1987 film Straight to Hell. According to True, the pair were formally introduced at an L7 and Butthole Surfers concert in Los Angeles in May 1991. In the weeks that followed, after learning from Grohl that Cobain shared mutual interests with her, Love began pursuing Cobain. In late 1991, the two were often together and bonded through drug use.
On February 24, 1992, a few days after the conclusion of Nirvana's "Pacific Rim" tour, Cobain and Love were married on Waikiki Beach in Hawaii. Love wore a satin and lace dress once owned by Frances Farmer, and Cobain donned a Guatemalan purse and wore green pajamas, because he had been "too lazy to put on a tux." Eight people were in attendance at the ceremony, including Grohl. Love said she was warned by the Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon that marrying Cobain would "destroy her life"; Love responded: "'Whatever! I love him, and I want to be with him!' ... It wasn't his fault. He wasn't trying to do that."
The couple's daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, was born August 18, 1992. A sonogram was included in the artwork for Nirvana's single, "Lithium." In a 1992 Vanity Fair article, Love admitted to a drug binge with Cobain in the early weeks of her pregnancy. At the time, she claimed that Vanity Fair had misquoted her. Love later admitted to using heroin before knowing she was pregnant. The couple were asked by the press if Frances was addicted to drugs at birth. The Los Angeles County Department of Children's Services visited the Cobains days after Love gave birth and later took them to court, stating that their drug usage made them unfit parents.
In October 1992, when asked, "Well, are you gay?" by Monk Magazine, Cobain replied, "If I wasn't attracted to Courtney, I'd be a bisexual." In another interview, he described identifying with the gay community in The Advocate, stating, "I'm definitely gay in spirit and I probably could be bisexual" and "if I wouldn't have found Courtney, I probably would have carried on with a bisexual life-style", but also that he was "more sexually attracted to women". He described himself as being "feminine" in childhood, and often wore dresses and other stereotypically feminine clothing. Some of his song lyrics, as well as phrases he would use to vandalize vehicles and a bank, included "God is gay", "Jesus is gay", "HOMOSEXUAL SEX RULES", and "Everyone is gay". One of his personal journals states, "I am not gay, although I wish I were, just to piss off homophobes."
Cobain advocated for LGBTQ+ rights, including traveling to Oregon to perform at a benefit opposing the 1992 Oregon Ballot Measure 9, and supported local bands with LGBTQ+ members. He reported having felt "different" from the age of seven, and was a frequent target of homophobic bullying in his school due to his having a "gay friend". Cobain was interviewed by two gay magazines, Out and The Advocate; the 1993 interview with The Advocate being described as "the only [interview] the band's lead singer says he plans to do for Incesticide", an album whose liner notes included a statement decrying homophobia, racism and misogyny:
If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different color, or women, please do this one favor for us—leave us the fuck alone! Don't come to our shows and don't buy our records.
Throughout most of his life, Cobain had chronic bronchitis and intense physical pain due to an undiagnosed chronic stomach condition. According to The Telegraph, Cobain had depression. His cousin brought attention to the family history of suicide, mental illness and alcoholism, noting that two of her uncles had died by suicide with guns.
He used drugs heavily; his first drug experience was with cannabis in 1980, at age 13. He regularly used the drug during adulthood. Cobain also had a period of consuming "notable" amounts of LSD, as observed by Marander, and was prone to alcoholism and solvent abuse. Novoselic said he was "really into getting fucked up: drugs, acid, any kind of drug". Cobain first took heroin in 1986, administered to him by a dealer in Tacoma, Washington, who had previously supplied him with oxycodone and aspirin. Cobain used heroin sporadically for several years; by the end of 1990, his use had developed into addiction. Cobain claimed that he was "determined to get a habit" as a way to self-medicate his stomach condition. "It started with three days in a row of doing heroin and I don't have a stomach pain. That was such a relief," he said. However, his longtime friend Buzz Osborne disputes this, saying that his stomach pain was more likely caused by his heroin use: "He made it up for sympathy and so he could use it as an excuse to stay loaded. Of course he was vomiting—that's what people on heroin do, they vomit. It's called 'vomiting with a smile on your face'."
Cobain's heroin use began to affect Nirvana's Nevermind tour. During a 1992 photoshoot with Michael Lavine, he fell asleep several times, having used heroin beforehand. Cobain told biographer Michael Azerrad: "They're not going to be able to tell me to stop. So I really didn't care. Obviously to them it was like practicing witchcraft or something. They didn't know anything about it so they thought that any second, I was going to die."
The morning after the band's performance on Saturday Night Live in 1992, Cobain experienced his first near-death overdose after injecting heroin; Love resuscitated him. Prior to a performance at the New Music Seminar in New York City on July 23, 1993, Cobain suffered another overdose. Rather than calling for an ambulance, Love injected Cobain with naloxone to resuscitate him. Cobain proceeded to perform with Nirvana, giving the public no indication that anything had happened.
Following a tour stop at Terminal Eins in Munich, Germany, on March 1, 1994, Cobain was diagnosed with bronchitis and severe laryngitis. He flew to Rome the next day for medical treatment, and was joined there by his wife, Courtney Love, on March 3. The next morning, Love awoke to find that Cobain had overdosed on a combination of champagne and Rohypnol. Cobain was rushed to the hospital and was unconscious for the rest of the day. After five days, Cobain was released and returned to Seattle. Love later said that the incident was Cobain's first suicide attempt.
On March 18, 1994, Love phoned the Seattle police informing them that Cobain was suicidal and had locked himself in a room with a gun. Police arrived and confiscated several guns and a bottle of pills from Cobain, who insisted that he was not suicidal and had locked himself in the room to hide from Love.
Love arranged an intervention regarding Cobain's drug use on March 25, 1994. The ten people involved included musician friends, record company executives, and one of Cobain's closest friends, Dylan Carlson. Cobain reacted with anger, insulting and heaping scorn on the participants, and locked himself in the upstairs bedroom. However, by the end of the day, Cobain agreed to undergo a detox program, and he entered a residential facility in Los Angeles for a few days on March 30, 1994.
The following night, Cobain left the facility and flew to Seattle. On the flight, he sat near Duff McKagan of Guns N' Roses. Despite Cobain's animosity towards Guns N' Roses, Cobain "seemed happy" to see McKagan. McKagan later said that he knew from "all of my instincts that something was wrong". Most of Cobain's friends and family were unaware of his whereabouts. On April 7, amid rumors of Nirvana breaking up, the band pulled out of the 1994 Lollapalooza festival.
On April 8, Cobain's body was discovered at his Lake Washington Boulevard home by an electrician, who had arrived to install a security system. A suicide note was found, addressed to Cobain's childhood imaginary friend Boddah, that stated that Cobain had not "felt the excitement of listening to as well as creating music, along with really writing ... for too many years now". Cobain's body had been there for days; the coroner's report estimated he died on April 5, 1994, at the age of 27.
A public vigil was held on April 10, at a park at Seattle Center, drawing approximately 7,000 mourners. Prerecorded messages by Novoselic and Love were played at the memorial. Love read portions of the suicide note to the crowd, crying and chastising Cobain. Near the end of the vigil, Love distributed some of Cobain's clothing to those who remained. Grohl said that the news of Cobain's death was "probably the worst thing that has happened to me in my life. I remember the day after that I woke up and I was heartbroken that he was gone. I just felt like, 'Okay, so I get to wake up today and have another day and he doesn't.'"
Billboard, reporting from Seattle on April 23, stated that within a few hours of Cobain's death being confirmed on April 8, the only remaining Nirvana titles at Park Ave Records on Queen Anne Avenue were two "Heart-Shaped Box" import CD singles. A marketing director at the three-store Cellophane Square chain said that "all three stores sold about a few hundred CDs, singles, and vinyl by the morning of April 9". A buyer at Tower Records on Mercer Street said: "It's a pathetic scene, everything is going out the door. If people were really fans, they would've had this stuff already." In the United Kingdom, sales of Nirvana releases rose dramatically immediately after Cobain's death.
Grohl believed that he knew Cobain would die at an early age, saying that "sometimes you just can't save someone from themselves", and "in some ways, you kind of prepare yourself emotionally for that to be a reality". Dave Reed, who for a short time had been Cobain's foster father, said that "he had the desperation, not the courage, to be himself. Once you do that, you can't go wrong, because you can't make any mistakes when people love you for being yourself. But for Kurt, it didn't matter that other people loved him; he simply didn't love himself enough."
A final ceremony was arranged by Cobain's mother on May 31, 1999, and was attended by Love and Tracy Marander. As a Buddhist monk chanted, daughter Frances Bean scattered Cobain's ashes into McLane Creek in Olympia, the city where he "had found his true artistic muse". In 2006, Love said she retained Cobain's ashes, kept in a bank vault in Los Angeles because "no cemetery in Seattle will take them".
Cobain's death became a topic of public fascination and debate. His artistic endeavors and struggles with addiction, illness and depression, as well as the circumstances of his death, have become a frequent topic of controversy. According to a spokesperson for the Seattle Police Department, the department receives at least one weekly request to reopen the investigation, resulting in the maintenance of the basic incident report on file.
In March 2014, the Seattle police developed four rolls of film that had been left in an evidence vault; no reason was provided for why the rolls were not developed earlier. According to the Seattle police, the 35mm film photographs show the scene of Cobain's dead body more clearly than previous Polaroid images taken by the police. Detective Mike Ciesynski, a cold case investigator, was instructed to look at the film because "it is 20 years later and it's a high media case". Ciesynski stated that Cobain's death remains a suicide and that the images would not have been released publicly. The photos in question were later released, one by one, weeks before the 20th anniversary of Cobain's death. One photo shows Cobain's arm, still wearing the hospital bracelet from the drug rehab facility he had left just a few days prior to returning to Seattle. Another photo shows Cobain's foot resting next to a bag of shotgun shells, one of which was used in his death.
Cobain is remembered as one of the most influential rock musicians in the history of alternative music. His angst-fueled songwriting and anti-establishment persona led him to be referenced as the spokesman of Generation X. In addition, Cobain's songs widened the themes of mainstream rock music of the 1980s to discussion of personal reflection and social issues. On April 10, 2014, Nirvana was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Grohl, Novoselic and Love accepted the accolade at the ceremony, where Cobain was also remembered. Cobain is one of the best-known members of the 27 Club, a list of musicians who died when they were 27 years old.
Music & Media reporting on April 23, 1994, after Cobain had died, stated that Jorgen Larsen, the president of MCA Music Entertainment International was asked where he thought Cobain stood in terms of his contribution to contemporary music, and Larsen replied that "If anybody comes out of nowhere to sell 11 or 12 million albums you have to conclude that there's something there. He wasn't just a one-hit wonder."
According to music journalist Paul Lester, who worked at Melody Maker at the time, Cobain's suicide triggered an immediate reappraisal of his work. He wrote: "The general impression offered by In Utero was that Cobain was some kind of whiny, self-absorbed, grunge, misery guts who could make routinely powerful music but was hardly a suffering godhead. You could almost hear a collective sigh of relief after April 5, 1994, that Cobain could no longer further sully his reputation; that the myth-making machinery could finally be cranked into action."
Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins referred to Cobain as "the Michael Jordan of our generation", and said that Cobain opened the door for everyone in the 1990s alternative rock scene. Lars Ulrich of Metallica reflected on Cobain's influence stating that "with Kurt Cobain you felt you were connecting to the real person, not to a perception of who he was — you were not connecting to an image or a manufactured cut-out. You felt that between you and him there was nothing — it was heart-to-heart. There are very few people who have that ability." In 1996, the Church of Kurt Cobain was established in Portland, Oregon, but it was later claimed by some media outlets to have been a media hoax. Reflecting on Cobain's death over 10 years later, MSNBC's Eric Olsen wrote, "In the intervening decade, Cobain, a small, frail but handsome man in life, has become an abstract Generation X icon, viewed by many as the 'last real rock star' ... a messiah and martyr whose every utterance has been plundered and parsed."
In 2003, David Fricke of Rolling Stone ranked Cobain the 12th greatest guitarist of all time. He was later ranked the 73rd greatest guitarist and 45th greatest singer of all time by the same magazine, and by MTV as seventh in the "22 Greatest Voices in Music". In 2006, he was placed at number twenty by Hit Parader on their list of the "100 Greatest Metal Singers of All Time".
In 2005, a sign was put up in Aberdeen, Washington, that read "Welcome to Aberdeen – Come As You Are" as a tribute to Cobain. The sign was paid for and created by the Kurt Cobain Memorial Committee, a non-profit organization created in May 2004 to honor Cobain. The Committee planned to create a Kurt Cobain Memorial Park and a youth center in Aberdeen. Because Cobain was cremated and his remains scattered into the Wishkah River in Washington, many Nirvana fans visit Viretta Park, near Cobain's former Lake Washington home to pay tribute. On the anniversary of his death, fans gather in the park to celebrate his life and memory. Controversy erupted in July 2009 when a monument to Cobain in Aberdeen along the Wishkah River included the quote "... Drugs are bad for you. They will fuck you up." The city ultimately decided to sandblast the monument to replace the expletive with "f---", but fans immediately drew the letters back in. In December 2013, the small city of Hoquiam, where Cobain once lived, announced that April 10 would become the annual Nirvana Day. Similarly, in January 2014, Cobain's birthday, February 20, was declared annual "Kurt Cobain Day" in Aberdeen.
In June 2020, the 1959 Martin D-18E acoustic-electric guitar used by Cobain for Nirvana's MTV Unplugged performance sold at auction for $6,010,000 to Peter Freedman the chairman of Røde Microphones. It was the most expensive guitar and the most expensive piece of band memorabilia ever sold. In May 2022, Cobain's Lake Placid Blue Fender Mustang guitar sold at auction for $4.5 million to Jim Irsay, making it the second-most valuable guitar ever sold and the most valuable electric guitar.
In April 2021, around the 27th anniversary of Cobain's death, the American musician Kid Cudi performed his Man on the Moon III: The Chosen album cuts "Tequila Shots" and "Sad People" on Saturday Night Live. He wore a green sweater and later a dress in tribute to Cobain. In July 2021, the Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation confirmed that Cobain's childhood home in Aberdeen would be included on their Heritage Register, and that the owner would be making it into an exhibit for people to visit.
Prior to Cobain's death, Michael Azerrad published Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana, a book chronicling Nirvana's career from its beginning, as well as the personal histories of the band members. The book explored Cobain's drug addiction, as well as the countless controversies surrounding the band. After Cobain's death, Azerrad republished the book to include a final chapter discussing the last year of Cobain's life. The book involved the band members themselves, who provided interviews and personal information to Azerrad specifically for the book. In 2006, Azerrad's taped conversations with Cobain were transformed into a documentary about Cobain, titled Kurt Cobain: About a Son. Though this film does not feature any music by Nirvana, it has songs by the artists that inspired Cobain.
Journalists Ian Halperin and Max Wallace published their investigation of any possible conspiracy surrounding Cobain's death in their 1999 book Who Killed Kurt Cobain?. Halperin and Wallace argued that, while there was not enough evidence to prove a conspiracy, there was more than enough to demand that the case be reopened. The book included the journalists' discussions with Tom Grant, who had taped nearly every conversation that he had undertaken while he was in Love's employ. Over the next several years, Halperin and Wallace collaborated with Grant to write a second book, 2004's Love and Death: The Murder of Kurt Cobain.
In 2001, writer Charles R. Cross published a biography of Cobain, titled Heavier Than Heaven. For the book, Cross conducted over 400 interviews, and was given access by Courtney Love to Cobain's journals, lyrics, and diaries. Cross' biography was met with criticism, including allegations of Cross accepting secondhand (and incorrect) information as fact. Friend Everett True – who derided the book as being inaccurate, omissive, and highly biased – said Heavier than Heaven was "the Courtney-sanctioned version of history" or, alternatively, Cross's "Oh, I think I need to find the new Bruce Springsteen now" Kurt Cobain book. However, beyond the criticism, the book contained details about Cobain and Nirvana's career that would have otherwise been unnoted. In 2008, Cross published Cobain Unseen, a compilation of annotated photographs and creations and writings by Cobain throughout his life and career.
In 2002, a sampling of Cobain's writings was published as Journals. The book fills 280 pages with a simple black cover; the pages are arranged somewhat chronologically (although Cobain generally did not date them). The journal pages are reproduced in color, and there is a section added at the back with explanations and transcripts of some of the less legible pages. The writings begin in the late 1980s and were continued until his death. A paperback version of the book, released in 2003, included a handful of writings that were not offered in the initial release. In the journals, Cobain talked about the ups and downs of life on the road, made lists of what music he was enjoying, and often scribbled down lyric ideas for future reference. Upon its release, reviewers and fans were conflicted about the collection. Many were elated to be able to learn more about Cobain and read his inner thoughts in his own words, but were disturbed by what was viewed as an invasion of his privacy.
In 2009, ECW Press released a book titled Grunge Is Dead: The Oral History of Seattle Rock Music. Written by Greg Prato, the book explored the history of grunge in detail, touching upon Nirvana and Cobain's life and death via interviews with former bandmates, friends, and various grunge-era contemporaries. A picture of Cobain from the Bleach era is used for the book's front cover, and its title comes from a shirt that Cobain was once photographed wearing.
Cobain was also apparently 'the biggest influence' on the 2020 novel Dead Rock Stars, by the English author Guy Mankowski, particularly given Cobain's "message of feminism". Of the musician, Mankowski said, "I think he raised the consciousness."
In the 1998 documentary Kurt & Courtney, filmmaker Nick Broomfield investigated Tom Grant's claim that Cobain was actually murdered. He took a film crew to visit a number of people associated with Cobain and Love; Love's father, Cobain's aunt, and one of the couple's former nannies. Broomfield also spoke to Mentors bandleader Eldon "El Duce" Hoke, who claimed Love offered him $50,000 to kill Cobain. Although Hoke claimed he knew who killed Cobain, he failed to mention a name, and offered no evidence to support his assertion. Broomfield inadvertently captured Hoke's last interview, as he died days later, reportedly hit by a train. However, Broomfield felt he had not uncovered enough evidence to conclude the existence of a conspiracy. In a 1998 interview, Broomfield summed it up by saying:
I think that he committed suicide. I don't think there's a smoking gun. And I think there's only one way you can explain a lot of things around his death. Not that he was murdered, but that there was just a lack of caring for him. I just think that Courtney had moved on, and he was expendable.
Broomfield's documentary was noted by The New York Times to be a rambling, largely speculative and circumstantial work, relying on flimsy evidence as was his later documentary Biggie & Tupac.
Gus Van Sant loosely based his 2005 movie Last Days on the events in the final days of Cobain's life, starring Michael Pitt as the main character Blake who was based on Cobain. In January 2007, Love began to shop the biography Heavier Than Heaven to various movie studios in Hollywood to turn the book into an A-list feature film about Cobain and Nirvana.
A Brett Morgen film, entitled Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2015, followed by small-screen and cinema releases. Morgen said that documentary "will be this generation's The Wall".
Soaked in Bleach is a 2015 American docudrama directed by Benjamin Statler. The film details the events leading up to the death of Kurt Cobain, as seen through the perspective of Tom Grant, the private detective who was hired by Courtney Love to find Cobain, her husband, shortly before his death in 1994. It also explores the premise that Cobain's death was not a suicide. The film stars Tyler Bryan as Cobain and Daniel Roebuck as Grant, with Sarah Scott portraying Courtney Love and August Emerson as Dylan Carlson. Love's legal team issued a cease-and-desist letter against theaters showing the documentary.
Regarding the depiction of Nirvana, and in particular Kurt Cobain, the indie rock author Andrew Earles wrote:
Never has a rock band's past been so retroactively distorted into an irreversible fiction by incessant mythologizing, conjecture, wild speculation, and romanticizing rhetoric. The Cobain biographical narrative – specifically in regard to the culturally irresponsible mishandling of subjects such as drug abuse, depression, and suicide – is now impenetrable with inaccurate and overcooked connectivity between that which is completely unrelated, too chronologically disparate, or just plain untrue.
Matt Reeves' film The Batman depicts a version of Bruce Wayne, performed by Robert Pattinson, that was loosely inspired by Cobain. Reeves stated, "when I write, I listen to music, and as I was writing the first act, I put on Nirvana's 'Something in the Way,' that's when it came to me that, rather than make Bruce Wayne the playboy version we've seen before, there's another version who had gone through a great tragedy and become a recluse. So I started making this connection to Gus Van Sant's Last Days, and the idea of this fictionalised version of Kurt Cobain being in this kind of decaying manor." "Something in the Way" was used in trailers to promote The Batman prior to its release and is featured twice in the film.
In September 2009, the Roy Smiles play Kurt and Sid debuted at the Trafalgar Studios in London's West End. The play, set in Cobain's greenhouse on the day of his suicide, revolves around the ghost of Sid Vicious visiting Cobain to try to convince him not to kill himself. Cobain was played by Shaun Evans.
Cobain was included as a playable character in the 2009 video game Guitar Hero 5; he can be used to play songs by Nirvana and other acts. Novoselic and Grohl released a statement condemning the inclusion and urging the developer, Activision, to alter it, saying they had no control over the use of Cobain's likeness. Love denied that she had given permission, saying it was "the result of a cabal of a few assholes' greed", and threatened to sue. The vice-president of Activision said that Love had contributed photos and videos to the development and had been "great to work with".
For a complete list of all Nirvana releases see Nirvana discography
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Kurt Donald Cobain (February 20, 1967 – c. April 5, 1994) was an American musician, singer, and songwriter. He became known as the co-founder, lead vocalist, guitarist, and primary songwriter of the rock band Nirvana. Through his angst-fueled songwriting and anti-establishment persona, his compositions widened the thematic conventions of mainstream rock music. He was heralded as a spokesman of Generation X and is widely recognized as one of the most influential alternative rock musicians.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Cobain formed Nirvana with Krist Novoselic and Aaron Burckhard in 1987, establishing themselves as part of the Seattle music scene that later became known as grunge. Burckhard was replaced by Chad Channing before the band released their debut album Bleach (1989) on Sub Pop, after which Channing was in turn replaced by Dave Grohl. With this finalized line-up, the band signed with DGC and found commercial success with the single \"Smells Like Teen Spirit\" from their critically acclaimed second album Nevermind (1991). Cobain wrote many other hit Nirvana songs such as \"About a Girl\", \"All Apologies\", \"Aneurysm\", \"Come as You Are\", \"Heart-Shaped Box\", \"In Bloom\", \"Lithium\", \"Something in the Way\", and \"You Know You're Right\". Although he was hailed as the voice of Generation X following Nirvana's sudden success, he resented this and believed his message and artistic vision had been misinterpreted by the public.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "During his final years, Cobain struggled with a heroin addiction and chronic depression. He also struggled with the personal and professional pressures of fame, and was often in the spotlight for his tumultuous marriage to fellow musician Courtney Love, with whom he had a daughter named Frances. In March 1994, he overdosed on a combination of champagne and Rohypnol, subsequently undergoing an intervention and detox program. On April 8, 1994, he was found dead in the garage of his Seattle home at the age of 27, with police concluding that he had died around three days earlier from a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Cobain was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, alongside Nirvana bandmates Novoselic and Grohl, in their first year of eligibility in 2014. Rolling Stone included him on its lists of the 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time, 100 Greatest Guitarists, and 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. He was ranked 7th by MTV in the \"22 Greatest Voices in Music\", and was placed 20th by Hit Parader on their 2006 list of the \"100 Greatest Metal Singers of All Time\".",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Kurt Donald Cobain was born at Grays Harbor Hospital in Aberdeen, Washington, on February 20, 1967, the son of waitress Wendy Elizabeth (née Fradenburg; born 1948) and car mechanic Donald Leland Cobain (born 1946). His parents married in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, on July 31, 1965. Cobain had Dutch, English, French, German, Irish, and Scottish ancestry. The Cobain surname comes from his Irish ancestors, who emigrated from the Northern Irish town of Carrickmore in 1875. Researchers found that they were shoemakers, originally surnamed Cobane, and came from the Inishatieve area of Carrickmore. They first settled in Canada, where they lived in Cornwall, Ontario, before moving to Washington. Cobain mistakenly believed that his Irish ancestors came from County Cork. His younger sister, Kimberly, was born on April 24, 1970.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Cobain's family had a musical background. His maternal uncle, Chuck Fradenburg, played in a band called the Beachcombers; his aunt, Mari Earle, played guitar and performed in bands throughout Grays Harbor County; and his great-uncle, Delbert, had a career as an Irish tenor, making an appearance in the 1930 film King of Jazz. Kurt was described as a happy and excitable child, who also exhibited sensitivity and care. His talent as an artist was evident from an early age, as he would draw his favorite characters from films and cartoons, such as the Creature from the Black Lagoon and Donald Duck, in his bedroom. He was encouraged by his grandmother, Iris Cobain, a professional artist. Cobain developed an interest in music at a young age. According to his aunt Mari, he began singing at the age of two. At age four, he started playing the piano and singing, writing a song about a trip to a park. He listened to artists including Electric Light Orchestra (ELO), and, from a young age, would sing songs including Arlo Guthrie's \"Motorcycle Song\", the Beatles' \"Hey Jude\", Terry Jacks' \"Seasons in the Sun\", and the theme song to the Monkees television show.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "When Cobain was nine years old, his parents divorced. He later said the divorce had a profound effect on his life, and his mother noted that his personality changed dramatically; Cobain became defiant and withdrawn. In a 1993 interview, he said he felt \"ashamed\" of his parents as a child and had desperately wanted to have a \"typical family ... I wanted that security, so I resented my parents for quite a few years because of that.\" His parents found new partners after the divorce. Although his father had promised not to remarry, he married Jenny Westeby, to Kurt's dismay. Cobain, his father, Westeby, and her two children, Mindy and James, moved into a new household. Cobain liked Westeby at first, as she gave him the maternal attention he desired. In January 1979, Westeby gave birth to a boy, Chad Cobain. This new family, which Cobain insisted was not his real one, was in stark contrast to the attention Cobain was used to receiving as an only boy, and he became resentful of his stepmother. Cobain's mother dated a man who was abusive; Cobain witnessed the domestic violence inflicted upon her, with one incident resulting in her being hospitalized with a broken arm. Wendy refused to press charges, remaining committed to the relationship.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Cobain behaved insolently toward adults during this period and began bullying another boy at school. His father and Westeby took him to a therapist who concluded that he would benefit from a single-family environment. Both sides of the family unsuccessfully attempted to reunite his parents. On June 28, 1979, Cobain's mother granted full custody to his father. Cobain's teenage rebellion quickly became overwhelming for his father who placed him in the care of family and friends. While living with the born-again Christian family of his friend Jesse Reed, Cobain became a devout Christian and regularly attended church services. He later renounced Christianity, engaging in what was described as \"anti-God\" rants. The song \"Lithium\" is about his experience while living with the Reed family. Religion remained an important part of his personal life and beliefs. Although uninterested in sports, Cobain was enrolled in a junior high school wrestling team at the insistence of his father. He was a skilled wrestler but despised the experience. Because of the ridicule he endured from his teammates and coach, he allowed himself to be pinned in an attempt to sadden his father. Later, his father enlisted him in a Little League Baseball team, where Cobain would intentionally strike out to avoid playing. Cobain befriended a gay student at school and was bullied by peers who concluded that he was gay. In an interview, he said that he liked being associated with a gay identity because he did not like people, and when they thought he was gay they left him alone. He said, \"I started being really proud of the fact that I was gay even though I wasn't.\" His friend tried to kiss him, and Cobain backed away, explaining to his friend that he was not gay, but remained friends with him. According to Cobain, he used to spray paint \"God Is Gay\" on pickup trucks in the Aberdeen area. Police records show that Cobain was arrested for spray painting the phrase \"ain't got no how watchamacallit\" on vehicles.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Cobain often drew during classes. When given a caricature assignment for an art course, Cobain drew Michael Jackson but was told by the teacher that the image was inappropriate for a school hallway. He then drew an image of then-President Ronald Reagan that was seen as \"unflattering\". Through art and electronics classes, Cobain met Roger \"Buzz\" Osborne, singer and guitarist of the Melvins, who became his friend and introduced him to punk rock and hardcore music. As attested to by several of Cobain's classmates and family members, the first concert he attended was Sammy Hagar and Quarterflash, held at the Seattle Center Coliseum in 1983. Cobain, however, claimed that the first live show he attended was the Melvins, when they played a free concert outside the Thriftway supermarket where Osborne worked. Cobain wrote in his journals of this experience, as well as in interviews, singling out the impact it had on him. As a teenager living in Montesano, Washington, Cobain eventually found escape through the thriving Pacific Northwest punk scene, going to punk rock shows in Seattle.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "During his second year in high school, Cobain began living with his mother in Aberdeen. Two weeks prior to graduation, he dropped out of Aberdeen High School upon realizing that he did not have enough credits to graduate. His mother gave him an ultimatum: find employment or leave. After one week, Cobain found his clothes and other belongings packed away in boxes. Feeling banished, Cobain stayed with friends, occasionally sneaking back into his mother's basement. Cobain also claimed that, during periods of homelessness, he lived under a bridge over the Wishkah River, an experience that inspired the song \"Something in the Way\". His future bandmate Krist Novoselic later said, \"He hung out there, but you couldn't live on those muddy banks, with the tides coming up and down. That was his own revisionism.\" In late 1986, Cobain moved into an apartment, paying his rent by working at the Polynesian Resort, a themed resort on the Pacific coast at Ocean Shores, Washington approximately 20 miles (32 km) west of Aberdeen. During this period, he traveled frequently to Olympia, Washington, to go to rock concerts. During his visits to Olympia, Cobain formed a relationship with Tracy Marander. Their relationship was close but strained by financial problems and Cobain's absence when touring. Marander supported the couple by working at the cafeteria of the Boeing plant in Auburn, Washington, often stealing food. Cobain spent most of his time sleeping into the late evening, watching television, and concentrating on art projects.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Marander's insistence that he get a job caused arguments that influenced Cobain to write the song \"About a Girl\", which appeared on the Nirvana album Bleach. Marander is credited with having taken the cover photo for the album, as well as the front and back cover photos of their Blew single. She did not become aware that Cobain wrote \"About a Girl\" about her until years after his death. Soon after his separation from Marander, Cobain began dating Tobi Vail, an influential punk zinester of the riot grrrl band Bikini Kill who embraced the DIY ethos. After meeting Vail, Cobain vomited, overwhelmed with anxiety caused by his infatuation with her. This event inspired the lyric \"love you so much it makes me sick\" in the song \"Aneurysm\". While Cobain regarded Vail as his female counterpart, his relationship with her waned; he desired the maternal comfort of a traditional relationship, which Vail regarded as sexist within a countercultural punk rock community. Vail's lovers were described by her friend Alice Wheeler as \"fashion accessories\". Cobain wrote many of his songs about Vail.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "On his 14th birthday on February 20, 1981, Cobain's uncle offered him either a bike or a used guitar; Kurt chose the guitar. Soon, he was trying to play Led Zeppelin's song \"Stairway to Heaven\". He also learned how to play \"Louie Louie\", Queen's \"Another One Bites the Dust\", and the Cars' \"My Best Friend's Girl\", before he began working on his own songs. Cobain played left-handed, despite being forced to write right-handed.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In early 1985, Cobain formed Fecal Matter after he had dropped out of Aberdeen High School. One of \"several joke bands\" that arose from the circle of friends associated with the Melvins, it initially featured Cobain singing and playing guitar, Melvins drummer Dale Crover playing bass, and Greg Hokanson playing drums. They spent several months rehearsing original material and covers, including songs by the Ramones, Led Zeppelin, and Jimi Hendrix.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "During high school, Cobain rarely found anyone with whom he could play music. While hanging out at the Melvins' practice space, he met Krist Novoselic, a fellow devotee of punk rock. Novoselic's mother owned a hair salon, and the pair occasionally practiced in the upstairs room of the salon. A few years later, Cobain tried to convince Novoselic to form a band with him by lending him a copy of a home demo recorded by Fecal Matter. After months of asking, Novoselic agreed to join Cobain, forming the beginnings of Nirvana. Religion appeared to remain a significant muse to Cobain during this time as he often used Christian imagery in his work and developed an interest in Jainism and Buddhist philosophy.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Cobain became disenchanted after early touring because of the band's inability to draw substantial crowds and the difficulty in supporting themselves financially. During their first few years playing together, Novoselic and Cobain were hosts to a succession of drummers. Eventually, the band settled on Chad Channing with whom Nirvana recorded the album Bleach, released on Sub Pop Records in 1989. Cobain, however, became dissatisfied with Channing's style and subsequently fired him. He and Novoselic eventually hired Dave Grohl to replace Channing. Grohl helped the band record their 1991 major-label debut, Nevermind. With Nevermind's lead single, \"Smells Like Teen Spirit\", Nirvana quickly entered the mainstream, popularizing a subgenre of alternative rock called \"grunge\". Since their debut, Nirvana has sold over 28 million albums in the United States alone and over 75 million worldwide. The success of Nevermind provided numerous Seattle bands, such as Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden, access to wider audiences. As a result, alternative rock became a dominant genre on radio and music television in the U.S. during the first half of the 1990s. Nirvana was considered the \"flagship band of Generation X\", and Cobain found himself reluctantly anointed by the media as the generation's \"spokesman\". He resented this characterization since he believed his artistic message had been misinterpreted by the public.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "When you're in the public eye, you have no choice but to be raped over and over again – they'll take every ounce of blood out of you until you're exhausted. ... I'm looking forward to the future. It will only be another year and then everyone will forget about it.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "—Kurt Cobain on the overwhelming media attention after Nevermind, 1992",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Cobain struggled to reconcile the massive success of Nirvana with his underground roots and vision. He also felt persecuted by the media, comparing himself to Frances Farmer whom he named a song after. He began to harbor resentment against people who claimed to be fans of the band yet refused to acknowledge, or misinterpreted, the band's social and political views. A vocal opponent of sexism, racism, sexual assault, and homophobia, he was publicly proud that Nirvana had played at a gay rights benefit concert that was held to oppose Oregon's 1992 Ballot Measure 9, which would have directed Oregon schools to teach that homosexuality was \"abnormal, wrong, unnatural and perverse\". Cobain was a vocal supporter of the pro-choice movement, and Nirvana was involved in L7's Rock for Choice campaign. He received death threats from a small number of anti-abortion activists for participating in the pro-choice campaign, with one activist threatening to shoot Cobain as soon as he stepped on a stage.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In 1989, members of Nirvana and fellow American alternative rock band Screaming Trees formed a side project known as the Jury. The band featured Cobain on vocals and guitar, Mark Lanegan on vocals, Krist Novoselic on bass, and Mark Pickerel on drums. Over two days of recording sessions, on August 20 and 28, 1989, the band recorded four songs also performed by Lead Belly; \"Where Did You Sleep Last Night?\", an instrumental version of \"Grey Goose\", \"Ain't It a Shame\", and \"They Hung Him on a Cross\", the latter of which featured Cobain performing solo. Cobain was inspired to record the songs after receiving a copy of Lead Belly's Last Sessions from friend Slim Moon; after hearing it, he \"felt a connection to Leadbelly's almost physical expressions of longing and desire.\"",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In 1990, Cobain and his girlfriend, Tobi Vail of the riot grrrl band Bikini Kill, collaborated on a musical project called Bathtub is Real in which they both sang and played guitar and drums. They recorded their songs on a four-track tape machine that belonged to Vail's father. In Everett True's 2009 book Nirvana: The Biography, Vail is quoted as saying that Cobain \"would play the songs he was writing, I would play the songs I was writing and we'd record them on my dad's four-track. Sometimes I'd sing on the songs he was writing and play drums on them ... He was really into the fact that I was creative and into music. I don't think he'd ever played music with a girl before. He was super-inspiring and fun to play with.\" The musician Slim Moon described their sound as \"like the minimal quiet pop songs that Olympia is known for. Both of them sang; it was really good.\"",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In 1992, Cobain contacted William S. Burroughs about a possible collaboration. Burroughs responded by sending him a recording of \"The Junky's Christmas\" (which he recorded in his studio in Lawrence, Kansas). Two months later at a studio in Seattle, Cobain added guitar backing based on \"Silent Night\" and \"To Anacreon in Heaven\". The two would meet shortly later in Lawrence, Kansas and produce \"The 'Priest' They Called Him\", a spoken word version of \"The Junky's Christmas\".",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The Beatles were an early and lasting influence on Cobain; his aunt Mari remembers him singing \"Hey Jude\" at the age of two. \"My aunts would give me Beatles records\", Cobain told Jon Savage in 1993, \"so for the most part [I listened to] the Beatles [as a child], and if I was lucky, I'd be able to buy a single.\" Cobain expressed a particular fondness for John Lennon, whom he called his \"idol\" in his posthumously released journals, and he said that he wrote the song \"About a Girl\", from Nirvana's 1989 debut album Bleach, after spending three hours listening to Meet the Beatles!.",
"title": "Musical influences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Cobain was also a fan of 1970s hard rock and heavy metal bands, including Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Aerosmith, Queen, and Kiss. Nirvana occasionally played cover songs by these bands, including Led Zeppelin's \"Heartbreaker\", \"Moby Dick\" and \"Immigrant Song\", Black Sabbath's \"Hand of Doom\", and Kiss' \"Do You Love Me?\" and wrote the Incesticide song \"Aero Zeppelin\" as a tribute to Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith. Recollecting touring with his band, Cobain stated, \"I used to take a nap in the van and listen to Queen. Over and over again and drain the battery on the van. We'd be stuck with a dead battery because I'd listened to Queen too much\".",
"title": "Musical influences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "He was introduced to punk rock and hardcore music by his Aberdeen classmate Buzz Osborne, lead singer and guitarist of the Melvins, who taught Cobain about punk by loaning him records and old copies of the Detroit-based magazine Creem. Punk rock proved to be a profound influence on a teenaged Cobain's attitude and artistic style. His first punk rock album was Sandinista! by The Clash, but he became a bigger fan of fellow 1970s British punk band the Sex Pistols, describing them as \"one million times more important than the Clash\" in his journals. He quickly discovered contemporary American hardcore bands like Black Flag, Bad Brains, Millions of Dead Cops and Flipper. The Melvins themselves were a major early musical influence on Cobain; his admiration for them led him to drive their van on tour and help them to carry their equipment. He and Novoselic watched hundreds of Melvins rehearsals and \"learned almost everything from them\", as stated by Cobain. The Melvins' heavy, grungey sound was mimicked by Nirvana on many songs from Bleach; in an early interview given by Nirvana, Cobain stated that their biggest fear was to be perceived as a \"Melvins rip-off\". After their commercial success, the members of Nirvana would constantly talk about the Melvins' importance to them in the press.",
"title": "Musical influences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Cobain was also a fan of protopunk acts like the Stooges, whose 1973 album Raw Power he listed as his favorite of all time in his journals, and The Velvet Underground, whose 1968 song \"Here She Comes Now\" the band covered both live and in the studio.",
"title": "Musical influences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The 1980s American alternative rock band Pixies were instrumental in helping an adult Cobain develop his own songwriting style. In a 1992 interview with Melody Maker, Cobain said that hearing their 1988 debut album, Surfer Rosa, \"convinced him to abandon his more Black Flag-influenced songwriting in favor of the Iggy Pop/Aerosmith–type songwriting that appeared on Nevermind. In a 1993 interview with Rolling Stone, he said that \"Smells Like Teen Spirit\" was his attempt at \"trying to rip off the Pixies. I have to admit it. When I heard the Pixies for the first time, I connected with that band so heavily that I should have been in that band—or at least a Pixies cover band. We used their sense of dynamics, being soft and quiet and then loud and hard\".",
"title": "Musical influences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Cobain's appreciation of early alternative rock bands also extended to Sonic Youth and R.E.M., both of which the members of Nirvana befriended and looked up to for advice. It was under recommendation from Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon that Nirvana signed to DGC in 1990, and both bands did a two-week tour of Europe in the summer of 1991, as documented in the 1992 documentary, 1991: The Year Punk Broke. In 1993, Cobain said of R.E.M.: \"If I could write just a couple of songs as good as what they've written... I don't know how that band does what they do. God, they're the greatest. They've dealt with their success like saints, and they keep delivering great music\".",
"title": "Musical influences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "After attaining mainstream success, Cobain became a devoted champion of lesser known indie bands, covering songs by The Vaselines, Meat Puppets, Wipers and Fang onstage and/or in the studio, wearing Daniel Johnston T-shirts during photo shoots, having the K Records logo tattooed on his forearm, and enlisting bands like Butthole Surfers, Shonen Knife, Chokebore and Half Japanese along for the In Utero tour in late 1993 and early 1994. Cobain even invited his favorite musicians to perform with him: ex-Germs guitarist Pat Smear joined the band in 1993, and the Meat Puppets appeared onstage during Nirvana's 1993 MTV Unplugged appearance to perform three songs from their second album, Meat Puppets II.",
"title": "Musical influences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Nirvana's Unplugged set includes renditions of \"The Man Who Sold the World\", by David Bowie, and the American folk song, \"Where Did You Sleep Last Night\", as adapted by Lead Belly. Cobain introduced the latter by calling Lead Belly his favorite performer, and in a 1993 interview revealed he had been introduced to him from reading the American author William S. Burroughs, saying: \"I remember [Burroughs] saying in an interview, 'These new rock'n'roll kids should just throw away their guitars and listen to something with real soul, like Leadbelly.' I'd never heard about Leadbelly before so I bought a couple of records, and now he turns out to be my absolute favorite of all time in music. I absolutely love it more than any rock'n'roll I ever heard.\" The album MTV Unplugged in New York was released posthumously in 1994. It has drawn comparisons to R.E.M.'s 1992 release, Automatic for the People. In 1993, Cobain had predicted that the next Nirvana album would be \"pretty ethereal, acoustic, like R.E.M.'s last album\".",
"title": "Musical influences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "\"Yeah, he talked a lot about what direction he was heading in\", Cobain's friend, R.E.M.'s lead singer Michael Stipe, told Newsweek in 1994. \"I mean, I know what the next Nirvana recording was going to sound like. It was going to be very quiet and acoustic, with lots of stringed instruments. It was going to be an amazing fucking record, and I'm a little bit angry at him for killing himself. He and I were going to record a trial run of the album, a demo tape. It was all set up. He had a plane ticket. He had a car picking him up. And at the last minute he called and said, 'I can't come.'\" Stipe was chosen as the godfather of Cobain's and Courtney Love's daughter, Frances Bean Cobain.",
"title": "Musical influences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "According to Grohl, Cobain believed that music comes first and lyrics second; he focused primarily on the melodies. He complained when fans and rock journalists attempted to decipher his singing and extract meaning from his lyrics, writing: \"Why in the hell do journalists insist on coming up with a second-rate Freudian evaluation of my lyrics, when 90 percent of the time they've transcribed them incorrectly?\" Though Cobain insisted on the subjectivity and unimportance of his lyrics, he labored and procrastinated in writing them, often changing the content and order of lyrics during performances. Cobain would describe his own lyrics as \"a big pile of contradictions. They're split down the middle between very sincere opinions that I have and sarcastic opinions and feelings that I have and sarcastic and hopeful, humorous rebuttals toward cliché bohemian ideals that have been exhausted for years.\"",
"title": "Artistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Cobain originally wanted Nevermind to be divided into two sides: a \"Boy\" side, for the songs written about the experiences of his early life and childhood, and a \"Girl\" side, for the songs written about his dysfunctional relationship with Vail. Charles R. Cross wrote, \"In the four months following their break-up, Kurt would write a half dozen of his most memorable songs, all of them about Tobi Vail.\" Though Cobain wrote \"Lithium\" before meeting Vail, he wrote the lyrics to reference her. Cobain said in an interview with Musician that he wrote about \"some of my very personal experiences, like breaking up with girlfriends and having bad relationships, feeling that death void that the person in the song is feeling. Very lonely, sick.\" While Cobain regarded In Utero as \"for the most part very impersonal\", its lyrics deal with his parents' divorce, his newfound fame and the public image and perception of himself and Courtney Love on \"Serve the Servants\", with his enamored relationship with Love conveyed through lyrical themes of pregnancy and the female anatomy on \"Heart-Shaped Box.\"",
"title": "Artistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Cobain was affected enough to write \"Polly\" from Nevermind after reading a newspaper story of an incident in 1987, when a 14-year-old girl was kidnapped after attending a punk rock show then raped and tortured with a blowtorch. She escaped after gaining the trust of her captor Gerald Friend through flirting with him. After seeing Nirvana perform, Bob Dylan cited \"Polly\" as the best of Nirvana's songs, and said of Cobain, \"the kid has heart\". Patrick Süskind's novel Perfume: The Story of a Murderer inspired Cobain to write the song \"Scentless Apprentice\" from In Utero. The book is a historical horror novel about a perfumer's apprentice born with no body odor of his own but with a highly developed sense of smell, and who attempts to create the \"ultimate perfume\" by killing virginal women and taking their scent.",
"title": "Artistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Cobain immersed himself in artistic projects throughout his life, as much so as he did in songwriting. The sentiments of his artwork followed the same subjects of his lyrics, often expressed through a dark and macabre sense of humor. Noted were his fascination with physiology, his own rare medical conditions, and the human anatomy. According to Novoselic, \"Kurt said that he never liked literal things. He liked cryptic things. He would cut out pictures of meat from grocery-store fliers, then paste these orchids on them ... And all this stuff on [In Utero] about the body – there was something about anatomy. He really liked that. You look at his art – there are these people, and they're all weird, like mutants. And dolls – creepy dolls.\"",
"title": "Artistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Cobain contributed backing guitar for a spoken word recording of beat poet William S. Burroughs' entitled The \"Priest\" They Called Him. Cobain regarded Burroughs as a hero. During Nirvana's European tour Cobain kept a copy of Burroughs' Naked Lunch, purchased from a London bookstall. Cobain met with Burroughs at his home in Lawrence, Kansas in October 1993. Burroughs expressed no surprise at Cobain's death: \"It wasn't an act of will for Kurt to kill himself. As far as I was concerned, he was dead already.\"",
"title": "Artistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In a Guitar World retrospective, Cobain's guitar tone was deemed \"one of the most iconic\" in the history of the electric guitar, while noting that rather than relying on expensive or vintage items, Cobain used \"an eccentric cache of budget models, low-end imports and pawn shop prizes.\" Cobain stated in a 1992 interview, \"Junk is always best,\" but denied this was a punk statement and claimed it was a necessity, as he had trouble finding high quality lefthanded guitars.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Cobain's first guitar was a used electric guitar from Sears that he received on his 14th birthday. He took guitar lessons long enough to learn AC/DC's \"Back in Black\" and began playing with local kids. Cobain found the guitar smashed after leaving it in a locker, but he was able to purchase new equipment, including a Peavey amp, by recovering and selling his stepfather's gun collection, which his mother had dumped in a river after discovering his infidelity. Upon forming what would be Nirvana, Cobain was playing a Fender Champ amplifier and a righthanded Univox Hi-Flier guitar he flipped over and strung for lefthanded playing.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "For the recording of Bleach, Cobain needed to borrow a Fender Twin Reverb due to his main amplifier, a solid-state Randall, being repaired at the time, but as the Twin Reverb's speakers were blown, he was forced to pair it with an external cabinet featuring two 12\" speakers. He used a Boss DS-1 for distortion, while playing Hi-Flier guitars, which cost him $100 each. Nirvana embarked on their first American tour in 1989, at the start of which Cobain played an Epiphone ET270; however, he destroyed the guitar onstage during a show, a subsequent habit that forced label Sub Pop to have to call local pawn shops looking for replacement guitars. Cobain's first acoustic guitar, a Stella 12-string, cost him $31.21. Cobain strung it with six (or sometimes five) strings, and while the guitar's tuners had to be held together with duct tape, it sounded good enough that the guitar was later used to record the Nevermind tracks \"Polly\" and \"Something in the Way.\"",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Despite receiving a $287,000 advance upon signing with Geffen Records, Cobain retained a preference for inexpensive gear. He became a fan of Japanese-made Fender guitars ahead of recording Nevermind, due to their slim necks and wide availability in lefthanded orientation. These included several Stratocasters fitted with humbucker pickups in the bridge positions, as well as a 1965 Jaguar with DiMarzio pickups and a 1969 Competition Mustang, the latter of which Cobain cited as his favorite, despite noting, \"They're cheap and totally inefficient, and they sound like crap and are very small.\" For the album, Cobain used a rackmount system featuring a Mesa/Boogie Studio preamp, a Crown power amp, and Marshall cabinets. He also used a Vox AC30 and a Fender Bassman. Producer Butch Vig preferred to avoid pedals, but allowed Cobain to use his Boss DS-1, which Cobain considered a key part of his sound, as well as an Electro-Harmonix Big Muff fuzz pedal and a Small Clone chorus, which can be heard on songs like \"Smells Like Teen Spirit,\" \"Come As You Are,\" and \"Aneurysm.\"",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Cobain used his '69 Mustang, '65 Jaguar, a custom Jaguar/Mustang, and a Hi-Flier for the In Utero recording sessions. To tour behind the album, Cobain placed an order for 10 Mustangs split between Fiesta Red and Sonic Blue. As the Fender Custom Shop was new, the guitars were to be shipped out two at a time over a period of months. By the time of his death, Cobain had received six of the guitars. The remaining four, waiting to be shipped, were instead sold as regular stock at Japanese music stores without informing buyers the guitars had been made for Cobain.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "For Nirvana's Unplugged performance, Cobain played a righthanded 1959 Martin D-18E acoustic guitar modified for lefthanded playing. The guitar became the most expensive ever sold when it fetched over $6 million at auction in 2020. Cobain's 1969 Competition Mustang, which he also played in the \"Smells Like Teen Spirit\" music video, sold at a 2022 auction to Jim Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts, for $4.5 million, with an original estimate of $600,000.",
"title": "Equipment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "There are differing accounts of exactly when and how Kurt Cobain first met Courtney Love. In his 1993 authorized biography of Nirvana Michael Azerrad cites a January 21, 1989, Dharma Bums gig in Portland where Nirvana played as support, while the Charles R. Cross 2001 Cobain biography has Love and Cobain meeting at the same Satyricon nightclub venue in Portland but a different Nirvana show, January 12, 1990, when both still led ardent underground rock bands. Love made advances soon after they met, but Cobain was evasive. Early in their interactions, Cobain broke off dates and ignored Love's advances because he was unsure if he wanted a relationship. Cobain noted, \"I was determined to be a bachelor for a few months [...] But I knew that I liked Courtney so much right away that it was a really hard struggle to stay away from her for so many months.\" Everett True, who was an associate of both Cobain and Love, disputes those versions of events in his 2006 book, claiming that he himself introduced the couple on May 17, 1991.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Cobain was already aware of Love through her role in the 1987 film Straight to Hell. According to True, the pair were formally introduced at an L7 and Butthole Surfers concert in Los Angeles in May 1991. In the weeks that followed, after learning from Grohl that Cobain shared mutual interests with her, Love began pursuing Cobain. In late 1991, the two were often together and bonded through drug use.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "On February 24, 1992, a few days after the conclusion of Nirvana's \"Pacific Rim\" tour, Cobain and Love were married on Waikiki Beach in Hawaii. Love wore a satin and lace dress once owned by Frances Farmer, and Cobain donned a Guatemalan purse and wore green pajamas, because he had been \"too lazy to put on a tux.\" Eight people were in attendance at the ceremony, including Grohl. Love said she was warned by the Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon that marrying Cobain would \"destroy her life\"; Love responded: \"'Whatever! I love him, and I want to be with him!' ... It wasn't his fault. He wasn't trying to do that.\"",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The couple's daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, was born August 18, 1992. A sonogram was included in the artwork for Nirvana's single, \"Lithium.\" In a 1992 Vanity Fair article, Love admitted to a drug binge with Cobain in the early weeks of her pregnancy. At the time, she claimed that Vanity Fair had misquoted her. Love later admitted to using heroin before knowing she was pregnant. The couple were asked by the press if Frances was addicted to drugs at birth. The Los Angeles County Department of Children's Services visited the Cobains days after Love gave birth and later took them to court, stating that their drug usage made them unfit parents.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In October 1992, when asked, \"Well, are you gay?\" by Monk Magazine, Cobain replied, \"If I wasn't attracted to Courtney, I'd be a bisexual.\" In another interview, he described identifying with the gay community in The Advocate, stating, \"I'm definitely gay in spirit and I probably could be bisexual\" and \"if I wouldn't have found Courtney, I probably would have carried on with a bisexual life-style\", but also that he was \"more sexually attracted to women\". He described himself as being \"feminine\" in childhood, and often wore dresses and other stereotypically feminine clothing. Some of his song lyrics, as well as phrases he would use to vandalize vehicles and a bank, included \"God is gay\", \"Jesus is gay\", \"HOMOSEXUAL SEX RULES\", and \"Everyone is gay\". One of his personal journals states, \"I am not gay, although I wish I were, just to piss off homophobes.\"",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Cobain advocated for LGBTQ+ rights, including traveling to Oregon to perform at a benefit opposing the 1992 Oregon Ballot Measure 9, and supported local bands with LGBTQ+ members. He reported having felt \"different\" from the age of seven, and was a frequent target of homophobic bullying in his school due to his having a \"gay friend\". Cobain was interviewed by two gay magazines, Out and The Advocate; the 1993 interview with The Advocate being described as \"the only [interview] the band's lead singer says he plans to do for Incesticide\", an album whose liner notes included a statement decrying homophobia, racism and misogyny:",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different color, or women, please do this one favor for us—leave us the fuck alone! Don't come to our shows and don't buy our records.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Throughout most of his life, Cobain had chronic bronchitis and intense physical pain due to an undiagnosed chronic stomach condition. According to The Telegraph, Cobain had depression. His cousin brought attention to the family history of suicide, mental illness and alcoholism, noting that two of her uncles had died by suicide with guns.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "He used drugs heavily; his first drug experience was with cannabis in 1980, at age 13. He regularly used the drug during adulthood. Cobain also had a period of consuming \"notable\" amounts of LSD, as observed by Marander, and was prone to alcoholism and solvent abuse. Novoselic said he was \"really into getting fucked up: drugs, acid, any kind of drug\". Cobain first took heroin in 1986, administered to him by a dealer in Tacoma, Washington, who had previously supplied him with oxycodone and aspirin. Cobain used heroin sporadically for several years; by the end of 1990, his use had developed into addiction. Cobain claimed that he was \"determined to get a habit\" as a way to self-medicate his stomach condition. \"It started with three days in a row of doing heroin and I don't have a stomach pain. That was such a relief,\" he said. However, his longtime friend Buzz Osborne disputes this, saying that his stomach pain was more likely caused by his heroin use: \"He made it up for sympathy and so he could use it as an excuse to stay loaded. Of course he was vomiting—that's what people on heroin do, they vomit. It's called 'vomiting with a smile on your face'.\"",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Cobain's heroin use began to affect Nirvana's Nevermind tour. During a 1992 photoshoot with Michael Lavine, he fell asleep several times, having used heroin beforehand. Cobain told biographer Michael Azerrad: \"They're not going to be able to tell me to stop. So I really didn't care. Obviously to them it was like practicing witchcraft or something. They didn't know anything about it so they thought that any second, I was going to die.\"",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The morning after the band's performance on Saturday Night Live in 1992, Cobain experienced his first near-death overdose after injecting heroin; Love resuscitated him. Prior to a performance at the New Music Seminar in New York City on July 23, 1993, Cobain suffered another overdose. Rather than calling for an ambulance, Love injected Cobain with naloxone to resuscitate him. Cobain proceeded to perform with Nirvana, giving the public no indication that anything had happened.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Following a tour stop at Terminal Eins in Munich, Germany, on March 1, 1994, Cobain was diagnosed with bronchitis and severe laryngitis. He flew to Rome the next day for medical treatment, and was joined there by his wife, Courtney Love, on March 3. The next morning, Love awoke to find that Cobain had overdosed on a combination of champagne and Rohypnol. Cobain was rushed to the hospital and was unconscious for the rest of the day. After five days, Cobain was released and returned to Seattle. Love later said that the incident was Cobain's first suicide attempt.",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "On March 18, 1994, Love phoned the Seattle police informing them that Cobain was suicidal and had locked himself in a room with a gun. Police arrived and confiscated several guns and a bottle of pills from Cobain, who insisted that he was not suicidal and had locked himself in the room to hide from Love.",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Love arranged an intervention regarding Cobain's drug use on March 25, 1994. The ten people involved included musician friends, record company executives, and one of Cobain's closest friends, Dylan Carlson. Cobain reacted with anger, insulting and heaping scorn on the participants, and locked himself in the upstairs bedroom. However, by the end of the day, Cobain agreed to undergo a detox program, and he entered a residential facility in Los Angeles for a few days on March 30, 1994.",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "The following night, Cobain left the facility and flew to Seattle. On the flight, he sat near Duff McKagan of Guns N' Roses. Despite Cobain's animosity towards Guns N' Roses, Cobain \"seemed happy\" to see McKagan. McKagan later said that he knew from \"all of my instincts that something was wrong\". Most of Cobain's friends and family were unaware of his whereabouts. On April 7, amid rumors of Nirvana breaking up, the band pulled out of the 1994 Lollapalooza festival.",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "On April 8, Cobain's body was discovered at his Lake Washington Boulevard home by an electrician, who had arrived to install a security system. A suicide note was found, addressed to Cobain's childhood imaginary friend Boddah, that stated that Cobain had not \"felt the excitement of listening to as well as creating music, along with really writing ... for too many years now\". Cobain's body had been there for days; the coroner's report estimated he died on April 5, 1994, at the age of 27.",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "A public vigil was held on April 10, at a park at Seattle Center, drawing approximately 7,000 mourners. Prerecorded messages by Novoselic and Love were played at the memorial. Love read portions of the suicide note to the crowd, crying and chastising Cobain. Near the end of the vigil, Love distributed some of Cobain's clothing to those who remained. Grohl said that the news of Cobain's death was \"probably the worst thing that has happened to me in my life. I remember the day after that I woke up and I was heartbroken that he was gone. I just felt like, 'Okay, so I get to wake up today and have another day and he doesn't.'\"",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Billboard, reporting from Seattle on April 23, stated that within a few hours of Cobain's death being confirmed on April 8, the only remaining Nirvana titles at Park Ave Records on Queen Anne Avenue were two \"Heart-Shaped Box\" import CD singles. A marketing director at the three-store Cellophane Square chain said that \"all three stores sold about a few hundred CDs, singles, and vinyl by the morning of April 9\". A buyer at Tower Records on Mercer Street said: \"It's a pathetic scene, everything is going out the door. If people were really fans, they would've had this stuff already.\" In the United Kingdom, sales of Nirvana releases rose dramatically immediately after Cobain's death.",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Grohl believed that he knew Cobain would die at an early age, saying that \"sometimes you just can't save someone from themselves\", and \"in some ways, you kind of prepare yourself emotionally for that to be a reality\". Dave Reed, who for a short time had been Cobain's foster father, said that \"he had the desperation, not the courage, to be himself. Once you do that, you can't go wrong, because you can't make any mistakes when people love you for being yourself. But for Kurt, it didn't matter that other people loved him; he simply didn't love himself enough.\"",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "A final ceremony was arranged by Cobain's mother on May 31, 1999, and was attended by Love and Tracy Marander. As a Buddhist monk chanted, daughter Frances Bean scattered Cobain's ashes into McLane Creek in Olympia, the city where he \"had found his true artistic muse\". In 2006, Love said she retained Cobain's ashes, kept in a bank vault in Los Angeles because \"no cemetery in Seattle will take them\".",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Cobain's death became a topic of public fascination and debate. His artistic endeavors and struggles with addiction, illness and depression, as well as the circumstances of his death, have become a frequent topic of controversy. According to a spokesperson for the Seattle Police Department, the department receives at least one weekly request to reopen the investigation, resulting in the maintenance of the basic incident report on file.",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "In March 2014, the Seattle police developed four rolls of film that had been left in an evidence vault; no reason was provided for why the rolls were not developed earlier. According to the Seattle police, the 35mm film photographs show the scene of Cobain's dead body more clearly than previous Polaroid images taken by the police. Detective Mike Ciesynski, a cold case investigator, was instructed to look at the film because \"it is 20 years later and it's a high media case\". Ciesynski stated that Cobain's death remains a suicide and that the images would not have been released publicly. The photos in question were later released, one by one, weeks before the 20th anniversary of Cobain's death. One photo shows Cobain's arm, still wearing the hospital bracelet from the drug rehab facility he had left just a few days prior to returning to Seattle. Another photo shows Cobain's foot resting next to a bag of shotgun shells, one of which was used in his death.",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Cobain is remembered as one of the most influential rock musicians in the history of alternative music. His angst-fueled songwriting and anti-establishment persona led him to be referenced as the spokesman of Generation X. In addition, Cobain's songs widened the themes of mainstream rock music of the 1980s to discussion of personal reflection and social issues. On April 10, 2014, Nirvana was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Grohl, Novoselic and Love accepted the accolade at the ceremony, where Cobain was also remembered. Cobain is one of the best-known members of the 27 Club, a list of musicians who died when they were 27 years old.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Music & Media reporting on April 23, 1994, after Cobain had died, stated that Jorgen Larsen, the president of MCA Music Entertainment International was asked where he thought Cobain stood in terms of his contribution to contemporary music, and Larsen replied that \"If anybody comes out of nowhere to sell 11 or 12 million albums you have to conclude that there's something there. He wasn't just a one-hit wonder.\"",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "According to music journalist Paul Lester, who worked at Melody Maker at the time, Cobain's suicide triggered an immediate reappraisal of his work. He wrote: \"The general impression offered by In Utero was that Cobain was some kind of whiny, self-absorbed, grunge, misery guts who could make routinely powerful music but was hardly a suffering godhead. You could almost hear a collective sigh of relief after April 5, 1994, that Cobain could no longer further sully his reputation; that the myth-making machinery could finally be cranked into action.\"",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins referred to Cobain as \"the Michael Jordan of our generation\", and said that Cobain opened the door for everyone in the 1990s alternative rock scene. Lars Ulrich of Metallica reflected on Cobain's influence stating that \"with Kurt Cobain you felt you were connecting to the real person, not to a perception of who he was — you were not connecting to an image or a manufactured cut-out. You felt that between you and him there was nothing — it was heart-to-heart. There are very few people who have that ability.\" In 1996, the Church of Kurt Cobain was established in Portland, Oregon, but it was later claimed by some media outlets to have been a media hoax. Reflecting on Cobain's death over 10 years later, MSNBC's Eric Olsen wrote, \"In the intervening decade, Cobain, a small, frail but handsome man in life, has become an abstract Generation X icon, viewed by many as the 'last real rock star' ... a messiah and martyr whose every utterance has been plundered and parsed.\"",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "In 2003, David Fricke of Rolling Stone ranked Cobain the 12th greatest guitarist of all time. He was later ranked the 73rd greatest guitarist and 45th greatest singer of all time by the same magazine, and by MTV as seventh in the \"22 Greatest Voices in Music\". In 2006, he was placed at number twenty by Hit Parader on their list of the \"100 Greatest Metal Singers of All Time\".",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "In 2005, a sign was put up in Aberdeen, Washington, that read \"Welcome to Aberdeen – Come As You Are\" as a tribute to Cobain. The sign was paid for and created by the Kurt Cobain Memorial Committee, a non-profit organization created in May 2004 to honor Cobain. The Committee planned to create a Kurt Cobain Memorial Park and a youth center in Aberdeen. Because Cobain was cremated and his remains scattered into the Wishkah River in Washington, many Nirvana fans visit Viretta Park, near Cobain's former Lake Washington home to pay tribute. On the anniversary of his death, fans gather in the park to celebrate his life and memory. Controversy erupted in July 2009 when a monument to Cobain in Aberdeen along the Wishkah River included the quote \"... Drugs are bad for you. They will fuck you up.\" The city ultimately decided to sandblast the monument to replace the expletive with \"f---\", but fans immediately drew the letters back in. In December 2013, the small city of Hoquiam, where Cobain once lived, announced that April 10 would become the annual Nirvana Day. Similarly, in January 2014, Cobain's birthday, February 20, was declared annual \"Kurt Cobain Day\" in Aberdeen.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "In June 2020, the 1959 Martin D-18E acoustic-electric guitar used by Cobain for Nirvana's MTV Unplugged performance sold at auction for $6,010,000 to Peter Freedman the chairman of Røde Microphones. It was the most expensive guitar and the most expensive piece of band memorabilia ever sold. In May 2022, Cobain's Lake Placid Blue Fender Mustang guitar sold at auction for $4.5 million to Jim Irsay, making it the second-most valuable guitar ever sold and the most valuable electric guitar.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "In April 2021, around the 27th anniversary of Cobain's death, the American musician Kid Cudi performed his Man on the Moon III: The Chosen album cuts \"Tequila Shots\" and \"Sad People\" on Saturday Night Live. He wore a green sweater and later a dress in tribute to Cobain. In July 2021, the Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation confirmed that Cobain's childhood home in Aberdeen would be included on their Heritage Register, and that the owner would be making it into an exhibit for people to visit.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Prior to Cobain's death, Michael Azerrad published Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana, a book chronicling Nirvana's career from its beginning, as well as the personal histories of the band members. The book explored Cobain's drug addiction, as well as the countless controversies surrounding the band. After Cobain's death, Azerrad republished the book to include a final chapter discussing the last year of Cobain's life. The book involved the band members themselves, who provided interviews and personal information to Azerrad specifically for the book. In 2006, Azerrad's taped conversations with Cobain were transformed into a documentary about Cobain, titled Kurt Cobain: About a Son. Though this film does not feature any music by Nirvana, it has songs by the artists that inspired Cobain.",
"title": "Media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Journalists Ian Halperin and Max Wallace published their investigation of any possible conspiracy surrounding Cobain's death in their 1999 book Who Killed Kurt Cobain?. Halperin and Wallace argued that, while there was not enough evidence to prove a conspiracy, there was more than enough to demand that the case be reopened. The book included the journalists' discussions with Tom Grant, who had taped nearly every conversation that he had undertaken while he was in Love's employ. Over the next several years, Halperin and Wallace collaborated with Grant to write a second book, 2004's Love and Death: The Murder of Kurt Cobain.",
"title": "Media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "In 2001, writer Charles R. Cross published a biography of Cobain, titled Heavier Than Heaven. For the book, Cross conducted over 400 interviews, and was given access by Courtney Love to Cobain's journals, lyrics, and diaries. Cross' biography was met with criticism, including allegations of Cross accepting secondhand (and incorrect) information as fact. Friend Everett True – who derided the book as being inaccurate, omissive, and highly biased – said Heavier than Heaven was \"the Courtney-sanctioned version of history\" or, alternatively, Cross's \"Oh, I think I need to find the new Bruce Springsteen now\" Kurt Cobain book. However, beyond the criticism, the book contained details about Cobain and Nirvana's career that would have otherwise been unnoted. In 2008, Cross published Cobain Unseen, a compilation of annotated photographs and creations and writings by Cobain throughout his life and career.",
"title": "Media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "In 2002, a sampling of Cobain's writings was published as Journals. The book fills 280 pages with a simple black cover; the pages are arranged somewhat chronologically (although Cobain generally did not date them). The journal pages are reproduced in color, and there is a section added at the back with explanations and transcripts of some of the less legible pages. The writings begin in the late 1980s and were continued until his death. A paperback version of the book, released in 2003, included a handful of writings that were not offered in the initial release. In the journals, Cobain talked about the ups and downs of life on the road, made lists of what music he was enjoying, and often scribbled down lyric ideas for future reference. Upon its release, reviewers and fans were conflicted about the collection. Many were elated to be able to learn more about Cobain and read his inner thoughts in his own words, but were disturbed by what was viewed as an invasion of his privacy.",
"title": "Media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "In 2009, ECW Press released a book titled Grunge Is Dead: The Oral History of Seattle Rock Music. Written by Greg Prato, the book explored the history of grunge in detail, touching upon Nirvana and Cobain's life and death via interviews with former bandmates, friends, and various grunge-era contemporaries. A picture of Cobain from the Bleach era is used for the book's front cover, and its title comes from a shirt that Cobain was once photographed wearing.",
"title": "Media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Cobain was also apparently 'the biggest influence' on the 2020 novel Dead Rock Stars, by the English author Guy Mankowski, particularly given Cobain's \"message of feminism\". Of the musician, Mankowski said, \"I think he raised the consciousness.\"",
"title": "Media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "In the 1998 documentary Kurt & Courtney, filmmaker Nick Broomfield investigated Tom Grant's claim that Cobain was actually murdered. He took a film crew to visit a number of people associated with Cobain and Love; Love's father, Cobain's aunt, and one of the couple's former nannies. Broomfield also spoke to Mentors bandleader Eldon \"El Duce\" Hoke, who claimed Love offered him $50,000 to kill Cobain. Although Hoke claimed he knew who killed Cobain, he failed to mention a name, and offered no evidence to support his assertion. Broomfield inadvertently captured Hoke's last interview, as he died days later, reportedly hit by a train. However, Broomfield felt he had not uncovered enough evidence to conclude the existence of a conspiracy. In a 1998 interview, Broomfield summed it up by saying:",
"title": "Media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "I think that he committed suicide. I don't think there's a smoking gun. And I think there's only one way you can explain a lot of things around his death. Not that he was murdered, but that there was just a lack of caring for him. I just think that Courtney had moved on, and he was expendable.",
"title": "Media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Broomfield's documentary was noted by The New York Times to be a rambling, largely speculative and circumstantial work, relying on flimsy evidence as was his later documentary Biggie & Tupac.",
"title": "Media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Gus Van Sant loosely based his 2005 movie Last Days on the events in the final days of Cobain's life, starring Michael Pitt as the main character Blake who was based on Cobain. In January 2007, Love began to shop the biography Heavier Than Heaven to various movie studios in Hollywood to turn the book into an A-list feature film about Cobain and Nirvana.",
"title": "Media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "A Brett Morgen film, entitled Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2015, followed by small-screen and cinema releases. Morgen said that documentary \"will be this generation's The Wall\".",
"title": "Media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Soaked in Bleach is a 2015 American docudrama directed by Benjamin Statler. The film details the events leading up to the death of Kurt Cobain, as seen through the perspective of Tom Grant, the private detective who was hired by Courtney Love to find Cobain, her husband, shortly before his death in 1994. It also explores the premise that Cobain's death was not a suicide. The film stars Tyler Bryan as Cobain and Daniel Roebuck as Grant, with Sarah Scott portraying Courtney Love and August Emerson as Dylan Carlson. Love's legal team issued a cease-and-desist letter against theaters showing the documentary.",
"title": "Media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Regarding the depiction of Nirvana, and in particular Kurt Cobain, the indie rock author Andrew Earles wrote:",
"title": "Media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Never has a rock band's past been so retroactively distorted into an irreversible fiction by incessant mythologizing, conjecture, wild speculation, and romanticizing rhetoric. The Cobain biographical narrative – specifically in regard to the culturally irresponsible mishandling of subjects such as drug abuse, depression, and suicide – is now impenetrable with inaccurate and overcooked connectivity between that which is completely unrelated, too chronologically disparate, or just plain untrue.",
"title": "Media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Matt Reeves' film The Batman depicts a version of Bruce Wayne, performed by Robert Pattinson, that was loosely inspired by Cobain. Reeves stated, \"when I write, I listen to music, and as I was writing the first act, I put on Nirvana's 'Something in the Way,' that's when it came to me that, rather than make Bruce Wayne the playboy version we've seen before, there's another version who had gone through a great tragedy and become a recluse. So I started making this connection to Gus Van Sant's Last Days, and the idea of this fictionalised version of Kurt Cobain being in this kind of decaying manor.\" \"Something in the Way\" was used in trailers to promote The Batman prior to its release and is featured twice in the film.",
"title": "Media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "In September 2009, the Roy Smiles play Kurt and Sid debuted at the Trafalgar Studios in London's West End. The play, set in Cobain's greenhouse on the day of his suicide, revolves around the ghost of Sid Vicious visiting Cobain to try to convince him not to kill himself. Cobain was played by Shaun Evans.",
"title": "Media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Cobain was included as a playable character in the 2009 video game Guitar Hero 5; he can be used to play songs by Nirvana and other acts. Novoselic and Grohl released a statement condemning the inclusion and urging the developer, Activision, to alter it, saying they had no control over the use of Cobain's likeness. Love denied that she had given permission, saying it was \"the result of a cabal of a few assholes' greed\", and threatened to sue. The vice-president of Activision said that Love had contributed photos and videos to the development and had been \"great to work with\".",
"title": "Media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "For a complete list of all Nirvana releases see Nirvana discography",
"title": "Discography"
}
] |
Kurt Donald Cobain was an American musician, singer, and songwriter. He became known as the co-founder, lead vocalist, guitarist, and primary songwriter of the rock band Nirvana. Through his angst-fueled songwriting and anti-establishment persona, his compositions widened the thematic conventions of mainstream rock music. He was heralded as a spokesman of Generation X and is widely recognized as one of the most influential alternative rock musicians. Cobain formed Nirvana with Krist Novoselic and Aaron Burckhard in 1987, establishing themselves as part of the Seattle music scene that later became known as grunge. Burckhard was replaced by Chad Channing before the band released their debut album Bleach (1989) on Sub Pop, after which Channing was in turn replaced by Dave Grohl. With this finalized line-up, the band signed with DGC and found commercial success with the single "Smells Like Teen Spirit" from their critically acclaimed second album Nevermind (1991). Cobain wrote many other hit Nirvana songs such as "About a Girl", "All Apologies", "Aneurysm", "Come as You Are", "Heart-Shaped Box", "In Bloom", "Lithium", "Something in the Way", and "You Know You're Right". Although he was hailed as the voice of Generation X following Nirvana's sudden success, he resented this and believed his message and artistic vision had been misinterpreted by the public. During his final years, Cobain struggled with a heroin addiction and chronic depression. He also struggled with the personal and professional pressures of fame, and was often in the spotlight for his tumultuous marriage to fellow musician Courtney Love, with whom he had a daughter named Frances. In March 1994, he overdosed on a combination of champagne and Rohypnol, subsequently undergoing an intervention and detox program. On April 8, 1994, he was found dead in the garage of his Seattle home at the age of 27, with police concluding that he had died around three days earlier from a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head. Cobain was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, alongside Nirvana bandmates Novoselic and Grohl, in their first year of eligibility in 2014. Rolling Stone included him on its lists of the 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time, 100 Greatest Guitarists, and 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. He was ranked 7th by MTV in the "22 Greatest Voices in Music", and was placed 20th by Hit Parader on their 2006 list of the "100 Greatest Metal Singers of All Time".
|
2001-09-28T19:06:43Z
|
2023-12-29T20:50:24Z
|
[
"Template:Pp",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:ISBN",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Sister project links",
"Template:AllMusic",
"Template:Redirect",
"Template:'",
"Template:Citation needed",
"Template:' \"",
"Template:Nbsp",
"Template:Refend",
"Template:Portal bar",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Convert",
"Template:Refbegin",
"Template:Circa",
"Template:Infobox person",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Pp-move",
"Template:Cbignore",
"Template:Discogs artist",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Cite magazine",
"Template:Courtney Love",
"Template:2014 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame",
"Template:Blockquote",
"Template:Quote box",
"Template:Cite AV media",
"Template:Nirvana (band)",
"Template:Rp",
"Template:Use American English",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:IMDb name",
"Template:Use mdy dates"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Cobain
|
16,708 |
Kent Beck
|
Kent Beck (born 1961) is an American software engineer and the creator of extreme programming, a software development methodology that eschews rigid formal specification for a collaborative and iterative design process. Beck was one of the 17 original signatories of the Agile Manifesto, the founding document for agile software development. Extreme and Agile methods are closely associated with Test-Driven Development (TDD), of which Beck is perhaps the leading proponent.
Beck pioneered software design patterns, as well as the commercial application of Smalltalk. He wrote the SUnit unit testing framework for Smalltalk, which spawned the xUnit series of frameworks, notably JUnit for Java, which Beck wrote with Erich Gamma. Beck popularized CRC cards with Ward Cunningham, the inventor of the wiki.
He lives in San Francisco, California and worked at social media company Facebook. In 2019, Beck joined Gusto as a software fellow and coach, where he coaches engineering teams as they build out payroll systems for small businesses.
Beck attended the University of Oregon between 1979 and 1987, receiving B.S. and M.S. degrees in computer and information science.
In 1996 Beck was hired to work on the Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation System. Beck in turn brought in Ron Jeffries. In March 1996 the development team estimated the system would be ready to go into production around one year later. In 1997 the development team adopted a way of working which is now formalized as extreme programming. The one-year delivery target was nearly achieved, with actual delivery being only a couple of months late.
The book illustrates the use of unit testing as part of the methodology, including examples in Java and Python. One section includes using test-driven development to develop a unit testing framework.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Kent Beck (born 1961) is an American software engineer and the creator of extreme programming, a software development methodology that eschews rigid formal specification for a collaborative and iterative design process. Beck was one of the 17 original signatories of the Agile Manifesto, the founding document for agile software development. Extreme and Agile methods are closely associated with Test-Driven Development (TDD), of which Beck is perhaps the leading proponent.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Beck pioneered software design patterns, as well as the commercial application of Smalltalk. He wrote the SUnit unit testing framework for Smalltalk, which spawned the xUnit series of frameworks, notably JUnit for Java, which Beck wrote with Erich Gamma. Beck popularized CRC cards with Ward Cunningham, the inventor of the wiki.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "He lives in San Francisco, California and worked at social media company Facebook. In 2019, Beck joined Gusto as a software fellow and coach, where he coaches engineering teams as they build out payroll systems for small businesses.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Beck attended the University of Oregon between 1979 and 1987, receiving B.S. and M.S. degrees in computer and information science.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In 1996 Beck was hired to work on the Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation System. Beck in turn brought in Ron Jeffries. In March 1996 the development team estimated the system would be ready to go into production around one year later. In 1997 the development team adopted a way of working which is now formalized as extreme programming. The one-year delivery target was nearly achieved, with actual delivery being only a couple of months late.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The book illustrates the use of unit testing as part of the methodology, including examples in Java and Python. One section includes using test-driven development to develop a unit testing framework.",
"title": "Publications"
}
] |
Kent Beck is an American software engineer and the creator of extreme programming, a software development methodology that eschews rigid formal specification for a collaborative and iterative design process. Beck was one of the 17 original signatories of the Agile Manifesto, the founding document for agile software development. Extreme and Agile methods are closely associated with Test-Driven Development (TDD), of which Beck is perhaps the leading proponent. Beck pioneered software design patterns, as well as the commercial application of Smalltalk. He wrote the SUnit unit testing framework for Smalltalk, which spawned the xUnit series of frameworks, notably JUnit for Java, which Beck wrote with Erich Gamma. Beck popularized CRC cards with Ward Cunningham, the inventor of the wiki. He lives in San Francisco, California and worked at social media company Facebook. In 2019, Beck joined Gusto as a software fellow and coach, where he coaches engineering teams as they build out payroll systems for small businesses.
|
2001-05-16T20:50:57Z
|
2023-12-14T16:52:47Z
|
[
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Commons category",
"Template:Wikiquote",
"Template:Software engineering",
"Template:Use mdy dates",
"Template:Use American English",
"Template:ISBN",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Infobox scientist",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite web"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_Beck
|
16,709 |
Swedish krona
|
The krona (Swedish: [ˈkrûːna] ; plural: kronor; sign: kr; code: SEK) is the currency of Sweden. It is one of the currencies of the European Union and Sweden is legally bound to adopt the euro in the future. Both the ISO code "SEK" and currency sign "kr" are in common use for the krona; the former precedes or follows the value, the latter usually follows it but, especially in the past, it sometimes preceded the value. In English, the currency is sometimes referred to as the Swedish crown, as krona means "crown" in Swedish. The Swedish krona was the ninth-most traded currency in the world by value in April 2016.
One krona is subdivided into 100 öre (singular; plural öre or ören, where the former is always used after a cardinal number, hence "50 öre", but otherwise the latter is often preferred in contemporary speech). Coins as small as 1 öre were formerly in use, but the last coin smaller than 1 krona was discontinued in 2010. Goods can still be priced in öre, but all sums are rounded to the nearest krona when paying with cash. The word öre is ultimately derived from the Latin word for gold (aurum).
The introduction of the krona, which replaced the riksdaler at par, was a result of the Scandinavian Monetary Union, which came into effect in 1876 and lasted until the beginning of World War I. The parties to the union were the Scandinavian countries, where the name was krona in Sweden and krone in Denmark and Norway, which in English literally means "crown". The three currencies were on the gold standard, with the krona/krone defined as 1⁄2480 of a kilogram of pure gold.
The mutual equivalence of all three currencies ended in World War I when their convertibility to gold was suspended. While their gold parities remained during most of the interwar period, these currencies were generally quoted at varying market rates.
On 11 September 2012, the Riksbank announced a new series of coins with new sizes to replace the 1-krona and 5-kronor coins; the new coins arrived in October 2016. The design of the coins follows the theme of singer-songwriter Ted Gärdestad's song, "Sol, vind och vatten" (English: "Sun, wind and water"), with the designs depicting the elements on the reverse side of the coins. This also included the reintroduction of the 2-kronor coin, while the current 10-kronor coin remained the same. The new coins also have a new portrait of the king in their design. One of the reasons for a new series of coins was to end the use of nickel (for allergy reasons). Vending machines and parking meters have to a fairly high degree stopped accepting coins and accept only bank cards or mobile phone payments.
Between 1873 and 1876, coins in denominations of 1, 2, 5, 10, 25, and 50 öre and 1, 2, 10, and 20 kronor were introduced. The 1, 2 and 5 öre were in bronze, the 10, 25, 50 öre and 1 krona and 2 kronor were in silver, and the 10 and 20 kronor were in gold. Gold 5-kronor coins were added in 1881.
In 1873 the Scandinavian Monetary Union currency was fixed so that 2,480 kronor purchased 1 kg of gold. In 2017 the price of gold is 365,289 kronor per kg. So one öre in 1873 bought as much gold as 1.47 kronor in 2017. So if it is reasonable to have the smallest denomination coin 1 krona today, in 1873 a reasonable smallest denomination coin was 1 öre. A 10 kr gold coin weighed 4.4803 grams with 900 fineness so that the fine weight was 4.03327 grams or exactly 1/248th of a kilogram.
In 1902, production of gold coins ceased, and was briefly restarted in 1920 and 1925 before ceasing entirely. Due to metal shortages during World War I, iron replaced bronze between 1917 and 1919. Nickel-bronze replaced silver in the 10, 25 and 50 öre in 1920, with silver returning in 1927.
Metal shortages due to World War II again led to changes in the Swedish coinage. Between 1940 and 1947, the nickel-bronze 10, 25 and 50 öre were again issued. In 1942, iron again replaced bronze (until 1952) and the silver content of the other coins was reduced. In 1962, cupronickel replaced silver in the 10-öre, 25-öre and 50-öre coins.
In 1968, the 2-kronor switched to cupronickel and the 1-krona switched to cupronickel-clad copper (it was replaced entirely by cupronickel in 1982). Nonetheless, all previous mintages of the 1-krona (since 1875) and 2-kronor (since 1876) were still legal tender until 2017, though 2-kronor coins were extremely rarely seen in circulation as they have not been issued since 1971. The 2-kronor coins contained 40% silver until 1966, which meant they had been for several years worth much more than face value, so most have been bought and melted down by arbitrageurs, and the rest are kept by collectors.
In 1954, 1955 and 1971, 5-kronor silver coins were produced, with designs similar to contemporary 1-krona and 2-kronor coins. In 1972, a new, smaller 5-kronor coin was introduced, struck in cupronickel-clad nickel. The current design has been produced since 1976. 5-kronor coins minted since 1954 are legal tender but tend to be kept by collectors for their silver content.
The royal motto of the monarch is also inscribed on many of the coins. A new 5-kronor coin was designed in 1974, at a time when there were political efforts to abandon the monarchy and the young inexperienced king. The monarchy remained, but the 5-kronor was not given a portrait. Coins minted before 1974 have the same size, but contain the portrait of King Gustav VI Adolf and his royal motto.
Cash rounding (Swedish: öresavrundning), commonly called Swedish rounding, is a legally-enforced method of rounding off change, up or down, to the nearest unit of physical currency, while retaining the öre as pricing and accounting unit. It was required in conjunction with the phaseout of smaller coins, as follows:
In 1971 the 2-kronor coin ceased production. In 1972 the sizes of the 5-öre and 5-kronor coins were reduced.
In 1991, aluminium-brass ("Nordic gold") 10-kronor coins were introduced; previous 10-kronor coins are not legal tender. In the same year bronze-coloured 50-öre coins were introduced.
On 18 December 2008, the Riksbank announced a proposal to phase out the 50-öre, the final öre coin, by 2010. The öre would still remain a subdivision unit for electronic payments. The reasons may have included low purchasing power, higher production and distribution cost than the value and the coins cannot be used in most parking machines and vending machines. On 25 March 2009, the Riksdag formally decided to enact the law to abolish 50-öre coins as legal tender. Under that law, the final date payments could be made with 50-öre coins was 30 September 2010. Remaining 50-öre coins could be exchanged at banks until the end of March 2011.
After the launch of the current coin series in 2016, all the old kronor coins have been invalid since 2017. They cannot be used for payments, nor can they be exchanged for legal tender at any bank, and are instead instructed to be recycled as metal.
Jubilee and commemorative coins have been minted, and those since 1897 are also legal tender.
In 1874, notes were introduced by the Riksbank in denominations of 1 krona and 5, 10, 50, 100 and 1,000 kronor. The 1 krona was only initially issued for two years, although it reappeared between 1914 and 1920. In 1939 and 1958, 10,000-kronor notes were issued.
Production of the 5-kronor note ceased in 1981, although a coin had been issued since 1972. With the introduction of a 10-krona coin in 1991, production of 10-kronor notes ceased and a 20-kronor note was introduced.
All remaining one krona banknotes became invalid after 31 December 1987. All remaining five krona and ten krona banknotes became invalid after 31 December 1998.
An exhaustive list of every banknote design since 1874 is not included, but the following five designs were or will be retired in 2016–2017. The oldest design began to be printed in 1985.
A 20-kronor banknote (a new denomination) was printed 1991–1995 with a portrait of the writer Selma Lagerlöf and on the reverse was an engraved interpretation of a passage from the book The Wonderful Adventures of Nils. The banknote became invalid after 31 December 2005. A more secure version with the same portrait was printed from 1997 to 2008 and became invalid after 30 June 2016.
A 50-kronor banknote (3rd design since 1896) was printed 1996–2003 with a portrait of the singer Jenny Lind and on the reverse was a picture of a silver harp and its tonal range. The banknote became invalid after 31 December 2013. A more secure version with the same portrait was printed from 2006 to 2011 and became invalid after 30 June 2016.
A 100-kronor banknote (3rd design since 1898) was printed 1986–2000 with a portrait of the botanist Carl Linnaeus and on the reverse was a drawing of a bee pollinating a flower. The banknote became invalid after 31 December 2005. A more secure version with the same portrait was introduced in 2001 and became invalid after 30 June 2017.
A 500-kronor banknote (a new denomination) in a blue shade was introduced in 1985 with a portrait of King Charles XI and on the reverse an engraving depicts Christopher Polhem, the "father of Swedish engineering". These banknotes became invalid on 31 December 1998. A 500-kronor banknote (red, but without foil strips) with the same portrait was printed 1989–2000. This banknote became invalid after 31 December 2005. A more secure version with the same portrait was introduced in 2001 and became invalid after 30 June 2017. The banknote had some controversy in 1985 because of the executions of "Snapphane" guerrilla warriors that King Charles XI ordered.
The first two designs of 1,000-kronor banknotes (printed from 1894 to 1950 and 1952–1973) became invalid on 31 December 1987. The third design with portrait of Jöns Jacob Berzelius (printed 1976–1988) and declared invalid on 31 December 1998. In preparation for retirement of the 10,000-kronor banknotes a new 1,000-kronor banknotes (of the 4th design / without foil strips) was printed from 1989 to 1991 with a portrait of Gustav Vasa and on the reverse a harvest picture from Olaus Magnus's Description of the Northern Peoples from 1555. Circulation peaked at over 48 million in 2001.
On 15 March 2006, the Riksbank introduced a new, more secure 1,000-kronor banknote with the same portrait and the Riksbank became the first central bank in the world to use the security feature of MOTION (a moving image in the striped band) on the new 1,000-kronor banknote. When the banknote is tilted, the picture in the striped band appears to move. The Vasa banknote without security thread became invalid after 31 December 2013 at which time there was only 10 million in circulation. The Vasa banknotes with the security thread became invalid after 30 June 2016 at which time there was under 4 million in circulation. Replacement banknotes featuring Dag Hammarskjöld became valid on 1 October 2015, but were circulated in considerably fewer quantities (less than 3.5 million), thus reducing the supply of cash in Sweden.
The 10,000 krona banknote was always printed in small quantities as it was one of the most valuable banknotes in the world. The first design featuring the Head of Mercury was printed in 1939 and became invalid after 31 December 1987. The second design was printed 1958 and featured a portrait of Gustav VI Adolf, and became invalid after 31 December 1991.
Invalid banknotes can be redeemed via the Riksbank, with an administration fee of 200 kronor.
On 6 April 2011, the Riksbank announced the names of the persons whose portraits would decorate the new series of banknotes that would be introduced in 2015. This would also include a new 200-kronor banknote. These are:
On 24 April 2012, the Riksbank announced the base for the new designs of the banknotes, based on Göran Österlund's entry titled Cultural Journey.
The first banknotes, the 20, 50, 200, and 1,000 krona, were issued on 1 October 2015 with the other two notes, the 100 and 500 krona, to follow on 3 October 2016.
Opera singer Malena Ernman has criticized the Riksbank for choosing a design where Birgit Nilsson has been depicted performing Die Walküre by Richard Wagner. She pointed out that it was very inappropriate to include something by Wagner, whose works were associated with Nazi Germany, in a time of increasing problems with antisemitism in Sweden. Wagner died long before the Nazi era, and the association is that Hitler liked his music. The Riksbank replied saying that it is "unfortunate that the choice of design is seen as negative", and stated that it is not going to be changed.
Dagens Nyheter journalist Björn Wiman went further in his criticism, condemning the Riksbank for selecting Nilsson at all for the 500-kronor banknote. He brings up an example from Nilsson's 1995 autobiography, where she described Mauritz Rosengarten from Decca using antisemitic jokes about greed.
To see where Swedish krona ranks in "most traded currencies", read the article on the Foreign exchange market.
The exchange rate of the Swedish krona against other currencies has historically been dependent on the monetary policy pursued by Sweden at the time. Since the Swedish banking rescue, a managed float regimen has been upheld.
The weakest the krona has been relative to the euro was 6 March 2009 when one euro bought 11.6465 SEK. The strongest the krona has been relative to the euro was on 13 August 2012 when one euro bought 8.2065 SEK. The weakness in the euro was due to the crisis in Greece which began in July 2012 and fear of further spreading to Italy and Spain. The average exchange rate since the beginning of 2002 when the euro banknote and coins were issued and 1 March 2017 was 9.2884 SEK/EUR.
According to the 1994 accession treaty (effective 1 January 1995), Sweden is required to join the eurozone and therefore must convert to the euro once the convergence criteria are met. Notwithstanding this, on 14 September 2003, a consultative Swedish referendum was held on the euro, in which 56% of voters were opposed to the adoption of the currency, out of an overall turnout of 82.6%. The Swedish government has argued such a course of action is possible since one of the requirements for eurozone membership is a prior two-year membership of the ERM II. By simply not joining the exchange rate mechanism, the Swedish government is provided a formal loophole avoiding the theoretical requirement of adopting the euro.
Some of Sweden's major parties continue to believe it would be in the national interest to join, but all parties have pledged to abide by the results of the referendum, and none have shown any interest in raising the issue again. There was an agreement among the parties not to discuss the issue before the 2010 general election. In a poll from May 2007, 33.3% were in favour, while 53.8% were against and 13.0% were uncertain.
In February 2009, Fredrik Reinfeldt, the prime minister of Sweden, stated that a new referendum on the euro issue will not be held until support is gained from the people and all the major parties. Therefore, the timing is now at the discretion of the Social Democrats. He added, the request of Mona Sahlin, former leader of the Social Democratic Party, for deferral of a new referendum until after the 2010 mandate period should be respected.
As of 2014, support for Swedish membership of the euro among the general population is low. In September 2013, support fell as low as 9%. The only party in the Riksdag that supports Swedish entry in the euro (as of 2015) is the Liberal Party.
Sweden is a wealthy country and in the 1970s and 1980s the value of banknotes and coins per capita was one of the highest in the world. In 1991, the largest banknote worth 10,000kr that was in circulation since 1958 was declared invalid and no longer was legal tender. For a discussion of the financial and banking crisis that hit Sweden in the early 1990s see the article History of Sweden (1991–present) and Swedish banking rescue.
Unlike the United States, which by policy never declares issued money invalid, Sweden and most other European countries have a date when older series of banknotes or older coin designs are invalid and are no longer legal tender. Invalid old banknotes of any age can, however, be deposited in the Riksbank, and the value be sent to a bank account.
From the years 2001 to 2008 banknotes and coins were circulated at a near constant level of around 12,000 krona per capita, but in 2006 a modified 1,000-krona banknote with a motion security strip was produced. Within seven years the banknotes without the strip were declared invalid, leaving only a radically reduced number of banknotes with foil valid. The Vasa 1,000-krona banknote without the foil strip became invalid after 31 December 2013, and the pieces with the foil strip are invalid after 30 June 2016. Also the Swish mobile payment system was established in Sweden in 2012 and become a popular alternative to cash payments.
Although many countries are performing larger and larger share of transactions by electronic means, Sweden is unique in that it is also reducing its cash in circulation by a significant percentage. According to Bank for International Settlements the last year Sweden was surpassed in cash on a per capita basis converted to United States dollars by the US in 1993, the Euro Area in 2003, Australia in 2007, Canada in 2009, United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia in 2013, South Korea in 2014, Russia in 2016, and Mexico in 2019. As of 2019 Sweden was still circulating more cash per person (converted to USD) than Argentina, Brazil, Turkey, India, Indonesia, and South Africa.
The tables show the value of the banknotes and coins per capita for participating countries on Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI). Local currency is converted to US dollars using end of the year rates.
The circulation levels in the table above were reported to the Bank for International Settlements. Possible discrepancies with these statistics and other sources may be because some sources exclude "commemorative banknotes and coins" (3.20% of total for Sweden in 2015) and other sources exclude "banknotes and coin held by banks" (2.68% of total for Sweden in 2015) as opposed "banknotes and coin in circulation outside banks".
Circulation levels of cash on a per capita basis, are reduced by 51% from the high in 2007 compared to 2018. Speculation about Sweden declaring all banknotes and coins invalid at some future date is widespread in the media with Björn Ulvaeus as a celebrity advocate of a cashless Sweden which he believes will result in a safer society because simple robbery will involve stealing goods that must be fenced.
The value of the payments between households, companies and authorities in Sweden amounts to about 20,000 kronor annual per capita in cash. In shops, almost one in seven payments is made in cash. More than half of the adult population has the Swish payment app. Annual withdrawals from Swedish ATMs in 2015 amount to 15,300 kronor per capita. According to Skingsley, "what some consumers, smaller companies and local clubs often see as a problem, is not so much getting hold of cash, but being able to deposit it in a bank account."
To see how circulation of the Swedish krona ranks compared to other currencies see Bank for International Settlements#Red Books.
The e-krona (electronic krona) is a proposed electronic currency to be issued directly by the Riksbank. It is different from the electronic transfers using commercial bank money as central bank money has no nominal credit risk, as it stands for a claim on the central bank, which cannot go bankrupt, at least not for debts in Swedish krona.
The declining use of cash in Sweden is going to be reinforced cyclically. As more businesses find that they can function without accepting cash, the number of businesses refusing to accept cash will increase. That will re-enforce the need for more and more citizens to get the Swish app which is already used by half the population. Cash machines, which are controlled by a Swedish bank consortium, are being dismantled by the hundreds, especially in rural areas.
The Riksbank has not taken a decision on issuing e-krona. First, the Riksbank needs to investigate a number of technical, legal and practical issues. "The declining use of cash in Sweden means that this is more of a burning issue for us than for most other central banks. Although it may appear simple at first glance to issue e-krona, this is something entirely new for a central bank and there is no precedent to follow". If the Riksbank chooses to issue e-krona, it is not to replace cash, but to act as a complement to it. "The Riksbank will continue issuing banknotes and coins as long as there is demand for them in society. It is our statutory duty and we will of course continue to live up to it," concluded Deputy Governor Cecilia Skingsley.
In December 2020, Sweden's Minister for Financial Markets Per Bolund announced a government review to explore the feasibility of moving to a digital currency that was expected to be completed by the end of November in 2022. Anna Kinberg Batra, a former chairwoman of the Riksbank's finance committee, was announced as the leader of the review. As of 2023, no decision has been made.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The krona (Swedish: [ˈkrûːna] ; plural: kronor; sign: kr; code: SEK) is the currency of Sweden. It is one of the currencies of the European Union and Sweden is legally bound to adopt the euro in the future. Both the ISO code \"SEK\" and currency sign \"kr\" are in common use for the krona; the former precedes or follows the value, the latter usually follows it but, especially in the past, it sometimes preceded the value. In English, the currency is sometimes referred to as the Swedish crown, as krona means \"crown\" in Swedish. The Swedish krona was the ninth-most traded currency in the world by value in April 2016.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "One krona is subdivided into 100 öre (singular; plural öre or ören, where the former is always used after a cardinal number, hence \"50 öre\", but otherwise the latter is often preferred in contemporary speech). Coins as small as 1 öre were formerly in use, but the last coin smaller than 1 krona was discontinued in 2010. Goods can still be priced in öre, but all sums are rounded to the nearest krona when paying with cash. The word öre is ultimately derived from the Latin word for gold (aurum).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The introduction of the krona, which replaced the riksdaler at par, was a result of the Scandinavian Monetary Union, which came into effect in 1876 and lasted until the beginning of World War I. The parties to the union were the Scandinavian countries, where the name was krona in Sweden and krone in Denmark and Norway, which in English literally means \"crown\". The three currencies were on the gold standard, with the krona/krone defined as 1⁄2480 of a kilogram of pure gold.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The mutual equivalence of all three currencies ended in World War I when their convertibility to gold was suspended. While their gold parities remained during most of the interwar period, these currencies were generally quoted at varying market rates.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "On 11 September 2012, the Riksbank announced a new series of coins with new sizes to replace the 1-krona and 5-kronor coins; the new coins arrived in October 2016. The design of the coins follows the theme of singer-songwriter Ted Gärdestad's song, \"Sol, vind och vatten\" (English: \"Sun, wind and water\"), with the designs depicting the elements on the reverse side of the coins. This also included the reintroduction of the 2-kronor coin, while the current 10-kronor coin remained the same. The new coins also have a new portrait of the king in their design. One of the reasons for a new series of coins was to end the use of nickel (for allergy reasons). Vending machines and parking meters have to a fairly high degree stopped accepting coins and accept only bank cards or mobile phone payments.",
"title": "Coins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Between 1873 and 1876, coins in denominations of 1, 2, 5, 10, 25, and 50 öre and 1, 2, 10, and 20 kronor were introduced. The 1, 2 and 5 öre were in bronze, the 10, 25, 50 öre and 1 krona and 2 kronor were in silver, and the 10 and 20 kronor were in gold. Gold 5-kronor coins were added in 1881.",
"title": "Coins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In 1873 the Scandinavian Monetary Union currency was fixed so that 2,480 kronor purchased 1 kg of gold. In 2017 the price of gold is 365,289 kronor per kg. So one öre in 1873 bought as much gold as 1.47 kronor in 2017. So if it is reasonable to have the smallest denomination coin 1 krona today, in 1873 a reasonable smallest denomination coin was 1 öre. A 10 kr gold coin weighed 4.4803 grams with 900 fineness so that the fine weight was 4.03327 grams or exactly 1/248th of a kilogram.",
"title": "Coins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In 1902, production of gold coins ceased, and was briefly restarted in 1920 and 1925 before ceasing entirely. Due to metal shortages during World War I, iron replaced bronze between 1917 and 1919. Nickel-bronze replaced silver in the 10, 25 and 50 öre in 1920, with silver returning in 1927.",
"title": "Coins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Metal shortages due to World War II again led to changes in the Swedish coinage. Between 1940 and 1947, the nickel-bronze 10, 25 and 50 öre were again issued. In 1942, iron again replaced bronze (until 1952) and the silver content of the other coins was reduced. In 1962, cupronickel replaced silver in the 10-öre, 25-öre and 50-öre coins.",
"title": "Coins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In 1968, the 2-kronor switched to cupronickel and the 1-krona switched to cupronickel-clad copper (it was replaced entirely by cupronickel in 1982). Nonetheless, all previous mintages of the 1-krona (since 1875) and 2-kronor (since 1876) were still legal tender until 2017, though 2-kronor coins were extremely rarely seen in circulation as they have not been issued since 1971. The 2-kronor coins contained 40% silver until 1966, which meant they had been for several years worth much more than face value, so most have been bought and melted down by arbitrageurs, and the rest are kept by collectors.",
"title": "Coins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In 1954, 1955 and 1971, 5-kronor silver coins were produced, with designs similar to contemporary 1-krona and 2-kronor coins. In 1972, a new, smaller 5-kronor coin was introduced, struck in cupronickel-clad nickel. The current design has been produced since 1976. 5-kronor coins minted since 1954 are legal tender but tend to be kept by collectors for their silver content.",
"title": "Coins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The royal motto of the monarch is also inscribed on many of the coins. A new 5-kronor coin was designed in 1974, at a time when there were political efforts to abandon the monarchy and the young inexperienced king. The monarchy remained, but the 5-kronor was not given a portrait. Coins minted before 1974 have the same size, but contain the portrait of King Gustav VI Adolf and his royal motto.",
"title": "Coins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Cash rounding (Swedish: öresavrundning), commonly called Swedish rounding, is a legally-enforced method of rounding off change, up or down, to the nearest unit of physical currency, while retaining the öre as pricing and accounting unit. It was required in conjunction with the phaseout of smaller coins, as follows:",
"title": "Coins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In 1971 the 2-kronor coin ceased production. In 1972 the sizes of the 5-öre and 5-kronor coins were reduced.",
"title": "Coins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In 1991, aluminium-brass (\"Nordic gold\") 10-kronor coins were introduced; previous 10-kronor coins are not legal tender. In the same year bronze-coloured 50-öre coins were introduced.",
"title": "Coins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "On 18 December 2008, the Riksbank announced a proposal to phase out the 50-öre, the final öre coin, by 2010. The öre would still remain a subdivision unit for electronic payments. The reasons may have included low purchasing power, higher production and distribution cost than the value and the coins cannot be used in most parking machines and vending machines. On 25 March 2009, the Riksdag formally decided to enact the law to abolish 50-öre coins as legal tender. Under that law, the final date payments could be made with 50-öre coins was 30 September 2010. Remaining 50-öre coins could be exchanged at banks until the end of March 2011.",
"title": "Coins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "After the launch of the current coin series in 2016, all the old kronor coins have been invalid since 2017. They cannot be used for payments, nor can they be exchanged for legal tender at any bank, and are instead instructed to be recycled as metal.",
"title": "Coins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Jubilee and commemorative coins have been minted, and those since 1897 are also legal tender.",
"title": "Coins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In 1874, notes were introduced by the Riksbank in denominations of 1 krona and 5, 10, 50, 100 and 1,000 kronor. The 1 krona was only initially issued for two years, although it reappeared between 1914 and 1920. In 1939 and 1958, 10,000-kronor notes were issued.",
"title": "Banknotes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Production of the 5-kronor note ceased in 1981, although a coin had been issued since 1972. With the introduction of a 10-krona coin in 1991, production of 10-kronor notes ceased and a 20-kronor note was introduced.",
"title": "Banknotes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "All remaining one krona banknotes became invalid after 31 December 1987. All remaining five krona and ten krona banknotes became invalid after 31 December 1998.",
"title": "Banknotes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "An exhaustive list of every banknote design since 1874 is not included, but the following five designs were or will be retired in 2016–2017. The oldest design began to be printed in 1985.",
"title": "Banknotes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "A 20-kronor banknote (a new denomination) was printed 1991–1995 with a portrait of the writer Selma Lagerlöf and on the reverse was an engraved interpretation of a passage from the book The Wonderful Adventures of Nils. The banknote became invalid after 31 December 2005. A more secure version with the same portrait was printed from 1997 to 2008 and became invalid after 30 June 2016.",
"title": "Banknotes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "A 50-kronor banknote (3rd design since 1896) was printed 1996–2003 with a portrait of the singer Jenny Lind and on the reverse was a picture of a silver harp and its tonal range. The banknote became invalid after 31 December 2013. A more secure version with the same portrait was printed from 2006 to 2011 and became invalid after 30 June 2016.",
"title": "Banknotes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "A 100-kronor banknote (3rd design since 1898) was printed 1986–2000 with a portrait of the botanist Carl Linnaeus and on the reverse was a drawing of a bee pollinating a flower. The banknote became invalid after 31 December 2005. A more secure version with the same portrait was introduced in 2001 and became invalid after 30 June 2017.",
"title": "Banknotes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "A 500-kronor banknote (a new denomination) in a blue shade was introduced in 1985 with a portrait of King Charles XI and on the reverse an engraving depicts Christopher Polhem, the \"father of Swedish engineering\". These banknotes became invalid on 31 December 1998. A 500-kronor banknote (red, but without foil strips) with the same portrait was printed 1989–2000. This banknote became invalid after 31 December 2005. A more secure version with the same portrait was introduced in 2001 and became invalid after 30 June 2017. The banknote had some controversy in 1985 because of the executions of \"Snapphane\" guerrilla warriors that King Charles XI ordered.",
"title": "Banknotes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The first two designs of 1,000-kronor banknotes (printed from 1894 to 1950 and 1952–1973) became invalid on 31 December 1987. The third design with portrait of Jöns Jacob Berzelius (printed 1976–1988) and declared invalid on 31 December 1998. In preparation for retirement of the 10,000-kronor banknotes a new 1,000-kronor banknotes (of the 4th design / without foil strips) was printed from 1989 to 1991 with a portrait of Gustav Vasa and on the reverse a harvest picture from Olaus Magnus's Description of the Northern Peoples from 1555. Circulation peaked at over 48 million in 2001.",
"title": "Banknotes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "On 15 March 2006, the Riksbank introduced a new, more secure 1,000-kronor banknote with the same portrait and the Riksbank became the first central bank in the world to use the security feature of MOTION (a moving image in the striped band) on the new 1,000-kronor banknote. When the banknote is tilted, the picture in the striped band appears to move. The Vasa banknote without security thread became invalid after 31 December 2013 at which time there was only 10 million in circulation. The Vasa banknotes with the security thread became invalid after 30 June 2016 at which time there was under 4 million in circulation. Replacement banknotes featuring Dag Hammarskjöld became valid on 1 October 2015, but were circulated in considerably fewer quantities (less than 3.5 million), thus reducing the supply of cash in Sweden.",
"title": "Banknotes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The 10,000 krona banknote was always printed in small quantities as it was one of the most valuable banknotes in the world. The first design featuring the Head of Mercury was printed in 1939 and became invalid after 31 December 1987. The second design was printed 1958 and featured a portrait of Gustav VI Adolf, and became invalid after 31 December 1991.",
"title": "Banknotes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Invalid banknotes can be redeemed via the Riksbank, with an administration fee of 200 kronor.",
"title": "Banknotes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "On 6 April 2011, the Riksbank announced the names of the persons whose portraits would decorate the new series of banknotes that would be introduced in 2015. This would also include a new 200-kronor banknote. These are:",
"title": "Banknotes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "On 24 April 2012, the Riksbank announced the base for the new designs of the banknotes, based on Göran Österlund's entry titled Cultural Journey.",
"title": "Banknotes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The first banknotes, the 20, 50, 200, and 1,000 krona, were issued on 1 October 2015 with the other two notes, the 100 and 500 krona, to follow on 3 October 2016.",
"title": "Banknotes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Opera singer Malena Ernman has criticized the Riksbank for choosing a design where Birgit Nilsson has been depicted performing Die Walküre by Richard Wagner. She pointed out that it was very inappropriate to include something by Wagner, whose works were associated with Nazi Germany, in a time of increasing problems with antisemitism in Sweden. Wagner died long before the Nazi era, and the association is that Hitler liked his music. The Riksbank replied saying that it is \"unfortunate that the choice of design is seen as negative\", and stated that it is not going to be changed.",
"title": "Banknotes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Dagens Nyheter journalist Björn Wiman went further in his criticism, condemning the Riksbank for selecting Nilsson at all for the 500-kronor banknote. He brings up an example from Nilsson's 1995 autobiography, where she described Mauritz Rosengarten from Decca using antisemitic jokes about greed.",
"title": "Banknotes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "To see where Swedish krona ranks in \"most traded currencies\", read the article on the Foreign exchange market.",
"title": "Exchange rate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The exchange rate of the Swedish krona against other currencies has historically been dependent on the monetary policy pursued by Sweden at the time. Since the Swedish banking rescue, a managed float regimen has been upheld.",
"title": "Exchange rate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The weakest the krona has been relative to the euro was 6 March 2009 when one euro bought 11.6465 SEK. The strongest the krona has been relative to the euro was on 13 August 2012 when one euro bought 8.2065 SEK. The weakness in the euro was due to the crisis in Greece which began in July 2012 and fear of further spreading to Italy and Spain. The average exchange rate since the beginning of 2002 when the euro banknote and coins were issued and 1 March 2017 was 9.2884 SEK/EUR.",
"title": "Exchange rate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "According to the 1994 accession treaty (effective 1 January 1995), Sweden is required to join the eurozone and therefore must convert to the euro once the convergence criteria are met. Notwithstanding this, on 14 September 2003, a consultative Swedish referendum was held on the euro, in which 56% of voters were opposed to the adoption of the currency, out of an overall turnout of 82.6%. The Swedish government has argued such a course of action is possible since one of the requirements for eurozone membership is a prior two-year membership of the ERM II. By simply not joining the exchange rate mechanism, the Swedish government is provided a formal loophole avoiding the theoretical requirement of adopting the euro.",
"title": "Relationship to the euro"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Some of Sweden's major parties continue to believe it would be in the national interest to join, but all parties have pledged to abide by the results of the referendum, and none have shown any interest in raising the issue again. There was an agreement among the parties not to discuss the issue before the 2010 general election. In a poll from May 2007, 33.3% were in favour, while 53.8% were against and 13.0% were uncertain.",
"title": "Relationship to the euro"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In February 2009, Fredrik Reinfeldt, the prime minister of Sweden, stated that a new referendum on the euro issue will not be held until support is gained from the people and all the major parties. Therefore, the timing is now at the discretion of the Social Democrats. He added, the request of Mona Sahlin, former leader of the Social Democratic Party, for deferral of a new referendum until after the 2010 mandate period should be respected.",
"title": "Relationship to the euro"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "As of 2014, support for Swedish membership of the euro among the general population is low. In September 2013, support fell as low as 9%. The only party in the Riksdag that supports Swedish entry in the euro (as of 2015) is the Liberal Party.",
"title": "Relationship to the euro"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Sweden is a wealthy country and in the 1970s and 1980s the value of banknotes and coins per capita was one of the highest in the world. In 1991, the largest banknote worth 10,000kr that was in circulation since 1958 was declared invalid and no longer was legal tender. For a discussion of the financial and banking crisis that hit Sweden in the early 1990s see the article History of Sweden (1991–present) and Swedish banking rescue.",
"title": "Banknotes and coins per capita in circulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Unlike the United States, which by policy never declares issued money invalid, Sweden and most other European countries have a date when older series of banknotes or older coin designs are invalid and are no longer legal tender. Invalid old banknotes of any age can, however, be deposited in the Riksbank, and the value be sent to a bank account.",
"title": "Banknotes and coins per capita in circulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "From the years 2001 to 2008 banknotes and coins were circulated at a near constant level of around 12,000 krona per capita, but in 2006 a modified 1,000-krona banknote with a motion security strip was produced. Within seven years the banknotes without the strip were declared invalid, leaving only a radically reduced number of banknotes with foil valid. The Vasa 1,000-krona banknote without the foil strip became invalid after 31 December 2013, and the pieces with the foil strip are invalid after 30 June 2016. Also the Swish mobile payment system was established in Sweden in 2012 and become a popular alternative to cash payments.",
"title": "Banknotes and coins per capita in circulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Although many countries are performing larger and larger share of transactions by electronic means, Sweden is unique in that it is also reducing its cash in circulation by a significant percentage. According to Bank for International Settlements the last year Sweden was surpassed in cash on a per capita basis converted to United States dollars by the US in 1993, the Euro Area in 2003, Australia in 2007, Canada in 2009, United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia in 2013, South Korea in 2014, Russia in 2016, and Mexico in 2019. As of 2019 Sweden was still circulating more cash per person (converted to USD) than Argentina, Brazil, Turkey, India, Indonesia, and South Africa.",
"title": "Banknotes and coins per capita in circulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The tables show the value of the banknotes and coins per capita for participating countries on Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI). Local currency is converted to US dollars using end of the year rates.",
"title": "Banknotes and coins per capita in circulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The circulation levels in the table above were reported to the Bank for International Settlements. Possible discrepancies with these statistics and other sources may be because some sources exclude \"commemorative banknotes and coins\" (3.20% of total for Sweden in 2015) and other sources exclude \"banknotes and coin held by banks\" (2.68% of total for Sweden in 2015) as opposed \"banknotes and coin in circulation outside banks\".",
"title": "Banknotes and coins per capita in circulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Circulation levels of cash on a per capita basis, are reduced by 51% from the high in 2007 compared to 2018. Speculation about Sweden declaring all banknotes and coins invalid at some future date is widespread in the media with Björn Ulvaeus as a celebrity advocate of a cashless Sweden which he believes will result in a safer society because simple robbery will involve stealing goods that must be fenced.",
"title": "Banknotes and coins per capita in circulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "The value of the payments between households, companies and authorities in Sweden amounts to about 20,000 kronor annual per capita in cash. In shops, almost one in seven payments is made in cash. More than half of the adult population has the Swish payment app. Annual withdrawals from Swedish ATMs in 2015 amount to 15,300 kronor per capita. According to Skingsley, \"what some consumers, smaller companies and local clubs often see as a problem, is not so much getting hold of cash, but being able to deposit it in a bank account.\"",
"title": "Banknotes and coins per capita in circulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "To see how circulation of the Swedish krona ranks compared to other currencies see Bank for International Settlements#Red Books.",
"title": "Banknotes and coins per capita in circulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The e-krona (electronic krona) is a proposed electronic currency to be issued directly by the Riksbank. It is different from the electronic transfers using commercial bank money as central bank money has no nominal credit risk, as it stands for a claim on the central bank, which cannot go bankrupt, at least not for debts in Swedish krona.",
"title": "The e-krona"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The declining use of cash in Sweden is going to be reinforced cyclically. As more businesses find that they can function without accepting cash, the number of businesses refusing to accept cash will increase. That will re-enforce the need for more and more citizens to get the Swish app which is already used by half the population. Cash machines, which are controlled by a Swedish bank consortium, are being dismantled by the hundreds, especially in rural areas.",
"title": "The e-krona"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "The Riksbank has not taken a decision on issuing e-krona. First, the Riksbank needs to investigate a number of technical, legal and practical issues. \"The declining use of cash in Sweden means that this is more of a burning issue for us than for most other central banks. Although it may appear simple at first glance to issue e-krona, this is something entirely new for a central bank and there is no precedent to follow\". If the Riksbank chooses to issue e-krona, it is not to replace cash, but to act as a complement to it. \"The Riksbank will continue issuing banknotes and coins as long as there is demand for them in society. It is our statutory duty and we will of course continue to live up to it,\" concluded Deputy Governor Cecilia Skingsley.",
"title": "The e-krona"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "In December 2020, Sweden's Minister for Financial Markets Per Bolund announced a government review to explore the feasibility of moving to a digital currency that was expected to be completed by the end of November in 2022. Anna Kinberg Batra, a former chairwoman of the Riksbank's finance committee, was announced as the leader of the review. As of 2023, no decision has been made.",
"title": "The e-krona"
}
] |
The krona is the currency of Sweden. It is one of the currencies of the European Union and Sweden is legally bound to adopt the euro in the future. Both the ISO code "SEK" and currency sign "kr" are in common use for the krona; the former precedes or follows the value, the latter usually follows it but, especially in the past, it sometimes preceded the value. In English, the currency is sometimes referred to as the Swedish crown, as krona means "crown" in Swedish. The Swedish krona was the ninth-most traded currency in the world by value in April 2016. One krona is subdivided into 100 öre. Coins as small as 1 öre were formerly in use, but the last coin smaller than 1 krona was discontinued in 2010. Goods can still be priced in öre, but all sums are rounded to the nearest krona when paying with cash. The word öre is ultimately derived from the Latin word for gold (aurum).
|
2001-05-16T23:02:06Z
|
2023-12-28T16:30:34Z
|
[
"Template:Multiple image",
"Template:CSS image crop",
"Template:Numis cite SCWC",
"Template:Lang",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Update inline",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Citation",
"Template:Cite magazine",
"Template:Euro topics",
"Template:Nbsp",
"Template:Exchange rate",
"Template:As of",
"Template:Div col",
"Template:Div col end",
"Template:Redirect",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:In lang",
"Template:Krona",
"Template:Frac",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite report",
"Template:Numis cite SCWPM",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Infobox currency",
"Template:IPA-sv",
"Template:Standard banknote table notice",
"Template:Update",
"Template:Sweden topics",
"Template:Currencies of Europe",
"Template:Citation needed",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Portal bar"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_krona
|
16,710 |
Krone
|
Krone (the cognate of Crown) may refer to:
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Krone (the cognate of Crown) may refer to:",
"title": ""
}
] |
Krone may refer to:
|
2023-01-19T11:04:10Z
|
[
"Template:Wiktionary",
"Template:TOC right",
"Template:Disambiguation"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krone
|
|
16,712 |
Kattegat
|
The Kattegat (Danish: [ˈkʰætəkæt]; Swedish: Kattegatt [ˈkâtːɛˌɡat]) is a 30,000 km (12,000 sq mi) sea area bounded by the Jutlandic peninsula in the west, the Danish Straits islands of Denmark and the Baltic Sea to the south and the provinces of Bohuslän, Västergötland, Halland and Skåne in Sweden in the east. The Baltic Sea drains into the Kattegat through the Danish Straits. The sea area is a continuation of the Skagerrak and may be seen as a bay of the North Sea, but in traditional Scandinavian usage, this is not the case.
The Kattegat is a rather shallow sea and can be very difficult and dangerous to navigate because of the many sandy and stony reefs and tricky currents, which often shift. In modern times, artificial seabed channels have been dug, many reefs have been dredged by either sand pumping or stone fishing, and a well-developed light signaling network has been installed to safeguard the very heavy international traffic on this small sea.
There are several large cities and major ports on the Kattegat, including, in descending size, Gothenburg, Aarhus, Aalborg, Halmstad, and Frederikshavn.
According to the definition established in a 1932 convention signed by Denmark, Norway and Sweden (registered in the League of Nations Treaty Series 1933–1934), the northern boundary between the Kattegat and Skagerrak are found at the northernmost point of Skagen on Jutland, while the southern boundary towards Øresund is found at the tip of Kullen Peninsula in Scania.
Major waterways that drain into the Kattegat are the rivers of Göta älv at Gothenburg, together with the Lagan, Nissan, Ätran and Viskan in the province of Halland on the Swedish side, and the river of Gudenå in Jutland, in Denmark.
The main islands of the Kattegat are Samsø, Læsø and Anholt; the latter two are, due to their relatively dry climate, perceived as belonging to "the Danish desert belt".
A number of noteworthy coastal areas abut the Kattegat, including the Kullaberg Nature Reserve in Scania, Sweden, which contains a number of rare species and a scenic rocky shore, the town of Mölle, which has a picturesque harbour and views into the Kullaberg, and Skagen at the northern tip of Denmark.
Since the 1950s, a bridge project usually referred to as Kattegatbroen (the Kattegat Bridge) connecting Jutland and Zealand across the Kattegat has been considered. Since the late 2000s, the project has seen a renewed interest from several influential politicians in Denmark. The bridge is usually envisioned as connecting Hov (a village south of Odder in the Aarhus area) with Samsø and Kalundborg.
The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the "Kattegat, Sound and Belts" (that is, the Kattegat, Øresund, Great Belt, and Little Belt) as follows:
On the North: A line joining Skagen (The Skaw, northernmost point of Denmark) and Paternoster Skær (57°54′N 11°27′E / 57.900°N 11.450°E / 57.900; 11.450) and thence northeastward through the shoals to Tjörn Island.
On the South: The limits of the Baltic Sea in the Belts and Sound:
According to Den Store Danske Encyklopædi and Nudansk Ordbog [da], the name derives from the Dutch words katte 'cat's' and gat 'gate, passage'. It derives from late medieval navigation jargon, in which captains of the Hanseatic trading fleets would compare the Danish Straits to a passage so tight that even a cat would have difficulty squeezing its way through, owing to the many reefs and shoals. At one point, the passable waters were a mere 3.84 km (2.07 nmi; 4,200 yd) wide. The name of the Copenhagen street Kattesundet has a comparable etymological meaning, namely 'narrow passage', lit. 'cat's strait'.
An archaic name for both the Skagerrak and Kattegat was the Norwegian Sea or Jutland Sea (Knýtlinga saga mentions the name Jótlandshaf). Its ancient Latin name was Sinus Codanus.
Control of the Kattegat, and access to it, have been important throughout the history of international seafaring. Until the completion of the Eider Canal in 1784, the Kattegat was the only sea route into and out of the Baltic region.
Beginning in 1429 in the Middle Ages, the Danish royal family – and later the state of Denmark – prospered greatly from the Sound dues, a toll charged for passage through the Øresund, while Copenhagen provided shelter, trade, and repair opportunities and protection from piracy. The dues were eventually lifted in 1857.
In the Kattegat, the salinity has a pronounced two-layer structure. The upper layer has a salinity between 18‰ and 26‰ and the lower layer – separated by a strong halocline at around 15 m (49 ft) – has a salinity between 32‰ and 34‰. The lower layer consists of inflowing seawater from the Skagerrak, with a salinity on level with most other coastal seawaters, while the upper layer consists of inflowing seawater from the Baltic Sea and has a much lower salinity, comparable to brackish water, but still a great deal higher than the rest of the Baltic sea. These two opposing flows transport a net surplus of 475 km (114 cu mi) seawater from the Baltic to the Skagerrak every year. During stronger winds, the layers in the Kattegat are completely mixed in some places, such as the Great Belt, so the overall salinity is highly variable in this small sea. This sets some unique conditions for the sealife here.
Cold seeps, locally known as bubbling reefs (Danish: boblerev), are found in the northern Kattegat. Unlike cold seeps in most other places (including the North Sea and Skagerrak), the Kattegat bubbling reefs are at relatively shallow depths, generally between 0 and 30 m (0–100 ft) below the surface. The seeps rely on methane deposited during the Eemian period and during calm weather the bubbles can sometimes be seen on the water surface. Carbonate cementation and lithification form slaps or pillars up to 4 m (13 ft) tall, and support a rich biodiversity. Because of their unique status, the Kattegat bubbling reefs receive a level of protection and are recognized as a Natura 2000 habitat (type 1180) by the European Union (EU).
The Kattegat, characterised by widespread anoxia, was one of the first marine dead zones to be noted in the 1970s, when scientists began studying how intensive industrial activities affected the natural world. Since then, studies and research has provided much insight into processes like eutrophication, and how to deal with it. Denmark and the EU have initiated costly and far-reaching domestic projects in order to stop, repair and prevent these environmentally destructive and economically damaging processes since the first Action Plan for the Aquatic Environment in 1985, and are now busy implementing the fourth Action Plan. The action plans sums up a broad range of initiatives and includes the so-called Nitrate Directives. The action plans have generally been viewed as a success, although the work is not finished and all goals are not completely met yet.
Due to the very heavy sea traffic and many large coastal settlements, the Kattegat has been designated as a Sulphur Emission Control Area as part of the Baltic Sea since 2006. As from 1 January 2016 the benchmark for sulphur in fuels was lowered to 0.1%.
Several larger areas of the Kattegat are designated as Natura 2000 and under various bird protections such as the Ramsar Convention. The remaining larger shallow reefs are among the protections, as they are important spawning and feeding grounds for fish and marine mammals and they support a thriving but threatened biodiversity. Protected areas includes:
Denmark
Sweden
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Kattegat (Danish: [ˈkʰætəkæt]; Swedish: Kattegatt [ˈkâtːɛˌɡat]) is a 30,000 km (12,000 sq mi) sea area bounded by the Jutlandic peninsula in the west, the Danish Straits islands of Denmark and the Baltic Sea to the south and the provinces of Bohuslän, Västergötland, Halland and Skåne in Sweden in the east. The Baltic Sea drains into the Kattegat through the Danish Straits. The sea area is a continuation of the Skagerrak and may be seen as a bay of the North Sea, but in traditional Scandinavian usage, this is not the case.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The Kattegat is a rather shallow sea and can be very difficult and dangerous to navigate because of the many sandy and stony reefs and tricky currents, which often shift. In modern times, artificial seabed channels have been dug, many reefs have been dredged by either sand pumping or stone fishing, and a well-developed light signaling network has been installed to safeguard the very heavy international traffic on this small sea.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "There are several large cities and major ports on the Kattegat, including, in descending size, Gothenburg, Aarhus, Aalborg, Halmstad, and Frederikshavn.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "According to the definition established in a 1932 convention signed by Denmark, Norway and Sweden (registered in the League of Nations Treaty Series 1933–1934), the northern boundary between the Kattegat and Skagerrak are found at the northernmost point of Skagen on Jutland, while the southern boundary towards Øresund is found at the tip of Kullen Peninsula in Scania.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Major waterways that drain into the Kattegat are the rivers of Göta älv at Gothenburg, together with the Lagan, Nissan, Ätran and Viskan in the province of Halland on the Swedish side, and the river of Gudenå in Jutland, in Denmark.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The main islands of the Kattegat are Samsø, Læsø and Anholt; the latter two are, due to their relatively dry climate, perceived as belonging to \"the Danish desert belt\".",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "A number of noteworthy coastal areas abut the Kattegat, including the Kullaberg Nature Reserve in Scania, Sweden, which contains a number of rare species and a scenic rocky shore, the town of Mölle, which has a picturesque harbour and views into the Kullaberg, and Skagen at the northern tip of Denmark.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Since the 1950s, a bridge project usually referred to as Kattegatbroen (the Kattegat Bridge) connecting Jutland and Zealand across the Kattegat has been considered. Since the late 2000s, the project has seen a renewed interest from several influential politicians in Denmark. The bridge is usually envisioned as connecting Hov (a village south of Odder in the Aarhus area) with Samsø and Kalundborg.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the \"Kattegat, Sound and Belts\" (that is, the Kattegat, Øresund, Great Belt, and Little Belt) as follows:",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "On the North: A line joining Skagen (The Skaw, northernmost point of Denmark) and Paternoster Skær (57°54′N 11°27′E / 57.900°N 11.450°E / 57.900; 11.450) and thence northeastward through the shoals to Tjörn Island.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "On the South: The limits of the Baltic Sea in the Belts and Sound:",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "According to Den Store Danske Encyklopædi and Nudansk Ordbog [da], the name derives from the Dutch words katte 'cat's' and gat 'gate, passage'. It derives from late medieval navigation jargon, in which captains of the Hanseatic trading fleets would compare the Danish Straits to a passage so tight that even a cat would have difficulty squeezing its way through, owing to the many reefs and shoals. At one point, the passable waters were a mere 3.84 km (2.07 nmi; 4,200 yd) wide. The name of the Copenhagen street Kattesundet has a comparable etymological meaning, namely 'narrow passage', lit. 'cat's strait'.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "An archaic name for both the Skagerrak and Kattegat was the Norwegian Sea or Jutland Sea (Knýtlinga saga mentions the name Jótlandshaf). Its ancient Latin name was Sinus Codanus.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Control of the Kattegat, and access to it, have been important throughout the history of international seafaring. Until the completion of the Eider Canal in 1784, the Kattegat was the only sea route into and out of the Baltic region.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Beginning in 1429 in the Middle Ages, the Danish royal family – and later the state of Denmark – prospered greatly from the Sound dues, a toll charged for passage through the Øresund, while Copenhagen provided shelter, trade, and repair opportunities and protection from piracy. The dues were eventually lifted in 1857.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In the Kattegat, the salinity has a pronounced two-layer structure. The upper layer has a salinity between 18‰ and 26‰ and the lower layer – separated by a strong halocline at around 15 m (49 ft) – has a salinity between 32‰ and 34‰. The lower layer consists of inflowing seawater from the Skagerrak, with a salinity on level with most other coastal seawaters, while the upper layer consists of inflowing seawater from the Baltic Sea and has a much lower salinity, comparable to brackish water, but still a great deal higher than the rest of the Baltic sea. These two opposing flows transport a net surplus of 475 km (114 cu mi) seawater from the Baltic to the Skagerrak every year. During stronger winds, the layers in the Kattegat are completely mixed in some places, such as the Great Belt, so the overall salinity is highly variable in this small sea. This sets some unique conditions for the sealife here.",
"title": "Biology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Cold seeps, locally known as bubbling reefs (Danish: boblerev), are found in the northern Kattegat. Unlike cold seeps in most other places (including the North Sea and Skagerrak), the Kattegat bubbling reefs are at relatively shallow depths, generally between 0 and 30 m (0–100 ft) below the surface. The seeps rely on methane deposited during the Eemian period and during calm weather the bubbles can sometimes be seen on the water surface. Carbonate cementation and lithification form slaps or pillars up to 4 m (13 ft) tall, and support a rich biodiversity. Because of their unique status, the Kattegat bubbling reefs receive a level of protection and are recognized as a Natura 2000 habitat (type 1180) by the European Union (EU).",
"title": "Biology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The Kattegat, characterised by widespread anoxia, was one of the first marine dead zones to be noted in the 1970s, when scientists began studying how intensive industrial activities affected the natural world. Since then, studies and research has provided much insight into processes like eutrophication, and how to deal with it. Denmark and the EU have initiated costly and far-reaching domestic projects in order to stop, repair and prevent these environmentally destructive and economically damaging processes since the first Action Plan for the Aquatic Environment in 1985, and are now busy implementing the fourth Action Plan. The action plans sums up a broad range of initiatives and includes the so-called Nitrate Directives. The action plans have generally been viewed as a success, although the work is not finished and all goals are not completely met yet.",
"title": "Biology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Due to the very heavy sea traffic and many large coastal settlements, the Kattegat has been designated as a Sulphur Emission Control Area as part of the Baltic Sea since 2006. As from 1 January 2016 the benchmark for sulphur in fuels was lowered to 0.1%.",
"title": "Protections and regulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Several larger areas of the Kattegat are designated as Natura 2000 and under various bird protections such as the Ramsar Convention. The remaining larger shallow reefs are among the protections, as they are important spawning and feeding grounds for fish and marine mammals and they support a thriving but threatened biodiversity. Protected areas includes:",
"title": "Protections and regulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Denmark",
"title": "Protections and regulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Sweden",
"title": "Protections and regulation"
}
] |
The Kattegat is a 30,000 km2 (12,000 sq mi) sea area bounded by the Jutlandic peninsula in the west, the Danish Straits islands of Denmark and the Baltic Sea to the south and the provinces of Bohuslän, Västergötland, Halland and Skåne in Sweden in the east. The Baltic Sea drains into the Kattegat through the Danish Straits. The sea area is a continuation of the Skagerrak and may be seen as a bay of the North Sea, but in traditional Scandinavian usage, this is not the case. The Kattegat is a rather shallow sea and can be very difficult and dangerous to navigate because of the many sandy and stony reefs and tricky currents, which often shift. In modern times, artificial seabed channels have been dug, many reefs have been dredged by either sand pumping or stone fishing, and a well-developed light signaling network has been installed to safeguard the very heavy international traffic on this small sea. There are several large cities and major ports on the Kattegat, including, in descending size, Gothenburg, Aarhus, Aalborg, Halmstad, and Frederikshavn.
|
2001-05-19T20:33:47Z
|
2023-09-19T23:55:06Z
|
[
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:IPA-sv",
"Template:Cite NIE",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:IPA-da",
"Template:Lang-sv",
"Template:Convert",
"Template:Literal translation",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite Americana",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Blockquote",
"Template:Lang",
"Template:Lang-da",
"Template:Commons category",
"Template:Cite Collier's",
"Template:Infobox body of water",
"Template:Clarify",
"Template:Ill",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Cite journal"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kattegat
|
16,714 |
Kolmogorov–Smirnov test
|
In statistics, the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test (K–S test or KS test) is a nonparametric test of the equality of continuous (or discontinuous, see Section 2.2), one-dimensional probability distributions that can be used to compare a sample with a reference probability distribution (one-sample K–S test), or to compare two samples (two-sample K–S test). In essence, the test answers the question "How likely is it that we would see a collection of samples like this if they were drawn from that probability distribution?" or, in the second case, "How likely is it that we would see two sets of samples like this if they were drawn from the same (but unknown) probability distribution?". It is named after Andrey Kolmogorov and Nikolai Smirnov.
The Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic quantifies a distance between the empirical distribution function of the sample and the cumulative distribution function of the reference distribution, or between the empirical distribution functions of two samples. The null distribution of this statistic is calculated under the null hypothesis that the sample is drawn from the reference distribution (in the one-sample case) or that the samples are drawn from the same distribution (in the two-sample case). In the one-sample case, the distribution considered under the null hypothesis may be continuous (see Section 2), purely discrete or mixed (see Section 2.2). In the two-sample case (see Section 3), the distribution considered under the null hypothesis is a continuous distribution but is otherwise unrestricted. However, the two sample test can also be performed under more general conditions that allow for discontinuity, heterogeneity and dependence across samples.
The two-sample K–S test is one of the most useful and general nonparametric methods for comparing two samples, as it is sensitive to differences in both location and shape of the empirical cumulative distribution functions of the two samples.
The Kolmogorov–Smirnov test can be modified to serve as a goodness of fit test. In the special case of testing for normality of the distribution, samples are standardized and compared with a standard normal distribution. This is equivalent to setting the mean and variance of the reference distribution equal to the sample estimates, and it is known that using these to define the specific reference distribution changes the null distribution of the test statistic (see Test with estimated parameters). Various studies have found that, even in this corrected form, the test is less powerful for testing normality than the Shapiro–Wilk test or Anderson–Darling test. However, these other tests have their own disadvantages. For instance the Shapiro–Wilk test is known not to work well in samples with many identical values.
The empirical distribution function Fn for n independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) ordered observations Xi is defined as
The Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic for a given cumulative distribution function F(x) is
where supx is the supremum of the set of distances. Intuitively, the statistic takes the largest absolute difference between the two distribution functions across all x values.
By the Glivenko–Cantelli theorem, if the sample comes from distribution F(x), then Dn converges to 0 almost surely in the limit when n {\displaystyle n} goes to infinity. Kolmogorov strengthened this result, by effectively providing the rate of this convergence (see Kolmogorov distribution). Donsker's theorem provides a yet stronger result.
In practice, the statistic requires a relatively large number of data points (in comparison to other goodness of fit criteria such as the Anderson–Darling test statistic) to properly reject the null hypothesis.
The Kolmogorov distribution is the distribution of the random variable
where B(t) is the Brownian bridge. The cumulative distribution function of K is given by
which can also be expressed by the Jacobi theta function ϑ 01 ( z = 0 ; τ = 2 i x 2 / π ) {\displaystyle \vartheta _{01}(z=0;\tau =2ix^{2}/\pi )} . Both the form of the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test statistic and its asymptotic distribution under the null hypothesis were published by Andrey Kolmogorov, while a table of the distribution was published by Nikolai Smirnov. Recurrence relations for the distribution of the test statistic in finite samples are available.
Under null hypothesis that the sample comes from the hypothesized distribution F(x),
in distribution, where B(t) is the Brownian bridge. If F is continuous then under the null hypothesis n D n {\displaystyle {\sqrt {n}}D_{n}} converges to the Kolmogorov distribution, which does not depend on F. This result may also be known as the Kolmogorov theorem.
The accuracy of this limit as an approximation to the exact cdf of K {\displaystyle K} when n {\displaystyle n} is finite is not very impressive: even when n = 1000 {\displaystyle n=1000} , the corresponding maximum error is about 0.9 % {\displaystyle 0.9~\%} ; this error increases to 2.6 % {\displaystyle 2.6~\%} when n = 100 {\displaystyle n=100} and to a totally unacceptable 7 % {\displaystyle 7~\%} when n = 10 {\displaystyle n=10} . However, a very simple expedient of replacing x {\displaystyle x} by
in the argument of the Jacobi theta function reduces these errors to 0.003 % {\displaystyle 0.003~\%} , 0.027 % {\displaystyle 0.027\%} , and 0.27 % {\displaystyle 0.27~\%} respectively; such accuracy would be usually considered more than adequate for all practical applications.
The goodness-of-fit test or the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test can be constructed by using the critical values of the Kolmogorov distribution. This test is asymptotically valid when n → ∞ . {\displaystyle n\to \infty .} It rejects the null hypothesis at level α {\displaystyle \alpha } if
where Kα is found from
The asymptotic power of this test is 1.
Fast and accurate algorithms to compute the cdf Pr ( D n ≤ x ) {\displaystyle \operatorname {Pr} (D_{n}\leq x)} or its complement for arbitrary n {\displaystyle n} and x {\displaystyle x} , are available from:
If either the form or the parameters of F(x) are determined from the data Xi the critical values determined in this way are invalid. In such cases, Monte Carlo or other methods may be required, but tables have been prepared for some cases. Details for the required modifications to the test statistic and for the critical values for the normal distribution and the exponential distribution have been published, and later publications also include the Gumbel distribution. The Lilliefors test represents a special case of this for the normal distribution. The logarithm transformation may help to overcome cases where the Kolmogorov test data does not seem to fit the assumption that it came from the normal distribution.
Using estimated parameters, the question arises which estimation method should be used. Usually this would be the maximum likelihood method, but e.g. for the normal distribution MLE has a large bias error on sigma. Using a moment fit or KS minimization instead has a large impact on the critical values, and also some impact on test power. If we need to decide for Student-T data with df = 2 via KS test whether the data could be normal or not, then a ML estimate based on H0 (data is normal, so using the standard deviation for scale) would give much larger KS distance, than a fit with minimum KS. In this case we should reject H0, which is often the case with MLE, because the sample standard deviation might be very large for T-2 data, but with KS minimization we may get still a too low KS to reject H0. In the Student-T case, a modified KS test with KS estimate instead of MLE, makes the KS test indeed slightly worse. However, in other cases, such a modified KS test leads to slightly better test power.
Under the assumption that F ( x ) {\displaystyle F(x)} is non-decreasing and right-continuous, with countable (possibly infinite) number of jumps, the KS test statistic can be expressed as:
From the right-continuity of F ( x ) {\displaystyle F(x)} , it follows that F ( F − 1 ( t ) ) ≥ t {\displaystyle F(F^{-1}(t))\geq t} and F − 1 ( F ( x ) ) ≤ x {\displaystyle F^{-1}(F(x))\leq x} and hence, the distribution of D n {\displaystyle D_{n}} depends on the null distribution F ( x ) {\displaystyle F(x)} , i.e., is no longer distribution-free as in the continuous case. Therefore, a fast and accurate method has been developed to compute the exact and asymptotic distribution of D n {\displaystyle D_{n}} when F ( x ) {\displaystyle F(x)} is purely discrete or mixed, implemented in C++ and in the KSgeneral package of the R language. The functions disc_ks_test(), mixed_ks_test() and cont_ks_test() compute also the KS test statistic and p-values for purely discrete, mixed or continuous null distributions and arbitrary sample sizes. The KS test and its p-values for discrete null distributions and small sample sizes are also computed in as part of the dgof package of the R language. Major statistical packages among which SAS PROC NPAR1WAY, Stata ksmirnov implement the KS test under the assumption that F ( x ) {\displaystyle F(x)} is continuous, which is more conservative if the null distribution is actually not continuous (see ).
The Kolmogorov–Smirnov test may also be used to test whether two underlying one-dimensional probability distributions differ. In this case, the Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic is
where F 1 , n {\displaystyle F_{1,n}} and F 2 , m {\displaystyle F_{2,m}} are the empirical distribution functions of the first and the second sample respectively, and sup {\displaystyle \sup } is the supremum function.
For large samples, the null hypothesis is rejected at level α {\displaystyle \alpha } if
Where n {\displaystyle n} and m {\displaystyle m} are the sizes of first and second sample respectively. The value of c ( α ) {\displaystyle c({\alpha })} is given in the table below for the most common levels of α {\displaystyle \alpha }
and in general by
so that the condition reads
Here, again, the larger the sample sizes, the more sensitive the minimal bound: For a given ratio of sample sizes (e.g. m = n {\displaystyle m=n} ), the minimal bound scales in the size of either of the samples according to its inverse square root.
Note that the two-sample test checks whether the two data samples come from the same distribution. This does not specify what that common distribution is (e.g. whether it's normal or not normal). Again, tables of critical values have been published. A shortcoming of the univariate Kolmogorov–Smirnov test is that it is not very powerful because it is devised to be sensitive against all possible types of differences between two distribution functions. Some argue that the Cucconi test, originally proposed for simultaneously comparing location and scale, can be much more powerful than the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test when comparing two distribution functions.
Two-sample KS tests have been applied in economics to detect asymmetric effects and to study natural experiments.
While the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test is usually used to test whether a given F(x) is the underlying probability distribution of Fn(x), the procedure may be inverted to give confidence limits on F(x) itself. If one chooses a critical value of the test statistic Dα such that P(Dn > Dα) = α, then a band of width ±Dα around Fn(x) will entirely contain F(x) with probability 1 − α.
A distribution-free multivariate Kolmogorov–Smirnov goodness of fit test has been proposed by Justel, Peña and Zamar (1997). The test uses a statistic which is built using Rosenblatt's transformation, and an algorithm is developed to compute it in the bivariate case. An approximate test that can be easily computed in any dimension is also presented.
The Kolmogorov–Smirnov test statistic needs to be modified if a similar test is to be applied to multivariate data. This is not straightforward because the maximum difference between two joint cumulative distribution functions is not generally the same as the maximum difference of any of the complementary distribution functions. Thus the maximum difference will differ depending on which of Pr ( x < X ∧ y < Y ) {\displaystyle \Pr(x<X\land y<Y)} or Pr ( X < x ∧ Y > y ) {\displaystyle \Pr(X<x\land Y>y)} or any of the other two possible arrangements is used. One might require that the result of the test used should not depend on which choice is made.
One approach to generalizing the Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic to higher dimensions which meets the above concern is to compare the cdfs of the two samples with all possible orderings, and take the largest of the set of resulting KS statistics. In d dimensions, there are 2 − 1 such orderings. One such variation is due to Peacock (see also Gosset for a 3D version) and another to Fasano and Franceschini (see Lopes et al. for a comparison and computational details). Critical values for the test statistic can be obtained by simulations, but depend on the dependence structure in the joint distribution.
In one dimension, the Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic is identical to the so-called star discrepancy D, so another native KS extension to higher dimensions would be simply to use D also for higher dimensions. Unfortunately, the star discrepancy is hard to calculate in high dimensions.
In 2021 the functional form of the multivariate KS test statistic was proposed, which simplified the problem of estimating the tail probabilities of the multivariate KS test statistic, which is needed for the statistical test. For the multivariate case, if Fi is the ith continuous marginal from a probability distribution with k variables, then
so the limiting distribution does not depend on the marginal distributions.
The Kolmogorov–Smirnov test is implemented in many software programs. Most of these implement both the one and two sampled test.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "In statistics, the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test (K–S test or KS test) is a nonparametric test of the equality of continuous (or discontinuous, see Section 2.2), one-dimensional probability distributions that can be used to compare a sample with a reference probability distribution (one-sample K–S test), or to compare two samples (two-sample K–S test). In essence, the test answers the question \"How likely is it that we would see a collection of samples like this if they were drawn from that probability distribution?\" or, in the second case, \"How likely is it that we would see two sets of samples like this if they were drawn from the same (but unknown) probability distribution?\". It is named after Andrey Kolmogorov and Nikolai Smirnov.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic quantifies a distance between the empirical distribution function of the sample and the cumulative distribution function of the reference distribution, or between the empirical distribution functions of two samples. The null distribution of this statistic is calculated under the null hypothesis that the sample is drawn from the reference distribution (in the one-sample case) or that the samples are drawn from the same distribution (in the two-sample case). In the one-sample case, the distribution considered under the null hypothesis may be continuous (see Section 2), purely discrete or mixed (see Section 2.2). In the two-sample case (see Section 3), the distribution considered under the null hypothesis is a continuous distribution but is otherwise unrestricted. However, the two sample test can also be performed under more general conditions that allow for discontinuity, heterogeneity and dependence across samples.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The two-sample K–S test is one of the most useful and general nonparametric methods for comparing two samples, as it is sensitive to differences in both location and shape of the empirical cumulative distribution functions of the two samples.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The Kolmogorov–Smirnov test can be modified to serve as a goodness of fit test. In the special case of testing for normality of the distribution, samples are standardized and compared with a standard normal distribution. This is equivalent to setting the mean and variance of the reference distribution equal to the sample estimates, and it is known that using these to define the specific reference distribution changes the null distribution of the test statistic (see Test with estimated parameters). Various studies have found that, even in this corrected form, the test is less powerful for testing normality than the Shapiro–Wilk test or Anderson–Darling test. However, these other tests have their own disadvantages. For instance the Shapiro–Wilk test is known not to work well in samples with many identical values.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The empirical distribution function Fn for n independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) ordered observations Xi is defined as",
"title": "One-sample Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic for a given cumulative distribution function F(x) is",
"title": "One-sample Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "where supx is the supremum of the set of distances. Intuitively, the statistic takes the largest absolute difference between the two distribution functions across all x values.",
"title": "One-sample Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "By the Glivenko–Cantelli theorem, if the sample comes from distribution F(x), then Dn converges to 0 almost surely in the limit when n {\\displaystyle n} goes to infinity. Kolmogorov strengthened this result, by effectively providing the rate of this convergence (see Kolmogorov distribution). Donsker's theorem provides a yet stronger result.",
"title": "One-sample Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In practice, the statistic requires a relatively large number of data points (in comparison to other goodness of fit criteria such as the Anderson–Darling test statistic) to properly reject the null hypothesis.",
"title": "One-sample Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The Kolmogorov distribution is the distribution of the random variable",
"title": "Kolmogorov distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "where B(t) is the Brownian bridge. The cumulative distribution function of K is given by",
"title": "Kolmogorov distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "which can also be expressed by the Jacobi theta function ϑ 01 ( z = 0 ; τ = 2 i x 2 / π ) {\\displaystyle \\vartheta _{01}(z=0;\\tau =2ix^{2}/\\pi )} . Both the form of the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test statistic and its asymptotic distribution under the null hypothesis were published by Andrey Kolmogorov, while a table of the distribution was published by Nikolai Smirnov. Recurrence relations for the distribution of the test statistic in finite samples are available.",
"title": "Kolmogorov distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Under null hypothesis that the sample comes from the hypothesized distribution F(x),",
"title": "Kolmogorov distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "in distribution, where B(t) is the Brownian bridge. If F is continuous then under the null hypothesis n D n {\\displaystyle {\\sqrt {n}}D_{n}} converges to the Kolmogorov distribution, which does not depend on F. This result may also be known as the Kolmogorov theorem.",
"title": "Kolmogorov distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The accuracy of this limit as an approximation to the exact cdf of K {\\displaystyle K} when n {\\displaystyle n} is finite is not very impressive: even when n = 1000 {\\displaystyle n=1000} , the corresponding maximum error is about 0.9 % {\\displaystyle 0.9~\\%} ; this error increases to 2.6 % {\\displaystyle 2.6~\\%} when n = 100 {\\displaystyle n=100} and to a totally unacceptable 7 % {\\displaystyle 7~\\%} when n = 10 {\\displaystyle n=10} . However, a very simple expedient of replacing x {\\displaystyle x} by",
"title": "Kolmogorov distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "in the argument of the Jacobi theta function reduces these errors to 0.003 % {\\displaystyle 0.003~\\%} , 0.027 % {\\displaystyle 0.027\\%} , and 0.27 % {\\displaystyle 0.27~\\%} respectively; such accuracy would be usually considered more than adequate for all practical applications.",
"title": "Kolmogorov distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The goodness-of-fit test or the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test can be constructed by using the critical values of the Kolmogorov distribution. This test is asymptotically valid when n → ∞ . {\\displaystyle n\\to \\infty .} It rejects the null hypothesis at level α {\\displaystyle \\alpha } if",
"title": "Kolmogorov distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "where Kα is found from",
"title": "Kolmogorov distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The asymptotic power of this test is 1.",
"title": "Kolmogorov distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Fast and accurate algorithms to compute the cdf Pr ( D n ≤ x ) {\\displaystyle \\operatorname {Pr} (D_{n}\\leq x)} or its complement for arbitrary n {\\displaystyle n} and x {\\displaystyle x} , are available from:",
"title": "Kolmogorov distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "If either the form or the parameters of F(x) are determined from the data Xi the critical values determined in this way are invalid. In such cases, Monte Carlo or other methods may be required, but tables have been prepared for some cases. Details for the required modifications to the test statistic and for the critical values for the normal distribution and the exponential distribution have been published, and later publications also include the Gumbel distribution. The Lilliefors test represents a special case of this for the normal distribution. The logarithm transformation may help to overcome cases where the Kolmogorov test data does not seem to fit the assumption that it came from the normal distribution.",
"title": "Kolmogorov distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Using estimated parameters, the question arises which estimation method should be used. Usually this would be the maximum likelihood method, but e.g. for the normal distribution MLE has a large bias error on sigma. Using a moment fit or KS minimization instead has a large impact on the critical values, and also some impact on test power. If we need to decide for Student-T data with df = 2 via KS test whether the data could be normal or not, then a ML estimate based on H0 (data is normal, so using the standard deviation for scale) would give much larger KS distance, than a fit with minimum KS. In this case we should reject H0, which is often the case with MLE, because the sample standard deviation might be very large for T-2 data, but with KS minimization we may get still a too low KS to reject H0. In the Student-T case, a modified KS test with KS estimate instead of MLE, makes the KS test indeed slightly worse. However, in other cases, such a modified KS test leads to slightly better test power.",
"title": "Kolmogorov distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Under the assumption that F ( x ) {\\displaystyle F(x)} is non-decreasing and right-continuous, with countable (possibly infinite) number of jumps, the KS test statistic can be expressed as:",
"title": "Kolmogorov distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "From the right-continuity of F ( x ) {\\displaystyle F(x)} , it follows that F ( F − 1 ( t ) ) ≥ t {\\displaystyle F(F^{-1}(t))\\geq t} and F − 1 ( F ( x ) ) ≤ x {\\displaystyle F^{-1}(F(x))\\leq x} and hence, the distribution of D n {\\displaystyle D_{n}} depends on the null distribution F ( x ) {\\displaystyle F(x)} , i.e., is no longer distribution-free as in the continuous case. Therefore, a fast and accurate method has been developed to compute the exact and asymptotic distribution of D n {\\displaystyle D_{n}} when F ( x ) {\\displaystyle F(x)} is purely discrete or mixed, implemented in C++ and in the KSgeneral package of the R language. The functions disc_ks_test(), mixed_ks_test() and cont_ks_test() compute also the KS test statistic and p-values for purely discrete, mixed or continuous null distributions and arbitrary sample sizes. The KS test and its p-values for discrete null distributions and small sample sizes are also computed in as part of the dgof package of the R language. Major statistical packages among which SAS PROC NPAR1WAY, Stata ksmirnov implement the KS test under the assumption that F ( x ) {\\displaystyle F(x)} is continuous, which is more conservative if the null distribution is actually not continuous (see ).",
"title": "Kolmogorov distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The Kolmogorov–Smirnov test may also be used to test whether two underlying one-dimensional probability distributions differ. In this case, the Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic is",
"title": "Two-sample Kolmogorov–Smirnov test"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "where F 1 , n {\\displaystyle F_{1,n}} and F 2 , m {\\displaystyle F_{2,m}} are the empirical distribution functions of the first and the second sample respectively, and sup {\\displaystyle \\sup } is the supremum function.",
"title": "Two-sample Kolmogorov–Smirnov test"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "For large samples, the null hypothesis is rejected at level α {\\displaystyle \\alpha } if",
"title": "Two-sample Kolmogorov–Smirnov test"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Where n {\\displaystyle n} and m {\\displaystyle m} are the sizes of first and second sample respectively. The value of c ( α ) {\\displaystyle c({\\alpha })} is given in the table below for the most common levels of α {\\displaystyle \\alpha }",
"title": "Two-sample Kolmogorov–Smirnov test"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "and in general by",
"title": "Two-sample Kolmogorov–Smirnov test"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "so that the condition reads",
"title": "Two-sample Kolmogorov–Smirnov test"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Here, again, the larger the sample sizes, the more sensitive the minimal bound: For a given ratio of sample sizes (e.g. m = n {\\displaystyle m=n} ), the minimal bound scales in the size of either of the samples according to its inverse square root.",
"title": "Two-sample Kolmogorov–Smirnov test"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Note that the two-sample test checks whether the two data samples come from the same distribution. This does not specify what that common distribution is (e.g. whether it's normal or not normal). Again, tables of critical values have been published. A shortcoming of the univariate Kolmogorov–Smirnov test is that it is not very powerful because it is devised to be sensitive against all possible types of differences between two distribution functions. Some argue that the Cucconi test, originally proposed for simultaneously comparing location and scale, can be much more powerful than the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test when comparing two distribution functions.",
"title": "Two-sample Kolmogorov–Smirnov test"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Two-sample KS tests have been applied in economics to detect asymmetric effects and to study natural experiments.",
"title": "Two-sample Kolmogorov–Smirnov test"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "While the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test is usually used to test whether a given F(x) is the underlying probability distribution of Fn(x), the procedure may be inverted to give confidence limits on F(x) itself. If one chooses a critical value of the test statistic Dα such that P(Dn > Dα) = α, then a band of width ±Dα around Fn(x) will entirely contain F(x) with probability 1 − α.",
"title": "Setting confidence limits for the shape of a distribution function"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "A distribution-free multivariate Kolmogorov–Smirnov goodness of fit test has been proposed by Justel, Peña and Zamar (1997). The test uses a statistic which is built using Rosenblatt's transformation, and an algorithm is developed to compute it in the bivariate case. An approximate test that can be easily computed in any dimension is also presented.",
"title": "The Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic in more than one dimension"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The Kolmogorov–Smirnov test statistic needs to be modified if a similar test is to be applied to multivariate data. This is not straightforward because the maximum difference between two joint cumulative distribution functions is not generally the same as the maximum difference of any of the complementary distribution functions. Thus the maximum difference will differ depending on which of Pr ( x < X ∧ y < Y ) {\\displaystyle \\Pr(x<X\\land y<Y)} or Pr ( X < x ∧ Y > y ) {\\displaystyle \\Pr(X<x\\land Y>y)} or any of the other two possible arrangements is used. One might require that the result of the test used should not depend on which choice is made.",
"title": "The Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic in more than one dimension"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "One approach to generalizing the Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic to higher dimensions which meets the above concern is to compare the cdfs of the two samples with all possible orderings, and take the largest of the set of resulting KS statistics. In d dimensions, there are 2 − 1 such orderings. One such variation is due to Peacock (see also Gosset for a 3D version) and another to Fasano and Franceschini (see Lopes et al. for a comparison and computational details). Critical values for the test statistic can be obtained by simulations, but depend on the dependence structure in the joint distribution.",
"title": "The Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic in more than one dimension"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In one dimension, the Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic is identical to the so-called star discrepancy D, so another native KS extension to higher dimensions would be simply to use D also for higher dimensions. Unfortunately, the star discrepancy is hard to calculate in high dimensions.",
"title": "The Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic in more than one dimension"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "In 2021 the functional form of the multivariate KS test statistic was proposed, which simplified the problem of estimating the tail probabilities of the multivariate KS test statistic, which is needed for the statistical test. For the multivariate case, if Fi is the ith continuous marginal from a probability distribution with k variables, then",
"title": "The Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic in more than one dimension"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "so the limiting distribution does not depend on the marginal distributions.",
"title": "The Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic in more than one dimension"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The Kolmogorov–Smirnov test is implemented in many software programs. Most of these implement both the one and two sampled test.",
"title": "Implementations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "",
"title": "External links"
}
] |
In statistics, the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test is a nonparametric test of the equality of continuous, one-dimensional probability distributions that can be used to compare a sample with a reference probability distribution, or to compare two samples. In essence, the test answers the question "How likely is it that we would see a collection of samples like this if they were drawn from that probability distribution?" or, in the second case, "How likely is it that we would see two sets of samples like this if they were drawn from the same probability distribution?".
It is named after Andrey Kolmogorov and Nikolai Smirnov. The Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic quantifies a distance between the empirical distribution function of the sample and the cumulative distribution function of the reference distribution, or between the empirical distribution functions of two samples. The null distribution of this statistic is calculated under the null hypothesis that the sample is drawn from the reference distribution or that the samples are drawn from the same distribution. In the one-sample case, the distribution considered under the null hypothesis may be continuous, purely discrete or mixed. In the two-sample case, the distribution considered under the null hypothesis is a continuous distribution but is otherwise unrestricted. However, the two sample test can also be performed under more general conditions that allow for discontinuity, heterogeneity and dependence across samples. The two-sample K–S test is one of the most useful and general nonparametric methods for comparing two samples, as it is sensitive to differences in both location and shape of the empirical cumulative distribution functions of the two samples. The Kolmogorov–Smirnov test can be modified to serve as a goodness of fit test. In the special case of testing for normality of the distribution, samples are standardized and compared with a standard normal distribution. This is equivalent to setting the mean and variance of the reference distribution equal to the sample estimates, and it is known that using these to define the specific reference distribution changes the null distribution of the test statistic. Various studies have found that, even in this corrected form, the test is less powerful for testing normality than the Shapiro–Wilk test or Anderson–Darling test. However, these other tests have their own disadvantages. For instance the Shapiro–Wilk test is known not to work well in samples with many identical values.
|
2001-05-21T20:26:10Z
|
2023-12-19T22:52:17Z
|
[
"Template:Citation needed",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Cite conference",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Main article",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Springer",
"Template:Statistics"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov%E2%80%93Smirnov_test
|
16,716 |
Kansas
|
Kansas (/ˈkænzəs/ ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its capital is Topeka, its largest metropolitan core is Kansas City MO-KS and its most populous municipality is Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the west. Kansas is named after the Kansas River, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native Americans who lived along its banks. For thousands of years, what is now Kansas was home to numerous and diverse Native American tribes. Tribes in the eastern part of the state generally lived in villages along the river valleys. Tribes in the western part of the state were semi-nomadic and hunted large herds of bison.
The first Euro-American settlement in Kansas occurred in 1827 at Fort Leavenworth. The pace of settlement accelerated in the 1850s, in the midst of political wars over the slavery debate. When it was officially opened to settlement by the U.S. government in 1854 with the Kansas–Nebraska Act, abolitionist Free-Staters from New England and pro-slavery settlers from neighboring Missouri rushed to the territory to determine whether Kansas would become a free state or a slave state. Thus, the area was a hotbed of violence and chaos in its early days as these forces collided, and was known as Bleeding Kansas. The abolitionists prevailed, and on January 29, 1861, Kansas entered the Union as a free state, hence the unofficial nickname "The Free State".
As of 2015, Kansas was among the most productive agricultural states, producing high yields of wheat, corn, sorghum, and soybeans. Kansas, which has an area of 82,278 square miles (213,100 square kilometers) is the 15th-largest state by area, the 36th most-populous of the 50 states, with a population of 2,940,865 according to the 2020 census, and the 10th least densely populated. Residents of Kansas are called Kansans. Mount Sunflower is Kansas's highest point at 4,039 feet (1,231 meters).
The name Kansas derives from the Algonquian term, Akansa, for the Quapaw people. These were a Dhegiha Siouan-speaking people who settled in Arkansas around the 13th century. The stem -kansa is named after the Kaw people, also known as the Kansa, a federally recognized Native American tribe. The tribe's name (natively kką:ze) is often said to mean "people of the (south) wind" although this was probably not the term's original meaning.
Before European colonization, Kansas was occupied by the Caddoan Wichita and later the Siouan Kaw people. The first European to set foot in present-day Kansas was the Spanish conquistador Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, who explored the area in 1541.
Between 1763 and 1803 the territory of Kansas was integrated into Spanish Louisiana. The governor Luis de Unzaga 'le Conciliateur', during that period, promoted expeditions and good relations with the Amerindians, among the explorers were Antoine de Marigny and others who continued trading across the Kansas River, especially at its confluence with the Missouri River, tributaries of the Mississippi River.
In 1803, most of modern Kansas was acquired by the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase. Southwest Kansas, however, was still a part of Spain, Mexico, and the Republic of Texas until the conclusion of the Mexican–American War in 1848, when these lands were ceded to the United States. From 1812 to 1821, Kansas was part of the Missouri Territory. The Santa Fe Trail traversed Kansas from 1821 to 1880, transporting manufactured goods from Missouri and silver and furs from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Wagon ruts from the trail are still visible in the prairie today.
In 1827, Fort Leavenworth became the first permanent settlement of white Americans in the future state. The Kansas–Nebraska Act became law on May 30, 1854, establishing Nebraska Territory and Kansas Territory, and opening the area to broader settlement by whites. Kansas Territory stretched all the way to the Continental Divide and included the sites of present-day Denver, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo.
The first non-military settlement of Euro-Americans in Kansas Territory consisted of abolitionists from Massachusetts and other Free-Staters who founded the town of Lawrence and attempted to stop the spread of slavery from neighboring Missouri.
Missouri and Arkansas continually sent settlers into Kansas Territory along its eastern border to sway votes in favor of slavery prior to Kansas statehood elections. Directly presaging the American Civil War these forces collided, entering into skirmishes and guerrilla conflicts that earned the territory the nickname Bleeding Kansas. These included John Brown's Pottawatomie massacre of 1856.
Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state on January 29, 1861, making it the 34th state to join the United States. By that time, the violence in Kansas had largely subsided, but during the Civil War, on August 21, 1863, William Quantrill led several hundred of his supporters on a raid into Lawrence, destroying much of the city and killing nearly 200 people. He was roundly condemned by both the conventional Confederate military and the partisan rangers commissioned by the Missouri legislature. His application to that body for a commission was flatly rejected due to his pre-war criminal record.
Passage of the Homestead Acts in 1862 accelerated settlement and agricultural development in the state. After the Civil War, many veterans constructed homesteads in Kansas. Many African Americans also looked to Kansas as the land of "John Brown" and, led by freedmen like Benjamin "Pap" Singleton, began establishing black colonies in the state. Leaving southern states in the late 1870s because of increasing discrimination, they became known as Exodusters.
At the same time, the Chisholm Trail was opened and the Wild West-era commenced in Kansas. Storied lawman Wild Bill Hickok was a deputy marshal at Fort Riley and a marshal at Hays and Abilene. Dodge City was home to both Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp, who worked as lawmen in the town. The Dalton Gang robbed trains and banks throughout Kansas and the Southwest and maintained a hideout in nearby Meade. In one year alone, eight million head of cattle from Texas boarded trains in Dodge City bound for the East, earning Dodge the nickname "Queen of the Cowtowns".
In response to demands of Methodists and other evangelical Protestants, in 1881 Kansas became the first U.S. state to adopt a constitutional amendment prohibiting all alcoholic beverages, which was repealed in 1948. Anti-saloon activist Carrie Nation vandalized her first saloon in Kiowa in 1900. In 1922, suffragist Ella Uphay Mowry became the first female gubernatorial candidate in the state when she ran as "Mrs. W.D. Mowry". She later stated that, "Someone had to be the pioneer. I firmly believe that some day a woman will sit in the governor's chair in Kansas."
Kansas suffered severe and environmental damage in the 1930s due to the combined effects of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, and large numbers of people left southwestern Kansas in particular for better opportunities elsewhere.
Kansas is bordered by Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the west. The state is divided into 105 counties with 628 cities, with its largest county by area being Butler County. Kansas is located equidistant from the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The geographic center of the 48 contiguous states is in Smith County near Lebanon. Until 1989, the Meades Ranch Triangulation Station in Osborne County was the geodetic center of North America: the central reference point for all maps of North America. The geographic center of Kansas is in Barton County.
Kansas is underlain by a sequence of horizontal to gently westward dipping sedimentary rocks. A sequence of Mississippian, Pennsylvanian and Permian rocks outcrop in the eastern and southern part of the state. The state's western half has exposures of Cretaceous through Tertiary sediments, the latter derived from the erosion of the uplifted Rocky Mountains to the west. These are underlain by older Paleozoic and Mesozoic sediments which correlate well with the outcrops to the east. The state's northeastern corner was subjected to glaciation in the Pleistocene and is covered by glacial drift and loess.
The western two-thirds of the state, lying in the great central plain of the United States, has a generally flat or undulating surface, while the eastern third has many hills and forests. The land gradually rises from east to west; its altitude ranges from 684 ft (208 m) along the Verdigris River at Coffeyville in Montgomery County, to 4,039 ft (1,231 m) at Mount Sunflower, 0.5 miles (0.80 kilometers) from the Colorado border, in Wallace County. It is a common misconception that Kansas is the flattest state in the nation—in 2003, a tongue-in-cheek study famously declared the state "flatter than a pancake". In fact, Kansas has a maximum topographic relief of 3,360 ft (1,020 m), making it the 23rd flattest U.S. state measured by maximum relief.
Around 74 mi (119 km) of the state's northeastern boundary is defined by the Missouri River. The Kansas River (locally known as the Kaw), formed by the junction of the Smoky Hill and Republican rivers at appropriately-named Junction City, joins the Missouri River at Kansas City, after a course of 170 mi (270 km) across the northeastern part of the state.
The Arkansas River (pronunciation varies), rising in Colorado, flows with a bending course for nearly 500 mi (800 km) across the western and southern parts of the state. With its tributaries, (the Little Arkansas, Ninnescah, Walnut, Cow Creek, Cimarron, Verdigris, and the Neosho), it forms the southern drainage system of the state.
Kansas's other rivers are the Saline and Solomon Rivers, tributaries of the Smoky Hill River; the Big Blue, Delaware, and Wakarusa, which flow into the Kansas River; and the Marais des Cygnes, a tributary of the Missouri River. Spring River is located between Riverton and Baxter Springs.
Areas under the protection of the National Park Service include:
In Kansas, there are currently 238 species of rare animals and 400 rare plants. Among those include: Smooth rockress, Virginia rail, Western Grotto Salamander, Royal Fern, Turkey-tangle, Bobolink, Cave salamander, Snowy Plover, Strecker's Chorus Frog, Peregrine falcon, and Black-footed ferret. Common animal species and grasses include: Crows, Deer, Lesser prairie chicken, Mice, Moles, Virginia Opossum, Prairie dogs, Raccoon, Eastern Gama Grass, Prairie Dropseed, Indian Grass, Little Bluestem, Switch grass, Northern Sea Oats, Tussock Sedge, Sideoats grama, and Big Bluestem.
In the Köppen climate classification, Kansas has three climates: humid continental, semi-arid steppe, and humid subtropical. The eastern two-thirds of the state (especially the northeastern portion) has a humid continental climate, with cool to cold winters and hot, often humid summers. Most of the precipitation falls during both the summer and the spring. The USDA hardiness zones for Kansas range from Zone 5b (−15 °F to −10 °F) in the North to Zone 6b (−5 °F to 0 °F) in the South.
The western third of the state—from roughly the U.S. Route 83 corridor westward—has a semi-arid steppe climate. Summers are hot, often very hot, and generally less humid. Winters are highly changeable between warm and very cold. The western region receives an average of about 16 inches (410 millimeters) of precipitation per year. Chinook winds in the winter can warm western Kansas all the way into the 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius) range.
The south-central and southeastern portions of the state, including the Wichita area, have a humid subtropical climate with hot and humid summers, milder winters, and more precipitation than elsewhere in Kansas. Some features of all three climates can be found in most of the state, with droughts and changeable weather between dry and humid not uncommon, and both warm and cold spells in the winter.
Temperatures in areas between U.S. Routes 83 and 81, as well as the southwestern portion of the state along and south of U.S. 50, reach 90 °F (32 °C) or above on most days of June, July, and August. High humidity added to the high temperatures sends the heat index into life-threatening territory, especially in Wichita, Hutchinson, Salina, Russell, Hays, and Great Bend. Temperatures are often higher in Dodge City, Garden City, and Liberal, but the heat index in those three cities is usually lower than the actual air temperature.
Although temperatures of 100 °F (38 °C) or higher are not as common in areas east of U.S. 81, higher humidity and the urban heat island effect lead most summer days to heat indices between 107 °F (42 °C) and 114 °F (46 °C) in Topeka, Lawrence, and the Kansas City metropolitan area. Also, combined with humidity between 85 and 95 percent, dangerous heat indices can be experienced at every hour of the day.
Precipitation ranges from about 47 inches (1,200 mm) annually in the state's southeast corner to about 16 inches (410 mm) in the southwest. Snowfall ranges from around 5 inches (130 mm) in the fringes of the south, to 35 inches (890 mm) in the far northwest. Frost-free days range from more than 200 days in the south, to 130 days in the northwest. Thus, Kansas is the country's ninth or tenth sunniest state, depending on the source. Western Kansas is as sunny as parts of California and Arizona.
Kansas is prone to severe weather, especially in the spring and the early-summer. Despite the frequent sunshine throughout much of the state, due to its location at a climatic boundary prone to intrusions of multiple air masses, the state is vulnerable to strong and severe thunderstorms. Some of these storms become supercell thunderstorms; these can produce some tornadoes, occasionally those of EF3 strength or higher. Kansas averages more than 50 tornadoes annually. Severe thunderstorms sometimes drop some very large hail over Kansas as well. Furthermore, these storms can even bring in flash flooding and damaging straight line winds.
According to NOAA, the all-time highest temperature recorded in Kansas is (121 °F or 49.4 °C) on July 24, 1936, near Alton in Osborne County, and the all-time low is −40 °F (−40 °C) on February 13, 1905, near Lebanon in Smith County. Alton and Lebanon are approximately 50 miles (80 km) apart.
Kansas's record high of 121 °F (49.4 °C) ties with North Dakota for the fifth-highest record high in an American state, behind California (134 °F or 56.7 °C), Arizona (128 °F or 53.3 °C), Nevada (125 °F or 51.7 °C), and New Mexico (122 °F or 50 °C).
Known as rural flight, the last few decades have been marked by a migratory pattern out of the countryside into cities. Out of all the cities in these Midwestern states, 89% have fewer than 3,000 people, and hundreds of those have fewer than 1,000. In Kansas alone, there are more than 6,000 ghost towns and dwindling communities, according to one Kansas historian, Daniel C. Fitzgerald. At the same time, some of the communities in Johnson County (metropolitan Kansas City) are among the fastest-growing in the country.
Kansas has 627 incorporated cities. By state statute, cities are divided into three classes as determined by the population obtained "by any census of enumeration". A city of the third class has a population of less than 5,000, but cities reaching a population of more than 2,000 may be certified as a city of the second class. The second class is limited to cities with a population of less than 25,000, and upon reaching a population of more than 15,000, they may be certified as a city of the first class. First and second class cities are independent of any township and are not included within the township's territory.
Note: Births in table don't add up, because Hispanics are counted both by their ethnicity and by their race, giving a higher overall number.
The residents of Kansas have a life expectancy near the U.S. national average. In 2013, males in Kansas lived an average of 76.6 years compared to a male national average of 76.7 years and females lived an average of 81.0 years compared to a female national average of 81.5 years. Increases in life expectancy between 1980 and 2013 were below the national average for males and near the national average for females. Male life expectancy in Kansas between 1980 and 2014 increased by an average of 5.2 years, compared to a male national average of a 6.7-year increase. Life expectancy for females in Kansas between 1980 and 2014 increased by 4.3 years, compared to a female national average of a 4.0 year increase.
Using 2017–2019 data, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation calculated that life expectancy for Kansas counties ranged from 75.8 years for Wyandotte County to 81.7 years for Johnson County. Life expectancy for the state as a whole was 78.5 years. Life expectancy for the United States as a whole in 2019 was 78.8 years.
The northeastern portion of the state, extending from the eastern border to Junction City and from the Nebraska border to south of Johnson County is home to more than 1.5 million people in the Kansas City (Kansas portion), Manhattan, Lawrence, and Topeka metropolitan areas. Overland Park, a young city incorporated in 1960, has the largest population and the largest land area in the county. It is home to Johnson County Community College.
Olathe is the county seat and home to Johnson County Executive Airport. The cities of Olathe, Shawnee, De Soto and Gardner have some of the state's fastest growing populations. The cities of Overland Park, Lenexa, Olathe, De Soto, and Gardner are also notable because they lie along the former route of the Santa Fe Trail. Among cities with at least one thousand residents, Mission Hills has the highest median income in the state.
Several institutions of higher education are located in Northeast Kansas including Baker University (the oldest university in the state, founded in 1858 and affiliated with the United Methodist Church) in Baldwin City, Benedictine College (sponsored by St. Benedict's Abbey and Mount St. Scholastica Monastery and formed from the merger of St. Benedict's College (1858) and Mount St. Scholastica College (1923)) in Atchison, MidAmerica Nazarene University in Olathe, Ottawa University in Ottawa and Overland Park, Kansas City Kansas Community College and KU Medical Center in Kansas City, and KU Edwards Campus in Overland Park. Less than an hour's drive to the west, Lawrence is home to the University of Kansas, the largest public university in the state, and Haskell Indian Nations University.
To the north, Kansas City, with the second largest land area in the state, contains a number of diverse ethnic neighborhoods. Its attractions include the Kansas Speedway, Sporting Kansas City, Kansas City Monarchs, and The Legends at Village West retail and entertainment center. Nearby, Kansas's first settlement Bonner Springs is home to several national and regional attractions including the Providence Medical Center Amphitheather, the National Agricultural Center and Hall of Fame, and the annual Kansas City Renaissance Festival. Further up the Missouri River, the city of Lansing is the home of the state's first maximum-security prison. Historic Leavenworth, founded in 1854, was the first incorporated city in Kansas. North of the city, Fort Leavenworth is the oldest active Army post west of the Mississippi River. The city of Atchison was an early commercial center in the state and is well known as the birthplace of Amelia Earhart.
To the west, nearly a quarter million people reside in the Topeka metropolitan area. Topeka is the state capital and home to Washburn University and Washburn Institute of Technology. Built at a Kansas River crossing along the old Oregon Trail, this historic city has several nationally registered historic places. Further westward along Interstate 70 and the Kansas River is Junction City with its historic limestone and brick buildings and nearby Fort Riley, well known as the home to the U.S. Army's 1st Infantry Division (nicknamed "the Big Red One"). A short distance away, the city of Manhattan is home to Kansas State University, the second-largest public university in the state and the nation's oldest land-grant university, dating back to 1863. South of the campus, Aggieville dates back to 1889 and is the state's oldest shopping district of its kind.
In south-central Kansas, the Wichita metropolitan area is home to more than 600,000 people. Wichita is the largest city in the state in terms of both land area and population. 'The Air Capital' is a major manufacturing center for the aircraft industry and the home of Wichita State University. Before Wichita was 'The Air Capital' it was a Cowtown. With a number of nationally registered historic places, museums, and other entertainment destinations, it has a desire to become a cultural mecca in the Midwest. Wichita's population growth has grown by double digits and the surrounding suburbs are among the fastest growing cities in the state. The population of Goddard has grown by more than 11% per year since 2000. Other fast-growing cities include Andover, Maize, Park City, Derby, and Haysville.
Wichita was one of the first cities to add the city commissioner and city manager in their form of government. Wichita is also home of the nationally recognized Sedgwick County Zoo.
Up river (the Arkansas River) from Wichita is the city of Hutchinson. The city was built on one of the world's largest salt deposits (of what would form Strataca), and it has the world's largest and longest wheat elevator. It is also the home of Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center, Prairie Dunes Country Club and the Kansas State Fair. North of Wichita along Interstate 135 is the city of Newton, the former western terminal of the Santa Fe Railroad and trailhead for the famed Chisholm Trail. To the southeast of Wichita are the cities of Winfield and Arkansas City with historic architecture and the Cherokee Strip Museum (in Ark City). The city of Udall was the site of the deadliest tornado in Kansas on May 25, 1955; it killed 80 people in and near the city.
Southeast Kansas has a unique history with a number of nationally registered historic places in this coal-mining region. Located in Crawford County (dubbed the Fried Chicken Capital of Kansas), Pittsburg is the largest city in the region and the home of Pittsburg State University. The neighboring city of Frontenac in 1888 was the site of the worst mine disaster in the state in which an underground explosion killed 47 miners. "Big Brutus" is located 1.5 miles (2.4 km) outside the city of West Mineral. Along with the restored fort, historic Fort Scott has a national cemetery designated by President Lincoln in 1862. The region also shares a Media market with Joplin, Missouri, a city in Southwest Missouri.
Salina is the largest city in central and north-central Kansas. South of Salina is the small city of Lindsborg with its numerous Dala horses. Much of the architecture and decor of this town has a distinctly Swedish style. To the east along Interstate 70, the historic city of Abilene was formerly a trailhead for the Chisholm Trail and was the boyhood home of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and is the site of his Presidential Library and the tombs of the former president, First Lady and son who died in infancy. To the west is Lucas, the Grassroots Art Capital of Kansas.
Westward along the Interstate, the city of Russell, traditionally the beginning of sparsely-populated northwest Kansas, was the base of former U.S. Senator Bob Dole and the boyhood home of U.S. Senator Arlen Specter. The city of Hays is home to Fort Hays State University and the Sternberg Museum of Natural History, and is the largest city in the northwest with a population of around 20,001.
Two other landmarks are located in smaller towns in Ellis County: the "Cathedral of the Plains" is located 10 miles (16 km) east of Hays in Victoria, and the boyhood home of Walter Chrysler is 15 miles (24 km) west of Hays in Ellis. West of Hays, population drops dramatically, even in areas along I-70, and only two towns containing populations of more than 4,000: Colby and Goodland, which are located 35 miles (56 km) apart along I-70.
Dodge City, famously known for the cattle drive days of the late 19th century, was built along the old Santa Fe Trail route. The city of Liberal is located along the southern Santa Fe Trail route. The first wind farm in the state was built east of Montezuma. Garden City has the Lee Richardson Zoo. In 1992, a short-lived secessionist movement advocated the secession of several counties in southwest Kansas.
Located midway between Kansas City, Topeka, and Wichita in the heart of the Bluestem Region of the Flint Hills, the city of Emporia has several nationally registered historic places and is the home of Emporia State University, well known for its Teachers College. It was also the home of newspaper man William Allen White.
The United States Census Bureau estimates that the population of Kansas was 2,913,314 on July 1, 2019, a 2.11% increase since the 2010 United States census and an increase of 58,387, or 2.05%, since 2010. This includes a natural increase since the last census of 93,899 (246,484 births minus 152,585 deaths) and a decrease due to net migration of 20,742 people out of the state. Immigration from outside the United States resulted in a net increase of 44,847 people, and migration within the country produced a net loss of 65,589 people. At the 2020 census, its population was 2,937,880.
In 2018, The top countries of origin for Kansas's immigrants were Mexico, India, Vietnam, Guatemala and China.
The population density of Kansas is 52.9 people per square mile. The center of population of Kansas is located in Chase County, at 38°27′N 96°32′W / 38.450°N 96.533°W / 38.450; -96.533, approximately 3 miles (4.8 km) north of the community of Strong City.
The focus on labor-efficient grain-based agriculture—such as a large wheat farm that requires only one or a few people with large machinery to operate, rather than a vegetable farm that requires many people—is causing the de-population of rural areas across Kansas.
According to HUD's 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, there were an estimated 2,397 homeless people in Kansas.
According to the 2021 United States census estimates, the racial makeup of the population was: White American, non-Hispanic (74.7%), Hispanic or Latino (12.7%), Black or African American (6.2%), Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander (0.1%), two or more races (3.3%), Asian (3.2%), and American Indian and Alaska Native (1.2%). At the 2020 census, its racial and ethnic makeup was 75.6% White, 5.7% African American, 2.9% Asian American, 1.1% Native American, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 4.9% some other race, and 9.5% two or more races.
As of 2004, the population included 149,800 foreign-born (5.5% of the state population). The ten largest reported ancestry groups, which account for nearly 90% of the population, in the state are: German (33.75%), Irish (14.4%), English (14.1%), American (7.5%), French (4.4%), Scottish (4.2%), Dutch (2.5%), Swedish (2.4%), Italian (1.8%), and Polish (1.5%). German descendants are especially present in the northwest and northeast with German immigrants settling and founding towns such as Nortonville, Holton, Sabetha and Horton. Descendants of English and of white Americans from other states are especially present in the southeast. Kansas is also home to a large Czech community.
Mexicans are present in the southwest and make up nearly half the population in certain counties. Many African Americans in Kansas are descended from the Exodusters, newly freed blacks who fled the South for land in Kansas following the Civil War.
There is a growing Asian community in Kansas. Since 1965, more and more Asian families have moved to Kansas from countries such as the Philippines, China, Korea, India, and Vietnam.
As of 2011, 35.0% of Kansas's population younger than one year of age belonged to minority groups (i.e., did not have two parents of non-Hispanic white ancestry).
English is the most-spoken language in Kansas, with 91.3% of the population speaking only English at home as of the year 2000. 5.5% speak Spanish, 0.7% speak German, and 0.4% speak Vietnamese.
Religion in Kansas (2022), per PRRI
The 2014 Pew Religious Landscape Survey showed the religious makeup of adults in Kansas was as follows: 57% Protestant, 18% Catholic, 1% Mormon, 1% Jehovah's Witness, 20% unaffiliated, 1% Buddhism, and 2% other religions. In 2010, the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA) reported that the Catholic Church had the highest number of adherents in Kansas (at 426,611), followed by the United Methodist Church with 202,989 members, and the Southern Baptist Convention, reporting 99,329 adherents.
In 2020, ARDA reported 414,939 Catholics, 165,658 United Methodists, and 164,486 Southern Baptists. In 2022, the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI)'s study revealed 74% of the total population were Christian; among them, 59% were Protestant, 13% Catholic, and 2% Mormon. The religiously unaffiliated were 23% of the population, Unitarian Universalists 1%, and New Agers 1%.
Kansas's capital Topeka is sometimes cited as the home of Pentecostalism as it was the site of Charles Fox Parham's Bethel Bible College, where glossolalia was first claimed as the evidence of a spiritual experience referred to as the baptism of the Holy Spirit in 1901. It is also the home of Reverend Charles Sheldon, author of In His Steps, and was the site where the question "What would Jesus do?" originated in a sermon of Sheldon's at Central Congregational Church.
Kansas is the location of the second Baha'i community west of Egypt, when the Baha'i community of Enterprise, KS was started in 1897. From that beginning the Baha'i Faith spread across Kansas.
Topeka is also home of the Westboro Baptist Church, a hate group according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The church has garnered worldwide media attention for picketing the funerals of U.S. servicemen and women for what church members claim as "necessary to combat the fight for equality for gays and lesbians". They have sometimes successfully raised lawsuits against the city of Topeka.
Total Employment of the metropolitan areas in the State of Kansas by total Non-farm Employment in 2016
Total Number of employer establishments in 2016: 74,884
The Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates that Kansas's total gross domestic product in 2014 was US$140.964 billion. In 2015, the job growth rate was 0.8%, among the lowest rates in America with only "10,900 total nonfarm jobs" added that year. According to the Kansas Department of Labor's 2016 report, the average annual wage was $42,930 in 2015. As of April 2016, the state's unemployment rate was 4.2%.
The State of Kansas had a $350 million budget shortfall in February 2017. In February 2017, S&P downgraded Kansas's credit rating to AA-.
Nearly 90% of Kansas's land is devoted to agriculture. The state's agricultural outputs are cattle, sheep, wheat, sorghum, soybeans, cotton, hogs, corn, and salt. As of 2018, there were 59,600 farms in Kansas, 86 (0.14%) of which are certified organic farms. The average farm in the state is about 770 acres (more than a square mile), and in 2016, the average cost of running the farm was $300,000.
By far, the most significant agricultural crop in the state is wheat. Eastern Kansas is part of the Grain Belt, an area of major grain production in the central United States. Approximately 40% of all winter wheat grown in the US is grown in Kansas. Roughly 95% of the wheat grown in the state is hard red winter wheat. During 2016, farmers of conventionally grown wheat farmed 8.2 million acres and harvested an average of 57 bushels of wheat per acre.
The industrial outputs are transportation equipment, commercial and private aircraft, food processing, publishing, chemical products, machinery, apparel, petroleum, and mining.
The state's economy is also heavily influenced by the aerospace industry. Several large aircraft corporations have manufacturing facilities in Wichita and Kansas City, including Spirit AeroSystems, Bombardier Aerospace (LearJet), and Textron Aviation (a merger of the former Cessna, Hawker, and Beechcraft brands). Boeing ended a decades-long history of manufacturing in Kansas between 2012 and 2013.
Major companies headquartered in Kansas include the Garmin (Olathe), YRC Worldwide (Overland Park), Payless Shoes (national headquarters and major distribution facilities in Topeka), and Koch Industries (with national headquarters in Wichita), and Coleman (headquarters in Wichita).
Kansas is also home to three major military installations: Fort Leavenworth (Army), Fort Riley (Army), and McConnell Air Force Base (Air Force). Approximately 25,000 active duty soldiers and airmen are stationed at these bases which also employ approximately 8,000 civilian DoD employees. The US Army Reserve also has the 451st Expeditionary Sustainment Command headquartered in Wichita that serves reservists and their units from around the region. The Kansas Air National Guard has units at Forbes Field in Topeka and the 184th Intelligence Wing in Wichita. The Smoky Hill Weapons Range, a detachment of the Intelligence Wing, is one of the largest and busiest bombing ranges in the nation. During World War II, Kansas was home to numerous Army Air Corps training fields for training new pilots and aircrew. Many of those airfields live on today as municipal airports.
Kansas has vast renewable resources and is a top producer of wind energy in the US, with an installed capacity of about 6,100 Megawatts (MW) from nearly 3,200 wind turbines in 2019. Wind generated the largest share of electricity from the state at 41%. An additional 700 MW of capacity was scheduled to come online during 2020. Kansas is also a leading national producer of renewable ethanol and biodiesel fuels at nearly 600 million gallons per year.
Kansas is ranked eighth in US petroleum extraction. Production has experienced a steady decline as the state's limited economical reserves especially from the Anadarko Basin are depleted. Since oil prices bottomed in 1999, oil production in Kansas has remained fairly constant, with an average monthly rate of about 2.8 million barrels (450,000 cubic meters) in 2004. The recent higher prices have made carbon dioxide sequestration and other oil recovery techniques more economical.
Kansas is also ranked eighth in US natural gas production. Production has steadily declined since the mid-1990s with the gradual depletion of the Hugoton Natural Gas Field—the state's largest field which extends into Oklahoma and Texas. In 2004, slower declines in the Hugoton gas fields and increased coalbed methane production contributed to a smaller overall decline. Average monthly production was over 32 billion cubic feet (0.91 cubic kilometers).
Tax is collected by the Kansas Department of Revenue.
Revenue shortfalls resulting from lower than expected tax collections and slower growth in personal income following a 1998 permanent tax reduction have contributed to the substantial growth in the state's debt level as bonded debt increased from $1.16 billion in 1998 to $3.83 billion in 2006. Some increase in debt was expected as the state continues with its 10-year Comprehensive Transportation Program enacted in 1999.
In 2003, Kansas had three income brackets for income tax calculation, ranging from 3.5% to 6.45%.
The state sales tax in Kansas is 6.15%. Various cities and counties in Kansas have an additional local sales tax. Except during the 2001 recession (March–November 2001), when monthly sales tax collections were flat, collections have trended higher as the economy has grown and two rate increases have been enacted. If there had been no change in sales tax rates or in the economy, the total sales tax collections for 2003 would have been $1,797 million, compared to $805.3 million in 1990. However, they instead amounted to $1,630 million an inflation-adjusted reduction of 10%. The state sales tax is a combined destination-based tax, meaning a single tax is applied that includes state, county, and local taxes, and the rate is based on where the consumer takes possession of the goods or services. Thanks to the destination structure and the numerous local special taxing districts, Kansas has 920 separate sales tax rates ranging from 6.5% to 11.5%. This taxing scheme, known as "Streamlined Sales Tax" was adopted on October 1, 2005, under the governorship of Kathleen Sebelius. Groceries are subject to sales tax in the state. All sales tax collected is remitted to the state department of revenue, and local taxes are then distributed to the various taxing agencies.
As of June 2004, Moody's Investors Service ranked the state 14th for net tax-supported debt per capita. As a percentage of personal income, it was at 3.8%—above the median value of 2.5% for all rated states and having risen from a value of less than 1% in 1992. The state has a statutory requirement to maintain cash reserves of at least 7.5% of expenses at the end of each fiscal year; however, lawmakers can vote to override the rule, and did so during the most recent budget agreement.
During his campaign for the 2010 election, Governor Sam Brownback called for a complete "phase out of Kansas's income tax". In May 2012, Governor Brownback signed into law the Kansas Senate Bill Substitute HB 2117. Starting in 2013, the "ambitious tax overhaul" trimmed income tax, eliminated some corporate taxes, and created pass-through income tax exemptions, he raised the sales tax by one percent to offset the loss to state revenues but that was inadequate. He made cuts to education and some state services to offset lost revenue. The tax cut led to years of budget shortfalls, culminating in a $350 million budget shortfall in February 2017. From 2013 to 2017, 300,000 businesses were considered to be pass-through income entities and benefited from the tax exemption. The tax reform "encouraged tens of thousands of Kansans to claim their wages and salaries as income from a business rather than from employment."
The economic growth that Brownback anticipated never materialized. He argued that it was because of "low wheat and oil prices and a downturn in aircraft sales". The state general fund debt load was $83 million in fiscal year 2010 and by fiscal year 2017 the debt load sat at $179 million. In 2016, Governor Brownback earned the title of "most unpopular governor in America". Only 26 percent of Kansas voters approved of his job performance, compared to 65 percent who said they did not. In the summer of 2016 S&P Global Ratings downgraded Kansas's credit rating. In February 2017, S&P lowered it to AA-.
In February 2017, a bi-partisan coalition presented a bill that would repeal the pass-through income exemption, the "most important provisions of Brownback's overhaul", and raise taxes to make up for the budget shortfall. Brownback vetoed the bill but "45 GOP legislators had voted in favor of the increase, while 40 voted to uphold the governor's veto." On June 6, 2017, a coalition of Democrats and newly elected Republicans overrode [Brownback's] veto and implemented tax increases to a level close to what it was before 2013. Brownback's tax overhaul was described in a June 2017 article in The Atlantic as the United States' "most aggressive experiment in conservative economic policy". The drastic tax cuts had "threatened the viability of schools and infrastructure" in Kansas.
Kansas is served by two Interstate highways with one beltway, two spur routes, and three bypasses, with over 874 miles (1,407 km) in all. The first section of Interstate in the nation was opened on Interstate 70 (I-70) just west of Topeka on November 14, 1956.
I-70 is a major east–west route connecting to Denver, Colorado and Kansas City, Missouri. Cities along this route (from west to east) include Colby, Hays, Salina, Junction City, Topeka, Lawrence, Bonner Springs, and Kansas City.
I-35 is a major north–south route connecting to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and Des Moines, Iowa. Cities along this route (from south to north) include Wichita, El Dorado, Emporia, Ottawa, and Kansas City (and suburbs).
Spur routes serve as connections between the two major routes. I-135, a north–south route, connects I-35 at Wichita to I-70 at Salina. I-335, a southwest–northeast route, connects I-35 at Emporia to I-70 at Topeka. I-335 and portions of I-35 and I-70 make up the Kansas Turnpike. Bypasses include I-470 around Topeka, I-235 around Wichita, and I-670 in downtown Kansas City. I-435 is a beltway around the Kansas City metropolitan area while I-635 bypasses through Kansas City.
U.S. Route 69 (US-69) travels south to north, from Oklahoma to Missouri. The highway passes through the eastern section of Kansas, traveling through Baxter Springs, Pittsburg, Frontenac, Fort Scott, Louisburg, and the Kansas City area.
Kansas also has the country's third largest state highway system after Texas and California. This is because of the high number of counties and county seats (105) and their intertwining.
In January 2004, the Kansas Department of Transportation (KDOT) announced the new Kansas 511 traveler information service. By dialing 511, callers will get access to information about road conditions, construction, closures, detours and weather conditions for the state highway system. Weather and road condition information is updated every 15 minutes.
The state's only major commercial (Class C) airport is Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport, located along US-54 on the western edge of the city. Manhattan Regional Airport in Manhattan offers daily flights to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, making it the second-largest commercial airport in the state. Most air travelers in northeastern Kansas fly out of Kansas City International Airport, located in Platte County, Missouri, as well as Topeka Regional Airport in the state's capital.
In the state's southeastern part, people often use Tulsa International Airport in Tulsa, Oklahoma or Joplin Regional Airport in Joplin, Missouri. For those in the far western part of the state, Denver International Airport is a popular option. Connecting flights are also available from smaller Kansas airports in Dodge City, Garden City, Hays, Hutchinson, Liberal, or Salina.
Dotted across the state are smaller regional and municipal airports, including the Lawrence Municipal Airport, which houses many aircraft for the city of Lawrence and the University of Kansas, Miami County Airport, Wamego Airport, Osage City Municipal Airport, which is the headquarters of Skydive Kansas, Garden City Regional Airport, Manhattan Regional Airport, and Dodge City Regional Airport.
Up through the mid 20th century, railroads connected most cities in Kansas. During World War II, less profitable links were abandoned for scrap metal drives, then additional mileage was reduced as passenger service was halted caused by the wide spread use of automobiles and trucking on the expanding highway system.
For passenger service, currently the Southwest Chief Amtrak route runs through the state on its route from Chicago, Illinois to Los Angeles, California on the BNSF railway. Stops in Kansas include Lawrence, Topeka, Newton, Hutchinson, Dodge City, and Garden City. An Amtrak Thruway connects Newton to the Heartland Flyer in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. There has been proposals to modify the Amtrak routing through Kansas, such as: removing rail service from the Southwest Chief between Albuquerque, New Mexico and Dodge City, and extending rail service for the Heartland Flyer from Oklahoma City to Newton with new stops at Arkansas City and Wichita.
For freight service, there are three Class I railroads in Kansas: BNSF, Union Pacific, and Kansas City Southern; as well as many shortline railroads.
Executive branch: The executive branch consists of one officer and five elected officers. The governor and lieutenant governor are elected on the same ticket. The attorney general, secretary of state, state treasurer, and state insurance commissioner are each elected separately.
Legislative branch: The bicameral Kansas Legislature consists of the Kansas House of Representatives, with 125 members serving two-year terms, and the Kansas Senate, with 40 members serving four-year terms.
Judicial branch: The judicial branch of the state government is headed by the Kansas Supreme Court. The court has seven judges. A vacancy is filled by the Governor picking one of three nominees selected by the nine-member Kansas Supreme Court Nominating Commission. The board consists of five Kansas lawyers elected by other Kansas lawyers and four members selected by the governor.
Since the 1930s, Kansas has remained one of the most socially conservative states in the nation. The 1990s brought the defeat of prominent Democrats, including Dan Glickman, and the Kansas State Board of Education's 1999 decision to eliminate evolution from the state teaching standards, a decision that was later reversed. In 2005, voters accepted a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. The next year, the state passed a law setting a minimum age for marriage at 15 years. Kansas's path to a solid Republican state has been examined by journalist and historian Thomas Frank in his 2004 book What's the Matter with Kansas?.
Kansas was the first state to institute a system of workers' compensation (1910) and to regulate the securities industry (1911). Kansas also permitted women's suffrage in 1912, almost a decade before the federal constitution was amended to require it. Suffrage in all states would not be guaranteed until ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920.
The council–manager government model was adopted by many larger Kansas cities in the years following World War I while many American cities were being run by political machines or organized crime, notably the Pendergast Machine in neighboring Kansas City, Missouri. Kansas was also at the center of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, a 1954 Supreme Court decision that banned racially segregated schools throughout the U.S., though, infamously, many Kansas residents opposed the decision, and it led to protests in Topeka after the verdict.
The state backed Republican Presidential Candidates Wendell Willkie and Thomas E. Dewey in 1940 and 1944, respectively, breaking ranks with the majority of the country in the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Kansas also supported Dewey in 1948 despite the presence of incumbent president Harry S. Truman, who hailed from Independence, Missouri, approximately 15 miles (24 km) east of the Kansas–Missouri state line. After Roosevelt carried Kansas in 1936, only one Democrat has won the state since, Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.
In 2008, Democrat Governor Kathleen Sebelius vetoed permits for the construction of new coal-fired energy plants in Kansas, saying: "We know that greenhouse gases contribute to climate change. As an agricultural state, Kansas is particularly vulnerable. Therefore, reducing pollutants benefits our state not only in the short term—but also for generations of Kansans to come." However, shortly after Mark Parkinson became governor in 2009 upon Sebelius's resignation to become Secretary of U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Parkinson announced a compromise plan to allow construction of a coal-fired plant.
In 2010, Republican Sam Brownback was elected governor with 63 percent of the state vote. He was sworn in as governor in 2011, Kansas's first Republican governor in eight years. Brownback had established himself as a conservative member of the U.S. Senate in years prior, but made several controversial decisions after becoming governor, leading to a 23% approval rating among registered voters – the lowest of any governor in the United States. In May 2011, much to the opposition of art leaders and enthusiasts in the state, Brownback eliminated the Kansas Arts Commission, making Kansas the first state without an arts agency. In July 2011, Brownback announced plans to close the Lawrence branch of the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services as a cost-saving measure. Hundreds rallied against the decision. Lawrence City Commission later voted to provide the funding needed to keep the branch open.
Democrat Laura Kelly defeated former Secretary of State of Kansas Kris Kobach in the 2018 election for Governor with 48.0% of the vote.
In August 2022, Kansas voters rejected the controversial Value Them Both Amendment, which would have eliminated the right to an abortion in the state constitution. The vote was the first referendum on abortion since Roe v. Wade was overturned earlier that summer, and the result was hailed as a landmark victory for pro-choice advocates in the traditionally socially conservative state.
In a 2020 study, Kansas was ranked as the 13th hardest state for citizens to vote in.
The state's current delegation to the Congress of the United States includes Republican Senators Jerry Moran of Manhattan, and Roger Marshall of Great Bend. In the House of Representatives, Kansas is represented by Republican Representatives Tracey Mann of Quinter (District 1), Jake LaTurner of Pittsburg (District 2), Ron Estes of Wichita (District 4), and Democratic Representative Sharice Davids of Kansas City (District 3) Davids is the second Native American to represent Kansas in Congress, after Republican Charles Curtis (Kaw).
Historically, Kansas has been strongly Republican, dating from the Antebellum age when the Republican Party was created out of the movement opposing the extension of slavery into Kansas Territory. Kansas has not elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since the 1932 election, when Franklin D. Roosevelt won his first term as president in the wake of the Great Depression. This is the longest Senate losing streak for either party in a single state. Senator Sam Brownback was a candidate for the Republican party nomination for president in 2008. Brownback was not a candidate for re-election to a third full term in 2010, but he was elected Governor in that year's general election. Moran defeated Tiahrt for the Republican nomination for Brownback's seat in the August 2010 primary, then won a landslide general election victory over Democrat Lisa Johnston.
The only non-Republican presidential candidates Kansas has given its electoral vote to are Populist James Weaver and Democrats William Jennings Bryan (once), Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt (twice), and Lyndon Johnson. In 2004, George W. Bush won the state's six electoral votes by an overwhelming margin of 25 percentage points with 62% of the vote. The only two counties to support Democrat John Kerry in that election were Wyandotte, which contains Kansas City, and Douglas, home to the University of Kansas, located in Lawrence. The 2008 election brought similar results as John McCain won the state with 57% of the votes. Douglas, Wyandotte, and Crawford County were the only counties in support of President Barack Obama.
Abilene was the boyhood home to Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower, and he maintained lifelong ties to family and friends there. Kansas was the adult home of two losing Republican candidates (Governor Alf Landon in 1936 and Senator Bob Dole in 1996).
The New York Times reported in September 2014 that as the Democratic candidate for Senator has tried to drop out of the race, independent Greg Orman has attracted enough bipartisan support to seriously challenge the reelection bid of Republican Pat Roberts:
The legal drinking age in Kansas is 21. In lieu of the state retail sales tax, a 10% Liquor Drink Tax is collected for liquor consumed on the licensed premises and an 8% Liquor Enforcement Tax is collected on retail purchases. Although the sale of cereal malt beverage (also known as 3.2 beer) was legalized in 1937, the first post-Prohibition legalization of alcoholic liquor did not occur until the state's constitution was amended in 1948. The following year the Legislature enacted the Liquor Control Act which created a system of regulating, licensing, and taxing, and the Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) was created to enforce the act. The power to regulate cereal malt beverage remains with the cities and counties. Liquor-by-the-drink did not become legal until passage of an amendment to the state's constitution in 1986 and additional legislation the following year. As of November 2006, Kansas still has 29 dry counties and only 17 counties have passed liquor-by-the-drink with no food sales requirement. Today there are more than 2,600 liquor and 4,000 cereal malt beverage licensees in the state.
On May 12, 2022, Gov. Laura Kelly signed legislation (Senate Bill 84) that legalizes sports betting in the state, making Kansas the 35th state to approve sports wagering in the US. This would give the four state-owned casinos the right to partner with online bookmakers and up to 50 retailers, including gas stations and restaurants, to engage in sports betting.
Education in Kansas is governed at the primary and secondary school level by the Kansas State Board of Education. The state's public colleges and universities are supervised by the Kansas Board of Regents.
Twice since 1999 the Board of Education has approved changes in the state science curriculum standards that encouraged the teaching of intelligent design. Both times, the standards were reversed after changes in the composition of the board in the next election.
The rock band Kansas was formed in the state capital of Topeka, the hometown of several of the band's members.
Joe Walsh, guitarist for the famous rock band the Eagles, was born in Wichita.
Danny Carey, drummer for the band Tool, was raised in Paola.
Singers from Kansas include Leavenworth native Melissa Etheridge, Sharon native Martina McBride, Chanute native Jennifer Knapp (whose first album was titled Kansas), Kansas City native Janelle Monáe, and Liberal native Jerrod Niemann.
The state anthem is the American classic Home on the Range, written by Kansan Brewster Higley. Another song, the official state march adopted by the Kansas Legislature in 1935 is called The Kansas March, which features the lyrics, "Blue sky above us, silken strands of heat, Rim of the far horizon, where earth and heaven meet, Kansas as a temple, stands in velvet sod, Shrine which the sunshine, sanctifies to God."
The state's most famous appearance in literature was as the home of Dorothy Gale, the main character in the novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900). Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie, published in 1935, is another well-known tale about Kansas.
Kansas was also the setting of the 1965 best-seller In Cold Blood, described by its author Truman Capote as a "nonfiction novel". Mixing fact and fiction, the book chronicles the events and aftermath of the 1959 murder of a wealthy farmer and his family who lived in the small West Kansas town of Holcomb in Finney County.
The fictional town of Smallville, Kansas is the childhood home of Clark Kent/Superman in American comic books published by DC Comics. Also Keystone City is a Kansas city where The Flash works and lives.
The science fiction novella A Boy and His Dog, as well as the film based on it, take place in post-apocalyptic Topeka.
The winner of the 2011 Newbery Medal for excellence in children's literature, Moon Over Manifest, tells the story of a young and adventurous girl named Abilene who is sent to the fictional town of Manifest, Kansas, by her father in the summer of 1936. It was written by Kansan Clare Vanderpool.
Lawrence is the setting for a number of science fiction writer James Gunn's novels.
The first film theater in Kansas was the Patee Theater in Lawrence. Most theaters at the time showed films only as part of vaudeville acts but not as an exclusive and stand alone form of entertainment. Though the Patee family had been involved in vaudeville, they believed films could carry the evening without other variety acts, but to show the films it was necessary for the Patee's to establish a generating plant (back in 1903 Lawrence was not yet fully electrified). The Patee Theater was one of the first of its kind west of the Mississippi River. The specialized equipment like the projector came from New York City.
Kansas has been the setting of many award-winning and popular American films, as well as being the home of some of the oldest operating cinemas in the world. The Plaza Cinema in Ottawa, Kansas, located in the northeastern portion of the state, was built on May 22, 1907, and it is listed by the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest operating cinema in the world. In 1926, The Jayhawk Theatre, an art-deco movie house in Topeka opened its doors for the first time to movie going audiences, and today, in addition to screenings of independent films, the theatre acts as a venue for plays and concerts. The Fox Theater in Hutchinson was built in 1930, and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989. Like the other theaters listed here, The Fox still plays first run movies to this day.
Sporting Kansas City, who have played their home games at Village West in Kansas City, since 2008, are the first top-tier professional sports league and first Major League Soccer team to be located within Kansas. In 2011 the team moved to their new home, a $165 million soccer specific stadium now known as Children's Mercy Park.
Historically, Kansans have supported the major league sports teams of Kansas City, Missouri, including the Kansas City Royals (MLB), and the Kansas City Chiefs (NFL), in part because the home stadiums for these teams are a few miles from the Kansas border. The Chiefs and the Royals play at the Truman Sports Complex, located about 10 miles (16 km) from the Kansas–Missouri state line. FC Kansas City, a charter member of the National Women's Soccer League, played the 2013 season, the first for both the team and the league, on the Kansas side of the metropolitan area, but played on the Missouri side until folding after the 2017 season. From 1973 to 1997 the flagship radio station for the Royals was WIBW in Topeka.
Some Kansans, mostly from the westernmost parts of the state, support the professional sports teams of Denver, particularly the Denver Broncos of the NFL.
Two major auto racing facilities are located in Kansas. The Kansas Speedway located in Kansas City hosts races of the NASCAR, IndyCar, and ARCA circuits. Also, the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) holds drag racing events at Heartland Park Topeka. The Sports Car Club of America has its national headquarters in Topeka.
The history of professional sports in Kansas probably dates from the establishment of the minor league baseball Topeka Capitals and Leavenworth Soldiers in 1886 in the Western League. The African-American Bud Fowler played on the Topeka team that season, one year before the "color line" descended on professional baseball.
In 1887, the Western League was dominated by a reorganized Topeka team called the Golden Giants: a high-priced collection of major leaguer players, including Bug Holliday, Jim Conway, Dan Stearns, Perry Werden and Jimmy Macullar, which won the league by 15.5 games. On April 10, 1887, the Golden Giants also won an exhibition game from the defending World Series champions, the St. Louis Browns (the present-day Cardinals), by a score of 12–9. However, Topeka was unable to support the team, and it disbanded after one year.
The first night game in the history of professional baseball was played in Independence on April 28, 1930, when the Muscogee (Oklahoma) Indians beat the Independence Producers 13–3 in a minor league game sanctioned by the Western League of the Western Baseball Association with 1,500 fans attending the game. The permanent lighting system was first used for an exhibition game on April 17, 1930, between the Independence Producers and House of David semi-professional baseball team of Benton Harbor, Michigan with the Independence team winning 9–1 before a crowd of 1,700 spectators.
The governing body for intercollegiate sports in the United States, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), was headquartered in Johnson County, Kansas from 1952 until moving to Indianapolis in 1999.
While there are no franchises of the four major professional sports within the state, many Kansans are fans of the state's major college sports teams, especially the Jayhawks of the University of Kansas (KU), and the Wildcats of Kansas State University (KSU or "K-State"). The teams are rivals in the Big 12 Conference.
Both KU and K-State have tradition-rich programs in men's basketball. The Jayhawks are a perennial national power, ranking first in all-time victories among NCAA programs. The Jayhawks have won six national titles, including NCAA tournament championships in 1952, 1988, 2008, and 2022. They also were retroactively awarded national championships by the Helms Foundation for 1922 and 1923. K-State also had a long stretch of success on the hardwood, lasting from the 1940s to the 1980s, making four Final Fours during that stretch. In 1988, KU and K-State met in the Elite Eight, KU taking the game 71–58. After a 12-year absence, the Wildcats returned to the NCAA tournament in 2008, and advanced to the Elite Eight in 2010 and 2018. KU is fifth all-time with 15 Final Four appearances, while K-State's four appearances are tied for 17th.
Conversely, success on the gridiron has been less frequent for both KSU and KU. However, there have been recent breakthroughs for both schools' football teams. The Jayhawks won the Orange Bowl for the first time in three tries in 2008, capping a 12–1 season, the best in school history. And when Bill Snyder arrived to coach at K-State in 1989, he turned the Wildcats from one of the worst college football programs in America, into a national force for most of the 1990s and early 2000s. The team won the Fiesta Bowl in 1997, achieved an undefeated (11–0) regular season and No. 1 ranking in 1998, and took the Big 12 Conference championship in 2003. After three seasons in which K-State football languished, Snyder came out of retirement in 2009 and guided them to the top of the college football ranks again, finishing second in the Big 12 in 2011 and earning a berth in the Cotton Bowl, and winning the Big 12 again in 2012.
Wichita State University, which also fields teams (called the Shockers) in Division I of the NCAA, is best known for its baseball and basketball programs. In baseball, the Shockers won the College World Series in 1989. In men's basketball, they appeared in the Final Four in 1965 and 2013, and entered the 2014 NCAA tournament unbeaten. The school also fielded a football team from 1897 to 1986. The Shocker football team is tragically known for a plane crash in 1970 that killed 31 people, including 14 players.
Notable success has also been achieved by the state's smaller schools in football. Pittsburg State University, an NCAA Division II participant, has claimed four national titles in football, two in the NAIA and most recently the 2011 NCAA Division II national title. Pittsburg State became the winningest NCAA Division II football program in 1995. PSU passed Hillsdale College at the top of the all-time victories list in the 1995 season on its march to the national runner-up finish. The Gorillas, in 96 seasons of intercollegiate competition, have accumulated 579 victories, posting a 579–301–48 overall mark.
Washburn University, in Topeka, won the NAIA Men's Basketball Championship in 1987. The Fort Hays State University men won the 1996 NCAA Division II title with a 34–0 record, and the Washburn women won the 2005 NCAA Division II crown. St. Benedict's College (now Benedictine College), in Atchison, won the 1954 and 1967 Men's NAIA Basketball Championships.
The Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference has its roots as one of the oldest college sport conferences in existence and participates in the NAIA and all ten member schools are in the state of Kansas. Other smaller school conferences that have some members in Kansas are the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association the Midlands Collegiate Athletic Conference, the Midwest Christian College Conference, and the Heart of America Athletic Conference. Many junior colleges also have active athletic programs.
Emporia State's women's basketball team, under head coach Brandon Schneider, who is now serving as the women's basketball coach at the University of Kansas, has seen success as well. In 2010 the team won the NCAA Division II National Championship. Emporia State and Washburn in Topeka share a heated rivalry in all sports, mostly due to the close proximity of both cities.
The Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference has been heralded as one of the best conferences in all of NJCAA football, with Garden City Community College, Independence Community College, and Butler County Community College all consistently in contention for national championships.
The Kansas State High School Activities Association (KSHSAA) is the organization which oversees interscholastic competition in the state of Kansas at the high school level. It oversees both athletic and non-athletic competition, and sponsors championships in several sports and activities.
Maps
38°N 98°W / 38°N 98°W / 38; -98 (State of Kansas)
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Kansas (/ˈkænzəs/ ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its capital is Topeka, its largest metropolitan core is Kansas City MO-KS and its most populous municipality is Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the west. Kansas is named after the Kansas River, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native Americans who lived along its banks. For thousands of years, what is now Kansas was home to numerous and diverse Native American tribes. Tribes in the eastern part of the state generally lived in villages along the river valleys. Tribes in the western part of the state were semi-nomadic and hunted large herds of bison.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The first Euro-American settlement in Kansas occurred in 1827 at Fort Leavenworth. The pace of settlement accelerated in the 1850s, in the midst of political wars over the slavery debate. When it was officially opened to settlement by the U.S. government in 1854 with the Kansas–Nebraska Act, abolitionist Free-Staters from New England and pro-slavery settlers from neighboring Missouri rushed to the territory to determine whether Kansas would become a free state or a slave state. Thus, the area was a hotbed of violence and chaos in its early days as these forces collided, and was known as Bleeding Kansas. The abolitionists prevailed, and on January 29, 1861, Kansas entered the Union as a free state, hence the unofficial nickname \"The Free State\".",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "As of 2015, Kansas was among the most productive agricultural states, producing high yields of wheat, corn, sorghum, and soybeans. Kansas, which has an area of 82,278 square miles (213,100 square kilometers) is the 15th-largest state by area, the 36th most-populous of the 50 states, with a population of 2,940,865 according to the 2020 census, and the 10th least densely populated. Residents of Kansas are called Kansans. Mount Sunflower is Kansas's highest point at 4,039 feet (1,231 meters).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The name Kansas derives from the Algonquian term, Akansa, for the Quapaw people. These were a Dhegiha Siouan-speaking people who settled in Arkansas around the 13th century. The stem -kansa is named after the Kaw people, also known as the Kansa, a federally recognized Native American tribe. The tribe's name (natively kką:ze) is often said to mean \"people of the (south) wind\" although this was probably not the term's original meaning.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Before European colonization, Kansas was occupied by the Caddoan Wichita and later the Siouan Kaw people. The first European to set foot in present-day Kansas was the Spanish conquistador Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, who explored the area in 1541.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Between 1763 and 1803 the territory of Kansas was integrated into Spanish Louisiana. The governor Luis de Unzaga 'le Conciliateur', during that period, promoted expeditions and good relations with the Amerindians, among the explorers were Antoine de Marigny and others who continued trading across the Kansas River, especially at its confluence with the Missouri River, tributaries of the Mississippi River.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In 1803, most of modern Kansas was acquired by the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase. Southwest Kansas, however, was still a part of Spain, Mexico, and the Republic of Texas until the conclusion of the Mexican–American War in 1848, when these lands were ceded to the United States. From 1812 to 1821, Kansas was part of the Missouri Territory. The Santa Fe Trail traversed Kansas from 1821 to 1880, transporting manufactured goods from Missouri and silver and furs from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Wagon ruts from the trail are still visible in the prairie today.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In 1827, Fort Leavenworth became the first permanent settlement of white Americans in the future state. The Kansas–Nebraska Act became law on May 30, 1854, establishing Nebraska Territory and Kansas Territory, and opening the area to broader settlement by whites. Kansas Territory stretched all the way to the Continental Divide and included the sites of present-day Denver, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The first non-military settlement of Euro-Americans in Kansas Territory consisted of abolitionists from Massachusetts and other Free-Staters who founded the town of Lawrence and attempted to stop the spread of slavery from neighboring Missouri.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Missouri and Arkansas continually sent settlers into Kansas Territory along its eastern border to sway votes in favor of slavery prior to Kansas statehood elections. Directly presaging the American Civil War these forces collided, entering into skirmishes and guerrilla conflicts that earned the territory the nickname Bleeding Kansas. These included John Brown's Pottawatomie massacre of 1856.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state on January 29, 1861, making it the 34th state to join the United States. By that time, the violence in Kansas had largely subsided, but during the Civil War, on August 21, 1863, William Quantrill led several hundred of his supporters on a raid into Lawrence, destroying much of the city and killing nearly 200 people. He was roundly condemned by both the conventional Confederate military and the partisan rangers commissioned by the Missouri legislature. His application to that body for a commission was flatly rejected due to his pre-war criminal record.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Passage of the Homestead Acts in 1862 accelerated settlement and agricultural development in the state. After the Civil War, many veterans constructed homesteads in Kansas. Many African Americans also looked to Kansas as the land of \"John Brown\" and, led by freedmen like Benjamin \"Pap\" Singleton, began establishing black colonies in the state. Leaving southern states in the late 1870s because of increasing discrimination, they became known as Exodusters.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "At the same time, the Chisholm Trail was opened and the Wild West-era commenced in Kansas. Storied lawman Wild Bill Hickok was a deputy marshal at Fort Riley and a marshal at Hays and Abilene. Dodge City was home to both Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp, who worked as lawmen in the town. The Dalton Gang robbed trains and banks throughout Kansas and the Southwest and maintained a hideout in nearby Meade. In one year alone, eight million head of cattle from Texas boarded trains in Dodge City bound for the East, earning Dodge the nickname \"Queen of the Cowtowns\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In response to demands of Methodists and other evangelical Protestants, in 1881 Kansas became the first U.S. state to adopt a constitutional amendment prohibiting all alcoholic beverages, which was repealed in 1948. Anti-saloon activist Carrie Nation vandalized her first saloon in Kiowa in 1900. In 1922, suffragist Ella Uphay Mowry became the first female gubernatorial candidate in the state when she ran as \"Mrs. W.D. Mowry\". She later stated that, \"Someone had to be the pioneer. I firmly believe that some day a woman will sit in the governor's chair in Kansas.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Kansas suffered severe and environmental damage in the 1930s due to the combined effects of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, and large numbers of people left southwestern Kansas in particular for better opportunities elsewhere.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Kansas is bordered by Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the west. The state is divided into 105 counties with 628 cities, with its largest county by area being Butler County. Kansas is located equidistant from the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The geographic center of the 48 contiguous states is in Smith County near Lebanon. Until 1989, the Meades Ranch Triangulation Station in Osborne County was the geodetic center of North America: the central reference point for all maps of North America. The geographic center of Kansas is in Barton County.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Kansas is underlain by a sequence of horizontal to gently westward dipping sedimentary rocks. A sequence of Mississippian, Pennsylvanian and Permian rocks outcrop in the eastern and southern part of the state. The state's western half has exposures of Cretaceous through Tertiary sediments, the latter derived from the erosion of the uplifted Rocky Mountains to the west. These are underlain by older Paleozoic and Mesozoic sediments which correlate well with the outcrops to the east. The state's northeastern corner was subjected to glaciation in the Pleistocene and is covered by glacial drift and loess.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The western two-thirds of the state, lying in the great central plain of the United States, has a generally flat or undulating surface, while the eastern third has many hills and forests. The land gradually rises from east to west; its altitude ranges from 684 ft (208 m) along the Verdigris River at Coffeyville in Montgomery County, to 4,039 ft (1,231 m) at Mount Sunflower, 0.5 miles (0.80 kilometers) from the Colorado border, in Wallace County. It is a common misconception that Kansas is the flattest state in the nation—in 2003, a tongue-in-cheek study famously declared the state \"flatter than a pancake\". In fact, Kansas has a maximum topographic relief of 3,360 ft (1,020 m), making it the 23rd flattest U.S. state measured by maximum relief.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Around 74 mi (119 km) of the state's northeastern boundary is defined by the Missouri River. The Kansas River (locally known as the Kaw), formed by the junction of the Smoky Hill and Republican rivers at appropriately-named Junction City, joins the Missouri River at Kansas City, after a course of 170 mi (270 km) across the northeastern part of the state.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The Arkansas River (pronunciation varies), rising in Colorado, flows with a bending course for nearly 500 mi (800 km) across the western and southern parts of the state. With its tributaries, (the Little Arkansas, Ninnescah, Walnut, Cow Creek, Cimarron, Verdigris, and the Neosho), it forms the southern drainage system of the state.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Kansas's other rivers are the Saline and Solomon Rivers, tributaries of the Smoky Hill River; the Big Blue, Delaware, and Wakarusa, which flow into the Kansas River; and the Marais des Cygnes, a tributary of the Missouri River. Spring River is located between Riverton and Baxter Springs.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Areas under the protection of the National Park Service include:",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In Kansas, there are currently 238 species of rare animals and 400 rare plants. Among those include: Smooth rockress, Virginia rail, Western Grotto Salamander, Royal Fern, Turkey-tangle, Bobolink, Cave salamander, Snowy Plover, Strecker's Chorus Frog, Peregrine falcon, and Black-footed ferret. Common animal species and grasses include: Crows, Deer, Lesser prairie chicken, Mice, Moles, Virginia Opossum, Prairie dogs, Raccoon, Eastern Gama Grass, Prairie Dropseed, Indian Grass, Little Bluestem, Switch grass, Northern Sea Oats, Tussock Sedge, Sideoats grama, and Big Bluestem.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In the Köppen climate classification, Kansas has three climates: humid continental, semi-arid steppe, and humid subtropical. The eastern two-thirds of the state (especially the northeastern portion) has a humid continental climate, with cool to cold winters and hot, often humid summers. Most of the precipitation falls during both the summer and the spring. The USDA hardiness zones for Kansas range from Zone 5b (−15 °F to −10 °F) in the North to Zone 6b (−5 °F to 0 °F) in the South.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The western third of the state—from roughly the U.S. Route 83 corridor westward—has a semi-arid steppe climate. Summers are hot, often very hot, and generally less humid. Winters are highly changeable between warm and very cold. The western region receives an average of about 16 inches (410 millimeters) of precipitation per year. Chinook winds in the winter can warm western Kansas all the way into the 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius) range.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The south-central and southeastern portions of the state, including the Wichita area, have a humid subtropical climate with hot and humid summers, milder winters, and more precipitation than elsewhere in Kansas. Some features of all three climates can be found in most of the state, with droughts and changeable weather between dry and humid not uncommon, and both warm and cold spells in the winter.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Temperatures in areas between U.S. Routes 83 and 81, as well as the southwestern portion of the state along and south of U.S. 50, reach 90 °F (32 °C) or above on most days of June, July, and August. High humidity added to the high temperatures sends the heat index into life-threatening territory, especially in Wichita, Hutchinson, Salina, Russell, Hays, and Great Bend. Temperatures are often higher in Dodge City, Garden City, and Liberal, but the heat index in those three cities is usually lower than the actual air temperature.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Although temperatures of 100 °F (38 °C) or higher are not as common in areas east of U.S. 81, higher humidity and the urban heat island effect lead most summer days to heat indices between 107 °F (42 °C) and 114 °F (46 °C) in Topeka, Lawrence, and the Kansas City metropolitan area. Also, combined with humidity between 85 and 95 percent, dangerous heat indices can be experienced at every hour of the day.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Precipitation ranges from about 47 inches (1,200 mm) annually in the state's southeast corner to about 16 inches (410 mm) in the southwest. Snowfall ranges from around 5 inches (130 mm) in the fringes of the south, to 35 inches (890 mm) in the far northwest. Frost-free days range from more than 200 days in the south, to 130 days in the northwest. Thus, Kansas is the country's ninth or tenth sunniest state, depending on the source. Western Kansas is as sunny as parts of California and Arizona.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Kansas is prone to severe weather, especially in the spring and the early-summer. Despite the frequent sunshine throughout much of the state, due to its location at a climatic boundary prone to intrusions of multiple air masses, the state is vulnerable to strong and severe thunderstorms. Some of these storms become supercell thunderstorms; these can produce some tornadoes, occasionally those of EF3 strength or higher. Kansas averages more than 50 tornadoes annually. Severe thunderstorms sometimes drop some very large hail over Kansas as well. Furthermore, these storms can even bring in flash flooding and damaging straight line winds.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "According to NOAA, the all-time highest temperature recorded in Kansas is (121 °F or 49.4 °C) on July 24, 1936, near Alton in Osborne County, and the all-time low is −40 °F (−40 °C) on February 13, 1905, near Lebanon in Smith County. Alton and Lebanon are approximately 50 miles (80 km) apart.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Kansas's record high of 121 °F (49.4 °C) ties with North Dakota for the fifth-highest record high in an American state, behind California (134 °F or 56.7 °C), Arizona (128 °F or 53.3 °C), Nevada (125 °F or 51.7 °C), and New Mexico (122 °F or 50 °C).",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Known as rural flight, the last few decades have been marked by a migratory pattern out of the countryside into cities. Out of all the cities in these Midwestern states, 89% have fewer than 3,000 people, and hundreds of those have fewer than 1,000. In Kansas alone, there are more than 6,000 ghost towns and dwindling communities, according to one Kansas historian, Daniel C. Fitzgerald. At the same time, some of the communities in Johnson County (metropolitan Kansas City) are among the fastest-growing in the country.",
"title": "Settlement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Kansas has 627 incorporated cities. By state statute, cities are divided into three classes as determined by the population obtained \"by any census of enumeration\". A city of the third class has a population of less than 5,000, but cities reaching a population of more than 2,000 may be certified as a city of the second class. The second class is limited to cities with a population of less than 25,000, and upon reaching a population of more than 15,000, they may be certified as a city of the first class. First and second class cities are independent of any township and are not included within the township's territory.",
"title": "Settlement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Note: Births in table don't add up, because Hispanics are counted both by their ethnicity and by their race, giving a higher overall number.",
"title": "Settlement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The residents of Kansas have a life expectancy near the U.S. national average. In 2013, males in Kansas lived an average of 76.6 years compared to a male national average of 76.7 years and females lived an average of 81.0 years compared to a female national average of 81.5 years. Increases in life expectancy between 1980 and 2013 were below the national average for males and near the national average for females. Male life expectancy in Kansas between 1980 and 2014 increased by an average of 5.2 years, compared to a male national average of a 6.7-year increase. Life expectancy for females in Kansas between 1980 and 2014 increased by 4.3 years, compared to a female national average of a 4.0 year increase.",
"title": "Settlement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Using 2017–2019 data, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation calculated that life expectancy for Kansas counties ranged from 75.8 years for Wyandotte County to 81.7 years for Johnson County. Life expectancy for the state as a whole was 78.5 years. Life expectancy for the United States as a whole in 2019 was 78.8 years.",
"title": "Settlement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The northeastern portion of the state, extending from the eastern border to Junction City and from the Nebraska border to south of Johnson County is home to more than 1.5 million people in the Kansas City (Kansas portion), Manhattan, Lawrence, and Topeka metropolitan areas. Overland Park, a young city incorporated in 1960, has the largest population and the largest land area in the county. It is home to Johnson County Community College.",
"title": "Settlement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Olathe is the county seat and home to Johnson County Executive Airport. The cities of Olathe, Shawnee, De Soto and Gardner have some of the state's fastest growing populations. The cities of Overland Park, Lenexa, Olathe, De Soto, and Gardner are also notable because they lie along the former route of the Santa Fe Trail. Among cities with at least one thousand residents, Mission Hills has the highest median income in the state.",
"title": "Settlement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Several institutions of higher education are located in Northeast Kansas including Baker University (the oldest university in the state, founded in 1858 and affiliated with the United Methodist Church) in Baldwin City, Benedictine College (sponsored by St. Benedict's Abbey and Mount St. Scholastica Monastery and formed from the merger of St. Benedict's College (1858) and Mount St. Scholastica College (1923)) in Atchison, MidAmerica Nazarene University in Olathe, Ottawa University in Ottawa and Overland Park, Kansas City Kansas Community College and KU Medical Center in Kansas City, and KU Edwards Campus in Overland Park. Less than an hour's drive to the west, Lawrence is home to the University of Kansas, the largest public university in the state, and Haskell Indian Nations University.",
"title": "Settlement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "To the north, Kansas City, with the second largest land area in the state, contains a number of diverse ethnic neighborhoods. Its attractions include the Kansas Speedway, Sporting Kansas City, Kansas City Monarchs, and The Legends at Village West retail and entertainment center. Nearby, Kansas's first settlement Bonner Springs is home to several national and regional attractions including the Providence Medical Center Amphitheather, the National Agricultural Center and Hall of Fame, and the annual Kansas City Renaissance Festival. Further up the Missouri River, the city of Lansing is the home of the state's first maximum-security prison. Historic Leavenworth, founded in 1854, was the first incorporated city in Kansas. North of the city, Fort Leavenworth is the oldest active Army post west of the Mississippi River. The city of Atchison was an early commercial center in the state and is well known as the birthplace of Amelia Earhart.",
"title": "Settlement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "To the west, nearly a quarter million people reside in the Topeka metropolitan area. Topeka is the state capital and home to Washburn University and Washburn Institute of Technology. Built at a Kansas River crossing along the old Oregon Trail, this historic city has several nationally registered historic places. Further westward along Interstate 70 and the Kansas River is Junction City with its historic limestone and brick buildings and nearby Fort Riley, well known as the home to the U.S. Army's 1st Infantry Division (nicknamed \"the Big Red One\"). A short distance away, the city of Manhattan is home to Kansas State University, the second-largest public university in the state and the nation's oldest land-grant university, dating back to 1863. South of the campus, Aggieville dates back to 1889 and is the state's oldest shopping district of its kind.",
"title": "Settlement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "In south-central Kansas, the Wichita metropolitan area is home to more than 600,000 people. Wichita is the largest city in the state in terms of both land area and population. 'The Air Capital' is a major manufacturing center for the aircraft industry and the home of Wichita State University. Before Wichita was 'The Air Capital' it was a Cowtown. With a number of nationally registered historic places, museums, and other entertainment destinations, it has a desire to become a cultural mecca in the Midwest. Wichita's population growth has grown by double digits and the surrounding suburbs are among the fastest growing cities in the state. The population of Goddard has grown by more than 11% per year since 2000. Other fast-growing cities include Andover, Maize, Park City, Derby, and Haysville.",
"title": "Settlement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Wichita was one of the first cities to add the city commissioner and city manager in their form of government. Wichita is also home of the nationally recognized Sedgwick County Zoo.",
"title": "Settlement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Up river (the Arkansas River) from Wichita is the city of Hutchinson. The city was built on one of the world's largest salt deposits (of what would form Strataca), and it has the world's largest and longest wheat elevator. It is also the home of Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center, Prairie Dunes Country Club and the Kansas State Fair. North of Wichita along Interstate 135 is the city of Newton, the former western terminal of the Santa Fe Railroad and trailhead for the famed Chisholm Trail. To the southeast of Wichita are the cities of Winfield and Arkansas City with historic architecture and the Cherokee Strip Museum (in Ark City). The city of Udall was the site of the deadliest tornado in Kansas on May 25, 1955; it killed 80 people in and near the city.",
"title": "Settlement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Southeast Kansas has a unique history with a number of nationally registered historic places in this coal-mining region. Located in Crawford County (dubbed the Fried Chicken Capital of Kansas), Pittsburg is the largest city in the region and the home of Pittsburg State University. The neighboring city of Frontenac in 1888 was the site of the worst mine disaster in the state in which an underground explosion killed 47 miners. \"Big Brutus\" is located 1.5 miles (2.4 km) outside the city of West Mineral. Along with the restored fort, historic Fort Scott has a national cemetery designated by President Lincoln in 1862. The region also shares a Media market with Joplin, Missouri, a city in Southwest Missouri.",
"title": "Settlement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Salina is the largest city in central and north-central Kansas. South of Salina is the small city of Lindsborg with its numerous Dala horses. Much of the architecture and decor of this town has a distinctly Swedish style. To the east along Interstate 70, the historic city of Abilene was formerly a trailhead for the Chisholm Trail and was the boyhood home of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and is the site of his Presidential Library and the tombs of the former president, First Lady and son who died in infancy. To the west is Lucas, the Grassroots Art Capital of Kansas.",
"title": "Settlement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Westward along the Interstate, the city of Russell, traditionally the beginning of sparsely-populated northwest Kansas, was the base of former U.S. Senator Bob Dole and the boyhood home of U.S. Senator Arlen Specter. The city of Hays is home to Fort Hays State University and the Sternberg Museum of Natural History, and is the largest city in the northwest with a population of around 20,001.",
"title": "Settlement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Two other landmarks are located in smaller towns in Ellis County: the \"Cathedral of the Plains\" is located 10 miles (16 km) east of Hays in Victoria, and the boyhood home of Walter Chrysler is 15 miles (24 km) west of Hays in Ellis. West of Hays, population drops dramatically, even in areas along I-70, and only two towns containing populations of more than 4,000: Colby and Goodland, which are located 35 miles (56 km) apart along I-70.",
"title": "Settlement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Dodge City, famously known for the cattle drive days of the late 19th century, was built along the old Santa Fe Trail route. The city of Liberal is located along the southern Santa Fe Trail route. The first wind farm in the state was built east of Montezuma. Garden City has the Lee Richardson Zoo. In 1992, a short-lived secessionist movement advocated the secession of several counties in southwest Kansas.",
"title": "Settlement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Located midway between Kansas City, Topeka, and Wichita in the heart of the Bluestem Region of the Flint Hills, the city of Emporia has several nationally registered historic places and is the home of Emporia State University, well known for its Teachers College. It was also the home of newspaper man William Allen White.",
"title": "Settlement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The United States Census Bureau estimates that the population of Kansas was 2,913,314 on July 1, 2019, a 2.11% increase since the 2010 United States census and an increase of 58,387, or 2.05%, since 2010. This includes a natural increase since the last census of 93,899 (246,484 births minus 152,585 deaths) and a decrease due to net migration of 20,742 people out of the state. Immigration from outside the United States resulted in a net increase of 44,847 people, and migration within the country produced a net loss of 65,589 people. At the 2020 census, its population was 2,937,880.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "In 2018, The top countries of origin for Kansas's immigrants were Mexico, India, Vietnam, Guatemala and China.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "The population density of Kansas is 52.9 people per square mile. The center of population of Kansas is located in Chase County, at 38°27′N 96°32′W / 38.450°N 96.533°W / 38.450; -96.533, approximately 3 miles (4.8 km) north of the community of Strong City.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "The focus on labor-efficient grain-based agriculture—such as a large wheat farm that requires only one or a few people with large machinery to operate, rather than a vegetable farm that requires many people—is causing the de-population of rural areas across Kansas.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "According to HUD's 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, there were an estimated 2,397 homeless people in Kansas.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "According to the 2021 United States census estimates, the racial makeup of the population was: White American, non-Hispanic (74.7%), Hispanic or Latino (12.7%), Black or African American (6.2%), Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander (0.1%), two or more races (3.3%), Asian (3.2%), and American Indian and Alaska Native (1.2%). At the 2020 census, its racial and ethnic makeup was 75.6% White, 5.7% African American, 2.9% Asian American, 1.1% Native American, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 4.9% some other race, and 9.5% two or more races.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "As of 2004, the population included 149,800 foreign-born (5.5% of the state population). The ten largest reported ancestry groups, which account for nearly 90% of the population, in the state are: German (33.75%), Irish (14.4%), English (14.1%), American (7.5%), French (4.4%), Scottish (4.2%), Dutch (2.5%), Swedish (2.4%), Italian (1.8%), and Polish (1.5%). German descendants are especially present in the northwest and northeast with German immigrants settling and founding towns such as Nortonville, Holton, Sabetha and Horton. Descendants of English and of white Americans from other states are especially present in the southeast. Kansas is also home to a large Czech community.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Mexicans are present in the southwest and make up nearly half the population in certain counties. Many African Americans in Kansas are descended from the Exodusters, newly freed blacks who fled the South for land in Kansas following the Civil War.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "There is a growing Asian community in Kansas. Since 1965, more and more Asian families have moved to Kansas from countries such as the Philippines, China, Korea, India, and Vietnam.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "As of 2011, 35.0% of Kansas's population younger than one year of age belonged to minority groups (i.e., did not have two parents of non-Hispanic white ancestry).",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "English is the most-spoken language in Kansas, with 91.3% of the population speaking only English at home as of the year 2000. 5.5% speak Spanish, 0.7% speak German, and 0.4% speak Vietnamese.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Religion in Kansas (2022), per PRRI",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "The 2014 Pew Religious Landscape Survey showed the religious makeup of adults in Kansas was as follows: 57% Protestant, 18% Catholic, 1% Mormon, 1% Jehovah's Witness, 20% unaffiliated, 1% Buddhism, and 2% other religions. In 2010, the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA) reported that the Catholic Church had the highest number of adherents in Kansas (at 426,611), followed by the United Methodist Church with 202,989 members, and the Southern Baptist Convention, reporting 99,329 adherents.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "In 2020, ARDA reported 414,939 Catholics, 165,658 United Methodists, and 164,486 Southern Baptists. In 2022, the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI)'s study revealed 74% of the total population were Christian; among them, 59% were Protestant, 13% Catholic, and 2% Mormon. The religiously unaffiliated were 23% of the population, Unitarian Universalists 1%, and New Agers 1%.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Kansas's capital Topeka is sometimes cited as the home of Pentecostalism as it was the site of Charles Fox Parham's Bethel Bible College, where glossolalia was first claimed as the evidence of a spiritual experience referred to as the baptism of the Holy Spirit in 1901. It is also the home of Reverend Charles Sheldon, author of In His Steps, and was the site where the question \"What would Jesus do?\" originated in a sermon of Sheldon's at Central Congregational Church.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Kansas is the location of the second Baha'i community west of Egypt, when the Baha'i community of Enterprise, KS was started in 1897. From that beginning the Baha'i Faith spread across Kansas.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Topeka is also home of the Westboro Baptist Church, a hate group according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The church has garnered worldwide media attention for picketing the funerals of U.S. servicemen and women for what church members claim as \"necessary to combat the fight for equality for gays and lesbians\". They have sometimes successfully raised lawsuits against the city of Topeka.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Total Employment of the metropolitan areas in the State of Kansas by total Non-farm Employment in 2016",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Total Number of employer establishments in 2016: 74,884",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "The Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates that Kansas's total gross domestic product in 2014 was US$140.964 billion. In 2015, the job growth rate was 0.8%, among the lowest rates in America with only \"10,900 total nonfarm jobs\" added that year. According to the Kansas Department of Labor's 2016 report, the average annual wage was $42,930 in 2015. As of April 2016, the state's unemployment rate was 4.2%.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "The State of Kansas had a $350 million budget shortfall in February 2017. In February 2017, S&P downgraded Kansas's credit rating to AA-.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Nearly 90% of Kansas's land is devoted to agriculture. The state's agricultural outputs are cattle, sheep, wheat, sorghum, soybeans, cotton, hogs, corn, and salt. As of 2018, there were 59,600 farms in Kansas, 86 (0.14%) of which are certified organic farms. The average farm in the state is about 770 acres (more than a square mile), and in 2016, the average cost of running the farm was $300,000.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "By far, the most significant agricultural crop in the state is wheat. Eastern Kansas is part of the Grain Belt, an area of major grain production in the central United States. Approximately 40% of all winter wheat grown in the US is grown in Kansas. Roughly 95% of the wheat grown in the state is hard red winter wheat. During 2016, farmers of conventionally grown wheat farmed 8.2 million acres and harvested an average of 57 bushels of wheat per acre.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "The industrial outputs are transportation equipment, commercial and private aircraft, food processing, publishing, chemical products, machinery, apparel, petroleum, and mining.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "The state's economy is also heavily influenced by the aerospace industry. Several large aircraft corporations have manufacturing facilities in Wichita and Kansas City, including Spirit AeroSystems, Bombardier Aerospace (LearJet), and Textron Aviation (a merger of the former Cessna, Hawker, and Beechcraft brands). Boeing ended a decades-long history of manufacturing in Kansas between 2012 and 2013.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Major companies headquartered in Kansas include the Garmin (Olathe), YRC Worldwide (Overland Park), Payless Shoes (national headquarters and major distribution facilities in Topeka), and Koch Industries (with national headquarters in Wichita), and Coleman (headquarters in Wichita).",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Kansas is also home to three major military installations: Fort Leavenworth (Army), Fort Riley (Army), and McConnell Air Force Base (Air Force). Approximately 25,000 active duty soldiers and airmen are stationed at these bases which also employ approximately 8,000 civilian DoD employees. The US Army Reserve also has the 451st Expeditionary Sustainment Command headquartered in Wichita that serves reservists and their units from around the region. The Kansas Air National Guard has units at Forbes Field in Topeka and the 184th Intelligence Wing in Wichita. The Smoky Hill Weapons Range, a detachment of the Intelligence Wing, is one of the largest and busiest bombing ranges in the nation. During World War II, Kansas was home to numerous Army Air Corps training fields for training new pilots and aircrew. Many of those airfields live on today as municipal airports.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Kansas has vast renewable resources and is a top producer of wind energy in the US, with an installed capacity of about 6,100 Megawatts (MW) from nearly 3,200 wind turbines in 2019. Wind generated the largest share of electricity from the state at 41%. An additional 700 MW of capacity was scheduled to come online during 2020. Kansas is also a leading national producer of renewable ethanol and biodiesel fuels at nearly 600 million gallons per year.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Kansas is ranked eighth in US petroleum extraction. Production has experienced a steady decline as the state's limited economical reserves especially from the Anadarko Basin are depleted. Since oil prices bottomed in 1999, oil production in Kansas has remained fairly constant, with an average monthly rate of about 2.8 million barrels (450,000 cubic meters) in 2004. The recent higher prices have made carbon dioxide sequestration and other oil recovery techniques more economical.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Kansas is also ranked eighth in US natural gas production. Production has steadily declined since the mid-1990s with the gradual depletion of the Hugoton Natural Gas Field—the state's largest field which extends into Oklahoma and Texas. In 2004, slower declines in the Hugoton gas fields and increased coalbed methane production contributed to a smaller overall decline. Average monthly production was over 32 billion cubic feet (0.91 cubic kilometers).",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Tax is collected by the Kansas Department of Revenue.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Revenue shortfalls resulting from lower than expected tax collections and slower growth in personal income following a 1998 permanent tax reduction have contributed to the substantial growth in the state's debt level as bonded debt increased from $1.16 billion in 1998 to $3.83 billion in 2006. Some increase in debt was expected as the state continues with its 10-year Comprehensive Transportation Program enacted in 1999.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "In 2003, Kansas had three income brackets for income tax calculation, ranging from 3.5% to 6.45%.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "The state sales tax in Kansas is 6.15%. Various cities and counties in Kansas have an additional local sales tax. Except during the 2001 recession (March–November 2001), when monthly sales tax collections were flat, collections have trended higher as the economy has grown and two rate increases have been enacted. If there had been no change in sales tax rates or in the economy, the total sales tax collections for 2003 would have been $1,797 million, compared to $805.3 million in 1990. However, they instead amounted to $1,630 million an inflation-adjusted reduction of 10%. The state sales tax is a combined destination-based tax, meaning a single tax is applied that includes state, county, and local taxes, and the rate is based on where the consumer takes possession of the goods or services. Thanks to the destination structure and the numerous local special taxing districts, Kansas has 920 separate sales tax rates ranging from 6.5% to 11.5%. This taxing scheme, known as \"Streamlined Sales Tax\" was adopted on October 1, 2005, under the governorship of Kathleen Sebelius. Groceries are subject to sales tax in the state. All sales tax collected is remitted to the state department of revenue, and local taxes are then distributed to the various taxing agencies.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "As of June 2004, Moody's Investors Service ranked the state 14th for net tax-supported debt per capita. As a percentage of personal income, it was at 3.8%—above the median value of 2.5% for all rated states and having risen from a value of less than 1% in 1992. The state has a statutory requirement to maintain cash reserves of at least 7.5% of expenses at the end of each fiscal year; however, lawmakers can vote to override the rule, and did so during the most recent budget agreement.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "During his campaign for the 2010 election, Governor Sam Brownback called for a complete \"phase out of Kansas's income tax\". In May 2012, Governor Brownback signed into law the Kansas Senate Bill Substitute HB 2117. Starting in 2013, the \"ambitious tax overhaul\" trimmed income tax, eliminated some corporate taxes, and created pass-through income tax exemptions, he raised the sales tax by one percent to offset the loss to state revenues but that was inadequate. He made cuts to education and some state services to offset lost revenue. The tax cut led to years of budget shortfalls, culminating in a $350 million budget shortfall in February 2017. From 2013 to 2017, 300,000 businesses were considered to be pass-through income entities and benefited from the tax exemption. The tax reform \"encouraged tens of thousands of Kansans to claim their wages and salaries as income from a business rather than from employment.\"",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "The economic growth that Brownback anticipated never materialized. He argued that it was because of \"low wheat and oil prices and a downturn in aircraft sales\". The state general fund debt load was $83 million in fiscal year 2010 and by fiscal year 2017 the debt load sat at $179 million. In 2016, Governor Brownback earned the title of \"most unpopular governor in America\". Only 26 percent of Kansas voters approved of his job performance, compared to 65 percent who said they did not. In the summer of 2016 S&P Global Ratings downgraded Kansas's credit rating. In February 2017, S&P lowered it to AA-.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "In February 2017, a bi-partisan coalition presented a bill that would repeal the pass-through income exemption, the \"most important provisions of Brownback's overhaul\", and raise taxes to make up for the budget shortfall. Brownback vetoed the bill but \"45 GOP legislators had voted in favor of the increase, while 40 voted to uphold the governor's veto.\" On June 6, 2017, a coalition of Democrats and newly elected Republicans overrode [Brownback's] veto and implemented tax increases to a level close to what it was before 2013. Brownback's tax overhaul was described in a June 2017 article in The Atlantic as the United States' \"most aggressive experiment in conservative economic policy\". The drastic tax cuts had \"threatened the viability of schools and infrastructure\" in Kansas.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Kansas is served by two Interstate highways with one beltway, two spur routes, and three bypasses, with over 874 miles (1,407 km) in all. The first section of Interstate in the nation was opened on Interstate 70 (I-70) just west of Topeka on November 14, 1956.",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "I-70 is a major east–west route connecting to Denver, Colorado and Kansas City, Missouri. Cities along this route (from west to east) include Colby, Hays, Salina, Junction City, Topeka, Lawrence, Bonner Springs, and Kansas City.",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "I-35 is a major north–south route connecting to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and Des Moines, Iowa. Cities along this route (from south to north) include Wichita, El Dorado, Emporia, Ottawa, and Kansas City (and suburbs).",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "Spur routes serve as connections between the two major routes. I-135, a north–south route, connects I-35 at Wichita to I-70 at Salina. I-335, a southwest–northeast route, connects I-35 at Emporia to I-70 at Topeka. I-335 and portions of I-35 and I-70 make up the Kansas Turnpike. Bypasses include I-470 around Topeka, I-235 around Wichita, and I-670 in downtown Kansas City. I-435 is a beltway around the Kansas City metropolitan area while I-635 bypasses through Kansas City.",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "U.S. Route 69 (US-69) travels south to north, from Oklahoma to Missouri. The highway passes through the eastern section of Kansas, traveling through Baxter Springs, Pittsburg, Frontenac, Fort Scott, Louisburg, and the Kansas City area.",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Kansas also has the country's third largest state highway system after Texas and California. This is because of the high number of counties and county seats (105) and their intertwining.",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "In January 2004, the Kansas Department of Transportation (KDOT) announced the new Kansas 511 traveler information service. By dialing 511, callers will get access to information about road conditions, construction, closures, detours and weather conditions for the state highway system. Weather and road condition information is updated every 15 minutes.",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "The state's only major commercial (Class C) airport is Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport, located along US-54 on the western edge of the city. Manhattan Regional Airport in Manhattan offers daily flights to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, making it the second-largest commercial airport in the state. Most air travelers in northeastern Kansas fly out of Kansas City International Airport, located in Platte County, Missouri, as well as Topeka Regional Airport in the state's capital.",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "In the state's southeastern part, people often use Tulsa International Airport in Tulsa, Oklahoma or Joplin Regional Airport in Joplin, Missouri. For those in the far western part of the state, Denver International Airport is a popular option. Connecting flights are also available from smaller Kansas airports in Dodge City, Garden City, Hays, Hutchinson, Liberal, or Salina.",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "Dotted across the state are smaller regional and municipal airports, including the Lawrence Municipal Airport, which houses many aircraft for the city of Lawrence and the University of Kansas, Miami County Airport, Wamego Airport, Osage City Municipal Airport, which is the headquarters of Skydive Kansas, Garden City Regional Airport, Manhattan Regional Airport, and Dodge City Regional Airport.",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "Up through the mid 20th century, railroads connected most cities in Kansas. During World War II, less profitable links were abandoned for scrap metal drives, then additional mileage was reduced as passenger service was halted caused by the wide spread use of automobiles and trucking on the expanding highway system.",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "For passenger service, currently the Southwest Chief Amtrak route runs through the state on its route from Chicago, Illinois to Los Angeles, California on the BNSF railway. Stops in Kansas include Lawrence, Topeka, Newton, Hutchinson, Dodge City, and Garden City. An Amtrak Thruway connects Newton to the Heartland Flyer in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. There has been proposals to modify the Amtrak routing through Kansas, such as: removing rail service from the Southwest Chief between Albuquerque, New Mexico and Dodge City, and extending rail service for the Heartland Flyer from Oklahoma City to Newton with new stops at Arkansas City and Wichita.",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "For freight service, there are three Class I railroads in Kansas: BNSF, Union Pacific, and Kansas City Southern; as well as many shortline railroads.",
"title": "Transportation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "Executive branch: The executive branch consists of one officer and five elected officers. The governor and lieutenant governor are elected on the same ticket. The attorney general, secretary of state, state treasurer, and state insurance commissioner are each elected separately.",
"title": "Law and government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "Legislative branch: The bicameral Kansas Legislature consists of the Kansas House of Representatives, with 125 members serving two-year terms, and the Kansas Senate, with 40 members serving four-year terms.",
"title": "Law and government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "Judicial branch: The judicial branch of the state government is headed by the Kansas Supreme Court. The court has seven judges. A vacancy is filled by the Governor picking one of three nominees selected by the nine-member Kansas Supreme Court Nominating Commission. The board consists of five Kansas lawyers elected by other Kansas lawyers and four members selected by the governor.",
"title": "Law and government"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "Since the 1930s, Kansas has remained one of the most socially conservative states in the nation. The 1990s brought the defeat of prominent Democrats, including Dan Glickman, and the Kansas State Board of Education's 1999 decision to eliminate evolution from the state teaching standards, a decision that was later reversed. In 2005, voters accepted a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. The next year, the state passed a law setting a minimum age for marriage at 15 years. Kansas's path to a solid Republican state has been examined by journalist and historian Thomas Frank in his 2004 book What's the Matter with Kansas?.",
"title": "Political culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "Kansas was the first state to institute a system of workers' compensation (1910) and to regulate the securities industry (1911). Kansas also permitted women's suffrage in 1912, almost a decade before the federal constitution was amended to require it. Suffrage in all states would not be guaranteed until ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920.",
"title": "Political culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "The council–manager government model was adopted by many larger Kansas cities in the years following World War I while many American cities were being run by political machines or organized crime, notably the Pendergast Machine in neighboring Kansas City, Missouri. Kansas was also at the center of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, a 1954 Supreme Court decision that banned racially segregated schools throughout the U.S., though, infamously, many Kansas residents opposed the decision, and it led to protests in Topeka after the verdict.",
"title": "Political culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "The state backed Republican Presidential Candidates Wendell Willkie and Thomas E. Dewey in 1940 and 1944, respectively, breaking ranks with the majority of the country in the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Kansas also supported Dewey in 1948 despite the presence of incumbent president Harry S. Truman, who hailed from Independence, Missouri, approximately 15 miles (24 km) east of the Kansas–Missouri state line. After Roosevelt carried Kansas in 1936, only one Democrat has won the state since, Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.",
"title": "Political culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "In 2008, Democrat Governor Kathleen Sebelius vetoed permits for the construction of new coal-fired energy plants in Kansas, saying: \"We know that greenhouse gases contribute to climate change. As an agricultural state, Kansas is particularly vulnerable. Therefore, reducing pollutants benefits our state not only in the short term—but also for generations of Kansans to come.\" However, shortly after Mark Parkinson became governor in 2009 upon Sebelius's resignation to become Secretary of U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Parkinson announced a compromise plan to allow construction of a coal-fired plant.",
"title": "Political culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "In 2010, Republican Sam Brownback was elected governor with 63 percent of the state vote. He was sworn in as governor in 2011, Kansas's first Republican governor in eight years. Brownback had established himself as a conservative member of the U.S. Senate in years prior, but made several controversial decisions after becoming governor, leading to a 23% approval rating among registered voters – the lowest of any governor in the United States. In May 2011, much to the opposition of art leaders and enthusiasts in the state, Brownback eliminated the Kansas Arts Commission, making Kansas the first state without an arts agency. In July 2011, Brownback announced plans to close the Lawrence branch of the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services as a cost-saving measure. Hundreds rallied against the decision. Lawrence City Commission later voted to provide the funding needed to keep the branch open.",
"title": "Political culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "Democrat Laura Kelly defeated former Secretary of State of Kansas Kris Kobach in the 2018 election for Governor with 48.0% of the vote.",
"title": "Political culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "In August 2022, Kansas voters rejected the controversial Value Them Both Amendment, which would have eliminated the right to an abortion in the state constitution. The vote was the first referendum on abortion since Roe v. Wade was overturned earlier that summer, and the result was hailed as a landmark victory for pro-choice advocates in the traditionally socially conservative state.",
"title": "Political culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "In a 2020 study, Kansas was ranked as the 13th hardest state for citizens to vote in.",
"title": "Political culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "The state's current delegation to the Congress of the United States includes Republican Senators Jerry Moran of Manhattan, and Roger Marshall of Great Bend. In the House of Representatives, Kansas is represented by Republican Representatives Tracey Mann of Quinter (District 1), Jake LaTurner of Pittsburg (District 2), Ron Estes of Wichita (District 4), and Democratic Representative Sharice Davids of Kansas City (District 3) Davids is the second Native American to represent Kansas in Congress, after Republican Charles Curtis (Kaw).",
"title": "Political culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "Historically, Kansas has been strongly Republican, dating from the Antebellum age when the Republican Party was created out of the movement opposing the extension of slavery into Kansas Territory. Kansas has not elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since the 1932 election, when Franklin D. Roosevelt won his first term as president in the wake of the Great Depression. This is the longest Senate losing streak for either party in a single state. Senator Sam Brownback was a candidate for the Republican party nomination for president in 2008. Brownback was not a candidate for re-election to a third full term in 2010, but he was elected Governor in that year's general election. Moran defeated Tiahrt for the Republican nomination for Brownback's seat in the August 2010 primary, then won a landslide general election victory over Democrat Lisa Johnston.",
"title": "Political culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "The only non-Republican presidential candidates Kansas has given its electoral vote to are Populist James Weaver and Democrats William Jennings Bryan (once), Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt (twice), and Lyndon Johnson. In 2004, George W. Bush won the state's six electoral votes by an overwhelming margin of 25 percentage points with 62% of the vote. The only two counties to support Democrat John Kerry in that election were Wyandotte, which contains Kansas City, and Douglas, home to the University of Kansas, located in Lawrence. The 2008 election brought similar results as John McCain won the state with 57% of the votes. Douglas, Wyandotte, and Crawford County were the only counties in support of President Barack Obama.",
"title": "Political culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "Abilene was the boyhood home to Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower, and he maintained lifelong ties to family and friends there. Kansas was the adult home of two losing Republican candidates (Governor Alf Landon in 1936 and Senator Bob Dole in 1996).",
"title": "Political culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "The New York Times reported in September 2014 that as the Democratic candidate for Senator has tried to drop out of the race, independent Greg Orman has attracted enough bipartisan support to seriously challenge the reelection bid of Republican Pat Roberts:",
"title": "Political culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "The legal drinking age in Kansas is 21. In lieu of the state retail sales tax, a 10% Liquor Drink Tax is collected for liquor consumed on the licensed premises and an 8% Liquor Enforcement Tax is collected on retail purchases. Although the sale of cereal malt beverage (also known as 3.2 beer) was legalized in 1937, the first post-Prohibition legalization of alcoholic liquor did not occur until the state's constitution was amended in 1948. The following year the Legislature enacted the Liquor Control Act which created a system of regulating, licensing, and taxing, and the Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) was created to enforce the act. The power to regulate cereal malt beverage remains with the cities and counties. Liquor-by-the-drink did not become legal until passage of an amendment to the state's constitution in 1986 and additional legislation the following year. As of November 2006, Kansas still has 29 dry counties and only 17 counties have passed liquor-by-the-drink with no food sales requirement. Today there are more than 2,600 liquor and 4,000 cereal malt beverage licensees in the state.",
"title": "Political culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "On May 12, 2022, Gov. Laura Kelly signed legislation (Senate Bill 84) that legalizes sports betting in the state, making Kansas the 35th state to approve sports wagering in the US. This would give the four state-owned casinos the right to partner with online bookmakers and up to 50 retailers, including gas stations and restaurants, to engage in sports betting.",
"title": "Political culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "Education in Kansas is governed at the primary and secondary school level by the Kansas State Board of Education. The state's public colleges and universities are supervised by the Kansas Board of Regents.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "Twice since 1999 the Board of Education has approved changes in the state science curriculum standards that encouraged the teaching of intelligent design. Both times, the standards were reversed after changes in the composition of the board in the next election.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "The rock band Kansas was formed in the state capital of Topeka, the hometown of several of the band's members.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "Joe Walsh, guitarist for the famous rock band the Eagles, was born in Wichita.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 125,
"text": "Danny Carey, drummer for the band Tool, was raised in Paola.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 126,
"text": "Singers from Kansas include Leavenworth native Melissa Etheridge, Sharon native Martina McBride, Chanute native Jennifer Knapp (whose first album was titled Kansas), Kansas City native Janelle Monáe, and Liberal native Jerrod Niemann.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 127,
"text": "The state anthem is the American classic Home on the Range, written by Kansan Brewster Higley. Another song, the official state march adopted by the Kansas Legislature in 1935 is called The Kansas March, which features the lyrics, \"Blue sky above us, silken strands of heat, Rim of the far horizon, where earth and heaven meet, Kansas as a temple, stands in velvet sod, Shrine which the sunshine, sanctifies to God.\"",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 128,
"text": "The state's most famous appearance in literature was as the home of Dorothy Gale, the main character in the novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900). Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie, published in 1935, is another well-known tale about Kansas.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 129,
"text": "Kansas was also the setting of the 1965 best-seller In Cold Blood, described by its author Truman Capote as a \"nonfiction novel\". Mixing fact and fiction, the book chronicles the events and aftermath of the 1959 murder of a wealthy farmer and his family who lived in the small West Kansas town of Holcomb in Finney County.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 130,
"text": "The fictional town of Smallville, Kansas is the childhood home of Clark Kent/Superman in American comic books published by DC Comics. Also Keystone City is a Kansas city where The Flash works and lives.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 131,
"text": "The science fiction novella A Boy and His Dog, as well as the film based on it, take place in post-apocalyptic Topeka.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 132,
"text": "The winner of the 2011 Newbery Medal for excellence in children's literature, Moon Over Manifest, tells the story of a young and adventurous girl named Abilene who is sent to the fictional town of Manifest, Kansas, by her father in the summer of 1936. It was written by Kansan Clare Vanderpool.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 133,
"text": "Lawrence is the setting for a number of science fiction writer James Gunn's novels.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 134,
"text": "The first film theater in Kansas was the Patee Theater in Lawrence. Most theaters at the time showed films only as part of vaudeville acts but not as an exclusive and stand alone form of entertainment. Though the Patee family had been involved in vaudeville, they believed films could carry the evening without other variety acts, but to show the films it was necessary for the Patee's to establish a generating plant (back in 1903 Lawrence was not yet fully electrified). The Patee Theater was one of the first of its kind west of the Mississippi River. The specialized equipment like the projector came from New York City.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 135,
"text": "Kansas has been the setting of many award-winning and popular American films, as well as being the home of some of the oldest operating cinemas in the world. The Plaza Cinema in Ottawa, Kansas, located in the northeastern portion of the state, was built on May 22, 1907, and it is listed by the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest operating cinema in the world. In 1926, The Jayhawk Theatre, an art-deco movie house in Topeka opened its doors for the first time to movie going audiences, and today, in addition to screenings of independent films, the theatre acts as a venue for plays and concerts. The Fox Theater in Hutchinson was built in 1930, and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989. Like the other theaters listed here, The Fox still plays first run movies to this day.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 136,
"text": "Sporting Kansas City, who have played their home games at Village West in Kansas City, since 2008, are the first top-tier professional sports league and first Major League Soccer team to be located within Kansas. In 2011 the team moved to their new home, a $165 million soccer specific stadium now known as Children's Mercy Park.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 137,
"text": "Historically, Kansans have supported the major league sports teams of Kansas City, Missouri, including the Kansas City Royals (MLB), and the Kansas City Chiefs (NFL), in part because the home stadiums for these teams are a few miles from the Kansas border. The Chiefs and the Royals play at the Truman Sports Complex, located about 10 miles (16 km) from the Kansas–Missouri state line. FC Kansas City, a charter member of the National Women's Soccer League, played the 2013 season, the first for both the team and the league, on the Kansas side of the metropolitan area, but played on the Missouri side until folding after the 2017 season. From 1973 to 1997 the flagship radio station for the Royals was WIBW in Topeka.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 138,
"text": "Some Kansans, mostly from the westernmost parts of the state, support the professional sports teams of Denver, particularly the Denver Broncos of the NFL.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 139,
"text": "Two major auto racing facilities are located in Kansas. The Kansas Speedway located in Kansas City hosts races of the NASCAR, IndyCar, and ARCA circuits. Also, the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) holds drag racing events at Heartland Park Topeka. The Sports Car Club of America has its national headquarters in Topeka.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 140,
"text": "The history of professional sports in Kansas probably dates from the establishment of the minor league baseball Topeka Capitals and Leavenworth Soldiers in 1886 in the Western League. The African-American Bud Fowler played on the Topeka team that season, one year before the \"color line\" descended on professional baseball.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 141,
"text": "In 1887, the Western League was dominated by a reorganized Topeka team called the Golden Giants: a high-priced collection of major leaguer players, including Bug Holliday, Jim Conway, Dan Stearns, Perry Werden and Jimmy Macullar, which won the league by 15.5 games. On April 10, 1887, the Golden Giants also won an exhibition game from the defending World Series champions, the St. Louis Browns (the present-day Cardinals), by a score of 12–9. However, Topeka was unable to support the team, and it disbanded after one year.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 142,
"text": "The first night game in the history of professional baseball was played in Independence on April 28, 1930, when the Muscogee (Oklahoma) Indians beat the Independence Producers 13–3 in a minor league game sanctioned by the Western League of the Western Baseball Association with 1,500 fans attending the game. The permanent lighting system was first used for an exhibition game on April 17, 1930, between the Independence Producers and House of David semi-professional baseball team of Benton Harbor, Michigan with the Independence team winning 9–1 before a crowd of 1,700 spectators.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 143,
"text": "The governing body for intercollegiate sports in the United States, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), was headquartered in Johnson County, Kansas from 1952 until moving to Indianapolis in 1999.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 144,
"text": "While there are no franchises of the four major professional sports within the state, many Kansans are fans of the state's major college sports teams, especially the Jayhawks of the University of Kansas (KU), and the Wildcats of Kansas State University (KSU or \"K-State\"). The teams are rivals in the Big 12 Conference.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 145,
"text": "Both KU and K-State have tradition-rich programs in men's basketball. The Jayhawks are a perennial national power, ranking first in all-time victories among NCAA programs. The Jayhawks have won six national titles, including NCAA tournament championships in 1952, 1988, 2008, and 2022. They also were retroactively awarded national championships by the Helms Foundation for 1922 and 1923. K-State also had a long stretch of success on the hardwood, lasting from the 1940s to the 1980s, making four Final Fours during that stretch. In 1988, KU and K-State met in the Elite Eight, KU taking the game 71–58. After a 12-year absence, the Wildcats returned to the NCAA tournament in 2008, and advanced to the Elite Eight in 2010 and 2018. KU is fifth all-time with 15 Final Four appearances, while K-State's four appearances are tied for 17th.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 146,
"text": "Conversely, success on the gridiron has been less frequent for both KSU and KU. However, there have been recent breakthroughs for both schools' football teams. The Jayhawks won the Orange Bowl for the first time in three tries in 2008, capping a 12–1 season, the best in school history. And when Bill Snyder arrived to coach at K-State in 1989, he turned the Wildcats from one of the worst college football programs in America, into a national force for most of the 1990s and early 2000s. The team won the Fiesta Bowl in 1997, achieved an undefeated (11–0) regular season and No. 1 ranking in 1998, and took the Big 12 Conference championship in 2003. After three seasons in which K-State football languished, Snyder came out of retirement in 2009 and guided them to the top of the college football ranks again, finishing second in the Big 12 in 2011 and earning a berth in the Cotton Bowl, and winning the Big 12 again in 2012.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 147,
"text": "Wichita State University, which also fields teams (called the Shockers) in Division I of the NCAA, is best known for its baseball and basketball programs. In baseball, the Shockers won the College World Series in 1989. In men's basketball, they appeared in the Final Four in 1965 and 2013, and entered the 2014 NCAA tournament unbeaten. The school also fielded a football team from 1897 to 1986. The Shocker football team is tragically known for a plane crash in 1970 that killed 31 people, including 14 players.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 148,
"text": "Notable success has also been achieved by the state's smaller schools in football. Pittsburg State University, an NCAA Division II participant, has claimed four national titles in football, two in the NAIA and most recently the 2011 NCAA Division II national title. Pittsburg State became the winningest NCAA Division II football program in 1995. PSU passed Hillsdale College at the top of the all-time victories list in the 1995 season on its march to the national runner-up finish. The Gorillas, in 96 seasons of intercollegiate competition, have accumulated 579 victories, posting a 579–301–48 overall mark.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 149,
"text": "Washburn University, in Topeka, won the NAIA Men's Basketball Championship in 1987. The Fort Hays State University men won the 1996 NCAA Division II title with a 34–0 record, and the Washburn women won the 2005 NCAA Division II crown. St. Benedict's College (now Benedictine College), in Atchison, won the 1954 and 1967 Men's NAIA Basketball Championships.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 150,
"text": "The Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference has its roots as one of the oldest college sport conferences in existence and participates in the NAIA and all ten member schools are in the state of Kansas. Other smaller school conferences that have some members in Kansas are the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association the Midlands Collegiate Athletic Conference, the Midwest Christian College Conference, and the Heart of America Athletic Conference. Many junior colleges also have active athletic programs.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 151,
"text": "Emporia State's women's basketball team, under head coach Brandon Schneider, who is now serving as the women's basketball coach at the University of Kansas, has seen success as well. In 2010 the team won the NCAA Division II National Championship. Emporia State and Washburn in Topeka share a heated rivalry in all sports, mostly due to the close proximity of both cities.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 152,
"text": "The Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference has been heralded as one of the best conferences in all of NJCAA football, with Garden City Community College, Independence Community College, and Butler County Community College all consistently in contention for national championships.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 153,
"text": "The Kansas State High School Activities Association (KSHSAA) is the organization which oversees interscholastic competition in the state of Kansas at the high school level. It oversees both athletic and non-athletic competition, and sponsors championships in several sports and activities.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 154,
"text": "Maps",
"title": "External links"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 155,
"text": "38°N 98°W / 38°N 98°W / 38; -98 (State of Kansas)",
"title": "External links"
}
] |
Kansas is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its capital is Topeka, its largest metropolitan core is Kansas City MO-KS and its most populous municipality is Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the west. Kansas is named after the Kansas River, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native Americans who lived along its banks. For thousands of years, what is now Kansas was home to numerous and diverse Native American tribes. Tribes in the eastern part of the state generally lived in villages along the river valleys. Tribes in the western part of the state were semi-nomadic and hunted large herds of bison. The first Euro-American settlement in Kansas occurred in 1827 at Fort Leavenworth. The pace of settlement accelerated in the 1850s, in the midst of political wars over the slavery debate. When it was officially opened to settlement by the U.S. government in 1854 with the Kansas–Nebraska Act, abolitionist Free-Staters from New England and pro-slavery settlers from neighboring Missouri rushed to the territory to determine whether Kansas would become a free state or a slave state. Thus, the area was a hotbed of violence and chaos in its early days as these forces collided, and was known as Bleeding Kansas. The abolitionists prevailed, and on January 29, 1861, Kansas entered the Union as a free state, hence the unofficial nickname "The Free State". As of 2015, Kansas was among the most productive agricultural states, producing high yields of wheat, corn, sorghum, and soybeans. Kansas, which has an area of 82,278 square miles is the 15th-largest state by area, the 36th most-populous of the 50 states, with a population of 2,940,865 according to the 2020 census, and the 10th least densely populated. Residents of Kansas are called Kansans. Mount Sunflower is Kansas's highest point at 4,039 feet.
|
2001-09-25T20:01:44Z
|
2023-12-18T18:26:53Z
|
[
"Template:US Census population",
"Template:Citation needed",
"Template:Citation",
"Template:Pie chart",
"Template:Div col",
"Template:See also",
"Template:Update",
"Template:Notelist",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Sister project links",
"Template:Navboxes",
"Template:About",
"Template:Convert",
"Template:Nbsp",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:S-end",
"Template:Lang",
"Template:US$",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cbignore",
"Template:Location map ",
"Template:IPAc-en",
"Template:Clear",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Use American English",
"Template:Hidden",
"Template:Multiref2",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Curlie",
"Template:Portal",
"Template:Infobox U.S. state",
"Template:Coord",
"Template:Collapsible list",
"Template:Dead link",
"Template:S-start",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Osmrelation-inline",
"Template:S-aft",
"Template:Cite press release",
"Template:Stack",
"Template:S-bef",
"Template:Pp-pc",
"Template:Kansas urban pop chart",
"Template:S-ttl",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Use mdy dates",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Div col end",
"Template:Jct",
"Template:Party color cell",
"Template:ISBN",
"Template:Cite magazine"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas
|
16,717 |
K
|
K, or k, is the eleventh letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is kay (pronounced /ˈkeɪ/), plural kays. The letter K usually represents the voiceless velar plosive.
The letter K comes from the Greek letter Κ (kappa), which was taken from the Semitic kaph, the symbol for an open hand. This, in turn, was likely adapted by Semitic tribes who had lived in Egypt from the hieroglyph for "hand" representing /ḏ/ in the Egyptian word for hand, ⟨ḏ-r-t⟩ (likely pronounced /ˈcʼaːɾat/ in Old Egyptian). The Semites evidently assigned it the sound value /k/ instead, because their word for hand started with that sound.
K was brought into the Latin alphabet with the name ka /kaː/ to differentiate it from C, named ce (pronounced /keː/) and Q, named qu and pronounced /kuː/. In the earliest Latin inscriptions, the letters C, K and Q were all used to represent the sounds /k/ and /ɡ/ (which were not differentiated in writing). Of these, Q was used before a rounded vowel (e.g. ⟨EQO⟩ 'ego'), K before /a/ (e.g. ⟨KALENDIS⟩ 'calendis'), and C elsewhere. Later, the use of C and its variant G replaced most usages of K and Q. K survived only in a few fossilized forms such as Kalendae, "the calends".
After Greek words were taken into Latin, the Kappa was transliterated as a C. Loanwords from other alphabets with the sound /k/ were also transliterated with C. Hence, the Romance languages generally use C, in imitating Classical Latin's practice, and have K only in later loanwords from other language groups. The Celtic languages also tended to use C instead of K, and this influence carried over into Old English.
English is now the only Germanic language to productively use "hard" ⟨c⟩ (outside the digraph ⟨ck⟩) rather than ⟨k⟩ (although Dutch uses it in loan words of Latin origin, and the pronunciation of these words follows the same hard/soft distinction as in English).
The letter ⟨k⟩ is silent at the start of an English word when it comes before the letter ⟨n⟩, as in the words knight, knife, knot, know, and knee.
Like J, X, Q, and Z, the letter K is not used very frequently in English. It is the fifth least frequently used letter in the English language, with a frequency in words of about 0.8%.
In the International System of Units (SI), the SI prefix for one thousand is kilo-, officially abbreviated as k: for example, prefixed to metre/meter or its abbreviation m, kilometre or km signifies a thousand metres. As such, people occasionally represent numbers in a non-standard notation by replacing the last three zeros of the general numeral with K, as in 30K for 30,000.
In most languages where it is employed, this letter represents the sound /k/ (with or without aspiration) or some similar sound.
The International Phonetic Alphabet uses ⟨k⟩ for the voiceless velar plosive.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "K, or k, is the eleventh letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is kay (pronounced /ˈkeɪ/), plural kays. The letter K usually represents the voiceless velar plosive.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The letter K comes from the Greek letter Κ (kappa), which was taken from the Semitic kaph, the symbol for an open hand. This, in turn, was likely adapted by Semitic tribes who had lived in Egypt from the hieroglyph for \"hand\" representing /ḏ/ in the Egyptian word for hand, ⟨ḏ-r-t⟩ (likely pronounced /ˈcʼaːɾat/ in Old Egyptian). The Semites evidently assigned it the sound value /k/ instead, because their word for hand started with that sound.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "K was brought into the Latin alphabet with the name ka /kaː/ to differentiate it from C, named ce (pronounced /keː/) and Q, named qu and pronounced /kuː/. In the earliest Latin inscriptions, the letters C, K and Q were all used to represent the sounds /k/ and /ɡ/ (which were not differentiated in writing). Of these, Q was used before a rounded vowel (e.g. ⟨EQO⟩ 'ego'), K before /a/ (e.g. ⟨KALENDIS⟩ 'calendis'), and C elsewhere. Later, the use of C and its variant G replaced most usages of K and Q. K survived only in a few fossilized forms such as Kalendae, \"the calends\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "After Greek words were taken into Latin, the Kappa was transliterated as a C. Loanwords from other alphabets with the sound /k/ were also transliterated with C. Hence, the Romance languages generally use C, in imitating Classical Latin's practice, and have K only in later loanwords from other language groups. The Celtic languages also tended to use C instead of K, and this influence carried over into Old English.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "English is now the only Germanic language to productively use \"hard\" ⟨c⟩ (outside the digraph ⟨ck⟩) rather than ⟨k⟩ (although Dutch uses it in loan words of Latin origin, and the pronunciation of these words follows the same hard/soft distinction as in English).",
"title": "Pronunciation and use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The letter ⟨k⟩ is silent at the start of an English word when it comes before the letter ⟨n⟩, as in the words knight, knife, knot, know, and knee.",
"title": "Pronunciation and use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Like J, X, Q, and Z, the letter K is not used very frequently in English. It is the fifth least frequently used letter in the English language, with a frequency in words of about 0.8%.",
"title": "Pronunciation and use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In the International System of Units (SI), the SI prefix for one thousand is kilo-, officially abbreviated as k: for example, prefixed to metre/meter or its abbreviation m, kilometre or km signifies a thousand metres. As such, people occasionally represent numbers in a non-standard notation by replacing the last three zeros of the general numeral with K, as in 30K for 30,000.",
"title": "Pronunciation and use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In most languages where it is employed, this letter represents the sound /k/ (with or without aspiration) or some similar sound.",
"title": "Pronunciation and use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The International Phonetic Alphabet uses ⟨k⟩ for the voiceless velar plosive.",
"title": "Pronunciation and use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "",
"title": "Related characters"
}
] |
K, or k, is the eleventh letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is kay, plural kays. The letter K usually represents the voiceless velar plosive.
|
2001-05-27T20:00:39Z
|
2023-12-03T21:42:56Z
|
[
"Template:Pp-semi-indef",
"Template:Infobox grapheme",
"Template:IPAc-en",
"Template:IPA",
"Template:Letter other reps",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Angbr",
"Template:Angbr IPA",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Unichar",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Clear",
"Template:Registration required",
"Template:Latin alphabet",
"Template:About",
"Template:Citation needed",
"Template:Commons-inline",
"Template:Anchor",
"Template:Cbignore",
"Template:Charmap",
"Template:Midsize",
"Template:Latin letter info",
"Template:IPAslink",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Dead link",
"Template:Wiktionary-inline",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Lang"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K
|
16,718 |
Kappa (disambiguation)
|
Kappa is a letter of the Greek alphabet.
Kappa may also refer to:
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Kappa is a letter of the Greek alphabet.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Kappa may also refer to:",
"title": ""
}
] |
Kappa is a letter of the Greek alphabet. Kappa may also refer to:
|
2021-09-03T20:01:05Z
|
[
"Template:Wiktionary",
"Template:TOC right",
"Template:Look from",
"Template:Disambiguation"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kappa_(disambiguation)
|
|
16,720 |
Kuiper's test
|
Kuiper's test is used in statistics to test that whether a given distribution, or family of distributions, is contradicted by evidence from a sample of data. It is named after Dutch mathematician Nicolaas Kuiper.
Kuiper's test is closely related to the better-known Kolmogorov–Smirnov test (or K-S test as it is often called). As with the K-S test, the discrepancy statistics D and D represent the absolute sizes of the most positive and most negative differences between the two cumulative distribution functions that are being compared. The trick with Kuiper's test is to use the quantity D + D as the test statistic. This small change makes Kuiper's test as sensitive in the tails as at the median and also makes it invariant under cyclic transformations of the independent variable. The Anderson–Darling test is another test that provides equal sensitivity at the tails as the median, but it does not provide the cyclic invariance.
This invariance under cyclic transformations makes Kuiper's test invaluable when testing for cyclic variations by time of year or day of the week or time of day, and more generally for testing the fit of, and differences between, circular probability distributions.
The test statistic, V, for Kuiper's test is defined as follows. Let F be the continuous cumulative distribution function which is to be the null hypothesis. Denote the sample of data which are independent realisations of random variables, having F as their distribution function, by xi (i=1,...,n). Then define
and finally,
Tables for the critical points of the test statistic are available, and these include certain cases where the distribution being tested is not fully known, so that parameters of the family of distributions are estimated.
We could test the hypothesis that computers fail more during some times of the year than others. To test this, we would collect the dates on which the test set of computers had failed and build an empirical distribution function. The null hypothesis is that the failures are uniformly distributed. Kuiper's statistic does not change if we change the beginning of the year and does not require that we bin failures into months or the like. Another test statistic having this property is the Watson statistic, which is related to the Cramér–von Mises test.
However, if failures occur mostly on weekends, many uniform-distribution tests such as K-S and Kuiper would miss this, since weekends are spread throughout the year. This inability to distinguish distributions with a comb-like shape from continuous uniform distributions is a key problem with all statistics based on a variant of the K-S test. Kuiper's test, applied to the event times modulo one week, is able to detect such a pattern. Using event times that have been modulated with the K-S test can result in different results depending on how the data is phased. In this example, the K-S test may detect the non-uniformity if the data is set to start the week on Saturday, but fail to detect the non-uniformity if the week starts on Wednesday.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Kuiper's test is used in statistics to test that whether a given distribution, or family of distributions, is contradicted by evidence from a sample of data. It is named after Dutch mathematician Nicolaas Kuiper.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Kuiper's test is closely related to the better-known Kolmogorov–Smirnov test (or K-S test as it is often called). As with the K-S test, the discrepancy statistics D and D represent the absolute sizes of the most positive and most negative differences between the two cumulative distribution functions that are being compared. The trick with Kuiper's test is to use the quantity D + D as the test statistic. This small change makes Kuiper's test as sensitive in the tails as at the median and also makes it invariant under cyclic transformations of the independent variable. The Anderson–Darling test is another test that provides equal sensitivity at the tails as the median, but it does not provide the cyclic invariance.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "This invariance under cyclic transformations makes Kuiper's test invaluable when testing for cyclic variations by time of year or day of the week or time of day, and more generally for testing the fit of, and differences between, circular probability distributions.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The test statistic, V, for Kuiper's test is defined as follows. Let F be the continuous cumulative distribution function which is to be the null hypothesis. Denote the sample of data which are independent realisations of random variables, having F as their distribution function, by xi (i=1,...,n). Then define",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "and finally,",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Tables for the critical points of the test statistic are available, and these include certain cases where the distribution being tested is not fully known, so that parameters of the family of distributions are estimated.",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "We could test the hypothesis that computers fail more during some times of the year than others. To test this, we would collect the dates on which the test set of computers had failed and build an empirical distribution function. The null hypothesis is that the failures are uniformly distributed. Kuiper's statistic does not change if we change the beginning of the year and does not require that we bin failures into months or the like. Another test statistic having this property is the Watson statistic, which is related to the Cramér–von Mises test.",
"title": "Example"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "However, if failures occur mostly on weekends, many uniform-distribution tests such as K-S and Kuiper would miss this, since weekends are spread throughout the year. This inability to distinguish distributions with a comb-like shape from continuous uniform distributions is a key problem with all statistics based on a variant of the K-S test. Kuiper's test, applied to the event times modulo one week, is able to detect such a pattern. Using event times that have been modulated with the K-S test can result in different results depending on how the data is phased. In this example, the K-S test may detect the non-uniformity if the data is set to start the week on Saturday, but fail to detect the non-uniformity if the week starts on Wednesday.",
"title": "Example"
}
] |
Kuiper's test is used in statistics to test that whether a given distribution, or family of distributions, is contradicted by evidence from a sample of data. It is named after Dutch mathematician Nicolaas Kuiper. Kuiper's test is closely related to the better-known Kolmogorov–Smirnov test. As with the K-S test, the discrepancy statistics D+ and D− represent the absolute sizes of the most positive and most negative differences between the two cumulative distribution functions that are being compared. The trick with Kuiper's test is to use the quantity D+ + D− as the test statistic. This small change makes Kuiper's test as sensitive in the tails as at the median and also makes it invariant under cyclic transformations of the independent variable. The Anderson–Darling test is another test that provides equal sensitivity at the tails as the median, but it does not provide the cyclic invariance. This invariance under cyclic transformations makes Kuiper's test invaluable when testing for cyclic variations by time of year or day of the week or time of day, and more generally for testing the fit of, and differences between, circular probability distributions.
|
2023-02-06T22:12:23Z
|
[
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Isbn",
"Template:JSTOR"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper%27s_test
|
|
16,724 |
Kirk Hammett
|
Kirk Lee Hammett (born November 18, 1962) is an American musician who has been the lead guitarist of heavy metal band Metallica since 1983. Prior to joining Metallica, he co-formed the thrash metal band Exodus in 1979. In 2003, Hammett, along with bandmate James Hetfield, was ranked 23rd on Rolling Stone's list of Greatest Guitarists of All Time. In 2009, Hammett was ranked number 15 in Joel McIver's book The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists.
Hammett was born on November 18, 1962, in San Francisco, California, and raised in the town of El Sobrante. He is the son of Teofila "Chefela" (born Oyao) and Dennis L. Hammett (a Merchant Mariner). His mother is of Filipino descent and his father was of English, German, Scottish, and Irish ancestry. He attended De Anza High School in Richmond, California. While attending De Anza High School, he met Les Claypool of Primus, and they remain close friends.
Hammett has a well-known passion for horror movies that stretches back to the late 1960s. After spraining his arm in a fight with his sister at age five, Hammett's parents placed him in front of the television. It was during this time that he first watched The Day of the Triffids. After that, Hammett found himself drawn to his brother's Frankenstein figures and began spending his milk money on horror magazines. For the better part of the next decade, Hammett dove deep into the horror scene.
Hammett began showing an interest in music after listening to his brother Rick's extensive record collection (which included Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, and UFO). He began selling his horror magazines to buy music records, which led him to properly picking up the guitar at age 15. Hammett's first guitar was (in his own words) a "wholly unglamorous" Montgomery Ward catalog special, which was accompanied by a shoebox (with a four-inch speaker) for an amp. After purchasing a 1978 Fender Stratocaster copy, Hammett attempted to customize his sound with various guitar parts before eventually buying a 1974 Gibson Flying V.
Hammett's musical interests eventually drew him into the fledgling thrash metal genre. In 1979, he formed the band Exodus at the age of sixteen, along with vocalist Paul Baloff, guitarist Tim Agnello, bassist Geoff Andrews, and drummer Tom Hunting. Hammett named Exodus after the Leon Uris novel of the same name, and played on the band's 1982 Demo and its successor Die By His Hand from 1983. Exodus was an influential band in the Bay Area thrash movement.
In 1983, Metallica traveled to the east coast to record its debut album, Kill 'Em All. Due to lead guitarist Dave Mustaine's substance abuse and violent tendencies, he was fired shortly after their arrival, and would eventually form the band Megadeth. Hammett received a phone call from Metallica on April 1, and flew out to New York for an audition on April 11, the same day Mustaine was let go. Vocalist/guitarist James Hetfield said: "The first song we played was "Seek and Destroy", and Kirk pulled off this solo, and it was like ... things are going to be alright!". Hammett was instantly asked to join the band.
Hammett has written a number of riffs for Metallica since Ride the Lightning (the band's second album). One of his riffs was used on "Enter Sandman" - which went on to become one of Metallica's most popular songs. It was the first track and the first single on the band's self-titled album (also known as The Black Album), and was ranked 399th on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The bridge for "Creeping Death" was originally an Exodus riff that Hammett took with him to Metallica.
In 1986, during the band's European leg of their tour to support Master of Puppets, the group had a dispute over sleeping arrangements on their tour bus. The outcome of the dispute was decided by a card draw, which Cliff Burton won by picking the Ace of Spades. Once the draw was completed, Burton looked at Hammett and said "I want your bunk", to which Hammett complied, saying that he might be able to sleep better in the front of the bus anyway. In the early hours of the following morning, Metallica's tour bus slid off the road and overturned in Sweden. Burton was thrown through the window of the bus, which fell on top of Burton and subsequently killed him. Hammett has stated in an interview that he once thought that it easily could have been him who was killed instead, since Burton was sleeping in what was considered to be Hammett's bunk. In Kirk's own words: "You know to this day I just think, it could have been me or it couldn't have been me but ... it's never left me to this day."
Between the end of touring (and promoting) the Black Album and the start of touring in promotion of Load, he studied at San Francisco State University, focusing on film and Asian arts. Hammett went through a "blues period" around this time - which had some influence on Metallica's Load and Reload albums. He also began listening to a lot of jazz music. Hammett described this period of his life as "great education", because he was able to discover where all of his own rock influences had gotten their own guitar licks. However, even though jazz music had a profound effect on his improvisation skills and solos, Hammett felt that he was delving too deep into the genre. Since Death Magnetic, Hammett has gone back to being "primarily" a metal guitarist, but some of his influences of jazz and blues music still remain.
Hammett wanted to have guitar solos on Metallica's 2003 album, St. Anger, but drummer Lars Ulrich and producer Bob Rock thought that the solos did not sound right in the songs. He later admitted himself, "We tried to put in solos but they sounded like an afterthought so we left them out". Recording for St. Anger was halted in 2001 so that Metallica frontman James Hetfield could enter rehab for alcohol abuse. Due to tensions within the band (which were well-documented in the Metallica documentary Some Kind of Monster) at the time, Hammett expressed interest in working on a solo album. According to Hammett, if he ever worked on a solo album, it wouldn't be "super-duty" heavy metal, and may include some classical guitarists. When he was asked about his experiences of recording St. Anger, Hammett said:
Honestly, I was ready to start working on a solo album. I had a bunch of music I was sitting on. I was going to ask Lars [Metallica's drummer] to play drums on it.
On April 4, 2009, Hammett, along with Metallica bandmates Lars Ulrich, James Hetfield, and Robert Trujillo and former Metallica bandmates Jason Newsted and the deceased Cliff Burton, were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2009, Hammett provided the foreword to British author Joel McIver's book To Live Is to Die: The Life and Death of Metallica's Cliff Burton.
In April 2015, Hammett admitted to losing his phone - which contained 250 new "ideas" for Metallica's upcoming studio release. The incident happened about six months prior to the admission (around November 2014). The phone was not backed up and Hammett can only remember eight out of the 250 "ideas" he had. On the subject, Hammett said:
For me, music comes at all times of the day. When I get a riff, sometimes it's a complete riff and I can just play it and there it is, sometimes it's half a riff and I have to tweak it. Sometimes it's just a rhythm or a note selection. Or sometimes it's just something that I hum in my head. But it can come from anywhere, and I put it on my phone, and I make sure the phone is fucking backed up.
In 2016, Hammett provided the foreword to author Greg Prato's book German Metal Machine: Scorpions in the '70s.
On February 8, 2022, it was announced that Hammett would release an extended play entitled Portals. Said to be inspired by "classical music, soundtracks, horror movies and maybe a little Ennio Morricone", the play is his solo debut and was released on April 23, 2022.
He also appeared on the Kichigai EP by punk band Septic Death. He played additional lead guitar on the title track.
Hammett can be seen in the background in Primus' "John the Fisherman" video fishing off of Les Claypool's boat. Hammett has been friends with Primus bassist and lead vocalist Les Claypool since childhood. Claypool even auditioned for Metallica after the tragic death of Cliff Burton.
Hammett played guitar on the track "Satan" with Orbital for the Spawn: The Album soundtrack released in July 1997.
Hammett plays a guitar solo on Pansy Division's song "Headbanger" which appears on the EP For Those About to Suck Cock.
In 2005, Hammett was featured playing the guitar roles on the Carlos Santana track "Trinity" alongside steel-pedal guitarist Robert Randolph. Santana personally asked Hammett to contribute to his then-upcoming album All That I Am. Hammett previously worked with Santana in 2001 at a live show benefit in San Francisco. Metallica had also invited Santana into the studio while recording St. Anger.
In 2006, Hammett voiced himself on The Simpsons ("The Mook, the Chef, the Wife and Her Homer"). He also provided various voices on the Adult Swim show Metalocalypse, including a two fingered fan ("The Curse of Dethklok"), The Queen of Denmark ("Happy Dethday"), and a Finnish barkeep ("Dethtroll").
Hammett also appeared as a guest in an episode of Space Ghost Coast to Coast titled "Jacksonville", alongside fellow Metallica member James Hetfield.
He appeared as a guest guitarist on K'Naan's 2006 song "If Rap Gets Jealous" off of the Troubadour album.
After performing a set with Metallica at Bonnaroo in June 2008, Hammett played one song with My Morning Jacket and a couple songs with the annual Superjam collaboration, which also included Les Claypool and members of Gogol Bordello playing primarily Tom Waits songs.
Hammett is one of the main characters in Guitar Hero: Metallica, along with the rest of the current line-up of Metallica.
In 2011, Hammett appeared in an episode of Jon Benjamin Has a Van as an actor and guitarist.
Hammett has appeared as himself, representing the character Kevin's conscience, in the 2022 American teen comedy-drama Metal Lords.
In May 2023, Hammett performed at the Jeff Beck tribute concerts held at the Royal Albert Hall in London, sharing the stage with Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, Ronnie Wood, Billy Gibbons and Johnny Depp among others.
On October 1, 2012, Abrams Image published Hammett's first book, Too Much Horror Business (a collection of photos detailing Hammett's lifelong love of monster movies and horror memorabilia). Hammett has said that the book is "basically" all of the horror memorabilia he has managed to amass over the last 30 years. In an interview with Guitar World, Hammett said that he has such a huge horror collection and thought it was the right time to share it with everyone. The 228 page hardcover features more than 300 images of Hammett's horror collection. Among these images are the costumes from the Bela Lugosi movies White Zombie and The Black Cat (which also starred Boris Karloff), original movie posters (ranging from Nosferatu to Hellraiser), rare horror-themed toys (including the 'Great Garloo' and 'Frankenstein Tricky Walkers'), movie props (including the 'Dr. Tongue' zombie from George A. Romero's Day of the Dead), original Basil Gogos Famous Monsters art, and fantasy paintings by Frank Frazetta. In addition to the images from Hammett's horror collection, Too Much Horror Business contains three conversations with the guitarist about his childhood, the nature of his horror collection, and the connection between Metallica's music and horror movies. On the book, Hammett has been quoted saying:
This is my gift to all the other horror nerds out there who are just like me. It's (the book) been made with great love for all the many characters and movies which guided me through childhood, into adulthood and which still keep me on track today.
Kirk Von Hammett's Fear FestEvil is an annual horror convention created by Kirk Hammett. The first Fear FestEvil took place at the Regency Ballroom in San Francisco - over a three-day period (from February 6–8, 2014). Hammett was inspired to create his own horror convention after experiencing the enjoyment of making his "crypt" at the Orion Music + More festival. The convention features live music, signings, interactive displays, vending, live talks, and guest appearances. At the 2014 event, guests included Sara Karloff (daughter of actor Boris Karloff), Bela G. Lugosi (son of actor Bela Lugosi), make-up artist Gregory Nicotero (who worked on George A. Romero's Day of the Dead), actor Tom Savini (who portrayed Sex Machine in From Dusk Till Dawn and worked on many of George A. Romero's movies), Heather Langenkamp (who portrayed Nancy in Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street), Kane Hodder (who portrayed Jason Voorhees in the Friday the 13th film series), and Haruo Nakajima (of Godzilla fame). Other guests in attendance included Hammett's former band Exodus, Death Angel, Orchid, Metallica band member Robert Trujillo, Richard Christy, Stephen Perkins, Slash, and Scott Ian. Exodus played on-stage with Carcass on the Friday, whilst Death Division and Orchid played before Death Angel on the Saturday. Hammett joined Exodus and Death Angel on-stage for their encores.
The second annual Fear FestEvil took place between April 10–12, 2015, at the Rockbar Theater in San Jose, California. Meshuggah headlined the event, whilst High on Fire, Blues Pills, Agnostic Front, and Asada Messiah also made appearances. Orchid also made a second appearance at the Fear FestEvil. On April 10, VIPs were able to attend the Dinner and Murder Mystery - along with Hammett - at the Winchester Mystery House.
Hammett has been married twice. His first marriage to Rebecca lasted three years, having ended in 1990, during the recording of Metallica. Hammett has been married to his second wife Lani since 1998. They have two sons, Angel (b. September 29, 2006) and Vincenzo (b. June 28, 2008). He resides in Sonoma, California and Hawaii.
In addition to playing guitar and collecting horror memorabilia, Hammett's hobbies include reading comic books and surfing.
At one point in his life, Hammett spent a "lot of money" on drugs. Hammett has said that he used drugs because he thought they would be fun. During the Damaged Justice tour, he had a cocaine addiction. Hammett eventually pulled out of the addiction because cocaine made him feel depressed, but relapsed during the Load era. One of the reasons Hammett said he spent a lot of money on comic books is because he finds them to be a more enjoyable and healthier alternative to drugs. He also smoked heroin a few times, but "didn't like it".
Although the other members of Metallica do not speak publicly about their politics, Hammett has expressed his disagreement with statements by former president Donald Trump. In an interview with Billboard magazine in December 2016 (one month after Trump's election), Hammett said that he was "just waiting to get into a personal Twitter war with (Trump)." In the same interview, Hammett stressed the importance of the fight against global warming, which Trump has claimed is a hoax.
Hammett is known for consistently taping sections of his right (picking) hand in order to protect his skin from abrasions from his use of palm muting and fast picking techniques over lengthy tour cycles.
Hammett's touring guitars over the years have included:
On the 25th anniversary of Metallica's debut album Kill 'Em All, Hammett appears on the cover of Feb. 2008's Guitar World sporting his new custom ESP. This model is the KH20, the 20th anniversary model from ESP.
In 2014, Hammett purchased "Greeny", a 1959 Les Paul formerly used by Gary Moore and Peter Green; using it on tour as of 2015 when playing a cover of Thin Lizzy's version of "Whiskey in the Jar".
Throughout Metallica's career, Hammett has used a range of different amplifiers. For the first two albums, he used Marshall amplifiers and cabinets, with occasional effects. For the recording of Metallica's third album, Master of Puppets (1986), he and James Hetfield bought a Mesa/Boogie MarkIIC+ amplifier, and used Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier heads. Even when he made his move to Randall Amplifiers in 2007, he still used Mesa/Boogie amplifiers in his setup, and still does to this day. He currently uses two rackmounted Dual Rectifier 2-channel heads in tandem with his Randalls.
In September 2007, Randall Amplifiers announced a partnership with Hammett to design a line of signature amplifiers, heads, combos and preamp modules.
In December 2011, it was announced by Fortin Amps that they would team up with Randall to start a new line of tube amplifiers based on the Fortin Meathead amplifier. Hammett is currently using a prototype of the amplifier that he used for the Big 4 show at Yankee Stadium and for all of the shows in India and Asia, and was recently sent a second prototype.
To avoid problems with pedals being damaged during live performances, Hammett keeps his effect pedals in a rack along with his amplifiers. His guitar technician controls them through a pedalboard sidestage. The pedal controller allows him to change between different effect pedals and amplifiers.
In 2008, Jim Dunlop started working in partnership with Hammett to create a signature Wah-wah pedal, the KH95. Hammett said that the Ibanez Tube Screamer has been an essential part of his sound since he was a teenager, but it was not versatile enough, which started him searching for a better pedal. In 2012, he co-founded KHDK Electronics with sound designer David Karon, hiring Antonin Salva as chief engineer, based in Prague. The company makes guitar pedals in Paducah, Kentucky. They began developing pedals and trying out prototypes. In September 2015, the company launched its first series of pedals, surprising the industry.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Kirk Lee Hammett (born November 18, 1962) is an American musician who has been the lead guitarist of heavy metal band Metallica since 1983. Prior to joining Metallica, he co-formed the thrash metal band Exodus in 1979. In 2003, Hammett, along with bandmate James Hetfield, was ranked 23rd on Rolling Stone's list of Greatest Guitarists of All Time. In 2009, Hammett was ranked number 15 in Joel McIver's book The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Hammett was born on November 18, 1962, in San Francisco, California, and raised in the town of El Sobrante. He is the son of Teofila \"Chefela\" (born Oyao) and Dennis L. Hammett (a Merchant Mariner). His mother is of Filipino descent and his father was of English, German, Scottish, and Irish ancestry. He attended De Anza High School in Richmond, California. While attending De Anza High School, he met Les Claypool of Primus, and they remain close friends.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Hammett has a well-known passion for horror movies that stretches back to the late 1960s. After spraining his arm in a fight with his sister at age five, Hammett's parents placed him in front of the television. It was during this time that he first watched The Day of the Triffids. After that, Hammett found himself drawn to his brother's Frankenstein figures and began spending his milk money on horror magazines. For the better part of the next decade, Hammett dove deep into the horror scene.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Hammett began showing an interest in music after listening to his brother Rick's extensive record collection (which included Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, and UFO). He began selling his horror magazines to buy music records, which led him to properly picking up the guitar at age 15. Hammett's first guitar was (in his own words) a \"wholly unglamorous\" Montgomery Ward catalog special, which was accompanied by a shoebox (with a four-inch speaker) for an amp. After purchasing a 1978 Fender Stratocaster copy, Hammett attempted to customize his sound with various guitar parts before eventually buying a 1974 Gibson Flying V.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Hammett's musical interests eventually drew him into the fledgling thrash metal genre. In 1979, he formed the band Exodus at the age of sixteen, along with vocalist Paul Baloff, guitarist Tim Agnello, bassist Geoff Andrews, and drummer Tom Hunting. Hammett named Exodus after the Leon Uris novel of the same name, and played on the band's 1982 Demo and its successor Die By His Hand from 1983. Exodus was an influential band in the Bay Area thrash movement.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In 1983, Metallica traveled to the east coast to record its debut album, Kill 'Em All. Due to lead guitarist Dave Mustaine's substance abuse and violent tendencies, he was fired shortly after their arrival, and would eventually form the band Megadeth. Hammett received a phone call from Metallica on April 1, and flew out to New York for an audition on April 11, the same day Mustaine was let go. Vocalist/guitarist James Hetfield said: \"The first song we played was \"Seek and Destroy\", and Kirk pulled off this solo, and it was like ... things are going to be alright!\". Hammett was instantly asked to join the band.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Hammett has written a number of riffs for Metallica since Ride the Lightning (the band's second album). One of his riffs was used on \"Enter Sandman\" - which went on to become one of Metallica's most popular songs. It was the first track and the first single on the band's self-titled album (also known as The Black Album), and was ranked 399th on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The bridge for \"Creeping Death\" was originally an Exodus riff that Hammett took with him to Metallica.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In 1986, during the band's European leg of their tour to support Master of Puppets, the group had a dispute over sleeping arrangements on their tour bus. The outcome of the dispute was decided by a card draw, which Cliff Burton won by picking the Ace of Spades. Once the draw was completed, Burton looked at Hammett and said \"I want your bunk\", to which Hammett complied, saying that he might be able to sleep better in the front of the bus anyway. In the early hours of the following morning, Metallica's tour bus slid off the road and overturned in Sweden. Burton was thrown through the window of the bus, which fell on top of Burton and subsequently killed him. Hammett has stated in an interview that he once thought that it easily could have been him who was killed instead, since Burton was sleeping in what was considered to be Hammett's bunk. In Kirk's own words: \"You know to this day I just think, it could have been me or it couldn't have been me but ... it's never left me to this day.\"",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Between the end of touring (and promoting) the Black Album and the start of touring in promotion of Load, he studied at San Francisco State University, focusing on film and Asian arts. Hammett went through a \"blues period\" around this time - which had some influence on Metallica's Load and Reload albums. He also began listening to a lot of jazz music. Hammett described this period of his life as \"great education\", because he was able to discover where all of his own rock influences had gotten their own guitar licks. However, even though jazz music had a profound effect on his improvisation skills and solos, Hammett felt that he was delving too deep into the genre. Since Death Magnetic, Hammett has gone back to being \"primarily\" a metal guitarist, but some of his influences of jazz and blues music still remain.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Hammett wanted to have guitar solos on Metallica's 2003 album, St. Anger, but drummer Lars Ulrich and producer Bob Rock thought that the solos did not sound right in the songs. He later admitted himself, \"We tried to put in solos but they sounded like an afterthought so we left them out\". Recording for St. Anger was halted in 2001 so that Metallica frontman James Hetfield could enter rehab for alcohol abuse. Due to tensions within the band (which were well-documented in the Metallica documentary Some Kind of Monster) at the time, Hammett expressed interest in working on a solo album. According to Hammett, if he ever worked on a solo album, it wouldn't be \"super-duty\" heavy metal, and may include some classical guitarists. When he was asked about his experiences of recording St. Anger, Hammett said:",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Honestly, I was ready to start working on a solo album. I had a bunch of music I was sitting on. I was going to ask Lars [Metallica's drummer] to play drums on it.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "On April 4, 2009, Hammett, along with Metallica bandmates Lars Ulrich, James Hetfield, and Robert Trujillo and former Metallica bandmates Jason Newsted and the deceased Cliff Burton, were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2009, Hammett provided the foreword to British author Joel McIver's book To Live Is to Die: The Life and Death of Metallica's Cliff Burton.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In April 2015, Hammett admitted to losing his phone - which contained 250 new \"ideas\" for Metallica's upcoming studio release. The incident happened about six months prior to the admission (around November 2014). The phone was not backed up and Hammett can only remember eight out of the 250 \"ideas\" he had. On the subject, Hammett said:",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "For me, music comes at all times of the day. When I get a riff, sometimes it's a complete riff and I can just play it and there it is, sometimes it's half a riff and I have to tweak it. Sometimes it's just a rhythm or a note selection. Or sometimes it's just something that I hum in my head. But it can come from anywhere, and I put it on my phone, and I make sure the phone is fucking backed up.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In 2016, Hammett provided the foreword to author Greg Prato's book German Metal Machine: Scorpions in the '70s.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "On February 8, 2022, it was announced that Hammett would release an extended play entitled Portals. Said to be inspired by \"classical music, soundtracks, horror movies and maybe a little Ennio Morricone\", the play is his solo debut and was released on April 23, 2022.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "He also appeared on the Kichigai EP by punk band Septic Death. He played additional lead guitar on the title track.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Hammett can be seen in the background in Primus' \"John the Fisherman\" video fishing off of Les Claypool's boat. Hammett has been friends with Primus bassist and lead vocalist Les Claypool since childhood. Claypool even auditioned for Metallica after the tragic death of Cliff Burton.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Hammett played guitar on the track \"Satan\" with Orbital for the Spawn: The Album soundtrack released in July 1997.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Hammett plays a guitar solo on Pansy Division's song \"Headbanger\" which appears on the EP For Those About to Suck Cock.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In 2005, Hammett was featured playing the guitar roles on the Carlos Santana track \"Trinity\" alongside steel-pedal guitarist Robert Randolph. Santana personally asked Hammett to contribute to his then-upcoming album All That I Am. Hammett previously worked with Santana in 2001 at a live show benefit in San Francisco. Metallica had also invited Santana into the studio while recording St. Anger.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In 2006, Hammett voiced himself on The Simpsons (\"The Mook, the Chef, the Wife and Her Homer\"). He also provided various voices on the Adult Swim show Metalocalypse, including a two fingered fan (\"The Curse of Dethklok\"), The Queen of Denmark (\"Happy Dethday\"), and a Finnish barkeep (\"Dethtroll\").",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Hammett also appeared as a guest in an episode of Space Ghost Coast to Coast titled \"Jacksonville\", alongside fellow Metallica member James Hetfield.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "He appeared as a guest guitarist on K'Naan's 2006 song \"If Rap Gets Jealous\" off of the Troubadour album.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "After performing a set with Metallica at Bonnaroo in June 2008, Hammett played one song with My Morning Jacket and a couple songs with the annual Superjam collaboration, which also included Les Claypool and members of Gogol Bordello playing primarily Tom Waits songs.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Hammett is one of the main characters in Guitar Hero: Metallica, along with the rest of the current line-up of Metallica.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In 2011, Hammett appeared in an episode of Jon Benjamin Has a Van as an actor and guitarist.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Hammett has appeared as himself, representing the character Kevin's conscience, in the 2022 American teen comedy-drama Metal Lords.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In May 2023, Hammett performed at the Jeff Beck tribute concerts held at the Royal Albert Hall in London, sharing the stage with Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, Ronnie Wood, Billy Gibbons and Johnny Depp among others.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "On October 1, 2012, Abrams Image published Hammett's first book, Too Much Horror Business (a collection of photos detailing Hammett's lifelong love of monster movies and horror memorabilia). Hammett has said that the book is \"basically\" all of the horror memorabilia he has managed to amass over the last 30 years. In an interview with Guitar World, Hammett said that he has such a huge horror collection and thought it was the right time to share it with everyone. The 228 page hardcover features more than 300 images of Hammett's horror collection. Among these images are the costumes from the Bela Lugosi movies White Zombie and The Black Cat (which also starred Boris Karloff), original movie posters (ranging from Nosferatu to Hellraiser), rare horror-themed toys (including the 'Great Garloo' and 'Frankenstein Tricky Walkers'), movie props (including the 'Dr. Tongue' zombie from George A. Romero's Day of the Dead), original Basil Gogos Famous Monsters art, and fantasy paintings by Frank Frazetta. In addition to the images from Hammett's horror collection, Too Much Horror Business contains three conversations with the guitarist about his childhood, the nature of his horror collection, and the connection between Metallica's music and horror movies. On the book, Hammett has been quoted saying:",
"title": "Book"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "This is my gift to all the other horror nerds out there who are just like me. It's (the book) been made with great love for all the many characters and movies which guided me through childhood, into adulthood and which still keep me on track today.",
"title": "Book"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Kirk Von Hammett's Fear FestEvil is an annual horror convention created by Kirk Hammett. The first Fear FestEvil took place at the Regency Ballroom in San Francisco - over a three-day period (from February 6–8, 2014). Hammett was inspired to create his own horror convention after experiencing the enjoyment of making his \"crypt\" at the Orion Music + More festival. The convention features live music, signings, interactive displays, vending, live talks, and guest appearances. At the 2014 event, guests included Sara Karloff (daughter of actor Boris Karloff), Bela G. Lugosi (son of actor Bela Lugosi), make-up artist Gregory Nicotero (who worked on George A. Romero's Day of the Dead), actor Tom Savini (who portrayed Sex Machine in From Dusk Till Dawn and worked on many of George A. Romero's movies), Heather Langenkamp (who portrayed Nancy in Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street), Kane Hodder (who portrayed Jason Voorhees in the Friday the 13th film series), and Haruo Nakajima (of Godzilla fame). Other guests in attendance included Hammett's former band Exodus, Death Angel, Orchid, Metallica band member Robert Trujillo, Richard Christy, Stephen Perkins, Slash, and Scott Ian. Exodus played on-stage with Carcass on the Friday, whilst Death Division and Orchid played before Death Angel on the Saturday. Hammett joined Exodus and Death Angel on-stage for their encores.",
"title": "Kirk Von Hammett's Fear FestEvil"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The second annual Fear FestEvil took place between April 10–12, 2015, at the Rockbar Theater in San Jose, California. Meshuggah headlined the event, whilst High on Fire, Blues Pills, Agnostic Front, and Asada Messiah also made appearances. Orchid also made a second appearance at the Fear FestEvil. On April 10, VIPs were able to attend the Dinner and Murder Mystery - along with Hammett - at the Winchester Mystery House.",
"title": "Kirk Von Hammett's Fear FestEvil"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Hammett has been married twice. His first marriage to Rebecca lasted three years, having ended in 1990, during the recording of Metallica. Hammett has been married to his second wife Lani since 1998. They have two sons, Angel (b. September 29, 2006) and Vincenzo (b. June 28, 2008). He resides in Sonoma, California and Hawaii.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In addition to playing guitar and collecting horror memorabilia, Hammett's hobbies include reading comic books and surfing.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "At one point in his life, Hammett spent a \"lot of money\" on drugs. Hammett has said that he used drugs because he thought they would be fun. During the Damaged Justice tour, he had a cocaine addiction. Hammett eventually pulled out of the addiction because cocaine made him feel depressed, but relapsed during the Load era. One of the reasons Hammett said he spent a lot of money on comic books is because he finds them to be a more enjoyable and healthier alternative to drugs. He also smoked heroin a few times, but \"didn't like it\".",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Although the other members of Metallica do not speak publicly about their politics, Hammett has expressed his disagreement with statements by former president Donald Trump. In an interview with Billboard magazine in December 2016 (one month after Trump's election), Hammett said that he was \"just waiting to get into a personal Twitter war with (Trump).\" In the same interview, Hammett stressed the importance of the fight against global warming, which Trump has claimed is a hoax.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Hammett is known for consistently taping sections of his right (picking) hand in order to protect his skin from abrasions from his use of palm muting and fast picking techniques over lengthy tour cycles.",
"title": "Equipment and techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Hammett's touring guitars over the years have included:",
"title": "Equipment and techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "On the 25th anniversary of Metallica's debut album Kill 'Em All, Hammett appears on the cover of Feb. 2008's Guitar World sporting his new custom ESP. This model is the KH20, the 20th anniversary model from ESP.",
"title": "Equipment and techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In 2014, Hammett purchased \"Greeny\", a 1959 Les Paul formerly used by Gary Moore and Peter Green; using it on tour as of 2015 when playing a cover of Thin Lizzy's version of \"Whiskey in the Jar\".",
"title": "Equipment and techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Throughout Metallica's career, Hammett has used a range of different amplifiers. For the first two albums, he used Marshall amplifiers and cabinets, with occasional effects. For the recording of Metallica's third album, Master of Puppets (1986), he and James Hetfield bought a Mesa/Boogie MarkIIC+ amplifier, and used Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier heads. Even when he made his move to Randall Amplifiers in 2007, he still used Mesa/Boogie amplifiers in his setup, and still does to this day. He currently uses two rackmounted Dual Rectifier 2-channel heads in tandem with his Randalls.",
"title": "Equipment and techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "In September 2007, Randall Amplifiers announced a partnership with Hammett to design a line of signature amplifiers, heads, combos and preamp modules.",
"title": "Equipment and techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "In December 2011, it was announced by Fortin Amps that they would team up with Randall to start a new line of tube amplifiers based on the Fortin Meathead amplifier. Hammett is currently using a prototype of the amplifier that he used for the Big 4 show at Yankee Stadium and for all of the shows in India and Asia, and was recently sent a second prototype.",
"title": "Equipment and techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "To avoid problems with pedals being damaged during live performances, Hammett keeps his effect pedals in a rack along with his amplifiers. His guitar technician controls them through a pedalboard sidestage. The pedal controller allows him to change between different effect pedals and amplifiers.",
"title": "Equipment and techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In 2008, Jim Dunlop started working in partnership with Hammett to create a signature Wah-wah pedal, the KH95. Hammett said that the Ibanez Tube Screamer has been an essential part of his sound since he was a teenager, but it was not versatile enough, which started him searching for a better pedal. In 2012, he co-founded KHDK Electronics with sound designer David Karon, hiring Antonin Salva as chief engineer, based in Prague. The company makes guitar pedals in Paducah, Kentucky. They began developing pedals and trying out prototypes. In September 2015, the company launched its first series of pedals, surprising the industry.",
"title": "Equipment and techniques"
}
] |
Kirk Lee Hammett is an American musician who has been the lead guitarist of heavy metal band Metallica since 1983. Prior to joining Metallica, he co-formed the thrash metal band Exodus in 1979. In 2003, Hammett, along with bandmate James Hetfield, was ranked 23rd on Rolling Stone's list of Greatest Guitarists of All Time. In 2009, Hammett was ranked number 15 in Joel McIver's book The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists.
|
2001-06-05T22:57:49Z
|
2023-11-06T23:17:47Z
|
[
"Template:S-start",
"Template:S-end",
"Template:Col-end",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Dead link",
"Template:Wikiquote",
"Template:Commons category",
"Template:2009 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame",
"Template:Pp-semi-indef",
"Template:Col-2",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Cite episode",
"Template:S-bef",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:IMDb name",
"Template:S-aft",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Infobox musical artist",
"Template:As of",
"Template:S-ttl",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Blockquote",
"Template:Use mdy dates",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Cite magazine",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Metallica",
"Template:Exodus(band)",
"Template:'",
"Template:Col-begin",
"Template:Cite web"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirk_Hammett
|
16,726 |
Kul Tigin
|
Kul Tigin (Old Turkic: 𐰚𐰇𐰠𐱅𐰃𐰏𐰤, romanized: Kültegin Chinese: 闕特勤, Pinyin: Quètèqín, Wade-Giles: chüeh-t'e-ch'in, AD 684–731) was a general and a prince of the Second Turkic Khaganate.
Necip Asım (1921) for the first time did read his name as köl, based on the etymology of Mahmud al-Kashgari, meaning "lake, sea". Radloff did read this word as kül, and Thomsen (1896), Malov (1951) and Tekin (1968) adopted this reading. Bazin (1956) and Hamilton (1962) rejected Radloff's reading and preferred the form köl. However, Chinese sources used the Chinese character 闕 (què). Therefore, this word should be read as kül, not köl.
He was a second son of Ilterish Qaghan, the Second Turkic Khaganate's founder, and the younger brother of Bilge Kaghan, the fourth kaghan. He was seven when his father died.
During the reign of Qapagan Khaghan, Kul Tigin and his older brother earned reputation for their military prowess. They defeated Yenisei Kirghiz, Turgesh, and the Karluks, extending the Kaganate territory all the way to the Iron Gate south of Samarkand. They also subjugated all nine of the Tokuz Oguz tribes.
In 705, Tujue forces commanded by Mojilian entered Lingwu, defeating Shazha Chongyi (沙吒忠义). Kul Tigin commanded a unit in battle, in which he lost three horses.
In 711, he participated in Battle of Bolchu, which was disastrous for Turgesh.
In 713 he participated in subjugation of Karluk tribes with his brother and uncle.
Upon the death of Qapagan Khaghan, his son Inel Qaghan attempted to illegally ascend to the throne, defying the traditional Lateral succession law, but Kül Tigin refused to recognize the takeover. He raised an army, attacked, and killed Inel, Ashina Duoxifu and his trusted followers. He placed his elder brother Bilge Khagan on the throne, and took the title of Shad, an equivalent of commander-in-chief of the army, for himself.
He died suddenly on 27 February 731. A stele in memory of Kül Tigin, which included inscriptions in both Turkic and Chinese, was erected at his memorial complex of Khoshoo Tsaidam, at the present site of the Orkhon inscriptions. Kül-Tegin is also mentioned in the inscription erected in memory of his older brother Bilge Qaghan at the neighbouring site of Khöshöö-Tsaidam-1.
His burial ceremony took place in 1 November 731. He was posthumously renamed Inanču Apa Yarğan Tarqan (Old Turkic: 𐰃𐰤𐰨𐰆:𐰯𐰀:𐰖𐰺𐰍𐰣:𐱃𐰺𐰴𐰣) by Bilge Khagan.
The head of the Kül Tigin sculpture in the Khöshöö-Tsaidam enclave in (Orkhon, in northern Mongolia) carries a bird with wings spread like an eagle, personifying a raven. The head was found by the Czech archeologie Lumir Jisl during his 1957-1958 expedition to Mongolia.
He was portrayed by Ham Suk Hun (함석훈) in Korean TV Series Dae Jo Yeong.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Kul Tigin (Old Turkic: 𐰚𐰇𐰠𐱅𐰃𐰏𐰤, romanized: Kültegin Chinese: 闕特勤, Pinyin: Quètèqín, Wade-Giles: chüeh-t'e-ch'in, AD 684–731) was a general and a prince of the Second Turkic Khaganate.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Necip Asım (1921) for the first time did read his name as köl, based on the etymology of Mahmud al-Kashgari, meaning \"lake, sea\". Radloff did read this word as kül, and Thomsen (1896), Malov (1951) and Tekin (1968) adopted this reading. Bazin (1956) and Hamilton (1962) rejected Radloff's reading and preferred the form köl. However, Chinese sources used the Chinese character 闕 (què). Therefore, this word should be read as kül, not köl.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "He was a second son of Ilterish Qaghan, the Second Turkic Khaganate's founder, and the younger brother of Bilge Kaghan, the fourth kaghan. He was seven when his father died.",
"title": "Early years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "During the reign of Qapagan Khaghan, Kul Tigin and his older brother earned reputation for their military prowess. They defeated Yenisei Kirghiz, Turgesh, and the Karluks, extending the Kaganate territory all the way to the Iron Gate south of Samarkand. They also subjugated all nine of the Tokuz Oguz tribes.",
"title": "Early years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In 705, Tujue forces commanded by Mojilian entered Lingwu, defeating Shazha Chongyi (沙吒忠义). Kul Tigin commanded a unit in battle, in which he lost three horses.",
"title": "Early years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In 711, he participated in Battle of Bolchu, which was disastrous for Turgesh.",
"title": "Early years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In 713 he participated in subjugation of Karluk tribes with his brother and uncle.",
"title": "Early years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Upon the death of Qapagan Khaghan, his son Inel Qaghan attempted to illegally ascend to the throne, defying the traditional Lateral succession law, but Kül Tigin refused to recognize the takeover. He raised an army, attacked, and killed Inel, Ashina Duoxifu and his trusted followers. He placed his elder brother Bilge Khagan on the throne, and took the title of Shad, an equivalent of commander-in-chief of the army, for himself.",
"title": "As supreme commander"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "He died suddenly on 27 February 731. A stele in memory of Kül Tigin, which included inscriptions in both Turkic and Chinese, was erected at his memorial complex of Khoshoo Tsaidam, at the present site of the Orkhon inscriptions. Kül-Tegin is also mentioned in the inscription erected in memory of his older brother Bilge Qaghan at the neighbouring site of Khöshöö-Tsaidam-1.",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "His burial ceremony took place in 1 November 731. He was posthumously renamed Inanču Apa Yarğan Tarqan (Old Turkic: 𐰃𐰤𐰨𐰆:𐰯𐰀:𐰖𐰺𐰍𐰣:𐱃𐰺𐰴𐰣) by Bilge Khagan.",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The head of the Kül Tigin sculpture in the Khöshöö-Tsaidam enclave in (Orkhon, in northern Mongolia) carries a bird with wings spread like an eagle, personifying a raven. The head was found by the Czech archeologie Lumir Jisl during his 1957-1958 expedition to Mongolia.",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "He was portrayed by Ham Suk Hun (함석훈) in Korean TV Series Dae Jo Yeong.",
"title": "Popular culture"
}
] |
Kul Tigin was a general and a prince of the Second Turkic Khaganate.
|
2001-06-10T13:32:12Z
|
2023-08-21T02:10:19Z
|
[
"Template:Infobox military person",
"Template:Lang-zh",
"Template:Göktürks",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Lang-otk",
"Template:Efn",
"Template:Notelist",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Listed Invalid ISBN",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Authority control"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kul_Tigin
|
16,733 |
Kinky Friedman
|
Richard Samet "Kinky" Friedman (born October 31, 1944) is an American singer, songwriter, novelist, humorist, politician, and former columnist for Texas Monthly who styles himself in the mold of popular American satirists Will Rogers and Mark Twain.
Friedman was one of two independent candidates in the 2006 election for the office of Governor of Texas. Receiving 12.6% of the vote, Friedman placed fourth in the six-person race.
Richard Samet Friedman was born in Chicago on October 31, 1944 to Jewish parents, Dr. S. Thomas Friedman and his wife Minnie (Samet) Friedman. Both of his parents were the children of Russian Jewish immigrants. When Friedman was young, his family moved to a ranch in Kerrville, Texas in the Texas Hill Country and opened a summer camp called Echo Hill.
Friedman had an early interest in both pop music and chess, and was chosen at age seven as one of 50 local players to challenge U.S. grandmaster Samuel Reshevsky to simultaneous games in Houston. Reshevsky won all 50 games, but Friedman was, by far, the youngest competitor.
Friedman graduated from Austin High School in Austin, Texas, in 1962. He went on and earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Texas at Austin in 1966, majoring in Psychology. He took part in the Plan II Honors program and was a member of the Tau Delta Phi fraternity. During his first year, Chinga Chavin gave Friedman the nickname "Kinky" because of his curly hair.
Friedman served two years in the United States Peace Corps, teaching in Borneo, Indonesia with John Gross. During his service in the Peace Corps, he met future road manager Dylan Ferrero, with whom he still works. Friedman lives at Echo Hill Ranch, his family's summer camp near Kerrville, Texas. He founded Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch, also located near Kerrville, whose mission is to care for stray, abused and aging animals; more than 1,000 dogs have been saved from animal euthanasia.
Friedman formed his first band, King Arthur & the Carrots, while a student at the University of Texas at Austin. The band, which poked fun at surf music, recorded only one single in 1966 ("Schwinn 24/Beach Party Boo Boo").
By 1973, Friedman had formed his second band, Kinky Friedman and The Texas Jewboys, which many took to be a play on the name of the famous band Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. In keeping with the band's satirical nature, each member had a comical name: in addition to Kinky there were Little Jewford, Big Nig, Panama Red, Wichita Culpepper, Sky Cap Adams, Rainbow Colours, and Snakebite Jacobs. More conventionally named roadie Jack Slaughter and road manager Dylan Ferrero rounded out the crew and provided most of the driving of the "tour bus", a Cadillac with 10-year-old expired license plates and a propensity to break down (but, according to Friedman, her talent lay in her ability to stop on a dime and pick up the change).
Friedman's father objected to the name of the band, calling it a "negative, hostile, peculiar thing", which gave Kinky even more reason to choose the name.
Arriving on the wave of country rock following on from Gram Parsons, The Band, and Eagles, Friedman originally found cult fame as a country and western singer. His break came in 1973 thanks to Commander Cody of Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, who contacted Vanguard Music on his behalf. Friedman released Kinky Friedman in 1974 for ABC Records, then toured with Bob Dylan in 1975–1976. His repertoire mixed social commentary ("We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to You") and maudlin ballads ("Western Union Wire") with raucous humor (such as "Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns into Bed"). His "Ride 'Em Jewboy" was an extended tribute to the victims of the Holocaust.
One of his most famous songs is "They Ain't Makin' Jews Like Jesus Anymore," a song in which Kinky verbally and physically beats up a drunken white racist who berates blacks, Jews, Italians, Greeks, and Sigma Nus in a bar, with lyrics such as,
Oh, they ain't makin' Jews like Jesus anymore, They ain't makin' carpenters that know what nails are for
Other Friedman tunes include "The Ballad of Charles Whitman," in which Friedman lampooned Charles Whitman's sniper attack from the University of Texas at Austin's Main Building tower on August 1, 1966. He also covered Chinga Chavin's "Asshole from El Paso", a parody of Merle Haggard's "Okie from Muskogee".
One of Friedman's most infamous concerts was a 1973 performance in Buffalo, New York; upon performing "Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns into Bed" (a song that lampoons feminism), a group of what Friedman described as "cranked-up lesbians" entered into a fight with the band and forced the concert to end early while Friedman and the band were escorted off stage. The National Organization for Women awarded Friedman the "Male Chauvinist Pig Award" later that year, an award Friedman took with pride. Friedman would not return to Buffalo until 2012. Another was at The Boarding House in early-March 1975 when an offended Buffy Sainte-Marie rushed on stage and snatched the war bonnet that Friedman was wearing while he and his band were performing "Miss Nickelodeon," a composition that spoofs the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
Friedman and his band taped an Austin City Limits show on November 11, 1975, which was never aired. According to the show's executive producer, Terry Lickona, this is the first and only time in the show's long history that an episode went unaired. Lickona told the Austin Chronicle "I've seen it many times – it's a very popular party tape among friends. I think it was a great show, and it might be as offensive today as it was back then."
In early 1976, he joined Bob Dylan on the second leg of the Rolling Thunder Revue tour.
Friedman was the musical guest on the Season 2 fifth episode of Saturday Night Live which aired on October 23, 1976. He performed his own composition "Dear Abbie".
Although hard to verify, given the number of Jewish-origin entertainers in country/hillbilly-tour circles (e.g. Gilbert Maxwell "Broncho Billy" Anderson), Friedman claims to have been the first full-blooded Jew to take the stage at the Grand Ole Opry.
In February 2007, Sustain Records released a compilation of the songs of Kinky Friedman sung by other artists called Why the Hell Not ... The compilation includes contributions by Dwight Yoakam, Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett, and Kelly Willis.
On July 20, 2007, Friedman hosted the Concert to Save Town Lake to honor the memory of Lady Bird Johnson and her efforts to protect and preserve the shores of Town Lake in Austin, Texas.
On April 27, 2011, Friedman launched his Springtime for Kinky Tour (cf. "Springtime for Hitler") in Kansas City, Missouri, at Knuckleheads Saloon; it included dates in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kentucky before heading towards the East Coast. This was followed by a tour of Australia with Van Dyke Parks.
After his music career stalled in the 1980s, Friedman shifted his creative focus to writing detective novels. His books have similarities to his song lyrics, featuring a fictionalized version of himself solving crimes in New York City and dispensing jokes, wisdom, recipes, charm and Jameson's whiskey in equal measure. They are written in a straightforward style which owes a debt to Raymond Chandler. The Kinky character views himself as a latter-day Sherlock Holmes and he is aided in his investigations by his close friend Larry Sloman aka Ratso who assumes the role of Dr. Watson.
To date, he has written two novels that do not star the Kinky Friedman character: Kill Two Birds and Get Stoned and The Christmas Pig.
Friedman also wrote a regular column for the magazine Texas Monthly from April 2001 to March 2005 which was suspended during his run for governor of Texas. In 2008, Texas Monthly brought his column back on a bimonthly basis.
Two books have been published collecting some of these nonfiction writings, as well as previously unpublished ones: 'Scuse Me While I Whip This Out and Texas Hold'em. He has also published a travelog (The Great Psychedelic Armadillo Picnic) and an etiquette guide.
Friedman's early books have been republished by Friedman's own Vandam Press as ebooks. During March and April 2011, Vandam released seven of Friedman's early titles including: Greenwich Killing Time, A Case of Lone Star, Musical Chairs, When The Cat's Away, Frequent Flyer, Roadkill and the rarely seen Curse of the Missing Puppet Head. Elvis Jesus and Coca-Cola, God Bless John Wayne, Blast From The Past, Armadillos and Old Lace and two nonfiction books, Drinker With A Writing Problem and Heroes of A Texas Childhood were released in 2011. E-book releases are announced on Friedman's Twitter feed and Facebook page, "TheRealKinkster".
Friedman also announced (via Jim Bessman's column at examiner.com) the upcoming release of all Vandam Press titles as unabridged audio books "read by the author".
The recurring character "Rambam", a New York private investigator and friend of the Friedman character in the books, is based on the real-life investigator, Steven Rambam, who acts as a technical advisor for the real Friedman. Old Peace Corps friend and long time road manager Dylan Ferrero is also a recurring character in Kinky's mystery novels; his character is known for only speaking in rock and roll quotes, a trait taken from real life.
In 1986, Friedman ran for Justice of the Peace in Kerrville, Texas, as a Republican but lost the election.
In 2004, Friedman began an ostensibly serious, though colorful, campaign to become the Governor of Texas in 2006. One of his stated goals is the "dewussification" of Texas. Among his campaign slogans were "How Hard Could It Be?", "Why The Hell Not?", "My Governor is a Jewish Cowboy", and "He ain't Kinky, he's my Governor" (cf. "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother").
Friedman had hoped to follow in the footsteps of other entertainers-turned-governors, including Jimmie Davis, Jesse Ventura, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Ronald Reagan. Jesse Ventura even campaigned with Friedman for his election. When the campaign finance reports came out after the second quarter had ended, Friedman had raised more funds than the Democratic nominee, former Congressman Chris Bell.
On election day, Friedman was defeated, receiving 12.6% of the votes in the six-candidate matchup.
Friedman released a statement on October 15, 2013, announcing his intent to again run for Texas agriculture commissioner as a Democrat. Friedman previously ran for the post in 2010, losing in the Democratic primary.
Friedman supports the full legalization and cultivation of hemp and marijuana, declaring that the end of the prohibition is a health, education funding, prison reduction, border security, and state's rights issue.
On education, he supports higher pay for teachers and working to lower Texas's dropout rate. He supports more investment in harnessing Texas's alternative fuel resources such as wind and biodiesel. Friedman is opposed to the Trans-Texas Corridor since it relies on toll road construction.
On capital punishment, he previously summed up his position, "I am not anti-death penalty, but I'm damn sure anti-the-wrong-guy-getting-executed." More recently, he has clarified his position: "The system is not perfect. Until it's perfect, let's do away with the death penalty."
On illegal immigration, Friedman wants to increase the number of Texas National Guard troops on the border (from the current 1,500 to 10,000), impose $25,000 and $50,000 fines on companies that hire illegal immigrants, and require foreign nationals seeking employment to purchase a foreign taxpayer ID card once they have passed a criminal background check. "Texas can no longer wait for our federal government to solve our illegal immigration problem," Friedman said. "These are steps that Texas can immediately take to help stem the tide of illegal immigrants penetrating our border." Had he been elected, he had promised to meet regularly with Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico and Governor Janet Napolitano of Arizona to develop a coordinated border state plan to supplement federal efforts to curb illegal immigration. Previously, Kinky put forth the "Five Mexican Generals" Plan, to pay Mexican officials to halt immigration on their side of the border. Although he originally stated "When I talk about the five Mexican generals, people think I'm joking but I'm dead serious", Friedman later told the Dallas Morning News that the plan, never meant to be carried out, was a joke with an element of seriousness.
According to his official website, Friedman's answer to the question "How does Kinky feel about abortion?" is "Kinky believes in a woman's right to choose." In person, he hedges his bets, saying "I'm not pro-life, and I'm not pro-choice. I'm pro-football." On social issues, he has supported gay marriage, answering an Associated Press reporter's question on the subject on February 3, 2005, by saying, "I support gay marriage. I believe they have a right to be as miserable as the rest of us." (Friedman himself has never been married.)
According to Cigar Aficionado magazine, Friedman plans to roll back "any and all smoking bans" if elected. One of his favorite quotes comes from Mark Twain: "If smoking is not allowed in heaven, I shall not go." Friedman supports the decriminalization of marijuana, though he doesn't advocate making its sale legal. "I'm not talking about like Amsterdam," he noted, "We've got to clear some of the room out of the prisons so we can put the bad guys in there, like the pedophiles and the politicians."
On August 9, 2007, the Austin American-Statesman reported that Friedman was considering another run for governor of Texas in 2010. "I'm open to running", Friedman said, adding that he wouldn't make a final decision until after the 2008 elections. On February 10, 2009, Friedman confirmed to the Associated Press that he was still interested in running.
In an August 23, 2007 interview with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and a February 10, 2009 interview with the Associated Press, Friedman stated that if he did run in 2010, he would run as a Democrat, citing that "God probably couldn't have won as an Independent" and that he was a Democrat all his life.
On April 14, 2009, Friedman announced in an email to supporters that he intended to make a second gubernatorial run, this time as a Democrat. Friedman then announced on December 14, 2009, that he was leaving the gubernatorial race and would instead seek the party nomination in March 2010 for Texas Agriculture Commissioner. He lost the nomination to rancher Hank Gilbert in the primary held on March 2, 2010. Gilbert was in turn defeated for a second time by the incumbent Republican Todd Staples of Palestine, who vacates the office in January 2015, following his defeat for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor in the March 4, 2014, primary.
Friedman appeared in the 2004 documentary film Barbecue: A Texas Love Story by Austin-based director Chris Elley. In the film, narrated by Governor Ann Richards, Kinky exclaims that "Jesus loved Barbecue" and analyzes the speech patterns of Texans versus New Yorkers. Raw footage from Friedman's interview appears in the 2005 DVD release of the film. He has appeared in other movies as well including Loose Shoes and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.
Friedman's persona as a politically incorrect raconteur has been likened to that of movie critic and commentator John Irving Bloom, better known in print as Joe Bob Briggs, with whom he appeared in the B movie The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.
Friedman prefers to smoke Montecristo No. 2 Cigars, the same brand once smoked by Fidel Castro. However, he also smokes Bolivars, noting that "Simón Bolívar is the only person in history to be exiled from a country named after him." Friedman now makes eponymous cigars under the name Kinky Friedman Cigars.
Friedman is given brief praise in Joseph Heller's 1976 novel, Good as Gold, in which a governor (meant to satirize Lyndon B. Johnson), tells the main character, Bruce Gold: "Gold, I like you. You remind me a lot of this famous country singer from Texas I'm crazy about, a fellow calls himself Kinky Friedman, the Original Texas Jewboy. Kinky's smarter, but I like you more."
Friedman is friends with Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and he has visited both at the White House. He wrote about his friendships with them in his November 2001 column ("Hail to the Kinkster") for Texas Monthly.
The play Becoming Kinky: The World According to Kinky Friedman, directed by Ted Swindley (Always...Patsy Cline), starring Jesse Dayton, Little Jewford, Alan Lee, and Andross Bautsch, premiered in Houston, Texas on March 28, 2011.
Friedman is responsible for the quote "you've got to find what you love and let it kill you," which is often falsely attributed to the poet and novelist Charles Bukowski.
Friedman hosted the live concert music television show "Texas Roadhouse Live" around 2011, which would air on over-the-air network television late Saturday night (or midnight Sunday morning) in some Texas markets.
On the 2017 album entitled Out of All This Blue, Mike Scott of The Waterboys composed a song called "Kinky's History Lesson" where the singer attempts to correct Friedman on a number of false statements he has allegedly made.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Richard Samet \"Kinky\" Friedman (born October 31, 1944) is an American singer, songwriter, novelist, humorist, politician, and former columnist for Texas Monthly who styles himself in the mold of popular American satirists Will Rogers and Mark Twain.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Friedman was one of two independent candidates in the 2006 election for the office of Governor of Texas. Receiving 12.6% of the vote, Friedman placed fourth in the six-person race.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Richard Samet Friedman was born in Chicago on October 31, 1944 to Jewish parents, Dr. S. Thomas Friedman and his wife Minnie (Samet) Friedman. Both of his parents were the children of Russian Jewish immigrants. When Friedman was young, his family moved to a ranch in Kerrville, Texas in the Texas Hill Country and opened a summer camp called Echo Hill.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Friedman had an early interest in both pop music and chess, and was chosen at age seven as one of 50 local players to challenge U.S. grandmaster Samuel Reshevsky to simultaneous games in Houston. Reshevsky won all 50 games, but Friedman was, by far, the youngest competitor.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Friedman graduated from Austin High School in Austin, Texas, in 1962. He went on and earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Texas at Austin in 1966, majoring in Psychology. He took part in the Plan II Honors program and was a member of the Tau Delta Phi fraternity. During his first year, Chinga Chavin gave Friedman the nickname \"Kinky\" because of his curly hair.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Friedman served two years in the United States Peace Corps, teaching in Borneo, Indonesia with John Gross. During his service in the Peace Corps, he met future road manager Dylan Ferrero, with whom he still works. Friedman lives at Echo Hill Ranch, his family's summer camp near Kerrville, Texas. He founded Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch, also located near Kerrville, whose mission is to care for stray, abused and aging animals; more than 1,000 dogs have been saved from animal euthanasia.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Friedman formed his first band, King Arthur & the Carrots, while a student at the University of Texas at Austin. The band, which poked fun at surf music, recorded only one single in 1966 (\"Schwinn 24/Beach Party Boo Boo\").",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "By 1973, Friedman had formed his second band, Kinky Friedman and The Texas Jewboys, which many took to be a play on the name of the famous band Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. In keeping with the band's satirical nature, each member had a comical name: in addition to Kinky there were Little Jewford, Big Nig, Panama Red, Wichita Culpepper, Sky Cap Adams, Rainbow Colours, and Snakebite Jacobs. More conventionally named roadie Jack Slaughter and road manager Dylan Ferrero rounded out the crew and provided most of the driving of the \"tour bus\", a Cadillac with 10-year-old expired license plates and a propensity to break down (but, according to Friedman, her talent lay in her ability to stop on a dime and pick up the change).",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Friedman's father objected to the name of the band, calling it a \"negative, hostile, peculiar thing\", which gave Kinky even more reason to choose the name.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Arriving on the wave of country rock following on from Gram Parsons, The Band, and Eagles, Friedman originally found cult fame as a country and western singer. His break came in 1973 thanks to Commander Cody of Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, who contacted Vanguard Music on his behalf. Friedman released Kinky Friedman in 1974 for ABC Records, then toured with Bob Dylan in 1975–1976. His repertoire mixed social commentary (\"We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to You\") and maudlin ballads (\"Western Union Wire\") with raucous humor (such as \"Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns into Bed\"). His \"Ride 'Em Jewboy\" was an extended tribute to the victims of the Holocaust.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "One of his most famous songs is \"They Ain't Makin' Jews Like Jesus Anymore,\" a song in which Kinky verbally and physically beats up a drunken white racist who berates blacks, Jews, Italians, Greeks, and Sigma Nus in a bar, with lyrics such as,",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Oh, they ain't makin' Jews like Jesus anymore, They ain't makin' carpenters that know what nails are for",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Other Friedman tunes include \"The Ballad of Charles Whitman,\" in which Friedman lampooned Charles Whitman's sniper attack from the University of Texas at Austin's Main Building tower on August 1, 1966. He also covered Chinga Chavin's \"Asshole from El Paso\", a parody of Merle Haggard's \"Okie from Muskogee\".",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "One of Friedman's most infamous concerts was a 1973 performance in Buffalo, New York; upon performing \"Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns into Bed\" (a song that lampoons feminism), a group of what Friedman described as \"cranked-up lesbians\" entered into a fight with the band and forced the concert to end early while Friedman and the band were escorted off stage. The National Organization for Women awarded Friedman the \"Male Chauvinist Pig Award\" later that year, an award Friedman took with pride. Friedman would not return to Buffalo until 2012. Another was at The Boarding House in early-March 1975 when an offended Buffy Sainte-Marie rushed on stage and snatched the war bonnet that Friedman was wearing while he and his band were performing \"Miss Nickelodeon,\" a composition that spoofs the indigenous peoples of the Americas.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Friedman and his band taped an Austin City Limits show on November 11, 1975, which was never aired. According to the show's executive producer, Terry Lickona, this is the first and only time in the show's long history that an episode went unaired. Lickona told the Austin Chronicle \"I've seen it many times – it's a very popular party tape among friends. I think it was a great show, and it might be as offensive today as it was back then.\"",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In early 1976, he joined Bob Dylan on the second leg of the Rolling Thunder Revue tour.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Friedman was the musical guest on the Season 2 fifth episode of Saturday Night Live which aired on October 23, 1976. He performed his own composition \"Dear Abbie\".",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Although hard to verify, given the number of Jewish-origin entertainers in country/hillbilly-tour circles (e.g. Gilbert Maxwell \"Broncho Billy\" Anderson), Friedman claims to have been the first full-blooded Jew to take the stage at the Grand Ole Opry.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In February 2007, Sustain Records released a compilation of the songs of Kinky Friedman sung by other artists called Why the Hell Not ... The compilation includes contributions by Dwight Yoakam, Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett, and Kelly Willis.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "On July 20, 2007, Friedman hosted the Concert to Save Town Lake to honor the memory of Lady Bird Johnson and her efforts to protect and preserve the shores of Town Lake in Austin, Texas.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "On April 27, 2011, Friedman launched his Springtime for Kinky Tour (cf. \"Springtime for Hitler\") in Kansas City, Missouri, at Knuckleheads Saloon; it included dates in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kentucky before heading towards the East Coast. This was followed by a tour of Australia with Van Dyke Parks.",
"title": "Music career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "After his music career stalled in the 1980s, Friedman shifted his creative focus to writing detective novels. His books have similarities to his song lyrics, featuring a fictionalized version of himself solving crimes in New York City and dispensing jokes, wisdom, recipes, charm and Jameson's whiskey in equal measure. They are written in a straightforward style which owes a debt to Raymond Chandler. The Kinky character views himself as a latter-day Sherlock Holmes and he is aided in his investigations by his close friend Larry Sloman aka Ratso who assumes the role of Dr. Watson.",
"title": "Writing career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "To date, he has written two novels that do not star the Kinky Friedman character: Kill Two Birds and Get Stoned and The Christmas Pig.",
"title": "Writing career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Friedman also wrote a regular column for the magazine Texas Monthly from April 2001 to March 2005 which was suspended during his run for governor of Texas. In 2008, Texas Monthly brought his column back on a bimonthly basis.",
"title": "Writing career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Two books have been published collecting some of these nonfiction writings, as well as previously unpublished ones: 'Scuse Me While I Whip This Out and Texas Hold'em. He has also published a travelog (The Great Psychedelic Armadillo Picnic) and an etiquette guide.",
"title": "Writing career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Friedman's early books have been republished by Friedman's own Vandam Press as ebooks. During March and April 2011, Vandam released seven of Friedman's early titles including: Greenwich Killing Time, A Case of Lone Star, Musical Chairs, When The Cat's Away, Frequent Flyer, Roadkill and the rarely seen Curse of the Missing Puppet Head. Elvis Jesus and Coca-Cola, God Bless John Wayne, Blast From The Past, Armadillos and Old Lace and two nonfiction books, Drinker With A Writing Problem and Heroes of A Texas Childhood were released in 2011. E-book releases are announced on Friedman's Twitter feed and Facebook page, \"TheRealKinkster\".",
"title": "Writing career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Friedman also announced (via Jim Bessman's column at examiner.com) the upcoming release of all Vandam Press titles as unabridged audio books \"read by the author\".",
"title": "Writing career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The recurring character \"Rambam\", a New York private investigator and friend of the Friedman character in the books, is based on the real-life investigator, Steven Rambam, who acts as a technical advisor for the real Friedman. Old Peace Corps friend and long time road manager Dylan Ferrero is also a recurring character in Kinky's mystery novels; his character is known for only speaking in rock and roll quotes, a trait taken from real life.",
"title": "Writing career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In 1986, Friedman ran for Justice of the Peace in Kerrville, Texas, as a Republican but lost the election.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In 2004, Friedman began an ostensibly serious, though colorful, campaign to become the Governor of Texas in 2006. One of his stated goals is the \"dewussification\" of Texas. Among his campaign slogans were \"How Hard Could It Be?\", \"Why The Hell Not?\", \"My Governor is a Jewish Cowboy\", and \"He ain't Kinky, he's my Governor\" (cf. \"He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother\").",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Friedman had hoped to follow in the footsteps of other entertainers-turned-governors, including Jimmie Davis, Jesse Ventura, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Ronald Reagan. Jesse Ventura even campaigned with Friedman for his election. When the campaign finance reports came out after the second quarter had ended, Friedman had raised more funds than the Democratic nominee, former Congressman Chris Bell.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "On election day, Friedman was defeated, receiving 12.6% of the votes in the six-candidate matchup.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Friedman released a statement on October 15, 2013, announcing his intent to again run for Texas agriculture commissioner as a Democrat. Friedman previously ran for the post in 2010, losing in the Democratic primary.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Friedman supports the full legalization and cultivation of hemp and marijuana, declaring that the end of the prohibition is a health, education funding, prison reduction, border security, and state's rights issue.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "On education, he supports higher pay for teachers and working to lower Texas's dropout rate. He supports more investment in harnessing Texas's alternative fuel resources such as wind and biodiesel. Friedman is opposed to the Trans-Texas Corridor since it relies on toll road construction.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "On capital punishment, he previously summed up his position, \"I am not anti-death penalty, but I'm damn sure anti-the-wrong-guy-getting-executed.\" More recently, he has clarified his position: \"The system is not perfect. Until it's perfect, let's do away with the death penalty.\"",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "On illegal immigration, Friedman wants to increase the number of Texas National Guard troops on the border (from the current 1,500 to 10,000), impose $25,000 and $50,000 fines on companies that hire illegal immigrants, and require foreign nationals seeking employment to purchase a foreign taxpayer ID card once they have passed a criminal background check. \"Texas can no longer wait for our federal government to solve our illegal immigration problem,\" Friedman said. \"These are steps that Texas can immediately take to help stem the tide of illegal immigrants penetrating our border.\" Had he been elected, he had promised to meet regularly with Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico and Governor Janet Napolitano of Arizona to develop a coordinated border state plan to supplement federal efforts to curb illegal immigration. Previously, Kinky put forth the \"Five Mexican Generals\" Plan, to pay Mexican officials to halt immigration on their side of the border. Although he originally stated \"When I talk about the five Mexican generals, people think I'm joking but I'm dead serious\", Friedman later told the Dallas Morning News that the plan, never meant to be carried out, was a joke with an element of seriousness.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "According to his official website, Friedman's answer to the question \"How does Kinky feel about abortion?\" is \"Kinky believes in a woman's right to choose.\" In person, he hedges his bets, saying \"I'm not pro-life, and I'm not pro-choice. I'm pro-football.\" On social issues, he has supported gay marriage, answering an Associated Press reporter's question on the subject on February 3, 2005, by saying, \"I support gay marriage. I believe they have a right to be as miserable as the rest of us.\" (Friedman himself has never been married.)",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "According to Cigar Aficionado magazine, Friedman plans to roll back \"any and all smoking bans\" if elected. One of his favorite quotes comes from Mark Twain: \"If smoking is not allowed in heaven, I shall not go.\" Friedman supports the decriminalization of marijuana, though he doesn't advocate making its sale legal. \"I'm not talking about like Amsterdam,\" he noted, \"We've got to clear some of the room out of the prisons so we can put the bad guys in there, like the pedophiles and the politicians.\"",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "On August 9, 2007, the Austin American-Statesman reported that Friedman was considering another run for governor of Texas in 2010. \"I'm open to running\", Friedman said, adding that he wouldn't make a final decision until after the 2008 elections. On February 10, 2009, Friedman confirmed to the Associated Press that he was still interested in running.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In an August 23, 2007 interview with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and a February 10, 2009 interview with the Associated Press, Friedman stated that if he did run in 2010, he would run as a Democrat, citing that \"God probably couldn't have won as an Independent\" and that he was a Democrat all his life.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "On April 14, 2009, Friedman announced in an email to supporters that he intended to make a second gubernatorial run, this time as a Democrat. Friedman then announced on December 14, 2009, that he was leaving the gubernatorial race and would instead seek the party nomination in March 2010 for Texas Agriculture Commissioner. He lost the nomination to rancher Hank Gilbert in the primary held on March 2, 2010. Gilbert was in turn defeated for a second time by the incumbent Republican Todd Staples of Palestine, who vacates the office in January 2015, following his defeat for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor in the March 4, 2014, primary.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Friedman appeared in the 2004 documentary film Barbecue: A Texas Love Story by Austin-based director Chris Elley. In the film, narrated by Governor Ann Richards, Kinky exclaims that \"Jesus loved Barbecue\" and analyzes the speech patterns of Texans versus New Yorkers. Raw footage from Friedman's interview appears in the 2005 DVD release of the film. He has appeared in other movies as well including Loose Shoes and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.",
"title": "Other work and references in popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Friedman's persona as a politically incorrect raconteur has been likened to that of movie critic and commentator John Irving Bloom, better known in print as Joe Bob Briggs, with whom he appeared in the B movie The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.",
"title": "Other work and references in popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Friedman prefers to smoke Montecristo No. 2 Cigars, the same brand once smoked by Fidel Castro. However, he also smokes Bolivars, noting that \"Simón Bolívar is the only person in history to be exiled from a country named after him.\" Friedman now makes eponymous cigars under the name Kinky Friedman Cigars.",
"title": "Other work and references in popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Friedman is given brief praise in Joseph Heller's 1976 novel, Good as Gold, in which a governor (meant to satirize Lyndon B. Johnson), tells the main character, Bruce Gold: \"Gold, I like you. You remind me a lot of this famous country singer from Texas I'm crazy about, a fellow calls himself Kinky Friedman, the Original Texas Jewboy. Kinky's smarter, but I like you more.\"",
"title": "Other work and references in popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Friedman is friends with Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and he has visited both at the White House. He wrote about his friendships with them in his November 2001 column (\"Hail to the Kinkster\") for Texas Monthly.",
"title": "Other work and references in popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The play Becoming Kinky: The World According to Kinky Friedman, directed by Ted Swindley (Always...Patsy Cline), starring Jesse Dayton, Little Jewford, Alan Lee, and Andross Bautsch, premiered in Houston, Texas on March 28, 2011.",
"title": "Other work and references in popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Friedman is responsible for the quote \"you've got to find what you love and let it kill you,\" which is often falsely attributed to the poet and novelist Charles Bukowski.",
"title": "Other work and references in popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Friedman hosted the live concert music television show \"Texas Roadhouse Live\" around 2011, which would air on over-the-air network television late Saturday night (or midnight Sunday morning) in some Texas markets.",
"title": "Other work and references in popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "On the 2017 album entitled Out of All This Blue, Mike Scott of The Waterboys composed a song called \"Kinky's History Lesson\" where the singer attempts to correct Friedman on a number of false statements he has allegedly made.",
"title": "Other work and references in popular culture"
}
] |
Richard Samet "Kinky" Friedman is an American singer, songwriter, novelist, humorist, politician, and former columnist for Texas Monthly who styles himself in the mold of popular American satirists Will Rogers and Mark Twain. Friedman was one of two independent candidates in the 2006 election for the office of Governor of Texas. Receiving 12.6% of the vote, Friedman placed fourth in the six-person race.
|
2001-07-07T12:59:19Z
|
2023-12-21T18:04:05Z
|
[
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Cite magazine",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Cbignore",
"Template:Infobox officeholder",
"Template:See also",
"Template:When",
"Template:Col-begin",
"Template:Wikiquote",
"Template:Official website",
"Template:Use mdy dates",
"Template:BLP sources",
"Template:Primary source inline",
"Template:Col-end",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Dead link",
"Template:Portal",
"Template:Commons category",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:AllMusic",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Col-2",
"Template:ISBN",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite news"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinky_Friedman
|
16,736 |
Kurt Gödel
|
Kurt Friedrich Gödel (/ˈɡɜːrdəl/ GUR-dəl, German: [kʊʁt ˈɡøːdl̩] ; April 28, 1906 – January 14, 1978) was a logician, mathematician, and philosopher. Considered along with Aristotle and Gottlob Frege to be one of the most significant logicians in history, Gödel had an immense effect upon scientific and philosophical thinking in the 20th century, a time when others such as Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead, and David Hilbert were using logic and set theory to investigate the foundations of mathematics, building on earlier work by the likes of Richard Dedekind, Georg Cantor and Gottlob Frege.
Gödel's discoveries in the foundations of mathematics led to the proof of his completeness theorem in 1929 as part of his dissertation to earn a doctorate at the University of Vienna, and the publication of Gödel's incompleteness theorems two years later, in 1931. The first incompleteness theorem states that for any ω-consistent recursive axiomatic system powerful enough to describe the arithmetic of the natural numbers (for example, Peano arithmetic), there are true propositions about the natural numbers that can be neither proved nor disproved from the axioms. To prove this, Gödel developed a technique now known as Gödel numbering, which codes formal expressions as natural numbers. The second incompleteness theorem, which follows from the first, states that the system cannot prove its own consistency.
Gödel also showed that neither the axiom of choice nor the continuum hypothesis can be disproved from the accepted Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, assuming that its axioms are consistent. The former result opened the door for mathematicians to assume the axiom of choice in their proofs. He also made important contributions to proof theory by clarifying the connections between classical logic, intuitionistic logic, and modal logic.
Gödel was born April 28, 1906, in Brünn, Austria-Hungary (now Brno, Czech Republic), into the German-speaking family of Rudolf Gödel (1874–1929), the managing director and part owner of a major textile firm, and Marianne Gödel (née Handschuh, 1879–1966). At the time of his birth the city had a German-speaking majority which included his parents. His father was Catholic and his mother was Protestant and the children were raised as Protestants. The ancestors of Kurt Gödel were often active in Brünn's cultural life. For example, his grandfather Joseph Gödel was a famous singer in his time and for some years a member of the Brünner Männergesangverein (Men's Choral Union of Brünn).
Gödel automatically became a citizen of Czechoslovakia at age 12 when the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed following its defeat in the First World War. According to his classmate Klepetař, like many residents of the predominantly German Sudetenländer, "Gödel considered himself always Austrian and an exile in Czechoslovakia". In February 1929, he was granted release from his Czechoslovakian citizenship and then, in April, granted Austrian citizenship. When Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Gödel automatically became a German citizen at age 32. In 1948, after World War II, at the age of 42, he became an American citizen.
In his family, the young Gödel was nicknamed Herr Warum ("Mr. Why") because of his insatiable curiosity. According to his brother Rudolf, at the age of six or seven, Kurt suffered from rheumatic fever; he completely recovered, but for the rest of his life he remained convinced that his heart had suffered permanent damage. Beginning at age four, Gödel suffered from "frequent episodes of poor health", which would continue for his entire life.
Gödel attended the Evangelische Volksschule, a Lutheran school in Brünn from 1912 to 1916, and was enrolled in the Deutsches Staats-Realgymnasium from 1916 to 1924, excelling with honors in all his subjects, particularly in mathematics, languages and religion. Although Gödel had first excelled in languages, he later became more interested in history and mathematics. His interest in mathematics increased when in 1920 his older brother Rudolf (born 1902) left for Vienna, where he attended medical school at the University of Vienna. During his teens, Gödel studied Gabelsberger shorthand, Goethe's Theory of Colours and criticisms of Isaac Newton, and the writings of Immanuel Kant.
At the age of 18, Gödel joined his brother at the University of Vienna. By that time, he had already mastered university-level mathematics. Although initially intending to study theoretical physics, he also attended courses on mathematics and philosophy. During this time, he adopted ideas of mathematical realism. He read Kant's Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft, and participated in the Vienna Circle with Moritz Schlick, Hans Hahn, and Rudolf Carnap. Gödel then studied number theory, but when he took part in a seminar run by Moritz Schlick which studied Bertrand Russell's book Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, he became interested in mathematical logic. According to Gödel, mathematical logic was "a science prior to all others, which contains the ideas and principles underlying all sciences."
Attending a lecture by David Hilbert in Bologna on completeness and consistency in mathematical systems may have set Gödel's life course. In 1928, Hilbert and Wilhelm Ackermann published Grundzüge der theoretischen Logik (Principles of Mathematical Logic), an introduction to first-order logic in which the problem of completeness was posed: "Are the axioms of a formal system sufficient to derive every statement that is true in all models of the system?"
This problem became the topic that Gödel chose for his doctoral work. In 1929, at the age of 23, he completed his doctoral dissertation under Hans Hahn's supervision. In it, he established his eponymous completeness theorem regarding the first-order predicate calculus. He was awarded his doctorate in 1930, and his thesis (accompanied by some additional work) was published by the Vienna Academy of Science.
Kurt Gödel's achievement in modern logic is singular and monumental—indeed it is more than a monument, it is a landmark which will remain visible far in space and time. ... The subject of logic has certainly completely changed its nature and possibilities with Gödel's achievement.
In 1930 Gödel attended the Second Conference on the Epistemology of the Exact Sciences, held in Königsberg, 5–7 September. Here he delivered his incompleteness theorems.
Gödel published his incompleteness theorems in Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme (called in English "On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems"). In that article, he proved for any computable axiomatic system that is powerful enough to describe the arithmetic of the natural numbers (e.g., the Peano axioms or Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory with the axiom of choice), that:
These theorems ended a half-century of attempts, beginning with the work of Gottlob Frege and culminating in Principia Mathematica and Hilbert's Program, to find a non-relatively consistent axiomatization sufficient for number theory (that was to serve as the foundation for other fields of mathematics).
In hindsight, the basic idea at the heart of the incompleteness theorem is rather simple. Gödel essentially constructed a formula that claims that it is unprovable in a given formal system. If it were provable, it would be false. Thus there will always be at least one true but unprovable statement. That is, for any computably enumerable set of axioms for arithmetic (that is, a set that can in principle be printed out by an idealized computer with unlimited resources), there is a formula that is true of arithmetic, but which is not provable in that system. To make this precise, however, Gödel needed to produce a method to encode (as natural numbers) statements, proofs, and the concept of provability; he did this using a process known as Gödel numbering.
In his two-page paper Zum intuitionistischen Aussagenkalkül (1932) Gödel refuted the finite-valuedness of intuitionistic logic. In the proof, he implicitly used what has later become known as Gödel–Dummett intermediate logic (or Gödel fuzzy logic).
Gödel earned his habilitation at Vienna in 1932, and in 1933 he became a Privatdozent (unpaid lecturer) there. In 1933 Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, and over the following years the Nazis rose in influence in Austria, and among Vienna's mathematicians. In June 1936, Moritz Schlick, whose seminar had aroused Gödel's interest in logic, was assassinated by one of his former students, Johann Nelböck. This triggered "a severe nervous crisis" in Gödel. He developed paranoid symptoms, including a fear of being poisoned, and spent several months in a sanitarium for nervous diseases.
In 1933, Gödel first traveled to the U.S., where he met Albert Einstein, who became a good friend. He delivered an address to the annual meeting of the American Mathematical Society. During this year, Gödel also developed the ideas of computability and recursive functions to the point where he was able to present a lecture on general recursive functions and the concept of truth. This work was developed in number theory, using Gödel numbering.
In 1934, Gödel gave a series of lectures at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey, titled On undecidable propositions of formal mathematical systems. Stephen Kleene, who had just completed his PhD at Princeton, took notes of these lectures that have been subsequently published.
Gödel visited the IAS again in the autumn of 1935. The travelling and the hard work had exhausted him and the next year he took a break to recover from a depressive episode. He returned to teaching in 1937. During this time, he worked on the proof of consistency of the axiom of choice and of the continuum hypothesis; he went on to show that these hypotheses cannot be disproved from the common system of axioms of set theory.
He married Adele Nimbursky [es ; ast] (née Porkert, 1899–1981), whom he had known for over 10 years, on September 20, 1938. Gödel's parents had opposed their relationship because she was a divorced dancer, six years older than he was.
Subsequently, he left for another visit to the United States, spending the autumn of 1938 at the IAS and publishing Consistency of the axiom of choice and of the generalized continuum-hypothesis with the axioms of set theory, a classic of modern mathematics. In that work he introduced the constructible universe, a model of set theory in which the only sets that exist are those that can be constructed from simpler sets. Gödel showed that both the axiom of choice (AC) and the generalized continuum hypothesis (GCH) are true in the constructible universe, and therefore must be consistent with the Zermelo–Fraenkel axioms for set theory (ZF). This result has had considerable consequences for working mathematicians, as it means they can assume the axiom of choice when proving the Hahn–Banach theorem. Paul Cohen later constructed a model of ZF in which AC and GCH are false; together these proofs mean that AC and GCH are independent of the ZF axioms for set theory.
Gödel spent the spring of 1939 at the University of Notre Dame.
After the Anschluss on 12 March 1938, Austria had become a part of Nazi Germany. Germany abolished the title Privatdozent, so Gödel had to apply for a different position under the new order. His former association with Jewish members of the Vienna Circle, especially with Hahn, weighed against him. The University of Vienna turned his application down.
His predicament intensified when the German army found him fit for conscription. World War II started in September 1939. Before the year was up, Gödel and his wife left Vienna for Princeton. To avoid the difficulty of an Atlantic crossing, the Gödels took the Trans-Siberian Railway to the Pacific, sailed from Japan to San Francisco (which they reached on March 4, 1940), then crossed the US by train to Princeton. There Gödel accepted a position at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), which he had previously visited during 1933–34.
Albert Einstein was also living at Princeton during this time. Gödel and Einstein developed a strong friendship, and were known to take long walks together to and from the Institute for Advanced Study. The nature of their conversations was a mystery to the other Institute members. Economist Oskar Morgenstern recounts that toward the end of his life Einstein confided that his "own work no longer meant much, that he came to the Institute merely ... to have the privilege of walking home with Gödel".
Gödel and his wife, Adele, spent the summer of 1942 in Blue Hill, Maine, at the Blue Hill Inn at the top of the bay. Gödel was not merely vacationing but had a very productive summer of work. Using Heft 15 [volume 15] of Gödel's still-unpublished Arbeitshefte [working notebooks], John W. Dawson Jr. conjectures that Gödel discovered a proof for the independence of the axiom of choice from finite type theory, a weakened form of set theory, while in Blue Hill in 1942. Gödel's close friend Hao Wang supports this conjecture, noting that Gödel's Blue Hill notebooks contain his most extensive treatment of the problem.
On December 5, 1947, Einstein and Morgenstern accompanied Gödel to his U.S. citizenship exam, where they acted as witnesses. Gödel had confided in them that he had discovered an inconsistency in the U.S. Constitution that could allow the U.S. to become a dictatorship; this has since been dubbed Gödel's Loophole. Einstein and Morgenstern were concerned that their friend's unpredictable behavior might jeopardize his application. The judge turned out to be Phillip Forman, who knew Einstein and had administered the oath at Einstein's own citizenship hearing. Everything went smoothly until Forman happened to ask Gödel if he thought a dictatorship like the Nazi regime could happen in the U.S. Gödel then started to explain his discovery to Forman. Forman understood what was going on, cut Gödel off, and moved the hearing on to other questions and a routine conclusion.
Gödel became a permanent member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in 1946. Around this time he stopped publishing, though he continued to work. He became a full professor at the Institute in 1953 and an emeritus professor in 1976.
During his time at the institute, Gödel's interests turned to philosophy and physics. In 1949, he demonstrated the existence of solutions involving closed timelike curves, to Einstein's field equations in general relativity. He is said to have given this elaboration to Einstein as a present for his 70th birthday. His "rotating universes" would allow time travel to the past and caused Einstein to have doubts about his own theory. His solutions are known as the Gödel metric (an exact solution of the Einstein field equation).
He studied and admired the works of Gottfried Leibniz, but came to believe that a hostile conspiracy had caused some of Leibniz's works to be suppressed. To a lesser extent he studied Immanuel Kant and Edmund Husserl. In the early 1970s, Gödel circulated among his friends an elaboration of Leibniz's version of Anselm of Canterbury's ontological proof of God's existence. This is now known as Gödel's ontological proof.
Gödel was awarded (with Julian Schwinger) the first Albert Einstein Award in 1951, and was also awarded the National Medal of Science, in 1974. Gödel was elected a resident member of the American Philosophical Society in 1961 and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1968. He was a Plenary Speaker of the ICM in 1950 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Later in his life, Gödel suffered periods of mental instability and illness. Following the assassination of his close friend Moritz Schlick, Gödel developed an obsessive fear of being poisoned, and would eat only food prepared by his wife Adele. Adele was hospitalized beginning in late 1977, and in her absence Gödel refused to eat; he weighed 29 kilograms (65 lb) when he died of "malnutrition and inanition caused by personality disturbance" in Princeton Hospital on January 14, 1978. He was buried in Princeton Cemetery. Adele died in 1981.
Gödel believed that God was personal, and called his philosophy "rationalistic, idealistic, optimistic, and theological".
Gödel believed in an afterlife, saying, "Of course this supposes that there are many relationships which today's science and received wisdom haven't any inkling of. But I am convinced of this [the afterlife], independently of any theology." It is "possible today to perceive, by pure reasoning" that it "is entirely consistent with known facts." "If the world is rationally constructed and has meaning, then there must be such a thing [as an afterlife]."
In an unmailed answer to a questionnaire, Gödel described his religion as "baptized Lutheran (but not member of any religious congregation). My belief is theistic, not pantheistic, following Leibniz rather than Spinoza." Of religion(s) in general, he said: "Religions are, for the most part, bad—but religion is not". According to his wife Adele, "Gödel, although he did not go to church, was religious and read the Bible in bed every Sunday morning", while of Islam, he said, "I like Islam: it is a consistent [or consequential] idea of religion and open-minded."
Douglas Hofstadter wrote the 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach to celebrate the work and ideas of Gödel, M. C. Escher and Johann Sebastian Bach. It partly explores the ramifications of the fact that Gödel's incompleteness theorem can be applied to any Turing-complete computational system, which may include the human brain.
The Kurt Gödel Society, founded in 1987, is an international organization for the promotion of research in logic, philosophy, and the history of mathematics. The University of Vienna hosts the Kurt Gödel Research Center for Mathematical Logic. The Association for Symbolic Logic has held an annual Gödel Lecture each year since 1990. Gödel's Philosophical Notebooks Archived May 14, 2019, at the Wayback Machine are edited at the Kurt Gödel Research Centre Archived May 14, 2019, at the Wayback Machine which is situated at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Germany.
Five volumes of Gödel's collected works have been published. The first two include his publications; the third includes unpublished manuscripts from his Nachlass, and the final two include correspondence.
In 2005 John Dawson published a biography of Gödel, Logical Dilemmas: The Life and Work of Kurt Gödel (A. K. Peters, Wellesley, MA, ISBN 1-56881-256-6). Stephen Budiansky's book about Gödel's life, Journey to the Edge of Reason: The Life of Kurt Gödel (W. W. Norton & Company, New York City, NY, ISBN 978-0-393-35820-9), was a New York Times Critics' Top Book of 2021.
Gödel was also one of four mathematicians examined in David Malone's 2008 BBC documentary Dangerous Knowledge.
The Gödel Prize is given annually for an outstanding paper in theoretical computer science.
In the 2023 movie Oppenheimer, Gödel, played by James Urbaniak, briefly appears walking with Einstein in the gardens of Princeton.
In German:
In English:
In English translation:
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Kurt Friedrich Gödel (/ˈɡɜːrdəl/ GUR-dəl, German: [kʊʁt ˈɡøːdl̩] ; April 28, 1906 – January 14, 1978) was a logician, mathematician, and philosopher. Considered along with Aristotle and Gottlob Frege to be one of the most significant logicians in history, Gödel had an immense effect upon scientific and philosophical thinking in the 20th century, a time when others such as Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead, and David Hilbert were using logic and set theory to investigate the foundations of mathematics, building on earlier work by the likes of Richard Dedekind, Georg Cantor and Gottlob Frege.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Gödel's discoveries in the foundations of mathematics led to the proof of his completeness theorem in 1929 as part of his dissertation to earn a doctorate at the University of Vienna, and the publication of Gödel's incompleteness theorems two years later, in 1931. The first incompleteness theorem states that for any ω-consistent recursive axiomatic system powerful enough to describe the arithmetic of the natural numbers (for example, Peano arithmetic), there are true propositions about the natural numbers that can be neither proved nor disproved from the axioms. To prove this, Gödel developed a technique now known as Gödel numbering, which codes formal expressions as natural numbers. The second incompleteness theorem, which follows from the first, states that the system cannot prove its own consistency.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Gödel also showed that neither the axiom of choice nor the continuum hypothesis can be disproved from the accepted Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, assuming that its axioms are consistent. The former result opened the door for mathematicians to assume the axiom of choice in their proofs. He also made important contributions to proof theory by clarifying the connections between classical logic, intuitionistic logic, and modal logic.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Gödel was born April 28, 1906, in Brünn, Austria-Hungary (now Brno, Czech Republic), into the German-speaking family of Rudolf Gödel (1874–1929), the managing director and part owner of a major textile firm, and Marianne Gödel (née Handschuh, 1879–1966). At the time of his birth the city had a German-speaking majority which included his parents. His father was Catholic and his mother was Protestant and the children were raised as Protestants. The ancestors of Kurt Gödel were often active in Brünn's cultural life. For example, his grandfather Joseph Gödel was a famous singer in his time and for some years a member of the Brünner Männergesangverein (Men's Choral Union of Brünn).",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Gödel automatically became a citizen of Czechoslovakia at age 12 when the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed following its defeat in the First World War. According to his classmate Klepetař, like many residents of the predominantly German Sudetenländer, \"Gödel considered himself always Austrian and an exile in Czechoslovakia\". In February 1929, he was granted release from his Czechoslovakian citizenship and then, in April, granted Austrian citizenship. When Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Gödel automatically became a German citizen at age 32. In 1948, after World War II, at the age of 42, he became an American citizen.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In his family, the young Gödel was nicknamed Herr Warum (\"Mr. Why\") because of his insatiable curiosity. According to his brother Rudolf, at the age of six or seven, Kurt suffered from rheumatic fever; he completely recovered, but for the rest of his life he remained convinced that his heart had suffered permanent damage. Beginning at age four, Gödel suffered from \"frequent episodes of poor health\", which would continue for his entire life.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Gödel attended the Evangelische Volksschule, a Lutheran school in Brünn from 1912 to 1916, and was enrolled in the Deutsches Staats-Realgymnasium from 1916 to 1924, excelling with honors in all his subjects, particularly in mathematics, languages and religion. Although Gödel had first excelled in languages, he later became more interested in history and mathematics. His interest in mathematics increased when in 1920 his older brother Rudolf (born 1902) left for Vienna, where he attended medical school at the University of Vienna. During his teens, Gödel studied Gabelsberger shorthand, Goethe's Theory of Colours and criticisms of Isaac Newton, and the writings of Immanuel Kant.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "At the age of 18, Gödel joined his brother at the University of Vienna. By that time, he had already mastered university-level mathematics. Although initially intending to study theoretical physics, he also attended courses on mathematics and philosophy. During this time, he adopted ideas of mathematical realism. He read Kant's Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft, and participated in the Vienna Circle with Moritz Schlick, Hans Hahn, and Rudolf Carnap. Gödel then studied number theory, but when he took part in a seminar run by Moritz Schlick which studied Bertrand Russell's book Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, he became interested in mathematical logic. According to Gödel, mathematical logic was \"a science prior to all others, which contains the ideas and principles underlying all sciences.\"",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Attending a lecture by David Hilbert in Bologna on completeness and consistency in mathematical systems may have set Gödel's life course. In 1928, Hilbert and Wilhelm Ackermann published Grundzüge der theoretischen Logik (Principles of Mathematical Logic), an introduction to first-order logic in which the problem of completeness was posed: \"Are the axioms of a formal system sufficient to derive every statement that is true in all models of the system?\"",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "This problem became the topic that Gödel chose for his doctoral work. In 1929, at the age of 23, he completed his doctoral dissertation under Hans Hahn's supervision. In it, he established his eponymous completeness theorem regarding the first-order predicate calculus. He was awarded his doctorate in 1930, and his thesis (accompanied by some additional work) was published by the Vienna Academy of Science.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Kurt Gödel's achievement in modern logic is singular and monumental—indeed it is more than a monument, it is a landmark which will remain visible far in space and time. ... The subject of logic has certainly completely changed its nature and possibilities with Gödel's achievement.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In 1930 Gödel attended the Second Conference on the Epistemology of the Exact Sciences, held in Königsberg, 5–7 September. Here he delivered his incompleteness theorems.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Gödel published his incompleteness theorems in Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme (called in English \"On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems\"). In that article, he proved for any computable axiomatic system that is powerful enough to describe the arithmetic of the natural numbers (e.g., the Peano axioms or Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory with the axiom of choice), that:",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "These theorems ended a half-century of attempts, beginning with the work of Gottlob Frege and culminating in Principia Mathematica and Hilbert's Program, to find a non-relatively consistent axiomatization sufficient for number theory (that was to serve as the foundation for other fields of mathematics).",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In hindsight, the basic idea at the heart of the incompleteness theorem is rather simple. Gödel essentially constructed a formula that claims that it is unprovable in a given formal system. If it were provable, it would be false. Thus there will always be at least one true but unprovable statement. That is, for any computably enumerable set of axioms for arithmetic (that is, a set that can in principle be printed out by an idealized computer with unlimited resources), there is a formula that is true of arithmetic, but which is not provable in that system. To make this precise, however, Gödel needed to produce a method to encode (as natural numbers) statements, proofs, and the concept of provability; he did this using a process known as Gödel numbering.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In his two-page paper Zum intuitionistischen Aussagenkalkül (1932) Gödel refuted the finite-valuedness of intuitionistic logic. In the proof, he implicitly used what has later become known as Gödel–Dummett intermediate logic (or Gödel fuzzy logic).",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Gödel earned his habilitation at Vienna in 1932, and in 1933 he became a Privatdozent (unpaid lecturer) there. In 1933 Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, and over the following years the Nazis rose in influence in Austria, and among Vienna's mathematicians. In June 1936, Moritz Schlick, whose seminar had aroused Gödel's interest in logic, was assassinated by one of his former students, Johann Nelböck. This triggered \"a severe nervous crisis\" in Gödel. He developed paranoid symptoms, including a fear of being poisoned, and spent several months in a sanitarium for nervous diseases.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In 1933, Gödel first traveled to the U.S., where he met Albert Einstein, who became a good friend. He delivered an address to the annual meeting of the American Mathematical Society. During this year, Gödel also developed the ideas of computability and recursive functions to the point where he was able to present a lecture on general recursive functions and the concept of truth. This work was developed in number theory, using Gödel numbering.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In 1934, Gödel gave a series of lectures at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey, titled On undecidable propositions of formal mathematical systems. Stephen Kleene, who had just completed his PhD at Princeton, took notes of these lectures that have been subsequently published.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Gödel visited the IAS again in the autumn of 1935. The travelling and the hard work had exhausted him and the next year he took a break to recover from a depressive episode. He returned to teaching in 1937. During this time, he worked on the proof of consistency of the axiom of choice and of the continuum hypothesis; he went on to show that these hypotheses cannot be disproved from the common system of axioms of set theory.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "He married Adele Nimbursky [es ; ast] (née Porkert, 1899–1981), whom he had known for over 10 years, on September 20, 1938. Gödel's parents had opposed their relationship because she was a divorced dancer, six years older than he was.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Subsequently, he left for another visit to the United States, spending the autumn of 1938 at the IAS and publishing Consistency of the axiom of choice and of the generalized continuum-hypothesis with the axioms of set theory, a classic of modern mathematics. In that work he introduced the constructible universe, a model of set theory in which the only sets that exist are those that can be constructed from simpler sets. Gödel showed that both the axiom of choice (AC) and the generalized continuum hypothesis (GCH) are true in the constructible universe, and therefore must be consistent with the Zermelo–Fraenkel axioms for set theory (ZF). This result has had considerable consequences for working mathematicians, as it means they can assume the axiom of choice when proving the Hahn–Banach theorem. Paul Cohen later constructed a model of ZF in which AC and GCH are false; together these proofs mean that AC and GCH are independent of the ZF axioms for set theory.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Gödel spent the spring of 1939 at the University of Notre Dame.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "After the Anschluss on 12 March 1938, Austria had become a part of Nazi Germany. Germany abolished the title Privatdozent, so Gödel had to apply for a different position under the new order. His former association with Jewish members of the Vienna Circle, especially with Hahn, weighed against him. The University of Vienna turned his application down.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "His predicament intensified when the German army found him fit for conscription. World War II started in September 1939. Before the year was up, Gödel and his wife left Vienna for Princeton. To avoid the difficulty of an Atlantic crossing, the Gödels took the Trans-Siberian Railway to the Pacific, sailed from Japan to San Francisco (which they reached on March 4, 1940), then crossed the US by train to Princeton. There Gödel accepted a position at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), which he had previously visited during 1933–34.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Albert Einstein was also living at Princeton during this time. Gödel and Einstein developed a strong friendship, and were known to take long walks together to and from the Institute for Advanced Study. The nature of their conversations was a mystery to the other Institute members. Economist Oskar Morgenstern recounts that toward the end of his life Einstein confided that his \"own work no longer meant much, that he came to the Institute merely ... to have the privilege of walking home with Gödel\".",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Gödel and his wife, Adele, spent the summer of 1942 in Blue Hill, Maine, at the Blue Hill Inn at the top of the bay. Gödel was not merely vacationing but had a very productive summer of work. Using Heft 15 [volume 15] of Gödel's still-unpublished Arbeitshefte [working notebooks], John W. Dawson Jr. conjectures that Gödel discovered a proof for the independence of the axiom of choice from finite type theory, a weakened form of set theory, while in Blue Hill in 1942. Gödel's close friend Hao Wang supports this conjecture, noting that Gödel's Blue Hill notebooks contain his most extensive treatment of the problem.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "On December 5, 1947, Einstein and Morgenstern accompanied Gödel to his U.S. citizenship exam, where they acted as witnesses. Gödel had confided in them that he had discovered an inconsistency in the U.S. Constitution that could allow the U.S. to become a dictatorship; this has since been dubbed Gödel's Loophole. Einstein and Morgenstern were concerned that their friend's unpredictable behavior might jeopardize his application. The judge turned out to be Phillip Forman, who knew Einstein and had administered the oath at Einstein's own citizenship hearing. Everything went smoothly until Forman happened to ask Gödel if he thought a dictatorship like the Nazi regime could happen in the U.S. Gödel then started to explain his discovery to Forman. Forman understood what was going on, cut Gödel off, and moved the hearing on to other questions and a routine conclusion.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Gödel became a permanent member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in 1946. Around this time he stopped publishing, though he continued to work. He became a full professor at the Institute in 1953 and an emeritus professor in 1976.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "During his time at the institute, Gödel's interests turned to philosophy and physics. In 1949, he demonstrated the existence of solutions involving closed timelike curves, to Einstein's field equations in general relativity. He is said to have given this elaboration to Einstein as a present for his 70th birthday. His \"rotating universes\" would allow time travel to the past and caused Einstein to have doubts about his own theory. His solutions are known as the Gödel metric (an exact solution of the Einstein field equation).",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "He studied and admired the works of Gottfried Leibniz, but came to believe that a hostile conspiracy had caused some of Leibniz's works to be suppressed. To a lesser extent he studied Immanuel Kant and Edmund Husserl. In the early 1970s, Gödel circulated among his friends an elaboration of Leibniz's version of Anselm of Canterbury's ontological proof of God's existence. This is now known as Gödel's ontological proof.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Gödel was awarded (with Julian Schwinger) the first Albert Einstein Award in 1951, and was also awarded the National Medal of Science, in 1974. Gödel was elected a resident member of the American Philosophical Society in 1961 and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1968. He was a Plenary Speaker of the ICM in 1950 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.",
"title": "Awards and honours"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Later in his life, Gödel suffered periods of mental instability and illness. Following the assassination of his close friend Moritz Schlick, Gödel developed an obsessive fear of being poisoned, and would eat only food prepared by his wife Adele. Adele was hospitalized beginning in late 1977, and in her absence Gödel refused to eat; he weighed 29 kilograms (65 lb) when he died of \"malnutrition and inanition caused by personality disturbance\" in Princeton Hospital on January 14, 1978. He was buried in Princeton Cemetery. Adele died in 1981.",
"title": "Later life and death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Gödel believed that God was personal, and called his philosophy \"rationalistic, idealistic, optimistic, and theological\".",
"title": "Religious views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Gödel believed in an afterlife, saying, \"Of course this supposes that there are many relationships which today's science and received wisdom haven't any inkling of. But I am convinced of this [the afterlife], independently of any theology.\" It is \"possible today to perceive, by pure reasoning\" that it \"is entirely consistent with known facts.\" \"If the world is rationally constructed and has meaning, then there must be such a thing [as an afterlife].\"",
"title": "Religious views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In an unmailed answer to a questionnaire, Gödel described his religion as \"baptized Lutheran (but not member of any religious congregation). My belief is theistic, not pantheistic, following Leibniz rather than Spinoza.\" Of religion(s) in general, he said: \"Religions are, for the most part, bad—but religion is not\". According to his wife Adele, \"Gödel, although he did not go to church, was religious and read the Bible in bed every Sunday morning\", while of Islam, he said, \"I like Islam: it is a consistent [or consequential] idea of religion and open-minded.\"",
"title": "Religious views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Douglas Hofstadter wrote the 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach to celebrate the work and ideas of Gödel, M. C. Escher and Johann Sebastian Bach. It partly explores the ramifications of the fact that Gödel's incompleteness theorem can be applied to any Turing-complete computational system, which may include the human brain.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The Kurt Gödel Society, founded in 1987, is an international organization for the promotion of research in logic, philosophy, and the history of mathematics. The University of Vienna hosts the Kurt Gödel Research Center for Mathematical Logic. The Association for Symbolic Logic has held an annual Gödel Lecture each year since 1990. Gödel's Philosophical Notebooks Archived May 14, 2019, at the Wayback Machine are edited at the Kurt Gödel Research Centre Archived May 14, 2019, at the Wayback Machine which is situated at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Germany.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Five volumes of Gödel's collected works have been published. The first two include his publications; the third includes unpublished manuscripts from his Nachlass, and the final two include correspondence.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "In 2005 John Dawson published a biography of Gödel, Logical Dilemmas: The Life and Work of Kurt Gödel (A. K. Peters, Wellesley, MA, ISBN 1-56881-256-6). Stephen Budiansky's book about Gödel's life, Journey to the Edge of Reason: The Life of Kurt Gödel (W. W. Norton & Company, New York City, NY, ISBN 978-0-393-35820-9), was a New York Times Critics' Top Book of 2021.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Gödel was also one of four mathematicians examined in David Malone's 2008 BBC documentary Dangerous Knowledge.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The Gödel Prize is given annually for an outstanding paper in theoretical computer science.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "In the 2023 movie Oppenheimer, Gödel, played by James Urbaniak, briefly appears walking with Einstein in the gardens of Princeton.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "In German:",
"title": "Bibliography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "In English:",
"title": "Bibliography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In English translation:",
"title": "Bibliography"
}
] |
Kurt Friedrich Gödel was a logician, mathematician, and philosopher. Considered along with Aristotle and Gottlob Frege to be one of the most significant logicians in history, Gödel had an immense effect upon scientific and philosophical thinking in the 20th century, a time when others such as Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead, and David Hilbert were using logic and set theory to investigate the foundations of mathematics, building on earlier work by the likes of Richard Dedekind, Georg Cantor and Gottlob Frege. Gödel's discoveries in the foundations of mathematics led to the proof of his completeness theorem in 1929 as part of his dissertation to earn a doctorate at the University of Vienna, and the publication of Gödel's incompleteness theorems two years later, in 1931. The first incompleteness theorem states that for any ω-consistent recursive axiomatic system powerful enough to describe the arithmetic of the natural numbers, there are true propositions about the natural numbers that can be neither proved nor disproved from the axioms. To prove this, Gödel developed a technique now known as Gödel numbering, which codes formal expressions as natural numbers. The second incompleteness theorem, which follows from the first, states that the system cannot prove its own consistency. Gödel also showed that neither the axiom of choice nor the continuum hypothesis can be disproved from the accepted Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, assuming that its axioms are consistent. The former result opened the door for mathematicians to assume the axiom of choice in their proofs. He also made important contributions to proof theory by clarifying the connections between classical logic, intuitionistic logic, and modal logic.
|
2001-08-03T16:12:36Z
|
2023-12-13T09:15:10Z
|
[
"Template:ISBN",
"Template:Analytic philosophy",
"Template:Set theory",
"Template:Winners of the National Medal of Science",
"Template:IPAc-en",
"Template:Citation needed",
"Template:Wikiquote",
"Template:ScienceWorldBiography",
"Template:Citation",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:IPA-de",
"Template:Lang",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century",
"Template:Respell",
"Template:-\"",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Cite SEP",
"Template:Redirect2",
"Template:Infobox scientist",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Commons category",
"Template:Platonists",
"Template:Sfn",
"Template:Isbn",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Harvnb",
"Template:Use mdy dates",
"Template:Ill",
"Template:Blockquote",
"Template:Convert",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Portal",
"Template:Cite Merriam-Webster"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_G%C3%B6del
|
16,743 |
Karl Marx
|
Karl Marx (German: [maʁks]; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German-born philosopher, economist, political theorist, historian, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His best-known works are the 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto (with Friedrich Engels) and the three-volume Das Kapital (1867–1894); the latter employs his critical approach of historical materialism in an analysis of capitalism and represents his greatest intellectual achievement. Marx's ideas and theories and their subsequent development, collectively known as Marxism, have exerted enormous influence on modern intellectual, economic and political history.
Born in Trier in the Kingdom of Prussia, German Confederation, Marx studied at the universities of Bonn, Berlin, and Jena, and received a doctorate in philosophy from the latter in 1841. A Young Hegelian, he was influenced by the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and both critiqued and developed Hegel's ideas in works such as The German Ideology (written 1846) and the Grundrisse (written 1857–1858). While in Paris in 1844, Marx wrote his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts and met Engels, a lifelong friend and collaborator. After moving to Brussels in 1845, they were active in the Communist League, and in 1848 wrote The Communist Manifesto, which expresses Marx's ideas and lays out a programme for revolution. Marx was expelled from Belgium and Germany, and in 1849 moved to London, where he wrote The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852) and Das Kapital. In 1864, Marx helped found the International Workingmen's Association (First International), in which he sought to fight the influence of anarchists led by Mikhail Bakunin. In his Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875), Marx wrote on revolution, the state and the transition to communism. He died stateless in 1883 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery.
Marx's critiques of history, society and political economy hold that human societies develop through class conflict. In the capitalist mode of production, this manifests itself in the conflict between the ruling classes (known as the bourgeoisie) that control the means of production and the working classes (known as the proletariat) that enable these means by selling their labour power in return for wages. Employing his historical materialist approach, Marx predicted that capitalism produced internal tensions like previous socioeconomic systems and that these tensions would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by a new system known as the socialist mode of production. For Marx, class antagonisms under capitalism—owing in part to its instability and crisis-prone nature—would eventuate the working class's development of class consciousness, leading to their conquest of political power and eventually the establishment of a classless, communist society constituted by a free association of producers. Marx actively pressed for its implementation, arguing that the working class should carry out organised proletarian revolutionary action to topple capitalism and bring about socio-economic emancipation.
Marx has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history, and his work has been both lauded and criticised. Marxism has exerted major influence on socialist thought and political movements, and during the 20th century revolutionary governments identifying as Marxist took power in many countries and established socialist states including the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. A number of theoretical variants such as Leninism, Marxism–Leninism, Trotskyism, and Maoism have been developed. Marx's work in economics has a strong influence on modern heterodox theories of labour and its relation to capital, and he is typically cited as one of the principal architects of modern social science.
Karl Marx was born on 5 May 1818 to Heinrich Marx (1777–1838) and Henriette Pressburg (1788–1863). He was born at Brückengasse 664 in Trier, an ancient city then part of the Kingdom of Prussia's Province of the Lower Rhine. Marx's family was originally non-religious Jewish but had converted formally to Christianity before his birth. His maternal grandfather was a Dutch rabbi, while his paternal line had supplied Trier's rabbis since 1723, a role taken by his grandfather Meier Halevi Marx. His father, as a child known as Herschel, was the first in the line to receive a secular education. He became a lawyer with a comfortably upper middle class income and the family owned a number of Moselle vineyards, in addition to his income as an attorney. Prior to his son's birth and after the abrogation of Jewish emancipation in the Rhineland, Herschel converted from Judaism to join the state Evangelical Church of Prussia, taking on the German forename Heinrich over the Yiddish Herschel.
Largely non-religious, Heinrich was a man of the Enlightenment, interested in the ideas of the philosophers Immanuel Kant and Voltaire. A classical liberal, he took part in agitation for a constitution and reforms in Prussia, which was then an absolute monarchy. In 1815, Heinrich Marx began working as an attorney and in 1819 moved his family to a ten-room property near the Porta Nigra. His wife, Henriette Pressburg, was a Dutch Jew from a prosperous business family that later founded the company Philips Electronics. Her sister Sophie Pressburg (1797–1854) married Lion Philips (1794–1866) and was the grandmother of both Gerard and Anton Philips and great-grandmother to Frits Philips. Lion Philips was a wealthy Dutch tobacco manufacturer and industrialist, upon whom Karl and Jenny Marx would later often come to rely for loans while they were exiled in London.
Little is known of Marx's childhood. The third of nine children, he became the eldest son when his brother Moritz died in 1819. Marx and his surviving siblings, Sophie, Hermann, Henriette, Louise, Emilie, and Caroline, were baptised into the Lutheran Church in August 1824, and their mother in November 1825. Marx was privately educated by his father until 1830 when he entered Trier High School (Gymnasium zu Trier [de]), whose headmaster, Hugo Wyttenbach, was a friend of his father. By employing many liberal humanists as teachers, Wyttenbach incurred the anger of the local conservative government. Subsequently, police raided the school in 1832 and discovered that literature espousing political liberalism was being distributed among the students. Considering the distribution of such material a seditious act, the authorities instituted reforms and replaced several staff during Marx's attendance.
In October 1835 at the age of 16, Marx travelled to the University of Bonn wishing to study philosophy and literature, but his father insisted on law as a more practical field. Due to a condition referred to as a "weak chest", Marx was excused from military duty when he turned 18. While at the University at Bonn, Marx joined the Poets' Club, a group containing political radicals that were monitored by the police. Marx also joined the Trier Tavern Club drinking society (German: Landsmannschaft der Treveraner) where many ideas were discussed and at one point he served as the club's co-president. Additionally, Marx was involved in certain disputes, some of which became serious: in August 1836 he took part in a duel with a member of the university's Borussian Korps. Although his grades in the first term were good, they soon deteriorated, leading his father to force a transfer to the more serious and academic University of Berlin.
Spending summer and autumn 1836 in Trier, Marx became more serious about his studies and his life. He became engaged to Jenny von Westphalen, an educated member of the petty nobility who had known Marx since childhood. As she had broken off her engagement with a young aristocrat to be with Marx, their relationship was socially controversial owing to the differences between their religious and class origins, but Marx befriended her father Ludwig von Westphalen (a liberal aristocrat) and later dedicated his doctoral thesis to him. Seven years after their engagement, on 19 June 1843, they married in a Protestant church in Kreuznach.
In October 1836, Marx arrived in Berlin, matriculating in the university's faculty of law and renting a room in the Mittelstrasse. During the first term, Marx attended lectures of Eduard Gans (who represented the progressive Hegelian standpoint, elaborated on rational development in history by emphasising particularly its libertarian aspects, and the importance of social question) and of Karl von Savigny (who represented the Historical School of Law). Although studying law, he was fascinated by philosophy and looked for a way to combine the two, believing that "without philosophy nothing could be accomplished". Marx became interested in the recently deceased German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, whose ideas were then widely debated among European philosophical circles. During a convalescence in Stralau, he joined the Doctor's Club (Doktorklub), a student group which discussed Hegelian ideas, and through them became involved with a group of radical thinkers known as the Young Hegelians in 1837. They gathered around Ludwig Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer, with Marx developing a particularly close friendship with Adolf Rutenberg. Like Marx, the Young Hegelians were critical of Hegel's metaphysical assumptions but adopted his dialectical method to criticise established society, politics and religion from a left-wing perspective. Marx's father died in May 1838, resulting in a diminished income for the family. Marx had been emotionally close to his father and treasured his memory after his death.
By 1837, Marx was writing both fiction and non-fiction, having completed a short novel, Scorpion and Felix; a drama, Oulanem; as well as a number of love poems dedicated to his wife. None of this early work was published during his lifetime. The love poems were published posthumously in the Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Volume 1. Marx soon abandoned fiction for other pursuits, including the study of both English and Italian, art history and the translation of Latin classics. He began co-operating with Bruno Bauer on editing Hegel's Philosophy of Religion in 1840. Marx was also engaged in writing his doctoral thesis, The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature, which he completed in 1841. It was described as "a daring and original piece of work in which Marx set out to show that theology must yield to the superior wisdom of philosophy". The essay was controversial, particularly among the conservative professors at the University of Berlin. Marx decided instead to submit his thesis to the more liberal University of Jena, whose faculty awarded him his Ph.D. in April 1841. As Marx and Bauer were both atheists, in March 1841 they began plans for a journal entitled Archiv des Atheismus (Atheistic Archives), but it never came to fruition. In July, Marx and Bauer took a trip to Bonn from Berlin. There they scandalised their class by getting drunk, laughing in church and galloping through the streets on donkeys.
Marx was considering an academic career, but this path was barred by the government's growing opposition to classical liberalism and the Young Hegelians. Marx moved to Cologne in 1842, where he became a journalist, writing for the radical newspaper Rheinische Zeitung (Rhineland News), expressing his early views on socialism and his developing interest in economics. Marx criticised right-wing European governments as well as figures in the liberal and socialist movements, whom he thought ineffective or counter-productive. The newspaper attracted the attention of the Prussian government censors, who checked every issue for seditious material before printing, which Marx lamented: "Our newspaper has to be presented to the police to be sniffed at, and if the police nose smells anything un-Christian or un-Prussian, the newspaper is not allowed to appear". After the Rheinische Zeitung published an article strongly criticising the Russian monarchy, Tsar Nicholas I requested it be banned and Prussia's government complied in 1843.
In 1843, Marx became co-editor of a new, radical left-wing Parisian newspaper, the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher (German-French Annals), then being set up by the German activist Arnold Ruge to bring together German and French radicals. Therefore Marx and his wife moved to Paris in October 1843. Initially living with Ruge and his wife communally at 23 Rue Vaneau, they found the living conditions difficult, so moved out following the birth of their daughter Jenny in 1844. Although intended to attract writers from both France and the German states, the Jahrbücher was dominated by the latter and the only non-German writer was the exiled Russian anarchist collectivist Mikhail Bakunin. Marx contributed two essays to the paper, "Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right" and "On the Jewish Question", the latter introducing his belief that the proletariat were a revolutionary force and marking his embrace of communism. Only one issue was published, but it was relatively successful, largely owing to the inclusion of Heinrich Heine's satirical odes on King Ludwig of Bavaria, leading the German states to ban it and seize imported copies (Ruge nevertheless refused to fund the publication of further issues and his friendship with Marx broke down). After the paper's collapse, Marx began writing for the only uncensored German-language radical newspaper left, Vorwärts! (Forward!). Based in Paris, the paper was connected to the League of the Just, a utopian socialist secret society of workers and artisans. Marx attended some of their meetings but did not join. In Vorwärts!, Marx refined his views on socialism based upon Hegelian and Feuerbachian ideas of dialectical materialism, at the same time criticising liberals and other socialists operating in Europe.
On 28 August 1844, Marx met the German socialist Friedrich Engels at the Café de la Régence, beginning a lifelong friendship. Engels showed Marx his recently published The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, convincing Marx that the working class would be the agent and instrument of the final revolution in history. Soon, Marx and Engels were collaborating on a criticism of the philosophical ideas of Marx's former friend, Bruno Bauer. This work was published in 1845 as The Holy Family. Although critical of Bauer, Marx was increasingly influenced by the ideas of the Young Hegelians Max Stirner and Ludwig Feuerbach, but eventually Marx and Engels abandoned Feuerbachian materialism as well.
During the time that he lived at 38 Rue Vaneau in Paris (from October 1843 until January 1845), Marx engaged in an intensive study of political economy (Adam Smith, David Ricardo, James Mill, etc.), the French socialists (especially Claude Henri St. Simon and Charles Fourier) and the history of France. The study of, and critique, of political economy is a project that Marx would pursue for the rest of his life and would result in his major economic work—the three-volume series called Das Kapital. Marxism is based in large part on three influences: Hegel's dialectics, French utopian socialism and British political economy. Together with his earlier study of Hegel's dialectics, the studying that Marx did during this time in Paris meant that all major components of "Marxism" were in place by the autumn of 1844. Marx was constantly being pulled away from his critique of political economy—not only by the usual daily demands of the time, but additionally by editing a radical newspaper and later by organising and directing the efforts of a political party during years of potentially revolutionary popular uprisings of the citizenry. Still, Marx was always drawn back to his studies where he sought "to understand the inner workings of capitalism".
An outline of "Marxism" had definitely formed in the mind of Karl Marx by late 1844. Indeed, many features of the Marxist view of the world had been worked out in great detail, but Marx needed to write down all of the details of his world view to further clarify the new critique of political economy in his own mind. Accordingly, Marx wrote The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. These manuscripts covered numerous topics, detailing Marx's concept of alienated labour. By the spring of 1845, his continued study of political economy, capital and capitalism had led Marx to the belief that the new critique of political economy he was espousing—that of scientific socialism—needed to be built on the base of a thoroughly developed materialistic view of the world.
The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 had been written between April and August 1844, but soon Marx recognised that the Manuscripts had been influenced by some inconsistent ideas of Ludwig Feuerbach. Accordingly, Marx recognised the need to break with Feuerbach's philosophy in favour of historical materialism, thus a year later (in April 1845) after moving from Paris to Brussels, Marx wrote his eleven "Theses on Feuerbach". The "Theses on Feuerbach" are best known for Thesis 11, which states that "philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point is to change it". This work contains Marx's criticism of materialism (for being contemplative), idealism (for reducing practice to theory), and, overall, philosophy (for putting abstract reality above the physical world). It thus introduced the first glimpse at Marx's historical materialism, an argument that the world is changed not by ideas but by actual, physical, material activity and practice. In 1845, after receiving a request from the Prussian king, the French government shut down Vorwärts!, with the interior minister, François Guizot, expelling Marx from France.
Unable either to stay in France or to move to Germany, Marx decided to emigrate to Brussels in Belgium in February 1845. However, to stay in Belgium he had to pledge not to publish anything on the subject of contemporary politics. In Brussels, Marx associated with other exiled socialists from across Europe, including Moses Hess, Karl Heinzen and Joseph Weydemeyer. In April 1845, Engels moved from Barmen in Germany to Brussels to join Marx and the growing cadre of members of the League of the Just now seeking home in Brussels. Later, Mary Burns, Engels' long-time companion, left Manchester, England to join Engels in Brussels.
In mid-July 1845, Marx and Engels left Brussels for England to visit the leaders of the Chartists, a working-class movement in Britain. This was Marx's first trip to England and Engels was an ideal guide for the trip. Engels had already spent two years living in Manchester from November 1842 to August 1844. Not only did Engels already know the English language, but he had also developed a close relationship with many Chartist leaders. Indeed, Engels was serving as a reporter for many Chartist and socialist English newspapers. Marx used the trip as an opportunity to examine the economic resources available for study in various libraries in London and Manchester.
In collaboration with Engels, Marx also set about writing a book which is often seen as his best treatment of the concept of historical materialism, The German Ideology. In this work, Marx broke with Ludwig Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, Max Stirner and the rest of the Young Hegelians, while he also broke with Karl Grün and other "true socialists" whose philosophies were still based in part on "idealism". In German Ideology, Marx and Engels finally completed their philosophy, which was based solely on materialism as the sole motor force in history. German Ideology is written in a humorously satirical form, but even this satirical form did not save the work from censorship. Like so many other early writings of his, German Ideology would not be published in Marx's lifetime and would be published only in 1932.
After completing German Ideology, Marx turned to a work that was intended to clarify his own position regarding "the theory and tactics" of a truly "revolutionary proletarian movement" operating from the standpoint of a truly "scientific materialist" philosophy. This work was intended to draw a distinction between the utopian socialists and Marx's own scientific socialist philosophy. Whereas the utopians believed that people must be persuaded one person at a time to join the socialist movement, the way a person must be persuaded to adopt any different belief, Marx knew that people would tend, on most occasions, to act in accordance with their own economic interests, thus appealing to an entire class (the working class in this case) with a broad appeal to the class's best material interest would be the best way to mobilise the broad mass of that class to make a revolution and change society. This was the intent of the new book that Marx was planning, but to get the manuscript past the government censors he called the book The Poverty of Philosophy (1847) and offered it as a response to the "petty-bourgeois philosophy" of the French anarchist socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon as expressed in his book The Philosophy of Poverty (1840).
These books laid the foundation for Marx and Engels's most famous work, a political pamphlet that has since come to be commonly known as The Communist Manifesto. While residing in Brussels in 1846, Marx continued his association with the secret radical organisation League of the Just. As noted above, Marx thought the League to be just the sort of radical organisation that was needed to spur the working class of Europe toward the mass movement that would bring about a working-class revolution. However, to organise the working class into a mass movement the League had to cease its "secret" or "underground" orientation and operate in the open as a political party. Members of the League eventually became persuaded in this regard. Accordingly, in June 1847 the League was reorganised by its membership into a new open "above ground" political society that appealed directly to the working classes. This new open political society was called the Communist League. Both Marx and Engels participated in drawing up the programme and organisational principles of the new Communist League.
In late 1847, Marx and Engels began writing what was to become their most famous work – a programme of action for the Communist League. Written jointly by Marx and Engels from December 1847 to January 1848, The Communist Manifesto was first published on 21 February 1848. The Communist Manifesto laid out the beliefs of the new Communist League. No longer a secret society, the Communist League wanted to make aims and intentions clear to the general public rather than hiding its beliefs as the League of the Just had been doing. The opening lines of the pamphlet set forth the principal basis of Marxism: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles". It goes on to examine the antagonisms that Marx claimed were arising in the clashes of interest between the bourgeoisie (the wealthy capitalist class) and the proletariat (the industrial working class). Proceeding on from this, the Manifesto presents the argument for why the Communist League, as opposed to other socialist and liberal political parties and groups at the time, was truly acting in the interests of the proletariat to overthrow capitalist society and to replace it with socialism.
Later that year, Europe experienced a series of protests, rebellions, and often violent upheavals that became known as the Revolutions of 1848. In France, a revolution led to the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of the French Second Republic. Marx was supportive of such activity and having recently received a substantial inheritance from his father (withheld by his uncle Lionel Philips since his father's death in 1838) of either 6,000 or 5,000 francs he allegedly used a third of it to arm Belgian workers who were planning revolutionary action. Although the veracity of these allegations is disputed, the Belgian Ministry of Justice accused Marx of it, subsequently arresting him and he was forced to flee back to France, where with a new republican government in power he believed that he would be safe.
Temporarily settling down in Paris, Marx transferred the Communist League executive headquarters to the city and also set up a German Workers' Club with various German socialists living there. Hoping to see the revolution spread to Germany, in 1848 Marx moved back to Cologne where he began issuing a handbill entitled the Demands of the Communist Party in Germany, in which he argued for only four of the ten points of the Communist Manifesto, believing that in Germany at that time the bourgeoisie must overthrow the feudal monarchy and aristocracy before the proletariat could overthrow the bourgeoisie. On 1 June, Marx started the publication of a daily newspaper, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, which he helped to finance through his recent inheritance from his father. Designed to put forward news from across Europe with his own Marxist interpretation of events, the newspaper featured Marx as a primary writer and the dominant editorial influence. Despite contributions by fellow members of the Communist League, according to Friedrich Engels it remained "a simple dictatorship by Marx".
Whilst editor of the paper, Marx and the other revolutionary socialists were regularly harassed by the police and Marx was brought to trial on several occasions, facing various allegations including insulting the Chief Public Prosecutor, committing a press misdemeanor and inciting armed rebellion through tax boycotting, although each time he was acquitted. Meanwhile, the democratic parliament in Prussia collapsed and the king, Frederick William IV, introduced a new cabinet of his reactionary supporters, who implemented counterrevolutionary measures to expunge left-wing and other revolutionary elements from the country. Consequently, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung was soon suppressed, and Marx was ordered to leave the country on 16 May. Marx returned to Paris, which was then under the grip of both a reactionary counterrevolution and a cholera epidemic, and was soon expelled by the city authorities, who considered him a political threat. With his wife Jenny expecting their fourth child and with Marx not able to move back to Germany or Belgium, in August 1849 he sought refuge in London.
Marx moved to London in early June 1849 and would remain based in the city for the rest of his life. The headquarters of the Communist League also moved to London. However, in the winter of 1849–1850, a split within the ranks of the Communist League occurred when a faction within it led by August Willich and Karl Schapper began agitating for an immediate uprising. Willich and Schapper believed that once the Communist League had initiated the uprising, the entire working class from across Europe would rise "spontaneously" to join it, thus creating revolution across Europe. Marx and Engels protested that such an unplanned uprising on the part of the Communist League was "adventuristic" and would be suicide for the Communist League. Such an uprising as that recommended by the Schapper/Willich group would easily be crushed by the police and the armed forces of the reactionary governments of Europe. Marx maintained that this would spell doom for the Communist League itself, arguing that changes in society are not achieved overnight through the efforts and will power of a handful of men. They are instead brought about through a scientific analysis of economic conditions of society and by moving toward revolution through different stages of social development. In the present stage of development (circa 1850), following the defeat of the uprisings across Europe in 1848 he felt that the Communist League should encourage the working class to unite with progressive elements of the rising bourgeoisie to defeat the feudal aristocracy on issues involving demands for governmental reforms, such as a constitutional republic with freely elected assemblies and universal (male) suffrage. In other words, the working class must join with bourgeois and democratic forces to bring about the successful conclusion of the bourgeois revolution before stressing the working-class agenda and a working-class revolution.
After a long struggle that threatened to ruin the Communist League, Marx's opinion prevailed and eventually, the Willich/Schapper group left the Communist League. Meanwhile, Marx also became heavily involved with the socialist German Workers' Educational Society. The Society held their meetings in Great Windmill Street, Soho, central London's entertainment district. This organisation was also racked by an internal struggle between its members, some of whom followed Marx while others followed the Schapper/Willich faction. The issues in this internal split were the same issues raised in the internal split within the Communist League, but Marx lost the fight with the Schapper/Willich faction within the German Workers' Educational Society and on 17 September 1850 resigned from the Society.
In the early period in London, Marx committed himself almost exclusively to his studies, such that his family endured extreme poverty. His main source of income was Engels, whose own source was his wealthy industrialist father. In Prussia as editor of his own newspaper, and contributor to others ideologically aligned, Marx could reach his audience, the working classes. In London, without finances to run a newspaper themselves, he and Engels turned to international journalism. At one stage they were being published by six newspapers from England, the United States, Prussia, Austria, and South Africa. Marx's principal earnings came from his work as European correspondent, from 1852 to 1862, for the New-York Daily Tribune, and from also producing articles for more "bourgeois" newspapers. Marx had his articles translated from German by Wilhelm Pieper [de], until his proficiency in English had become adequate.
The New-York Daily Tribune had been founded in April 1841 by Horace Greeley. Its editorial board contained progressive bourgeois journalists and publishers, among them George Ripley and the journalist Charles Dana, who was editor-in-chief. Dana, a fourierist and an abolitionist, was Marx's contact. The Tribune was a vehicle for Marx to reach a transatlantic public, such as for his "hidden warfare" against Henry Charles Carey. The journal had wide working-class appeal from its foundation; at two cents, it was inexpensive; and, with about 50,000 copies per issue, its circulation was the widest in the United States. Its editorial ethos was progressive and its anti-slavery stance reflected Greeley's. Marx's first article for the paper, on the British parliamentary elections, was published on 21 August 1852.
On 21 March 1857, Dana informed Marx that due to the economic recession only one article a week would be paid for, published or not; the others would be paid for only if published. Marx had sent his articles on Tuesdays and Fridays, but, that October, the Tribune discharged all its correspondents in Europe except Marx and B. Taylor, and reduced Marx to a weekly article. Between September and November 1860, only five were published. After a six-month interval, Marx resumed contributions from September 1861 until March 1862, when Dana wrote to inform him that there was no longer space in the Tribune for reports from London, due to American domestic affairs. In 1868, Dana set up a rival newspaper, the New York Sun, at which he was editor-in-chief. In April 1857, Dana invited Marx to contribute articles, mainly on military history, to the New American Cyclopedia, an idea of George Ripley, Dana's friend and literary editor of the Tribune. In all, 67 Marx-Engels articles were published, of which 51 were written by Engels, although Marx did some research for them in the British Museum. By the late 1850s, American popular interest in European affairs waned and Marx's articles turned to topics such as the "slavery crisis" and the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 in the "War Between the States". Between December 1851 and March 1852, Marx worked on his theoretical work about the French Revolution of 1848, titled The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. In this he explored concepts in historical materialism, class struggle, dictatorship of the proletariat, and victory of the proletariat over the bourgeois state.
The 1850s and 1860s may be said to mark a philosophical boundary distinguishing the young Marx's Hegelian idealism and the more mature Marx's scientific ideology associated with structural Marxism. However, not all scholars accept this distinction. For Marx and Engels, their experience of the Revolutions of 1848 to 1849 were formative in the development of their theory of economics and historical progression. After the "failures" of 1848, the revolutionary impetus appeared spent and not to be renewed without an economic recession. Contention arose between Marx and his fellow communists, whom he denounced as "adventurists". Marx deemed it fanciful to propose that "will power" could be sufficient to create the revolutionary conditions when in reality the economic component was the necessary requisite. The recession in the United States' economy in 1852 gave Marx and Engels grounds for optimism for revolutionary activity, yet this economy was seen as too immature for a capitalist revolution. Open territories on America's western frontier dissipated the forces of social unrest. Moreover, any economic crisis arising in the United States would not lead to revolutionary contagion of the older economies of individual European nations, which were closed systems bounded by their national borders. When the so-called Panic of 1857 in the United States spread globally, it broke all economic theory models, and was the first truly global economic crisis.
Marx continued to write articles for the New York Daily Tribune as long as he was sure that the Tribune's editorial policy was still progressive. However, the departure of Charles Dana from the paper in late 1861 and the resultant change in the editorial board brought about a new editorial policy. No longer was the Tribune to be a strong abolitionist paper dedicated to a complete Union victory. The new editorial board supported an immediate peace between the Union and the Confederacy in the Civil War in the United States with slavery left intact in the Confederacy. Marx strongly disagreed with this new political position and in 1863 was forced to withdraw as a writer for the Tribune.
In 1864, Marx became involved in the International Workingmen's Association (also known as the First International), to whose General Council he was elected at its inception in 1864. In that organisation, Marx was involved in the struggle against the anarchist wing centred on Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876). Although Marx won this contest, the transfer of the seat of the General Council from London to New York in 1872, which Marx supported, led to the decline of the International. The most important political event during the existence of the International was the Paris Commune of 1871 when the citizens of Paris rebelled against their government and held the city for two months. In response to the bloody suppression of this rebellion, Marx wrote one of his most famous pamphlets, "The Civil War in France", a defence of the Commune.
Given the repeated failures and frustrations of workers' revolutions and movements, Marx also sought to understand and provide a critique suitable for the capitalist mode of production, and hence spent a great deal of time in the reading room of the British Museum studying. By 1857, Marx had accumulated over 800 pages of notes and short essays on capital, landed property, wage labour, the state, and foreign trade, and the world market, though this work did not appear in print until 1939, under the title Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy.
In 1859, Marx published A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, his first serious critique of political economy. This work was intended merely as a preview of his three-volume Das Kapital (English title: Capital: Critique of Political Economy), which he intended to publish at a later date. In A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx began to critically examine axioms and categories of economic thinking. The work was enthusiastically received, and the edition sold out quickly.
The successful sales of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy stimulated Marx in the early 1860s to finish work on the three large volumes that would compose his major life's work – Das Kapital and the Theories of Surplus Value, which discussed and critiqued the theoreticians of political economy, particularly Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Theories of Surplus Value is often referred to as the fourth volume of Das Kapital and constitutes one of the first comprehensive treatises on the history of economic thought. In 1867, the first volume of Das Kapital was published, a work which critically analysed capital. Das Kapital proposes an explanation of the "laws of motion" of the mode of production from its origins to its future by describing the dynamics of the accumulation of capital, with topics such as the growth of wage labour, the transformation of the workplace, capital accumulation, competition, the banking system, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and land-rents, as well as how waged labour continually reproduce the rule of capital. Marx proposes that the driving force of capital is in the exploitation of labor, whose unpaid work is the ultimate source of surplus value.
Demand for a Russian language edition of Das Kapital soon led to the printing of 3,000 copies of the book in the Russian language, which was published on 27 March 1872. By the autumn of 1871, the entire first edition of the German-language edition of Das Kapital had been sold out and a second edition was published.
Volumes II and III of Das Kapital remained mere manuscripts upon which Marx continued to work for the rest of his life. Both volumes were published by Engels after Marx's death. Volume II of Das Kapital was prepared and published by Engels in July 1893 under the name Capital II: The Process of Circulation of Capital. Volume III of Das Kapital was published a year later in October 1894 under the name Capital III: The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole. Theories of Surplus Value derived from the sprawling Economic Manuscripts of 1861–1863, a second draft for Das Kapital, the latter spanning volumes 30–34 of the Collected Works of Marx and Engels. Specifically, Theories of Surplus Value runs from the latter part of the Collected Works' thirtieth volume through the end of their thirty-second volume; meanwhile, the larger Economic Manuscripts of 1861–1863 run from the start of the Collected Works' thirtieth volume through the first half of their thirty-fourth volume. The latter half of the Collected Works' thirty-fourth volume consists of the surviving fragments of the Economic Manuscripts of 1863–1864, which represented a third draft for Das Kapital, and a large portion of which is included as an appendix to the Penguin edition of Das Kapital, volume I. A German-language abridged edition of Theories of Surplus Value was published in 1905 and in 1910. This abridged edition was translated into English and published in 1951 in London, but the complete unabridged edition of Theories of Surplus Value was published as the "fourth volume" of Das Kapital in 1963 and 1971 in Moscow.
During the last decade of his life, Marx's health declined, and he became incapable of the sustained effort that had characterised his previous work. He did manage to comment substantially on contemporary politics, particularly in Germany and Russia. His Critique of the Gotha Programme opposed the tendency of his followers Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel to compromise with the state socialist ideas of Ferdinand Lassalle in the interests of a united socialist party. This work is also notable for another famous Marx quote: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need".
In a letter to Vera Zasulich dated 8 March 1881, Marx contemplated the possibility of Russia's bypassing the capitalist stage of development and building communism on the basis of the common ownership of land characteristic of the village mir. While admitting that Russia's rural "commune is the fulcrum of social regeneration in Russia", Marx also warned that in order for the mir to operate as a means for moving straight to the socialist stage without a preceding capitalist stage it "would first be necessary to eliminate the deleterious influences which are assailing it [the rural commune] from all sides". Given the elimination of these pernicious influences, Marx allowed that "normal conditions of spontaneous development" of the rural commune could exist. However, in the same letter to Vera Zasulich he points out that "at the core of the capitalist system ... lies the complete separation of the producer from the means of production". In one of the drafts of this letter, Marx reveals his growing passion for anthropology, motivated by his belief that future communism would be a return on a higher level to the communism of our prehistoric past. He wrote that "the historical trend of our age is the fatal crisis which capitalist production has undergone in the European and American countries where it has reached its highest peak, a crisis that will end in its destruction, in the return of modern society to a higher form of the most archaic type – collective production and appropriation". He added that "the vitality of primitive communities was incomparably greater than that of Semitic, Greek, Roman, etc. societies, and, a fortiori, that of modern capitalist societies". Before he died, Marx asked Engels to write up these ideas, which were published in 1884 under the title The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.
Marx and von Westphalen had seven children together, but partly owing to the poor conditions in which they lived whilst in London, only three survived to adulthood. Their children were: Jenny Caroline (m. Longuet; 1844–1883); Jenny Laura (m. Lafargue; 1845–1911); Edgar (1847–1855); Henry Edward Guy ("Guido"; 1849–1850); Jenny Eveline Frances ("Franziska"; 1851–1852); Jenny Julia Eleanor (1855–1898) and one more who died before being named (July 1857). According to his son-in-law, Paul Lafargue, Marx was a loving father. In 1962, there were allegations that Marx fathered a son, Freddy, out of wedlock by his housekeeper, Helene Demuth, but the claim is disputed for lack of documented evidence.
Marx frequently used pseudonyms, often when renting a house or flat, apparently to make it harder for the authorities to track him down. While in Paris, he used that of "Monsieur Ramboz", whilst in London, he signed off his letters as "A. Williams". His friends referred to him as "Moor", owing to his dark complexion and black curly hair, while he encouraged his children to call him "Old Nick" and "Charley". He also bestowed nicknames and pseudonyms on his friends and family as well, referring to Friedrich Engels as "General", his housekeeper Helene as "Lenchen" or "Nym", while one of his daughters, Jennychen, was referred to as "Qui Qui, Emperor of China" and another, Laura, was known as "Kakadou" or "the Hottentot".
Marx drank heavily until his death after joining the Trier Tavern Club drinking society in the 1830s.
Marx was afflicted by poor health (what he himself described as "the wretchedness of existence") and various authors have sought to describe and explain it. His biographer Werner Blumenberg attributed it to liver and gall problems which Marx had in 1849 and from which he was never afterward free, exacerbated by an unsuitable lifestyle. The attacks often came with headaches, eye inflammation, neuralgia in the head, and rheumatic pains. A serious nervous disorder appeared in 1877 and protracted insomnia was a consequence, which Marx fought with narcotics. The illness was aggravated by excessive nocturnal work and faulty diet. Marx was fond of highly seasoned dishes, smoked fish, caviare, pickled cucumbers, "none of which are good for liver patients", but he also liked wine and liqueurs and smoked an enormous amount "and since he had no money, it was usually bad-quality cigars". From 1863, Marx complained a lot about boils: "These are very frequent with liver patients and may be due to the same causes". The abscesses were so bad that Marx could neither sit nor work upright. According to Blumenberg, Marx's irritability is often found in liver patients:
The illness emphasised certain traits in his character. He argued cuttingly, his biting satire did not shrink at insults, and his expressions could be rude and cruel. Though in general Marx had blind faith in his closest friends, nevertheless he himself complained that he was sometimes too mistrustful and unjust even to them. His verdicts, not only about enemies but even about friends, were sometimes so harsh that even less sensitive people would take offence ... There must have been few whom he did not criticize like this ... not even Engels was an exception.
According to Princeton historian Jerrold Seigel, in his late teens, Marx may have had pneumonia or pleurisy, the effects of which led to his being exempted from Prussian military service. In later life whilst working on Das Kapital (which he never completed), Marx suffered from a trio of afflictions. A liver ailment, probably hereditary, was aggravated by overwork, a bad diet, and lack of sleep. Inflammation of the eyes was induced by too much work at night. A third affliction, eruption of carbuncles or boils, "was probably brought on by general physical debility to which the various features of Marx's style of life – alcohol, tobacco, poor diet, and failure to sleep – all contributed. Engels often exhorted Marx to alter this dangerous regime". In Seigel's thesis, what lay behind this punishing sacrifice of his health may have been guilt about self-involvement and egoism, originally induced in Karl Marx by his father.
In 2007, a retrodiagnosis of Marx's skin disease was made by dermatologist Sam Shuster of Newcastle University and for Shuster, the most probable explanation was that Marx suffered not from liver problems, but from hidradenitis suppurativa, a recurring infective condition arising from blockage of apocrine ducts opening into hair follicles. This condition, which was not described in the English medical literature until 1933 (hence would not have been known to Marx's physicians), can produce joint pain (which could be misdiagnosed as rheumatic disorder) and painful eye conditions. To arrive at his retrodiagnosis, Shuster considered the primary material: the Marx correspondence published in the 50 volumes of the Marx/Engels Collected Works. There, "although the skin lesions were called 'furuncles', 'boils' and 'carbuncles' by Marx, his wife, and his physicians, they were too persistent, recurrent, destructive and site-specific for that diagnosis". The sites of the persistent 'carbuncles' were noted repeatedly in the armpits, groins, perianal, genital (penis and scrotum) and suprapubic regions and inner thighs, "favoured sites of hidradenitis suppurativa". Professor Shuster claimed the diagnosis "can now be made definitively".
Shuster went on to consider the potential psychosocial effects of the disease, noting that the skin is an organ of communication and that hidradenitis suppurativa produces much psychological distress, including loathing and disgust and depression of self-image, mood, and well-being, feelings for which Shuster found "much evidence" in the Marx correspondence. Professor Shuster went on to ask himself whether the mental effects of the disease affected Marx's work and even helped him to develop his theory of alienation.
Following the death of his wife Jenny in December 1881, Marx developed a catarrh that kept him in ill health for the last 15 months of his life. It eventually brought on the bronchitis and pleurisy that killed him in London on 14 March 1883, when he died a stateless person at age 64. Family and friends in London buried his body in Highgate Cemetery (East), London, on 17 March 1883 in an area reserved for agnostics and atheists (George Eliot's grave is nearby). According to Francis Wheen, there were between nine and eleven mourners at his funeral; however, research from contemporary sources identifies thirteen named individuals attending the funeral: Friedrich Engels, Eleanor Marx, Edward Aveling, Paul Lafargue, Charles Longuet, Helene Demuth, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Gottlieb Lemke, Frederick Lessner, G Lochner, Sir Ray Lankester, Carl Schorlemmer and Ernest Radford. A contemporary newspaper account claims that twenty-five to thirty relatives and friends attended the funeral. A writer in The Graphic noted: 'By a strange blunder ... his death was not announced for two days, and then as having taken place at Paris. The next day the correction came from Paris; and when his friends and followers hastened to his house in Haverstock Hill, to learn the time and place of burial, they learned that he was already in the cold ground. But for this secresy [sic] and haste, a great popular demonstration would undoubtedly have been held over his grave'.
Several of his closest friends spoke at his funeral, including Wilhelm Liebknecht and Friedrich Engels. Engels' speech included the passage:
On the 14th of March, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest living thinker ceased to think. He had been left alone for scarcely two minutes, and when we came back we found him in his armchair, peacefully gone to sleep – but forever.
Marx's surviving daughters Eleanor and Laura, as well as Charles Longuet and Paul Lafargue, Marx's two French socialist sons-in-law, were also in attendance. He had been predeceased by his wife and his eldest daughter, the latter dying a few months earlier in January 1883. Liebknecht, a founder and leader of the German Social Democratic Party, gave a speech in German, and Longuet, a prominent figure in the French working-class movement, made a short statement in French. Two telegrams from workers' parties in France and Spain were also read out. Together with Engels's speech, this constituted the entire programme of the funeral. Non-relatives attending the funeral included three communist associates of Marx: Friedrich Lessner, imprisoned for three years after the Cologne Communist Trial of 1852; G. Lochner, whom Engels described as "an old member of the Communist League"; and Carl Schorlemmer, a professor of chemistry in Manchester, a member of the Royal Society, and a communist activist involved in the 1848 Baden revolution. Another attendee of the funeral was Ray Lankester, a British zoologist who would later become a prominent academic.
Marx left a personal estate valued for probate at £250 (equivalent to £26,788 in 2021). Upon his own death in 1895, Engels left Marx's two surviving daughters a "significant portion" of his considerable estate (valued in 2011 at US$4.8 million).
Marx and his family were reburied on a new site nearby in November 1954. The tomb at the new site, unveiled on 14 March 1956, bears the carved message: "Workers of All Lands Unite", the final line of The Communist Manifesto; and, from the 11th "Thesis on Feuerbach" (as edited by Engels), "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways—the point however is to change it". The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) had the monument with a portrait bust by Laurence Bradshaw erected and Marx's original tomb had only humble adornment. Black civil rights leader and CPGB activist Claudia Jones was later buried beside Karl Marx's tomb.
The Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm remarked: "One cannot say Marx died a failure." Although he had not achieved a large following of disciples in Britain, his writings had already begun to make an impact on the left-wing movements in Germany and Russia. Within twenty-five years of his death, the continental European socialist parties that acknowledged Marx's influence on their politics had contributed to significant gains in their representative democratic elections.
Marx's thought demonstrates influence from many sources, including but not limited to:
Marx's view of history, which came to be called historical materialism (controversially adapted as the philosophy of dialectical materialism by Engels and Lenin), certainly shows the influence of Hegel's claim that one should view reality (and history) dialectically. However, whereas Hegel had thought in idealist terms, putting ideas in the forefront, Marx sought to conceptualize dialectics in materialist terms, arguing for the primacy of matter over idea. Where Hegel saw the "spirit" as driving history, Marx saw this as an unnecessary mystification, obscuring the reality of humanity and its physical actions shaping the world. He wrote that Hegelianism stood the movement of reality on its head, and that one needed to set it upon its feet. Despite his dislike of mystical terms, Marx used Gothic language in several of his works: in The Communist Manifesto he proclaims "A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre", and in The Capital he refers to capital as "necromancy that surrounds the products of labour".
Though inspired by French socialist and sociological thought, Marx criticised utopian socialists, arguing that their favoured small-scale socialistic communities would be bound to marginalisation and poverty and that only a large-scale change in the economic system could bring about real change.
Other important contributions to Marx's revision of Hegelianism came from Engels's book, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, which led Marx to conceive of the historical dialectic in terms of class conflict and to see the modern working class as the most progressive force for revolution, as well as from the social democrat Friedrich Wilhelm Schulz, who in Die Bewegung der Produktion described the movement of society as "flowing from the contradiction between the forces of production and the mode of production."
Marx believed that he could study history and society scientifically, discerning tendencies of history and thereby predicting the outcome of social conflicts. Some followers of Marx, therefore, concluded that a communist revolution would inevitably occur. However, Marx famously asserted in the eleventh of his "Theses on Feuerbach" that "philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point however is to change it" and he clearly dedicated himself to trying to alter the world.
Marx's theories inspired several theories and disciplines of future, including but not limited to:
Marx's polemic with other thinkers often occurred through critique and thus he has been called "the first great user of critical method in social sciences". He criticised speculative philosophy, equating metaphysics with ideology. By adopting this approach, Marx attempted to separate key findings from ideological biases. This set him apart from many contemporary philosophers.
Like Tocqueville, who described a faceless and bureaucratic despotism with no identifiable despot, Marx also broke with classical thinkers who spoke of a single tyrant and with Montesquieu, who discussed the nature of the single despot. Instead, Marx set out to analyse "the despotism of capital". Fundamentally, Marx assumed that human history involves transforming human nature, which encompasses both human beings and material objects. Humans recognise that they possess both actual and potential selves. For both Marx and Hegel, self-development begins with an experience of internal alienation stemming from this recognition, followed by a realisation that the actual self, as a subjective agent, renders its potential counterpart an object to be apprehended. Marx further argues that by moulding nature in desired ways the subject takes the object as its own and thus permits the individual to be actualised as fully human. For Marx, the human nature – Gattungswesen, or species-being – exists as a function of human labour. Fundamental to Marx's idea of meaningful labour is the proposition that for a subject to come to terms with its alienated object it must first exert influence upon literal, material objects in the subject's world. Marx acknowledges that Hegel "grasps the nature of work and comprehends objective man, authentic because actual, as the result of his own work", but characterises Hegelian self-development as unduly "spiritual" and abstract. Marx thus departs from Hegel by insisting that "the fact that man is a corporeal, actual, sentient, objective being with natural capacities means that he has actual, sensuous objects for his nature as objects of his life-expression, or that he can only express his life in actual sensuous objects". Consequently, Marx revises Hegelian "work" into material "labour" and in the context of human capacity to transform nature the term "labour power".
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
Marx had a special concern with how people relate to their own labour power. He wrote extensively about this in terms of the problem of alienation. As with the dialectic, Marx began with a Hegelian notion of alienation but developed a more materialist conception. Capitalism mediates social relationships of production (such as among workers or between workers and capitalists) through commodities, including labour, that are bought and sold on the market. For Marx, the possibility that one may give up ownership of one's own labour – one's capacity to transform the world – is tantamount to being alienated from one's own nature and it is a spiritual loss. Marx described this loss as commodity fetishism, in which the things that people produce, commodities, appear to have a life and movement of their own to which humans and their behaviour merely adapt.
Commodity fetishism provides an example of what Engels called "false consciousness", which relates closely to the understanding of ideology. By "ideology", Marx and Engels meant ideas that reflect the interests of a particular class at a particular time in history, but which contemporaries see as universal and eternal. Marx and Engels's point was not only that such beliefs are at best half-truths, as they serve an important political function. Put another way, the control that one class exercises over the means of production include not only the production of food or manufactured goods but also the production of ideas (this provides one possible explanation for why members of a subordinate class may hold ideas contrary to their own interests). An example of this sort of analysis is Marx's understanding of religion, summed up in a passage from the preface to his 1843 Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right:
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.
Whereas his Gymnasium senior thesis at the Gymnasium zu Trier [de] argued that religion had as its primary social aim the promotion of solidarity, here Marx sees the social function of religion in terms of highlighting/preserving political and economic status quo and inequality.
Marx was an outspoken opponent of child labour, saying that British industries "could but live by sucking blood, and children's blood too", and that U.S. capital was financed by the "capitalized blood of children".
But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the whole bourgeoisie in chorus. The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the means of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion than that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women. He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere mean of production.
—Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto
Marx's thoughts on labour and its function in reproducing capital were related to the primacy he gave to social relations in determining the society's past, present and future. (Critics have called this economic determinism.) Labour is the precondition for the existence of, and accumulation of capital, which both shape the social system. For Marx, social change was driven by conflict between opposing interests, by parties situated in the historical situation of their mode of production. This became the inspiration for the body of works known as the conflict theory. In his evolutionary model of history, he argued that human history began with free, productive and creative activities that was over time coerced and dehumanised, a trend most apparent under capitalism. Marx noted that this was not an intentional process, but rather due to the immanent logic of the current mode of production which demands more human labour (abstract labour) to reproduce the social relationships of capital.
The organisation of society depends on means of production. The means of production are all things required to produce material goods, such as land, natural resources, and technology but not human labour. The relations of production are the social relationships people enter into as they acquire and use the means of production. Together, these compose the mode of production and Marx distinguished historical eras in terms of modes of production. Marx differentiated between base and superstructure, where the base (or substructure) is the economic system and superstructure is the cultural and political system. Marx regarded this mismatch between economic base and social superstructure as a major source of social disruption and conflict.
Despite Marx's stress on the critique of capitalism and discussion of the new communist society that should replace it, his explicit critique is guarded, as he saw it as an improved society compared to the past ones (slavery and feudalism). Marx never clearly discusses issues of morality and justice, but scholars agree that his work contained implicit discussion of those concepts.
Marx's view of capitalism was two-sided. On one hand, in the 19th century's deepest critique of the dehumanising aspects of this system he noted that defining features of capitalism include alienation, exploitation and recurring, cyclical depressions leading to mass unemployment. On the other hand, he characterised capitalism as "revolutionising, industrialising and universalising qualities of development, growth and progressivity" (by which Marx meant industrialisation, urbanisation, technological progress, increased productivity and growth, rationality, and scientific revolution) that are responsible for progress, at in contrast to earlier forms of societies. Marx considered the capitalist class to be one of the most revolutionary in history because it constantly improved the means of production, more so than any other class in history and was responsible for the overthrow of feudalism. Capitalism can stimulate considerable growth because the capitalist has an incentive to reinvest profits in new technologies and capital equipment.
According to Marx, capitalists take advantage of the difference between the labour market and the market for whatever commodity the capitalist can produce. Marx observed that in practically every successful industry, input unit-costs are lower than output unit-prices. Marx called the difference "surplus value" and argued that it was based on surplus labour, the difference between what it costs to keep workers alive, and what they can produce. Although Marx describes capitalists as vampires sucking worker's blood, he notes that drawing profit is "by no means an injustice" since Marx, according to Allen W. Wood "excludes any trans-epochal standpoint from which one can comment" on the morals of such particular arrangements. Marx also noted that even the capitalists themselves cannot go against the system. The problem is the "cancerous cell" of capital, understood not as property or equipment, but the social relations between workers and owners, (the selling and purchasing of labour power) – the societal system, or rather mode of production, in general.
At the same time, Marx stressed that capitalism was unstable and prone to periodic crises. He suggested that over time capitalists would invest more and more in new technologies and less and less in labour. Since Marx believed that profit derived from surplus value appropriated from labour, he concluded that the rate of profit would fall as the economy grows. Marx believed that increasingly severe crises would punctuate this cycle of growth and collapse. Moreover, he believed that in the long-term, this process would enrich and empower the capitalist class and impoverish the proletariat. In section one of The Communist Manifesto, Marx describes feudalism, capitalism and the role internal social contradictions play in the historical process:
We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged ... the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder. Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted in it, and the economic and political sway of the bourgeois class. A similar movement is going on before our own eyes ... The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring order into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property.
Marx believed that those structural contradictions within capitalism necessitate its end, giving way to socialism, or a post-capitalistic, communist society:
The development of modern industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.
Thanks to various processes overseen by capitalism, such as urbanisation, the working class, the proletariat, should grow in numbers and develop class consciousness, in time realising that they can and must change the system. Marx believed that if the proletariat were to seize the means of production, they would encourage social relations that would benefit everyone equally, abolishing the exploiting class and introducing a system of production less vulnerable to cyclical crises. Marx argued in The German Ideology that capitalism will end through the organised actions of an international working class:
Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality will have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.
In this new society, the alienation would end and humans would be free to act without being bound by selling their labour. It would be a democratic society, enfranchising the entire population. In such a utopian world, there would also be little need for a state, whose goal was previously to enforce the alienation. Marx theorised that between capitalism and the establishment of a socialist/communist system, would exist a period of dictatorship of the proletariat – where the working class holds political power and forcibly socialises the means of production. As he wrote in his Critique of the Gotha Program, "between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat". While he allowed for the possibility of peaceful transition in some countries with strong democratic institutional structures (such as Britain, the United States, and the Netherlands), he suggested that in other countries in which workers cannot "attain their goal by peaceful means" the "lever of our revolution must be force".
Marx viewed Russia as the main counter-revolutionary threat to European revolutions. During the Crimean War, Marx backed the Ottoman Empire and its allies Britain and France against Russia. He was absolutely opposed to Pan-Slavism, viewing it as an instrument of Russian foreign policy. Marx had considered the Slavic nations except Poles as 'counter-revolutionary'. Marx and Engels published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in February 1849:
To the sentimental phrases about brotherhood which we are being offered here on behalf of the most counter-revolutionary nations of Europe, we reply that hatred of Russians was and still is the primary revolutionary passion among Germans; that since the revolution [of 1848] hatred of Czechs and Croats has been added, and that only by the most determined use of terror against these Slav peoples can we, jointly with the Poles and Magyars, safeguard the revolution. We know where the enemies of the revolution are concentrated, viz. in Russia and the Slav regions of Austria, and no fine phrases, no allusions to an undefined democratic future for these countries can deter us from treating our enemies as enemies. Then there will be a struggle, an "inexorable life-and-death struggle", against those Slavs who betray the revolution; an annihilating fight and ruthless terror – not in the interests of Germany, but in the interests of the revolution!"
Marx and Engels sympathised with the Narodnik revolutionaries of the 1860s and 1870s. When the Russian revolutionaries assassinated Tsar Alexander II of Russia, Marx expressed the hope that the assassination foreshadowed 'the formation of a Russian commune'. Marx supported the Polish uprisings against tsarist Russia. He said in a speech in London in 1867:
In the first place the policy of Russia is changeless... Its methods, its tactics, its manoeuvres may change, but the polar star of its policy – world domination – is a fixed star. In our times only a civilised government ruling over barbarian masses can hatch out such a plan and execute it. ... There is but one alternative for Europe. Either Asiatic barbarism, under Muscovite direction, will burst around its head like an avalanche, or else it must re-establish Poland, thus putting twenty million heroes between itself and Asia and gaining a breathing spell for the accomplishment of its social regeneration.
Marx supported the cause of Irish independence. In 1867, he wrote Engels: "I used to think the separation of Ireland from England impossible. I now think it inevitable. The English working class will never accomplish anything until it has got rid of Ireland. ... English reaction in England had its roots ... in the subjugation of Ireland."
Marx spent some time in French Algeria, which had been invaded and made a French colony in 1830, and had the opportunity to observe life in colonial North Africa. He wrote about the colonial justice system, in which "a form of torture has been used (and this happens 'regularly') to extract confessions from the Arabs; naturally it is done (like the English in India) by the 'police'; the judge is supposed to know nothing at all about it." Marx was surprised by the arrogance of many European settlers in Algiers and wrote in a letter: "when a European colonist dwells among the 'lesser breeds,' either as a settler or even on business, he generally regards himself as even more inviolable than handsome William I [a Prussian king]. Still, when it comes to bare-faced arrogance and presumptuousness vis-à-vis the 'lesser breeds,' the British and Dutch outdo the French."
According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "Marx's analysis of colonialism as a progressive force bringing modernization to a backward feudal society sounds like a transparent rationalization for foreign domination. His account of British domination, however, reflects the same ambivalence that he shows towards capitalism in Europe. In both cases, Marx recognizes the immense suffering brought about during the transition from feudal to bourgeois society while insisting that the transition is both necessary and ultimately progressive. He argues that the penetration of foreign commerce will cause a social revolution in India."
Marx discussed British colonial rule in India in the New York Herald Tribune in June 1853:
There cannot remain any doubt but that the misery inflicted by the British on Hindostan [India] is of an essentially different and infinitely more intensive kind than all Hindostan had to suffer before. England has broken down the entire framework of Indian society, without any symptoms of reconstitution yet appearing... [however], we must not forget that these idyllic village communities, inoffensive though they may appear, had always been the solid foundation of Oriental despotism, that they restrained the human mind within the smallest possible compass, making it the unresisting tool of superstition.
Marx's ideas have had a profound impact on world politics and intellectual thought, in particular in the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution. Followers of Marx have often debated among themselves over how to interpret Marx's writings and apply his concepts to the modern world. The legacy of Marx's thought has become contested between numerous tendencies, each of which sees itself as Marx's most accurate interpreter. In the political realm, these tendencies include political theories such as Leninism, Marxism–Leninism, Trotskyism, Maoism, Luxemburgism, libertarian Marxism, and Open Marxism. Various currents have also developed in academic Marxism, often under influence of other views, resulting in structuralist Marxism, historical materialism, phenomenological Marxism, analytical Marxism, and Hegelian Marxism.
From an academic perspective, Marx's work contributed to the birth of modern sociology. He has been cited as one of the 19th century's three masters of the "school of suspicion", alongside Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud, and as one of the three principal architects of modern social science along with Émile Durkheim and Max Weber. In contrast to other philosophers, Marx offered theories that could often be tested with the scientific method. Both Marx and Auguste Comte set out to develop scientifically justified ideologies in the wake of European secularisation and new developments in the philosophies of history and science. Working in the Hegelian tradition, Marx rejected Comtean sociological positivism in an attempt to develop a science of society. Karl Löwith considered Marx and Søren Kierkegaard to be the two greatest philosophical successors of Hegel. In modern sociological theory, Marxist sociology is recognised as one of the main classical perspectives. Isaiah Berlin considers Marx the true founder of modern sociology "in so far as anyone can claim the title". Beyond social science, he has also had a lasting legacy in philosophy, literature, the arts, and the humanities.
Social theorists of the 20th and 21st centuries have pursued two main strategies in response to Marx. One move has been to reduce it to its analytical core, known as analytical Marxism. Another, more common move has been to dilute the explanatory claims of Marx's social theory and emphasise the "relative autonomy" of aspects of social and economic life not directly related to Marx's central narrative of interaction between the development of the "forces of production" and the succession of "modes of production". This has been the neo-Marxist theorising adopted by historians inspired by Marx's social theory such as E. P. Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm. It has also been a line of thinking pursued by thinkers and activists such as Antonio Gramsci who have sought to understand the opportunities and the difficulties of transformative political practice, seen in the light of Marxist social theory. Marx's ideas would also have a profound influence on subsequent artists and art history, with avant-garde movements across literature, visual art, music, film, and theatre.
Politically, Marx's legacy is more complex. Throughout the 20th century, revolutions in dozens of countries labelled themselves "Marxist"—most notably the Russian Revolution, which led to the founding of the Soviet Union. Major world leaders including Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, Salvador Allende, Josip Broz Tito, Kwame Nkrumah, Jawaharlal Nehru, Nelson Mandela, Xi Jinping and Thomas Sankara have all cited Marx as an influence. Beyond where Marxist revolutions took place, Marx's ideas have informed political parties worldwide. In countries associated with Marxism, some events have led political opponents to blame Marx for millions of deaths, while others argue for a distinction between the legacy and influence of Marx specifically, and the legacy and influence of those who have shaped his ideas for political purposes. Arthur Lipow describes Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels as "the founders of modern revolutionary democratic socialism."
The cities of Marks, Russia and Karl-Marx-Stadt, Germany (now known as Chemnitz) were named after Marx.
In May 2018, to mark the bicentenary of his birth, a 4.5m statue of him by leading Chinese sculptor Wu Weishan and donated by the Chinese government was unveiled in his birthplace of Trier, Germany. The then-European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker defended Marx's memory, saying that today Marx "stands for things which he is not responsible for and which he didn't cause because many of the things he wrote down were redrafted into the opposite".
In 2017, a feature film, titled The Young Karl Marx, featuring Marx, his wife Jenny Marx, and Engels, among other revolutionaries and intellectuals prior to the Revolutions of 1848, received good reviews for both its historical accuracy and its brio in dealing with intellectual life. Another fictional representation to coincide with the bicentenary was Jason Barker's novel Marx Returns which, despite being "[c]urious, funny, perplexing, and irreverent", according to philosopher Ray Brassier "casts unexpected light on Marx's thought."
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Karl Marx (German: [maʁks]; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German-born philosopher, economist, political theorist, historian, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His best-known works are the 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto (with Friedrich Engels) and the three-volume Das Kapital (1867–1894); the latter employs his critical approach of historical materialism in an analysis of capitalism and represents his greatest intellectual achievement. Marx's ideas and theories and their subsequent development, collectively known as Marxism, have exerted enormous influence on modern intellectual, economic and political history.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Born in Trier in the Kingdom of Prussia, German Confederation, Marx studied at the universities of Bonn, Berlin, and Jena, and received a doctorate in philosophy from the latter in 1841. A Young Hegelian, he was influenced by the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and both critiqued and developed Hegel's ideas in works such as The German Ideology (written 1846) and the Grundrisse (written 1857–1858). While in Paris in 1844, Marx wrote his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts and met Engels, a lifelong friend and collaborator. After moving to Brussels in 1845, they were active in the Communist League, and in 1848 wrote The Communist Manifesto, which expresses Marx's ideas and lays out a programme for revolution. Marx was expelled from Belgium and Germany, and in 1849 moved to London, where he wrote The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852) and Das Kapital. In 1864, Marx helped found the International Workingmen's Association (First International), in which he sought to fight the influence of anarchists led by Mikhail Bakunin. In his Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875), Marx wrote on revolution, the state and the transition to communism. He died stateless in 1883 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Marx's critiques of history, society and political economy hold that human societies develop through class conflict. In the capitalist mode of production, this manifests itself in the conflict between the ruling classes (known as the bourgeoisie) that control the means of production and the working classes (known as the proletariat) that enable these means by selling their labour power in return for wages. Employing his historical materialist approach, Marx predicted that capitalism produced internal tensions like previous socioeconomic systems and that these tensions would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by a new system known as the socialist mode of production. For Marx, class antagonisms under capitalism—owing in part to its instability and crisis-prone nature—would eventuate the working class's development of class consciousness, leading to their conquest of political power and eventually the establishment of a classless, communist society constituted by a free association of producers. Marx actively pressed for its implementation, arguing that the working class should carry out organised proletarian revolutionary action to topple capitalism and bring about socio-economic emancipation.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Marx has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history, and his work has been both lauded and criticised. Marxism has exerted major influence on socialist thought and political movements, and during the 20th century revolutionary governments identifying as Marxist took power in many countries and established socialist states including the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. A number of theoretical variants such as Leninism, Marxism–Leninism, Trotskyism, and Maoism have been developed. Marx's work in economics has a strong influence on modern heterodox theories of labour and its relation to capital, and he is typically cited as one of the principal architects of modern social science.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Karl Marx was born on 5 May 1818 to Heinrich Marx (1777–1838) and Henriette Pressburg (1788–1863). He was born at Brückengasse 664 in Trier, an ancient city then part of the Kingdom of Prussia's Province of the Lower Rhine. Marx's family was originally non-religious Jewish but had converted formally to Christianity before his birth. His maternal grandfather was a Dutch rabbi, while his paternal line had supplied Trier's rabbis since 1723, a role taken by his grandfather Meier Halevi Marx. His father, as a child known as Herschel, was the first in the line to receive a secular education. He became a lawyer with a comfortably upper middle class income and the family owned a number of Moselle vineyards, in addition to his income as an attorney. Prior to his son's birth and after the abrogation of Jewish emancipation in the Rhineland, Herschel converted from Judaism to join the state Evangelical Church of Prussia, taking on the German forename Heinrich over the Yiddish Herschel.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Largely non-religious, Heinrich was a man of the Enlightenment, interested in the ideas of the philosophers Immanuel Kant and Voltaire. A classical liberal, he took part in agitation for a constitution and reforms in Prussia, which was then an absolute monarchy. In 1815, Heinrich Marx began working as an attorney and in 1819 moved his family to a ten-room property near the Porta Nigra. His wife, Henriette Pressburg, was a Dutch Jew from a prosperous business family that later founded the company Philips Electronics. Her sister Sophie Pressburg (1797–1854) married Lion Philips (1794–1866) and was the grandmother of both Gerard and Anton Philips and great-grandmother to Frits Philips. Lion Philips was a wealthy Dutch tobacco manufacturer and industrialist, upon whom Karl and Jenny Marx would later often come to rely for loans while they were exiled in London.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Little is known of Marx's childhood. The third of nine children, he became the eldest son when his brother Moritz died in 1819. Marx and his surviving siblings, Sophie, Hermann, Henriette, Louise, Emilie, and Caroline, were baptised into the Lutheran Church in August 1824, and their mother in November 1825. Marx was privately educated by his father until 1830 when he entered Trier High School (Gymnasium zu Trier [de]), whose headmaster, Hugo Wyttenbach, was a friend of his father. By employing many liberal humanists as teachers, Wyttenbach incurred the anger of the local conservative government. Subsequently, police raided the school in 1832 and discovered that literature espousing political liberalism was being distributed among the students. Considering the distribution of such material a seditious act, the authorities instituted reforms and replaced several staff during Marx's attendance.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In October 1835 at the age of 16, Marx travelled to the University of Bonn wishing to study philosophy and literature, but his father insisted on law as a more practical field. Due to a condition referred to as a \"weak chest\", Marx was excused from military duty when he turned 18. While at the University at Bonn, Marx joined the Poets' Club, a group containing political radicals that were monitored by the police. Marx also joined the Trier Tavern Club drinking society (German: Landsmannschaft der Treveraner) where many ideas were discussed and at one point he served as the club's co-president. Additionally, Marx was involved in certain disputes, some of which became serious: in August 1836 he took part in a duel with a member of the university's Borussian Korps. Although his grades in the first term were good, they soon deteriorated, leading his father to force a transfer to the more serious and academic University of Berlin.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Spending summer and autumn 1836 in Trier, Marx became more serious about his studies and his life. He became engaged to Jenny von Westphalen, an educated member of the petty nobility who had known Marx since childhood. As she had broken off her engagement with a young aristocrat to be with Marx, their relationship was socially controversial owing to the differences between their religious and class origins, but Marx befriended her father Ludwig von Westphalen (a liberal aristocrat) and later dedicated his doctoral thesis to him. Seven years after their engagement, on 19 June 1843, they married in a Protestant church in Kreuznach.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In October 1836, Marx arrived in Berlin, matriculating in the university's faculty of law and renting a room in the Mittelstrasse. During the first term, Marx attended lectures of Eduard Gans (who represented the progressive Hegelian standpoint, elaborated on rational development in history by emphasising particularly its libertarian aspects, and the importance of social question) and of Karl von Savigny (who represented the Historical School of Law). Although studying law, he was fascinated by philosophy and looked for a way to combine the two, believing that \"without philosophy nothing could be accomplished\". Marx became interested in the recently deceased German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, whose ideas were then widely debated among European philosophical circles. During a convalescence in Stralau, he joined the Doctor's Club (Doktorklub), a student group which discussed Hegelian ideas, and through them became involved with a group of radical thinkers known as the Young Hegelians in 1837. They gathered around Ludwig Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer, with Marx developing a particularly close friendship with Adolf Rutenberg. Like Marx, the Young Hegelians were critical of Hegel's metaphysical assumptions but adopted his dialectical method to criticise established society, politics and religion from a left-wing perspective. Marx's father died in May 1838, resulting in a diminished income for the family. Marx had been emotionally close to his father and treasured his memory after his death.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "By 1837, Marx was writing both fiction and non-fiction, having completed a short novel, Scorpion and Felix; a drama, Oulanem; as well as a number of love poems dedicated to his wife. None of this early work was published during his lifetime. The love poems were published posthumously in the Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Volume 1. Marx soon abandoned fiction for other pursuits, including the study of both English and Italian, art history and the translation of Latin classics. He began co-operating with Bruno Bauer on editing Hegel's Philosophy of Religion in 1840. Marx was also engaged in writing his doctoral thesis, The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature, which he completed in 1841. It was described as \"a daring and original piece of work in which Marx set out to show that theology must yield to the superior wisdom of philosophy\". The essay was controversial, particularly among the conservative professors at the University of Berlin. Marx decided instead to submit his thesis to the more liberal University of Jena, whose faculty awarded him his Ph.D. in April 1841. As Marx and Bauer were both atheists, in March 1841 they began plans for a journal entitled Archiv des Atheismus (Atheistic Archives), but it never came to fruition. In July, Marx and Bauer took a trip to Bonn from Berlin. There they scandalised their class by getting drunk, laughing in church and galloping through the streets on donkeys.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Marx was considering an academic career, but this path was barred by the government's growing opposition to classical liberalism and the Young Hegelians. Marx moved to Cologne in 1842, where he became a journalist, writing for the radical newspaper Rheinische Zeitung (Rhineland News), expressing his early views on socialism and his developing interest in economics. Marx criticised right-wing European governments as well as figures in the liberal and socialist movements, whom he thought ineffective or counter-productive. The newspaper attracted the attention of the Prussian government censors, who checked every issue for seditious material before printing, which Marx lamented: \"Our newspaper has to be presented to the police to be sniffed at, and if the police nose smells anything un-Christian or un-Prussian, the newspaper is not allowed to appear\". After the Rheinische Zeitung published an article strongly criticising the Russian monarchy, Tsar Nicholas I requested it be banned and Prussia's government complied in 1843.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In 1843, Marx became co-editor of a new, radical left-wing Parisian newspaper, the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher (German-French Annals), then being set up by the German activist Arnold Ruge to bring together German and French radicals. Therefore Marx and his wife moved to Paris in October 1843. Initially living with Ruge and his wife communally at 23 Rue Vaneau, they found the living conditions difficult, so moved out following the birth of their daughter Jenny in 1844. Although intended to attract writers from both France and the German states, the Jahrbücher was dominated by the latter and the only non-German writer was the exiled Russian anarchist collectivist Mikhail Bakunin. Marx contributed two essays to the paper, \"Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right\" and \"On the Jewish Question\", the latter introducing his belief that the proletariat were a revolutionary force and marking his embrace of communism. Only one issue was published, but it was relatively successful, largely owing to the inclusion of Heinrich Heine's satirical odes on King Ludwig of Bavaria, leading the German states to ban it and seize imported copies (Ruge nevertheless refused to fund the publication of further issues and his friendship with Marx broke down). After the paper's collapse, Marx began writing for the only uncensored German-language radical newspaper left, Vorwärts! (Forward!). Based in Paris, the paper was connected to the League of the Just, a utopian socialist secret society of workers and artisans. Marx attended some of their meetings but did not join. In Vorwärts!, Marx refined his views on socialism based upon Hegelian and Feuerbachian ideas of dialectical materialism, at the same time criticising liberals and other socialists operating in Europe.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "On 28 August 1844, Marx met the German socialist Friedrich Engels at the Café de la Régence, beginning a lifelong friendship. Engels showed Marx his recently published The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, convincing Marx that the working class would be the agent and instrument of the final revolution in history. Soon, Marx and Engels were collaborating on a criticism of the philosophical ideas of Marx's former friend, Bruno Bauer. This work was published in 1845 as The Holy Family. Although critical of Bauer, Marx was increasingly influenced by the ideas of the Young Hegelians Max Stirner and Ludwig Feuerbach, but eventually Marx and Engels abandoned Feuerbachian materialism as well.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "During the time that he lived at 38 Rue Vaneau in Paris (from October 1843 until January 1845), Marx engaged in an intensive study of political economy (Adam Smith, David Ricardo, James Mill, etc.), the French socialists (especially Claude Henri St. Simon and Charles Fourier) and the history of France. The study of, and critique, of political economy is a project that Marx would pursue for the rest of his life and would result in his major economic work—the three-volume series called Das Kapital. Marxism is based in large part on three influences: Hegel's dialectics, French utopian socialism and British political economy. Together with his earlier study of Hegel's dialectics, the studying that Marx did during this time in Paris meant that all major components of \"Marxism\" were in place by the autumn of 1844. Marx was constantly being pulled away from his critique of political economy—not only by the usual daily demands of the time, but additionally by editing a radical newspaper and later by organising and directing the efforts of a political party during years of potentially revolutionary popular uprisings of the citizenry. Still, Marx was always drawn back to his studies where he sought \"to understand the inner workings of capitalism\".",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "An outline of \"Marxism\" had definitely formed in the mind of Karl Marx by late 1844. Indeed, many features of the Marxist view of the world had been worked out in great detail, but Marx needed to write down all of the details of his world view to further clarify the new critique of political economy in his own mind. Accordingly, Marx wrote The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. These manuscripts covered numerous topics, detailing Marx's concept of alienated labour. By the spring of 1845, his continued study of political economy, capital and capitalism had led Marx to the belief that the new critique of political economy he was espousing—that of scientific socialism—needed to be built on the base of a thoroughly developed materialistic view of the world.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 had been written between April and August 1844, but soon Marx recognised that the Manuscripts had been influenced by some inconsistent ideas of Ludwig Feuerbach. Accordingly, Marx recognised the need to break with Feuerbach's philosophy in favour of historical materialism, thus a year later (in April 1845) after moving from Paris to Brussels, Marx wrote his eleven \"Theses on Feuerbach\". The \"Theses on Feuerbach\" are best known for Thesis 11, which states that \"philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point is to change it\". This work contains Marx's criticism of materialism (for being contemplative), idealism (for reducing practice to theory), and, overall, philosophy (for putting abstract reality above the physical world). It thus introduced the first glimpse at Marx's historical materialism, an argument that the world is changed not by ideas but by actual, physical, material activity and practice. In 1845, after receiving a request from the Prussian king, the French government shut down Vorwärts!, with the interior minister, François Guizot, expelling Marx from France.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Unable either to stay in France or to move to Germany, Marx decided to emigrate to Brussels in Belgium in February 1845. However, to stay in Belgium he had to pledge not to publish anything on the subject of contemporary politics. In Brussels, Marx associated with other exiled socialists from across Europe, including Moses Hess, Karl Heinzen and Joseph Weydemeyer. In April 1845, Engels moved from Barmen in Germany to Brussels to join Marx and the growing cadre of members of the League of the Just now seeking home in Brussels. Later, Mary Burns, Engels' long-time companion, left Manchester, England to join Engels in Brussels.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In mid-July 1845, Marx and Engels left Brussels for England to visit the leaders of the Chartists, a working-class movement in Britain. This was Marx's first trip to England and Engels was an ideal guide for the trip. Engels had already spent two years living in Manchester from November 1842 to August 1844. Not only did Engels already know the English language, but he had also developed a close relationship with many Chartist leaders. Indeed, Engels was serving as a reporter for many Chartist and socialist English newspapers. Marx used the trip as an opportunity to examine the economic resources available for study in various libraries in London and Manchester.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In collaboration with Engels, Marx also set about writing a book which is often seen as his best treatment of the concept of historical materialism, The German Ideology. In this work, Marx broke with Ludwig Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, Max Stirner and the rest of the Young Hegelians, while he also broke with Karl Grün and other \"true socialists\" whose philosophies were still based in part on \"idealism\". In German Ideology, Marx and Engels finally completed their philosophy, which was based solely on materialism as the sole motor force in history. German Ideology is written in a humorously satirical form, but even this satirical form did not save the work from censorship. Like so many other early writings of his, German Ideology would not be published in Marx's lifetime and would be published only in 1932.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "After completing German Ideology, Marx turned to a work that was intended to clarify his own position regarding \"the theory and tactics\" of a truly \"revolutionary proletarian movement\" operating from the standpoint of a truly \"scientific materialist\" philosophy. This work was intended to draw a distinction between the utopian socialists and Marx's own scientific socialist philosophy. Whereas the utopians believed that people must be persuaded one person at a time to join the socialist movement, the way a person must be persuaded to adopt any different belief, Marx knew that people would tend, on most occasions, to act in accordance with their own economic interests, thus appealing to an entire class (the working class in this case) with a broad appeal to the class's best material interest would be the best way to mobilise the broad mass of that class to make a revolution and change society. This was the intent of the new book that Marx was planning, but to get the manuscript past the government censors he called the book The Poverty of Philosophy (1847) and offered it as a response to the \"petty-bourgeois philosophy\" of the French anarchist socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon as expressed in his book The Philosophy of Poverty (1840).",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "These books laid the foundation for Marx and Engels's most famous work, a political pamphlet that has since come to be commonly known as The Communist Manifesto. While residing in Brussels in 1846, Marx continued his association with the secret radical organisation League of the Just. As noted above, Marx thought the League to be just the sort of radical organisation that was needed to spur the working class of Europe toward the mass movement that would bring about a working-class revolution. However, to organise the working class into a mass movement the League had to cease its \"secret\" or \"underground\" orientation and operate in the open as a political party. Members of the League eventually became persuaded in this regard. Accordingly, in June 1847 the League was reorganised by its membership into a new open \"above ground\" political society that appealed directly to the working classes. This new open political society was called the Communist League. Both Marx and Engels participated in drawing up the programme and organisational principles of the new Communist League.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In late 1847, Marx and Engels began writing what was to become their most famous work – a programme of action for the Communist League. Written jointly by Marx and Engels from December 1847 to January 1848, The Communist Manifesto was first published on 21 February 1848. The Communist Manifesto laid out the beliefs of the new Communist League. No longer a secret society, the Communist League wanted to make aims and intentions clear to the general public rather than hiding its beliefs as the League of the Just had been doing. The opening lines of the pamphlet set forth the principal basis of Marxism: \"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles\". It goes on to examine the antagonisms that Marx claimed were arising in the clashes of interest between the bourgeoisie (the wealthy capitalist class) and the proletariat (the industrial working class). Proceeding on from this, the Manifesto presents the argument for why the Communist League, as opposed to other socialist and liberal political parties and groups at the time, was truly acting in the interests of the proletariat to overthrow capitalist society and to replace it with socialism.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Later that year, Europe experienced a series of protests, rebellions, and often violent upheavals that became known as the Revolutions of 1848. In France, a revolution led to the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of the French Second Republic. Marx was supportive of such activity and having recently received a substantial inheritance from his father (withheld by his uncle Lionel Philips since his father's death in 1838) of either 6,000 or 5,000 francs he allegedly used a third of it to arm Belgian workers who were planning revolutionary action. Although the veracity of these allegations is disputed, the Belgian Ministry of Justice accused Marx of it, subsequently arresting him and he was forced to flee back to France, where with a new republican government in power he believed that he would be safe.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Temporarily settling down in Paris, Marx transferred the Communist League executive headquarters to the city and also set up a German Workers' Club with various German socialists living there. Hoping to see the revolution spread to Germany, in 1848 Marx moved back to Cologne where he began issuing a handbill entitled the Demands of the Communist Party in Germany, in which he argued for only four of the ten points of the Communist Manifesto, believing that in Germany at that time the bourgeoisie must overthrow the feudal monarchy and aristocracy before the proletariat could overthrow the bourgeoisie. On 1 June, Marx started the publication of a daily newspaper, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, which he helped to finance through his recent inheritance from his father. Designed to put forward news from across Europe with his own Marxist interpretation of events, the newspaper featured Marx as a primary writer and the dominant editorial influence. Despite contributions by fellow members of the Communist League, according to Friedrich Engels it remained \"a simple dictatorship by Marx\".",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Whilst editor of the paper, Marx and the other revolutionary socialists were regularly harassed by the police and Marx was brought to trial on several occasions, facing various allegations including insulting the Chief Public Prosecutor, committing a press misdemeanor and inciting armed rebellion through tax boycotting, although each time he was acquitted. Meanwhile, the democratic parliament in Prussia collapsed and the king, Frederick William IV, introduced a new cabinet of his reactionary supporters, who implemented counterrevolutionary measures to expunge left-wing and other revolutionary elements from the country. Consequently, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung was soon suppressed, and Marx was ordered to leave the country on 16 May. Marx returned to Paris, which was then under the grip of both a reactionary counterrevolution and a cholera epidemic, and was soon expelled by the city authorities, who considered him a political threat. With his wife Jenny expecting their fourth child and with Marx not able to move back to Germany or Belgium, in August 1849 he sought refuge in London.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Marx moved to London in early June 1849 and would remain based in the city for the rest of his life. The headquarters of the Communist League also moved to London. However, in the winter of 1849–1850, a split within the ranks of the Communist League occurred when a faction within it led by August Willich and Karl Schapper began agitating for an immediate uprising. Willich and Schapper believed that once the Communist League had initiated the uprising, the entire working class from across Europe would rise \"spontaneously\" to join it, thus creating revolution across Europe. Marx and Engels protested that such an unplanned uprising on the part of the Communist League was \"adventuristic\" and would be suicide for the Communist League. Such an uprising as that recommended by the Schapper/Willich group would easily be crushed by the police and the armed forces of the reactionary governments of Europe. Marx maintained that this would spell doom for the Communist League itself, arguing that changes in society are not achieved overnight through the efforts and will power of a handful of men. They are instead brought about through a scientific analysis of economic conditions of society and by moving toward revolution through different stages of social development. In the present stage of development (circa 1850), following the defeat of the uprisings across Europe in 1848 he felt that the Communist League should encourage the working class to unite with progressive elements of the rising bourgeoisie to defeat the feudal aristocracy on issues involving demands for governmental reforms, such as a constitutional republic with freely elected assemblies and universal (male) suffrage. In other words, the working class must join with bourgeois and democratic forces to bring about the successful conclusion of the bourgeois revolution before stressing the working-class agenda and a working-class revolution.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "After a long struggle that threatened to ruin the Communist League, Marx's opinion prevailed and eventually, the Willich/Schapper group left the Communist League. Meanwhile, Marx also became heavily involved with the socialist German Workers' Educational Society. The Society held their meetings in Great Windmill Street, Soho, central London's entertainment district. This organisation was also racked by an internal struggle between its members, some of whom followed Marx while others followed the Schapper/Willich faction. The issues in this internal split were the same issues raised in the internal split within the Communist League, but Marx lost the fight with the Schapper/Willich faction within the German Workers' Educational Society and on 17 September 1850 resigned from the Society.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In the early period in London, Marx committed himself almost exclusively to his studies, such that his family endured extreme poverty. His main source of income was Engels, whose own source was his wealthy industrialist father. In Prussia as editor of his own newspaper, and contributor to others ideologically aligned, Marx could reach his audience, the working classes. In London, without finances to run a newspaper themselves, he and Engels turned to international journalism. At one stage they were being published by six newspapers from England, the United States, Prussia, Austria, and South Africa. Marx's principal earnings came from his work as European correspondent, from 1852 to 1862, for the New-York Daily Tribune, and from also producing articles for more \"bourgeois\" newspapers. Marx had his articles translated from German by Wilhelm Pieper [de], until his proficiency in English had become adequate.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The New-York Daily Tribune had been founded in April 1841 by Horace Greeley. Its editorial board contained progressive bourgeois journalists and publishers, among them George Ripley and the journalist Charles Dana, who was editor-in-chief. Dana, a fourierist and an abolitionist, was Marx's contact. The Tribune was a vehicle for Marx to reach a transatlantic public, such as for his \"hidden warfare\" against Henry Charles Carey. The journal had wide working-class appeal from its foundation; at two cents, it was inexpensive; and, with about 50,000 copies per issue, its circulation was the widest in the United States. Its editorial ethos was progressive and its anti-slavery stance reflected Greeley's. Marx's first article for the paper, on the British parliamentary elections, was published on 21 August 1852.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "On 21 March 1857, Dana informed Marx that due to the economic recession only one article a week would be paid for, published or not; the others would be paid for only if published. Marx had sent his articles on Tuesdays and Fridays, but, that October, the Tribune discharged all its correspondents in Europe except Marx and B. Taylor, and reduced Marx to a weekly article. Between September and November 1860, only five were published. After a six-month interval, Marx resumed contributions from September 1861 until March 1862, when Dana wrote to inform him that there was no longer space in the Tribune for reports from London, due to American domestic affairs. In 1868, Dana set up a rival newspaper, the New York Sun, at which he was editor-in-chief. In April 1857, Dana invited Marx to contribute articles, mainly on military history, to the New American Cyclopedia, an idea of George Ripley, Dana's friend and literary editor of the Tribune. In all, 67 Marx-Engels articles were published, of which 51 were written by Engels, although Marx did some research for them in the British Museum. By the late 1850s, American popular interest in European affairs waned and Marx's articles turned to topics such as the \"slavery crisis\" and the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 in the \"War Between the States\". Between December 1851 and March 1852, Marx worked on his theoretical work about the French Revolution of 1848, titled The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. In this he explored concepts in historical materialism, class struggle, dictatorship of the proletariat, and victory of the proletariat over the bourgeois state.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The 1850s and 1860s may be said to mark a philosophical boundary distinguishing the young Marx's Hegelian idealism and the more mature Marx's scientific ideology associated with structural Marxism. However, not all scholars accept this distinction. For Marx and Engels, their experience of the Revolutions of 1848 to 1849 were formative in the development of their theory of economics and historical progression. After the \"failures\" of 1848, the revolutionary impetus appeared spent and not to be renewed without an economic recession. Contention arose between Marx and his fellow communists, whom he denounced as \"adventurists\". Marx deemed it fanciful to propose that \"will power\" could be sufficient to create the revolutionary conditions when in reality the economic component was the necessary requisite. The recession in the United States' economy in 1852 gave Marx and Engels grounds for optimism for revolutionary activity, yet this economy was seen as too immature for a capitalist revolution. Open territories on America's western frontier dissipated the forces of social unrest. Moreover, any economic crisis arising in the United States would not lead to revolutionary contagion of the older economies of individual European nations, which were closed systems bounded by their national borders. When the so-called Panic of 1857 in the United States spread globally, it broke all economic theory models, and was the first truly global economic crisis.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Marx continued to write articles for the New York Daily Tribune as long as he was sure that the Tribune's editorial policy was still progressive. However, the departure of Charles Dana from the paper in late 1861 and the resultant change in the editorial board brought about a new editorial policy. No longer was the Tribune to be a strong abolitionist paper dedicated to a complete Union victory. The new editorial board supported an immediate peace between the Union and the Confederacy in the Civil War in the United States with slavery left intact in the Confederacy. Marx strongly disagreed with this new political position and in 1863 was forced to withdraw as a writer for the Tribune.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In 1864, Marx became involved in the International Workingmen's Association (also known as the First International), to whose General Council he was elected at its inception in 1864. In that organisation, Marx was involved in the struggle against the anarchist wing centred on Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876). Although Marx won this contest, the transfer of the seat of the General Council from London to New York in 1872, which Marx supported, led to the decline of the International. The most important political event during the existence of the International was the Paris Commune of 1871 when the citizens of Paris rebelled against their government and held the city for two months. In response to the bloody suppression of this rebellion, Marx wrote one of his most famous pamphlets, \"The Civil War in France\", a defence of the Commune.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Given the repeated failures and frustrations of workers' revolutions and movements, Marx also sought to understand and provide a critique suitable for the capitalist mode of production, and hence spent a great deal of time in the reading room of the British Museum studying. By 1857, Marx had accumulated over 800 pages of notes and short essays on capital, landed property, wage labour, the state, and foreign trade, and the world market, though this work did not appear in print until 1939, under the title Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In 1859, Marx published A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, his first serious critique of political economy. This work was intended merely as a preview of his three-volume Das Kapital (English title: Capital: Critique of Political Economy), which he intended to publish at a later date. In A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx began to critically examine axioms and categories of economic thinking. The work was enthusiastically received, and the edition sold out quickly.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The successful sales of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy stimulated Marx in the early 1860s to finish work on the three large volumes that would compose his major life's work – Das Kapital and the Theories of Surplus Value, which discussed and critiqued the theoreticians of political economy, particularly Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Theories of Surplus Value is often referred to as the fourth volume of Das Kapital and constitutes one of the first comprehensive treatises on the history of economic thought. In 1867, the first volume of Das Kapital was published, a work which critically analysed capital. Das Kapital proposes an explanation of the \"laws of motion\" of the mode of production from its origins to its future by describing the dynamics of the accumulation of capital, with topics such as the growth of wage labour, the transformation of the workplace, capital accumulation, competition, the banking system, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and land-rents, as well as how waged labour continually reproduce the rule of capital. Marx proposes that the driving force of capital is in the exploitation of labor, whose unpaid work is the ultimate source of surplus value.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Demand for a Russian language edition of Das Kapital soon led to the printing of 3,000 copies of the book in the Russian language, which was published on 27 March 1872. By the autumn of 1871, the entire first edition of the German-language edition of Das Kapital had been sold out and a second edition was published.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Volumes II and III of Das Kapital remained mere manuscripts upon which Marx continued to work for the rest of his life. Both volumes were published by Engels after Marx's death. Volume II of Das Kapital was prepared and published by Engels in July 1893 under the name Capital II: The Process of Circulation of Capital. Volume III of Das Kapital was published a year later in October 1894 under the name Capital III: The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole. Theories of Surplus Value derived from the sprawling Economic Manuscripts of 1861–1863, a second draft for Das Kapital, the latter spanning volumes 30–34 of the Collected Works of Marx and Engels. Specifically, Theories of Surplus Value runs from the latter part of the Collected Works' thirtieth volume through the end of their thirty-second volume; meanwhile, the larger Economic Manuscripts of 1861–1863 run from the start of the Collected Works' thirtieth volume through the first half of their thirty-fourth volume. The latter half of the Collected Works' thirty-fourth volume consists of the surviving fragments of the Economic Manuscripts of 1863–1864, which represented a third draft for Das Kapital, and a large portion of which is included as an appendix to the Penguin edition of Das Kapital, volume I. A German-language abridged edition of Theories of Surplus Value was published in 1905 and in 1910. This abridged edition was translated into English and published in 1951 in London, but the complete unabridged edition of Theories of Surplus Value was published as the \"fourth volume\" of Das Kapital in 1963 and 1971 in Moscow.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "During the last decade of his life, Marx's health declined, and he became incapable of the sustained effort that had characterised his previous work. He did manage to comment substantially on contemporary politics, particularly in Germany and Russia. His Critique of the Gotha Programme opposed the tendency of his followers Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel to compromise with the state socialist ideas of Ferdinand Lassalle in the interests of a united socialist party. This work is also notable for another famous Marx quote: \"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need\".",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In a letter to Vera Zasulich dated 8 March 1881, Marx contemplated the possibility of Russia's bypassing the capitalist stage of development and building communism on the basis of the common ownership of land characteristic of the village mir. While admitting that Russia's rural \"commune is the fulcrum of social regeneration in Russia\", Marx also warned that in order for the mir to operate as a means for moving straight to the socialist stage without a preceding capitalist stage it \"would first be necessary to eliminate the deleterious influences which are assailing it [the rural commune] from all sides\". Given the elimination of these pernicious influences, Marx allowed that \"normal conditions of spontaneous development\" of the rural commune could exist. However, in the same letter to Vera Zasulich he points out that \"at the core of the capitalist system ... lies the complete separation of the producer from the means of production\". In one of the drafts of this letter, Marx reveals his growing passion for anthropology, motivated by his belief that future communism would be a return on a higher level to the communism of our prehistoric past. He wrote that \"the historical trend of our age is the fatal crisis which capitalist production has undergone in the European and American countries where it has reached its highest peak, a crisis that will end in its destruction, in the return of modern society to a higher form of the most archaic type – collective production and appropriation\". He added that \"the vitality of primitive communities was incomparably greater than that of Semitic, Greek, Roman, etc. societies, and, a fortiori, that of modern capitalist societies\". Before he died, Marx asked Engels to write up these ideas, which were published in 1884 under the title The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Marx and von Westphalen had seven children together, but partly owing to the poor conditions in which they lived whilst in London, only three survived to adulthood. Their children were: Jenny Caroline (m. Longuet; 1844–1883); Jenny Laura (m. Lafargue; 1845–1911); Edgar (1847–1855); Henry Edward Guy (\"Guido\"; 1849–1850); Jenny Eveline Frances (\"Franziska\"; 1851–1852); Jenny Julia Eleanor (1855–1898) and one more who died before being named (July 1857). According to his son-in-law, Paul Lafargue, Marx was a loving father. In 1962, there were allegations that Marx fathered a son, Freddy, out of wedlock by his housekeeper, Helene Demuth, but the claim is disputed for lack of documented evidence.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Marx frequently used pseudonyms, often when renting a house or flat, apparently to make it harder for the authorities to track him down. While in Paris, he used that of \"Monsieur Ramboz\", whilst in London, he signed off his letters as \"A. Williams\". His friends referred to him as \"Moor\", owing to his dark complexion and black curly hair, while he encouraged his children to call him \"Old Nick\" and \"Charley\". He also bestowed nicknames and pseudonyms on his friends and family as well, referring to Friedrich Engels as \"General\", his housekeeper Helene as \"Lenchen\" or \"Nym\", while one of his daughters, Jennychen, was referred to as \"Qui Qui, Emperor of China\" and another, Laura, was known as \"Kakadou\" or \"the Hottentot\".",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Marx drank heavily until his death after joining the Trier Tavern Club drinking society in the 1830s.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Marx was afflicted by poor health (what he himself described as \"the wretchedness of existence\") and various authors have sought to describe and explain it. His biographer Werner Blumenberg attributed it to liver and gall problems which Marx had in 1849 and from which he was never afterward free, exacerbated by an unsuitable lifestyle. The attacks often came with headaches, eye inflammation, neuralgia in the head, and rheumatic pains. A serious nervous disorder appeared in 1877 and protracted insomnia was a consequence, which Marx fought with narcotics. The illness was aggravated by excessive nocturnal work and faulty diet. Marx was fond of highly seasoned dishes, smoked fish, caviare, pickled cucumbers, \"none of which are good for liver patients\", but he also liked wine and liqueurs and smoked an enormous amount \"and since he had no money, it was usually bad-quality cigars\". From 1863, Marx complained a lot about boils: \"These are very frequent with liver patients and may be due to the same causes\". The abscesses were so bad that Marx could neither sit nor work upright. According to Blumenberg, Marx's irritability is often found in liver patients:",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "The illness emphasised certain traits in his character. He argued cuttingly, his biting satire did not shrink at insults, and his expressions could be rude and cruel. Though in general Marx had blind faith in his closest friends, nevertheless he himself complained that he was sometimes too mistrustful and unjust even to them. His verdicts, not only about enemies but even about friends, were sometimes so harsh that even less sensitive people would take offence ... There must have been few whom he did not criticize like this ... not even Engels was an exception.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "According to Princeton historian Jerrold Seigel, in his late teens, Marx may have had pneumonia or pleurisy, the effects of which led to his being exempted from Prussian military service. In later life whilst working on Das Kapital (which he never completed), Marx suffered from a trio of afflictions. A liver ailment, probably hereditary, was aggravated by overwork, a bad diet, and lack of sleep. Inflammation of the eyes was induced by too much work at night. A third affliction, eruption of carbuncles or boils, \"was probably brought on by general physical debility to which the various features of Marx's style of life – alcohol, tobacco, poor diet, and failure to sleep – all contributed. Engels often exhorted Marx to alter this dangerous regime\". In Seigel's thesis, what lay behind this punishing sacrifice of his health may have been guilt about self-involvement and egoism, originally induced in Karl Marx by his father.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "In 2007, a retrodiagnosis of Marx's skin disease was made by dermatologist Sam Shuster of Newcastle University and for Shuster, the most probable explanation was that Marx suffered not from liver problems, but from hidradenitis suppurativa, a recurring infective condition arising from blockage of apocrine ducts opening into hair follicles. This condition, which was not described in the English medical literature until 1933 (hence would not have been known to Marx's physicians), can produce joint pain (which could be misdiagnosed as rheumatic disorder) and painful eye conditions. To arrive at his retrodiagnosis, Shuster considered the primary material: the Marx correspondence published in the 50 volumes of the Marx/Engels Collected Works. There, \"although the skin lesions were called 'furuncles', 'boils' and 'carbuncles' by Marx, his wife, and his physicians, they were too persistent, recurrent, destructive and site-specific for that diagnosis\". The sites of the persistent 'carbuncles' were noted repeatedly in the armpits, groins, perianal, genital (penis and scrotum) and suprapubic regions and inner thighs, \"favoured sites of hidradenitis suppurativa\". Professor Shuster claimed the diagnosis \"can now be made definitively\".",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Shuster went on to consider the potential psychosocial effects of the disease, noting that the skin is an organ of communication and that hidradenitis suppurativa produces much psychological distress, including loathing and disgust and depression of self-image, mood, and well-being, feelings for which Shuster found \"much evidence\" in the Marx correspondence. Professor Shuster went on to ask himself whether the mental effects of the disease affected Marx's work and even helped him to develop his theory of alienation.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Following the death of his wife Jenny in December 1881, Marx developed a catarrh that kept him in ill health for the last 15 months of his life. It eventually brought on the bronchitis and pleurisy that killed him in London on 14 March 1883, when he died a stateless person at age 64. Family and friends in London buried his body in Highgate Cemetery (East), London, on 17 March 1883 in an area reserved for agnostics and atheists (George Eliot's grave is nearby). According to Francis Wheen, there were between nine and eleven mourners at his funeral; however, research from contemporary sources identifies thirteen named individuals attending the funeral: Friedrich Engels, Eleanor Marx, Edward Aveling, Paul Lafargue, Charles Longuet, Helene Demuth, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Gottlieb Lemke, Frederick Lessner, G Lochner, Sir Ray Lankester, Carl Schorlemmer and Ernest Radford. A contemporary newspaper account claims that twenty-five to thirty relatives and friends attended the funeral. A writer in The Graphic noted: 'By a strange blunder ... his death was not announced for two days, and then as having taken place at Paris. The next day the correction came from Paris; and when his friends and followers hastened to his house in Haverstock Hill, to learn the time and place of burial, they learned that he was already in the cold ground. But for this secresy [sic] and haste, a great popular demonstration would undoubtedly have been held over his grave'.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Several of his closest friends spoke at his funeral, including Wilhelm Liebknecht and Friedrich Engels. Engels' speech included the passage:",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "On the 14th of March, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest living thinker ceased to think. He had been left alone for scarcely two minutes, and when we came back we found him in his armchair, peacefully gone to sleep – but forever.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Marx's surviving daughters Eleanor and Laura, as well as Charles Longuet and Paul Lafargue, Marx's two French socialist sons-in-law, were also in attendance. He had been predeceased by his wife and his eldest daughter, the latter dying a few months earlier in January 1883. Liebknecht, a founder and leader of the German Social Democratic Party, gave a speech in German, and Longuet, a prominent figure in the French working-class movement, made a short statement in French. Two telegrams from workers' parties in France and Spain were also read out. Together with Engels's speech, this constituted the entire programme of the funeral. Non-relatives attending the funeral included three communist associates of Marx: Friedrich Lessner, imprisoned for three years after the Cologne Communist Trial of 1852; G. Lochner, whom Engels described as \"an old member of the Communist League\"; and Carl Schorlemmer, a professor of chemistry in Manchester, a member of the Royal Society, and a communist activist involved in the 1848 Baden revolution. Another attendee of the funeral was Ray Lankester, a British zoologist who would later become a prominent academic.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Marx left a personal estate valued for probate at £250 (equivalent to £26,788 in 2021). Upon his own death in 1895, Engels left Marx's two surviving daughters a \"significant portion\" of his considerable estate (valued in 2011 at US$4.8 million).",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Marx and his family were reburied on a new site nearby in November 1954. The tomb at the new site, unveiled on 14 March 1956, bears the carved message: \"Workers of All Lands Unite\", the final line of The Communist Manifesto; and, from the 11th \"Thesis on Feuerbach\" (as edited by Engels), \"The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways—the point however is to change it\". The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) had the monument with a portrait bust by Laurence Bradshaw erected and Marx's original tomb had only humble adornment. Black civil rights leader and CPGB activist Claudia Jones was later buried beside Karl Marx's tomb.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "The Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm remarked: \"One cannot say Marx died a failure.\" Although he had not achieved a large following of disciples in Britain, his writings had already begun to make an impact on the left-wing movements in Germany and Russia. Within twenty-five years of his death, the continental European socialist parties that acknowledged Marx's influence on their politics had contributed to significant gains in their representative democratic elections.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Marx's thought demonstrates influence from many sources, including but not limited to:",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Marx's view of history, which came to be called historical materialism (controversially adapted as the philosophy of dialectical materialism by Engels and Lenin), certainly shows the influence of Hegel's claim that one should view reality (and history) dialectically. However, whereas Hegel had thought in idealist terms, putting ideas in the forefront, Marx sought to conceptualize dialectics in materialist terms, arguing for the primacy of matter over idea. Where Hegel saw the \"spirit\" as driving history, Marx saw this as an unnecessary mystification, obscuring the reality of humanity and its physical actions shaping the world. He wrote that Hegelianism stood the movement of reality on its head, and that one needed to set it upon its feet. Despite his dislike of mystical terms, Marx used Gothic language in several of his works: in The Communist Manifesto he proclaims \"A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre\", and in The Capital he refers to capital as \"necromancy that surrounds the products of labour\".",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Though inspired by French socialist and sociological thought, Marx criticised utopian socialists, arguing that their favoured small-scale socialistic communities would be bound to marginalisation and poverty and that only a large-scale change in the economic system could bring about real change.",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Other important contributions to Marx's revision of Hegelianism came from Engels's book, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, which led Marx to conceive of the historical dialectic in terms of class conflict and to see the modern working class as the most progressive force for revolution, as well as from the social democrat Friedrich Wilhelm Schulz, who in Die Bewegung der Produktion described the movement of society as \"flowing from the contradiction between the forces of production and the mode of production.\"",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Marx believed that he could study history and society scientifically, discerning tendencies of history and thereby predicting the outcome of social conflicts. Some followers of Marx, therefore, concluded that a communist revolution would inevitably occur. However, Marx famously asserted in the eleventh of his \"Theses on Feuerbach\" that \"philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point however is to change it\" and he clearly dedicated himself to trying to alter the world.",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Marx's theories inspired several theories and disciplines of future, including but not limited to:",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Marx's polemic with other thinkers often occurred through critique and thus he has been called \"the first great user of critical method in social sciences\". He criticised speculative philosophy, equating metaphysics with ideology. By adopting this approach, Marx attempted to separate key findings from ideological biases. This set him apart from many contemporary philosophers.",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Like Tocqueville, who described a faceless and bureaucratic despotism with no identifiable despot, Marx also broke with classical thinkers who spoke of a single tyrant and with Montesquieu, who discussed the nature of the single despot. Instead, Marx set out to analyse \"the despotism of capital\". Fundamentally, Marx assumed that human history involves transforming human nature, which encompasses both human beings and material objects. Humans recognise that they possess both actual and potential selves. For both Marx and Hegel, self-development begins with an experience of internal alienation stemming from this recognition, followed by a realisation that the actual self, as a subjective agent, renders its potential counterpart an object to be apprehended. Marx further argues that by moulding nature in desired ways the subject takes the object as its own and thus permits the individual to be actualised as fully human. For Marx, the human nature – Gattungswesen, or species-being – exists as a function of human labour. Fundamental to Marx's idea of meaningful labour is the proposition that for a subject to come to terms with its alienated object it must first exert influence upon literal, material objects in the subject's world. Marx acknowledges that Hegel \"grasps the nature of work and comprehends objective man, authentic because actual, as the result of his own work\", but characterises Hegelian self-development as unduly \"spiritual\" and abstract. Marx thus departs from Hegel by insisting that \"the fact that man is a corporeal, actual, sentient, objective being with natural capacities means that he has actual, sensuous objects for his nature as objects of his life-expression, or that he can only express his life in actual sensuous objects\". Consequently, Marx revises Hegelian \"work\" into material \"labour\" and in the context of human capacity to transform nature the term \"labour power\".",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Marx had a special concern with how people relate to their own labour power. He wrote extensively about this in terms of the problem of alienation. As with the dialectic, Marx began with a Hegelian notion of alienation but developed a more materialist conception. Capitalism mediates social relationships of production (such as among workers or between workers and capitalists) through commodities, including labour, that are bought and sold on the market. For Marx, the possibility that one may give up ownership of one's own labour – one's capacity to transform the world – is tantamount to being alienated from one's own nature and it is a spiritual loss. Marx described this loss as commodity fetishism, in which the things that people produce, commodities, appear to have a life and movement of their own to which humans and their behaviour merely adapt.",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Commodity fetishism provides an example of what Engels called \"false consciousness\", which relates closely to the understanding of ideology. By \"ideology\", Marx and Engels meant ideas that reflect the interests of a particular class at a particular time in history, but which contemporaries see as universal and eternal. Marx and Engels's point was not only that such beliefs are at best half-truths, as they serve an important political function. Put another way, the control that one class exercises over the means of production include not only the production of food or manufactured goods but also the production of ideas (this provides one possible explanation for why members of a subordinate class may hold ideas contrary to their own interests). An example of this sort of analysis is Marx's understanding of religion, summed up in a passage from the preface to his 1843 Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right:",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Whereas his Gymnasium senior thesis at the Gymnasium zu Trier [de] argued that religion had as its primary social aim the promotion of solidarity, here Marx sees the social function of religion in terms of highlighting/preserving political and economic status quo and inequality.",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Marx was an outspoken opponent of child labour, saying that British industries \"could but live by sucking blood, and children's blood too\", and that U.S. capital was financed by the \"capitalized blood of children\".",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the whole bourgeoisie in chorus. The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the means of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion than that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women. He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere mean of production.",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "—Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Marx's thoughts on labour and its function in reproducing capital were related to the primacy he gave to social relations in determining the society's past, present and future. (Critics have called this economic determinism.) Labour is the precondition for the existence of, and accumulation of capital, which both shape the social system. For Marx, social change was driven by conflict between opposing interests, by parties situated in the historical situation of their mode of production. This became the inspiration for the body of works known as the conflict theory. In his evolutionary model of history, he argued that human history began with free, productive and creative activities that was over time coerced and dehumanised, a trend most apparent under capitalism. Marx noted that this was not an intentional process, but rather due to the immanent logic of the current mode of production which demands more human labour (abstract labour) to reproduce the social relationships of capital.",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "The organisation of society depends on means of production. The means of production are all things required to produce material goods, such as land, natural resources, and technology but not human labour. The relations of production are the social relationships people enter into as they acquire and use the means of production. Together, these compose the mode of production and Marx distinguished historical eras in terms of modes of production. Marx differentiated between base and superstructure, where the base (or substructure) is the economic system and superstructure is the cultural and political system. Marx regarded this mismatch between economic base and social superstructure as a major source of social disruption and conflict.",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Despite Marx's stress on the critique of capitalism and discussion of the new communist society that should replace it, his explicit critique is guarded, as he saw it as an improved society compared to the past ones (slavery and feudalism). Marx never clearly discusses issues of morality and justice, but scholars agree that his work contained implicit discussion of those concepts.",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Marx's view of capitalism was two-sided. On one hand, in the 19th century's deepest critique of the dehumanising aspects of this system he noted that defining features of capitalism include alienation, exploitation and recurring, cyclical depressions leading to mass unemployment. On the other hand, he characterised capitalism as \"revolutionising, industrialising and universalising qualities of development, growth and progressivity\" (by which Marx meant industrialisation, urbanisation, technological progress, increased productivity and growth, rationality, and scientific revolution) that are responsible for progress, at in contrast to earlier forms of societies. Marx considered the capitalist class to be one of the most revolutionary in history because it constantly improved the means of production, more so than any other class in history and was responsible for the overthrow of feudalism. Capitalism can stimulate considerable growth because the capitalist has an incentive to reinvest profits in new technologies and capital equipment.",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "According to Marx, capitalists take advantage of the difference between the labour market and the market for whatever commodity the capitalist can produce. Marx observed that in practically every successful industry, input unit-costs are lower than output unit-prices. Marx called the difference \"surplus value\" and argued that it was based on surplus labour, the difference between what it costs to keep workers alive, and what they can produce. Although Marx describes capitalists as vampires sucking worker's blood, he notes that drawing profit is \"by no means an injustice\" since Marx, according to Allen W. Wood \"excludes any trans-epochal standpoint from which one can comment\" on the morals of such particular arrangements. Marx also noted that even the capitalists themselves cannot go against the system. The problem is the \"cancerous cell\" of capital, understood not as property or equipment, but the social relations between workers and owners, (the selling and purchasing of labour power) – the societal system, or rather mode of production, in general.",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "At the same time, Marx stressed that capitalism was unstable and prone to periodic crises. He suggested that over time capitalists would invest more and more in new technologies and less and less in labour. Since Marx believed that profit derived from surplus value appropriated from labour, he concluded that the rate of profit would fall as the economy grows. Marx believed that increasingly severe crises would punctuate this cycle of growth and collapse. Moreover, he believed that in the long-term, this process would enrich and empower the capitalist class and impoverish the proletariat. In section one of The Communist Manifesto, Marx describes feudalism, capitalism and the role internal social contradictions play in the historical process:",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged ... the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder. Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted in it, and the economic and political sway of the bourgeois class. A similar movement is going on before our own eyes ... The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring order into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property.",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Marx believed that those structural contradictions within capitalism necessitate its end, giving way to socialism, or a post-capitalistic, communist society:",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "The development of modern industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Thanks to various processes overseen by capitalism, such as urbanisation, the working class, the proletariat, should grow in numbers and develop class consciousness, in time realising that they can and must change the system. Marx believed that if the proletariat were to seize the means of production, they would encourage social relations that would benefit everyone equally, abolishing the exploiting class and introducing a system of production less vulnerable to cyclical crises. Marx argued in The German Ideology that capitalism will end through the organised actions of an international working class:",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality will have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "In this new society, the alienation would end and humans would be free to act without being bound by selling their labour. It would be a democratic society, enfranchising the entire population. In such a utopian world, there would also be little need for a state, whose goal was previously to enforce the alienation. Marx theorised that between capitalism and the establishment of a socialist/communist system, would exist a period of dictatorship of the proletariat – where the working class holds political power and forcibly socialises the means of production. As he wrote in his Critique of the Gotha Program, \"between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat\". While he allowed for the possibility of peaceful transition in some countries with strong democratic institutional structures (such as Britain, the United States, and the Netherlands), he suggested that in other countries in which workers cannot \"attain their goal by peaceful means\" the \"lever of our revolution must be force\".",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Marx viewed Russia as the main counter-revolutionary threat to European revolutions. During the Crimean War, Marx backed the Ottoman Empire and its allies Britain and France against Russia. He was absolutely opposed to Pan-Slavism, viewing it as an instrument of Russian foreign policy. Marx had considered the Slavic nations except Poles as 'counter-revolutionary'. Marx and Engels published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in February 1849:",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "To the sentimental phrases about brotherhood which we are being offered here on behalf of the most counter-revolutionary nations of Europe, we reply that hatred of Russians was and still is the primary revolutionary passion among Germans; that since the revolution [of 1848] hatred of Czechs and Croats has been added, and that only by the most determined use of terror against these Slav peoples can we, jointly with the Poles and Magyars, safeguard the revolution. We know where the enemies of the revolution are concentrated, viz. in Russia and the Slav regions of Austria, and no fine phrases, no allusions to an undefined democratic future for these countries can deter us from treating our enemies as enemies. Then there will be a struggle, an \"inexorable life-and-death struggle\", against those Slavs who betray the revolution; an annihilating fight and ruthless terror – not in the interests of Germany, but in the interests of the revolution!\"",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Marx and Engels sympathised with the Narodnik revolutionaries of the 1860s and 1870s. When the Russian revolutionaries assassinated Tsar Alexander II of Russia, Marx expressed the hope that the assassination foreshadowed 'the formation of a Russian commune'. Marx supported the Polish uprisings against tsarist Russia. He said in a speech in London in 1867:",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "In the first place the policy of Russia is changeless... Its methods, its tactics, its manoeuvres may change, but the polar star of its policy – world domination – is a fixed star. In our times only a civilised government ruling over barbarian masses can hatch out such a plan and execute it. ... There is but one alternative for Europe. Either Asiatic barbarism, under Muscovite direction, will burst around its head like an avalanche, or else it must re-establish Poland, thus putting twenty million heroes between itself and Asia and gaining a breathing spell for the accomplishment of its social regeneration.",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Marx supported the cause of Irish independence. In 1867, he wrote Engels: \"I used to think the separation of Ireland from England impossible. I now think it inevitable. The English working class will never accomplish anything until it has got rid of Ireland. ... English reaction in England had its roots ... in the subjugation of Ireland.\"",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Marx spent some time in French Algeria, which had been invaded and made a French colony in 1830, and had the opportunity to observe life in colonial North Africa. He wrote about the colonial justice system, in which \"a form of torture has been used (and this happens 'regularly') to extract confessions from the Arabs; naturally it is done (like the English in India) by the 'police'; the judge is supposed to know nothing at all about it.\" Marx was surprised by the arrogance of many European settlers in Algiers and wrote in a letter: \"when a European colonist dwells among the 'lesser breeds,' either as a settler or even on business, he generally regards himself as even more inviolable than handsome William I [a Prussian king]. Still, when it comes to bare-faced arrogance and presumptuousness vis-à-vis the 'lesser breeds,' the British and Dutch outdo the French.\"",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: \"Marx's analysis of colonialism as a progressive force bringing modernization to a backward feudal society sounds like a transparent rationalization for foreign domination. His account of British domination, however, reflects the same ambivalence that he shows towards capitalism in Europe. In both cases, Marx recognizes the immense suffering brought about during the transition from feudal to bourgeois society while insisting that the transition is both necessary and ultimately progressive. He argues that the penetration of foreign commerce will cause a social revolution in India.\"",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Marx discussed British colonial rule in India in the New York Herald Tribune in June 1853:",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "There cannot remain any doubt but that the misery inflicted by the British on Hindostan [India] is of an essentially different and infinitely more intensive kind than all Hindostan had to suffer before. England has broken down the entire framework of Indian society, without any symptoms of reconstitution yet appearing... [however], we must not forget that these idyllic village communities, inoffensive though they may appear, had always been the solid foundation of Oriental despotism, that they restrained the human mind within the smallest possible compass, making it the unresisting tool of superstition.",
"title": "Thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Marx's ideas have had a profound impact on world politics and intellectual thought, in particular in the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution. Followers of Marx have often debated among themselves over how to interpret Marx's writings and apply his concepts to the modern world. The legacy of Marx's thought has become contested between numerous tendencies, each of which sees itself as Marx's most accurate interpreter. In the political realm, these tendencies include political theories such as Leninism, Marxism–Leninism, Trotskyism, Maoism, Luxemburgism, libertarian Marxism, and Open Marxism. Various currents have also developed in academic Marxism, often under influence of other views, resulting in structuralist Marxism, historical materialism, phenomenological Marxism, analytical Marxism, and Hegelian Marxism.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "From an academic perspective, Marx's work contributed to the birth of modern sociology. He has been cited as one of the 19th century's three masters of the \"school of suspicion\", alongside Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud, and as one of the three principal architects of modern social science along with Émile Durkheim and Max Weber. In contrast to other philosophers, Marx offered theories that could often be tested with the scientific method. Both Marx and Auguste Comte set out to develop scientifically justified ideologies in the wake of European secularisation and new developments in the philosophies of history and science. Working in the Hegelian tradition, Marx rejected Comtean sociological positivism in an attempt to develop a science of society. Karl Löwith considered Marx and Søren Kierkegaard to be the two greatest philosophical successors of Hegel. In modern sociological theory, Marxist sociology is recognised as one of the main classical perspectives. Isaiah Berlin considers Marx the true founder of modern sociology \"in so far as anyone can claim the title\". Beyond social science, he has also had a lasting legacy in philosophy, literature, the arts, and the humanities.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "Social theorists of the 20th and 21st centuries have pursued two main strategies in response to Marx. One move has been to reduce it to its analytical core, known as analytical Marxism. Another, more common move has been to dilute the explanatory claims of Marx's social theory and emphasise the \"relative autonomy\" of aspects of social and economic life not directly related to Marx's central narrative of interaction between the development of the \"forces of production\" and the succession of \"modes of production\". This has been the neo-Marxist theorising adopted by historians inspired by Marx's social theory such as E. P. Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm. It has also been a line of thinking pursued by thinkers and activists such as Antonio Gramsci who have sought to understand the opportunities and the difficulties of transformative political practice, seen in the light of Marxist social theory. Marx's ideas would also have a profound influence on subsequent artists and art history, with avant-garde movements across literature, visual art, music, film, and theatre.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "Politically, Marx's legacy is more complex. Throughout the 20th century, revolutions in dozens of countries labelled themselves \"Marxist\"—most notably the Russian Revolution, which led to the founding of the Soviet Union. Major world leaders including Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, Salvador Allende, Josip Broz Tito, Kwame Nkrumah, Jawaharlal Nehru, Nelson Mandela, Xi Jinping and Thomas Sankara have all cited Marx as an influence. Beyond where Marxist revolutions took place, Marx's ideas have informed political parties worldwide. In countries associated with Marxism, some events have led political opponents to blame Marx for millions of deaths, while others argue for a distinction between the legacy and influence of Marx specifically, and the legacy and influence of those who have shaped his ideas for political purposes. Arthur Lipow describes Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels as \"the founders of modern revolutionary democratic socialism.\"",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "The cities of Marks, Russia and Karl-Marx-Stadt, Germany (now known as Chemnitz) were named after Marx.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "In May 2018, to mark the bicentenary of his birth, a 4.5m statue of him by leading Chinese sculptor Wu Weishan and donated by the Chinese government was unveiled in his birthplace of Trier, Germany. The then-European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker defended Marx's memory, saying that today Marx \"stands for things which he is not responsible for and which he didn't cause because many of the things he wrote down were redrafted into the opposite\".",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "In 2017, a feature film, titled The Young Karl Marx, featuring Marx, his wife Jenny Marx, and Engels, among other revolutionaries and intellectuals prior to the Revolutions of 1848, received good reviews for both its historical accuracy and its brio in dealing with intellectual life. Another fictional representation to coincide with the bicentenary was Jason Barker's novel Marx Returns which, despite being \"[c]urious, funny, perplexing, and irreverent\", according to philosopher Ray Brassier \"casts unexpected light on Marx's thought.\"",
"title": "Legacy"
}
] |
Karl Marx was a German-born philosopher, economist, political theorist, historian, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His best-known works are the 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto and the three-volume Das Kapital (1867–1894); the latter employs his critical approach of historical materialism in an analysis of capitalism and represents his greatest intellectual achievement. Marx's ideas and theories and their subsequent development, collectively known as Marxism, have exerted enormous influence on modern intellectual, economic and political history. Born in Trier in the Kingdom of Prussia, German Confederation, Marx studied at the universities of Bonn, Berlin, and Jena, and received a doctorate in philosophy from the latter in 1841. A Young Hegelian, he was influenced by the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and both critiqued and developed Hegel's ideas in works such as The German Ideology and the Grundrisse. While in Paris in 1844, Marx wrote his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts and met Engels, a lifelong friend and collaborator. After moving to Brussels in 1845, they were active in the Communist League, and in 1848 wrote The Communist Manifesto, which expresses Marx's ideas and lays out a programme for revolution. Marx was expelled from Belgium and Germany, and in 1849 moved to London, where he wrote The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852) and Das Kapital. In 1864, Marx helped found the International Workingmen's Association, in which he sought to fight the influence of anarchists led by Mikhail Bakunin. In his Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875), Marx wrote on revolution, the state and the transition to communism. He died stateless in 1883 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery. Marx's critiques of history, society and political economy hold that human societies develop through class conflict. In the capitalist mode of production, this manifests itself in the conflict between the ruling classes that control the means of production and the working classes that enable these means by selling their labour power in return for wages. Employing his historical materialist approach, Marx predicted that capitalism produced internal tensions like previous socioeconomic systems and that these tensions would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by a new system known as the socialist mode of production. For Marx, class antagonisms under capitalism—owing in part to its instability and crisis-prone nature—would eventuate the working class's development of class consciousness, leading to their conquest of political power and eventually the establishment of a classless, communist society constituted by a free association of producers. Marx actively pressed for its implementation, arguing that the working class should carry out organised proletarian revolutionary action to topple capitalism and bring about socio-economic emancipation. Marx has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history, and his work has been both lauded and criticised. Marxism has exerted major influence on socialist thought and political movements, and during the 20th century revolutionary governments identifying as Marxist took power in many countries and established socialist states including the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. A number of theoretical variants such as Leninism, Marxism–Leninism, Trotskyism, and Maoism have been developed. Marx's work in economics has a strong influence on modern heterodox theories of labour and its relation to capital, and he is typically cited as one of the principal architects of modern social science.
|
2001-09-24T20:53:00Z
|
2023-12-25T23:17:53Z
|
[
"Template:IPA-de",
"Template:What",
"Template:See also",
"Template:Cbignore",
"Template:Rp",
"Template:Which",
"Template:Inflation-year",
"Template:Inflation-fn",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Div col",
"Template:Redirect",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Subscription required",
"Template:Cite SEP",
"Template:Doi",
"Template:Dead link",
"Template:Cite ODNB",
"Template:Div col end",
"Template:Lang-de",
"Template:Em",
"Template:Quote box",
"Template:Cite encyclopedia",
"Template:Infobox person",
"Template:R",
"Template:Refend",
"Template:Marxists.org",
"Template:Interlanguage link multi",
"Template:Blockquote",
"Template:Cite speech",
"Template:Navboxes",
"Template:Lang",
"Template:Multiple image",
"Template:Clear",
"Template:Librivox author",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Marxism",
"Template:Sfn",
"Template:Mdash",
"Template:Further",
"Template:Sister project links",
"Template:Internet Archive author",
"Template:Cols",
"Template:Karl Marx",
"Template:'",
"Template:Harvnb",
"Template:Use British English",
"Template:Cite magazine",
"Template:ISBN",
"Template:Gutenberg author",
"Template:Portal bar",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Pp-vandalism",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Notelist",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Good article",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Colend",
"Template:Refbegin",
"Template:Cite thesis",
"Template:PM20"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx
|
16,744 |
Keno
|
Keno /kiːnoʊ/ is a lottery-like gambling game often played at modern casinos, and also offered as a game in some lotteries.
Players wager by choosing numbers ranging from 1 through (usually) 80. After all players make their wagers, 20 numbers (some variants draw fewer numbers) are drawn at random, either with a ball machine similar to ones used for lotteries and bingo, or with a random number generator.
Each casino sets its own series of payouts, called "paytables". The player is paid based on how many numbers were chosen (either player selection, or the terminal picking the numbers), the number of matches out of those chosen, and the wager.
There are a wide variety of keno paytables depending on the casino, usually with a larger "house edge" than other games, ranging from less than 4 percent to over 35 percent in online play, and 20-40% in in-person casinos. By way of comparison, the typical house edge for non-slot casino games is under 5%.
The word "keno" has French or Latin roots (Fr. quine "five winning numbers", L. quini "five each"), but by all accounts the game originated in China. Legend has it that the invention of the game saved an ancient city in time of war, and its widespread popularity helped raise funds to build the Great Wall of China. In modern China, the idea of using lotteries to fund a public institution was not accepted before the late 19th century.
Chinese lottery is not documented before 1847, when the Portuguese government of Macao decided to grant a licence to lottery operators. According to some, results of keno games in great cities were sent to outlying villages and hamlets by carrier pigeons, resulting in its Chinese name 白鸽票 báigē piào, with the literal reading "white dove tickets" in Mandarin, but in Southern varieties of Chinese spoken in Guangdong simply meaning "pigeon tickets", and pronounced baak-gaap-piu in Cantonese (on which the Western spelling 'pak-ah-pu' / 'pakapoo' was based).
The Chinese played the game using sheets printed with Chinese characters, often the first 80 characters of the Thousand Character Classic, from which the winning characters were selected. Eventually, Chinese immigrants introduced keno to the West when they sailed across the Pacific Ocean to work on construction of the First transcontinental railroad in the 19th century, where the name was Westernized into boc hop bu and puck-apu. There were also other, earlier games called Keno, but these were played in the same way as the game now known as "Bingo", not the modern game of Keno (for example, see an example from 1866 in Houston, Texas ).
Keno payouts are based on how many numbers the player chooses and how many of those numbers are "hit", multiplied by the proportion of the player's original wager to the "base rate" of the paytable. Typically, the more numbers a player chooses and the more numbers hit, the greater the payout, although some paytables pay for hitting a lesser number of spots. For example, it is not uncommon to see casinos paying $500 or even $1,000 for a “catch” of 0 out of 20 on a 20 spot ticket with a $5.00 wager. Payouts vary widely by casino. Most casinos allow paytable wagers of 1 through 20 numbers, but some limit the choice to only 1 through 10, 12 and 15 numbers, or "spots" as keno aficionados call the numbers selected.
The probability of a player hitting all 20 numbers on a 20 spot ticket is approximately 1 in 3.5 quintillion (1 in 3,535,316,142,212,174,320).
Even though it is highly improbable to hit all 20 numbers on a 20 spot ticket, the same player would typically also get paid for hitting “catches” 0, 1, 2, 3, and 7 through 19 out of 20, often with the 17 through 19 catches paying the same as the solid 20 hit. Some of the other paying "catches" on a 20 spot ticket or any other ticket with high "solid catch" odds are in reality very possible to hit:
Probabilities change significantly based on the number of spots and numbers that are picked on each ticket.
Keno probabilities come from a hypergeometric distribution. For Keno, one calculates the probability of hitting exactly r {\displaystyle r} spots on an n {\displaystyle n} -spot ticket by the formula:
To calculate the probability of hitting 4 spots on a 6-spot ticket, the formula is:
where ( n r ) {\displaystyle {n \choose r}} is calculated as n ! r ! ( n − r ) ! {\displaystyle n! \over r!(n-r)!} , where X! is notation for X factorial. Spreadsheets have the function COMBIN(n,r) to calculate ( n r ) {\displaystyle {n \choose r}} .
To calculate "odds-to-1", divide the probability into 1.0 and subtract 1 from the result.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Keno /kiːnoʊ/ is a lottery-like gambling game often played at modern casinos, and also offered as a game in some lotteries.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Players wager by choosing numbers ranging from 1 through (usually) 80. After all players make their wagers, 20 numbers (some variants draw fewer numbers) are drawn at random, either with a ball machine similar to ones used for lotteries and bingo, or with a random number generator.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Each casino sets its own series of payouts, called \"paytables\". The player is paid based on how many numbers were chosen (either player selection, or the terminal picking the numbers), the number of matches out of those chosen, and the wager.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "There are a wide variety of keno paytables depending on the casino, usually with a larger \"house edge\" than other games, ranging from less than 4 percent to over 35 percent in online play, and 20-40% in in-person casinos. By way of comparison, the typical house edge for non-slot casino games is under 5%.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The word \"keno\" has French or Latin roots (Fr. quine \"five winning numbers\", L. quini \"five each\"), but by all accounts the game originated in China. Legend has it that the invention of the game saved an ancient city in time of war, and its widespread popularity helped raise funds to build the Great Wall of China. In modern China, the idea of using lotteries to fund a public institution was not accepted before the late 19th century.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Chinese lottery is not documented before 1847, when the Portuguese government of Macao decided to grant a licence to lottery operators. According to some, results of keno games in great cities were sent to outlying villages and hamlets by carrier pigeons, resulting in its Chinese name 白鸽票 báigē piào, with the literal reading \"white dove tickets\" in Mandarin, but in Southern varieties of Chinese spoken in Guangdong simply meaning \"pigeon tickets\", and pronounced baak-gaap-piu in Cantonese (on which the Western spelling 'pak-ah-pu' / 'pakapoo' was based).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The Chinese played the game using sheets printed with Chinese characters, often the first 80 characters of the Thousand Character Classic, from which the winning characters were selected. Eventually, Chinese immigrants introduced keno to the West when they sailed across the Pacific Ocean to work on construction of the First transcontinental railroad in the 19th century, where the name was Westernized into boc hop bu and puck-apu. There were also other, earlier games called Keno, but these were played in the same way as the game now known as \"Bingo\", not the modern game of Keno (for example, see an example from 1866 in Houston, Texas ).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Keno payouts are based on how many numbers the player chooses and how many of those numbers are \"hit\", multiplied by the proportion of the player's original wager to the \"base rate\" of the paytable. Typically, the more numbers a player chooses and the more numbers hit, the greater the payout, although some paytables pay for hitting a lesser number of spots. For example, it is not uncommon to see casinos paying $500 or even $1,000 for a “catch” of 0 out of 20 on a 20 spot ticket with a $5.00 wager. Payouts vary widely by casino. Most casinos allow paytable wagers of 1 through 20 numbers, but some limit the choice to only 1 through 10, 12 and 15 numbers, or \"spots\" as keno aficionados call the numbers selected.",
"title": "Probabilities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The probability of a player hitting all 20 numbers on a 20 spot ticket is approximately 1 in 3.5 quintillion (1 in 3,535,316,142,212,174,320).",
"title": "Probabilities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Even though it is highly improbable to hit all 20 numbers on a 20 spot ticket, the same player would typically also get paid for hitting “catches” 0, 1, 2, 3, and 7 through 19 out of 20, often with the 17 through 19 catches paying the same as the solid 20 hit. Some of the other paying \"catches\" on a 20 spot ticket or any other ticket with high \"solid catch\" odds are in reality very possible to hit:",
"title": "Probabilities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Probabilities change significantly based on the number of spots and numbers that are picked on each ticket.",
"title": "Probabilities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Keno probabilities come from a hypergeometric distribution. For Keno, one calculates the probability of hitting exactly r {\\displaystyle r} spots on an n {\\displaystyle n} -spot ticket by the formula:",
"title": "Probabilities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "To calculate the probability of hitting 4 spots on a 6-spot ticket, the formula is:",
"title": "Probabilities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "where ( n r ) {\\displaystyle {n \\choose r}} is calculated as n ! r ! ( n − r ) ! {\\displaystyle n! \\over r!(n-r)!} , where X! is notation for X factorial. Spreadsheets have the function COMBIN(n,r) to calculate ( n r ) {\\displaystyle {n \\choose r}} .",
"title": "Probabilities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "To calculate \"odds-to-1\", divide the probability into 1.0 and subtract 1 from the result.",
"title": "Probabilities"
}
] |
Keno is a lottery-like gambling game often played at modern casinos, and also offered as a game in some lotteries. Players wager by choosing numbers ranging from 1 through (usually) 80. After all players make their wagers, 20 numbers are drawn at random, either with a ball machine similar to ones used for lotteries and bingo, or with a random number generator. Each casino sets its own series of payouts, called "paytables". The player is paid based on how many numbers were chosen, the number of matches out of those chosen, and the wager. There are a wide variety of keno paytables depending on the casino, usually with a larger "house edge" than other games, ranging from less than 4 percent to over 35 percent in online play, and 20-40% in in-person casinos. By way of comparison, the typical house edge for non-slot casino games is under 5%.
|
2001-07-12T01:44:58Z
|
2023-12-21T09:40:38Z
|
[
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Other uses",
"Template:IPAc-en",
"Template:See also",
"Template:Code",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Gambling"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keno
|
16,745 |
Kenyanthropus
|
Kenyanthropus is a hominin genus identified from the Lomekwi site by Lake Turkana, Kenya, dated to 3.3 to 3.2 million years ago during the Middle Pliocene. It contains one species, K. platyops, but may also include the 2 million year old Homo rudolfensis, or K. rudolfensis. Before its naming in 2001, Australopithecus afarensis was widely regarded as the only australopithecine to exist during the Middle Pliocene, but Kenyanthropus evinces a greater diversity than once acknowledged. Kenyanthropus is most recognisable by an unusually flat face and small teeth for such an early hominin, with values on the extremes or beyond the range of variation for australopithecines in regard to these features. Multiple australopithecine species may have coexisted by foraging for different food items (niche partitioning), which may be reason why these apes anatomically differ in features related to chewing.
The Lomekwi site also yielded the earliest stone tool industry, the Lomekwian, characterised by the rudimentary production of simple flakes by pounding a core against an anvil or with a hammerstone. It may have been manufactured by Kenyanthropus, but it is unclear if multiple species were present at the site or not. The knappers were using volcanic rocks collected no more than 100 m (330 ft) from the site. Kenyanthropus seems to have lived on a lakeside or floodplain environment featuring forests and grasslands.
In August 1998, field technician Blasto Onyango discovered a hominin partial left maxilla (upper jaw), specimen KNM-WT 38350, on the Kenyan Lomekwi dig site by Lake Turkana, overseen by prominent paleoanthropologists Louise and Meave Leakey. In August 1999 at the Lomewki site, research assistant Justus Erus discovered an uncharacteristically flat-faced australopithecine skull, specimen KNM-WT 40000. The 1998–1999 field season subsequently uncovered 34 more craniodental hominin specimens, but the research team was unable to determine if these can be placed into the same species as the former two specimens (that is, if multiple species were present at the site).
The specimens were recovered near the Nabetili tributary of the Lomekwi river in a mudstone layer of the Nachukui Formation. KNM-WT 40000 was recovered from the Kataboi Member, 8 m (26 ft) below the 3.4 million year old Tulu Bor Tuff, and 12 m (39 ft) above the 3.57 million year old Lokochot Tuff. By linear interpolation, KNM-WT 40000 is approximately 3.5 million years old, dating back to the Middle Pliocene. Only three more specimens were recovered from the Kataboi Member at around the same level, the deepest KNM-WT 38341 probably sitting on 3.53 million year old sediments. KNM-WT 38350 was recovered from the Lomekwi Member 17 m (56 ft) above Tulu Bor, and is approximately 3.3 million years old. The other specimens from this member sit 16 to 24 m (52 to 79 ft) above Tulu Bor, roughly 3.3 million years old as well. The highest specimens—KNM-WT 38344, -55, and -56—may be around 3.2 million years old.
In 2001, Meave Leakey and colleagues assigned the Lomekwi remains to a new genus and species, Kenyanthropus platyops, with KNM-WT 40000 the holotype, and KNM-WT 38350 a paratype. The genus name honours Kenya where Lomekwi and a slew of other major human-ancestor sites have been identified. The species name derives from Ancient Greek platus "flat" and opsis "face" in reference to the unusually flat face for such an early hominin.
The classification of early hominins with their widely varying anatomy has been a difficult subject matter. The 20th century generated an overabundance of hominin genera plunging the field into taxonomic turmoil, until German evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr, surveying a "bewildering diversity of names", decided to recognise only a single genus, Homo, containing a few species. Though other genera and species have since become popular, his more conservative view of hominin diversity has become the mainstay, and the acceptance of further genera is usually met with great resistance. Since Mayr, hominins are classified into Australopithecus which gave rise to Homo (which includes modern humans) and the robust Paranthropus (which is sometimes not recognised as its own genus), which by definition leaves Australopithecus polyphyletic (a non-natural group which does not comprise a common ancestor and all of its descendants). In addition to Kenyanthropus, the 1990s saw the introduction of A. bahrelghazali, Ardipithecus, Orrorin, and Sahelanthropus, which has complicated discussions of hominin diversity, though the latter three have not been met with much resistance on account of their greater age (all predating Australopithecus).
At the time Kenyanthropus was discovered, Australopithecus afarensis was the only recognised australopithecine to have existed between 4 and 3 million years ago, aside from its probable ancestor A. anamensis, making A. afarensis the likely progenitor of all other australopithecines as they diversified in the late Pliocene and into the Pleistocene. Leakey and colleagues considered Kenyanthropus to be evidence of a greater diversity of Pliocene australopithecines than previously acknowledged. In 2015, Ethiopian palaeoanthropologist Yohannes Haile-Selassie and colleagues erected a new species, A. deyiremeda, which lived in the same time and region as Kenyanthropus and A. afarensis.
Meave Leakey and colleagues drew attention to namely the flat face and small cheek teeth, in addition to several other traits, to distinguish the genus from earlier Ardipithecus, contemporary and later Australopithecus, and later Paranthropus. Kenyanthropus lacks any of the derived traits seen in Homo. They conceded Kenyanthropus could be subsumed into Australopithecus if the widest definition of the latter is used, but this conservative approach to hominin diversity leaves Australopithecus a grade taxon, a non-natural grouping of similar-looking species whereby it effectively encompasses all hominins not classifiable into Ardipithecus or Homo regardless of how they may be related to each other. Leakey and colleagues further drew parallels with KNM-WT 40000 and the 2 million year old KNM-ER 1470 assigned to Homo rudolfensis, attributing differences in braincase and nasal anatomy to archaicness. They suggested H. rudolfensis may be better classified as K. rudolfensis.
In 2003, American palaeoanthropologist Tim D. White was concerned that KNM-WT 40000 was far too distorted to obtain any accurate metrics for classification purposes, especially because the skull was splintered into over 1,100 pieces often measuring less than 1 cm (0.39 in) across. Because such damage is rarely even seen, he argues that it cannot be reliably reconstructed. Because the skulls of modern ape species vary widely, he suggested further fossil discoveries in the region may prove the Lomekwi hominins to be a local variant of A. afarensis rather than a distinct genus or species. In response, anthropologist Fred Spoor and Meave and Louise Leakey produced much more detailed digital topographical scans of the KNM-WT 40000 maxilla in 2010, permitting the comparison of many more anatomical landmarks on the maxillae of all other early hominins, modern humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas, in order to more accurately correct the distortion. The new reconstruction more convincingly verifies the distinctness of Kenyanthropus.
In 2003, Spanish writer Camilo José Cela Conde and evolutionary biologist Francisco J. Ayala proposed resurrecting the genus "Praeanthropus" to house all australopithecines which are not Ardipithecus, Paranthropus, or A. africanus, though they opted to synonymise Kenyanthropus with Homo as "H. platyops". Their recommendations have been largely rejected.
KNM-WT 40000 has been heavily distorted during the fossilisation process, the braincase shifted downwards and backwards, the nasal region to the right, and the mouth and cheek region forward. It is unclear if the specimen represents a male or a female.
Kenyanthropus has a relatively flat face, including subnasally, between the nose and the mouth (the nasoalveolar clivus). The clivus inclines at 45° (there is relaxed sub-nasal prognathism), steeper than almost all other australopithecine specimens (on the upper end of variation for Paranthropus), more comparable to H. rudolfensis and H. habilis. This is the earliest example of a flat face in the hominin fossil record. Unlike A. afarensis, Kenyanthropus lacks the anterior pillars, bony columns running down from the nasal aperture (nose hole). It is also one of the longest early hominin clivi discovered at 32 mm (1.3 in). The nasal aperture (nose hole) is narrow compared to that of Australopithecus and Paranthropus. The cheekbones are tall and steep, and the anterior surface (where the cheeks juts out the most) is positioned above the premolars, more frequently seen in Paranthropus than other hominins. The zygomaticoalveolar crest (stretching between the cheek and the teeth) is low and curved. Overall, the face resembles H. rudolfensis, though has longer nasal bones, a narrower nasal aperture, a shorter postcanine (the molars and premolars) tooth row, and a less steeply inclined (less flat, more prognathic) midfacial region. Much later Paranthropus are also characterised by relatively flat faces, but this is generally considered to be an adaptation to maximise bite force through enormous teeth, which Kenyanthropus enigmatically does not have.
Among all the specimens, only the M (2nd upper left molar) and the tooth sockets of the left side of the mouth of KNM-WT 40000 are preserved well enough to measure and study. With dimensions of 11.4 mm × 12.4 mm (0.0177 sq in × 0.0192 sq in), a surface area of 141.4 mm (5.57 in), it is the smallest M ever discovered for an early hominin. For comparison, those of A. afarensis in the comparative sample Leakey and colleagues used ranged from about 160 to 225 mm (0.248 to 0.349 sq in), H. habilis and H. rudolfensis 165 to 250 mm (0.256 to 0.388 sq in), and the robust P. boisei (with the largest molars among hominins) about 240 to 380 mm (0.37 to 0.59 sq in). The reconstructed dimensions of KNM-WT 38350's M are 10.5 mm × 12 mm (0.41 in × 0.47 in) for a surface area of 126 mm (0.195 sq in), which is on the lower end of variation for A. anamensis, A. afarensis and H. habilis. The thick molar enamel is on par with that of A. anamensis and A. afarensis. KNM-WT40000 retains the ancestral ape premolar tooth root morphology, with a single lingual root (on the tongue side) and two buccal roots (towards the cheeks), though the P of KNM-WT 38350 may only have a single buccal root; the ancestral pattern is frequent in Paranthropus and variable in Australopithecus. Individuals of more derived species typically have single-rooted premolars. The canine jugum is not visible (a line of bone in the maxilla corresponding to the canine tooth root), which may mean the canines were not that large. The cross-sectional area of the I (2nd upper incisor) is 90% the size of that of I, whereas it is usually 50 to 70% in other great apes. The tooth roots of the incisors do not appear to be orientated out (there was probably no alveolar prognathism, the front teeth did not jut forward).
Brain volume is uncalculable due to distortion of the braincase, but it was probably similar to that of Australopithecus and Paranthropus. A sample of five A. afarensis averaged 445 cc. Like Paranthropus, there is no frontal trigon (a triangle formed by the conjunction of the temporal lines behind the brow ridge). Unlike H. habilis but like H. rudolfensis, there is no sulcus (trench) behind the brow ridge. The degree of postorbital constriction, the narrowing of the braincase in the frontal lobe region, is on par with that of Australopithecus, H. rudolfensis, and H. habilis, but less than P. boisei. Like the earlier A. anamensis and Ar. ramidus, the tympanic bone retains the ancestral hominin ear morphology, lacking the petrous crest, and bearing a narrow ear canal with a small opening. The foramen magnum, where the skull connects to the spine, was probably oval shaped as opposed to the heart-shaped one of P. boisei.
In 2015, French archaeologist Sonia Harmand and colleagues identified the Lomekwian stone-tool industry at the Lomekwi site. The tools are attributed to Kenyanthropus as it is the only hominin identified at the site, but in 2015, anthropologist Fred Spoor suggested that at least some of the indeterminate specimens may be assignable to A. deyiremeda as the two species have somewhat similar maxillary anatomy. At 3.3 million years old, it is the oldest proposed industry. The assemblage comprises 83 cores, 35 flakes, 7 possible anvils, 7 possible hammerstones, 5 pebbles (which may have also been used as hammers), and 12 indeterminant fragments, of which 52 were sourced from basalt, 51 from phonolite, 35 from trachyphonolite (intermediate composition of phonolite and trachyte), 3 from vesicular basalt, 2 from trachyte, and 6 indeterminant. These materials could have originated at a conglomerate only 100 m (330 ft) from the site.
The cores are large and heavy, averaging 167 mm × 147.8 mm × 108.8 mm (6.57 in × 5.82 in × 4.28 in) and 3.1 kg (6.8 lb). Flakes ranged 19 to 205 mm (0.75 to 8.07 in) in length, normally shorter than later Oldowan industry flakes. Anvils were heavy, up to 15 kg (33 lb). Flakes seem to have been cleaved off primarily using the passive hammer technique (directly striking the core on the anvil) and/or the bipolar method (placing the core on the anvil and striking it with a hammerstone). They produced both unifaces (the flake was worked on one side) and bifaces (both sides were worked). Though they may have been shaping cores beforehand to make them easier to work, the knappers more often than not poorly executed the technique, producing incomplete fractures and fissures on several cores, or requiring multiple blows to flake off a piece. Harmand and colleagues suggested such rudimentary skills may place the Lomekwian as an intermediate industry between simple pounding techniques probably used by earlier hominins, and the flaking Oldowan industry developed by Homo.
It is typically assumed that early hominins were using stone tools to cut meat in addition to other organic materials. Wild chimpanzees and black-striped capuchins have been observed to make flakes by accident while using hammerstones to crack nuts on anvils, but the Lomekwi knappers were producing multiple flakes from the same core, and flipped over flakes to work the other side, which speak to the intentionality of their production. In 2016, Spanish archaeologists Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo and Luis Alcalá argued Harmand and colleagues did not convincingly justify that the tools were discovered in situ, that is, the tools may be much younger and were reworked into an older layer. If the date of 3.3 million years is accepted, then there is a 700,000 year gap between the next solid evidence of stone tools, at Ledi-Geraru associated with the earliest Homo LD 350-1, the Oldowan industry, reported by American palaeoanthropologist David Braun and colleagues in 2019. This gap can either be interpreted as the loss and reinvention of stone tool technology, or preservation bias (that tools from this time gap either did not preserve for whatever reason, or sit undiscovered), the latter implying the Lomekwian evolved into the Oldowan.
From 4.5 to 4 million years ago, Lake Turkana may have swelled to upwards of 28,000 km (11,000 sq mi), in comparison to today's 6,400 km (2,500 sq mi); the lake at what is now the Koobi Fora site possibly sat at minimum 36 m (118 ft) below the surface. Volcanic hills by Lomekwi pushed basalt into the lake sediments. The lake broke up and from 3.6 to 3.2 million years ago, the region was probably characterised by a series of much smaller lakes, each covering no more than 2,500 km (970 sq mi). Similarly, the bovid remains at Lomekwi are suggestive of a wet mosaic environment featuring both grasslands and forests on a lakeside or floodplain. Theropithecus brumpti is the most common monkey at the site as well as the rest of the Turkana Basin at this time; this species tends to live in more forested and closed environments. At the fossiliferous A. afarensis Hadar site in Ethiopia, Theropithecus darti is the most common monkey, which tends to prefer drier conditions conducive to wood- or grassland environments. Leakey and colleagues argued this distribution means Kenyanthropus was living in somewhat more forested environments than more northerly A. afarensis.
Kenyanthropus, A. afarensis, and A. deyiremeda all coexisted in the same time and region, and, because their anatomy largely diverges in areas relevant to chewing, they may have practised niche partitioning and foraged for different food items.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Kenyanthropus is a hominin genus identified from the Lomekwi site by Lake Turkana, Kenya, dated to 3.3 to 3.2 million years ago during the Middle Pliocene. It contains one species, K. platyops, but may also include the 2 million year old Homo rudolfensis, or K. rudolfensis. Before its naming in 2001, Australopithecus afarensis was widely regarded as the only australopithecine to exist during the Middle Pliocene, but Kenyanthropus evinces a greater diversity than once acknowledged. Kenyanthropus is most recognisable by an unusually flat face and small teeth for such an early hominin, with values on the extremes or beyond the range of variation for australopithecines in regard to these features. Multiple australopithecine species may have coexisted by foraging for different food items (niche partitioning), which may be reason why these apes anatomically differ in features related to chewing.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The Lomekwi site also yielded the earliest stone tool industry, the Lomekwian, characterised by the rudimentary production of simple flakes by pounding a core against an anvil or with a hammerstone. It may have been manufactured by Kenyanthropus, but it is unclear if multiple species were present at the site or not. The knappers were using volcanic rocks collected no more than 100 m (330 ft) from the site. Kenyanthropus seems to have lived on a lakeside or floodplain environment featuring forests and grasslands.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In August 1998, field technician Blasto Onyango discovered a hominin partial left maxilla (upper jaw), specimen KNM-WT 38350, on the Kenyan Lomekwi dig site by Lake Turkana, overseen by prominent paleoanthropologists Louise and Meave Leakey. In August 1999 at the Lomewki site, research assistant Justus Erus discovered an uncharacteristically flat-faced australopithecine skull, specimen KNM-WT 40000. The 1998–1999 field season subsequently uncovered 34 more craniodental hominin specimens, but the research team was unable to determine if these can be placed into the same species as the former two specimens (that is, if multiple species were present at the site).",
"title": "Taxonomy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The specimens were recovered near the Nabetili tributary of the Lomekwi river in a mudstone layer of the Nachukui Formation. KNM-WT 40000 was recovered from the Kataboi Member, 8 m (26 ft) below the 3.4 million year old Tulu Bor Tuff, and 12 m (39 ft) above the 3.57 million year old Lokochot Tuff. By linear interpolation, KNM-WT 40000 is approximately 3.5 million years old, dating back to the Middle Pliocene. Only three more specimens were recovered from the Kataboi Member at around the same level, the deepest KNM-WT 38341 probably sitting on 3.53 million year old sediments. KNM-WT 38350 was recovered from the Lomekwi Member 17 m (56 ft) above Tulu Bor, and is approximately 3.3 million years old. The other specimens from this member sit 16 to 24 m (52 to 79 ft) above Tulu Bor, roughly 3.3 million years old as well. The highest specimens—KNM-WT 38344, -55, and -56—may be around 3.2 million years old.",
"title": "Taxonomy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In 2001, Meave Leakey and colleagues assigned the Lomekwi remains to a new genus and species, Kenyanthropus platyops, with KNM-WT 40000 the holotype, and KNM-WT 38350 a paratype. The genus name honours Kenya where Lomekwi and a slew of other major human-ancestor sites have been identified. The species name derives from Ancient Greek platus \"flat\" and opsis \"face\" in reference to the unusually flat face for such an early hominin.",
"title": "Taxonomy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The classification of early hominins with their widely varying anatomy has been a difficult subject matter. The 20th century generated an overabundance of hominin genera plunging the field into taxonomic turmoil, until German evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr, surveying a \"bewildering diversity of names\", decided to recognise only a single genus, Homo, containing a few species. Though other genera and species have since become popular, his more conservative view of hominin diversity has become the mainstay, and the acceptance of further genera is usually met with great resistance. Since Mayr, hominins are classified into Australopithecus which gave rise to Homo (which includes modern humans) and the robust Paranthropus (which is sometimes not recognised as its own genus), which by definition leaves Australopithecus polyphyletic (a non-natural group which does not comprise a common ancestor and all of its descendants). In addition to Kenyanthropus, the 1990s saw the introduction of A. bahrelghazali, Ardipithecus, Orrorin, and Sahelanthropus, which has complicated discussions of hominin diversity, though the latter three have not been met with much resistance on account of their greater age (all predating Australopithecus).",
"title": "Taxonomy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "At the time Kenyanthropus was discovered, Australopithecus afarensis was the only recognised australopithecine to have existed between 4 and 3 million years ago, aside from its probable ancestor A. anamensis, making A. afarensis the likely progenitor of all other australopithecines as they diversified in the late Pliocene and into the Pleistocene. Leakey and colleagues considered Kenyanthropus to be evidence of a greater diversity of Pliocene australopithecines than previously acknowledged. In 2015, Ethiopian palaeoanthropologist Yohannes Haile-Selassie and colleagues erected a new species, A. deyiremeda, which lived in the same time and region as Kenyanthropus and A. afarensis.",
"title": "Taxonomy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Meave Leakey and colleagues drew attention to namely the flat face and small cheek teeth, in addition to several other traits, to distinguish the genus from earlier Ardipithecus, contemporary and later Australopithecus, and later Paranthropus. Kenyanthropus lacks any of the derived traits seen in Homo. They conceded Kenyanthropus could be subsumed into Australopithecus if the widest definition of the latter is used, but this conservative approach to hominin diversity leaves Australopithecus a grade taxon, a non-natural grouping of similar-looking species whereby it effectively encompasses all hominins not classifiable into Ardipithecus or Homo regardless of how they may be related to each other. Leakey and colleagues further drew parallels with KNM-WT 40000 and the 2 million year old KNM-ER 1470 assigned to Homo rudolfensis, attributing differences in braincase and nasal anatomy to archaicness. They suggested H. rudolfensis may be better classified as K. rudolfensis.",
"title": "Taxonomy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In 2003, American palaeoanthropologist Tim D. White was concerned that KNM-WT 40000 was far too distorted to obtain any accurate metrics for classification purposes, especially because the skull was splintered into over 1,100 pieces often measuring less than 1 cm (0.39 in) across. Because such damage is rarely even seen, he argues that it cannot be reliably reconstructed. Because the skulls of modern ape species vary widely, he suggested further fossil discoveries in the region may prove the Lomekwi hominins to be a local variant of A. afarensis rather than a distinct genus or species. In response, anthropologist Fred Spoor and Meave and Louise Leakey produced much more detailed digital topographical scans of the KNM-WT 40000 maxilla in 2010, permitting the comparison of many more anatomical landmarks on the maxillae of all other early hominins, modern humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas, in order to more accurately correct the distortion. The new reconstruction more convincingly verifies the distinctness of Kenyanthropus.",
"title": "Taxonomy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In 2003, Spanish writer Camilo José Cela Conde and evolutionary biologist Francisco J. Ayala proposed resurrecting the genus \"Praeanthropus\" to house all australopithecines which are not Ardipithecus, Paranthropus, or A. africanus, though they opted to synonymise Kenyanthropus with Homo as \"H. platyops\". Their recommendations have been largely rejected.",
"title": "Taxonomy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "KNM-WT 40000 has been heavily distorted during the fossilisation process, the braincase shifted downwards and backwards, the nasal region to the right, and the mouth and cheek region forward. It is unclear if the specimen represents a male or a female.",
"title": "Anatomy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Kenyanthropus has a relatively flat face, including subnasally, between the nose and the mouth (the nasoalveolar clivus). The clivus inclines at 45° (there is relaxed sub-nasal prognathism), steeper than almost all other australopithecine specimens (on the upper end of variation for Paranthropus), more comparable to H. rudolfensis and H. habilis. This is the earliest example of a flat face in the hominin fossil record. Unlike A. afarensis, Kenyanthropus lacks the anterior pillars, bony columns running down from the nasal aperture (nose hole). It is also one of the longest early hominin clivi discovered at 32 mm (1.3 in). The nasal aperture (nose hole) is narrow compared to that of Australopithecus and Paranthropus. The cheekbones are tall and steep, and the anterior surface (where the cheeks juts out the most) is positioned above the premolars, more frequently seen in Paranthropus than other hominins. The zygomaticoalveolar crest (stretching between the cheek and the teeth) is low and curved. Overall, the face resembles H. rudolfensis, though has longer nasal bones, a narrower nasal aperture, a shorter postcanine (the molars and premolars) tooth row, and a less steeply inclined (less flat, more prognathic) midfacial region. Much later Paranthropus are also characterised by relatively flat faces, but this is generally considered to be an adaptation to maximise bite force through enormous teeth, which Kenyanthropus enigmatically does not have.",
"title": "Anatomy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Among all the specimens, only the M (2nd upper left molar) and the tooth sockets of the left side of the mouth of KNM-WT 40000 are preserved well enough to measure and study. With dimensions of 11.4 mm × 12.4 mm (0.0177 sq in × 0.0192 sq in), a surface area of 141.4 mm (5.57 in), it is the smallest M ever discovered for an early hominin. For comparison, those of A. afarensis in the comparative sample Leakey and colleagues used ranged from about 160 to 225 mm (0.248 to 0.349 sq in), H. habilis and H. rudolfensis 165 to 250 mm (0.256 to 0.388 sq in), and the robust P. boisei (with the largest molars among hominins) about 240 to 380 mm (0.37 to 0.59 sq in). The reconstructed dimensions of KNM-WT 38350's M are 10.5 mm × 12 mm (0.41 in × 0.47 in) for a surface area of 126 mm (0.195 sq in), which is on the lower end of variation for A. anamensis, A. afarensis and H. habilis. The thick molar enamel is on par with that of A. anamensis and A. afarensis. KNM-WT40000 retains the ancestral ape premolar tooth root morphology, with a single lingual root (on the tongue side) and two buccal roots (towards the cheeks), though the P of KNM-WT 38350 may only have a single buccal root; the ancestral pattern is frequent in Paranthropus and variable in Australopithecus. Individuals of more derived species typically have single-rooted premolars. The canine jugum is not visible (a line of bone in the maxilla corresponding to the canine tooth root), which may mean the canines were not that large. The cross-sectional area of the I (2nd upper incisor) is 90% the size of that of I, whereas it is usually 50 to 70% in other great apes. The tooth roots of the incisors do not appear to be orientated out (there was probably no alveolar prognathism, the front teeth did not jut forward).",
"title": "Anatomy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Brain volume is uncalculable due to distortion of the braincase, but it was probably similar to that of Australopithecus and Paranthropus. A sample of five A. afarensis averaged 445 cc. Like Paranthropus, there is no frontal trigon (a triangle formed by the conjunction of the temporal lines behind the brow ridge). Unlike H. habilis but like H. rudolfensis, there is no sulcus (trench) behind the brow ridge. The degree of postorbital constriction, the narrowing of the braincase in the frontal lobe region, is on par with that of Australopithecus, H. rudolfensis, and H. habilis, but less than P. boisei. Like the earlier A. anamensis and Ar. ramidus, the tympanic bone retains the ancestral hominin ear morphology, lacking the petrous crest, and bearing a narrow ear canal with a small opening. The foramen magnum, where the skull connects to the spine, was probably oval shaped as opposed to the heart-shaped one of P. boisei.",
"title": "Anatomy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In 2015, French archaeologist Sonia Harmand and colleagues identified the Lomekwian stone-tool industry at the Lomekwi site. The tools are attributed to Kenyanthropus as it is the only hominin identified at the site, but in 2015, anthropologist Fred Spoor suggested that at least some of the indeterminate specimens may be assignable to A. deyiremeda as the two species have somewhat similar maxillary anatomy. At 3.3 million years old, it is the oldest proposed industry. The assemblage comprises 83 cores, 35 flakes, 7 possible anvils, 7 possible hammerstones, 5 pebbles (which may have also been used as hammers), and 12 indeterminant fragments, of which 52 were sourced from basalt, 51 from phonolite, 35 from trachyphonolite (intermediate composition of phonolite and trachyte), 3 from vesicular basalt, 2 from trachyte, and 6 indeterminant. These materials could have originated at a conglomerate only 100 m (330 ft) from the site.",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The cores are large and heavy, averaging 167 mm × 147.8 mm × 108.8 mm (6.57 in × 5.82 in × 4.28 in) and 3.1 kg (6.8 lb). Flakes ranged 19 to 205 mm (0.75 to 8.07 in) in length, normally shorter than later Oldowan industry flakes. Anvils were heavy, up to 15 kg (33 lb). Flakes seem to have been cleaved off primarily using the passive hammer technique (directly striking the core on the anvil) and/or the bipolar method (placing the core on the anvil and striking it with a hammerstone). They produced both unifaces (the flake was worked on one side) and bifaces (both sides were worked). Though they may have been shaping cores beforehand to make them easier to work, the knappers more often than not poorly executed the technique, producing incomplete fractures and fissures on several cores, or requiring multiple blows to flake off a piece. Harmand and colleagues suggested such rudimentary skills may place the Lomekwian as an intermediate industry between simple pounding techniques probably used by earlier hominins, and the flaking Oldowan industry developed by Homo.",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "It is typically assumed that early hominins were using stone tools to cut meat in addition to other organic materials. Wild chimpanzees and black-striped capuchins have been observed to make flakes by accident while using hammerstones to crack nuts on anvils, but the Lomekwi knappers were producing multiple flakes from the same core, and flipped over flakes to work the other side, which speak to the intentionality of their production. In 2016, Spanish archaeologists Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo and Luis Alcalá argued Harmand and colleagues did not convincingly justify that the tools were discovered in situ, that is, the tools may be much younger and were reworked into an older layer. If the date of 3.3 million years is accepted, then there is a 700,000 year gap between the next solid evidence of stone tools, at Ledi-Geraru associated with the earliest Homo LD 350-1, the Oldowan industry, reported by American palaeoanthropologist David Braun and colleagues in 2019. This gap can either be interpreted as the loss and reinvention of stone tool technology, or preservation bias (that tools from this time gap either did not preserve for whatever reason, or sit undiscovered), the latter implying the Lomekwian evolved into the Oldowan.",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "From 4.5 to 4 million years ago, Lake Turkana may have swelled to upwards of 28,000 km (11,000 sq mi), in comparison to today's 6,400 km (2,500 sq mi); the lake at what is now the Koobi Fora site possibly sat at minimum 36 m (118 ft) below the surface. Volcanic hills by Lomekwi pushed basalt into the lake sediments. The lake broke up and from 3.6 to 3.2 million years ago, the region was probably characterised by a series of much smaller lakes, each covering no more than 2,500 km (970 sq mi). Similarly, the bovid remains at Lomekwi are suggestive of a wet mosaic environment featuring both grasslands and forests on a lakeside or floodplain. Theropithecus brumpti is the most common monkey at the site as well as the rest of the Turkana Basin at this time; this species tends to live in more forested and closed environments. At the fossiliferous A. afarensis Hadar site in Ethiopia, Theropithecus darti is the most common monkey, which tends to prefer drier conditions conducive to wood- or grassland environments. Leakey and colleagues argued this distribution means Kenyanthropus was living in somewhat more forested environments than more northerly A. afarensis.",
"title": "Palaeoecology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Kenyanthropus, A. afarensis, and A. deyiremeda all coexisted in the same time and region, and, because their anatomy largely diverges in areas relevant to chewing, they may have practised niche partitioning and foraged for different food items.",
"title": "Palaeoecology"
}
] |
Kenyanthropus is a hominin genus identified from the Lomekwi site by Lake Turkana, Kenya, dated to 3.3 to 3.2 million years ago during the Middle Pliocene. It contains one species, K. platyops, but may also include the 2 million year old Homo rudolfensis, or K. rudolfensis. Before its naming in 2001, Australopithecus afarensis was widely regarded as the only australopithecine to exist during the Middle Pliocene, but Kenyanthropus evinces a greater diversity than once acknowledged. Kenyanthropus is most recognisable by an unusually flat face and small teeth for such an early hominin, with values on the extremes or beyond the range of variation for australopithecines in regard to these features. Multiple australopithecine species may have coexisted by foraging for different food items, which may be reason why these apes anatomically differ in features related to chewing. The Lomekwi site also yielded the earliest stone tool industry, the Lomekwian, characterised by the rudimentary production of simple flakes by pounding a core against an anvil or with a hammerstone. It may have been manufactured by Kenyanthropus, but it is unclear if multiple species were present at the site or not. The knappers were using volcanic rocks collected no more than 100 m (330 ft) from the site. Kenyanthropus seems to have lived on a lakeside or floodplain environment featuring forests and grasslands.
|
2001-07-12T18:19:45Z
|
2023-12-17T17:16:04Z
|
[
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Commons category",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:African hominin timeline",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Human Evolution",
"Template:Prehistoric technology",
"Template:Haplorhini",
"Template:Taxonbar",
"Template:Automatic taxobox",
"Template:Cvt",
"Template:Multiple image",
"Template:Portal",
"Template:Good article"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenyanthropus
|
16,746 |
Karate
|
Karate (空手) (/kəˈrɑːti/; Japanese pronunciation: [kaɾate] ; Okinawan pronunciation: [kaɽati]), also karate-do (空手道, Karate-dō), is a martial art developed in the Ryukyu Kingdom. It developed from the indigenous Ryukyuan martial arts (called te (手), "hand"; tī in Okinawan) under the influence of Chinese martial arts. While modern karate is primarily a striking art that uses punches and kicks, ancient karate was an art that also used jujutsu techniques such as throwing and joint locking techniques. A karate practitioner is called a karate-ka (空手家).
The Ryukyu Kingdom had been conquered by the Japanese Satsuma Domain and had become its vassal state since 1609, but was formally annexed to the Empire of Japan in 1879 as Okinawa Prefecture. The Ryukyuan samurai (Okinawan: samurē) who had been the bearers of karate lost their privileged position, and with it, karate was in danger of losing transmission. However, karate gradually regained popularity after 1905, when it began to be taught in schools in Okinawa.
During the Taishō era (1912-1926), karate was introduced to mainland Japan by Gichin Funakoshi and Motobu Chōki. Karate's popularity was initially sluggish due to its emphasis on kata practice, but when a magazine reported a story about Motobu defeating a foreign boxer in Kyoto, karate rapidly became well known throughout Japan.
In this era of escalating Japanese militarism, the name was changed from 唐手 ("Chinese hand" or "Tang hand") to 空手 ("empty hand") – both of which are pronounced karate in Japanese – to indicate that the Japanese wished to develop the combat form in Japanese style. After World War II, Okinawa became (1945) an important United States military site and karate became popular among servicemen stationed there.
The martial arts movies of the 1960s and 1970s served to greatly increase the popularity of martial arts around the world, and English-speakers began to use the word karate in a generic way to refer to all striking-based Asian martial arts. Karate schools (dōjōs) began appearing around the world, catering to those with casual interest as well as those seeking a deeper study of the art.
Karate, like other Japanese martial arts, is considered to be not only about fighting techniques, but also about spiritual cultivation. Many karate schools and dōjōs have established rules called dōjō kun, which emphasize the perfection of character, the importance of effort, and respect for courtesy.
Karate featured at the 2020 Summer Olympics after its inclusion at the Games was supported by the International Olympic Committee. Web Japan (sponsored by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs) claims that karate has 50 million practitioners worldwide, while the World Karate Federation claims there are 100 million practitioners around the world.
According to Gichin Funakoshi, there was originally a distinction between Okinawa-te (沖縄手, lit. 'Okinawa hand') and tōde (唐手, lit. 'Tang hand'). Okinawa-te refers to the kenpō (pugilism) indigenous to Okinawa, while tōde is thought to have referred to the kenpō derived from China. However, this distinction gradually became blurred with the decline of Okinawa-te.
Around 1905, when karate began to be taught in Okinawan schools, tōde was read kun’yomi and called karate (唐手, lit. 'Tang hand') in the Japanese style. Both tōde and karate are written in the same Chinese characters meaning "Tang/China hand," but the former is on'yomi (Chinese reading) and the latter is kun'yomi (Japanese reading). Since the distinction between Okinawa-te and tōde was already blurred at that time, karate was used to encompass both.
"Kara (から)" is a kun’yomi for the character "唐" (tō/とう in on'yomi) which is derived from "Gaya Confederacy (加羅)" and later included things deriving from China. "Te (て)" is a kun’yomi for the character "手" (shu/しゅ in on'yomi) which means "hand". The Tang dynasty of China ended in AD 907, but the kanji representing it remains in use in Japanese language referring to China generally, in such words as "唐人街" (Tōjin machi) meaning Chinatown. Thus the word karate was originally a way of expressing "martial art from China."
Since there are no written records it is not known definitely whether the kara in karate was originally written with the character 唐 meaning China or the character 空 meaning empty. During the time when admiration for China and things Chinese was at its height in the Ryūkyūs it was the custom to use the former character when referring to things of fine quality. Influenced by this practice, in recent times karate has begun to be written with the character 唐 to give it a sense of class or elegance.
The first documented use of a homophone of the logogram pronounced kara by replacing the Chinese character meaning "Tang dynasty" with the character meaning "empty" took place in Karate Kumite written in August 1905 by Chōmo Hanashiro (1869–1945). Sino-Japanese relations have never been very good and especially at the time of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, referring to the Chinese origins of karate was considered politically incorrect.
In 1933, the Okinawan art of karate was recognized as a Japanese martial art by the Japanese Martial Arts Committee known as the "Butoku Kai". Until 1935, "karate" was written as "唐手" (Chinese hand). But in 1935, the masters of the various styles of Okinawan karate conferred to decide a new name for their art. They decided to call their art "karate" written in Japanese characters as "空手" (empty hand).
Another nominal development is the addition of dō (道; どう) to the end of the word karate. Dō is a suffix having numerous meanings including road, path, route and way. It is used in many martial arts that survived Japan's transition from feudal culture to modern times. It implies that these arts are not just fighting systems but contain spiritual elements when promoted as disciplines. In this context dō is usually translated as "the way of …". Examples include aikido, judo, kyūdō and kendo. Thus karatedō is more than just empty hand techniques. It is "the way of the empty hand".
There are several theories regarding the origins of karate, but the main ones are as follows.
In Okinawa, there was an ancient martial dance called mēkata (舞方). The dancers danced to the accompaniment of songs and sanshin music, similar to karate kata. In the Okinawan countryside, mēkata remained until the early 20th century. There is a theory that from this mēkata with martial elements, te (Okinawan:tī, hand) was born and developed into karate. This theory is advocated by Ankō Asato and his student Gichin Funakoshi.
It is said that in 1392, a group of professional people known as the "Thirty-six families from Min" migrated to Kume Village (now Kume, Naha City) in Naha from Fujian Province in the Ming Dynasty at that time. They brought with them advanced learning and skills to Ryukyu, and there is a theory that Chinese kenpō, the origin of karate, was also brought to Ryukyu at this time.
There is also the "Keichō import theory," which states that karate was brought to Ryukyu after the invasion of Ryukyu by the Satsuma Domain (Keichō 14, 1609), as well as the theory that it was introduced by Kōshōkun (Okinawan: Kūsankū) based on the description in Ōshima Writing.
There are also other theories, such as that it developed from Okinawan sumo (shima) or that it originated from jujutsu, which had been introduced from Japan.
Karate began as a common fighting system known as te (Okinawan: ti) among the Pechin class of the Ryukyuans. After trade relationships were established with the Ming dynasty of China in 1372 by King Satto of Chūzan, some forms of Chinese martial arts were introduced to the Ryukyu Islands by the visitors from China, particularly Fujian. A large group of Chinese families moved to Okinawa around 1392 for the purpose of cultural exchange, where they established the community of Kumemura and shared their knowledge of a wide variety of Chinese arts and sciences, including the Chinese martial arts. The political centralization of Okinawa by King Shō Hashi in 1429 and the policy of banning weapons by King Shō Shin in 1477, later enforced in Okinawa after the invasion by the Shimazu clan in 1609, are also factors that furthered the development of unarmed combat techniques in Okinawa.
There were few formal styles of te, but rather many practitioners with their own methods. One surviving example is the Motobu-ryū school passed down from the Motobu family by Seikichi Uehara. Early styles of karate are often generalized as Shuri-te, Naha-te, and Tomari-te, named after the three cities from which they emerged. Each area and its teachers had particular kata, techniques, and principles that distinguished their local version of te from the others.
Members of the Okinawan upper classes were sent to China regularly to study various political and practical disciplines. The incorporation of empty-handed Chinese Kung Fu into Okinawan martial arts occurred partly because of these exchanges and partly because of growing legal restrictions on the use of weaponry. Traditional karate kata bear a strong resemblance to the forms found in Fujian martial arts such as Fujian White Crane, Five Ancestors, and Gangrou-quan (Hard Soft Fist; pronounced "Gōjūken" in Japanese). Many Okinawan weapons such as the sai, tonfa, and nunchaku may have originated in and around Southeast Asia.
Sakugawa Kanga (1786–1867) is believed to have studied pugilism and staff (bō) fighting in China (according to one legend, under the guidance of Kōshōkun, originator of Kūsankū kata). In the early 19th century, he became known as a master of the fighting arts of Chinese origin and was nicknamed "Tōdī Sakugawa," which meant "Sakugawa of China Hand." Although this nickname is not confirmed by the literature of the time, it suggests that the term tōdī (唐手) existed in the early 19th century. Around the 1820s, Matsumura Sōkon (1809-1899) began teaching a fighting art called Uchinā-dī (沖縄手, lit. 'Okinawan hand'). Matsumura was, according to one theory, a student of Sakugawa. Matsumura's style later became the origin of many Shuri-te schools.
Itosu Ankō (1831-1915) studied under Matsumura and Bushi Nagahama of Naha-te. He created the Pin'an forms ("Heian" in Japanese) which are simplified kata for beginning students. In 1905, Itosu helped to get karate introduced into Okinawa's public schools. These forms were taught to children at the elementary school level. Itosu's influence in karate is broad. The forms he created are common across nearly all styles of karate. His students became some of the most well-known karate masters, including Motobu Chōyū, Motobu Chōki, Yabu Kentsū, Hanashiro Chōmo, Gichin Funakoshi and Kenwa Mabuni. Itosu is sometimes referred to as "the Grandfather of Modern Karate."
In 1881, Higaonna Kanryō returned from China after years of instruction with Ryu Ryu Ko and founded what would become Naha-te. One of his students was the founder of Gojū-ryū, Chōjun Miyagi. Chōjun Miyagi taught such well-known karateka as Seko Higa (who also trained with Higaonna), Meitoku Yagi, Miyazato Ei'ichi, and Seikichi Toguchi, and for a very brief time near the end of his life, An'ichi Miyagi (a teacher claimed by Morio Higaonna).
In addition to the three early te styles of karate a fourth Okinawan influence is that of Uechi Kanbun (1877–1948). At the age of 20 he went to Fuzhou in Fujian Province, China, to escape Japanese military conscription. While there he studied under Shū Shiwa (Chinese: Zhou Zihe 周子和 1874–1926). He was a leading figure of Chinese Nanpa Shorin-ken style at that time. He later developed his own style of Uechi-ryū karate based on the Sanchin, Seisan, and Sanseiryu kata that he had studied in China.
When Shō Tai, the last king of the Ryūkyū Kingdom, was ordered to move to Tokyo in 1879, he was accompanied by prominent karate masters such as Ankō Asato and Chōfu Kyan (father of Chōtoku Kyan). It is unknown if they taught karate to the Japanese in Tokyo, although there are records that Kyan taught his son karate.
In 1908, students from the Okinawa Prefectural Middle School gave a karate demonstration at Butokuden in Kyoto, which was also witnessed by Kanō Jigorō (founder of judo).
In May 1922, Gichin Funakoshi (founder of Shotokan) presented pictures of karate on two hanging scrolls at the first Physical Education Exhibition in Tokyo. The following June, Funakoshi was invited to the Kodokan to give a karate demonstration in front of Jigoro Kano and other judo experts. This was the beginning of the full-scale introduction of karate in Tokyo.
In November 1922, Motobu Chōki (founder of Motobu-ryū) participated in a judo versus boxing match in Kyoto, defeating a foreign boxer. The match was featured in Japan's largest magazine "King," which had a circulation of about one million at the time, and karate and Motobu's name became instantly known throughout Japan.
In 1922, Funakoshi published the first book on karate, and in 1926 Motobu published the first technical book on kumite. As karate's popularity grew, karate clubs were established one after another in Japanese universities with Funakoshi and Motobu as instructors.
In the Showa era (1926-1989), other Okinawan karate masters also came to mainland Japan to teach karate. These included Kenwa Mabuni, Chōjun Miyagi, Kanken Tōyama, and Kanbun Uechi.
With the rise of militarism in Japan, some karate masters gradually came to consider the name karate (唐手, lit. 'Tang hand') undesirable. The name karate (空手, lit. 'empty hand') had already been used by Chōmo Hanashiro in Okinawa in 1905, and Funakoshi decided to use this name as well. In addition, the name karatedō (唐手道, lit. 'the way of the Tang hand'), which was already used by the karate club of Tokyo Imperial University (now the University of Tokyo) in 1929 by adding the suffix dō (道, way) to karate, was also used by Funakoshi, who decided to use the name karatedō (空手道, lit. 'the way of the empty hand') in the same way.
The dō suffix implies that karatedō is a path to self-knowledge, not just a study of the technical aspects of fighting. Like most martial arts practised in Japan, karate made its transition from -jutsu to -dō around the beginning of the 20th century. The "dō" in "karate-dō" sets it apart from karate-jutsu, as aikido is distinguished from aikijutsu, judo from jujutsu, kendo from kenjutsu and iaido from iaijutsu.
On October 25, 1936, a roundtable meeting of karate masters was held in Naha, Okinawa Prefecture, where it was officially decided to change the name of karate from karate (Tang hand) to karate (empty hand). In attendance were Chōmo Hanashiro, Chōki Motobu, Chōtoku Kyan, Jūhatsu Kyoda, Chōjun Miyagi, Shinpan Gusukuma, and Chōshin Chibana. In 2005, the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly passed a resolution to commemorate this decision by designating October 25 as "Karate Day."
Funakoshi changed the names of many kata and the name of the art itself (at least on mainland Japan), doing so to get karate accepted by the Japanese budō organization Dai Nippon Butoku Kai. Funakoshi also gave Japanese names to many of the kata. The five pinan forms became known as heian, the three naihanchi forms became known as tekki, seisan as hangetsu, Chintō as gankaku, wanshu as enpi, and so on. These were mostly political changes, rather than changes to the content of the forms, although Funakoshi did introduce some such changes. Funakoshi had trained in two of the popular branches of Okinawan karate of the time, Shorin-ryū and Shōrei-ryū. In Japan he was influenced by kendo, incorporating some ideas about distancing and timing into his style. He always referred to what he taught as simply karate, but in 1936 he built a dōjō in Tokyo and the style he left behind is usually called Shotokan after this dōjō. Shoto, meaning "pine wave", was Funakoshi's pen name and kan meaning "hall".
The modernization and systemization of karate in Japan also included the adoption of the white uniform that consisted of the kimono and the dogi or keikogi—mostly called just karategi—and coloured belt ranks. Both of these innovations were originated and popularized by Jigoro Kano, the founder of judo and one of the men Funakoshi consulted in his efforts to modernize karate.
A new form of karate called Kyokushin was formally founded in 1957 by Masutatsu Oyama (who was born a Korean, Choi Yeong-Eui 최영의). Kyokushin is largely a synthesis of Shotokan and Gōjū-ryū. It teaches a curriculum that emphasizes aliveness, physical toughness, and full contact sparring. Because of its emphasis on physical, full-force sparring, Kyokushin is now often called "full contact karate", or "Knockdown karate" (after the name for its competition rules). Many other karate organizations and styles are descended from the Kyokushin curriculum.
Karate can be practiced as an art (budō), self defense or as a combat sport. Traditional karate places emphasis on self-development (budō). Modern Japanese style training emphasizes the psychological elements incorporated into a proper kokoro (attitude) such as perseverance, fearlessness, virtue, and leadership skills. Sport karate places emphasis on exercise and competition. Weapons are an important training activity in some styles of karate.
Karate training is commonly divided into kihon (basics or fundamentals), kata (forms), and kumite (sparring).
Kihon means basics and these form the base for everything else in the style including stances, strikes, punches, kicks and blocks. Karate styles place varying importance on kihon. Typically this is training in unison of a technique or a combination of techniques by a group of karateka. Kihon may also be prearranged drills in smaller groups or in pairs.
Kata (型:かた) means literally "shape" or "model." Kata is a formalized sequence of movements which represent various offensive and defensive postures. These postures are based on idealized combat applications. The applications when applied in a demonstration with real opponents is referred to as a Bunkai. The Bunkai shows how every stance and movement is used. Bunkai is a useful tool to understand a kata.
To attain a formal rank the karateka must demonstrate competent performance of specific required kata for that level. The Japanese terminology for grades or ranks is commonly used. Requirements for examinations vary among schools.
Sparring in Karate is called kumite (組手:くみて). It literally means "meeting of hands." Kumite is practiced both as a sport and as self-defense training. Levels of physical contact during sparring vary considerably. Full contact karate has several variants. Knockdown karate (such as Kyokushin) uses full power techniques to bring an opponent to the ground. Sparring in armour, bogu kumite, allows full power techniques with some safety. Sport kumite in many international competition under the World Karate Federation is free or structured with light contact or semi contact and points are awarded by a referee.
In structured kumite (yakusoku, prearranged), two participants perform a choreographed series of techniques with one striking while the other blocks. The form ends with one devastating technique (hito tsuki).
In free sparring (Jiyu Kumite), the two participants have a free choice of scoring techniques. The allowed techniques and contact level are primarily determined by sport or style organization policy, but might be modified according to the age, rank and sex of the participants. Depending upon style, take-downs, sweeps and in some rare cases even time-limited grappling on the ground are also allowed.
Free sparring is performed in a marked or closed area. The bout runs for a fixed time (2 to 3 minutes.) The time can run continuously (iri kume) or be stopped for referee judgment. In light contact or semi contact kumite, points are awarded based on the criteria: good form, sporting attitude, vigorous application, awareness/zanshin, good timing and correct distance. In full contact karate kumite, points are based on the results of the impact, rather than the formal appearance of the scoring technique.
In the bushidō tradition dōjō kun is a set of guidelines for karateka to follow. These guidelines apply both in the dōjō (training hall) and in everyday life.
Okinawan karate uses supplementary training known as hojo undo. This uses simple equipment made of wood and stone. The makiwara is a striking post. The nigiri game is a large jar used for developing grip strength. These supplementary exercises are designed to increase strength, stamina, speed, and muscle coordination. Sport Karate emphasizes aerobic exercise, anaerobic exercise, power, agility, flexibility, and stress management. All practices vary depending upon the school and the teacher.
Gichin Funakoshi (船越 義珍) said, "There are no contests in karate." In pre–World War II Okinawa, kumite was not part of karate training. Shigeru Egami relates that, in 1940, some karateka were ousted from their dōjō because they adopted sparring after having learned it in Tokyo.
Karate is divided into style organizations. These organizations sometimes cooperate in non-style specific sport karate organizations or federations. Examples of sport organizations include AAKF/ITKF, AOK, TKL, AKA, WKF, NWUKO, WUKF and WKC. Organizations hold competitions (tournaments) from local to international level. Tournaments are designed to match members of opposing schools or styles against one another in kata, sparring and weapons demonstration. They are often separated by age, rank and sex with potentially different rules or standards based on these factors. The tournament may be exclusively for members of a particular style (closed) or one in which any martial artist from any style may participate within the rules of the tournament (open).
The World Karate Federation (WKF) is the largest sport karate organization and is recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as being responsible for karate competition in the Olympic Games. The WKF has developed common rules governing all styles. The national WKF organizations coordinate with their respective National Olympic Committees.
WKF karate competition has two disciplines: sparring (kumite) and forms (kata). Competitors may enter either as individuals or as part of a team. Evaluation for kata and kobudō is performed by a panel of judges, whereas sparring is judged by a head referee, usually with assistant referees at the side of the sparring area. Sparring matches are typically divided by weight, age, gender, and experience.
WKF only allows membership through one national organization/federation per country to which clubs may join. The World Union of Karate-do Federations (WUKF) offers different styles and federations a world body they may join, without having to compromise their style or size. The WUKF accepts more than one federation or association per country.
Sport organizations use different competition rule systems. Light contact rules are used by the WKF, WUKO, IASK and WKC. Full contact karate rules used by Kyokushinkai, Seidokaikan and other organizations. Bogu kumite (full contact with protective shielding of targets) rules are used in the World Koshiki Karate-Do Federation organization. Shinkaratedo Federation use boxing gloves. Within the United States, rules may be under the jurisdiction of state sports authorities, such as the boxing commission.
In August 2016, the International Olympic Committee approved karate as an Olympic sport beginning at the 2020 Summer Olympics. Karate also debuted at the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics. During this debut of Karate in the Summer Olympics, sixty competitors from around the world competed in the Kumite competition, and twenty competed in the Kata competition. In September 2015, karate was included in a shortlist along with baseball, softball, skateboarding, surfing, and sport climbing to be considered for inclusion in the 2020 Summer Olympics; and in June 2016, the executive board of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that they would support the proposal to include all of the shortlisted sports in the 2020 Games. Finally, on 3 August 2016, all five sports (counting baseball and softball together as one sport) were approved for inclusion in the 2020 Olympic program.
Karate will not be included in the 2024 Olympic Games, although it has made the shortlist for inclusion, alongside nine others, in the 2028 Summer Olympics. Karate, although not widely used in mixed martial arts, has been effective for some MMA practitioners. Various styles of karate are practiced in MMA: Lyoto Machida and John Makdessi practice Shotokan; Bas Rutten and Georges St-Pierre train in Kyokushin; Michelle Waterson holds a black belt in American Free Style Karate; Stephen Thompson practices American Kenpo Karate; and Robert Whittaker practices Gōjū-ryū.
In 1924, Gichin Funakoshi, founder of Shotokan Karate, adopted the Dan system from the judo founder Jigoro Kano using a rank scheme with a limited set of belt colors. Other Okinawan teachers also adopted this practice. In the Kyū/Dan system the beginner grades start with a higher numbered kyū (e.g., 10th Kyū or Jukyū) and progress toward a lower numbered kyū. The Dan progression continues from 1st Dan (Shodan, or 'beginning dan') to the higher dan grades. Kyū-grade karateka are referred to as "color belt" or mudansha ("ones without dan/rank"). Dan-grade karateka are referred to as yudansha (holders of dan/rank). Yudansha typically wear a black belt. Normally, the first five to six dans are given by examination by superior dan holders, while the subsequent (7 and up) are honorary, given for special merits and/or age reached. Requirements of rank differ among styles, organizations, and schools. Kyū ranks stress stance, balance, and coordination. Speed and power are added at higher grades.
Minimum age and time in rank are factors affecting promotion. Testing consists of demonstration of techniques before a panel of examiners or senseis. This will vary by school, but testing may include everything learned at that point, or just new information. The demonstration is an application for new rank (shinsa) and may include basics, kata, bunkai, self-defense, routines, tameshiwari (breaking), and kumite (sparring).
In Karate-Do Kyohan, Funakoshi quoted from the Heart Sutra, which is prominent in Shingon Buddhism: "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form itself" (shiki zokuze kū kū zokuze shiki). He interpreted the "kara" of Karate-dō to mean "to purge oneself of selfish and evil thoughts ... for only with a clear mind and conscience can the practitioner understand the knowledge which he receives." Funakoshi believed that one should be "inwardly humble and outwardly gentle." Only by behaving humbly can one be open to Karate's many lessons. This is done by listening and being receptive to criticism. He considered courtesy of prime importance. He said that "Karate is properly applied only in those rare situations in which one really must either down another or be downed by him." Funakoshi did not consider it unusual for a devotee to use Karate in a real physical confrontation no more than perhaps once in a lifetime. He stated that Karate practitioners must "never be easily drawn into a fight." It is understood that one blow from a real expert could mean death. It is clear that those who misuse what they have learned bring dishonor upon themselves. He promoted the character trait of personal conviction. In "time of grave public crisis, one must have the courage ... to face a million and one opponents." He taught that indecisiveness is a weakness.
Karate is divided into many styles, each with their different training methods, focuses, and cultures; though they mainly originate from the historical Okinawan parent styles of Naha-te, Tomari-te and Shuri-te. In the modern era the major four styles of karate are considered to be Gōjū-ryū, Shotokan, Shitō-ryū, and Wadō-ryū. These four styles are those recognised by the World Karate Federation for international kata competition.
Other internationally recognised styles include but are not limited to:
Karate has grown in popularity in Africa, particularly in South Africa and Ghana.
Karate began in Canada in the 1930s and 1940s as Japanese people immigrated to the country. Karate was practised quietly without a large amount of organization. During the Second World War, many Japanese-Canadian families were moved to the interior of British Columbia. Masaru Shintani, at the age of 13, began to study Shorin-Ryu karate in the Japanese camp under Kitigawa. In 1956, after 9 years of training with Kitigawa, Shintani travelled to Japan and met Hironori Otsuka (Wado Ryu). In 1958, Otsuka invited Shintani to join his organization Wado Kai, and in 1969 he asked Shintani to officially call his style Wado.
In Canada during this same time, karate was also introduced by Masami Tsuruoka who had studied in Japan in the 1940s under Tsuyoshi Chitose. In 1954, Tsuruoka initiated the first karate competition in Canada and laid the foundation for the National Karate Association.
In the late 1950s Shintani moved to Ontario and began teaching karate and judo at the Japanese Cultural Centre in Hamilton. In 1966, he began (with Otsuka's endorsement) the Shintani Wado Kai Karate Federation. During the 1970s Otsuka appointed Shintani the Supreme Instructor of Wado Kai in North America. In 1979, Otsuka publicly promoted Shintani to hachidan (8th dan) and privately gave him a kudan certificate (9th dan), which was revealed by Shintani in 1995. Shintani and Otsuka visited each other in Japan and Canada several times, the last time in 1980 two years prior to Otsuka's death. Shintani died 7 May 2000.
After World War II, members of the United States military learned karate in Okinawa or Japan and then opened schools in the US. In 1945, Robert Trias opened the first dōjō in the United States in Phoenix, Arizona, a Shuri-ryū karate dōjō. In the 1950s, William J. Dometrich, Ed Parker, Cecil T. Patterson, Gordon Doversola, Harold G. Long, Donald Hugh Nagle, George Mattson and Peter Urban all began instructing in the US.
Tsutomu Ohshima began studying karate under Shotokan's founder, Gichin Funakoshi, while a student at Waseda University, beginning in 1948. In 1957, Ohshima received his godan (fifth-degree black belt), the highest rank awarded by Funakoshi. He founded the first university karate club in the United States at California Institute of Technology in 1957. In 1959, he founded the Southern California Karate Association (SCKA) which was renamed Shotokan Karate of America (SKA) in 1969.
In the 1960s, Anthony Mirakian, Richard Kim, Teruyuki Okazaki, John Pachivas, Allen Steen, Gosei Yamaguchi (son of Gōgen Yamaguchi), Michael G. Foster and Pat Burleson began teaching martial arts around the country.
In 1961, Hidetaka Nishiyama, a co-founder of the Japan Karate Association (JKA) and student of Gichin Funakoshi, began teaching in the United States. He founded the International Traditional Karate Federation (ITKF). Takayuki Mikami was sent to New Orleans by the JKA in 1963.
In 1964, Takayuki Kubota relocated the International Karate Association from Tokyo to California.
Due to past conflict between Korea and Japan, most notably during the Japanese occupation of Korea in the early 20th century, the influence of karate in Korea is a contentious issue. From 1910 until 1945, Korea was annexed by the Japanese Empire. It was during this time that many of the Korean martial arts masters of the 20th century were exposed to Japanese karate. After regaining independence from Japan, many Korean martial arts schools that opened up in the 1940s and 1950s were founded by masters who had trained in karate in Japan as part of their martial arts training.
Won Kuk Lee, a Korean student of Funakoshi, founded the first martial arts school after the Japanese occupation of Korea ended in 1945, called the Chung Do Kwan. Having studied under Gichin Funakoshi at Chuo University, Lee had incorporated taekkyon, kung fu, and karate in the martial art that he taught which he called "Tang Soo Do", the Korean transliteration of the Chinese characters for "Way of Chinese Hand" (唐手道). In the mid-1950s, the martial arts schools were unified under President Rhee Syngman's order, and became taekwondo under the leadership of Choi Hong Hi and a committee of Korean masters. Choi, a significant figure in taekwondo history, had also studied karate under Funakoshi. Karate also provided an important comparative model for the early founders of taekwondo in the formalization of their art including hyung and the belt ranking system. The original taekwondo hyung were identical to karate kata. Eventually, original Korean forms were developed by individual schools and associations. Although the World Taekwondo Federation and International Taekwon-Do Federation are the most prominent among Korean martial arts organizations, tang soo do schools that teach Japanese karate still exist as they were originally conveyed to Won Kuk Lee and his contemporaries from Funakoshi.
Karate appeared in the Soviet Union in the mid-1960s, during Nikita Khrushchev's policy of improved international relations. The first Shotokan clubs were opened in Moscow's universities. In 1973, however, the government banned karate—together with all other foreign martial arts—endorsing only the Soviet martial art of sambo. Failing to suppress these uncontrolled groups, the USSR's Sport Committee formed the Karate Federation of USSR in December 1978. On 17 May 1984, the Soviet Karate Federation was disbanded and all karate became illegal again. In 1989, karate practice became legal again, but under strict government regulations, only after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 did independent karate schools resume functioning, and so federations were formed and national tournaments in authentic styles began.
Young actress Arhia Faye Agas is also an active karate practitioner.
In the 1950s and 1960s, several Japanese karate masters began to teach the art in Europe, but it was not until 1965 that the Japan Karate Association (JKA) sent to Europe four well-trained young Karate instructors Taiji Kase, Keinosuke Enoeda, Hirokazu Kanazawa and Hiroshi Shirai. Kase went to France, Enoeada to England and Shirai in Italy. These Masters maintained always a strong link between them, the JKA and the others JKA masters in the world, especially Hidetaka Nishiyama in the US
France Shotokan Karate was created in 1964 by Tsutomu Ohshima. It is affiliated with another of his organizations, Shotokan Karate of America (SKA). However, in 1965 Taiji Kase came from Japan along with Enoeda and Shirai, who went to England and Italy respectively, and karate came under the influence of the JKA.
Hiroshi Shirai, one of the original instructors sent by the JKA to Europe along with Kase, Enoeda and Kanazawa, moved to Italy in 1965 and quickly established a Shotokan enclave that spawned several instructors who in their turn soon spread the style all over the country. By 1970 Shotokan karate was the most spread martial art in Italy apart from Judo. Other styles such as Wado Ryu, Goju Ryu and Shito Ryu, are present and well established in Italy, while Shotokan remains the most popular.
Vernon Bell, a 3rd Dan Judo instructor who had been instructed by Kenshiro Abbe introduced Karate to England in 1956, having attended classes in Henry Plée's Yoseikan dōjō in Paris. Yoseikan had been founded by Minoru Mochizuki, a master of multiple Japanese martial arts, who had studied Karate with Gichin Funakoshi, thus the Yoseikan style was heavily influenced by Shotokan. Bell began teaching in the tennis courts of his parents' back garden in Ilford, Essex and his group was to become the British Karate Federation. On 19 July 1957, Vietnamese Hoang Nam 3rd Dan, billed as "Karate champion of Indo China", was invited to teach by Bell at Maybush Road, but the first instructor from Japan was Tetsuji Murakami (1927–1987) a 3rd Dan Yoseikan under Minoru Mochizuki and 1st Dan of the JKA, who arrived in England in July 1959. In 1959, Frederick Gille set up the Liverpool branch of the British Karate Federation, which was officially recognised in 1961. The Liverpool branch was based at Harold House Jewish Boys Club in Chatham Street before relocating to the YMCA in Everton where it became known as the Red Triangle. One of the early members of this branch was Andy Sherry who had previously studied Jujutsu with Jack Britten. In 1961, Edward Ainsworth, another blackbelt Judoka, set up the first Karate study group in Ayrshire, Scotland having attended Bell's third 'Karate Summer School' in 1961.
Outside of Bell's organisation, Charles Mack traveled to Japan and studied under Masatoshi Nakayama of the Japan Karate Association who graded Mack to 1st Dan Shotokan on 4 March 1962 in Japan. Shotokai Karate was introduced to England in 1963 by another of Gichin Funakoshi's students, Mitsusuke Harada. Outside of the Shotokan stable of karate styles, Wado Ryu Karate was also an early adopted style in the UK, introduced by Tatsuo Suzuki, a 6th Dan at the time in 1964.
Despite the early adoption of Shotokan in the UK, it was not until 1964 that JKA Shotokan officially came to the UK. Bell had been corresponding with the JKA in Tokyo asking for his grades to be ratified in Shotokan having apparently learnt that Murakami was not a designated representative of the JKA. The JKA obliged, and without enforcing a grading on Bell, ratified his black belt on 5 February 1964, though he had to relinquish his Yoseikan grade. Bell requested a visitation from JKA instructors and the next year Taiji Kase, Hirokazu Kanazawa, Keinosuke Enoeda and Hiroshi Shirai gave the first JKA demo at the old Kensington Town Hall on 21 April 1965. Hirokazu Kanazawa and Keinosuke Enoeda stayed and Murakami left (later re-emerging as a 5th Dan Shotokai under Harada).
In 1966, members of the former British Karate Federation established the Karate Union of Great Britain (KUGB) under Hirokazu Kanazawa as chief instructor and affiliated to JKA. Keinosuke Enoeda came to England at the same time as Kanazawa, teaching at a dōjō in Liverpool. Kanazawa left the UK after 3 years and Enoeda took over. After Enoeda's death in 2003, the KUGB elected Andy Sherry as Chief Instructor. Shortly after this, a new association split off from KUGB, JKA England. An earlier significant split from the KUGB took place in 1991 when a group led by KUGB senior instructor Steve Cattle formed the English Shotokan Academy (ESA). The aim of this group was to follow the teachings of Taiji Kase, formerly the JKA chief instructor in Europe, who along with Hiroshi Shirai created the World Shotokan Karate-do Academy (WKSA), in 1989 to pursue the teaching of "Budo" karate as opposed to what he viewed as "sport karate". Kase sought to return the practice of Shotokan Karate to its martial roots, reintroducing amongst other things open hand and throwing techniques that had been side lined as the result of competition rules introduced by the JKA. Both the ESA and the WKSA (renamed the Kase-Ha Shotokan-Ryu Karate-do Academy (KSKA) after Kase's death in 2004) continue following this path today. In 1975, Great Britain became the first team ever to take the World male team title from Japan after being defeated the previous year in the final.
The World Karate Federation was first introduced to Oceania as the Oceania Karate Federation 1973.
The Australian Karate Federation, under the World Karate Federation, was first introduced in 1970. In 1972 Frank Novak became the first fully qualified Shotokan instructor to arrive in Australia and teach in the country, establishing the first Shotokan Karate dojo in Australia. At karate's debut in the Olympics at the 2020 Summer Olympics, Tsuneari Yahiro became Australia's first Karate Olympian.
Karate spread rapidly in the West through popular culture. In 1950s popular fiction, karate was at times described to readers in near-mythical terms, and it was credible to show Western experts of unarmed combat as unaware of Eastern martial arts of this kind. Following the inclusion of judo at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, there was growing mainstream Western interest in Japanese martial arts, particularly karate, during the 1960s. By the 1970s, martial arts films (especially kung fu films and Bruce Lee flicks from Hong Kong) had formed a mainstream genre and launched the "kung fu craze" which propelled karate and other Asian martial arts into mass popularity. However, mainstream Western audiences at the time generally did not distinguish between different Asian martial arts such as karate, kung fu and tae kwon do.
In the film series 007 (1953–present), the main protagonist James Bond is exceptionally skillful in martial arts. He is an expert in various types of martial arts including Karate, as well as Judo, Aikido, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Filipino Eskrima and Krav Maga.
During the late 20th century, specifically during the 80s and 90s, karate saw a rise in mainstream popularity. America in the 80s took hold of the martial arts craze and began to produce more homegrown films in the martial arts genre. Films weren't the only popular visual representation of Karate in the 80s, just as arcades grew in popularity, so did Karate in arcade fighting games. The first video game to feature fist fighting was Heavyweight Champ in 1976, but it was Karate Champ that popularized the one-on-one fighting game genre in arcades in 1984. In 1987, Capcom released Street Fighter, featuring multiple Karateka characters.
The Karate Kid (1984) and its sequels The Karate Kid, Part II (1986), The Karate Kid, Part III (1989) and The Next Karate Kid (1994) are films relating the fictional story of an American adolescent's introduction into karate. Its television sequel, Cobra Kai (2018), has led to similar growing interest in karate. The success of The Karate Kid further popularized karate (as opposed to Asian martial arts more generally) in mainstream American popular culture. Karate Kommandos is an animated children's show, with Chuck Norris appearing to reveal the moral lessons contained in every episode.
Dragon Ball (1984–present) is a Japanese media franchise (Anime) whose characters use a variety and hybrid of east Asian martial arts styles, including Karate and Wing Chun (Kung fu). Dragon Ball was originally inspired by the classical 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West, combined with elements of Hong Kong martial arts films, with influences of Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee.
In the film series The Matrix, Neo uses a variety of martial arts styles. Neo's skill in martial arts was shown having downloaded into his brain, which granted combat abilities equivalent to a martial artist with decades of experience. Kenpo Karate is one of the many styles Neo learns as part of his computerised combat training. As part of the preparation for the movie, Yuen Woo-ping had Keanu Reeves undertake four months of martial arts training in a variety of different styles.
Many other film stars such as Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and Jet Li come from a range of other martial arts.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Karate (空手) (/kəˈrɑːti/; Japanese pronunciation: [kaɾate] ; Okinawan pronunciation: [kaɽati]), also karate-do (空手道, Karate-dō), is a martial art developed in the Ryukyu Kingdom. It developed from the indigenous Ryukyuan martial arts (called te (手), \"hand\"; tī in Okinawan) under the influence of Chinese martial arts. While modern karate is primarily a striking art that uses punches and kicks, ancient karate was an art that also used jujutsu techniques such as throwing and joint locking techniques. A karate practitioner is called a karate-ka (空手家).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The Ryukyu Kingdom had been conquered by the Japanese Satsuma Domain and had become its vassal state since 1609, but was formally annexed to the Empire of Japan in 1879 as Okinawa Prefecture. The Ryukyuan samurai (Okinawan: samurē) who had been the bearers of karate lost their privileged position, and with it, karate was in danger of losing transmission. However, karate gradually regained popularity after 1905, when it began to be taught in schools in Okinawa.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "During the Taishō era (1912-1926), karate was introduced to mainland Japan by Gichin Funakoshi and Motobu Chōki. Karate's popularity was initially sluggish due to its emphasis on kata practice, but when a magazine reported a story about Motobu defeating a foreign boxer in Kyoto, karate rapidly became well known throughout Japan.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In this era of escalating Japanese militarism, the name was changed from 唐手 (\"Chinese hand\" or \"Tang hand\") to 空手 (\"empty hand\") – both of which are pronounced karate in Japanese – to indicate that the Japanese wished to develop the combat form in Japanese style. After World War II, Okinawa became (1945) an important United States military site and karate became popular among servicemen stationed there.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The martial arts movies of the 1960s and 1970s served to greatly increase the popularity of martial arts around the world, and English-speakers began to use the word karate in a generic way to refer to all striking-based Asian martial arts. Karate schools (dōjōs) began appearing around the world, catering to those with casual interest as well as those seeking a deeper study of the art.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Karate, like other Japanese martial arts, is considered to be not only about fighting techniques, but also about spiritual cultivation. Many karate schools and dōjōs have established rules called dōjō kun, which emphasize the perfection of character, the importance of effort, and respect for courtesy.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Karate featured at the 2020 Summer Olympics after its inclusion at the Games was supported by the International Olympic Committee. Web Japan (sponsored by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs) claims that karate has 50 million practitioners worldwide, while the World Karate Federation claims there are 100 million practitioners around the world.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "According to Gichin Funakoshi, there was originally a distinction between Okinawa-te (沖縄手, lit. 'Okinawa hand') and tōde (唐手, lit. 'Tang hand'). Okinawa-te refers to the kenpō (pugilism) indigenous to Okinawa, while tōde is thought to have referred to the kenpō derived from China. However, this distinction gradually became blurred with the decline of Okinawa-te.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Around 1905, when karate began to be taught in Okinawan schools, tōde was read kun’yomi and called karate (唐手, lit. 'Tang hand') in the Japanese style. Both tōde and karate are written in the same Chinese characters meaning \"Tang/China hand,\" but the former is on'yomi (Chinese reading) and the latter is kun'yomi (Japanese reading). Since the distinction between Okinawa-te and tōde was already blurred at that time, karate was used to encompass both.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "\"Kara (から)\" is a kun’yomi for the character \"唐\" (tō/とう in on'yomi) which is derived from \"Gaya Confederacy (加羅)\" and later included things deriving from China. \"Te (て)\" is a kun’yomi for the character \"手\" (shu/しゅ in on'yomi) which means \"hand\". The Tang dynasty of China ended in AD 907, but the kanji representing it remains in use in Japanese language referring to China generally, in such words as \"唐人街\" (Tōjin machi) meaning Chinatown. Thus the word karate was originally a way of expressing \"martial art from China.\"",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Since there are no written records it is not known definitely whether the kara in karate was originally written with the character 唐 meaning China or the character 空 meaning empty. During the time when admiration for China and things Chinese was at its height in the Ryūkyūs it was the custom to use the former character when referring to things of fine quality. Influenced by this practice, in recent times karate has begun to be written with the character 唐 to give it a sense of class or elegance.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The first documented use of a homophone of the logogram pronounced kara by replacing the Chinese character meaning \"Tang dynasty\" with the character meaning \"empty\" took place in Karate Kumite written in August 1905 by Chōmo Hanashiro (1869–1945). Sino-Japanese relations have never been very good and especially at the time of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, referring to the Chinese origins of karate was considered politically incorrect.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In 1933, the Okinawan art of karate was recognized as a Japanese martial art by the Japanese Martial Arts Committee known as the \"Butoku Kai\". Until 1935, \"karate\" was written as \"唐手\" (Chinese hand). But in 1935, the masters of the various styles of Okinawan karate conferred to decide a new name for their art. They decided to call their art \"karate\" written in Japanese characters as \"空手\" (empty hand).",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Another nominal development is the addition of dō (道; どう) to the end of the word karate. Dō is a suffix having numerous meanings including road, path, route and way. It is used in many martial arts that survived Japan's transition from feudal culture to modern times. It implies that these arts are not just fighting systems but contain spiritual elements when promoted as disciplines. In this context dō is usually translated as \"the way of …\". Examples include aikido, judo, kyūdō and kendo. Thus karatedō is more than just empty hand techniques. It is \"the way of the empty hand\".",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "There are several theories regarding the origins of karate, but the main ones are as follows.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In Okinawa, there was an ancient martial dance called mēkata (舞方). The dancers danced to the accompaniment of songs and sanshin music, similar to karate kata. In the Okinawan countryside, mēkata remained until the early 20th century. There is a theory that from this mēkata with martial elements, te (Okinawan:tī, hand) was born and developed into karate. This theory is advocated by Ankō Asato and his student Gichin Funakoshi.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "It is said that in 1392, a group of professional people known as the \"Thirty-six families from Min\" migrated to Kume Village (now Kume, Naha City) in Naha from Fujian Province in the Ming Dynasty at that time. They brought with them advanced learning and skills to Ryukyu, and there is a theory that Chinese kenpō, the origin of karate, was also brought to Ryukyu at this time.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "There is also the \"Keichō import theory,\" which states that karate was brought to Ryukyu after the invasion of Ryukyu by the Satsuma Domain (Keichō 14, 1609), as well as the theory that it was introduced by Kōshōkun (Okinawan: Kūsankū) based on the description in Ōshima Writing.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "There are also other theories, such as that it developed from Okinawan sumo (shima) or that it originated from jujutsu, which had been introduced from Japan.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Karate began as a common fighting system known as te (Okinawan: ti) among the Pechin class of the Ryukyuans. After trade relationships were established with the Ming dynasty of China in 1372 by King Satto of Chūzan, some forms of Chinese martial arts were introduced to the Ryukyu Islands by the visitors from China, particularly Fujian. A large group of Chinese families moved to Okinawa around 1392 for the purpose of cultural exchange, where they established the community of Kumemura and shared their knowledge of a wide variety of Chinese arts and sciences, including the Chinese martial arts. The political centralization of Okinawa by King Shō Hashi in 1429 and the policy of banning weapons by King Shō Shin in 1477, later enforced in Okinawa after the invasion by the Shimazu clan in 1609, are also factors that furthered the development of unarmed combat techniques in Okinawa.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "There were few formal styles of te, but rather many practitioners with their own methods. One surviving example is the Motobu-ryū school passed down from the Motobu family by Seikichi Uehara. Early styles of karate are often generalized as Shuri-te, Naha-te, and Tomari-te, named after the three cities from which they emerged. Each area and its teachers had particular kata, techniques, and principles that distinguished their local version of te from the others.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Members of the Okinawan upper classes were sent to China regularly to study various political and practical disciplines. The incorporation of empty-handed Chinese Kung Fu into Okinawan martial arts occurred partly because of these exchanges and partly because of growing legal restrictions on the use of weaponry. Traditional karate kata bear a strong resemblance to the forms found in Fujian martial arts such as Fujian White Crane, Five Ancestors, and Gangrou-quan (Hard Soft Fist; pronounced \"Gōjūken\" in Japanese). Many Okinawan weapons such as the sai, tonfa, and nunchaku may have originated in and around Southeast Asia.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Sakugawa Kanga (1786–1867) is believed to have studied pugilism and staff (bō) fighting in China (according to one legend, under the guidance of Kōshōkun, originator of Kūsankū kata). In the early 19th century, he became known as a master of the fighting arts of Chinese origin and was nicknamed \"Tōdī Sakugawa,\" which meant \"Sakugawa of China Hand.\" Although this nickname is not confirmed by the literature of the time, it suggests that the term tōdī (唐手) existed in the early 19th century. Around the 1820s, Matsumura Sōkon (1809-1899) began teaching a fighting art called Uchinā-dī (沖縄手, lit. 'Okinawan hand'). Matsumura was, according to one theory, a student of Sakugawa. Matsumura's style later became the origin of many Shuri-te schools.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Itosu Ankō (1831-1915) studied under Matsumura and Bushi Nagahama of Naha-te. He created the Pin'an forms (\"Heian\" in Japanese) which are simplified kata for beginning students. In 1905, Itosu helped to get karate introduced into Okinawa's public schools. These forms were taught to children at the elementary school level. Itosu's influence in karate is broad. The forms he created are common across nearly all styles of karate. His students became some of the most well-known karate masters, including Motobu Chōyū, Motobu Chōki, Yabu Kentsū, Hanashiro Chōmo, Gichin Funakoshi and Kenwa Mabuni. Itosu is sometimes referred to as \"the Grandfather of Modern Karate.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In 1881, Higaonna Kanryō returned from China after years of instruction with Ryu Ryu Ko and founded what would become Naha-te. One of his students was the founder of Gojū-ryū, Chōjun Miyagi. Chōjun Miyagi taught such well-known karateka as Seko Higa (who also trained with Higaonna), Meitoku Yagi, Miyazato Ei'ichi, and Seikichi Toguchi, and for a very brief time near the end of his life, An'ichi Miyagi (a teacher claimed by Morio Higaonna).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In addition to the three early te styles of karate a fourth Okinawan influence is that of Uechi Kanbun (1877–1948). At the age of 20 he went to Fuzhou in Fujian Province, China, to escape Japanese military conscription. While there he studied under Shū Shiwa (Chinese: Zhou Zihe 周子和 1874–1926). He was a leading figure of Chinese Nanpa Shorin-ken style at that time. He later developed his own style of Uechi-ryū karate based on the Sanchin, Seisan, and Sanseiryu kata that he had studied in China.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "When Shō Tai, the last king of the Ryūkyū Kingdom, was ordered to move to Tokyo in 1879, he was accompanied by prominent karate masters such as Ankō Asato and Chōfu Kyan (father of Chōtoku Kyan). It is unknown if they taught karate to the Japanese in Tokyo, although there are records that Kyan taught his son karate.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In 1908, students from the Okinawa Prefectural Middle School gave a karate demonstration at Butokuden in Kyoto, which was also witnessed by Kanō Jigorō (founder of judo).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In May 1922, Gichin Funakoshi (founder of Shotokan) presented pictures of karate on two hanging scrolls at the first Physical Education Exhibition in Tokyo. The following June, Funakoshi was invited to the Kodokan to give a karate demonstration in front of Jigoro Kano and other judo experts. This was the beginning of the full-scale introduction of karate in Tokyo.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In November 1922, Motobu Chōki (founder of Motobu-ryū) participated in a judo versus boxing match in Kyoto, defeating a foreign boxer. The match was featured in Japan's largest magazine \"King,\" which had a circulation of about one million at the time, and karate and Motobu's name became instantly known throughout Japan.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In 1922, Funakoshi published the first book on karate, and in 1926 Motobu published the first technical book on kumite. As karate's popularity grew, karate clubs were established one after another in Japanese universities with Funakoshi and Motobu as instructors.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In the Showa era (1926-1989), other Okinawan karate masters also came to mainland Japan to teach karate. These included Kenwa Mabuni, Chōjun Miyagi, Kanken Tōyama, and Kanbun Uechi.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "With the rise of militarism in Japan, some karate masters gradually came to consider the name karate (唐手, lit. 'Tang hand') undesirable. The name karate (空手, lit. 'empty hand') had already been used by Chōmo Hanashiro in Okinawa in 1905, and Funakoshi decided to use this name as well. In addition, the name karatedō (唐手道, lit. 'the way of the Tang hand'), which was already used by the karate club of Tokyo Imperial University (now the University of Tokyo) in 1929 by adding the suffix dō (道, way) to karate, was also used by Funakoshi, who decided to use the name karatedō (空手道, lit. 'the way of the empty hand') in the same way.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The dō suffix implies that karatedō is a path to self-knowledge, not just a study of the technical aspects of fighting. Like most martial arts practised in Japan, karate made its transition from -jutsu to -dō around the beginning of the 20th century. The \"dō\" in \"karate-dō\" sets it apart from karate-jutsu, as aikido is distinguished from aikijutsu, judo from jujutsu, kendo from kenjutsu and iaido from iaijutsu.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "On October 25, 1936, a roundtable meeting of karate masters was held in Naha, Okinawa Prefecture, where it was officially decided to change the name of karate from karate (Tang hand) to karate (empty hand). In attendance were Chōmo Hanashiro, Chōki Motobu, Chōtoku Kyan, Jūhatsu Kyoda, Chōjun Miyagi, Shinpan Gusukuma, and Chōshin Chibana. In 2005, the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly passed a resolution to commemorate this decision by designating October 25 as \"Karate Day.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Funakoshi changed the names of many kata and the name of the art itself (at least on mainland Japan), doing so to get karate accepted by the Japanese budō organization Dai Nippon Butoku Kai. Funakoshi also gave Japanese names to many of the kata. The five pinan forms became known as heian, the three naihanchi forms became known as tekki, seisan as hangetsu, Chintō as gankaku, wanshu as enpi, and so on. These were mostly political changes, rather than changes to the content of the forms, although Funakoshi did introduce some such changes. Funakoshi had trained in two of the popular branches of Okinawan karate of the time, Shorin-ryū and Shōrei-ryū. In Japan he was influenced by kendo, incorporating some ideas about distancing and timing into his style. He always referred to what he taught as simply karate, but in 1936 he built a dōjō in Tokyo and the style he left behind is usually called Shotokan after this dōjō. Shoto, meaning \"pine wave\", was Funakoshi's pen name and kan meaning \"hall\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The modernization and systemization of karate in Japan also included the adoption of the white uniform that consisted of the kimono and the dogi or keikogi—mostly called just karategi—and coloured belt ranks. Both of these innovations were originated and popularized by Jigoro Kano, the founder of judo and one of the men Funakoshi consulted in his efforts to modernize karate.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "A new form of karate called Kyokushin was formally founded in 1957 by Masutatsu Oyama (who was born a Korean, Choi Yeong-Eui 최영의). Kyokushin is largely a synthesis of Shotokan and Gōjū-ryū. It teaches a curriculum that emphasizes aliveness, physical toughness, and full contact sparring. Because of its emphasis on physical, full-force sparring, Kyokushin is now often called \"full contact karate\", or \"Knockdown karate\" (after the name for its competition rules). Many other karate organizations and styles are descended from the Kyokushin curriculum.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Karate can be practiced as an art (budō), self defense or as a combat sport. Traditional karate places emphasis on self-development (budō). Modern Japanese style training emphasizes the psychological elements incorporated into a proper kokoro (attitude) such as perseverance, fearlessness, virtue, and leadership skills. Sport karate places emphasis on exercise and competition. Weapons are an important training activity in some styles of karate.",
"title": "Practice"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Karate training is commonly divided into kihon (basics or fundamentals), kata (forms), and kumite (sparring).",
"title": "Practice"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Kihon means basics and these form the base for everything else in the style including stances, strikes, punches, kicks and blocks. Karate styles place varying importance on kihon. Typically this is training in unison of a technique or a combination of techniques by a group of karateka. Kihon may also be prearranged drills in smaller groups or in pairs.",
"title": "Practice"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Kata (型:かた) means literally \"shape\" or \"model.\" Kata is a formalized sequence of movements which represent various offensive and defensive postures. These postures are based on idealized combat applications. The applications when applied in a demonstration with real opponents is referred to as a Bunkai. The Bunkai shows how every stance and movement is used. Bunkai is a useful tool to understand a kata.",
"title": "Practice"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "To attain a formal rank the karateka must demonstrate competent performance of specific required kata for that level. The Japanese terminology for grades or ranks is commonly used. Requirements for examinations vary among schools.",
"title": "Practice"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Sparring in Karate is called kumite (組手:くみて). It literally means \"meeting of hands.\" Kumite is practiced both as a sport and as self-defense training. Levels of physical contact during sparring vary considerably. Full contact karate has several variants. Knockdown karate (such as Kyokushin) uses full power techniques to bring an opponent to the ground. Sparring in armour, bogu kumite, allows full power techniques with some safety. Sport kumite in many international competition under the World Karate Federation is free or structured with light contact or semi contact and points are awarded by a referee.",
"title": "Practice"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "In structured kumite (yakusoku, prearranged), two participants perform a choreographed series of techniques with one striking while the other blocks. The form ends with one devastating technique (hito tsuki).",
"title": "Practice"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In free sparring (Jiyu Kumite), the two participants have a free choice of scoring techniques. The allowed techniques and contact level are primarily determined by sport or style organization policy, but might be modified according to the age, rank and sex of the participants. Depending upon style, take-downs, sweeps and in some rare cases even time-limited grappling on the ground are also allowed.",
"title": "Practice"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Free sparring is performed in a marked or closed area. The bout runs for a fixed time (2 to 3 minutes.) The time can run continuously (iri kume) or be stopped for referee judgment. In light contact or semi contact kumite, points are awarded based on the criteria: good form, sporting attitude, vigorous application, awareness/zanshin, good timing and correct distance. In full contact karate kumite, points are based on the results of the impact, rather than the formal appearance of the scoring technique.",
"title": "Practice"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "In the bushidō tradition dōjō kun is a set of guidelines for karateka to follow. These guidelines apply both in the dōjō (training hall) and in everyday life.",
"title": "Practice"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Okinawan karate uses supplementary training known as hojo undo. This uses simple equipment made of wood and stone. The makiwara is a striking post. The nigiri game is a large jar used for developing grip strength. These supplementary exercises are designed to increase strength, stamina, speed, and muscle coordination. Sport Karate emphasizes aerobic exercise, anaerobic exercise, power, agility, flexibility, and stress management. All practices vary depending upon the school and the teacher.",
"title": "Practice"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Gichin Funakoshi (船越 義珍) said, \"There are no contests in karate.\" In pre–World War II Okinawa, kumite was not part of karate training. Shigeru Egami relates that, in 1940, some karateka were ousted from their dōjō because they adopted sparring after having learned it in Tokyo.",
"title": "Practice"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Karate is divided into style organizations. These organizations sometimes cooperate in non-style specific sport karate organizations or federations. Examples of sport organizations include AAKF/ITKF, AOK, TKL, AKA, WKF, NWUKO, WUKF and WKC. Organizations hold competitions (tournaments) from local to international level. Tournaments are designed to match members of opposing schools or styles against one another in kata, sparring and weapons demonstration. They are often separated by age, rank and sex with potentially different rules or standards based on these factors. The tournament may be exclusively for members of a particular style (closed) or one in which any martial artist from any style may participate within the rules of the tournament (open).",
"title": "Practice"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The World Karate Federation (WKF) is the largest sport karate organization and is recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as being responsible for karate competition in the Olympic Games. The WKF has developed common rules governing all styles. The national WKF organizations coordinate with their respective National Olympic Committees.",
"title": "Practice"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "WKF karate competition has two disciplines: sparring (kumite) and forms (kata). Competitors may enter either as individuals or as part of a team. Evaluation for kata and kobudō is performed by a panel of judges, whereas sparring is judged by a head referee, usually with assistant referees at the side of the sparring area. Sparring matches are typically divided by weight, age, gender, and experience.",
"title": "Practice"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "WKF only allows membership through one national organization/federation per country to which clubs may join. The World Union of Karate-do Federations (WUKF) offers different styles and federations a world body they may join, without having to compromise their style or size. The WUKF accepts more than one federation or association per country.",
"title": "Practice"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Sport organizations use different competition rule systems. Light contact rules are used by the WKF, WUKO, IASK and WKC. Full contact karate rules used by Kyokushinkai, Seidokaikan and other organizations. Bogu kumite (full contact with protective shielding of targets) rules are used in the World Koshiki Karate-Do Federation organization. Shinkaratedo Federation use boxing gloves. Within the United States, rules may be under the jurisdiction of state sports authorities, such as the boxing commission.",
"title": "Practice"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "In August 2016, the International Olympic Committee approved karate as an Olympic sport beginning at the 2020 Summer Olympics. Karate also debuted at the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics. During this debut of Karate in the Summer Olympics, sixty competitors from around the world competed in the Kumite competition, and twenty competed in the Kata competition. In September 2015, karate was included in a shortlist along with baseball, softball, skateboarding, surfing, and sport climbing to be considered for inclusion in the 2020 Summer Olympics; and in June 2016, the executive board of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that they would support the proposal to include all of the shortlisted sports in the 2020 Games. Finally, on 3 August 2016, all five sports (counting baseball and softball together as one sport) were approved for inclusion in the 2020 Olympic program.",
"title": "Practice"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Karate will not be included in the 2024 Olympic Games, although it has made the shortlist for inclusion, alongside nine others, in the 2028 Summer Olympics. Karate, although not widely used in mixed martial arts, has been effective for some MMA practitioners. Various styles of karate are practiced in MMA: Lyoto Machida and John Makdessi practice Shotokan; Bas Rutten and Georges St-Pierre train in Kyokushin; Michelle Waterson holds a black belt in American Free Style Karate; Stephen Thompson practices American Kenpo Karate; and Robert Whittaker practices Gōjū-ryū.",
"title": "Practice"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "In 1924, Gichin Funakoshi, founder of Shotokan Karate, adopted the Dan system from the judo founder Jigoro Kano using a rank scheme with a limited set of belt colors. Other Okinawan teachers also adopted this practice. In the Kyū/Dan system the beginner grades start with a higher numbered kyū (e.g., 10th Kyū or Jukyū) and progress toward a lower numbered kyū. The Dan progression continues from 1st Dan (Shodan, or 'beginning dan') to the higher dan grades. Kyū-grade karateka are referred to as \"color belt\" or mudansha (\"ones without dan/rank\"). Dan-grade karateka are referred to as yudansha (holders of dan/rank). Yudansha typically wear a black belt. Normally, the first five to six dans are given by examination by superior dan holders, while the subsequent (7 and up) are honorary, given for special merits and/or age reached. Requirements of rank differ among styles, organizations, and schools. Kyū ranks stress stance, balance, and coordination. Speed and power are added at higher grades.",
"title": "Practice"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Minimum age and time in rank are factors affecting promotion. Testing consists of demonstration of techniques before a panel of examiners or senseis. This will vary by school, but testing may include everything learned at that point, or just new information. The demonstration is an application for new rank (shinsa) and may include basics, kata, bunkai, self-defense, routines, tameshiwari (breaking), and kumite (sparring).",
"title": "Practice"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "In Karate-Do Kyohan, Funakoshi quoted from the Heart Sutra, which is prominent in Shingon Buddhism: \"Form is emptiness, emptiness is form itself\" (shiki zokuze kū kū zokuze shiki). He interpreted the \"kara\" of Karate-dō to mean \"to purge oneself of selfish and evil thoughts ... for only with a clear mind and conscience can the practitioner understand the knowledge which he receives.\" Funakoshi believed that one should be \"inwardly humble and outwardly gentle.\" Only by behaving humbly can one be open to Karate's many lessons. This is done by listening and being receptive to criticism. He considered courtesy of prime importance. He said that \"Karate is properly applied only in those rare situations in which one really must either down another or be downed by him.\" Funakoshi did not consider it unusual for a devotee to use Karate in a real physical confrontation no more than perhaps once in a lifetime. He stated that Karate practitioners must \"never be easily drawn into a fight.\" It is understood that one blow from a real expert could mean death. It is clear that those who misuse what they have learned bring dishonor upon themselves. He promoted the character trait of personal conviction. In \"time of grave public crisis, one must have the courage ... to face a million and one opponents.\" He taught that indecisiveness is a weakness.",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Karate is divided into many styles, each with their different training methods, focuses, and cultures; though they mainly originate from the historical Okinawan parent styles of Naha-te, Tomari-te and Shuri-te. In the modern era the major four styles of karate are considered to be Gōjū-ryū, Shotokan, Shitō-ryū, and Wadō-ryū. These four styles are those recognised by the World Karate Federation for international kata competition.",
"title": "Styles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Other internationally recognised styles include but are not limited to:",
"title": "Styles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "",
"title": "Styles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Karate has grown in popularity in Africa, particularly in South Africa and Ghana.",
"title": "World"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Karate began in Canada in the 1930s and 1940s as Japanese people immigrated to the country. Karate was practised quietly without a large amount of organization. During the Second World War, many Japanese-Canadian families were moved to the interior of British Columbia. Masaru Shintani, at the age of 13, began to study Shorin-Ryu karate in the Japanese camp under Kitigawa. In 1956, after 9 years of training with Kitigawa, Shintani travelled to Japan and met Hironori Otsuka (Wado Ryu). In 1958, Otsuka invited Shintani to join his organization Wado Kai, and in 1969 he asked Shintani to officially call his style Wado.",
"title": "World"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "In Canada during this same time, karate was also introduced by Masami Tsuruoka who had studied in Japan in the 1940s under Tsuyoshi Chitose. In 1954, Tsuruoka initiated the first karate competition in Canada and laid the foundation for the National Karate Association.",
"title": "World"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "In the late 1950s Shintani moved to Ontario and began teaching karate and judo at the Japanese Cultural Centre in Hamilton. In 1966, he began (with Otsuka's endorsement) the Shintani Wado Kai Karate Federation. During the 1970s Otsuka appointed Shintani the Supreme Instructor of Wado Kai in North America. In 1979, Otsuka publicly promoted Shintani to hachidan (8th dan) and privately gave him a kudan certificate (9th dan), which was revealed by Shintani in 1995. Shintani and Otsuka visited each other in Japan and Canada several times, the last time in 1980 two years prior to Otsuka's death. Shintani died 7 May 2000.",
"title": "World"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "After World War II, members of the United States military learned karate in Okinawa or Japan and then opened schools in the US. In 1945, Robert Trias opened the first dōjō in the United States in Phoenix, Arizona, a Shuri-ryū karate dōjō. In the 1950s, William J. Dometrich, Ed Parker, Cecil T. Patterson, Gordon Doversola, Harold G. Long, Donald Hugh Nagle, George Mattson and Peter Urban all began instructing in the US.",
"title": "World"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Tsutomu Ohshima began studying karate under Shotokan's founder, Gichin Funakoshi, while a student at Waseda University, beginning in 1948. In 1957, Ohshima received his godan (fifth-degree black belt), the highest rank awarded by Funakoshi. He founded the first university karate club in the United States at California Institute of Technology in 1957. In 1959, he founded the Southern California Karate Association (SCKA) which was renamed Shotokan Karate of America (SKA) in 1969.",
"title": "World"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "In the 1960s, Anthony Mirakian, Richard Kim, Teruyuki Okazaki, John Pachivas, Allen Steen, Gosei Yamaguchi (son of Gōgen Yamaguchi), Michael G. Foster and Pat Burleson began teaching martial arts around the country.",
"title": "World"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "In 1961, Hidetaka Nishiyama, a co-founder of the Japan Karate Association (JKA) and student of Gichin Funakoshi, began teaching in the United States. He founded the International Traditional Karate Federation (ITKF). Takayuki Mikami was sent to New Orleans by the JKA in 1963.",
"title": "World"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "In 1964, Takayuki Kubota relocated the International Karate Association from Tokyo to California.",
"title": "World"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Due to past conflict between Korea and Japan, most notably during the Japanese occupation of Korea in the early 20th century, the influence of karate in Korea is a contentious issue. From 1910 until 1945, Korea was annexed by the Japanese Empire. It was during this time that many of the Korean martial arts masters of the 20th century were exposed to Japanese karate. After regaining independence from Japan, many Korean martial arts schools that opened up in the 1940s and 1950s were founded by masters who had trained in karate in Japan as part of their martial arts training.",
"title": "World"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Won Kuk Lee, a Korean student of Funakoshi, founded the first martial arts school after the Japanese occupation of Korea ended in 1945, called the Chung Do Kwan. Having studied under Gichin Funakoshi at Chuo University, Lee had incorporated taekkyon, kung fu, and karate in the martial art that he taught which he called \"Tang Soo Do\", the Korean transliteration of the Chinese characters for \"Way of Chinese Hand\" (唐手道). In the mid-1950s, the martial arts schools were unified under President Rhee Syngman's order, and became taekwondo under the leadership of Choi Hong Hi and a committee of Korean masters. Choi, a significant figure in taekwondo history, had also studied karate under Funakoshi. Karate also provided an important comparative model for the early founders of taekwondo in the formalization of their art including hyung and the belt ranking system. The original taekwondo hyung were identical to karate kata. Eventually, original Korean forms were developed by individual schools and associations. Although the World Taekwondo Federation and International Taekwon-Do Federation are the most prominent among Korean martial arts organizations, tang soo do schools that teach Japanese karate still exist as they were originally conveyed to Won Kuk Lee and his contemporaries from Funakoshi.",
"title": "World"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Karate appeared in the Soviet Union in the mid-1960s, during Nikita Khrushchev's policy of improved international relations. The first Shotokan clubs were opened in Moscow's universities. In 1973, however, the government banned karate—together with all other foreign martial arts—endorsing only the Soviet martial art of sambo. Failing to suppress these uncontrolled groups, the USSR's Sport Committee formed the Karate Federation of USSR in December 1978. On 17 May 1984, the Soviet Karate Federation was disbanded and all karate became illegal again. In 1989, karate practice became legal again, but under strict government regulations, only after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 did independent karate schools resume functioning, and so federations were formed and national tournaments in authentic styles began.",
"title": "World"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Young actress Arhia Faye Agas is also an active karate practitioner.",
"title": "World"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "In the 1950s and 1960s, several Japanese karate masters began to teach the art in Europe, but it was not until 1965 that the Japan Karate Association (JKA) sent to Europe four well-trained young Karate instructors Taiji Kase, Keinosuke Enoeda, Hirokazu Kanazawa and Hiroshi Shirai. Kase went to France, Enoeada to England and Shirai in Italy. These Masters maintained always a strong link between them, the JKA and the others JKA masters in the world, especially Hidetaka Nishiyama in the US",
"title": "World"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "France Shotokan Karate was created in 1964 by Tsutomu Ohshima. It is affiliated with another of his organizations, Shotokan Karate of America (SKA). However, in 1965 Taiji Kase came from Japan along with Enoeda and Shirai, who went to England and Italy respectively, and karate came under the influence of the JKA.",
"title": "World"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Hiroshi Shirai, one of the original instructors sent by the JKA to Europe along with Kase, Enoeda and Kanazawa, moved to Italy in 1965 and quickly established a Shotokan enclave that spawned several instructors who in their turn soon spread the style all over the country. By 1970 Shotokan karate was the most spread martial art in Italy apart from Judo. Other styles such as Wado Ryu, Goju Ryu and Shito Ryu, are present and well established in Italy, while Shotokan remains the most popular.",
"title": "World"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Vernon Bell, a 3rd Dan Judo instructor who had been instructed by Kenshiro Abbe introduced Karate to England in 1956, having attended classes in Henry Plée's Yoseikan dōjō in Paris. Yoseikan had been founded by Minoru Mochizuki, a master of multiple Japanese martial arts, who had studied Karate with Gichin Funakoshi, thus the Yoseikan style was heavily influenced by Shotokan. Bell began teaching in the tennis courts of his parents' back garden in Ilford, Essex and his group was to become the British Karate Federation. On 19 July 1957, Vietnamese Hoang Nam 3rd Dan, billed as \"Karate champion of Indo China\", was invited to teach by Bell at Maybush Road, but the first instructor from Japan was Tetsuji Murakami (1927–1987) a 3rd Dan Yoseikan under Minoru Mochizuki and 1st Dan of the JKA, who arrived in England in July 1959. In 1959, Frederick Gille set up the Liverpool branch of the British Karate Federation, which was officially recognised in 1961. The Liverpool branch was based at Harold House Jewish Boys Club in Chatham Street before relocating to the YMCA in Everton where it became known as the Red Triangle. One of the early members of this branch was Andy Sherry who had previously studied Jujutsu with Jack Britten. In 1961, Edward Ainsworth, another blackbelt Judoka, set up the first Karate study group in Ayrshire, Scotland having attended Bell's third 'Karate Summer School' in 1961.",
"title": "World"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Outside of Bell's organisation, Charles Mack traveled to Japan and studied under Masatoshi Nakayama of the Japan Karate Association who graded Mack to 1st Dan Shotokan on 4 March 1962 in Japan. Shotokai Karate was introduced to England in 1963 by another of Gichin Funakoshi's students, Mitsusuke Harada. Outside of the Shotokan stable of karate styles, Wado Ryu Karate was also an early adopted style in the UK, introduced by Tatsuo Suzuki, a 6th Dan at the time in 1964.",
"title": "World"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Despite the early adoption of Shotokan in the UK, it was not until 1964 that JKA Shotokan officially came to the UK. Bell had been corresponding with the JKA in Tokyo asking for his grades to be ratified in Shotokan having apparently learnt that Murakami was not a designated representative of the JKA. The JKA obliged, and without enforcing a grading on Bell, ratified his black belt on 5 February 1964, though he had to relinquish his Yoseikan grade. Bell requested a visitation from JKA instructors and the next year Taiji Kase, Hirokazu Kanazawa, Keinosuke Enoeda and Hiroshi Shirai gave the first JKA demo at the old Kensington Town Hall on 21 April 1965. Hirokazu Kanazawa and Keinosuke Enoeda stayed and Murakami left (later re-emerging as a 5th Dan Shotokai under Harada).",
"title": "World"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "In 1966, members of the former British Karate Federation established the Karate Union of Great Britain (KUGB) under Hirokazu Kanazawa as chief instructor and affiliated to JKA. Keinosuke Enoeda came to England at the same time as Kanazawa, teaching at a dōjō in Liverpool. Kanazawa left the UK after 3 years and Enoeda took over. After Enoeda's death in 2003, the KUGB elected Andy Sherry as Chief Instructor. Shortly after this, a new association split off from KUGB, JKA England. An earlier significant split from the KUGB took place in 1991 when a group led by KUGB senior instructor Steve Cattle formed the English Shotokan Academy (ESA). The aim of this group was to follow the teachings of Taiji Kase, formerly the JKA chief instructor in Europe, who along with Hiroshi Shirai created the World Shotokan Karate-do Academy (WKSA), in 1989 to pursue the teaching of \"Budo\" karate as opposed to what he viewed as \"sport karate\". Kase sought to return the practice of Shotokan Karate to its martial roots, reintroducing amongst other things open hand and throwing techniques that had been side lined as the result of competition rules introduced by the JKA. Both the ESA and the WKSA (renamed the Kase-Ha Shotokan-Ryu Karate-do Academy (KSKA) after Kase's death in 2004) continue following this path today. In 1975, Great Britain became the first team ever to take the World male team title from Japan after being defeated the previous year in the final.",
"title": "World"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "The World Karate Federation was first introduced to Oceania as the Oceania Karate Federation 1973.",
"title": "World"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "The Australian Karate Federation, under the World Karate Federation, was first introduced in 1970. In 1972 Frank Novak became the first fully qualified Shotokan instructor to arrive in Australia and teach in the country, establishing the first Shotokan Karate dojo in Australia. At karate's debut in the Olympics at the 2020 Summer Olympics, Tsuneari Yahiro became Australia's first Karate Olympian.",
"title": "World"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Karate spread rapidly in the West through popular culture. In 1950s popular fiction, karate was at times described to readers in near-mythical terms, and it was credible to show Western experts of unarmed combat as unaware of Eastern martial arts of this kind. Following the inclusion of judo at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, there was growing mainstream Western interest in Japanese martial arts, particularly karate, during the 1960s. By the 1970s, martial arts films (especially kung fu films and Bruce Lee flicks from Hong Kong) had formed a mainstream genre and launched the \"kung fu craze\" which propelled karate and other Asian martial arts into mass popularity. However, mainstream Western audiences at the time generally did not distinguish between different Asian martial arts such as karate, kung fu and tae kwon do.",
"title": "In film and popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "In the film series 007 (1953–present), the main protagonist James Bond is exceptionally skillful in martial arts. He is an expert in various types of martial arts including Karate, as well as Judo, Aikido, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Filipino Eskrima and Krav Maga.",
"title": "In film and popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "During the late 20th century, specifically during the 80s and 90s, karate saw a rise in mainstream popularity. America in the 80s took hold of the martial arts craze and began to produce more homegrown films in the martial arts genre. Films weren't the only popular visual representation of Karate in the 80s, just as arcades grew in popularity, so did Karate in arcade fighting games. The first video game to feature fist fighting was Heavyweight Champ in 1976, but it was Karate Champ that popularized the one-on-one fighting game genre in arcades in 1984. In 1987, Capcom released Street Fighter, featuring multiple Karateka characters.",
"title": "In film and popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "The Karate Kid (1984) and its sequels The Karate Kid, Part II (1986), The Karate Kid, Part III (1989) and The Next Karate Kid (1994) are films relating the fictional story of an American adolescent's introduction into karate. Its television sequel, Cobra Kai (2018), has led to similar growing interest in karate. The success of The Karate Kid further popularized karate (as opposed to Asian martial arts more generally) in mainstream American popular culture. Karate Kommandos is an animated children's show, with Chuck Norris appearing to reveal the moral lessons contained in every episode.",
"title": "In film and popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Dragon Ball (1984–present) is a Japanese media franchise (Anime) whose characters use a variety and hybrid of east Asian martial arts styles, including Karate and Wing Chun (Kung fu). Dragon Ball was originally inspired by the classical 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West, combined with elements of Hong Kong martial arts films, with influences of Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee.",
"title": "In film and popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "In the film series The Matrix, Neo uses a variety of martial arts styles. Neo's skill in martial arts was shown having downloaded into his brain, which granted combat abilities equivalent to a martial artist with decades of experience. Kenpo Karate is one of the many styles Neo learns as part of his computerised combat training. As part of the preparation for the movie, Yuen Woo-ping had Keanu Reeves undertake four months of martial arts training in a variety of different styles.",
"title": "In film and popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Many other film stars such as Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and Jet Li come from a range of other martial arts.",
"title": "In film and popular culture"
}
] |
Karate (空手), also karate-do, is a martial art developed in the Ryukyu Kingdom. It developed from the indigenous Ryukyuan martial arts under the influence of Chinese martial arts. While modern karate is primarily a striking art that uses punches and kicks, ancient karate was an art that also used jujutsu techniques such as throwing and joint locking techniques. A karate practitioner is called a karate-ka (空手家). The Ryukyu Kingdom had been conquered by the Japanese Satsuma Domain and had become its vassal state since 1609, but was formally annexed to the Empire of Japan in 1879 as Okinawa Prefecture. The Ryukyuan samurai who had been the bearers of karate lost their privileged position, and with it, karate was in danger of losing transmission. However, karate gradually regained popularity after 1905, when it began to be taught in schools in Okinawa. During the Taishō era (1912-1926), karate was introduced to mainland Japan by Gichin Funakoshi and Motobu Chōki. Karate's popularity was initially sluggish due to its emphasis on kata practice, but when a magazine reported a story about Motobu defeating a foreign boxer in Kyoto, karate rapidly became well known throughout Japan. In this era of escalating Japanese militarism, the name was changed from 唐手 to 空手 – both of which are pronounced karate in Japanese – to indicate that the Japanese wished to develop the combat form in Japanese style. After World War II, Okinawa became (1945) an important United States military site and karate became popular among servicemen stationed there. The martial arts movies of the 1960s and 1970s served to greatly increase the popularity of martial arts around the world, and English-speakers began to use the word karate in a generic way to refer to all striking-based Asian martial arts. Karate schools (dōjōs) began appearing around the world, catering to those with casual interest as well as those seeking a deeper study of the art. Karate, like other Japanese martial arts, is considered to be not only about fighting techniques, but also about spiritual cultivation. Many karate schools and dōjōs have established rules called dōjō kun, which emphasize the perfection of character, the importance of effort, and respect for courtesy. Karate featured at the 2020 Summer Olympics after its inclusion at the Games was supported by the International Olympic Committee. Web Japan claims that karate has 50 million practitioners worldwide, while the World Karate Federation claims there are 100 million practitioners around the world.
|
2001-10-24T18:43:50Z
|
2024-01-01T00:09:20Z
|
[
"Template:Better source needed",
"Template:Dead link",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Infobox martial art",
"Template:Infobox sport",
"Template:Nihongo2",
"Template:Cite magazine",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Cbignore",
"Template:Karate schools",
"Template:About",
"Template:Citation needed",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Commons and category",
"Template:Japanese martial arts",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Blockquote",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Portal",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:IPAc-en",
"Template:Lang",
"Template:Lit",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Nihongo",
"Template:See also",
"Template:C.",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Martial arts",
"Template:Summer Olympic sports",
"Template:Sports of the World Games program",
"Template:Redirect",
"Template:Infobox Chinese",
"Template:IPA"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karate
|
16,748 |
Kickboxing
|
Kickboxing (/ˈkɪkbɒksɪŋ/ KIK-boks-ing) is a full-contact combat sport and a form of boxing based on punching and kicking. The fight takes place in a boxing ring, normally with boxing gloves, mouth guards, shorts, and bare feet to favor the use of kicks. Kickboxing is practiced for self-defense, general fitness, or for competition. Some styles of kickboxing include: Karate, Muay Thai, Japanese kickboxing, Lethwei, Sanda, and Savate.
Although since the dawn of humanity people have faced each other in hand-to-hand combat, the first documentation on the use of kicking and punching in sports combat is from ancient Greece and ancient India. But nevertheless, the term kickboxing originated in Japan, in the 1960s, and developed in the late 1950s from karate mixed with boxing, having some influence, with competitions held since then. American kickboxing originated in the 1970s and was brought to prominence in September 1974, when the Professional Karate Association (PKA) held the first World Championships. Historically, kickboxing can be considered a hybrid martial art formed from the combination of elements of various traditional styles. This approach became increasingly popular since the 1970s, and since the 1990s, kickboxing has contributed to the emergence of mixed martial arts via further hybridization with ground fighting techniques from Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and folk wrestling.
There is no single international governing body, although some international governing bodies include the World Association of Kickboxing Organizations (also known as WAKO), World Kickboxing Association, the Professional Kickboxing Association (PKA), International Sport Karate Association, International Kickboxing Federation, and World Kickboxing Network, among others. Consequently, there is no single kickboxing world championship, and champion titles are issued by individual promotions, such as Glory, K-1 and ONE Championship among others. Bouts organized under different governing bodies apply different rules, such as allowing the use of knees or clinching etc.
The term "kickboxing" (キックボクシング, kikkubokushingu) can be used in a narrow and in a broad sense.
The term itself was introduced in the 1960s as a Japanese anglicism by Japanese boxing promoter Osamu Noguchi for a hybrid martial art combining Muay Thai and karate which he had introduced in 1958. The term was later also adopted by the American variant. Since there has been a lot of cross-fertilization between these styles, with many practitioners training or competing under the rules of more than one style, the history of the individual styles cannot be seen in isolation from one another.
The French term Boxe pieds-poings (literally "feet-fists-boxing") is also used in the sense of "kickboxing" in the general meaning, including French boxing (Savate) as well as American, Dutch and Japanese kickboxing, Burmese and Thai boxing, any style of full contact karate, etc.
Arts labelled as kickboxing in the general sense include:
Since kickboxing is a broad term, understanding the history can be somewhat difficult, since combat is an inherent part of being human. Kicking and punching as an act of human aggression have probably existed throughout the world since prehistory.
The earliest known depiction of any type of boxing comes from a Sumerian relief in Iraq from the 3rd millennium BC. Forms of kickboxing existed in ancient India. The earliest references to musti-yuddha come from classical Vedic epics such as the Ramayana and Rig Veda, compiled in the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. The Mahabharata describes two combatants boxing with clenched fists and fighting with kicks, finger strikes, knee strikes and headbutts. Mushti Yuddha has travelled along the Indosphere and has been a preceder and a strong influence in many famous martial arts of Southeast Asia such as Muay Thai, Muay Laos and Pradal Serey (of Cambodia).
In the Pankration, a mixed martial art from ancient Greece, a form of kickboxing was used in its Anō Pankration modality, being able to use any extremity to hit. In addition, it is debated whether kicks were allowed in ancient Greek boxing, and while there is some evidence of kicks, this is the subject of debate among scholars.
The French were the first to include boxing gloves into a sport that included kicking and boxing techniques. In 1743, modern boxing gloves were invented by Englishman Jack Broughton. Frenchman Charles Lecour added English boxing gloves to la boxe française. Charles Lecour was a pioneer of modern savate or la boxe française. He created a form where both kicking and punching was used. Lecour was the first to view savate as a sport and self-defense system. The French colonists introduced European boxing gloves into the native Asian martial arts in French Indochina. The use of European boxing gloves spread to neighboring Siam.
It was during the 1950s that a Japanese karateka named Tatsuo Yamada first established an outline of a new sport that combined karate and Muay Thai. This was further explored during the early 1960s, when competitions between karate and Muay Thai began, which allowed for rule modifications to take place. In the middle of the decade, the first events with the term kickboxing were held in Osaka.
By the 1970s and 1980s, the sport had expanded beyond Japan and had reached North America and Europe. It was during this time that many of the most prominent governing bodies were formed.
Since the 1990s the sport has been mostly dominated by the Japanese K-1 promotion, with some competition coming from other promotions and mostly pre-existing governing bodies.
Along with the growing popularity in competition, there has been an increased amount of participation and exposure in the mass media, fitness, and self-defense.
On December 20, 1959, a Muay Thai match among Thai fighters was held at Asakusa town hall in Tokyo. Tatsuo Yamada, who established "Nihon Kempo Karate-do", was interested in Muay Thai because he wanted to perform karate matches with full-contact rules since practitioners are not allowed to hit each other directly in karate matches. At this time, it was unimaginable to hit each other in karate matches in Japan. He had already announced his plan which was named "The draft principles of project of establishment of a new sport and its industrialization" in November 1959, and he proposed the tentative name of "karate-boxing" for this new sport. It is still unknown whether Nak Muay was invited by Yamada, but it is clear that Yamada was the only karateka who was really interested in Muay Thai. Yamada invited a champion Nak Muay (and formerly his son Kan Yamada's sparring partner), and started studying Muay Thai. At this time, the Thai fighter was taken by Osamu Noguchi who was a promoter of boxing and was also interested in Muay Thai. The Thai fighter's photo was on the magazine "The Primer of Nihon Kempo Karate-do, the first number" which was published by Yamada.
There were "Karate vs. Muay Thai fights" on February 12, 1963. The three karate fighters from Oyama dojo (kyokushin later) went to the Lumpinee Boxing Stadium in Thailand and fought against three Muay Thai fighters. The three kyokushin karate fighters' names are Tadashi Nakamura, Kenji Kurosaki and Akio Fujihira (also known as Noboru Osawa). The Muay Thai team were composed of only one authentic Thai fighter. Japan won by 2–1: Tadashi Nakamura and Akio Fujihira both KOed opponents by punch while Kenji Kurosaki, who fought the Thai, was KOed by elbow. The only Japanese loser Kenji Kurosaki was then a kyokushin instructor rather than a contender and temporarily designated as a substitute for the absent chosen fighter. On June of the same year, karateka and future kickboxer Tadashi Sawamura faced against top Thai fighter Samarn Sor Adisorn, in which Sawamura was knocked down 16 times and defeated. Sawamura would use what he learned in that fight to incorporate in the evolving kickboxing tournaments.
Noguchi studied Muay Thai and developed a combined martial art which Noguchi named kick boxing, which absorbed and adopted more rules than techniques from Muay Thai. The main techniques of kickboxing are still derived from a form of Japanese full contact karate where kicks to the legs are allowed, kyokushin. In early competitions, throwing and butting were allowed to distinguish it from Muay Thai. This was later repealed. The Kickboxing Association, the first kickboxing sanctioning body, was founded by Osamu Noguchi in 1966 soon after that. Then the first kickboxing event was held in Osaka on April 11, 1966.
Tatsu Yamada died in 1967, but his dojo changed its name to Suginami Gym, and kept sending kickboxers off to support kickboxing.
Kickboxing boomed and became popular in Japan as it began to be broadcast on TV. By 1970, kickboxing was telecast in Japan on three different channels three times weekly. The fight cards regularly included bouts between Japanese (kickboxers) and Thai (Muay Thai) boxers. Tadashi Sawamura was an especially popular early kickboxer. In 1971 the All Japan Kickboxing Association (AJKA) was established and it registered approximately 700 kickboxers. The first AJKA Commissioner was Shintaro Ishihara, the longtime Governor of Tokyo. Champions were in each weight division from fly to middle. Longtime Kyokushin practitioner Noboru Osawa won the AJKA bantamweight title, which he held for years. Raymond Edler, an American university student studying at Sophia University in Tokyo, took up kickboxing and won the AJKC middleweight title in 1972; he was the first non-Thai to be officially ranked in the sport of Thai boxing, when in 1972 Rajadamnern ranked him no. 3 in the Middleweight division. Edler defended the All Japan title several times and abandoned it. Other popular champions were Toshio Fujiwara and Mitsuo Shima. Most notably, Fujiwara was the first non-Thai to win an official Thai boxing title, when he defeated his Thai opponent in 1978 at Rajadamnern Stadium winning the lightweight championship bout.
By 1980, due to poor ratings and then infrequent television coverage, the golden-age of kickboxing in Japan was suddenly finished. Kickboxing had not been seen on TV until K-1 was founded in 1993.
In 1993, as Kazuyoshi Ishii (founder of Seidokaikan karate) produced K-1 under special kickboxing rules (no elbow and neck wrestling) in 1993, kickboxing became famous again. In the mid-1980s to early 1990s, before the first k-1, Kazuyoshi Ishii also partook in the formation of glove karate as an amateur sport in Japan. Glove karate is based on knockdown karate rules, but wearing boxing gloves and allowing punches to the head. In effect, it is oriental rules kickboxing with scoring based on knockdowns and aggression rather than the number of hits. As K-1 grew in popularity, Glove karate for a while became the fastest-growing amateur sport in Japan.
Count Dante, Ray Scarica and Maung Gyi held the United States' earliest cross-style full-contact style martial arts tournaments as early as 1962. Between 1970 and 1973 a handful of kickboxing promotions were staged across the US. The first recognized bout of this kind occurred on January 17, 1970, and came about when Joe Lewis, a Shorin Ryu stylist who had also studied Jeet Kune Do with the legendary Bruce Lee, and noted champion in the Karate tournament circuit, grew disillusioned with the point-sparring format and sought to create an event that would allow martial artists to fight to the knock out. Enlisting the help of promoter Lee Faulkner, training in boxing and combining the techniques of boxing and Karate for the first time in America, Lewis arranged the bout to be held at the 1st Pro Team Karate Championships. Lewis faced Kenpo stylist Greg "Om" Baines, who had defeated two opponents in years pasts. Lewis won the fight by knockout in the second round. The event was advertised as "Full contact" but the announcers referred to it as Kickboxing, and rules included knees, elbows and sweeps. Lewis would defend his U.S Heavyweight champion title 10 times, remaining undefeated until he came back from his retirement. In the early days, the rules were never clear; one of the first tournaments had no weight divisions, and all the competitors fought off until one was left. During this early time, kickboxing and full contact karate are essentially the same sport.
The institutional separation of American full-contact karate from kickboxing occurred with the formation of the Professional Karate Association (PKA) in 1974 and of the World Kickboxing Association (WKA) in 1976. They were the first organised body of martial arts on a global scale to sanction fights, create ranking systems, and institute a development programme.
The International Kickboxing Federation (IKF) and the International Sport Kickboxing Association (ISKA) have been the only organizations to have thrived in the modern era.
The International Kickboxing Federation (IKF) was founded in 1992 by Steve Fossum and Dan Stell. Stell eventually stepped down to go back to fighting while Fossum continued with the organization. In 1999 Fossum and Joe Taylor of Ringside Products created the first amateur open North American tournament for Kickboxing and Muay Thai, now the IKF World Classic.
After ending its venture with K-1 in 2006, ISKA co-operated the World Combat League with Chuck Norris, and Strikeforce MMA in partnership with Silicon Valley Entertainment (SVE), an investor group who also own the San Jose Sharks. Norris passed the WCL to his son-in-law Damien Diciolli in 2007, and it has since become inactive. Strikeforce MMA was sold to UFC in 2011.
The ISKA expanded into sport (tournament) martial arts about 15 years ago, and is a co-operator along with WAKO and Global Marketing Ventures (GMV) in the global Open World Tour (OWT) the first worldwide pro circuit of sport karate professional competitors. It sanctions and assists in the annual US Open & ISKA World Championships that anchors the OWT and the North American-based NASKA Tour. The US Open & ISKA World Championships is broadcast live on ESPN2 and ESPN3 each year.
Other kickboxing sanctioning bodies include World Association of Kickboxing Organizations (primarily amateurs) and KICK International.
In West Germany, American-styled kickboxing was promulgated from its inception in the 1970s by Georg F. Bruckner, who in 1976 was the co-founder of the World Association of Kickboxing Organizations. The term "kickboxing" as used in German-speaking Europe is therefore mostly synonymous with American kickboxing. The low-kick and knee techniques allowed in Japanese kickboxing, by contrast, were associated with Muay Thai, and Japanese kickboxing went mostly unnoticed in German-speaking Europe before the launch of K-1 in 1993.
By contrast, in the Netherlands kickboxing was introduced in its Japanese form, by Jan Plas and Thom Harinck who founded NKBB (The Dutch Kickboxing Association) in 1976. Harinck also founded the MTBN (Dutch Muay Thai Association) in 1983, and the WMTA (World Muay Thai Association) and the EMTA (European Muay Thai Association) in 1984. The most prominent kickboxing gyms in the Netherlands, Mejiro Gym, Chakuriki Gym and Golden Glory, were all derived from or were significantly influenced by Japanese kickboxing and kyokushin karate.
Dutch athletes have been very successful in the K-1 competitions. Out of the 19 K-1 World Grand Prix championship titles issued from 1993 to 2012, 15 went to Dutch participants (Peter Aerts, Ernesto Hoost, Remy Bonjasky, Semmy Schilt and Alistair Overeem). The remaining four titles were won by Branko Cikatić of Croatia in 1993, Andy Hug of Switzerland in 1996, Mark Hunt of New Zealand in 2001 and Mirko Filipović of Croatia in 2012.
Some of the top kickboxing promotions in the world are:
Some of the notable kickboxing promoters in the world are:
Kickboxing has a number of different rulesets. For example, Oriental/K-1 rules allow punches, high and low kicks and even knee strikes, while American kickboxing is limited to punches and kicks only above the belt (high kicks).
In the first two decades of the 21st century, several larger kickboxing promotions such as Glory, One Championship and Bellator Kickboxing have adopted the k1/oriental rule set, which allows knee strikes, kicking and punching.
Full Contact (also referred to as American Kickboxing) is essentially a mixture of Western boxing and traditional karate. The male kickboxers are bare-chested wearing kickboxing trousers and protective gear including: mouth-guard, hand-wraps, 10 oz (280 g) boxing gloves, groin-guard, shin-pads, and kick-boots and protective helmet (for amateurs and those under 16). Female kickboxers will wear a sports bra and chest protection in addition to the male clothing/protective gear.
Notable fighters under full contact rules include, Dennis Alexio, Joe Lewis, Rick Roufus, Jean-Yves Thériault, Benny Urquidez, Bill Wallace, Demetrius Havanas, Billy Jackson, Akseli Saurama, Pete Cunningham, and Don "The Dragon" Wilson
Rules:
Semi Contact or Points Fighting, is the variant of American kickboxing most similar to karate, since it consists in fighting for the purpose of scoring points with an emphasis on delivery, speed, and technique. Under such rules, fights are held on the tatami, presenting the belts to classify the fighters in order of experience and ability. The male kickboxers wear shirts and kickboxing trousers as well as protective gear including: mouth-guard, hand-wraps, 10 oz (280 g). boxing gloves, groin-guard, shin-pads, kick-boots, and headgear. The female kickboxers will wear a sports bra and chest protection in addition to the male clothing/protective gear.
Notable fighters under semi-contact rules include Raymond Daniels, Michael Page, and Gregorio Di Leo.
Rules:
International rules, or freestyle kickboxing (also known as Low Kick in the United States), contrast with full contact rules in that it also allows low kicks. The male kickboxers are bare-chested, wearing kickboxing trousers or shorts and protective gear, including mouth-guard, hand wraps, Boxing gloves, shin guards, and groin guard. The female kickboxers will wear a sports bra and chest protection in addition to the male clothing/protective gear.
Notable fighters under international rules include Rick Roufus and Abraham Roqueñi.
Rules:
Muay Thai, or Thai boxing, rules usually sees bouts contested over 5, 3 minute rounds and male fighters bare-chested wearing shorts and protective gear including: mouth-guard, hand-wraps, shin-wraps, 10 oz (280 g) boxing gloves, groin-guard and sometimes prajioud arm bands. 4oz MMA-style, open-finger gloves are sometimes used. The female Thaiboxers will wear a sports bra and chest protection in addition to the male clothing/protective gear. Muay Thai is unique in that it is the only style of kickboxing that allows elbows, knees, clinch fighting, throws, sweeps and low kicks. Groin strikes were allowed until the 1980s in international Muay Thai and are still partially allowed in Thailand itself (though the boxers wear cups to lessen the impact). Kicking to mid-body and head are scored highly generating a large number of points on judges' scorecards. Moreover, kicking is still judged highly even if the kick was blocked. In contrast, punching is worth fewer points.
Notable fighters under Muay Thai rules include Apidej Sit Hrun, Buakaw Por. Pramuk, Changpuek Kiatsongrit, Rob Kaman, Ramon Dekkers, Coban Lookchaomaesaitong, Dieselnoi Chor Thanasukarn, Saenchai P.K. Saenchaimuaythaigym, Samart Payakaroon and Yodsanklai Fairtex.
Rules:
Dutch rules (sometimes referred to as Dutch Kickboxing) came about when Japanese kickboxing and Muay Thai were first introduced in Holland in the 70s. European rules began to be developed by the Netherland Kick Boxing Bond in the 1970s when the late Jan Plas brought the sport from Japan to his native country. The primary difference between Dutch rules and full Muay Thai rules was the prohibition of elbow strikes and the limited knees strikes (only to the body). However, elbows were allowed when both parties agree to it. These changes were aimed at reducing injuries and making bouts more accessible to TV viewers. Like the Thai counterpart, the fights are accompanied with the traditional Thai music during a battle. The Dutch kickboxing rules were instrumental to the development of the K-1 rules.
Notable fighters under Dutch rules include Alistair Overeem, Bas Rutten, Melvin Manhoef, Gegard Mousasi, Remy Bonjasky and Peter Aerts.
Oriental rules (also known as K-1 rules or unified rules, and sometimes referred to as Japanese kickboxing) was the first combat sport that adopted the name of "kickboxing" in 1966, later termed "Japanese kickboxing" as a retronym. Since the 1990s, many of the largest kickboxing promotions such as K-1, ONE Championship, Glory and Bellator Kickboxing adopted this ruleset. Oriental rules began to be developed by the Japanese boxing promoter Osamu Noguchi and Karate practitioner Tatsuo Yamada, and it was initially intended as a mix of Karate and Muay Thai, but it was later affected also by the Dutch rules, which were first formalised in the Netherlands in the 1970s. The primary difference between Muay Thai and Oriental Kickboxing was the prohibition of elbow strikes and throws. In addition, the amount of clinch fighting is drastically decreased. These changes were aimed at reducing injuries and making bouts more accessible to TV viewers. Oriental rules bouts were traditionally fought over 5, 3-minute rounds but 3 round bouts have since become popular. The male kickboxers are bare-chested wearing shorts (although trousers and karate gis have been worn) and protective gear including: mouth-guard, hand-wraps, shin-wraps, 10 oz (280 g) gloves.
Notable fighters under K-1 rules include Semmy Schilt, Badr Hari, Ernesto Hoost, Albert Kraus, Masato, Peter Aerts, Remy Bonjasky, Giorgio Petrosyan, Buakaw and Andy Souwer.
Rules:
Sanda or Sanshou (also known as Chinese boxing and Chinese kickboxing) is a form of kickboxing originally developed by the Chinese military based upon the study and practices of traditional Kung fu and modern combat fighting techniques; it combines traditional kickboxing, which include close range and rapid successive punches and kicks, with wrestling, takedowns, throws, sweeps, kick catches, and in some competitions, even elbow and knee strikes. The male fighters are bare-chested wearing shorts and protective gear including: mouth-guard, hand-wraps, 10 oz (280 g) boxing gloves and groin-guard. The female kickboxers will wear a sports bra and chest protection in addition to the male clothing/protective gear.
Notable fighters under Sanshou rules include Wei Rui, Fang Bian, Jia Aoqi, Muslim Salikhov, Pat Barry, Zhang Tiequan, Liu Hailong, Cung Le, Shahbulat Shamhalaev and Shamil Zavurov.
Rules:
Shootboxing (also known as Standing Vale Tudo) is a unique style of hybrid kickboxing popular in Japan that utilizes standing submissions such as chokeholds, armlocks and wristlocks in addition to kicks, punches, knees and throws. The male fighters are bare-chested wearing skin tight trousers and protective gear including: mouth-guard, hand-wraps, 10 oz (280 g) boxing gloves and groin-guard. The female kickboxers will wear a sports bra and chest protection in addition to the male clothing/protective gear.
Notable fighters under shootboxing rules include Rena Kubota, Kenichi Ogata, Hiroki Shishido, Ai Takahashi and Andy Souwer.
Rules:
Lethwei is a type of kickboxing originating from Myanmar that features minimal rules and protective equipment. Lethwei not only allows the use of headbutts but actually emphasizes it, and fighters wear no gloves. Bouts can only be won with a knockout, either a proper or a technical. Uniquely, after one knockout and two minutes rest, the knocked out fighter may still choose to continue the fight once, unless they are knocked out in the final round. There are no points; if no knockout happens before the end of the fifth round, the fight is declared a draw. Male fighters are bare-chested and wear shorts. Protective gear consists of a mouth-guard, groin-guard, and wraps around hands and feet. Female fighters wear a sports bra and chest protection in addition to the male clothing and protective gear.
Notable fighters under Lethwei rules include Soe Lin Oo, Tun Tun Min, Dave Leduc, Too Too and Cyrus Washington.
Rules:
Punching techniques are very much identical to boxing punches, including
The standard kicking techniques are:
There are a large number of special or variant kicking techniques, including spinning kicks, jumping kicks, and other variants such as
Spinning versions of the back, side, hook and axe kicks can also be performed along with jumping versions of all kicks.
The knee techniques in Japanese kickboxing, indicative of its Muay Thai heritage, are the main difference that separates this style from other kickboxing rules. See ti khao for details.
There are three main defensive positions (guards or styles) used in kickboxing. Within each style, there is considerable variation among fighters, as some fighters may have their guard higher for more head protection while others have their guard lower to provide better protection against body punches. Many fighters vary their defensive style throughout a bout in order to adapt to the situation of the moment, choosing the position best suited to protect them.
Knocking a person unconscious or even causing a concussion may cause permanent brain damage. There is no clear division between the force required to knock a person out and the force likely to kill a person. Also, contact sports, especially combat sports, are directly related to a brain disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, abbreviated CTE. This disease begins to develop during the life of the athlete, and continues to develop even after sports activity has ceased. In addition, repetitive and subconcussive blows to the head, and not just concussions, cause CTE.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Kickboxing (/ˈkɪkbɒksɪŋ/ KIK-boks-ing) is a full-contact combat sport and a form of boxing based on punching and kicking. The fight takes place in a boxing ring, normally with boxing gloves, mouth guards, shorts, and bare feet to favor the use of kicks. Kickboxing is practiced for self-defense, general fitness, or for competition. Some styles of kickboxing include: Karate, Muay Thai, Japanese kickboxing, Lethwei, Sanda, and Savate.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Although since the dawn of humanity people have faced each other in hand-to-hand combat, the first documentation on the use of kicking and punching in sports combat is from ancient Greece and ancient India. But nevertheless, the term kickboxing originated in Japan, in the 1960s, and developed in the late 1950s from karate mixed with boxing, having some influence, with competitions held since then. American kickboxing originated in the 1970s and was brought to prominence in September 1974, when the Professional Karate Association (PKA) held the first World Championships. Historically, kickboxing can be considered a hybrid martial art formed from the combination of elements of various traditional styles. This approach became increasingly popular since the 1970s, and since the 1990s, kickboxing has contributed to the emergence of mixed martial arts via further hybridization with ground fighting techniques from Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and folk wrestling.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "There is no single international governing body, although some international governing bodies include the World Association of Kickboxing Organizations (also known as WAKO), World Kickboxing Association, the Professional Kickboxing Association (PKA), International Sport Karate Association, International Kickboxing Federation, and World Kickboxing Network, among others. Consequently, there is no single kickboxing world championship, and champion titles are issued by individual promotions, such as Glory, K-1 and ONE Championship among others. Bouts organized under different governing bodies apply different rules, such as allowing the use of knees or clinching etc.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The term \"kickboxing\" (キックボクシング, kikkubokushingu) can be used in a narrow and in a broad sense.",
"title": "Terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The term itself was introduced in the 1960s as a Japanese anglicism by Japanese boxing promoter Osamu Noguchi for a hybrid martial art combining Muay Thai and karate which he had introduced in 1958. The term was later also adopted by the American variant. Since there has been a lot of cross-fertilization between these styles, with many practitioners training or competing under the rules of more than one style, the history of the individual styles cannot be seen in isolation from one another.",
"title": "Terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The French term Boxe pieds-poings (literally \"feet-fists-boxing\") is also used in the sense of \"kickboxing\" in the general meaning, including French boxing (Savate) as well as American, Dutch and Japanese kickboxing, Burmese and Thai boxing, any style of full contact karate, etc.",
"title": "Terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Arts labelled as kickboxing in the general sense include:",
"title": "Terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Since kickboxing is a broad term, understanding the history can be somewhat difficult, since combat is an inherent part of being human. Kicking and punching as an act of human aggression have probably existed throughout the world since prehistory.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The earliest known depiction of any type of boxing comes from a Sumerian relief in Iraq from the 3rd millennium BC. Forms of kickboxing existed in ancient India. The earliest references to musti-yuddha come from classical Vedic epics such as the Ramayana and Rig Veda, compiled in the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. The Mahabharata describes two combatants boxing with clenched fists and fighting with kicks, finger strikes, knee strikes and headbutts. Mushti Yuddha has travelled along the Indosphere and has been a preceder and a strong influence in many famous martial arts of Southeast Asia such as Muay Thai, Muay Laos and Pradal Serey (of Cambodia).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In the Pankration, a mixed martial art from ancient Greece, a form of kickboxing was used in its Anō Pankration modality, being able to use any extremity to hit. In addition, it is debated whether kicks were allowed in ancient Greek boxing, and while there is some evidence of kicks, this is the subject of debate among scholars.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The French were the first to include boxing gloves into a sport that included kicking and boxing techniques. In 1743, modern boxing gloves were invented by Englishman Jack Broughton. Frenchman Charles Lecour added English boxing gloves to la boxe française. Charles Lecour was a pioneer of modern savate or la boxe française. He created a form where both kicking and punching was used. Lecour was the first to view savate as a sport and self-defense system. The French colonists introduced European boxing gloves into the native Asian martial arts in French Indochina. The use of European boxing gloves spread to neighboring Siam.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "It was during the 1950s that a Japanese karateka named Tatsuo Yamada first established an outline of a new sport that combined karate and Muay Thai. This was further explored during the early 1960s, when competitions between karate and Muay Thai began, which allowed for rule modifications to take place. In the middle of the decade, the first events with the term kickboxing were held in Osaka.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "By the 1970s and 1980s, the sport had expanded beyond Japan and had reached North America and Europe. It was during this time that many of the most prominent governing bodies were formed.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Since the 1990s the sport has been mostly dominated by the Japanese K-1 promotion, with some competition coming from other promotions and mostly pre-existing governing bodies.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Along with the growing popularity in competition, there has been an increased amount of participation and exposure in the mass media, fitness, and self-defense.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "On December 20, 1959, a Muay Thai match among Thai fighters was held at Asakusa town hall in Tokyo. Tatsuo Yamada, who established \"Nihon Kempo Karate-do\", was interested in Muay Thai because he wanted to perform karate matches with full-contact rules since practitioners are not allowed to hit each other directly in karate matches. At this time, it was unimaginable to hit each other in karate matches in Japan. He had already announced his plan which was named \"The draft principles of project of establishment of a new sport and its industrialization\" in November 1959, and he proposed the tentative name of \"karate-boxing\" for this new sport. It is still unknown whether Nak Muay was invited by Yamada, but it is clear that Yamada was the only karateka who was really interested in Muay Thai. Yamada invited a champion Nak Muay (and formerly his son Kan Yamada's sparring partner), and started studying Muay Thai. At this time, the Thai fighter was taken by Osamu Noguchi who was a promoter of boxing and was also interested in Muay Thai. The Thai fighter's photo was on the magazine \"The Primer of Nihon Kempo Karate-do, the first number\" which was published by Yamada.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "There were \"Karate vs. Muay Thai fights\" on February 12, 1963. The three karate fighters from Oyama dojo (kyokushin later) went to the Lumpinee Boxing Stadium in Thailand and fought against three Muay Thai fighters. The three kyokushin karate fighters' names are Tadashi Nakamura, Kenji Kurosaki and Akio Fujihira (also known as Noboru Osawa). The Muay Thai team were composed of only one authentic Thai fighter. Japan won by 2–1: Tadashi Nakamura and Akio Fujihira both KOed opponents by punch while Kenji Kurosaki, who fought the Thai, was KOed by elbow. The only Japanese loser Kenji Kurosaki was then a kyokushin instructor rather than a contender and temporarily designated as a substitute for the absent chosen fighter. On June of the same year, karateka and future kickboxer Tadashi Sawamura faced against top Thai fighter Samarn Sor Adisorn, in which Sawamura was knocked down 16 times and defeated. Sawamura would use what he learned in that fight to incorporate in the evolving kickboxing tournaments.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Noguchi studied Muay Thai and developed a combined martial art which Noguchi named kick boxing, which absorbed and adopted more rules than techniques from Muay Thai. The main techniques of kickboxing are still derived from a form of Japanese full contact karate where kicks to the legs are allowed, kyokushin. In early competitions, throwing and butting were allowed to distinguish it from Muay Thai. This was later repealed. The Kickboxing Association, the first kickboxing sanctioning body, was founded by Osamu Noguchi in 1966 soon after that. Then the first kickboxing event was held in Osaka on April 11, 1966.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Tatsu Yamada died in 1967, but his dojo changed its name to Suginami Gym, and kept sending kickboxers off to support kickboxing.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Kickboxing boomed and became popular in Japan as it began to be broadcast on TV. By 1970, kickboxing was telecast in Japan on three different channels three times weekly. The fight cards regularly included bouts between Japanese (kickboxers) and Thai (Muay Thai) boxers. Tadashi Sawamura was an especially popular early kickboxer. In 1971 the All Japan Kickboxing Association (AJKA) was established and it registered approximately 700 kickboxers. The first AJKA Commissioner was Shintaro Ishihara, the longtime Governor of Tokyo. Champions were in each weight division from fly to middle. Longtime Kyokushin practitioner Noboru Osawa won the AJKA bantamweight title, which he held for years. Raymond Edler, an American university student studying at Sophia University in Tokyo, took up kickboxing and won the AJKC middleweight title in 1972; he was the first non-Thai to be officially ranked in the sport of Thai boxing, when in 1972 Rajadamnern ranked him no. 3 in the Middleweight division. Edler defended the All Japan title several times and abandoned it. Other popular champions were Toshio Fujiwara and Mitsuo Shima. Most notably, Fujiwara was the first non-Thai to win an official Thai boxing title, when he defeated his Thai opponent in 1978 at Rajadamnern Stadium winning the lightweight championship bout.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "By 1980, due to poor ratings and then infrequent television coverage, the golden-age of kickboxing in Japan was suddenly finished. Kickboxing had not been seen on TV until K-1 was founded in 1993.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In 1993, as Kazuyoshi Ishii (founder of Seidokaikan karate) produced K-1 under special kickboxing rules (no elbow and neck wrestling) in 1993, kickboxing became famous again. In the mid-1980s to early 1990s, before the first k-1, Kazuyoshi Ishii also partook in the formation of glove karate as an amateur sport in Japan. Glove karate is based on knockdown karate rules, but wearing boxing gloves and allowing punches to the head. In effect, it is oriental rules kickboxing with scoring based on knockdowns and aggression rather than the number of hits. As K-1 grew in popularity, Glove karate for a while became the fastest-growing amateur sport in Japan.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Count Dante, Ray Scarica and Maung Gyi held the United States' earliest cross-style full-contact style martial arts tournaments as early as 1962. Between 1970 and 1973 a handful of kickboxing promotions were staged across the US. The first recognized bout of this kind occurred on January 17, 1970, and came about when Joe Lewis, a Shorin Ryu stylist who had also studied Jeet Kune Do with the legendary Bruce Lee, and noted champion in the Karate tournament circuit, grew disillusioned with the point-sparring format and sought to create an event that would allow martial artists to fight to the knock out. Enlisting the help of promoter Lee Faulkner, training in boxing and combining the techniques of boxing and Karate for the first time in America, Lewis arranged the bout to be held at the 1st Pro Team Karate Championships. Lewis faced Kenpo stylist Greg \"Om\" Baines, who had defeated two opponents in years pasts. Lewis won the fight by knockout in the second round. The event was advertised as \"Full contact\" but the announcers referred to it as Kickboxing, and rules included knees, elbows and sweeps. Lewis would defend his U.S Heavyweight champion title 10 times, remaining undefeated until he came back from his retirement. In the early days, the rules were never clear; one of the first tournaments had no weight divisions, and all the competitors fought off until one was left. During this early time, kickboxing and full contact karate are essentially the same sport.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The institutional separation of American full-contact karate from kickboxing occurred with the formation of the Professional Karate Association (PKA) in 1974 and of the World Kickboxing Association (WKA) in 1976. They were the first organised body of martial arts on a global scale to sanction fights, create ranking systems, and institute a development programme.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The International Kickboxing Federation (IKF) and the International Sport Kickboxing Association (ISKA) have been the only organizations to have thrived in the modern era.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The International Kickboxing Federation (IKF) was founded in 1992 by Steve Fossum and Dan Stell. Stell eventually stepped down to go back to fighting while Fossum continued with the organization. In 1999 Fossum and Joe Taylor of Ringside Products created the first amateur open North American tournament for Kickboxing and Muay Thai, now the IKF World Classic.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "After ending its venture with K-1 in 2006, ISKA co-operated the World Combat League with Chuck Norris, and Strikeforce MMA in partnership with Silicon Valley Entertainment (SVE), an investor group who also own the San Jose Sharks. Norris passed the WCL to his son-in-law Damien Diciolli in 2007, and it has since become inactive. Strikeforce MMA was sold to UFC in 2011.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The ISKA expanded into sport (tournament) martial arts about 15 years ago, and is a co-operator along with WAKO and Global Marketing Ventures (GMV) in the global Open World Tour (OWT) the first worldwide pro circuit of sport karate professional competitors. It sanctions and assists in the annual US Open & ISKA World Championships that anchors the OWT and the North American-based NASKA Tour. The US Open & ISKA World Championships is broadcast live on ESPN2 and ESPN3 each year.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Other kickboxing sanctioning bodies include World Association of Kickboxing Organizations (primarily amateurs) and KICK International.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In West Germany, American-styled kickboxing was promulgated from its inception in the 1970s by Georg F. Bruckner, who in 1976 was the co-founder of the World Association of Kickboxing Organizations. The term \"kickboxing\" as used in German-speaking Europe is therefore mostly synonymous with American kickboxing. The low-kick and knee techniques allowed in Japanese kickboxing, by contrast, were associated with Muay Thai, and Japanese kickboxing went mostly unnoticed in German-speaking Europe before the launch of K-1 in 1993.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "By contrast, in the Netherlands kickboxing was introduced in its Japanese form, by Jan Plas and Thom Harinck who founded NKBB (The Dutch Kickboxing Association) in 1976. Harinck also founded the MTBN (Dutch Muay Thai Association) in 1983, and the WMTA (World Muay Thai Association) and the EMTA (European Muay Thai Association) in 1984. The most prominent kickboxing gyms in the Netherlands, Mejiro Gym, Chakuriki Gym and Golden Glory, were all derived from or were significantly influenced by Japanese kickboxing and kyokushin karate.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Dutch athletes have been very successful in the K-1 competitions. Out of the 19 K-1 World Grand Prix championship titles issued from 1993 to 2012, 15 went to Dutch participants (Peter Aerts, Ernesto Hoost, Remy Bonjasky, Semmy Schilt and Alistair Overeem). The remaining four titles were won by Branko Cikatić of Croatia in 1993, Andy Hug of Switzerland in 1996, Mark Hunt of New Zealand in 2001 and Mirko Filipović of Croatia in 2012.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Some of the top kickboxing promotions in the world are:",
"title": "Modern sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Some of the notable kickboxing promoters in the world are:",
"title": "Modern sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Kickboxing has a number of different rulesets. For example, Oriental/K-1 rules allow punches, high and low kicks and even knee strikes, while American kickboxing is limited to punches and kicks only above the belt (high kicks).",
"title": "Kickboxing styles and rulesets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In the first two decades of the 21st century, several larger kickboxing promotions such as Glory, One Championship and Bellator Kickboxing have adopted the k1/oriental rule set, which allows knee strikes, kicking and punching.",
"title": "Kickboxing styles and rulesets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Full Contact (also referred to as American Kickboxing) is essentially a mixture of Western boxing and traditional karate. The male kickboxers are bare-chested wearing kickboxing trousers and protective gear including: mouth-guard, hand-wraps, 10 oz (280 g) boxing gloves, groin-guard, shin-pads, and kick-boots and protective helmet (for amateurs and those under 16). Female kickboxers will wear a sports bra and chest protection in addition to the male clothing/protective gear.",
"title": "Kickboxing styles and rulesets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Notable fighters under full contact rules include, Dennis Alexio, Joe Lewis, Rick Roufus, Jean-Yves Thériault, Benny Urquidez, Bill Wallace, Demetrius Havanas, Billy Jackson, Akseli Saurama, Pete Cunningham, and Don \"The Dragon\" Wilson",
"title": "Kickboxing styles and rulesets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Rules:",
"title": "Kickboxing styles and rulesets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Semi Contact or Points Fighting, is the variant of American kickboxing most similar to karate, since it consists in fighting for the purpose of scoring points with an emphasis on delivery, speed, and technique. Under such rules, fights are held on the tatami, presenting the belts to classify the fighters in order of experience and ability. The male kickboxers wear shirts and kickboxing trousers as well as protective gear including: mouth-guard, hand-wraps, 10 oz (280 g). boxing gloves, groin-guard, shin-pads, kick-boots, and headgear. The female kickboxers will wear a sports bra and chest protection in addition to the male clothing/protective gear.",
"title": "Kickboxing styles and rulesets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Notable fighters under semi-contact rules include Raymond Daniels, Michael Page, and Gregorio Di Leo.",
"title": "Kickboxing styles and rulesets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Rules:",
"title": "Kickboxing styles and rulesets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "International rules, or freestyle kickboxing (also known as Low Kick in the United States), contrast with full contact rules in that it also allows low kicks. The male kickboxers are bare-chested, wearing kickboxing trousers or shorts and protective gear, including mouth-guard, hand wraps, Boxing gloves, shin guards, and groin guard. The female kickboxers will wear a sports bra and chest protection in addition to the male clothing/protective gear.",
"title": "Kickboxing styles and rulesets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Notable fighters under international rules include Rick Roufus and Abraham Roqueñi.",
"title": "Kickboxing styles and rulesets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Rules:",
"title": "Kickboxing styles and rulesets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Muay Thai, or Thai boxing, rules usually sees bouts contested over 5, 3 minute rounds and male fighters bare-chested wearing shorts and protective gear including: mouth-guard, hand-wraps, shin-wraps, 10 oz (280 g) boxing gloves, groin-guard and sometimes prajioud arm bands. 4oz MMA-style, open-finger gloves are sometimes used. The female Thaiboxers will wear a sports bra and chest protection in addition to the male clothing/protective gear. Muay Thai is unique in that it is the only style of kickboxing that allows elbows, knees, clinch fighting, throws, sweeps and low kicks. Groin strikes were allowed until the 1980s in international Muay Thai and are still partially allowed in Thailand itself (though the boxers wear cups to lessen the impact). Kicking to mid-body and head are scored highly generating a large number of points on judges' scorecards. Moreover, kicking is still judged highly even if the kick was blocked. In contrast, punching is worth fewer points.",
"title": "Kickboxing styles and rulesets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Notable fighters under Muay Thai rules include Apidej Sit Hrun, Buakaw Por. Pramuk, Changpuek Kiatsongrit, Rob Kaman, Ramon Dekkers, Coban Lookchaomaesaitong, Dieselnoi Chor Thanasukarn, Saenchai P.K. Saenchaimuaythaigym, Samart Payakaroon and Yodsanklai Fairtex.",
"title": "Kickboxing styles and rulesets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Rules:",
"title": "Kickboxing styles and rulesets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Dutch rules (sometimes referred to as Dutch Kickboxing) came about when Japanese kickboxing and Muay Thai were first introduced in Holland in the 70s. European rules began to be developed by the Netherland Kick Boxing Bond in the 1970s when the late Jan Plas brought the sport from Japan to his native country. The primary difference between Dutch rules and full Muay Thai rules was the prohibition of elbow strikes and the limited knees strikes (only to the body). However, elbows were allowed when both parties agree to it. These changes were aimed at reducing injuries and making bouts more accessible to TV viewers. Like the Thai counterpart, the fights are accompanied with the traditional Thai music during a battle. The Dutch kickboxing rules were instrumental to the development of the K-1 rules.",
"title": "Kickboxing styles and rulesets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Notable fighters under Dutch rules include Alistair Overeem, Bas Rutten, Melvin Manhoef, Gegard Mousasi, Remy Bonjasky and Peter Aerts.",
"title": "Kickboxing styles and rulesets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Oriental rules (also known as K-1 rules or unified rules, and sometimes referred to as Japanese kickboxing) was the first combat sport that adopted the name of \"kickboxing\" in 1966, later termed \"Japanese kickboxing\" as a retronym. Since the 1990s, many of the largest kickboxing promotions such as K-1, ONE Championship, Glory and Bellator Kickboxing adopted this ruleset. Oriental rules began to be developed by the Japanese boxing promoter Osamu Noguchi and Karate practitioner Tatsuo Yamada, and it was initially intended as a mix of Karate and Muay Thai, but it was later affected also by the Dutch rules, which were first formalised in the Netherlands in the 1970s. The primary difference between Muay Thai and Oriental Kickboxing was the prohibition of elbow strikes and throws. In addition, the amount of clinch fighting is drastically decreased. These changes were aimed at reducing injuries and making bouts more accessible to TV viewers. Oriental rules bouts were traditionally fought over 5, 3-minute rounds but 3 round bouts have since become popular. The male kickboxers are bare-chested wearing shorts (although trousers and karate gis have been worn) and protective gear including: mouth-guard, hand-wraps, shin-wraps, 10 oz (280 g) gloves.",
"title": "Kickboxing styles and rulesets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Notable fighters under K-1 rules include Semmy Schilt, Badr Hari, Ernesto Hoost, Albert Kraus, Masato, Peter Aerts, Remy Bonjasky, Giorgio Petrosyan, Buakaw and Andy Souwer.",
"title": "Kickboxing styles and rulesets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Rules:",
"title": "Kickboxing styles and rulesets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Sanda or Sanshou (also known as Chinese boxing and Chinese kickboxing) is a form of kickboxing originally developed by the Chinese military based upon the study and practices of traditional Kung fu and modern combat fighting techniques; it combines traditional kickboxing, which include close range and rapid successive punches and kicks, with wrestling, takedowns, throws, sweeps, kick catches, and in some competitions, even elbow and knee strikes. The male fighters are bare-chested wearing shorts and protective gear including: mouth-guard, hand-wraps, 10 oz (280 g) boxing gloves and groin-guard. The female kickboxers will wear a sports bra and chest protection in addition to the male clothing/protective gear.",
"title": "Kickboxing styles and rulesets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Notable fighters under Sanshou rules include Wei Rui, Fang Bian, Jia Aoqi, Muslim Salikhov, Pat Barry, Zhang Tiequan, Liu Hailong, Cung Le, Shahbulat Shamhalaev and Shamil Zavurov.",
"title": "Kickboxing styles and rulesets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Rules:",
"title": "Kickboxing styles and rulesets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Shootboxing (also known as Standing Vale Tudo) is a unique style of hybrid kickboxing popular in Japan that utilizes standing submissions such as chokeholds, armlocks and wristlocks in addition to kicks, punches, knees and throws. The male fighters are bare-chested wearing skin tight trousers and protective gear including: mouth-guard, hand-wraps, 10 oz (280 g) boxing gloves and groin-guard. The female kickboxers will wear a sports bra and chest protection in addition to the male clothing/protective gear.",
"title": "Kickboxing styles and rulesets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Notable fighters under shootboxing rules include Rena Kubota, Kenichi Ogata, Hiroki Shishido, Ai Takahashi and Andy Souwer.",
"title": "Kickboxing styles and rulesets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Rules:",
"title": "Kickboxing styles and rulesets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Lethwei is a type of kickboxing originating from Myanmar that features minimal rules and protective equipment. Lethwei not only allows the use of headbutts but actually emphasizes it, and fighters wear no gloves. Bouts can only be won with a knockout, either a proper or a technical. Uniquely, after one knockout and two minutes rest, the knocked out fighter may still choose to continue the fight once, unless they are knocked out in the final round. There are no points; if no knockout happens before the end of the fifth round, the fight is declared a draw. Male fighters are bare-chested and wear shorts. Protective gear consists of a mouth-guard, groin-guard, and wraps around hands and feet. Female fighters wear a sports bra and chest protection in addition to the male clothing and protective gear.",
"title": "Kickboxing styles and rulesets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Notable fighters under Lethwei rules include Soe Lin Oo, Tun Tun Min, Dave Leduc, Too Too and Cyrus Washington.",
"title": "Kickboxing styles and rulesets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Rules:",
"title": "Kickboxing styles and rulesets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Punching techniques are very much identical to boxing punches, including",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "The standard kicking techniques are:",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "There are a large number of special or variant kicking techniques, including spinning kicks, jumping kicks, and other variants such as",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Spinning versions of the back, side, hook and axe kicks can also be performed along with jumping versions of all kicks.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "The knee techniques in Japanese kickboxing, indicative of its Muay Thai heritage, are the main difference that separates this style from other kickboxing rules. See ti khao for details.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "There are three main defensive positions (guards or styles) used in kickboxing. Within each style, there is considerable variation among fighters, as some fighters may have their guard higher for more head protection while others have their guard lower to provide better protection against body punches. Many fighters vary their defensive style throughout a bout in order to adapt to the situation of the moment, choosing the position best suited to protect them.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Knocking a person unconscious or even causing a concussion may cause permanent brain damage. There is no clear division between the force required to knock a person out and the force likely to kill a person. Also, contact sports, especially combat sports, are directly related to a brain disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, abbreviated CTE. This disease begins to develop during the life of the athlete, and continues to develop even after sports activity has ceased. In addition, repetitive and subconcussive blows to the head, and not just concussions, cause CTE.",
"title": "Brain injury and CTE"
}
] |
Kickboxing is a full-contact combat sport and a form of boxing based on punching and kicking. The fight takes place in a boxing ring, normally with boxing gloves, mouth guards, shorts, and bare feet to favor the use of kicks. Kickboxing is practiced for self-defense, general fitness, or for competition. Some styles of kickboxing include: Karate, Muay Thai, Japanese kickboxing, Lethwei, Sanda, and Savate. Although since the dawn of humanity people have faced each other in hand-to-hand combat, the first documentation on the use of kicking and punching in sports combat is from ancient Greece and ancient India. But nevertheless, the term kickboxing originated in Japan, in the 1960s, and developed in the late 1950s from karate mixed with boxing, having some influence, with competitions held since then. American kickboxing originated in the 1970s and was brought to prominence in September 1974, when the Professional Karate Association (PKA) held the first World Championships. Historically, kickboxing can be considered a hybrid martial art formed from the combination of elements of various traditional styles. This approach became increasingly popular since the 1970s, and since the 1990s, kickboxing has contributed to the emergence of mixed martial arts via further hybridization with ground fighting techniques from Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and folk wrestling. There is no single international governing body, although some international governing bodies include the World Association of Kickboxing Organizations, World Kickboxing Association, the Professional Kickboxing Association (PKA), International Sport Karate Association, International Kickboxing Federation, and World Kickboxing Network, among others. Consequently, there is no single kickboxing world championship, and champion titles are issued by individual promotions, such as Glory, K-1 and ONE Championship among others. Bouts organized under different governing bodies apply different rules, such as allowing the use of knees or clinching etc.
|
2001-10-01T13:29:55Z
|
2023-12-12T12:01:16Z
|
[
"Template:Nihongo",
"Template:Commons category",
"Template:Kickboxing organizations",
"Template:Boxing",
"Template:IPAc-en",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Convert",
"Template:See also",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:In lang",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Further",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Cite encyclopedia",
"Template:ISBN",
"Template:Martial arts",
"Template:Anchor",
"Template:Infobox martial art",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Citation needed",
"Template:Redirect",
"Template:Sports of the World Games program",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:When",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite magazine",
"Template:Respell"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kickboxing
|
16,749 |
Korea
|
Korea (Korean: 한국, Hanguk in South Korea or 조선, Joseon in North Korea) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, now known as the Korean Demilitarized Zone. In 1948, two states declared independence, both claiming sovereignty over all of Korea: South Korea (Republic of Korea) comprising its southern half and North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half. The region consists of the Korean Peninsula, Jeju Island, and a number of minor islands near the peninsula. The peninsula is bordered by China (Manchuria) to the north and Russia to the northeast, across the Amnok and Duman rivers. It is separated from Japan to the southeast by the Korea Strait.
The earliest radiocarbon dates for the Paleolithic sites found in Korea indicate human presence goes back to 40,000 and 30,000 BC. The first state to emerge was Gojoseon, which fell to the Han Dynasty in 108 BC. During the first half of the 1st millennium, Korea was divided between three states, Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla, together known as the Three Kingdoms of Korea. In the late 7th century, Silla conquered Baekje and Goguryeo with the aid of the Tang Dynasty, and drove the Tang out of Korea during the Silla-Tang War. Meanwhile, Balhae, formed by Goguryeo remnants and Mohe people, succeeded Goguryeo in the north. Unified Silla eventually collapsed into three separate states due to civil war, known as the Later Three Kingdoms.
Toward the end of the Later Three Kingdoms, Goguryeo was resurrected as Goryeo, which defeated the two other states and unified Korea as a single sovereign state. Around this time, Balhae collapsed and its last crown prince and much of its ruling class fled to Goryeo, unifying the two successor states of Goguryeo. Goryeo (also spelled as Koryŏ), whose name developed into the modern exonym "Korea", was a highly cultured state that created the world's first metal movable type in 1234. During the 13th century, the Mongol Empire made Goryeo its vassal state after decades of war. Although Goryeo overthrew Mongol rule, it fell to a coup led by General Yi Seong-gye, who established Joseon on 17 July 1392. The first 200 years of Joseon were marked by relative peace, and during this time the Korean alphabet was created by Sejong the Great and Confucianism became increasingly influential in the kingdom. However, this ended with the Japanese invasions of Korea and the 1636, which brought great devastation to Joseon and lead to Korean isolationism. After the end of these invasions, Joseon experienced a nearly 200-year period of peace and prosperity, along with cultural and technological development. In Joseon's final years, it experienced turmoil such as the Gapsin Coup, Donghak Peasant Revolution, and the assassination of Empress Myeongseong. In 1897, the Korean Empire was established to protect Korean independence. However, following Japan's victories in the First Sino-Japanese War and Russo-Japanese War, Japan annexed it altogether in 1910.
In 1945, Japan relinquished control over Korea after formally surrendering to the Allies, in the aftermath of World War II. The Soviet Union and the United States had agreed to partition Korea along the 38th parallel. These circumstances became the basis for the division of Korea. Tensions between the two Koreas resulted in North Korea invading South Korea and the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. With involvement by foreign troops, the war ended in a stalemate in 1953, but without a formalised peace treaty. A demilitarized zone was created between the two countries approximating the original partition.
This status contributes to the high tensions that continue to divide the peninsula, and both states continue to claim to be the sole legitimate government of Korea. South Korea is a regional power and a developed country, with its economy being ranked as the world's thirteenth-largest by nominal GDP and the fourteenth-largest by GDP (PPP). Its armed forces are ranked as one of the world's strongest militaries, with the world's second-largest standing army by military and paramilitary personnel. In the 21st century, South Korea has been renowned for its globally influential pop culture, particularly in music (K-pop), TV dramas (K-dramas) and cinema, a phenomenon referred to as the Korean Wave.
North Korea follows Songun, a "military first" policy which prioritizes the Korean People's Army in state affairs and the allocation of resources. It possesses nuclear weapons, and is the country with the highest number of military and paramilitary personnel, with a total of 7.77 million active, reserve, and paramilitary personnel, or approximately 30% of its population. Its active duty army of 1.28 million soldiers is the fourth-largest in the world, consisting of 4.9% of its population. North Korea is widely considered to have the worst human rights record in the world.
"Korea" is the modern spelling of "Corea", a name attested in English as early as 1614. "Corea" is derived from the name of the ancient kingdom of Goryeo. Korea was transliterated as Cauli in The Travels of Marco Polo, of the Chinese 高麗 (MC: Kawlej, mod. Gāolì). This was the Hanja for the Korean kingdom of Goryeo (Korean: 고려; MR: Koryŏ), which ruled most of the Korean peninsula during the 12th century. Korea's introduction to the West resulted from trade and contact with merchants from Arabic lands, with some records dating back as far as the 9th century. Goryeo's name was a continuation of Goguryeo (Koguryŏ) the northernmost of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, which was officially known as Goryeo beginning in the 5th century. The original name was a combination of the adjectives ("high, lofty") with the name of a local Yemaek tribe, whose original name is thought to have been either "Guru" (溝樓, "walled city," inferred from some toponyms in Chinese historical documents) or "Gauri" (가우리, "center"). With expanding British and American trade following the opening of Korea in the late 19th century, the spelling "Korea" appeared and gradually grew in popularity. The name Korea is now commonly used in English contexts by both North and South Korea.
In South Korea, Korea as a whole is referred to as Hanguk (한국, [haːnɡuk], lit. 'country of the Han'). The name references Samhan, referring to the Three Kingdoms of Korea, not the ancient confederacies in the southern Korean Peninsula. Although written in Hanja as 韓, 幹, or 刊, this Han has no relation to the Chinese place names or peoples who used those characters but was a phonetic transcription (OC: *Gar, MC: Han or Gan) of a native Korean word that seems to have had the meaning "big" or "great", particularly in reference to leaders. It has been tentatively linked with the title khan used by the nomads of Manchuria and Central Asia.
In North Korea, Korea as a whole is referred to as Joseon (조선, [tɕosʰʌn], lit. '[land of the] Morning Calm'). Joseon is the modern Korean pronunciation of the Hanja 朝鮮, which is also the basis of the word for Korea as a whole in Japan (朝鮮, Chōsen), China (朝鲜, Cháoxiǎn), and Vietnam (Triều Tiên). "Great Joseon" was the name of the kingdom ruled by the Joseon dynasty from 1392 until their declaration of the short-lived Great Korean Empire in 1897. King Taejo had named them for the earlier Gojoseon (고조선), who ruled northern Korea from its legendary prehistory until their conquest in 108 BCE by China's Han Empire. The Go- in Gojoseon is the Hanja word 古 and simply means "ancient" or "old"; it is a modern usage to distinguish the ancient Joseon from the later dynasty. It is unclear whether Joseon was a transcription of a native Korean name (OC *T[r]awser, MC Trjewsjen) or a partial translation into Chinese of the Korean capital Asadal (아사달), whose meaning has been reconstructed as "Morning Land" or "Mountain".
The Korean Academy claimed ancient hominid fossils originating from about 100,000 BCE in the lava at a stone city site in Korea. Fluorescent and high-magnetic analyses indicate the volcanic fossils may be from as early as 300,000 BCE. The best preserved Korean pottery goes back to the paleolithic times around 10,000 BCE and the Neolithic period begins around 6000 BCE.
Beginning around 300 BC, the Japonic-speaking Yayoi people from the Korean Peninsula entered the Japanese islands and displaced or intermingled with the original Jōmon inhabitants. The linguistic homeland of Proto-Koreans is located somewhere in Southern Siberia/Manchuria, such the Liao river area or the Amur region. Proto-Koreans arrived in the southern part of the Korean Peninsula at around 300 BC, replacing and assimilating Japonic-speakers and likely causing the Yayoi migration.
According to Korean legend, Dangun, a descendant of Heaven, established Gojoseon in 2333 BCE. In 108 BCE, the Han dynasty defeated Gojoseon and installed four commanderies in the northern Korean peninsula. Three of the commanderies fell or retreated westward within a few decades, but the Lelang Commandery remained as a center of cultural and economic exchange with successive Chinese dynasties for four centuries. By 313, Goguryeo annexed all of the Chinese commanderies.
The Proto–Three Kingdoms period, sometimes called the Multiple States Period, is the earlier part of what is commonly called the Three Kingdoms Period, following the fall of Gojoseon but before Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla fully developed into kingdoms.
This time period saw numerous states spring up from the former territories of Gojoseon, which encompassed northern Korea and southern Manchuria. With the fall of Gojoseon, southern Korea entered the Samhan period.
Located in the southern part of Korea, Samhan referred to the three confederacies of Mahan, Jinhan, and Byeonhan. Mahan was the largest and consisted of 54 states. Byeonhan and Jinhan both consisted of twelve states, bringing a total of 78 states within the Samhan. These three confederacies eventually developed into Baekje, Silla, and Gaya.
The Three Kingdoms of Korea consisted of Goguryeo, Silla, and Baekje. Silla and Baekje controlled the southern half of the Korean Peninsula, maintaining the former Samhan territories, while Goguryeo controlled the northern half of the Korean Peninsula, Manchuria and the Liaodong Peninsula, uniting Buyeo, Okjeo, Dongye, and other states in the former Gojoseon territories.
Goguryeo was a highly militaristic state, and a large empire in East Asia, reaching its zenith in the 5th century when its territories expanded to encompass most of Manchuria to the north, parts of Inner Mongolia to the west, parts of Russia to the east, and the Seoul region to the south. Goguryeo experienced a golden age under Gwanggaeto the Great and his son Jangsu, who both subdued Baekje and Silla during their times, achieving a brief unification of the Three Kingdoms of Korea and becoming the most dominant power on the Korean Peninsula. In addition to contesting for control of the Korean Peninsula, Goguryeo had many military conflicts with various Chinese dynasties, most notably the Goguryeo–Sui War, in which Goguryeo defeated a huge force said to number over a million men. In 642, the powerful general Yeon Gaesomun led a coup and gained complete control over Goguryeo. In response, Emperor Tang Taizong of China led a campaign against Goguryeo, but was defeated and retreated. After the death of Tang Taizong, his son Emperor Tang Gaozong allied with the Korean kingdom of Silla and invaded Goguryeo again, but was unable to overcome Goguryeo's stalwart defences and was defeated in 662. However, Yeon Gaesomun died of a natural cause in 666 and Goguryeo was thrown into chaos and weakened by a succession struggle among his sons and younger brother, with his eldest son defecting to Tang and his younger brother defecting to Silla. The Tang-Silla alliance finally conquered Goguryeo in 668. After the collapse of Goguryeo, Tang and Silla ended their alliance and fought over control of the Korean Peninsula. Silla succeeded in gaining control over most of the Korean Peninsula, while Tang gained control over Goguryeo's northern territories. However, 30 years after the fall of Goguryeo, a Goguryeo general by the name of Dae Joyeong founded the Korean-Mohe state of Balhae and successfully expelled the Tang presence from much of the former Goguryeo territories.
The southwestern Korean kingdom of Baekje was founded around modern-day Seoul by a Goguryeo prince, a son of the founder of Goguryeo. Baekje absorbed all of the Mahan states and subjugated most of the western Korean peninsula (including the modern provinces of Gyeonggi, Chungcheong, and Jeolla, as well as parts of Hwanghae and Gangwon) to a centralised government; during the expansion of its territory, Baekje acquired Chinese culture and technology through maritime contacts with the Southern Dynasties. Baekje was a great maritime power; its nautical skill, which made it the Phoenicia of East Asia, was instrumental in the dissemination of Buddhism throughout East Asia and continental culture to Japan. Historic evidence suggests that Japanese culture, art, and language were influenced by the kingdom of Baekje and Korea itself; Baekje also played an important role in transmitting advanced Chinese culture to the Japanese archipelago. Baekje was once a great military power on the Korean Peninsula, most notably in the 4th century during the rule of Geunchogo when its influence extended across the sea to Liaoxi and Shandong in China, taking advantage of the weakened state of Former Qin, and Kyushu in the Japanese archipelago; however, Baekje was critically defeated by Gwanggaeto the Great and declined.
Although later records claim that Silla was the oldest of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, it is now believed to have been the last kingdom to develop. By the 2nd century, Silla existed as a large state in the southeast, occupying and influencing its neighbouring city-states. In 562, Silla annexed the Gaya confederacy, which was located between Baekje and Silla. The Three Kingdoms of Korea often warred with each other and Silla was often dominated by Baekje and Goguryeo. Silla was the smallest and weakest of the three, but it used cunning diplomatic means to make opportunistic pacts and alliances with the more powerful Korean kingdoms, and eventually Tang China, to its great advantage. In 660, King Muyeol ordered his armies to attack Baekje. General Kim Yu-shin, aided by Tang forces, conquered Baekje after defeating General Gyebaek at the Battle of Hwangsanbeol. In 661, Silla and Tang attacked Goguryeo but were repelled. King Munmu, son of Muyeol and nephew of General Kim Yu-shin, launched another campaign in 667 and Goguryeo fell in the following year.
Beginning in the 6th century, Silla's power gradually extended across the Korean Peninsula. Silla first annexed the adjacent Gaya confederacy in 562. By the 640s, Silla formed an alliance with the Tang dynasty of China to conquer Baekje and later Goguryeo. After conquering Baekje and Goguryeo, Silla repulsed Tang China from the Korean peninsula in 676. Even though Silla unified most of the Korean Peninsula, most of the Goguryeo territories to the north of the Korean Peninsula were ruled by Balhae. Former Goguryeo general or chief of Sumo Mohe Dae Jo-yeong led a group of Goguryeo and Mohe refugees to the Jilin and founded the kingdom of Balhae, 30 years after the collapse of Goguryeo, as the successor to Goguryeo. At its height, Balhae's territories extended from southern Manchuria down to the northern Korean peninsula. Balhae was called the "Prosperous Country in the East".
Later Silla carried on the maritime prowess of Baekje, which acted like the Phoenicia of medieval East Asia, and during the 8th and 9th centuries dominated the seas of East Asia and the trade between China, Korea and Japan, most notably during the time of Jang Bogo; in addition, Silla people made overseas communities in China on the Shandong Peninsula and the mouth of the Yangtze River. Later Silla was a prosperous and wealthy country, and its metropolitan capital of Gyeongju was the fourth largest city in the world. Later Silla experienced a golden age of art and culture, as evidenced by the Hwangnyongsa, Seokguram, and Emille Bell. Buddhism flourished during this time, and many Korean Buddhists gained great fame among Chinese Buddhists and contributed to Chinese Buddhism, including: Woncheuk, Wonhyo, Uisang, Musang, and Kim Gyo-gak, a Silla prince whose influence made Mount Jiuhua one of the Four Sacred Mountains of Chinese Buddhism.
Later Silla fell apart in the late 9th century, giving way to the tumultuous Later Three Kingdoms period (892–935), and Balhae was destroyed by the Khitans in 926. Goryeo unified the Later Three Kingdoms and received the last crown prince and much of the ruling class of Balhae, thus bringing about a unification of the two successor nations of Goguryeo.
Goryeo was founded in 918 and replaced Silla as the ruling dynasty of Korea. Goryeo's land was at first what is now South Korea and about 1/3 of North Korea, but later on managed to recover most of the Korean peninsula. Momentarily, Goryeo advanced to parts of Jiandao while conquering the Jurchens, but returned the territories due to the harsh climate and difficulties in defending them. The name "Goryeo" (高麗) is a short form of "Goguryeo" (高句麗) and was first used during the time of King Jangsu. Goryeo regarded itself as the successor of Goguryeo, hence its name and efforts to recover the former territories of Goguryeo. Wang Geon, the founder of Goryeo, was of Goguryeo descent and traced his ancestry to a noble Goguryeo clan. He made Kaesong, his hometown, the capital.
During this period, laws were codified and a civil service system was introduced. Buddhism flourished and spread throughout the peninsula. The development of celadon industries flourished in the 12th and 13th centuries. The publication of the Tripitaka Koreana onto more than 80,000 wooden blocks and the invention of the world's first metal movable type in the 13th century attest to Goryeo's cultural achievements.
Goryeo had to defend frequently against attacks by nomadic empires, especially the Khitans and the Mongols. Goryeo had a hostile relationship with the Khitans, because the Khitan Empire had destroyed Balhae, also a successor state of Goguryeo. In 993, the Khitans, who had established the Liao dynasty in 907, invaded Goryeo, demanding that it make amity with them. Goryeo sent the diplomat Seo Hui to negotiate, who successfully persuaded the Khitans to let Goryeo expand to the banks of the Amnok (Yalu) River, citing that in the past the land belonged to Goguryeo, the predecessor of Goryeo. During the Goryeo–Khitan War, the Khitan Empire invaded Korea twice more in 1009 and 1018, but was defeated.
After defeating the Khitan Empire, which was the most powerful empire of its time, Goryeo experienced a golden age that lasted a century, during which the Tripitaka Koreana was completed, and there were great developments in printing and publishing, promoting learning and dispersing knowledge on philosophy, literature, religion, and science; by 1100, there were 12 universities that produced famous scholars and scientists.
Goryeo was invaded by the Mongols in seven major campaigns from the 1230s until the 1270s, but was never conquered. Exhausted after decades of fighting, Goryeo sent its crown prince to the Yuan capital to swear allegiance to the Mongols; Kublai Khan accepted, and married one of his daughters to the Korean crown prince, and the dynastic line of Goryeo continued to survive under the overlordship of the Mongol Yuan dynasty as a semi-autonomous vassal state and compulsory ally. The two nations became intertwined for 80 years as all subsequent Korean kings married Mongol princesses, and the last empress of the Yuan dynasty was a Korean princess.
In the 1350s, King Gongmin was free at last to reform the Goryeo government when the Yuan dynasty began to crumble. Gongmin had various problems that needed to be dealt with, which included the removal of pro-Mongol aristocrats and military officials, the question of land holding, and quelling the growing animosity between the Buddhists and Confucian scholars. During this tumultuous period, Goryeo momentarily conquered Liaoyang in 1356, repulsed two large invasions by the Red Turbans in 1359 and 1360, and defeated the final attempt by the Yuan to dominate Goryeo when General Choe Yeong defeated a Mongol tumen in 1364. During the 1380s, Goryeo turned its attention to the Wokou threat and used naval artillery created by Choe Museon to annihilate hundreds of pirate ships.
In 1392, the general Yi Seong-gye overthrew the Goryeo dynasty after he staged a coup and defeated General Choe Yeong. Yi Seong-gye named his new dynasty Joseon and moved the capital from Kaesong to Hanseong (formerly Hanyang; modern-day Seoul) and built the Gyeongbokgung palace. In 1394, he adopted Confucianism as the country's official ideology, resulting in much loss of power and wealth by the Buddhists. The prevailing philosophy of the Joseon dynasty was Neo-Confucianism, which was epitomised by the seonbi class, scholars who passed up positions of wealth and power to lead lives of study and integrity.
Joseon was a nominal tributary state of China but exercised full sovereignty, and maintained the highest position among China's tributary states, which also included countries such as the Ryukyu Kingdom, Vietnam, Burma, Brunei, Laos, Thailand, and the Philippines, among others. In addition, Joseon received tribute from Jurchens and Japanese until the 17th century, and had a small enclave in the Ryukyu Kingdom that engaged in trade with Siam and Java.
During the 15th and 16th centuries, Joseon enjoyed many benevolent rulers who promoted education and science. Most notable among them was Sejong the Great (r. 1418–50), who personally created and promulgated Hangul, the Korean alphabet. This golden age saw great cultural and scientific advancements, including in printing, meteorological observation, astronomy, calendar science, ceramics, military technology, geography, cartography, medicine, and agricultural technology, some of which were unrivaled elsewhere. Joseon implemented a class system that consisted of yangban the noble class, jungin the middle class, yangin the common class, and cheonin the lowest class, which included occupations such as butchers, tanners, shamans, entertainers, and nobi, the equivalent of slaves, bondservants, or serfs.
In 1592 and again in 1597, the Japanese invaded Korea; the Korean military at the time was unprepared and untrained, due to two centuries of peace on the Korean Peninsula. Toyotomi Hideyoshi intended to conquer China and India through the Korean Peninsula, but was defeated by strong resistance from the Righteous Army, the naval superiority of Admiral Yi Sun-sin and his turtle ships, and assistance from Wanli Emperor of Ming China. However, Joseon experienced great destruction, including a tremendous loss of cultural sites such as temples and palaces to Japanese pillaging, and the Japanese brought back to Japan an estimated 100,000–200,000 noses cut from Korean victims. Less than 30 years after the Japanese invasions, the Manchus took advantage of Joseon's war-weakened state and invaded in 1627 and 1637, and then went on to conquer the destabilised Ming dynasty.
After normalising relations with the new Qing dynasty, Joseon experienced a nearly 200-year period of peace. Kings Yeongjo and Jeongjo led a new renaissance of the Joseon dynasty during the 18th century.
In the 19th century, the royal in-law families gained control of the government, leading to mass corruption and weakening of the state, with severe poverty and peasant rebellions spreading throughout the country. Furthermore, the Joseon government adopted a strict isolationist policy, earning the nickname "the hermit kingdom", but ultimately failed to protect itself against imperialism and was forced to open its borders, beginning an era leading into Japanese imperial rule.
Beginning in 1871, Japan began to exert more influence in Korea, forcing it out of China's traditional sphere of influence. As a result of the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), the Qing dynasty had to give up such a position according to Article 1 of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which was concluded between China and Japan in 1895. That same year, Empress Myeongseong of Korea was assassinated by Japanese agents.
In 1897, the Joseon dynasty proclaimed the Korean Empire (1897–1910). King Gojong became emperor. During this brief period, Korea had some success in modernising the military, economy, real property laws, education system, and various industries. Russia, Japan, France, and the United States all invested in the country and sought to influence it politically.
The Russians were pushed out of the fight for Korea following the conclusion of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). Korea became a protectorate of Japan shortly afterwards. In Manchuria on 26 October 1909, An Jung-geun assassinated the former Resident-General of Korea, Itō Hirobumi, for his role in trying to force Korea into occupation.
In 1910, an already militarily occupied Korea was a forced party to the Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty. The treaty was signed by Lee Wan-Yong, who was given the General Power of Attorney by the Emperor. However, the Emperor is said to have not actually ratified the treaty according to Yi Tae-jin. There is a long dispute whether this treaty was legal or illegal due to its signing under duress, threat of force and bribes.
Korean resistance to the brutal Japanese occupation was manifested in the nonviolent March 1st Movement of 1919, during which 7,000 demonstrators were killed by Japanese police and military. The Korean liberation movement also spread to neighbouring Manchuria and Siberia.
Over five million Koreans were conscripted for labour beginning in 1939, and tens of thousands of men were forced into Japan's military. Nearly 400,000 Korean labourers died. Approximately 200,000 girls and women, mostly from China and Korea, were forced into sexual slavery for the Japanese military. In 1993, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono acknowledged the terrible injustices faced by these euphemistically named "comfort women".
During the Japanese annexation, the Korean language was suppressed in an effort to eradicate Korean national identity. Koreans were forced to take Japanese surnames, known as Sōshi-kaimei. Traditional Korean culture suffered heavy losses, as numerous Korean cultural artefacts were destroyed or taken to Japan. To this day, valuable Korean artefacts can often be found in Japanese museums or among private collections. One investigation by the South Korean government identified 75,311 cultural assets that were taken from Korea, 34,369 in Japan and 17,803 in the United States. However, experts estimate that over 100,000 artefacts actually remain in Japan. Japanese officials considered returning Korean cultural properties, but to date this has not occurred. Korea and Japan still dispute the ownership of the Dokdo islets, located east of the Korean Peninsula.
There was significant emigration to the overseas territories of the Empire of Japan during the Japanese occupation period, including Korea. By the end of World War II, there were over 850,000 Japanese settlers in Korea. After World War II, most of these overseas Japanese repatriated to Japan. Migrants who remained squatted in informal settlements.
In 1945, with the surrender of Japan, the United Nations developed plans for a trusteeship administration, the Soviet Union administering the peninsula north of the 38th parallel and the United States administering the south. The politics of the Cold War resulted in the 1948 establishment of two separate governments, North Korea and South Korea.
The aftermath of World War II left Korea partitioned along the 38th parallel on 2 September 1945, with the north under Soviet occupation and the south under US occupation supported by other allied states. Consequently, North Korea, a Soviet-style socialist republic was established in the north, and South Korea, a Western-style regime, was established in the south.
North Korea is a one-party state, now centred on Kim Il Sung's Juche ideology, with a centrally planned industrial economy. South Korea is a multi-party state with a capitalist market economy, alongside membership in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the Group of Twenty. The two states have greatly diverged both culturally and economically since their partition, though they still share a common traditional culture and pre-Cold War history.
Since the 1960s, the South Korean economy has grown enormously and the economic structure was radically transformed. In 1957, South Korea had a lower per capita GDP than Ghana, and by 2008 it was 17 times as high as Ghana's.
According to R. J. Rummel, forced labour, executions, and concentration camps were responsible for over one million deaths in North Korea from 1948 to 1987; others have estimated 400,000 deaths in concentration camps alone. Estimates based on the most recent North Korean census suggest that 240,000 to 420,000 people died as a result of the 1990s famine and that there were 600,000 to 850,000 unnatural deaths in North Korea from 1993 to 2008. In South Korea, as guerrilla activities expanded, the South Korean government used strong measures against peasants, such as forcefully moving their families from guerrilla areas. According to one estimate, these measures resulted in 36,000 people killed, 11,000 people wounded, and 432,000 people displaced.
The Korean War broke out when Soviet-backed North Korea invaded South Korea, though neither side gained much territory as a result. The Korean Peninsula remained divided, the Korean Demilitarized Zone being the de facto border between the two states.
In June 1950 North Korea invaded the South, using Soviet tanks and weaponry. During the Korean War (1950–53) more than 1.2 million people died and the three years of fighting throughout the nation effectively destroyed most cities. The war ended with an armistice agreement at approximately the Military Demarcation Line, but the two governments are officially still at war.
In 2018, the leaders of North Korea and South Korea officially signed the Panmunjom Declaration, announcing that they will work to end the conflict.
In November 2020, South Korea and China agreed to work together to mend South Korea's relationship with North Korea. During a meeting between President Moon and China's foreign minister, Wang Yi, Moon expressed his gratitude to China for its role in helping to foster peace in the Korean Peninsula. Moon was quoted telling Wang during their meeting that "[the South Korean] government will not stop efforts to put an end (formally) to war on the Korean Peninsula and achieve complete denuclearization and permanent peace together with the international community, including China."
Korea consists of a peninsula and nearby islands located in East Asia. The peninsula extends southwards for about 1,100 km (680 mi) from continental Asia into the Pacific Ocean and is surrounded by the Sea of Japan to the east and the Yellow Sea (West Sea) to the west, the Korea Strait connecting the two bodies of water. To the northwest, the Amnok River separates Korea from China and to the northeast, the Duman River separates it from China and Russia. Notable islands include Jeju Island, Ulleung Island, Dokdo.
The southern and western parts of the peninsula have well-developed plains, while the eastern and northern parts are mountainous. The highest mountain in Korea is Mount Paektu (2,744 m), through which runs the border with China. The southern extension of Mount Paektu is a highland called Gaema Heights. This highland was mainly raised during the Cenozoic orogeny and partly covered by volcanic matter. To the south of Gaema Gowon, successive high mountains are located along the eastern coast of the peninsula. This mountain range is named Baekdu-daegan. Some significant mountains include Mount Sobaek or Sobaeksan (1,439 m), Mount Kumgang (1,638 m), Mount Seorak (1,708 m), Mount Taebaek (1,567 m), and Mount Jiri (1,915 m). There are several lower, secondary mountain series whose direction is almost perpendicular to that of Baekdu-daegan. They are developed along the tectonic line of Mesozoic orogeny and their directions are basically northwest.
Unlike most ancient mountains on the mainland, many important islands in Korea were formed by volcanic activity in the Cenozoic orogeny. Jeju Island, situated off the southern coast, is a large volcanic island whose main mountain, Mount Halla or Hallasan (1,950 m), is the highest in South Korea. Ulleung Island is a volcanic island in the Sea of Japan, the composition of which is more felsic than Jeju. The volcanic islands tend to be younger, the more westward.
Because the mountainous region is mostly on the eastern part of the peninsula, the main rivers tend to flow westwards. Two exceptions are the southward-flowing Nakdong River and Seomjin River. Important rivers running westward include the Amnok River, the Chongchon River, the Taedong River, the Han River, the Geum River, and the Yeongsan River. These rivers have vast flood plains and provide an ideal environment for wet-rice cultivation.
The southern and southwestern coastlines of the peninsula form a well-developed ria coastline, known as Dadohae-jin in Korean. This convoluted coastline provides mild seas, and the resulting calm environment allows for safe navigation, fishing, and seaweed farming. In addition to the complex coastline, the western coast of the Korean Peninsula has an extremely high tidal amplitude (at Incheon, around the middle of the western coast, the tide can get as high as 9 m). Vast tidal flats have been developing on the south and west coastlines.
Korea has a temperate climate with comparatively fewer typhoons than other countries in East Asia. Due to the peninsula's position, it has a unique climate influenced by Siberia in the north, the Pacific Ocean in the east and the rest of Eurasia in the west. The peninsula has four distinct seasons: spring, summer, autumn and winter.
As influence from Siberia weakens, temperatures begin to increase while the high pressure begins to move away. If the weather is abnormally dry, Siberia will have more influence on the peninsula leading to wintry weather such as snow.
During June at the start of the summer, there tends to be a lot of rain due to the cold and wet air from the Sea of Okhotsk and the hot and humid air from the Pacific Ocean combining. When these fronts combine, it leads to a so-called rainy season with often cloudy days with rain, which is sometimes very heavy. The hot and humid winds from the south west blow causing an increasing amount of humidity and this leads to the fronts moving towards Manchuria in China and thus there is less rain and this is known as midsummer; temperatures can exceed 30 °C (86 °F) daily at this time of year.
Usually, high pressure is heavily dominant during autumn leading to clear conditions. Furthermore, temperatures remain high but the humidity becomes relatively low.
The weather becomes increasingly dominated by Siberia during winter and the jet stream moves further south causing a drop in temperature. This season is relatively dry with some snow falling at times.
Animal life of the Korean Peninsula includes a considerable number of bird species and native freshwater fish. Native or endemic species of the Korean Peninsula include Korean hare, Korean water deer, Korean field mouse, Korean brown frog, Korean pine and Korean spruce. The Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) with its forest and natural wetlands is a unique biodiversity spot, which harbours eighty-two endangered species. Korea once hosted many Siberian tigers, but as the number of people affected by the tigers increased, the tigers were killed in the Joseon Dynasty and the Siberian tigers in the South Korea became extinct during the Japanese colonial era period. It has been confirmed that Siberian tigers are only on the side of North Korea now.
There are also approximately 3,034 species of vascular plants throughout the peninsula.
As of 2023, the combined population of the Koreas is about 77.9 million (North Korea: 26.1 million, South Korea: 51.7 million). Korea is chiefly populated by a highly homogeneous ethnic group, the Koreans, who speak the Korean language. The number of foreigners living in Korea has also steadily increased since the late 20th century, particularly in South Korea, where more than 1 million foreigners reside. It was estimated in 2006 that only 26,700 of the old Chinese community now remain in South Korea. However, in recent years, immigration from mainland China has increased; 624,994 persons of Chinese nationality have immigrated to South Korea, including 443,566 of ethnic Korean descent. Small communities of ethnic Chinese and Japanese are also found in North Korea.
Korean is the official language of both North and South Korea, and (along with Mandarin) of Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in Jilin Province, China. Worldwide, there are up to 80 million speakers of the Korean language. South Korea has around 50 million speakers while North Korea around 25 million. Other large groups of Korean speakers through Korean diaspora are found in China, the United States, Japan, former Soviet Union and elsewhere.
Modern Korean is written almost exclusively in the script of the Korean alphabet (known as Hangul in South Korea and Chosungul in China and North Korea), which was invented in the 15th century. Korean is sometimes written with the addition of some Chinese characters called Hanja; however, this is only occasionally seen nowadays.
The modern South Korean school system consists of six years in elementary school, three years in middle school, and three years in high school. Students are required to go to elementary and middle school, and do not have to pay for their education, except for a small fee called a "School Operation Support Fee" that differs from school to school. The Programme for International Student Assessment, coordinated by the OECD, ranks South Korea's science education as the third best in the world and being significantly higher than the OECD average.
Although South Korean students often rank high on international comparative assessments, the education system is criticised for emphasising too much upon passive learning and memorisation. The South Korean education system is rather notably strict and structured as compared to its counterparts in most Western societies.
The North Korean education system consists primarily of universal and state funded schooling by the government. The national literacy rate for citizens 15 years of age and above is over 99 per cent. Children go through one year of kindergarten, four years of primary education, six years of secondary education, and then on to universities. The most prestigious university in the DPRK is Kim Il Sung University. Other notable universities include Kim Chaek University of Technology, which focuses on computer science, Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies, which trains working level diplomats and trade officials, and Kim Hyong Jik University of Education, which trains teachers.
One of the best known artefacts of Korea's history of science and technology is the Cheomseongdae (첨성대, 瞻星臺), a 9.4-meter high astronomical observatory built in 634.
The earliest known surviving Korean example of woodblock printing is The Great Dharani Sutra. It is believed to have been printed in Korea in 750–51, which if correct, would make it older than the Diamond Sutra.
During the Goryeo Dynasty, metal movable type printing was invented by Choe Yun-ui in 1234. This invention made printing easier, more efficient and also increased literacy, which observed by Chinese visitors was seen to be so important where it was considered to be shameful to not be able to read. The Mongol Empire later adopted Korea's movable type printing and spread as far as Central Asia. There is conjecture as to whether or not Choe's invention had any influence on later printing inventions such as Gutenberg's Printing press. When the Mongols invaded Europe they inadvertently introduced different kinds of Asian technology.
During the Joseon period, the Turtle Ship was invented, which were covered by a wooden deck and iron with thorns, as well as other weapons such as the bigyeokjincheolloe cannon (비격진천뢰, 飛擊震天雷) and the hwacha.
The Korean alphabet hangul was also invented during this time by King Sejong the Great.
In ancient Chinese texts, Korea is referred to as "Rivers and Mountains Embroidered on Silk" (금수강산, 錦繡江山) and "Eastern Nation of Decorum" (동방예의지국, 東方禮儀之國). Individuals are regarded as one year old when they are born, as Koreans reckon the pregnancy period as one year of life for infants, and age increments increase on New Year's Day rather than on the anniversary of birthdays. Thus, one born immediately before New Year's Day may only be a few days old in western reckoning, but two years old in Korea. Accordingly, a Korean person's stated age (at least among fellow Koreans) will be one or two years more than their age according to western reckoning. However, western reckoning is sometimes applied with regard to the concept of legal age; for example, the legal age for purchasing alcohol or cigarettes in the Republic of Korea is 19, which is measured according to western reckoning.
Korean literature written before the end of the Joseon Dynasty is called "Classical" or "Traditional." Literature, written in Chinese characters (hanja), was established at the same time as the Chinese script arrived on the peninsula. Korean scholars were writing poetry in the classical Korean style as early as the 2nd century BCE, reflecting Korean thoughts and experiences of that time. Classical Korean literature has its roots in traditional folk beliefs and folk tales of the peninsula, strongly influenced by Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism.
Modern literature is often linked with the development of hangul, which helped spread literacy from the aristocracy to the common people. Hangul, however, only reached a dominant position in Korean literature in the second half of the 19th century, resulting in a major growth in Korean literature. Sinsoseol, for instance, are novels written in hangul.
The Korean War led to the development of literature centered on the wounds and chaos of war. Much of the post-war literature in South Korea deals with the daily lives of ordinary people, and their struggles with national pain. The collapse of the traditional Korean value system is another common theme of the time.
Traditional Korean music includes combinations of the folk, vocal, religious and ritual music styles of the Korean people. Korean music has been practised since prehistoric times. Korean music falls into two broad categories. The first, Hyangak, literally means The local music or Music native to Korea, a famous example of which is Sujechon, a piece of instrumental music often claimed to be at least 1,300 years old. The second, yangak, represents a more Western style.
Confucian tradition has dominated Korean thought, along with contributions by Buddhism, Taoism, and Korean Shamanism. Since the middle of the 20th century, however, Christianity has competed with Buddhism in South Korea, while religious practice has been suppressed in North Korea. Throughout Korean history and culture, regardless of separation; the influence of traditional beliefs of Korean Shamanism, Mahayana Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism have remained an underlying religion of the Korean people as well as a vital aspect of their culture; all these traditions have coexisted peacefully for hundreds of years up to today despite strong Westernisation from Christian missionary conversions in the South or the pressure from the Juche government in the North.
According to 2005 statistics compiled by the South Korean government, about 46% of citizens profess to follow no particular religion. Christians account for 29.2% of the population (of which are Protestants 18.3% and Catholics 10.9%) and Buddhists 22.8%. In North Korea, around 71.3% claim to be non-religious or atheists, 12.9% follow Cheondoism and 12.3% Korean Folk Religion, while Christians count for 2% of the population, and Buddhists as 1.5%.
Islam in South Korea is practised by about 45,000 natives (about 0.09% of the population) in addition to some 100,000 foreign workers from Muslim countries. While in North Korea it's estimated to be around 3000 Muslims, which is around 0.01% of the popultation. The Ar-Rahman Mosque is the only mosque in DPRK, and it is located at the Iranian Embassy grounds in Pyongyyang.
In 1993, the Korean Overseas Culture and Information Service estimated that around 1,600,000 people practice Korean new religions in both Korean countries.
Koreans traditionally believe that the taste and quality of food depend on its spices and sauces, the essential ingredients to making a delicious meal. Therefore, soybean paste, soy sauce, gochujang or red pepper paste and kimchi are some of the most important staples in a Korean household.
Korean cuisine was greatly influenced by the geography and climate of the Korean Peninsula, which is known for its cold autumns and winters, therefore there are many fermented dishes and hot soups and stews.
Korean cuisine is probably best known for kimchi, a side dish which uses a distinctive fermentation process of preserving vegetables, most commonly cabbage. Kimchi is said to relieve the pores on the skin, thereby reducing wrinkles and providing nutrients to the skin naturally. It is also healthy, as it provides necessary vitamins and nutrients. Gochujang, a traditional Korean sauce made of red pepper is also commonly used, often as pepper (chilli) paste, earning the cuisine a reputation for spiciness.
Bulgogi (roasted marinated meat, usually beef), galbi (marinated grilled short ribs), and samgyeopsal (pork belly) are popular main courses. Fish is also a popular commodity, as it is the traditional meat that Koreans eat. Meals are usually accompanied by a soup or stew, such as galbitang (stewed ribs) or doenjang jjigae (fermented bean paste soup). The center of the table is filled with a shared collection of sidedishes called banchan.
Other popular dishes include bibimbap, which literally means "mixed rice" (rice mixed with meat, vegetables, and red pepper paste), and naengmyeon (cold noodles).
Instant noodles, or ramyeon, is a popular snack food. Koreans also enjoy food from pojangmachas (street vendors), which serve tteokbokki, rice cake and fish cake with a spicy gochujang sauce; gimbap, made of steamed white rice wrapped in dried green laver seaweed; fried squid; and glazed sweet potato. Soondae, a sausage made of cellophane noodles and pork blood, is widely eaten.
Additionally, some other common snacks include "Choco Pie", shrimp crackers, "bbeongtwigi" (puffed rice grains), and "nurungji" (slightly burnt rice). Nurungji can be eaten as it is or boiled with water to make a soup. Nurungji can also be eaten as a snack or a dessert.
Korea is unique among Asian countries in its use of metal chopsticks. Metal chopsticks have been discovered in archaeological sites belonging to the ancient Korean kingdoms of Goguryeo, Baekje and Silla.
North Korea and South Korea usually compete as two separate nations in international events. There are, however, a few examples of them having competed as one entity, under the name Korea.
While association football remains one of the most popular sports in South Korea, the martial art of taekwondo is considered to be the national sport. Baseball and golf are also popular. The board game Go, known in Korea as baduk, has also been popular for over a millennium, first arriving from China in the 5th century CE; baduk is played both casually and competitively.
Taekwon-Do is Korea's most famous martial art and sport. It combines combat techniques, self-defence, sport and exercise. Taekwon-Do has become an official Olympic sport, starting as a demonstration event in 1988 (when South Korea hosted the Games in Seoul) and becoming an official medal event in 2000. The two major Taekwon-Do federations were founded in Korea. The two are the International Taekwon-Do Federation and the World Taekwondo Federation.
Hapkido is a modern Korean martial art with a grappling focus that employs joint locks, throws, kicks, punches and other striking attacks like attacks against pressure points. Hapkido emphasises circular motion, non-resisting movements and control of the opponent. Practitioners seek to gain advantage through footwork and body positioning to employ leverage, avoiding the pure use of strength against strength.
Ssireum is a traditional form of wrestling that has been practised in Korea for thousands of years, with evidence discovered from Goguryeo of Korea's Three Kingdoms Period (57 BCE to 688). Ssireum is the traditional national sport of Korea. During a match, opponents grip each other by sash belts wrapped around the waist and the thigh, attempting to throw their competitor to the sandy ground of the ring. The first opponent to touch the ground with any body part above the knee or to lose hold of their opponent loses the round.
Ssireum competitions are traditionally held twice a year, during the Dano Festival (the 5th day of the fifth lunar month) and Chuseok (the 15th day of the 8th lunar month). Competitions are also held throughout the year as a part of festivals and other events.
Taekkyon is a traditional martial art, considered the oldest form of fighting technique of Korea. Practiced for centuries and especially popular during the Joseon dynasty, two forms co-existed: one for practical use, the other for sport. This form was usually practised alongside Ssireum during festivals and competitions between villages. Nonetheless, Taekkyon almost disappeared during the Japanese Occupation and the Korean War.
Though lost in North Korea, Taekkyon has enjoyed a spectacular revival from the 1980s in South Korea. It is the only martial art in the world (with Ssireum) recognised as a National Treasure of South Korea and a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage.
38°19′N 127°14′E / 38.317°N 127.233°E / 38.317; 127.233
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Korea (Korean: 한국, Hanguk in South Korea or 조선, Joseon in North Korea) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, now known as the Korean Demilitarized Zone. In 1948, two states declared independence, both claiming sovereignty over all of Korea: South Korea (Republic of Korea) comprising its southern half and North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half. The region consists of the Korean Peninsula, Jeju Island, and a number of minor islands near the peninsula. The peninsula is bordered by China (Manchuria) to the north and Russia to the northeast, across the Amnok and Duman rivers. It is separated from Japan to the southeast by the Korea Strait.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The earliest radiocarbon dates for the Paleolithic sites found in Korea indicate human presence goes back to 40,000 and 30,000 BC. The first state to emerge was Gojoseon, which fell to the Han Dynasty in 108 BC. During the first half of the 1st millennium, Korea was divided between three states, Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla, together known as the Three Kingdoms of Korea. In the late 7th century, Silla conquered Baekje and Goguryeo with the aid of the Tang Dynasty, and drove the Tang out of Korea during the Silla-Tang War. Meanwhile, Balhae, formed by Goguryeo remnants and Mohe people, succeeded Goguryeo in the north. Unified Silla eventually collapsed into three separate states due to civil war, known as the Later Three Kingdoms.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Toward the end of the Later Three Kingdoms, Goguryeo was resurrected as Goryeo, which defeated the two other states and unified Korea as a single sovereign state. Around this time, Balhae collapsed and its last crown prince and much of its ruling class fled to Goryeo, unifying the two successor states of Goguryeo. Goryeo (also spelled as Koryŏ), whose name developed into the modern exonym \"Korea\", was a highly cultured state that created the world's first metal movable type in 1234. During the 13th century, the Mongol Empire made Goryeo its vassal state after decades of war. Although Goryeo overthrew Mongol rule, it fell to a coup led by General Yi Seong-gye, who established Joseon on 17 July 1392. The first 200 years of Joseon were marked by relative peace, and during this time the Korean alphabet was created by Sejong the Great and Confucianism became increasingly influential in the kingdom. However, this ended with the Japanese invasions of Korea and the 1636, which brought great devastation to Joseon and lead to Korean isolationism. After the end of these invasions, Joseon experienced a nearly 200-year period of peace and prosperity, along with cultural and technological development. In Joseon's final years, it experienced turmoil such as the Gapsin Coup, Donghak Peasant Revolution, and the assassination of Empress Myeongseong. In 1897, the Korean Empire was established to protect Korean independence. However, following Japan's victories in the First Sino-Japanese War and Russo-Japanese War, Japan annexed it altogether in 1910.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In 1945, Japan relinquished control over Korea after formally surrendering to the Allies, in the aftermath of World War II. The Soviet Union and the United States had agreed to partition Korea along the 38th parallel. These circumstances became the basis for the division of Korea. Tensions between the two Koreas resulted in North Korea invading South Korea and the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. With involvement by foreign troops, the war ended in a stalemate in 1953, but without a formalised peace treaty. A demilitarized zone was created between the two countries approximating the original partition.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "This status contributes to the high tensions that continue to divide the peninsula, and both states continue to claim to be the sole legitimate government of Korea. South Korea is a regional power and a developed country, with its economy being ranked as the world's thirteenth-largest by nominal GDP and the fourteenth-largest by GDP (PPP). Its armed forces are ranked as one of the world's strongest militaries, with the world's second-largest standing army by military and paramilitary personnel. In the 21st century, South Korea has been renowned for its globally influential pop culture, particularly in music (K-pop), TV dramas (K-dramas) and cinema, a phenomenon referred to as the Korean Wave.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "North Korea follows Songun, a \"military first\" policy which prioritizes the Korean People's Army in state affairs and the allocation of resources. It possesses nuclear weapons, and is the country with the highest number of military and paramilitary personnel, with a total of 7.77 million active, reserve, and paramilitary personnel, or approximately 30% of its population. Its active duty army of 1.28 million soldiers is the fourth-largest in the world, consisting of 4.9% of its population. North Korea is widely considered to have the worst human rights record in the world.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "\"Korea\" is the modern spelling of \"Corea\", a name attested in English as early as 1614. \"Corea\" is derived from the name of the ancient kingdom of Goryeo. Korea was transliterated as Cauli in The Travels of Marco Polo, of the Chinese 高麗 (MC: Kawlej, mod. Gāolì). This was the Hanja for the Korean kingdom of Goryeo (Korean: 고려; MR: Koryŏ), which ruled most of the Korean peninsula during the 12th century. Korea's introduction to the West resulted from trade and contact with merchants from Arabic lands, with some records dating back as far as the 9th century. Goryeo's name was a continuation of Goguryeo (Koguryŏ) the northernmost of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, which was officially known as Goryeo beginning in the 5th century. The original name was a combination of the adjectives (\"high, lofty\") with the name of a local Yemaek tribe, whose original name is thought to have been either \"Guru\" (溝樓, \"walled city,\" inferred from some toponyms in Chinese historical documents) or \"Gauri\" (가우리, \"center\"). With expanding British and American trade following the opening of Korea in the late 19th century, the spelling \"Korea\" appeared and gradually grew in popularity. The name Korea is now commonly used in English contexts by both North and South Korea.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In South Korea, Korea as a whole is referred to as Hanguk (한국, [haːnɡuk], lit. 'country of the Han'). The name references Samhan, referring to the Three Kingdoms of Korea, not the ancient confederacies in the southern Korean Peninsula. Although written in Hanja as 韓, 幹, or 刊, this Han has no relation to the Chinese place names or peoples who used those characters but was a phonetic transcription (OC: *Gar, MC: Han or Gan) of a native Korean word that seems to have had the meaning \"big\" or \"great\", particularly in reference to leaders. It has been tentatively linked with the title khan used by the nomads of Manchuria and Central Asia.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In North Korea, Korea as a whole is referred to as Joseon (조선, [tɕosʰʌn], lit. '[land of the] Morning Calm'). Joseon is the modern Korean pronunciation of the Hanja 朝鮮, which is also the basis of the word for Korea as a whole in Japan (朝鮮, Chōsen), China (朝鲜, Cháoxiǎn), and Vietnam (Triều Tiên). \"Great Joseon\" was the name of the kingdom ruled by the Joseon dynasty from 1392 until their declaration of the short-lived Great Korean Empire in 1897. King Taejo had named them for the earlier Gojoseon (고조선), who ruled northern Korea from its legendary prehistory until their conquest in 108 BCE by China's Han Empire. The Go- in Gojoseon is the Hanja word 古 and simply means \"ancient\" or \"old\"; it is a modern usage to distinguish the ancient Joseon from the later dynasty. It is unclear whether Joseon was a transcription of a native Korean name (OC *T[r]awser, MC Trjewsjen) or a partial translation into Chinese of the Korean capital Asadal (아사달), whose meaning has been reconstructed as \"Morning Land\" or \"Mountain\".",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The Korean Academy claimed ancient hominid fossils originating from about 100,000 BCE in the lava at a stone city site in Korea. Fluorescent and high-magnetic analyses indicate the volcanic fossils may be from as early as 300,000 BCE. The best preserved Korean pottery goes back to the paleolithic times around 10,000 BCE and the Neolithic period begins around 6000 BCE.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Beginning around 300 BC, the Japonic-speaking Yayoi people from the Korean Peninsula entered the Japanese islands and displaced or intermingled with the original Jōmon inhabitants. The linguistic homeland of Proto-Koreans is located somewhere in Southern Siberia/Manchuria, such the Liao river area or the Amur region. Proto-Koreans arrived in the southern part of the Korean Peninsula at around 300 BC, replacing and assimilating Japonic-speakers and likely causing the Yayoi migration.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "According to Korean legend, Dangun, a descendant of Heaven, established Gojoseon in 2333 BCE. In 108 BCE, the Han dynasty defeated Gojoseon and installed four commanderies in the northern Korean peninsula. Three of the commanderies fell or retreated westward within a few decades, but the Lelang Commandery remained as a center of cultural and economic exchange with successive Chinese dynasties for four centuries. By 313, Goguryeo annexed all of the Chinese commanderies.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The Proto–Three Kingdoms period, sometimes called the Multiple States Period, is the earlier part of what is commonly called the Three Kingdoms Period, following the fall of Gojoseon but before Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla fully developed into kingdoms.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "This time period saw numerous states spring up from the former territories of Gojoseon, which encompassed northern Korea and southern Manchuria. With the fall of Gojoseon, southern Korea entered the Samhan period.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Located in the southern part of Korea, Samhan referred to the three confederacies of Mahan, Jinhan, and Byeonhan. Mahan was the largest and consisted of 54 states. Byeonhan and Jinhan both consisted of twelve states, bringing a total of 78 states within the Samhan. These three confederacies eventually developed into Baekje, Silla, and Gaya.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The Three Kingdoms of Korea consisted of Goguryeo, Silla, and Baekje. Silla and Baekje controlled the southern half of the Korean Peninsula, maintaining the former Samhan territories, while Goguryeo controlled the northern half of the Korean Peninsula, Manchuria and the Liaodong Peninsula, uniting Buyeo, Okjeo, Dongye, and other states in the former Gojoseon territories.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Goguryeo was a highly militaristic state, and a large empire in East Asia, reaching its zenith in the 5th century when its territories expanded to encompass most of Manchuria to the north, parts of Inner Mongolia to the west, parts of Russia to the east, and the Seoul region to the south. Goguryeo experienced a golden age under Gwanggaeto the Great and his son Jangsu, who both subdued Baekje and Silla during their times, achieving a brief unification of the Three Kingdoms of Korea and becoming the most dominant power on the Korean Peninsula. In addition to contesting for control of the Korean Peninsula, Goguryeo had many military conflicts with various Chinese dynasties, most notably the Goguryeo–Sui War, in which Goguryeo defeated a huge force said to number over a million men. In 642, the powerful general Yeon Gaesomun led a coup and gained complete control over Goguryeo. In response, Emperor Tang Taizong of China led a campaign against Goguryeo, but was defeated and retreated. After the death of Tang Taizong, his son Emperor Tang Gaozong allied with the Korean kingdom of Silla and invaded Goguryeo again, but was unable to overcome Goguryeo's stalwart defences and was defeated in 662. However, Yeon Gaesomun died of a natural cause in 666 and Goguryeo was thrown into chaos and weakened by a succession struggle among his sons and younger brother, with his eldest son defecting to Tang and his younger brother defecting to Silla. The Tang-Silla alliance finally conquered Goguryeo in 668. After the collapse of Goguryeo, Tang and Silla ended their alliance and fought over control of the Korean Peninsula. Silla succeeded in gaining control over most of the Korean Peninsula, while Tang gained control over Goguryeo's northern territories. However, 30 years after the fall of Goguryeo, a Goguryeo general by the name of Dae Joyeong founded the Korean-Mohe state of Balhae and successfully expelled the Tang presence from much of the former Goguryeo territories.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The southwestern Korean kingdom of Baekje was founded around modern-day Seoul by a Goguryeo prince, a son of the founder of Goguryeo. Baekje absorbed all of the Mahan states and subjugated most of the western Korean peninsula (including the modern provinces of Gyeonggi, Chungcheong, and Jeolla, as well as parts of Hwanghae and Gangwon) to a centralised government; during the expansion of its territory, Baekje acquired Chinese culture and technology through maritime contacts with the Southern Dynasties. Baekje was a great maritime power; its nautical skill, which made it the Phoenicia of East Asia, was instrumental in the dissemination of Buddhism throughout East Asia and continental culture to Japan. Historic evidence suggests that Japanese culture, art, and language were influenced by the kingdom of Baekje and Korea itself; Baekje also played an important role in transmitting advanced Chinese culture to the Japanese archipelago. Baekje was once a great military power on the Korean Peninsula, most notably in the 4th century during the rule of Geunchogo when its influence extended across the sea to Liaoxi and Shandong in China, taking advantage of the weakened state of Former Qin, and Kyushu in the Japanese archipelago; however, Baekje was critically defeated by Gwanggaeto the Great and declined.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Although later records claim that Silla was the oldest of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, it is now believed to have been the last kingdom to develop. By the 2nd century, Silla existed as a large state in the southeast, occupying and influencing its neighbouring city-states. In 562, Silla annexed the Gaya confederacy, which was located between Baekje and Silla. The Three Kingdoms of Korea often warred with each other and Silla was often dominated by Baekje and Goguryeo. Silla was the smallest and weakest of the three, but it used cunning diplomatic means to make opportunistic pacts and alliances with the more powerful Korean kingdoms, and eventually Tang China, to its great advantage. In 660, King Muyeol ordered his armies to attack Baekje. General Kim Yu-shin, aided by Tang forces, conquered Baekje after defeating General Gyebaek at the Battle of Hwangsanbeol. In 661, Silla and Tang attacked Goguryeo but were repelled. King Munmu, son of Muyeol and nephew of General Kim Yu-shin, launched another campaign in 667 and Goguryeo fell in the following year.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Beginning in the 6th century, Silla's power gradually extended across the Korean Peninsula. Silla first annexed the adjacent Gaya confederacy in 562. By the 640s, Silla formed an alliance with the Tang dynasty of China to conquer Baekje and later Goguryeo. After conquering Baekje and Goguryeo, Silla repulsed Tang China from the Korean peninsula in 676. Even though Silla unified most of the Korean Peninsula, most of the Goguryeo territories to the north of the Korean Peninsula were ruled by Balhae. Former Goguryeo general or chief of Sumo Mohe Dae Jo-yeong led a group of Goguryeo and Mohe refugees to the Jilin and founded the kingdom of Balhae, 30 years after the collapse of Goguryeo, as the successor to Goguryeo. At its height, Balhae's territories extended from southern Manchuria down to the northern Korean peninsula. Balhae was called the \"Prosperous Country in the East\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Later Silla carried on the maritime prowess of Baekje, which acted like the Phoenicia of medieval East Asia, and during the 8th and 9th centuries dominated the seas of East Asia and the trade between China, Korea and Japan, most notably during the time of Jang Bogo; in addition, Silla people made overseas communities in China on the Shandong Peninsula and the mouth of the Yangtze River. Later Silla was a prosperous and wealthy country, and its metropolitan capital of Gyeongju was the fourth largest city in the world. Later Silla experienced a golden age of art and culture, as evidenced by the Hwangnyongsa, Seokguram, and Emille Bell. Buddhism flourished during this time, and many Korean Buddhists gained great fame among Chinese Buddhists and contributed to Chinese Buddhism, including: Woncheuk, Wonhyo, Uisang, Musang, and Kim Gyo-gak, a Silla prince whose influence made Mount Jiuhua one of the Four Sacred Mountains of Chinese Buddhism.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Later Silla fell apart in the late 9th century, giving way to the tumultuous Later Three Kingdoms period (892–935), and Balhae was destroyed by the Khitans in 926. Goryeo unified the Later Three Kingdoms and received the last crown prince and much of the ruling class of Balhae, thus bringing about a unification of the two successor nations of Goguryeo.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Goryeo was founded in 918 and replaced Silla as the ruling dynasty of Korea. Goryeo's land was at first what is now South Korea and about 1/3 of North Korea, but later on managed to recover most of the Korean peninsula. Momentarily, Goryeo advanced to parts of Jiandao while conquering the Jurchens, but returned the territories due to the harsh climate and difficulties in defending them. The name \"Goryeo\" (高麗) is a short form of \"Goguryeo\" (高句麗) and was first used during the time of King Jangsu. Goryeo regarded itself as the successor of Goguryeo, hence its name and efforts to recover the former territories of Goguryeo. Wang Geon, the founder of Goryeo, was of Goguryeo descent and traced his ancestry to a noble Goguryeo clan. He made Kaesong, his hometown, the capital.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "During this period, laws were codified and a civil service system was introduced. Buddhism flourished and spread throughout the peninsula. The development of celadon industries flourished in the 12th and 13th centuries. The publication of the Tripitaka Koreana onto more than 80,000 wooden blocks and the invention of the world's first metal movable type in the 13th century attest to Goryeo's cultural achievements.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Goryeo had to defend frequently against attacks by nomadic empires, especially the Khitans and the Mongols. Goryeo had a hostile relationship with the Khitans, because the Khitan Empire had destroyed Balhae, also a successor state of Goguryeo. In 993, the Khitans, who had established the Liao dynasty in 907, invaded Goryeo, demanding that it make amity with them. Goryeo sent the diplomat Seo Hui to negotiate, who successfully persuaded the Khitans to let Goryeo expand to the banks of the Amnok (Yalu) River, citing that in the past the land belonged to Goguryeo, the predecessor of Goryeo. During the Goryeo–Khitan War, the Khitan Empire invaded Korea twice more in 1009 and 1018, but was defeated.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "After defeating the Khitan Empire, which was the most powerful empire of its time, Goryeo experienced a golden age that lasted a century, during which the Tripitaka Koreana was completed, and there were great developments in printing and publishing, promoting learning and dispersing knowledge on philosophy, literature, religion, and science; by 1100, there were 12 universities that produced famous scholars and scientists.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Goryeo was invaded by the Mongols in seven major campaigns from the 1230s until the 1270s, but was never conquered. Exhausted after decades of fighting, Goryeo sent its crown prince to the Yuan capital to swear allegiance to the Mongols; Kublai Khan accepted, and married one of his daughters to the Korean crown prince, and the dynastic line of Goryeo continued to survive under the overlordship of the Mongol Yuan dynasty as a semi-autonomous vassal state and compulsory ally. The two nations became intertwined for 80 years as all subsequent Korean kings married Mongol princesses, and the last empress of the Yuan dynasty was a Korean princess.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In the 1350s, King Gongmin was free at last to reform the Goryeo government when the Yuan dynasty began to crumble. Gongmin had various problems that needed to be dealt with, which included the removal of pro-Mongol aristocrats and military officials, the question of land holding, and quelling the growing animosity between the Buddhists and Confucian scholars. During this tumultuous period, Goryeo momentarily conquered Liaoyang in 1356, repulsed two large invasions by the Red Turbans in 1359 and 1360, and defeated the final attempt by the Yuan to dominate Goryeo when General Choe Yeong defeated a Mongol tumen in 1364. During the 1380s, Goryeo turned its attention to the Wokou threat and used naval artillery created by Choe Museon to annihilate hundreds of pirate ships.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In 1392, the general Yi Seong-gye overthrew the Goryeo dynasty after he staged a coup and defeated General Choe Yeong. Yi Seong-gye named his new dynasty Joseon and moved the capital from Kaesong to Hanseong (formerly Hanyang; modern-day Seoul) and built the Gyeongbokgung palace. In 1394, he adopted Confucianism as the country's official ideology, resulting in much loss of power and wealth by the Buddhists. The prevailing philosophy of the Joseon dynasty was Neo-Confucianism, which was epitomised by the seonbi class, scholars who passed up positions of wealth and power to lead lives of study and integrity.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Joseon was a nominal tributary state of China but exercised full sovereignty, and maintained the highest position among China's tributary states, which also included countries such as the Ryukyu Kingdom, Vietnam, Burma, Brunei, Laos, Thailand, and the Philippines, among others. In addition, Joseon received tribute from Jurchens and Japanese until the 17th century, and had a small enclave in the Ryukyu Kingdom that engaged in trade with Siam and Java.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "During the 15th and 16th centuries, Joseon enjoyed many benevolent rulers who promoted education and science. Most notable among them was Sejong the Great (r. 1418–50), who personally created and promulgated Hangul, the Korean alphabet. This golden age saw great cultural and scientific advancements, including in printing, meteorological observation, astronomy, calendar science, ceramics, military technology, geography, cartography, medicine, and agricultural technology, some of which were unrivaled elsewhere. Joseon implemented a class system that consisted of yangban the noble class, jungin the middle class, yangin the common class, and cheonin the lowest class, which included occupations such as butchers, tanners, shamans, entertainers, and nobi, the equivalent of slaves, bondservants, or serfs.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In 1592 and again in 1597, the Japanese invaded Korea; the Korean military at the time was unprepared and untrained, due to two centuries of peace on the Korean Peninsula. Toyotomi Hideyoshi intended to conquer China and India through the Korean Peninsula, but was defeated by strong resistance from the Righteous Army, the naval superiority of Admiral Yi Sun-sin and his turtle ships, and assistance from Wanli Emperor of Ming China. However, Joseon experienced great destruction, including a tremendous loss of cultural sites such as temples and palaces to Japanese pillaging, and the Japanese brought back to Japan an estimated 100,000–200,000 noses cut from Korean victims. Less than 30 years after the Japanese invasions, the Manchus took advantage of Joseon's war-weakened state and invaded in 1627 and 1637, and then went on to conquer the destabilised Ming dynasty.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "After normalising relations with the new Qing dynasty, Joseon experienced a nearly 200-year period of peace. Kings Yeongjo and Jeongjo led a new renaissance of the Joseon dynasty during the 18th century.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In the 19th century, the royal in-law families gained control of the government, leading to mass corruption and weakening of the state, with severe poverty and peasant rebellions spreading throughout the country. Furthermore, the Joseon government adopted a strict isolationist policy, earning the nickname \"the hermit kingdom\", but ultimately failed to protect itself against imperialism and was forced to open its borders, beginning an era leading into Japanese imperial rule.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Beginning in 1871, Japan began to exert more influence in Korea, forcing it out of China's traditional sphere of influence. As a result of the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), the Qing dynasty had to give up such a position according to Article 1 of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which was concluded between China and Japan in 1895. That same year, Empress Myeongseong of Korea was assassinated by Japanese agents.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In 1897, the Joseon dynasty proclaimed the Korean Empire (1897–1910). King Gojong became emperor. During this brief period, Korea had some success in modernising the military, economy, real property laws, education system, and various industries. Russia, Japan, France, and the United States all invested in the country and sought to influence it politically.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The Russians were pushed out of the fight for Korea following the conclusion of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). Korea became a protectorate of Japan shortly afterwards. In Manchuria on 26 October 1909, An Jung-geun assassinated the former Resident-General of Korea, Itō Hirobumi, for his role in trying to force Korea into occupation.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In 1910, an already militarily occupied Korea was a forced party to the Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty. The treaty was signed by Lee Wan-Yong, who was given the General Power of Attorney by the Emperor. However, the Emperor is said to have not actually ratified the treaty according to Yi Tae-jin. There is a long dispute whether this treaty was legal or illegal due to its signing under duress, threat of force and bribes.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Korean resistance to the brutal Japanese occupation was manifested in the nonviolent March 1st Movement of 1919, during which 7,000 demonstrators were killed by Japanese police and military. The Korean liberation movement also spread to neighbouring Manchuria and Siberia.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Over five million Koreans were conscripted for labour beginning in 1939, and tens of thousands of men were forced into Japan's military. Nearly 400,000 Korean labourers died. Approximately 200,000 girls and women, mostly from China and Korea, were forced into sexual slavery for the Japanese military. In 1993, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono acknowledged the terrible injustices faced by these euphemistically named \"comfort women\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "During the Japanese annexation, the Korean language was suppressed in an effort to eradicate Korean national identity. Koreans were forced to take Japanese surnames, known as Sōshi-kaimei. Traditional Korean culture suffered heavy losses, as numerous Korean cultural artefacts were destroyed or taken to Japan. To this day, valuable Korean artefacts can often be found in Japanese museums or among private collections. One investigation by the South Korean government identified 75,311 cultural assets that were taken from Korea, 34,369 in Japan and 17,803 in the United States. However, experts estimate that over 100,000 artefacts actually remain in Japan. Japanese officials considered returning Korean cultural properties, but to date this has not occurred. Korea and Japan still dispute the ownership of the Dokdo islets, located east of the Korean Peninsula.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "There was significant emigration to the overseas territories of the Empire of Japan during the Japanese occupation period, including Korea. By the end of World War II, there were over 850,000 Japanese settlers in Korea. After World War II, most of these overseas Japanese repatriated to Japan. Migrants who remained squatted in informal settlements.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "In 1945, with the surrender of Japan, the United Nations developed plans for a trusteeship administration, the Soviet Union administering the peninsula north of the 38th parallel and the United States administering the south. The politics of the Cold War resulted in the 1948 establishment of two separate governments, North Korea and South Korea.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The aftermath of World War II left Korea partitioned along the 38th parallel on 2 September 1945, with the north under Soviet occupation and the south under US occupation supported by other allied states. Consequently, North Korea, a Soviet-style socialist republic was established in the north, and South Korea, a Western-style regime, was established in the south.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "North Korea is a one-party state, now centred on Kim Il Sung's Juche ideology, with a centrally planned industrial economy. South Korea is a multi-party state with a capitalist market economy, alongside membership in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the Group of Twenty. The two states have greatly diverged both culturally and economically since their partition, though they still share a common traditional culture and pre-Cold War history.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Since the 1960s, the South Korean economy has grown enormously and the economic structure was radically transformed. In 1957, South Korea had a lower per capita GDP than Ghana, and by 2008 it was 17 times as high as Ghana's.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "According to R. J. Rummel, forced labour, executions, and concentration camps were responsible for over one million deaths in North Korea from 1948 to 1987; others have estimated 400,000 deaths in concentration camps alone. Estimates based on the most recent North Korean census suggest that 240,000 to 420,000 people died as a result of the 1990s famine and that there were 600,000 to 850,000 unnatural deaths in North Korea from 1993 to 2008. In South Korea, as guerrilla activities expanded, the South Korean government used strong measures against peasants, such as forcefully moving their families from guerrilla areas. According to one estimate, these measures resulted in 36,000 people killed, 11,000 people wounded, and 432,000 people displaced.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The Korean War broke out when Soviet-backed North Korea invaded South Korea, though neither side gained much territory as a result. The Korean Peninsula remained divided, the Korean Demilitarized Zone being the de facto border between the two states.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "In June 1950 North Korea invaded the South, using Soviet tanks and weaponry. During the Korean War (1950–53) more than 1.2 million people died and the three years of fighting throughout the nation effectively destroyed most cities. The war ended with an armistice agreement at approximately the Military Demarcation Line, but the two governments are officially still at war.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "In 2018, the leaders of North Korea and South Korea officially signed the Panmunjom Declaration, announcing that they will work to end the conflict.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "In November 2020, South Korea and China agreed to work together to mend South Korea's relationship with North Korea. During a meeting between President Moon and China's foreign minister, Wang Yi, Moon expressed his gratitude to China for its role in helping to foster peace in the Korean Peninsula. Moon was quoted telling Wang during their meeting that \"[the South Korean] government will not stop efforts to put an end (formally) to war on the Korean Peninsula and achieve complete denuclearization and permanent peace together with the international community, including China.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Korea consists of a peninsula and nearby islands located in East Asia. The peninsula extends southwards for about 1,100 km (680 mi) from continental Asia into the Pacific Ocean and is surrounded by the Sea of Japan to the east and the Yellow Sea (West Sea) to the west, the Korea Strait connecting the two bodies of water. To the northwest, the Amnok River separates Korea from China and to the northeast, the Duman River separates it from China and Russia. Notable islands include Jeju Island, Ulleung Island, Dokdo.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The southern and western parts of the peninsula have well-developed plains, while the eastern and northern parts are mountainous. The highest mountain in Korea is Mount Paektu (2,744 m), through which runs the border with China. The southern extension of Mount Paektu is a highland called Gaema Heights. This highland was mainly raised during the Cenozoic orogeny and partly covered by volcanic matter. To the south of Gaema Gowon, successive high mountains are located along the eastern coast of the peninsula. This mountain range is named Baekdu-daegan. Some significant mountains include Mount Sobaek or Sobaeksan (1,439 m), Mount Kumgang (1,638 m), Mount Seorak (1,708 m), Mount Taebaek (1,567 m), and Mount Jiri (1,915 m). There are several lower, secondary mountain series whose direction is almost perpendicular to that of Baekdu-daegan. They are developed along the tectonic line of Mesozoic orogeny and their directions are basically northwest.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Unlike most ancient mountains on the mainland, many important islands in Korea were formed by volcanic activity in the Cenozoic orogeny. Jeju Island, situated off the southern coast, is a large volcanic island whose main mountain, Mount Halla or Hallasan (1,950 m), is the highest in South Korea. Ulleung Island is a volcanic island in the Sea of Japan, the composition of which is more felsic than Jeju. The volcanic islands tend to be younger, the more westward.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Because the mountainous region is mostly on the eastern part of the peninsula, the main rivers tend to flow westwards. Two exceptions are the southward-flowing Nakdong River and Seomjin River. Important rivers running westward include the Amnok River, the Chongchon River, the Taedong River, the Han River, the Geum River, and the Yeongsan River. These rivers have vast flood plains and provide an ideal environment for wet-rice cultivation.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "The southern and southwestern coastlines of the peninsula form a well-developed ria coastline, known as Dadohae-jin in Korean. This convoluted coastline provides mild seas, and the resulting calm environment allows for safe navigation, fishing, and seaweed farming. In addition to the complex coastline, the western coast of the Korean Peninsula has an extremely high tidal amplitude (at Incheon, around the middle of the western coast, the tide can get as high as 9 m). Vast tidal flats have been developing on the south and west coastlines.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Korea has a temperate climate with comparatively fewer typhoons than other countries in East Asia. Due to the peninsula's position, it has a unique climate influenced by Siberia in the north, the Pacific Ocean in the east and the rest of Eurasia in the west. The peninsula has four distinct seasons: spring, summer, autumn and winter.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "As influence from Siberia weakens, temperatures begin to increase while the high pressure begins to move away. If the weather is abnormally dry, Siberia will have more influence on the peninsula leading to wintry weather such as snow.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "During June at the start of the summer, there tends to be a lot of rain due to the cold and wet air from the Sea of Okhotsk and the hot and humid air from the Pacific Ocean combining. When these fronts combine, it leads to a so-called rainy season with often cloudy days with rain, which is sometimes very heavy. The hot and humid winds from the south west blow causing an increasing amount of humidity and this leads to the fronts moving towards Manchuria in China and thus there is less rain and this is known as midsummer; temperatures can exceed 30 °C (86 °F) daily at this time of year.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Usually, high pressure is heavily dominant during autumn leading to clear conditions. Furthermore, temperatures remain high but the humidity becomes relatively low.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "The weather becomes increasingly dominated by Siberia during winter and the jet stream moves further south causing a drop in temperature. This season is relatively dry with some snow falling at times.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Animal life of the Korean Peninsula includes a considerable number of bird species and native freshwater fish. Native or endemic species of the Korean Peninsula include Korean hare, Korean water deer, Korean field mouse, Korean brown frog, Korean pine and Korean spruce. The Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) with its forest and natural wetlands is a unique biodiversity spot, which harbours eighty-two endangered species. Korea once hosted many Siberian tigers, but as the number of people affected by the tigers increased, the tigers were killed in the Joseon Dynasty and the Siberian tigers in the South Korea became extinct during the Japanese colonial era period. It has been confirmed that Siberian tigers are only on the side of North Korea now.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "There are also approximately 3,034 species of vascular plants throughout the peninsula.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "As of 2023, the combined population of the Koreas is about 77.9 million (North Korea: 26.1 million, South Korea: 51.7 million). Korea is chiefly populated by a highly homogeneous ethnic group, the Koreans, who speak the Korean language. The number of foreigners living in Korea has also steadily increased since the late 20th century, particularly in South Korea, where more than 1 million foreigners reside. It was estimated in 2006 that only 26,700 of the old Chinese community now remain in South Korea. However, in recent years, immigration from mainland China has increased; 624,994 persons of Chinese nationality have immigrated to South Korea, including 443,566 of ethnic Korean descent. Small communities of ethnic Chinese and Japanese are also found in North Korea.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Korean is the official language of both North and South Korea, and (along with Mandarin) of Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in Jilin Province, China. Worldwide, there are up to 80 million speakers of the Korean language. South Korea has around 50 million speakers while North Korea around 25 million. Other large groups of Korean speakers through Korean diaspora are found in China, the United States, Japan, former Soviet Union and elsewhere.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Modern Korean is written almost exclusively in the script of the Korean alphabet (known as Hangul in South Korea and Chosungul in China and North Korea), which was invented in the 15th century. Korean is sometimes written with the addition of some Chinese characters called Hanja; however, this is only occasionally seen nowadays.",
"title": "Demographics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "The modern South Korean school system consists of six years in elementary school, three years in middle school, and three years in high school. Students are required to go to elementary and middle school, and do not have to pay for their education, except for a small fee called a \"School Operation Support Fee\" that differs from school to school. The Programme for International Student Assessment, coordinated by the OECD, ranks South Korea's science education as the third best in the world and being significantly higher than the OECD average.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Although South Korean students often rank high on international comparative assessments, the education system is criticised for emphasising too much upon passive learning and memorisation. The South Korean education system is rather notably strict and structured as compared to its counterparts in most Western societies.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "The North Korean education system consists primarily of universal and state funded schooling by the government. The national literacy rate for citizens 15 years of age and above is over 99 per cent. Children go through one year of kindergarten, four years of primary education, six years of secondary education, and then on to universities. The most prestigious university in the DPRK is Kim Il Sung University. Other notable universities include Kim Chaek University of Technology, which focuses on computer science, Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies, which trains working level diplomats and trade officials, and Kim Hyong Jik University of Education, which trains teachers.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "One of the best known artefacts of Korea's history of science and technology is the Cheomseongdae (첨성대, 瞻星臺), a 9.4-meter high astronomical observatory built in 634.",
"title": "Science and technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "The earliest known surviving Korean example of woodblock printing is The Great Dharani Sutra. It is believed to have been printed in Korea in 750–51, which if correct, would make it older than the Diamond Sutra.",
"title": "Science and technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "During the Goryeo Dynasty, metal movable type printing was invented by Choe Yun-ui in 1234. This invention made printing easier, more efficient and also increased literacy, which observed by Chinese visitors was seen to be so important where it was considered to be shameful to not be able to read. The Mongol Empire later adopted Korea's movable type printing and spread as far as Central Asia. There is conjecture as to whether or not Choe's invention had any influence on later printing inventions such as Gutenberg's Printing press. When the Mongols invaded Europe they inadvertently introduced different kinds of Asian technology.",
"title": "Science and technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "During the Joseon period, the Turtle Ship was invented, which were covered by a wooden deck and iron with thorns, as well as other weapons such as the bigyeokjincheolloe cannon (비격진천뢰, 飛擊震天雷) and the hwacha.",
"title": "Science and technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "The Korean alphabet hangul was also invented during this time by King Sejong the Great.",
"title": "Science and technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "In ancient Chinese texts, Korea is referred to as \"Rivers and Mountains Embroidered on Silk\" (금수강산, 錦繡江山) and \"Eastern Nation of Decorum\" (동방예의지국, 東方禮儀之國). Individuals are regarded as one year old when they are born, as Koreans reckon the pregnancy period as one year of life for infants, and age increments increase on New Year's Day rather than on the anniversary of birthdays. Thus, one born immediately before New Year's Day may only be a few days old in western reckoning, but two years old in Korea. Accordingly, a Korean person's stated age (at least among fellow Koreans) will be one or two years more than their age according to western reckoning. However, western reckoning is sometimes applied with regard to the concept of legal age; for example, the legal age for purchasing alcohol or cigarettes in the Republic of Korea is 19, which is measured according to western reckoning.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Korean literature written before the end of the Joseon Dynasty is called \"Classical\" or \"Traditional.\" Literature, written in Chinese characters (hanja), was established at the same time as the Chinese script arrived on the peninsula. Korean scholars were writing poetry in the classical Korean style as early as the 2nd century BCE, reflecting Korean thoughts and experiences of that time. Classical Korean literature has its roots in traditional folk beliefs and folk tales of the peninsula, strongly influenced by Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Modern literature is often linked with the development of hangul, which helped spread literacy from the aristocracy to the common people. Hangul, however, only reached a dominant position in Korean literature in the second half of the 19th century, resulting in a major growth in Korean literature. Sinsoseol, for instance, are novels written in hangul.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "The Korean War led to the development of literature centered on the wounds and chaos of war. Much of the post-war literature in South Korea deals with the daily lives of ordinary people, and their struggles with national pain. The collapse of the traditional Korean value system is another common theme of the time.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Traditional Korean music includes combinations of the folk, vocal, religious and ritual music styles of the Korean people. Korean music has been practised since prehistoric times. Korean music falls into two broad categories. The first, Hyangak, literally means The local music or Music native to Korea, a famous example of which is Sujechon, a piece of instrumental music often claimed to be at least 1,300 years old. The second, yangak, represents a more Western style.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Confucian tradition has dominated Korean thought, along with contributions by Buddhism, Taoism, and Korean Shamanism. Since the middle of the 20th century, however, Christianity has competed with Buddhism in South Korea, while religious practice has been suppressed in North Korea. Throughout Korean history and culture, regardless of separation; the influence of traditional beliefs of Korean Shamanism, Mahayana Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism have remained an underlying religion of the Korean people as well as a vital aspect of their culture; all these traditions have coexisted peacefully for hundreds of years up to today despite strong Westernisation from Christian missionary conversions in the South or the pressure from the Juche government in the North.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "According to 2005 statistics compiled by the South Korean government, about 46% of citizens profess to follow no particular religion. Christians account for 29.2% of the population (of which are Protestants 18.3% and Catholics 10.9%) and Buddhists 22.8%. In North Korea, around 71.3% claim to be non-religious or atheists, 12.9% follow Cheondoism and 12.3% Korean Folk Religion, while Christians count for 2% of the population, and Buddhists as 1.5%.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Islam in South Korea is practised by about 45,000 natives (about 0.09% of the population) in addition to some 100,000 foreign workers from Muslim countries. While in North Korea it's estimated to be around 3000 Muslims, which is around 0.01% of the popultation. The Ar-Rahman Mosque is the only mosque in DPRK, and it is located at the Iranian Embassy grounds in Pyongyyang.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "In 1993, the Korean Overseas Culture and Information Service estimated that around 1,600,000 people practice Korean new religions in both Korean countries.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Koreans traditionally believe that the taste and quality of food depend on its spices and sauces, the essential ingredients to making a delicious meal. Therefore, soybean paste, soy sauce, gochujang or red pepper paste and kimchi are some of the most important staples in a Korean household.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Korean cuisine was greatly influenced by the geography and climate of the Korean Peninsula, which is known for its cold autumns and winters, therefore there are many fermented dishes and hot soups and stews.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Korean cuisine is probably best known for kimchi, a side dish which uses a distinctive fermentation process of preserving vegetables, most commonly cabbage. Kimchi is said to relieve the pores on the skin, thereby reducing wrinkles and providing nutrients to the skin naturally. It is also healthy, as it provides necessary vitamins and nutrients. Gochujang, a traditional Korean sauce made of red pepper is also commonly used, often as pepper (chilli) paste, earning the cuisine a reputation for spiciness.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Bulgogi (roasted marinated meat, usually beef), galbi (marinated grilled short ribs), and samgyeopsal (pork belly) are popular main courses. Fish is also a popular commodity, as it is the traditional meat that Koreans eat. Meals are usually accompanied by a soup or stew, such as galbitang (stewed ribs) or doenjang jjigae (fermented bean paste soup). The center of the table is filled with a shared collection of sidedishes called banchan.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Other popular dishes include bibimbap, which literally means \"mixed rice\" (rice mixed with meat, vegetables, and red pepper paste), and naengmyeon (cold noodles).",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Instant noodles, or ramyeon, is a popular snack food. Koreans also enjoy food from pojangmachas (street vendors), which serve tteokbokki, rice cake and fish cake with a spicy gochujang sauce; gimbap, made of steamed white rice wrapped in dried green laver seaweed; fried squid; and glazed sweet potato. Soondae, a sausage made of cellophane noodles and pork blood, is widely eaten.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Additionally, some other common snacks include \"Choco Pie\", shrimp crackers, \"bbeongtwigi\" (puffed rice grains), and \"nurungji\" (slightly burnt rice). Nurungji can be eaten as it is or boiled with water to make a soup. Nurungji can also be eaten as a snack or a dessert.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "Korea is unique among Asian countries in its use of metal chopsticks. Metal chopsticks have been discovered in archaeological sites belonging to the ancient Korean kingdoms of Goguryeo, Baekje and Silla.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "North Korea and South Korea usually compete as two separate nations in international events. There are, however, a few examples of them having competed as one entity, under the name Korea.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "While association football remains one of the most popular sports in South Korea, the martial art of taekwondo is considered to be the national sport. Baseball and golf are also popular. The board game Go, known in Korea as baduk, has also been popular for over a millennium, first arriving from China in the 5th century CE; baduk is played both casually and competitively.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Taekwon-Do is Korea's most famous martial art and sport. It combines combat techniques, self-defence, sport and exercise. Taekwon-Do has become an official Olympic sport, starting as a demonstration event in 1988 (when South Korea hosted the Games in Seoul) and becoming an official medal event in 2000. The two major Taekwon-Do federations were founded in Korea. The two are the International Taekwon-Do Federation and the World Taekwondo Federation.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Hapkido is a modern Korean martial art with a grappling focus that employs joint locks, throws, kicks, punches and other striking attacks like attacks against pressure points. Hapkido emphasises circular motion, non-resisting movements and control of the opponent. Practitioners seek to gain advantage through footwork and body positioning to employ leverage, avoiding the pure use of strength against strength.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "Ssireum is a traditional form of wrestling that has been practised in Korea for thousands of years, with evidence discovered from Goguryeo of Korea's Three Kingdoms Period (57 BCE to 688). Ssireum is the traditional national sport of Korea. During a match, opponents grip each other by sash belts wrapped around the waist and the thigh, attempting to throw their competitor to the sandy ground of the ring. The first opponent to touch the ground with any body part above the knee or to lose hold of their opponent loses the round.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "Ssireum competitions are traditionally held twice a year, during the Dano Festival (the 5th day of the fifth lunar month) and Chuseok (the 15th day of the 8th lunar month). Competitions are also held throughout the year as a part of festivals and other events.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "Taekkyon is a traditional martial art, considered the oldest form of fighting technique of Korea. Practiced for centuries and especially popular during the Joseon dynasty, two forms co-existed: one for practical use, the other for sport. This form was usually practised alongside Ssireum during festivals and competitions between villages. Nonetheless, Taekkyon almost disappeared during the Japanese Occupation and the Korean War.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "Though lost in North Korea, Taekkyon has enjoyed a spectacular revival from the 1980s in South Korea. It is the only martial art in the world (with Ssireum) recognised as a National Treasure of South Korea and a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "38°19′N 127°14′E / 38.317°N 127.233°E / 38.317; 127.233",
"title": "External links"
}
] |
Korea is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, now known as the Korean Demilitarized Zone. In 1948, two states declared independence, both claiming sovereignty over all of Korea: South Korea comprising its southern half and North Korea comprising its northern half. The region consists of the Korean Peninsula, Jeju Island, and a number of minor islands near the peninsula. The peninsula is bordered by China (Manchuria) to the north and Russia to the northeast, across the Amnok and Duman rivers. It is separated from Japan to the southeast by the Korea Strait. The earliest radiocarbon dates for the Paleolithic sites found in Korea indicate human presence goes back to 40,000 and 30,000 BC. The first state to emerge was Gojoseon, which fell to the Han Dynasty in 108 BC. During the first half of the 1st millennium, Korea was divided between three states, Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla, together known as the Three Kingdoms of Korea. In the late 7th century, Silla conquered Baekje and Goguryeo with the aid of the Tang Dynasty, and drove the Tang out of Korea during the Silla-Tang War. Meanwhile, Balhae, formed by Goguryeo remnants and Mohe people, succeeded Goguryeo in the north. Unified Silla eventually collapsed into three separate states due to civil war, known as the Later Three Kingdoms. Toward the end of the Later Three Kingdoms, Goguryeo was resurrected as Goryeo, which defeated the two other states and unified Korea as a single sovereign state. Around this time, Balhae collapsed and its last crown prince and much of its ruling class fled to Goryeo, unifying the two successor states of Goguryeo. Goryeo, whose name developed into the modern exonym "Korea", was a highly cultured state that created the world's first metal movable type in 1234. During the 13th century, the Mongol Empire made Goryeo its vassal state after decades of war. Although Goryeo overthrew Mongol rule, it fell to a coup led by General Yi Seong-gye, who established Joseon on 17 July 1392. The first 200 years of Joseon were marked by relative peace, and during this time the Korean alphabet was created by Sejong the Great and Confucianism became increasingly influential in the kingdom. However, this ended with the Japanese invasions of Korea and the 1636, which brought great devastation to Joseon and lead to Korean isolationism. After the end of these invasions, Joseon experienced a nearly 200-year period of peace and prosperity, along with cultural and technological development. In Joseon's final years, it experienced turmoil such as the Gapsin Coup, Donghak Peasant Revolution, and the assassination of Empress Myeongseong. In 1897, the Korean Empire was established to protect Korean independence. However, following Japan's victories in the First Sino-Japanese War and Russo-Japanese War, Japan annexed it altogether in 1910. In 1945, Japan relinquished control over Korea after formally surrendering to the Allies, in the aftermath of World War II. The Soviet Union and the United States had agreed to partition Korea along the 38th parallel. These circumstances became the basis for the division of Korea. Tensions between the two Koreas resulted in North Korea invading South Korea and the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. With involvement by foreign troops, the war ended in a stalemate in 1953, but without a formalised peace treaty. A demilitarized zone was created between the two countries approximating the original partition. This status contributes to the high tensions that continue to divide the peninsula, and both states continue to claim to be the sole legitimate government of Korea. South Korea is a regional power and a developed country, with its economy being ranked as the world's thirteenth-largest by nominal GDP and the fourteenth-largest by GDP (PPP). Its armed forces are ranked as one of the world's strongest militaries, with the world's second-largest standing army by military and paramilitary personnel. In the 21st century, South Korea has been renowned for its globally influential pop culture, particularly in music (K-pop), TV dramas (K-dramas) and cinema, a phenomenon referred to as the Korean Wave. North Korea follows Songun, a "military first" policy which prioritizes the Korean People's Army in state affairs and the allocation of resources. It possesses nuclear weapons, and is the country with the highest number of military and paramilitary personnel, with a total of 7.77 million active, reserve, and paramilitary personnel, or approximately 30% of its population. Its active duty army of 1.28 million soldiers is the fourth-largest in the world, consisting of 4.9% of its population. North Korea is widely considered to have the worst human rights record in the world.
|
2001-07-20T14:53:28Z
|
2023-12-30T03:19:09Z
|
[
"Template:Refn",
"Template:For timeline",
"Template:Unreferenced section",
"Template:Linktext",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Refend",
"Template:Wikivoyage",
"Template:Pp-move",
"Template:Self-published",
"Template:Self-published inline",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Self-published source",
"Template:Dead link",
"Template:Korean",
"Template:Citation",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Largest cities",
"Template:Cbignore",
"Template:Cite magazine",
"Template:EngvarB",
"Template:Transliteration",
"Template:IPA-ko",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Official website",
"Template:Lead too long",
"Template:Percentage",
"Template:Nbsp",
"Template:Wiktionary",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:See also",
"Template:Location map ",
"Template:Curlie",
"Template:Lang-ko",
"Template:Lang",
"Template:Infobox Chinese",
"Template:Flagicon",
"Template:East Asian topics",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:C.",
"Template:Refbegin",
"Template:Korea topics",
"Template:History of Korea",
"Template:Cite encyclopedia",
"Template:Pp-semi-indef",
"Template:UN Population",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Coord",
"Template:Infobox country",
"Template:Excessive citations inline",
"Template:Convert",
"Template:As of",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Redirect",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Literally",
"Template:Portal",
"Template:Wikisource-inline"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea
|
16,750 |
Kleene star
|
In mathematical logic and computer science, the Kleene star (or Kleene operator or Kleene closure) is a unary operation, either on sets of strings or on sets of symbols or characters. In mathematics, it is more commonly known as the free monoid construction. The application of the Kleene star to a set V {\displaystyle V} is written as V ∗ {\displaystyle V^{*}} . It is widely used for regular expressions, which is the context in which it was introduced by Stephen Kleene to characterize certain automata, where it means "zero or more repetitions".
The set V ∗ {\displaystyle V^{*}} can also be described as the set containing the empty string and all finite-length strings that can be generated by concatenating arbitrary elements of V {\displaystyle V} , allowing the use of the same element multiple times. If V {\displaystyle V} is either the empty set ∅ or the singleton set { ε } {\displaystyle \{\varepsilon \}} , then V ∗ = { ε } {\displaystyle V^{*}=\{\varepsilon \}} ; if V {\displaystyle V} is any other finite set or countably infinite set, then V ∗ {\displaystyle V^{*}} is a countably infinite set. As a consequence, each formal language over a finite or countably infinite alphabet Σ {\displaystyle \Sigma } is countable, since it is a subset of the countably infinite set Σ ∗ {\displaystyle \Sigma ^{*}} .
The operators are used in rewrite rules for generative grammars.
Given a set V {\displaystyle V} , define
and define recursively the set
If V {\displaystyle V} is a formal language, then V i {\displaystyle V^{i}} , the i {\displaystyle i} -th power of the set V {\displaystyle V} , is a shorthand for the concatenation of set V {\displaystyle V} with itself i {\displaystyle i} times. That is, V i {\displaystyle V^{i}} can be understood to be the set of all strings that can be represented as the concatenation of i {\displaystyle i} strings in V {\displaystyle V} .
The definition of Kleene star on V {\displaystyle V} is
This means that the Kleene star operator is an idempotent unary operator: ( V ∗ ) ∗ = V ∗ {\displaystyle (V^{*})^{*}=V^{*}} for any set V {\displaystyle V} of strings or characters, as ( V ∗ ) i = V ∗ {\displaystyle (V^{*})^{i}=V^{*}} for every i ≥ 1 {\displaystyle i\geq 1} .
In some formal language studies, (e.g. AFL theory) a variation on the Kleene star operation called the Kleene plus is used. The Kleene plus omits the V 0 {\displaystyle V^{0}} term in the above union. In other words, the Kleene plus on V {\displaystyle V} is
or
Example of Kleene star applied to set of strings:
Example of Kleene plus applied to set of characters:
Kleene star applied to the same character set:
Example of Kleene star applied to the empty set:
Example of Kleene plus applied to the empty set:
where concatenation is an associative and noncommutative product.
Example of Kleene plus and Kleene star applied to the singleton set containing the empty string:
Strings form a monoid with concatenation as the binary operation and ε the identity element. The Kleene star is defined for any monoid, not just strings. More precisely, let (M, ⋅) be a monoid, and S ⊆ M. Then S is the smallest submonoid of M containing S; that is, S contains the neutral element of M, the set S, and is such that if x,y ∈ S, then x⋅y ∈ S.
Furthermore, the Kleene star is generalized by including the *-operation (and the union) in the algebraic structure itself by the notion of complete star semiring.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "In mathematical logic and computer science, the Kleene star (or Kleene operator or Kleene closure) is a unary operation, either on sets of strings or on sets of symbols or characters. In mathematics, it is more commonly known as the free monoid construction. The application of the Kleene star to a set V {\\displaystyle V} is written as V ∗ {\\displaystyle V^{*}} . It is widely used for regular expressions, which is the context in which it was introduced by Stephen Kleene to characterize certain automata, where it means \"zero or more repetitions\".",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The set V ∗ {\\displaystyle V^{*}} can also be described as the set containing the empty string and all finite-length strings that can be generated by concatenating arbitrary elements of V {\\displaystyle V} , allowing the use of the same element multiple times. If V {\\displaystyle V} is either the empty set ∅ or the singleton set { ε } {\\displaystyle \\{\\varepsilon \\}} , then V ∗ = { ε } {\\displaystyle V^{*}=\\{\\varepsilon \\}} ; if V {\\displaystyle V} is any other finite set or countably infinite set, then V ∗ {\\displaystyle V^{*}} is a countably infinite set. As a consequence, each formal language over a finite or countably infinite alphabet Σ {\\displaystyle \\Sigma } is countable, since it is a subset of the countably infinite set Σ ∗ {\\displaystyle \\Sigma ^{*}} .",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The operators are used in rewrite rules for generative grammars.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Given a set V {\\displaystyle V} , define",
"title": "Definition and notation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "and define recursively the set",
"title": "Definition and notation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "If V {\\displaystyle V} is a formal language, then V i {\\displaystyle V^{i}} , the i {\\displaystyle i} -th power of the set V {\\displaystyle V} , is a shorthand for the concatenation of set V {\\displaystyle V} with itself i {\\displaystyle i} times. That is, V i {\\displaystyle V^{i}} can be understood to be the set of all strings that can be represented as the concatenation of i {\\displaystyle i} strings in V {\\displaystyle V} .",
"title": "Definition and notation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The definition of Kleene star on V {\\displaystyle V} is",
"title": "Definition and notation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "This means that the Kleene star operator is an idempotent unary operator: ( V ∗ ) ∗ = V ∗ {\\displaystyle (V^{*})^{*}=V^{*}} for any set V {\\displaystyle V} of strings or characters, as ( V ∗ ) i = V ∗ {\\displaystyle (V^{*})^{i}=V^{*}} for every i ≥ 1 {\\displaystyle i\\geq 1} .",
"title": "Definition and notation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In some formal language studies, (e.g. AFL theory) a variation on the Kleene star operation called the Kleene plus is used. The Kleene plus omits the V 0 {\\displaystyle V^{0}} term in the above union. In other words, the Kleene plus on V {\\displaystyle V} is",
"title": "Kleene plus"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "or",
"title": "Kleene plus"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Example of Kleene star applied to set of strings:",
"title": "Examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Example of Kleene plus applied to set of characters:",
"title": "Examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Kleene star applied to the same character set:",
"title": "Examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Example of Kleene star applied to the empty set:",
"title": "Examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Example of Kleene plus applied to the empty set:",
"title": "Examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "where concatenation is an associative and noncommutative product.",
"title": "Examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Example of Kleene plus and Kleene star applied to the singleton set containing the empty string:",
"title": "Examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Strings form a monoid with concatenation as the binary operation and ε the identity element. The Kleene star is defined for any monoid, not just strings. More precisely, let (M, ⋅) be a monoid, and S ⊆ M. Then S is the smallest submonoid of M containing S; that is, S contains the neutral element of M, the set S, and is such that if x,y ∈ S, then x⋅y ∈ S.",
"title": "Generalization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Furthermore, the Kleene star is generalized by including the *-operation (and the union) in the algebraic structure itself by the notion of complete star semiring.",
"title": "Generalization"
}
] |
In mathematical logic and computer science, the Kleene star is a unary operation, either on sets of strings or on sets of symbols or characters. In mathematics,
it is more commonly known as the free monoid construction. The application of the Kleene star to a set V is written as V ∗ . It is widely used for regular expressions, which is the context in which it was introduced by Stephen Kleene to characterize certain automata, where it means "zero or more repetitions". If V is a set of strings, then V ∗ is defined as the smallest superset of V that contains the empty string ε and is closed under the string concatenation operation.
If V is a set of symbols or characters, then V ∗ is the set of all strings over symbols in V , including the empty string ε . The set V ∗ can also be described as the set containing the empty string and all finite-length strings that can be generated by concatenating arbitrary elements of V , allowing the use of the same element multiple times. If V is either the empty set ∅ or the singleton set { ε } , then V ∗ = { ε } ; if V is any other finite set or countably infinite set, then V ∗ is a countably infinite set. As a consequence, each formal language over a finite or countably infinite alphabet Σ is countable, since it is a subset of the countably infinite set Σ ∗ . The operators are used in rewrite rules for generative grammars.
|
2023-07-18T16:52:19Z
|
[
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Cite book"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleene_star
|
|
16,756 |
Korean language
|
Korean (South Korean: 한국어, hangugeo; North Korean: 조선말, chosŏnmal) is the native language for about 81.7 million people, mostly of Korean descent. It is the official and national language of both South Korea and North Korea. The two countries have established standardized norms for Korean, and the differences between them are similar to those between Standard Chinese in mainland China and Taiwan, but political conflicts between the two countries have highlighted the differences between them. South Korean newspaper Daily NK has claimed North Korea criminalizes the use of the South's standard language with the death penalty, and South Korean education and media often portray the North's language as alien and uncomfortable.
Beyond Korea, the language is recognised as a minority language in parts of China, namely Jilin Province, and specifically Yanbian Prefecture, and Changbai County. It is also spoken by Sakhalin Koreans in parts of Sakhalin, the Russian island just north of Japan, and by the Koryo-saram in parts of Central Asia. The language has a few extinct relatives which—along with the Jeju language (Jejuan) of Jeju Island and Korean itself—form the compact Koreanic language family. Even so, Jejuan and Korean are not mutually intelligible. The linguistic homeland of Korean is suggested to be somewhere in contemporary Manchuria. The hierarchy of the society from which the language originates deeply influences the language, leading to a system of speech levels and honorifics indicative of the formality of any given situation.
Modern Korean is written in the Korean script (한글; Hangul in South Korea, 조선글; Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea), a system developed during the 15th century for that purpose, although it did not become the primary script until the 20th century. The script uses 24 basic letters (jamo) and 27 complex letters formed from the basic ones. When first recorded in historical texts, Korean was only a spoken language; all written records were maintained in Hanmun or classical Chinese along with invented phonetic scripts like as Idu, Gugyeol and Hyangchal. Later, written Chinese characters adapted to the Korean language, Hanja (漢字), were used to write the language for most of Korea's history and are still used to a limited extent in South Korea, most prominently in the humanities and the study of historical texts.
Since the turn of the 21st century, aspects of Korean culture have spread to other countries through globalization and cultural exports. As such, interest in Korean language acquisition (as a foreign language) is also generated by longstanding alliances, military involvement, and diplomacy, such as between South Korea–United States and China–North Korea since the end of World War II and the Korean War. Along with other languages such as Chinese and Arabic, Korean is ranked at the top difficulty level for English speakers by the United States Department of Defense.
Modern Korean descends from Middle Korean, which in turn descends from Old Korean, which descends from the Proto-Koreanic language, which is generally suggested to have its linguistic homeland somewhere in Manchuria. Whitman (2012) suggests that the proto-Koreans, already present in northern Korea, expanded into the southern part of the Korean Peninsula at around 300 BC and coexisted with the descendants of the Japonic Mumun cultivators (or assimilated them). Both had influence on each other and a later founder effect diminished the internal variety of both language families.
Since the establishment of two independent governments, North–South differences have developed in standard Korean, including variations in pronunciation and vocabulary chosen, but these minor differences can be found in any of the Korean dialects, which are still largely mutually intelligible.
Chinese characters arrived in Korea (see Sino-Xenic pronunciations for further information) together with Buddhism during the Proto-Three Kingdoms era in the 1st century BC. They were adapted for Korean and became known as Hanja, and remained as the main script for writing Korean for over a millennium alongside various phonetic scripts that were later invented such as Idu, Gugyeol and Hyangchal. Mainly privileged elites were educated to read and write in Hanja. However, most of the population was illiterate.
In the 15th century King Sejong the Great personally developed an alphabetic featural writing system known today as Hangul. He felt that Hanja was inadequate to write Korean and that caused its very restricted use; Hangul was designed to either aid in reading Hanja or to replace Hanja entirely. Introduced in the document Hunminjeongeum, it was called eonmun (colloquial script) and quickly spread nationwide to increase literacy in Korea. Hangul was widely used by all the Korean classes but was often treated as amkeul ("script for women") and disregarded by privileged elites, and Hanja was regarded as jinseo ("true text"). Consequently, official documents were always written in Hanja during the Joseon era. Since few people could understand Hanja, Korean kings sometimes released public notices entirely written in Hangul as early as the 16th century for all Korean classes, including uneducated peasants and slaves. By the 17th century, the elite class of Yangban had exchanged Hangul letters with slaves, which suggests a high literacy rate of Hangul during the Joseon era.
Today Hanja is largely unused in everyday life because of its inconvenience but it is still important for historical and linguistic studies. Neither South Korea nor North Korea opposes the learning of Hanja, but they are no longer officially used in North Korea and their usage in South Korea is mainly reserved for specific circumstances such as newspapers, scholarly papers and disambiguation.
The Korean names for the language are based on the names for Korea used in both South Korea and North Korea. The English word "Korean" is derived from Goryeo, which is thought to be the first Korean dynasty known to Western nations. Korean people in the former USSR refer to themselves as Koryo-saram or Koryo-in (literally, "Koryo/Goryeo persons"), and call the language Koryo-mal'. Some older English sources also use the spelling "Corea" to refer to the nation, and its inflected form for the language, culture and people, "Korea" becoming more popular in the late 1800s.
In South Korea the Korean language is referred to by many names including hanguk-eo ("Korean language"), hanguk-mal ("Korean speech") and uri-mal ("our language"); "hanguk" is taken from the name of the Korean Empire (대한제국; 大韓帝國; Daehan Jeguk). The "han" (韓) in Hanguk and Daehan Jeguk is derived from Samhan, in reference to the Three Kingdoms of Korea (not the ancient confederacies in the southern Korean Peninsula), while "-eo" and "-mal" mean "language" and "speech", respectively. Korean is also simply referred to as guk-eo, literally "national language". This name is based on the same Han characters (國語 "nation" + "language") that are also used in Taiwan and Japan to refer to their respective national languages.
In North Korea and China, the language is most often called Joseon-mal, or more formally, Joseon-o. This is taken from the North Korean name for Korea (Joseon), a name retained from the Joseon dynasty until the proclamation of the Korean Empire, which in turn was annexed by the Empire of Japan.
In mainland China, following the establishment of diplomatic relations with South Korea in 1992, the term Cháoxiǎnyǔ or the short form Cháoyǔ has normally been used to refer to the standard language of North Korea and Yanbian, whereas Hánguóyǔ or the short form Hányǔ is used to refer to the standard language of South Korea.
Korean is a member of the Koreanic family along with the Jeju language. Some linguists have included it in the Altaic family, but the core Altaic proposal itself has lost most of its prior support. The Khitan language has several vocabulary items similar to Korean that are not found in other Mongolian or Tungusic languages, suggesting a Korean influence on Khitan.
The hypothesis that Korean could be related to Japanese has had some supporters due to some overlap in vocabulary and similar grammatical features that have been elaborated upon by such researchers as Samuel E. Martin and Roy Andrew Miller. Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin (1991) found about 25% of potential cognates in the Japanese–Korean 100-word Swadesh list. Some linguists concerned with the issue between Japanese and Korean, including Alexander Vovin, have argued that the indicated similarities are not due to any genetic relationship, but rather to a sprachbund effect and heavy borrowing, especially from Ancient Korean into Western Old Japanese. A good example might be Middle Korean sàm and Japanese asá, meaning "hemp". This word seems to be a cognate, but although it is well attested in Western Old Japanese and Northern Ryukyuan languages, in Eastern Old Japanese it only occurs in compounds, and it is only present in three dialects of the Southern Ryukyuan language group. Also, the doublet wo meaning "hemp" is attested in Western Old Japanese and Southern Ryukyuan languages. It is thus plausible to assume a borrowed term. (See Classification of the Japonic languages or Comparison of Japanese and Korean for further details on a possible relationship.)
Hudson & Robbeets (2020) suggested that there are traces of a pre-Nivkh substratum in Korean. According to the hypothesis, ancestral varieties of Nivkh (also known as Amuric) were once distributed on the Korean peninsula before the arrival of Koreanic speakers.
Korean syllable structure is (C)(G)V(C), consisting of an optional onset consonant, glide /j, w, ɰ/ and final coda /p, t, k, m, n, ŋ, l/ surrounding a core vowel.
The IPA symbol ⟨◌͈⟩ (a subscript double straight quotation mark, shown here with a placeholder circle) is used to denote the tensed consonants /p͈/, /t͈/, /k͈/, /t͡ɕ͈/, /s͈/. Its official use in the extensions to the IPA is for 'strong' articulation, but is used in the literature for faucalized voice. The Korean consonants also have elements of stiff voice, but it is not yet known how typical this is of faucalized consonants. They are produced with a partially constricted glottis and additional subglottal pressure in addition to tense vocal tract walls, laryngeal lowering, or other expansion of the larynx.
/s/ is aspirated [sʰ] and becomes an alveolo-palatal [ɕʰ] before [j] or [i] for most speakers (but see North–South differences in the Korean language). This occurs with the tense fricative and all the affricates as well. At the end of a syllable, /s/ changes to /t/ (example: beoseot (버섯) 'mushroom').
/h/ may become a bilabial [ɸ] before [o] or [u], a palatal [ç] before [j] or [i], a velar [x] before [ɯ], a voiced [ɦ] between voiced sounds, and a [h] elsewhere.
/p, t, t͡ɕ, k/ become voiced [b, d, d͡ʑ, ɡ] between voiced sounds.
/m, n/ frequently denasalize at the beginnings of words.
/l/ becomes alveolar flap [ɾ] between vowels, and [l] or [ɭ] at the end of a syllable or next to another /l/. A written syllable-final 'ㄹ', when followed by a vowel or a glide (i.e., when the next character starts with 'ㅇ'), migrates to the next syllable and thus becomes [ɾ].
Traditionally, /l/ was disallowed at the beginning of a word. It disappeared before [j], and otherwise became /n/. However, the inflow of western loanwords changed the trend, and now word-initial /l/ (mostly from English loanwords) are pronounced as a free variation of either [ɾ] or [l].
All obstruents (plosives, affricates, fricatives) at the end of a word are pronounced with no audible release, [p̚, t̚, k̚].
Plosive sounds /p, t, k/ become nasals [m, n, ŋ] before nasal sounds.
Hangul spelling does not reflect these assimilatory pronunciation rules, but rather maintains the underlying, partly historical morphology. Given this, it is sometimes hard to tell which actual phonemes are present in a certain word.
The traditional prohibition of word-initial /ɾ/ became a morphological rule called "initial law" (두음법칙) in the pronunciation standards of South Korea, which pertains to Sino-Korean vocabulary. Such words retain their word-initial /ɾ/ in the pronunciation standards of North Korea. For example,
^NOTE ㅏ is closer to a near-open central vowel ([ɐ]), though ⟨a⟩ is still used for tradition.
Grammatical morphemes may change shape depending on the preceding sounds. Examples include -eun/-neun (-은/-는) and -i/-ga (-이/-가).
Sometimes sounds may be inserted instead. Examples include -eul/-reul (-을/-를), -euro/-ro (-으로/-로), -eseo/-seo (-에서/-서), -ideunji/-deunji (-이든지/-든지) and -iya/-ya (-이야/-야).
Some verbs may also change shape morphophonemically.
Korean is an agglutinative language. The Korean language is traditionally considered to have nine parts of speech. Modifiers generally precede the modified words, and in the case of verb modifiers, can be serially appended. The sentence structure or basic form of a Korean sentence is subject–object–verb (SOV), but the verb is the only required and immovable element and word order is highly flexible, as in many other agglutinative languages.
The relationship between a speaker/writer and their subject and audience is paramount in Korean grammar. The relationship between the speaker/writer and subject referent is reflected in honorifics, whereas that between speaker/writer and audience is reflected in speech level.
When talking about someone superior in status, a speaker or writer usually uses special nouns or verb endings to indicate the subject's superiority. Generally, someone is superior in status if they are an older relative, a stranger of roughly equal or greater age, or an employer, teacher, customer, or the like. Someone is equal or inferior in status if they are a younger stranger, student, employee, or the like. Nowadays, there are special endings which can be used on declarative, interrogative, and imperative sentences, and both honorific or normal sentences.
Honorifics in traditional Korea were strictly hierarchical. The caste and estate systems possessed patterns and usages much more complex and stratified than those used today. The intricate structure of the Korean honorific system flourished in traditional culture and society. Honorifics in contemporary Korea are now used for people who are psychologically distant. Honorifics are also used for people who are superior in status, such as older people, teachers, and employers.
There are seven verb paradigms or speech levels in Korean, and each level has its own unique set of verb endings which are used to indicate the level of formality of a situation. Unlike honorifics—which are used to show respect towards the referent (the person spoken of)—speech levels are used to show respect towards a speaker's or writer's audience (the person spoken to). The names of the seven levels are derived from the non-honorific imperative form of the verb 하다 (hada, "do") in each level, plus the suffix 체 ("che", Hanja: 體), which means "style".
The three levels with high politeness (very formally polite, formally polite, casually polite) are generally grouped together as jondaenmal (존댓말), whereas the two levels with low politeness (formally impolite, casually impolite) are banmal (반말) in Korean. The remaining two levels (neutral formality with neutral politeness, high formality with neutral politeness) are neither polite nor impolite.
Nowadays, younger-generation speakers no longer feel obligated to lower their usual regard toward the referent. It is common to see younger people talk to their older relatives with banmal (반말). This is not out of disrespect, but instead it shows the intimacy and the closeness of the relationship between the two speakers. Transformations in social structures and attitudes in today's rapidly changing society have brought about change in the way people speak.
In general, Korean lacks grammatical gender. As one of the few exceptions, the third-person singular pronoun has two different forms: 그 geu (male) and 그녀 geu-nyeo (female). Before 그녀 was invented in need of translating 'she' into Korean, 그 was the only third-person singular pronoun and had no grammatical gender. Its origin causes 그녀 never to be used in spoken Korean but appearing only in writing.
To have a more complete understanding of the intricacies of gender in Korean, three models of language and gender that have been proposed: the deficit model, the dominance model, and the cultural difference model. In the deficit model, male speech is seen as the default, and any form of speech that diverges from that norm (female speech) is seen as lesser than. The dominance model sees women as lacking in power due to living within a patriarchal society. The cultural difference model proposes that the difference in upbringing between men and women can explain the differences in their speech patterns. It is important to look at the models to better understand the misogynistic conditions that shaped the ways that men and women use the language. Korean's lack of grammatical gender makes it different from most European languages. Rather, gendered differences in Korean can be observed through formality, intonation, word choice, etc.
However, one can still find stronger contrasts between genders within Korean speech. Some examples of this can be seen in: (1) the softer tone used by women in speech; (2) a married woman introducing herself as someone's mother or wife, not with her own name; (3) the presence of gender differences in titles and occupational terms (for example, a sajang is a company president, and yŏsajang is a female company president); (4) females sometimes using more tag questions and rising tones in statements, also seen in speech from children.
Between two people of asymmetric status in Korean society, people tend to emphasize differences in status for the sake of solidarity. Koreans prefer to use kinship terms, rather than any other terms of reference. In traditional Korean society, women have long been in disadvantaged positions. Korean social structure traditionally was a patriarchically dominated family system that emphasized the maintenance of family lines. That structure has tended to separate the roles of women from those of men.
Cho and Whitman (2019) explain that the different categories like male and female in social conditions influence Korean's features. What they noticed was the word jagi (자기). Before explaining the word jagi, one thing that needs to be clearly distinguished is that jagi can be used in a variety of situations, not all of which mean the same thing, but they depend on the context. Parallel variable solidarity and affection move the convention of speech style, especially terms of address that Jagi (자기 'you') has emerged as a gender-specific second-person pronoun used by women. However, young Koreans use the word jagi to their lovers or spouses regardless of gender. Among middle-aged women, the word jagi is sometimes used to call someone who is close to them.
Korean society's prevalent attitude towards men being in public (outside the home) and women living in private still exists today. For instance, the word for husband is bakkat-yangban (바깥양반 'outside' 'nobleman'), but a husband introduces his wife as an-saram (안사람 an 'inside' 'person'). Also in kinship terminology, we (외 'outside' or 'wrong') is added for maternal grandparents, creating oe-harabeoji and oe-hal-meoni (외할아버지, 외할머니 'grandfather and grandmother'), with different lexicons for males and females and patriarchal society revealed. Further, in interrogatives to an addressee of equal or lower status, Korean men tend to use haennya (했냐? 'did it?')' in aggressive masculinity, but women use haenni (했니? 'did it?')' as a soft expression. However, there are exceptions. Korean society used the question endings -ni (니) and -nya (냐), the former prevailing among women and men until a few decades ago. In fact, -nya (냐) was characteristic of the Jeolla and Chungcheong dialects. However, since the 1950s, large numbers of people have moved to Seoul from Chungcheong and Jeolla, and they began to influence the way men speak. Recently, women also have used the -nya (냐). As for -ni (니), it is usually used toward people to be polite even to someone not close or younger. As for -nya (냐), it is used mainly to close friends regardless of gender.
Like the case of "actor" and "actress", it also is possible to add a gender prefix for emphasis: biseo (비서 'secretary') is sometimes combined with yeo (여 'female') to form yeo-biseo (여비서 'female secretary'); namja (남자 'man') often is added to ganhosa (간호사 'nurse') to form namja-ganhosa (남자간호사 'male nurse').
Another crucial difference between men and women is the tone and pitch of their voices and how they affect the perception of politeness. Men learn to use an authoritative falling tone; in Korean culture, a deeper voice is associated with being more polite. In addition to the deferential speech endings being used, men are seen as more polite as well as impartial, and professional. Compared to women who use a rising tone in conjunction with -yo (요), they are not perceived to be as polite as men. The -yo (요) also indicates uncertainty since the ending has many prefixes that indicate uncertainty and questioning. The deferential ending does not have any prefixes and do can indicate uncertainty. The -hamnida (합니다) ending is the most polite and formal form of Korea, and the -yo (요) ending is less polite and formal, which causes the perception of women as less professional.
Hedges soften an assertion, and their function as a euphemism in women's speech in terms of discourse difference. Women are expected to add nasal sounds neyng, neym, ney-e, more frequently than men do in the last syllable. Often, l is often added in women's for female stereotypes and so igeolo (이거로 'this thing') becomes igeollo (이걸로 'this thing') to refer to a lack of confidence and passive construction.
Women use more linguistic markers such as exclamation eomeo (어머 'oh') and eojjeom (어쩜 'what a surprise') than men do in cooperative communication.
The core of the Korean vocabulary is made up of native Korean words. However, a significant proportion of the vocabulary, especially words that denote abstract ideas, are Sino-Korean words (of Chinese origin). To a much lesser extent, some words have also been borrowed from Mongolian and other languages. More recent loanwords are dominated by English.
In South Korea, it is widely believed that North Korea wanted to emphasize the use of unique Korean expressions in its language and eliminate the influence of foreign languages. However, according to researchers such as Jeon Soo-tae, who has seen first-hand data from North Korea, the country has reduced the number of difficult foreign words in a similar way to South Korea.
In 2021, Moon Sung-guk of Kim Il Sung University in North Korea wrote in his thesis that Kim Jong Il had said that vernacularized Sino-Korean vocabulary should be used as it is, not modified. "A language is in constant interaction with other languages, and in the process it is constantly being developed and enriched," he said. According to the paper, Kim Jong Il argued that academic terms used in the natural sciences and engineering, such as 콤퓨터 (compyutŏ; computer) and 하드디스크 (hadǔdisǔkǔ; hard disk) should remain in the names of their inventors, and that the word 쵸콜레트 (ch'okoletǔ; chocolate) should not be replaced because it had been used for so long.
South Korea defines its vocabulary standards through the "표준국어대사전"("Standard Korean Language Dictionary"), and North Korea defines its vocabulary standards through the "조선말대사전"("Korean Language Dictionary").
Sino-Korean vocabulary consists of:
Therefore, just like other words, Korean has two sets of numeral systems. English is similar, having native English words and Latinate equivalents such as water-aqua, fire-flame, sea-marine, two-dual, sun-solar, star-stellar. However, unlike English and Latin which belong to the same Indo-European languages family and bear a certain resemblance, Korean and Chinese are genetically unrelated and the two sets of Korean words differ completely from each other. All Sino-Korean morphemes are monosyllabic as in Chinese, whereas native Korean morphemes can be polysyllabic. The Sino-Korean words were deliberately imported alongside corresponding Chinese characters for a written language and everything was supposed to be written in Hanja, so the coexistence of Sino-Korean would be more thorough and systematic than that of Latinate words in English.
The exact proportion of Sino-Korean vocabulary is a matter of debate. Sohn (2001) stated 50–60%. In 2006 the same author gives an even higher estimate of 65%. Jeong Jae-do, one of the compilers of the dictionary Urimal Keun Sajeon, asserts that the proportion is not so high. He points out that Korean dictionaries compiled during the colonial period include many unused Sino-Korean words. In his estimation, the proportion of Sino-Korean vocabulary in the Korean language might be as low as 30%.
The vast majority of loanwords other than Sino-Korean come from modern times, approximately 90% of which are from English. Many words have also been borrowed from Western languages such as German via Japanese (e.g. 아르바이트 (areubaiteu) "part-time job", 알레르기 (allereugi) "allergy", 기브스 (gibseu or gibuseu) "plaster cast used for broken bones"). Some Western words were borrowed indirectly via Japanese during the Japanese occupation of Korea, taking a Japanese sound pattern, for example "dozen" > ダース dāsu > 다스 daseu. However, most indirect Western borrowings are now written according to current "Hangulization" rules for the respective Western language, as if borrowed directly. In South Korean official use, a number of other Sino-Korean country names have been replaced with phonetically oriented "Hangeulizations" of the countries' endonyms or English names.
Because of such a prevalence of English in modern South Korean culture and society, lexical borrowing is inevitable. English-derived Korean, or "Konglish" (콩글리쉬), is increasingly used. The vocabulary of the South Korean dialect of the Korean language is roughly 5% loanwords (excluding Sino-Korean vocabulary). However, due to North Korea's isolation, such influence is lacking in North Korean speech.
Before the creation of the modern Korean alphabet, known as Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea and as Hangul in South Korea, people in Korea (known as Joseon at the time) primarily wrote using Classical Chinese alongside native phonetic writing systems that predate Hangul by hundreds of years, including idu, hyangchal, gugyeol, and gakpil. Few people in the lower classes had the opportunity to receive an education, and they found it extremely difficult to learn how to write in Chinese characters due to the fundamental disparities between the Korean and Chinese languages and the sheer amount of characters that needed to be taught. To assuage that problem, King Sejong (r. 1418–1450) created the unique alphabet known as Hangul to promote literacy among the common people.
The Korean alphabet was denounced and looked down upon by the yangban aristocracy, who deemed it too easy to learn, but it gained widespread use among the common class and was widely used to print popular novels which were enjoyed by the common class. With growing Korean nationalism in the 19th century, the Gabo Reformists' push, and the promotion of Hangul in schools, in 1894, Hangul displaced Hanja as Korea's national script. Hanja are still used to a certain extent in South Korea, where they are sometimes combined with Hangul, but that method is slowly declining in use even though students learn Hanja in school.
Below is a chart of the Korean alphabet's (Hangul) symbols and their Revised Romanization (RR) and canonical International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) values:
The letters of the Korean alphabet are not written linearly like most alphabets, but instead arranged into blocks that represent syllables. So, while the word bibimbap (Korean rice dish) is written as eight characters in a row in the Latin alphabet, in Korean it is written 비빔밥, as three "syllabic blocks" in a row. Mukbang (먹방 'eating show') is seven characters after romanization but only two "syllabic blocks" before.
Modern Korean is written with spaces between words, a feature not found in Chinese or Japanese (except when Japanese is written exclusively in hiragana, as in children's books). The marks used for Korean punctuation are almost identical to Western ones. Traditionally, Korean was written in columns, from top to bottom, right to left, like traditional Chinese. However, the syllabic blocks are now usually written in rows, from left to right, top to bottom, like English.
Korean has numerous small local dialects (called mal (말) [literally 'speech'], saturi (사투리), or bang'eon (방언). South Korean authors claim that the standard language (pyojun-eo or pyojun-mal) of both South Korea and North Korea is based on the dialect of the area around Seoul (which, as Hanyang, was the capital of Joseon-era Korea for 500 years), however since 1966 North Korea officially states that its standard is based on the Pyongyang speech. All dialects of Korean are similar to each other and largely mutually intelligible (with the exception of dialect-specific phrases or non-Standard vocabulary unique to dialects), though the dialect of Jeju Island is divergent enough to be generally considered a separate language. One of the more salient differences between dialects is the use of tone: speakers of the Seoul dialect make use of vowel length, whereas speakers of the Gyeongsang dialect maintain the pitch accent of Middle Korean. Some dialects are conservative, maintaining Middle Korean sounds (such as z, β, ə) which have been lost from the standard language, whereas others are highly innovative.
Kang Yoonjung & Han Sungwoo (2013), Kim Mi-Ryoung (2013), and Cho Sunghye (2017) suggest that the modern Seoul dialect is currently undergoing tonogenesis, based on the finding that in recent years lenis consonants (ㅂㅈㄷㄱ), aspirated consonants (ㅍㅊㅌㅋ) and fortis consonants (ㅃㅉㄸㄲ) were shifting from a distinction via voice onset time to that of pitch change; however, Choi Jiyoun, Kim Sahyang & Cho Taehong (2020) disagree with the suggestion that the consonant distinction shifting away from voice onset time is due to the introduction of tonal features, and instead proposes that it is a prosodically conditioned change.
There is substantial evidence for a history of extensive dialect levelling, or even convergent evolution or intermixture of two or more originally distinct linguistic stocks, within the Korean language and its dialects. Many Korean dialects have basic vocabulary that is etymologically distinct from vocabulary of identical meaning in Standard Korean or other dialects, for example "garlic chives" translated into Gyeongsang dialect /t͡ɕʌŋ.ɡu.d͡ʑi/ (정구지; jeongguji) but in Standard Korean, it is /puːt͡ɕʰu/ (부추; buchu). This suggests that the Korean Peninsula may have at one time been much more linguistically diverse than it is at present. See also the Japanese–Koguryoic languages hypothesis.
The differences among northern and southern dialects have become so significant that many North Korean defectors reportedly have had great difficulty communicating with South Koreans after having initially settled into South Korea. In response to the diverging vocabularies, an app called Univoca was designed to help North Korean defectors learn South Korean terms by translating them into North Korean ones. More information can be found on the page North-South differences in the Korean language.
Meanwhile, in South Korea, some South Korean linguists and North Korean defectors have argued that South Korean media and education overemphasize or exaggerate the differences between North Korean and South Korean languages. At the 2014 National Conference of the Korean Language and Literature Association, Yonsei University professor Hong Yun-pyo argued that language differences between North and South Korea were exaggerated in the context of the Cold War.
According to Hong, after the Korean War, words like dongmu(동무; comrade, friend) and inmin(인민; people) that had been in common use in South Korea before that disappeared, and if anyone used them, they could be reported to the authorities, which was important evidence of espionage. The language differences between the North and South continued to be exaggerated. The language of the North, the North Korean language, was used to promote anti-communist ideology. He even said that research on North Korean in South Korea "has not been done with actual language materials."
Hong had numerous meetings with North Korean scholars for academic conferences and dictionary compilations, but he rarely encountered communication difficulties; rather, he was more likely to encounter communication difficulties with speakers of the Gyeongsang or Jeolla dialects.
Journalist Joo Sung-ha, a North Korean defector, and Park No-pyeong, a North Korean defector who worked as a professor in North Korea, claimed that there are exaggerations, such as claiming that vocabulary that is unfamiliar to South Koreans but also unfamiliar to North Koreans is common in North Korea, or claiming vocabulary that is different from the North Korean standard as the standard in North Korea. For example, he said that there are rumors in South Korea that the word jeon-gu(전구; bulb) is called bural(불알; balls) in North Korea, which is not true. Most North Korean defectors spoke the dialect of their homeland, not the standard North Korean language, which has some similarities to the standard South Korean language, and it is believed that many did not even know the standard North Korean language when they arrived in South Korea.
In South Korea, the idea that there are linguistic differences between the languages of North and South Korea gained traction until the mid-to-late 2010s. However, as exploration of the actual language of North Korea has progressed, it has been argued that any differences in communication between the two Koreas stem from "cultural" differences, such as economic conditions and traditional ways of expression in certain regions.
For example, North Korean defectors who have fled the country tend to have more direct communication habits that reveal their true feelings compared to South Korean language etiquette, which is prominent in defectors' hometowns but rare in other areas where defection is rare, such as Pyongyang.
Aside from the standard language, there are few clear boundaries between Korean dialects, and they are typically partially grouped according to the regions of Korea.
Recently, both North and South Korea's usage rate of the regional dialect have been decreasing due to social factors. In North Korea, the central government is urging its citizens to use Munhwaŏ (the standard language of North Korea, literally 'Cultural language'), to prevent the use of foul language by the people: Kim Jong Un said in a speech "if your language in life is cultural and polite, you can achieve harmony and comradely unity among people." In South Korea, due to relocation in the population to Seoul to find jobs and the usage of standard language in education and media, the prevalence of regional dialects has decreased. Moreover, internationally, due to the increasing popularity of K-pop, the Seoul standard language has become more widely taught and used.
The North Korean government has become increasingly wary of the Korean Wave, and as such, has been very wary of slangs that reflect South Korean culture since 2020. In January 2023, North Korea adopted a law that could lead to public execution for excessive use of South Korean slang, which the North's government labeled as "puppet language" or "koeroemal (괴뢰말)." The word oppa(오빠, originally used by a woman who was the younger sibling in a sibling relationship to refer to a man who was older than her, but in South Korea, also became a way for a younger woman to refer to her male lover in a romantic relationship) was a prime example of this.
The language used in the North and the South exhibit differences in pronunciation, spelling, grammar and vocabulary.
In North Korea, palatalization of /si/ is optional, and /t͡ɕ/ can be pronounced [z] between vowels.
Words that are written the same way may be pronounced differently (such as the examples below). The pronunciations below are given in Revised Romanization, McCune–Reischauer and modified Hangul (what the Korean characters would be if one were to write the word as pronounced).
* In the North, similar pronunciation is used whenever the hanja "的" is attached to a Sino-Korean word ending in ㄴ, ㅁ or ㅇ.
* In the South, this rule only applies when it is attached to any single-character Sino-Korean word.
Some words are spelled differently by the North and the South, but the pronunciations are the same.
Basically, the standard languages of North and South Korea, including pronunciation and vocabulary, are both linguistically based on the Seoul dialect, but in North Korea, words have been modified to reflect the theories of scholars like Kim Tu-bong, who sought a refined language, as well as political needs. Some differences are difficult to explain in terms of political ideas, such as North Korea's use of the word rajio(라지오).:
In general, when transcribing place names, North Korea tends to use the pronunciation in the original language more than South Korea, which often uses the pronunciation in English. For example:
Some grammatical constructions are also different:
In the North, guillemets (《 and 》) are the symbols used for quotes; in the South, quotation marks equivalent to the English ones (" and ") are standard (although 『 』 and 「 」 are also used).
Some vocabulary is different between the North and the South:
Korean is spoken by the Korean people in both South Korea and North Korea, and by the Korean diaspora in many countries including the People's Republic of China, the United States, Japan, and Russia. Currently, Korean is the fourth most popular foreign language in China, following English, Japanese, and Russian. Korean-speaking minorities exist in these states, but because of cultural assimilation into host countries, not all ethnic Koreans may speak it with native fluency.
Korean is the official language of South Korea and North Korea. It, along with Mandarin Chinese, is also one of the two official languages of China's Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture.
In North Korea, the regulatory body is the Language Institute of the Academy of Social Sciences (사회과학원 어학연구소; 社會科學院語學硏究所, Sahoe Gwahagweon Eohag Yeonguso). In South Korea, the regulatory body for Korean is the Seoul-based National Institute of the Korean Language, which was created by presidential decree on 23 January 1991.
Established pursuant to Article 9, Section 2, of the Framework Act on the National Language, the King Sejong Institute is a public institution set up to coordinate the government's project of propagating Korean language and culture; it also supports the King Sejong Institute, which is the institution's overseas branch. The King Sejong Institute was established in response to:
The TOPIK Korea Institute is a lifelong educational center affiliated with a variety of Korean universities in Seoul, South Korea, whose aim is to promote Korean language and culture, support local Korean teaching internationally, and facilitate cultural exchanges.
The institute is sometimes compared to language and culture promotion organizations such as the King Sejong Institute. Unlike that organization, however, the TOPIK Korea Institute operates within established universities and colleges around the world, providing educational materials. In countries around the world, Korean embassies and cultural centers (한국문화원) administer TOPIK examinations.
For native English-speakers, Korean is generally considered to be one of the most difficult foreign languages to master despite the relative ease of learning Hangul. For instance, the United States' Defense Language Institute places Korean in Category IV with Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese), and Arabic, requiring 64 weeks of instruction (as compared to just 26 weeks for Category I languages like Italian, French, and Spanish) to bring an English-speaking student to a limited working level of proficiency in which they have "sufficient capability to meet routine social demands and limited job requirements" and "can deal with concrete topics in past, present, and future tense." Similarly, the Foreign Service Institute's School of Language Studies places Korean in Category IV, the highest level of difficulty.
The study of the Korean language in the United States is dominated by Korean American heritage language students, who in 2007 were estimated to form over 80% of all students of the language at non-military universities. However, Sejong Institutes in the United States have noted a sharp rise in the number of people of other ethnic backgrounds studying Korean between 2009 and 2011, which they attribute to rising popularity of South Korean music and television shows. In 2018, it was reported that the rise in K-Pop was responsible for the increase in people learning the language in US universities.
There are two widely used tests of Korean as a foreign language: the Korean Language Proficiency Test (KLPT) and the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK). The Korean Language Proficiency Test, an examination aimed at assessing non-native speakers' competence in Korean, was instituted in 1997; 17,000 people applied for the 2005 sitting of the examination. The TOPIK was first administered in 1997 and was taken by 2,274 people. Since then the total number of people who have taken the TOPIK has surpassed 1 million, with more than 150,000 candidates taking the test in 2012. TOPIK is administered in 45 regions within South Korea and 72 nations outside of South Korea, with a significant portion being administered in Japan and North America, which would suggest the targeted audience for TOPIK is still primarily foreigners of Korean heritage. This is also evident in TOPIK's website, where the examination is introduced as intended for Korean heritage students.
From Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Korean (Hankuko):
모든
Modeun
인간은
Ingan-eun
태어날
Tae-eonal
때부터
ttaebuteo
자유로우며
Jayuroumyeo
그
Geu
존엄과
Jon-eomgwa
권리에
Gwonrie
있어
Iss-eo
동등하다.
Dongdeunghada.
인간은
Ingan-eun
천부적으로
Cheonbujeog-euro
이성과
Iseong-gwa
양심을
Yangsim-eul
부여받았으며
Bu-yeobad-ass-eumyeo
서로
Seoro
형제애의
Hyungje-ae-ui
정신으로
Jeongsin-euro
행동하여야
Haengdongha-yeo-ya
한다.
handa.
모든 인간은 태어날 때부터 자유로우며 그 존엄과 권리에 있어 동등하다. 인간은 천부적으로 이성과 양심을 부여받았으며 서로 형제애의 정신으로 행동하여야 한다.
Modeun Ingan-eun Tae-eonal ttaebuteo Jayuroumyeo Geu Jon-eomgwa Gwonrie Iss-eo Dongdeunghada. Ingan-eun Cheonbujeog-euro Iseong-gwa Yangsim-eul Bu-yeobad-ass-eumyeo Seoro Hyungje-ae-ui Jeongsin-euro Haengdongha-yeo-ya handa.
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": "Korean (South Korean: 한국어, hangugeo; North Korean: 조선말, chosŏnmal) is the native language for about 81.7 million people, mostly of Korean descent. It is the official and national language of both South Korea and North Korea. The two countries have established standardized norms for Korean, and the differences between them are similar to those between Standard Chinese in mainland China and Taiwan, but political conflicts between the two countries have highlighted the differences between them. South Korean newspaper Daily NK has claimed North Korea criminalizes the use of the South's standard language with the death penalty, and South Korean education and media often portray the North's language as alien and uncomfortable.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Beyond Korea, the language is recognised as a minority language in parts of China, namely Jilin Province, and specifically Yanbian Prefecture, and Changbai County. It is also spoken by Sakhalin Koreans in parts of Sakhalin, the Russian island just north of Japan, and by the Koryo-saram in parts of Central Asia. The language has a few extinct relatives which—along with the Jeju language (Jejuan) of Jeju Island and Korean itself—form the compact Koreanic language family. Even so, Jejuan and Korean are not mutually intelligible. The linguistic homeland of Korean is suggested to be somewhere in contemporary Manchuria. The hierarchy of the society from which the language originates deeply influences the language, leading to a system of speech levels and honorifics indicative of the formality of any given situation.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Modern Korean is written in the Korean script (한글; Hangul in South Korea, 조선글; Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea), a system developed during the 15th century for that purpose, although it did not become the primary script until the 20th century. The script uses 24 basic letters (jamo) and 27 complex letters formed from the basic ones. When first recorded in historical texts, Korean was only a spoken language; all written records were maintained in Hanmun or classical Chinese along with invented phonetic scripts like as Idu, Gugyeol and Hyangchal. Later, written Chinese characters adapted to the Korean language, Hanja (漢字), were used to write the language for most of Korea's history and are still used to a limited extent in South Korea, most prominently in the humanities and the study of historical texts.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Since the turn of the 21st century, aspects of Korean culture have spread to other countries through globalization and cultural exports. As such, interest in Korean language acquisition (as a foreign language) is also generated by longstanding alliances, military involvement, and diplomacy, such as between South Korea–United States and China–North Korea since the end of World War II and the Korean War. Along with other languages such as Chinese and Arabic, Korean is ranked at the top difficulty level for English speakers by the United States Department of Defense.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Modern Korean descends from Middle Korean, which in turn descends from Old Korean, which descends from the Proto-Koreanic language, which is generally suggested to have its linguistic homeland somewhere in Manchuria. Whitman (2012) suggests that the proto-Koreans, already present in northern Korea, expanded into the southern part of the Korean Peninsula at around 300 BC and coexisted with the descendants of the Japonic Mumun cultivators (or assimilated them). Both had influence on each other and a later founder effect diminished the internal variety of both language families.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Since the establishment of two independent governments, North–South differences have developed in standard Korean, including variations in pronunciation and vocabulary chosen, but these minor differences can be found in any of the Korean dialects, which are still largely mutually intelligible.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Chinese characters arrived in Korea (see Sino-Xenic pronunciations for further information) together with Buddhism during the Proto-Three Kingdoms era in the 1st century BC. They were adapted for Korean and became known as Hanja, and remained as the main script for writing Korean for over a millennium alongside various phonetic scripts that were later invented such as Idu, Gugyeol and Hyangchal. Mainly privileged elites were educated to read and write in Hanja. However, most of the population was illiterate.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In the 15th century King Sejong the Great personally developed an alphabetic featural writing system known today as Hangul. He felt that Hanja was inadequate to write Korean and that caused its very restricted use; Hangul was designed to either aid in reading Hanja or to replace Hanja entirely. Introduced in the document Hunminjeongeum, it was called eonmun (colloquial script) and quickly spread nationwide to increase literacy in Korea. Hangul was widely used by all the Korean classes but was often treated as amkeul (\"script for women\") and disregarded by privileged elites, and Hanja was regarded as jinseo (\"true text\"). Consequently, official documents were always written in Hanja during the Joseon era. Since few people could understand Hanja, Korean kings sometimes released public notices entirely written in Hangul as early as the 16th century for all Korean classes, including uneducated peasants and slaves. By the 17th century, the elite class of Yangban had exchanged Hangul letters with slaves, which suggests a high literacy rate of Hangul during the Joseon era.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Today Hanja is largely unused in everyday life because of its inconvenience but it is still important for historical and linguistic studies. Neither South Korea nor North Korea opposes the learning of Hanja, but they are no longer officially used in North Korea and their usage in South Korea is mainly reserved for specific circumstances such as newspapers, scholarly papers and disambiguation.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The Korean names for the language are based on the names for Korea used in both South Korea and North Korea. The English word \"Korean\" is derived from Goryeo, which is thought to be the first Korean dynasty known to Western nations. Korean people in the former USSR refer to themselves as Koryo-saram or Koryo-in (literally, \"Koryo/Goryeo persons\"), and call the language Koryo-mal'. Some older English sources also use the spelling \"Corea\" to refer to the nation, and its inflected form for the language, culture and people, \"Korea\" becoming more popular in the late 1800s.",
"title": "Names"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In South Korea the Korean language is referred to by many names including hanguk-eo (\"Korean language\"), hanguk-mal (\"Korean speech\") and uri-mal (\"our language\"); \"hanguk\" is taken from the name of the Korean Empire (대한제국; 大韓帝國; Daehan Jeguk). The \"han\" (韓) in Hanguk and Daehan Jeguk is derived from Samhan, in reference to the Three Kingdoms of Korea (not the ancient confederacies in the southern Korean Peninsula), while \"-eo\" and \"-mal\" mean \"language\" and \"speech\", respectively. Korean is also simply referred to as guk-eo, literally \"national language\". This name is based on the same Han characters (國語 \"nation\" + \"language\") that are also used in Taiwan and Japan to refer to their respective national languages.",
"title": "Names"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In North Korea and China, the language is most often called Joseon-mal, or more formally, Joseon-o. This is taken from the North Korean name for Korea (Joseon), a name retained from the Joseon dynasty until the proclamation of the Korean Empire, which in turn was annexed by the Empire of Japan.",
"title": "Names"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In mainland China, following the establishment of diplomatic relations with South Korea in 1992, the term Cháoxiǎnyǔ or the short form Cháoyǔ has normally been used to refer to the standard language of North Korea and Yanbian, whereas Hánguóyǔ or the short form Hányǔ is used to refer to the standard language of South Korea.",
"title": "Names"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Korean is a member of the Koreanic family along with the Jeju language. Some linguists have included it in the Altaic family, but the core Altaic proposal itself has lost most of its prior support. The Khitan language has several vocabulary items similar to Korean that are not found in other Mongolian or Tungusic languages, suggesting a Korean influence on Khitan.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The hypothesis that Korean could be related to Japanese has had some supporters due to some overlap in vocabulary and similar grammatical features that have been elaborated upon by such researchers as Samuel E. Martin and Roy Andrew Miller. Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin (1991) found about 25% of potential cognates in the Japanese–Korean 100-word Swadesh list. Some linguists concerned with the issue between Japanese and Korean, including Alexander Vovin, have argued that the indicated similarities are not due to any genetic relationship, but rather to a sprachbund effect and heavy borrowing, especially from Ancient Korean into Western Old Japanese. A good example might be Middle Korean sàm and Japanese asá, meaning \"hemp\". This word seems to be a cognate, but although it is well attested in Western Old Japanese and Northern Ryukyuan languages, in Eastern Old Japanese it only occurs in compounds, and it is only present in three dialects of the Southern Ryukyuan language group. Also, the doublet wo meaning \"hemp\" is attested in Western Old Japanese and Southern Ryukyuan languages. It is thus plausible to assume a borrowed term. (See Classification of the Japonic languages or Comparison of Japanese and Korean for further details on a possible relationship.)",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Hudson & Robbeets (2020) suggested that there are traces of a pre-Nivkh substratum in Korean. According to the hypothesis, ancestral varieties of Nivkh (also known as Amuric) were once distributed on the Korean peninsula before the arrival of Koreanic speakers.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Korean syllable structure is (C)(G)V(C), consisting of an optional onset consonant, glide /j, w, ɰ/ and final coda /p, t, k, m, n, ŋ, l/ surrounding a core vowel.",
"title": "Phonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The IPA symbol ⟨◌͈⟩ (a subscript double straight quotation mark, shown here with a placeholder circle) is used to denote the tensed consonants /p͈/, /t͈/, /k͈/, /t͡ɕ͈/, /s͈/. Its official use in the extensions to the IPA is for 'strong' articulation, but is used in the literature for faucalized voice. The Korean consonants also have elements of stiff voice, but it is not yet known how typical this is of faucalized consonants. They are produced with a partially constricted glottis and additional subglottal pressure in addition to tense vocal tract walls, laryngeal lowering, or other expansion of the larynx.",
"title": "Phonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "/s/ is aspirated [sʰ] and becomes an alveolo-palatal [ɕʰ] before [j] or [i] for most speakers (but see North–South differences in the Korean language). This occurs with the tense fricative and all the affricates as well. At the end of a syllable, /s/ changes to /t/ (example: beoseot (버섯) 'mushroom').",
"title": "Phonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "/h/ may become a bilabial [ɸ] before [o] or [u], a palatal [ç] before [j] or [i], a velar [x] before [ɯ], a voiced [ɦ] between voiced sounds, and a [h] elsewhere.",
"title": "Phonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "/p, t, t͡ɕ, k/ become voiced [b, d, d͡ʑ, ɡ] between voiced sounds.",
"title": "Phonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "/m, n/ frequently denasalize at the beginnings of words.",
"title": "Phonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "/l/ becomes alveolar flap [ɾ] between vowels, and [l] or [ɭ] at the end of a syllable or next to another /l/. A written syllable-final 'ㄹ', when followed by a vowel or a glide (i.e., when the next character starts with 'ㅇ'), migrates to the next syllable and thus becomes [ɾ].",
"title": "Phonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Traditionally, /l/ was disallowed at the beginning of a word. It disappeared before [j], and otherwise became /n/. However, the inflow of western loanwords changed the trend, and now word-initial /l/ (mostly from English loanwords) are pronounced as a free variation of either [ɾ] or [l].",
"title": "Phonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "All obstruents (plosives, affricates, fricatives) at the end of a word are pronounced with no audible release, [p̚, t̚, k̚].",
"title": "Phonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Plosive sounds /p, t, k/ become nasals [m, n, ŋ] before nasal sounds.",
"title": "Phonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Hangul spelling does not reflect these assimilatory pronunciation rules, but rather maintains the underlying, partly historical morphology. Given this, it is sometimes hard to tell which actual phonemes are present in a certain word.",
"title": "Phonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The traditional prohibition of word-initial /ɾ/ became a morphological rule called \"initial law\" (두음법칙) in the pronunciation standards of South Korea, which pertains to Sino-Korean vocabulary. Such words retain their word-initial /ɾ/ in the pronunciation standards of North Korea. For example,",
"title": "Phonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "^NOTE ㅏ is closer to a near-open central vowel ([ɐ]), though ⟨a⟩ is still used for tradition.",
"title": "Phonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Grammatical morphemes may change shape depending on the preceding sounds. Examples include -eun/-neun (-은/-는) and -i/-ga (-이/-가).",
"title": "Phonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Sometimes sounds may be inserted instead. Examples include -eul/-reul (-을/-를), -euro/-ro (-으로/-로), -eseo/-seo (-에서/-서), -ideunji/-deunji (-이든지/-든지) and -iya/-ya (-이야/-야).",
"title": "Phonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Some verbs may also change shape morphophonemically.",
"title": "Phonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Korean is an agglutinative language. The Korean language is traditionally considered to have nine parts of speech. Modifiers generally precede the modified words, and in the case of verb modifiers, can be serially appended. The sentence structure or basic form of a Korean sentence is subject–object–verb (SOV), but the verb is the only required and immovable element and word order is highly flexible, as in many other agglutinative languages.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The relationship between a speaker/writer and their subject and audience is paramount in Korean grammar. The relationship between the speaker/writer and subject referent is reflected in honorifics, whereas that between speaker/writer and audience is reflected in speech level.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "When talking about someone superior in status, a speaker or writer usually uses special nouns or verb endings to indicate the subject's superiority. Generally, someone is superior in status if they are an older relative, a stranger of roughly equal or greater age, or an employer, teacher, customer, or the like. Someone is equal or inferior in status if they are a younger stranger, student, employee, or the like. Nowadays, there are special endings which can be used on declarative, interrogative, and imperative sentences, and both honorific or normal sentences.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Honorifics in traditional Korea were strictly hierarchical. The caste and estate systems possessed patterns and usages much more complex and stratified than those used today. The intricate structure of the Korean honorific system flourished in traditional culture and society. Honorifics in contemporary Korea are now used for people who are psychologically distant. Honorifics are also used for people who are superior in status, such as older people, teachers, and employers.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "There are seven verb paradigms or speech levels in Korean, and each level has its own unique set of verb endings which are used to indicate the level of formality of a situation. Unlike honorifics—which are used to show respect towards the referent (the person spoken of)—speech levels are used to show respect towards a speaker's or writer's audience (the person spoken to). The names of the seven levels are derived from the non-honorific imperative form of the verb 하다 (hada, \"do\") in each level, plus the suffix 체 (\"che\", Hanja: 體), which means \"style\".",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The three levels with high politeness (very formally polite, formally polite, casually polite) are generally grouped together as jondaenmal (존댓말), whereas the two levels with low politeness (formally impolite, casually impolite) are banmal (반말) in Korean. The remaining two levels (neutral formality with neutral politeness, high formality with neutral politeness) are neither polite nor impolite.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Nowadays, younger-generation speakers no longer feel obligated to lower their usual regard toward the referent. It is common to see younger people talk to their older relatives with banmal (반말). This is not out of disrespect, but instead it shows the intimacy and the closeness of the relationship between the two speakers. Transformations in social structures and attitudes in today's rapidly changing society have brought about change in the way people speak.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "In general, Korean lacks grammatical gender. As one of the few exceptions, the third-person singular pronoun has two different forms: 그 geu (male) and 그녀 geu-nyeo (female). Before 그녀 was invented in need of translating 'she' into Korean, 그 was the only third-person singular pronoun and had no grammatical gender. Its origin causes 그녀 never to be used in spoken Korean but appearing only in writing.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "To have a more complete understanding of the intricacies of gender in Korean, three models of language and gender that have been proposed: the deficit model, the dominance model, and the cultural difference model. In the deficit model, male speech is seen as the default, and any form of speech that diverges from that norm (female speech) is seen as lesser than. The dominance model sees women as lacking in power due to living within a patriarchal society. The cultural difference model proposes that the difference in upbringing between men and women can explain the differences in their speech patterns. It is important to look at the models to better understand the misogynistic conditions that shaped the ways that men and women use the language. Korean's lack of grammatical gender makes it different from most European languages. Rather, gendered differences in Korean can be observed through formality, intonation, word choice, etc.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "However, one can still find stronger contrasts between genders within Korean speech. Some examples of this can be seen in: (1) the softer tone used by women in speech; (2) a married woman introducing herself as someone's mother or wife, not with her own name; (3) the presence of gender differences in titles and occupational terms (for example, a sajang is a company president, and yŏsajang is a female company president); (4) females sometimes using more tag questions and rising tones in statements, also seen in speech from children.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Between two people of asymmetric status in Korean society, people tend to emphasize differences in status for the sake of solidarity. Koreans prefer to use kinship terms, rather than any other terms of reference. In traditional Korean society, women have long been in disadvantaged positions. Korean social structure traditionally was a patriarchically dominated family system that emphasized the maintenance of family lines. That structure has tended to separate the roles of women from those of men.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Cho and Whitman (2019) explain that the different categories like male and female in social conditions influence Korean's features. What they noticed was the word jagi (자기). Before explaining the word jagi, one thing that needs to be clearly distinguished is that jagi can be used in a variety of situations, not all of which mean the same thing, but they depend on the context. Parallel variable solidarity and affection move the convention of speech style, especially terms of address that Jagi (자기 'you') has emerged as a gender-specific second-person pronoun used by women. However, young Koreans use the word jagi to their lovers or spouses regardless of gender. Among middle-aged women, the word jagi is sometimes used to call someone who is close to them.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Korean society's prevalent attitude towards men being in public (outside the home) and women living in private still exists today. For instance, the word for husband is bakkat-yangban (바깥양반 'outside' 'nobleman'), but a husband introduces his wife as an-saram (안사람 an 'inside' 'person'). Also in kinship terminology, we (외 'outside' or 'wrong') is added for maternal grandparents, creating oe-harabeoji and oe-hal-meoni (외할아버지, 외할머니 'grandfather and grandmother'), with different lexicons for males and females and patriarchal society revealed. Further, in interrogatives to an addressee of equal or lower status, Korean men tend to use haennya (했냐? 'did it?')' in aggressive masculinity, but women use haenni (했니? 'did it?')' as a soft expression. However, there are exceptions. Korean society used the question endings -ni (니) and -nya (냐), the former prevailing among women and men until a few decades ago. In fact, -nya (냐) was characteristic of the Jeolla and Chungcheong dialects. However, since the 1950s, large numbers of people have moved to Seoul from Chungcheong and Jeolla, and they began to influence the way men speak. Recently, women also have used the -nya (냐). As for -ni (니), it is usually used toward people to be polite even to someone not close or younger. As for -nya (냐), it is used mainly to close friends regardless of gender.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Like the case of \"actor\" and \"actress\", it also is possible to add a gender prefix for emphasis: biseo (비서 'secretary') is sometimes combined with yeo (여 'female') to form yeo-biseo (여비서 'female secretary'); namja (남자 'man') often is added to ganhosa (간호사 'nurse') to form namja-ganhosa (남자간호사 'male nurse').",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Another crucial difference between men and women is the tone and pitch of their voices and how they affect the perception of politeness. Men learn to use an authoritative falling tone; in Korean culture, a deeper voice is associated with being more polite. In addition to the deferential speech endings being used, men are seen as more polite as well as impartial, and professional. Compared to women who use a rising tone in conjunction with -yo (요), they are not perceived to be as polite as men. The -yo (요) also indicates uncertainty since the ending has many prefixes that indicate uncertainty and questioning. The deferential ending does not have any prefixes and do can indicate uncertainty. The -hamnida (합니다) ending is the most polite and formal form of Korea, and the -yo (요) ending is less polite and formal, which causes the perception of women as less professional.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Hedges soften an assertion, and their function as a euphemism in women's speech in terms of discourse difference. Women are expected to add nasal sounds neyng, neym, ney-e, more frequently than men do in the last syllable. Often, l is often added in women's for female stereotypes and so igeolo (이거로 'this thing') becomes igeollo (이걸로 'this thing') to refer to a lack of confidence and passive construction.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Women use more linguistic markers such as exclamation eomeo (어머 'oh') and eojjeom (어쩜 'what a surprise') than men do in cooperative communication.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "The core of the Korean vocabulary is made up of native Korean words. However, a significant proportion of the vocabulary, especially words that denote abstract ideas, are Sino-Korean words (of Chinese origin). To a much lesser extent, some words have also been borrowed from Mongolian and other languages. More recent loanwords are dominated by English.",
"title": "Vocabulary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "In South Korea, it is widely believed that North Korea wanted to emphasize the use of unique Korean expressions in its language and eliminate the influence of foreign languages. However, according to researchers such as Jeon Soo-tae, who has seen first-hand data from North Korea, the country has reduced the number of difficult foreign words in a similar way to South Korea.",
"title": "Vocabulary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "In 2021, Moon Sung-guk of Kim Il Sung University in North Korea wrote in his thesis that Kim Jong Il had said that vernacularized Sino-Korean vocabulary should be used as it is, not modified. \"A language is in constant interaction with other languages, and in the process it is constantly being developed and enriched,\" he said. According to the paper, Kim Jong Il argued that academic terms used in the natural sciences and engineering, such as 콤퓨터 (compyutŏ; computer) and 하드디스크 (hadǔdisǔkǔ; hard disk) should remain in the names of their inventors, and that the word 쵸콜레트 (ch'okoletǔ; chocolate) should not be replaced because it had been used for so long.",
"title": "Vocabulary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "South Korea defines its vocabulary standards through the \"표준국어대사전\"(\"Standard Korean Language Dictionary\"), and North Korea defines its vocabulary standards through the \"조선말대사전\"(\"Korean Language Dictionary\").",
"title": "Vocabulary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Sino-Korean vocabulary consists of:",
"title": "Vocabulary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Therefore, just like other words, Korean has two sets of numeral systems. English is similar, having native English words and Latinate equivalents such as water-aqua, fire-flame, sea-marine, two-dual, sun-solar, star-stellar. However, unlike English and Latin which belong to the same Indo-European languages family and bear a certain resemblance, Korean and Chinese are genetically unrelated and the two sets of Korean words differ completely from each other. All Sino-Korean morphemes are monosyllabic as in Chinese, whereas native Korean morphemes can be polysyllabic. The Sino-Korean words were deliberately imported alongside corresponding Chinese characters for a written language and everything was supposed to be written in Hanja, so the coexistence of Sino-Korean would be more thorough and systematic than that of Latinate words in English.",
"title": "Vocabulary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "The exact proportion of Sino-Korean vocabulary is a matter of debate. Sohn (2001) stated 50–60%. In 2006 the same author gives an even higher estimate of 65%. Jeong Jae-do, one of the compilers of the dictionary Urimal Keun Sajeon, asserts that the proportion is not so high. He points out that Korean dictionaries compiled during the colonial period include many unused Sino-Korean words. In his estimation, the proportion of Sino-Korean vocabulary in the Korean language might be as low as 30%.",
"title": "Vocabulary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The vast majority of loanwords other than Sino-Korean come from modern times, approximately 90% of which are from English. Many words have also been borrowed from Western languages such as German via Japanese (e.g. 아르바이트 (areubaiteu) \"part-time job\", 알레르기 (allereugi) \"allergy\", 기브스 (gibseu or gibuseu) \"plaster cast used for broken bones\"). Some Western words were borrowed indirectly via Japanese during the Japanese occupation of Korea, taking a Japanese sound pattern, for example \"dozen\" > ダース dāsu > 다스 daseu. However, most indirect Western borrowings are now written according to current \"Hangulization\" rules for the respective Western language, as if borrowed directly. In South Korean official use, a number of other Sino-Korean country names have been replaced with phonetically oriented \"Hangeulizations\" of the countries' endonyms or English names.",
"title": "Vocabulary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Because of such a prevalence of English in modern South Korean culture and society, lexical borrowing is inevitable. English-derived Korean, or \"Konglish\" (콩글리쉬), is increasingly used. The vocabulary of the South Korean dialect of the Korean language is roughly 5% loanwords (excluding Sino-Korean vocabulary). However, due to North Korea's isolation, such influence is lacking in North Korean speech.",
"title": "Vocabulary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Before the creation of the modern Korean alphabet, known as Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea and as Hangul in South Korea, people in Korea (known as Joseon at the time) primarily wrote using Classical Chinese alongside native phonetic writing systems that predate Hangul by hundreds of years, including idu, hyangchal, gugyeol, and gakpil. Few people in the lower classes had the opportunity to receive an education, and they found it extremely difficult to learn how to write in Chinese characters due to the fundamental disparities between the Korean and Chinese languages and the sheer amount of characters that needed to be taught. To assuage that problem, King Sejong (r. 1418–1450) created the unique alphabet known as Hangul to promote literacy among the common people.",
"title": "Writing system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The Korean alphabet was denounced and looked down upon by the yangban aristocracy, who deemed it too easy to learn, but it gained widespread use among the common class and was widely used to print popular novels which were enjoyed by the common class. With growing Korean nationalism in the 19th century, the Gabo Reformists' push, and the promotion of Hangul in schools, in 1894, Hangul displaced Hanja as Korea's national script. Hanja are still used to a certain extent in South Korea, where they are sometimes combined with Hangul, but that method is slowly declining in use even though students learn Hanja in school.",
"title": "Writing system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Below is a chart of the Korean alphabet's (Hangul) symbols and their Revised Romanization (RR) and canonical International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) values:",
"title": "Writing system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "The letters of the Korean alphabet are not written linearly like most alphabets, but instead arranged into blocks that represent syllables. So, while the word bibimbap (Korean rice dish) is written as eight characters in a row in the Latin alphabet, in Korean it is written 비빔밥, as three \"syllabic blocks\" in a row. Mukbang (먹방 'eating show') is seven characters after romanization but only two \"syllabic blocks\" before.",
"title": "Writing system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Modern Korean is written with spaces between words, a feature not found in Chinese or Japanese (except when Japanese is written exclusively in hiragana, as in children's books). The marks used for Korean punctuation are almost identical to Western ones. Traditionally, Korean was written in columns, from top to bottom, right to left, like traditional Chinese. However, the syllabic blocks are now usually written in rows, from left to right, top to bottom, like English.",
"title": "Writing system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Korean has numerous small local dialects (called mal (말) [literally 'speech'], saturi (사투리), or bang'eon (방언). South Korean authors claim that the standard language (pyojun-eo or pyojun-mal) of both South Korea and North Korea is based on the dialect of the area around Seoul (which, as Hanyang, was the capital of Joseon-era Korea for 500 years), however since 1966 North Korea officially states that its standard is based on the Pyongyang speech. All dialects of Korean are similar to each other and largely mutually intelligible (with the exception of dialect-specific phrases or non-Standard vocabulary unique to dialects), though the dialect of Jeju Island is divergent enough to be generally considered a separate language. One of the more salient differences between dialects is the use of tone: speakers of the Seoul dialect make use of vowel length, whereas speakers of the Gyeongsang dialect maintain the pitch accent of Middle Korean. Some dialects are conservative, maintaining Middle Korean sounds (such as z, β, ə) which have been lost from the standard language, whereas others are highly innovative.",
"title": "Dialects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Kang Yoonjung & Han Sungwoo (2013), Kim Mi-Ryoung (2013), and Cho Sunghye (2017) suggest that the modern Seoul dialect is currently undergoing tonogenesis, based on the finding that in recent years lenis consonants (ㅂㅈㄷㄱ), aspirated consonants (ㅍㅊㅌㅋ) and fortis consonants (ㅃㅉㄸㄲ) were shifting from a distinction via voice onset time to that of pitch change; however, Choi Jiyoun, Kim Sahyang & Cho Taehong (2020) disagree with the suggestion that the consonant distinction shifting away from voice onset time is due to the introduction of tonal features, and instead proposes that it is a prosodically conditioned change.",
"title": "Dialects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "There is substantial evidence for a history of extensive dialect levelling, or even convergent evolution or intermixture of two or more originally distinct linguistic stocks, within the Korean language and its dialects. Many Korean dialects have basic vocabulary that is etymologically distinct from vocabulary of identical meaning in Standard Korean or other dialects, for example \"garlic chives\" translated into Gyeongsang dialect /t͡ɕʌŋ.ɡu.d͡ʑi/ (정구지; jeongguji) but in Standard Korean, it is /puːt͡ɕʰu/ (부추; buchu). This suggests that the Korean Peninsula may have at one time been much more linguistically diverse than it is at present. See also the Japanese–Koguryoic languages hypothesis.",
"title": "Dialects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "The differences among northern and southern dialects have become so significant that many North Korean defectors reportedly have had great difficulty communicating with South Koreans after having initially settled into South Korea. In response to the diverging vocabularies, an app called Univoca was designed to help North Korean defectors learn South Korean terms by translating them into North Korean ones. More information can be found on the page North-South differences in the Korean language.",
"title": "Dialects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Meanwhile, in South Korea, some South Korean linguists and North Korean defectors have argued that South Korean media and education overemphasize or exaggerate the differences between North Korean and South Korean languages. At the 2014 National Conference of the Korean Language and Literature Association, Yonsei University professor Hong Yun-pyo argued that language differences between North and South Korea were exaggerated in the context of the Cold War.",
"title": "Dialects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "According to Hong, after the Korean War, words like dongmu(동무; comrade, friend) and inmin(인민; people) that had been in common use in South Korea before that disappeared, and if anyone used them, they could be reported to the authorities, which was important evidence of espionage. The language differences between the North and South continued to be exaggerated. The language of the North, the North Korean language, was used to promote anti-communist ideology. He even said that research on North Korean in South Korea \"has not been done with actual language materials.\"",
"title": "Dialects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Hong had numerous meetings with North Korean scholars for academic conferences and dictionary compilations, but he rarely encountered communication difficulties; rather, he was more likely to encounter communication difficulties with speakers of the Gyeongsang or Jeolla dialects.",
"title": "Dialects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Journalist Joo Sung-ha, a North Korean defector, and Park No-pyeong, a North Korean defector who worked as a professor in North Korea, claimed that there are exaggerations, such as claiming that vocabulary that is unfamiliar to South Koreans but also unfamiliar to North Koreans is common in North Korea, or claiming vocabulary that is different from the North Korean standard as the standard in North Korea. For example, he said that there are rumors in South Korea that the word jeon-gu(전구; bulb) is called bural(불알; balls) in North Korea, which is not true. Most North Korean defectors spoke the dialect of their homeland, not the standard North Korean language, which has some similarities to the standard South Korean language, and it is believed that many did not even know the standard North Korean language when they arrived in South Korea.",
"title": "Dialects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "In South Korea, the idea that there are linguistic differences between the languages of North and South Korea gained traction until the mid-to-late 2010s. However, as exploration of the actual language of North Korea has progressed, it has been argued that any differences in communication between the two Koreas stem from \"cultural\" differences, such as economic conditions and traditional ways of expression in certain regions.",
"title": "Dialects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "For example, North Korean defectors who have fled the country tend to have more direct communication habits that reveal their true feelings compared to South Korean language etiquette, which is prominent in defectors' hometowns but rare in other areas where defection is rare, such as Pyongyang.",
"title": "Dialects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Aside from the standard language, there are few clear boundaries between Korean dialects, and they are typically partially grouped according to the regions of Korea.",
"title": "Dialects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Recently, both North and South Korea's usage rate of the regional dialect have been decreasing due to social factors. In North Korea, the central government is urging its citizens to use Munhwaŏ (the standard language of North Korea, literally 'Cultural language'), to prevent the use of foul language by the people: Kim Jong Un said in a speech \"if your language in life is cultural and polite, you can achieve harmony and comradely unity among people.\" In South Korea, due to relocation in the population to Seoul to find jobs and the usage of standard language in education and media, the prevalence of regional dialects has decreased. Moreover, internationally, due to the increasing popularity of K-pop, the Seoul standard language has become more widely taught and used.",
"title": "Dialects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "The North Korean government has become increasingly wary of the Korean Wave, and as such, has been very wary of slangs that reflect South Korean culture since 2020. In January 2023, North Korea adopted a law that could lead to public execution for excessive use of South Korean slang, which the North's government labeled as \"puppet language\" or \"koeroemal (괴뢰말).\" The word oppa(오빠, originally used by a woman who was the younger sibling in a sibling relationship to refer to a man who was older than her, but in South Korea, also became a way for a younger woman to refer to her male lover in a romantic relationship) was a prime example of this.",
"title": "Dialects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "The language used in the North and the South exhibit differences in pronunciation, spelling, grammar and vocabulary.",
"title": "North–South differences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "In North Korea, palatalization of /si/ is optional, and /t͡ɕ/ can be pronounced [z] between vowels.",
"title": "North–South differences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Words that are written the same way may be pronounced differently (such as the examples below). The pronunciations below are given in Revised Romanization, McCune–Reischauer and modified Hangul (what the Korean characters would be if one were to write the word as pronounced).",
"title": "North–South differences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "* In the North, similar pronunciation is used whenever the hanja \"的\" is attached to a Sino-Korean word ending in ㄴ, ㅁ or ㅇ.",
"title": "North–South differences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "* In the South, this rule only applies when it is attached to any single-character Sino-Korean word.",
"title": "North–South differences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Some words are spelled differently by the North and the South, but the pronunciations are the same.",
"title": "North–South differences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Basically, the standard languages of North and South Korea, including pronunciation and vocabulary, are both linguistically based on the Seoul dialect, but in North Korea, words have been modified to reflect the theories of scholars like Kim Tu-bong, who sought a refined language, as well as political needs. Some differences are difficult to explain in terms of political ideas, such as North Korea's use of the word rajio(라지오).:",
"title": "North–South differences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "In general, when transcribing place names, North Korea tends to use the pronunciation in the original language more than South Korea, which often uses the pronunciation in English. For example:",
"title": "North–South differences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Some grammatical constructions are also different:",
"title": "North–South differences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "In the North, guillemets (《 and 》) are the symbols used for quotes; in the South, quotation marks equivalent to the English ones (\" and \") are standard (although 『 』 and 「 」 are also used).",
"title": "North–South differences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Some vocabulary is different between the North and the South:",
"title": "North–South differences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Korean is spoken by the Korean people in both South Korea and North Korea, and by the Korean diaspora in many countries including the People's Republic of China, the United States, Japan, and Russia. Currently, Korean is the fourth most popular foreign language in China, following English, Japanese, and Russian. Korean-speaking minorities exist in these states, but because of cultural assimilation into host countries, not all ethnic Koreans may speak it with native fluency.",
"title": "Geographic distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Korean is the official language of South Korea and North Korea. It, along with Mandarin Chinese, is also one of the two official languages of China's Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture.",
"title": "Geographic distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "In North Korea, the regulatory body is the Language Institute of the Academy of Social Sciences (사회과학원 어학연구소; 社會科學院語學硏究所, Sahoe Gwahagweon Eohag Yeonguso). In South Korea, the regulatory body for Korean is the Seoul-based National Institute of the Korean Language, which was created by presidential decree on 23 January 1991.",
"title": "Geographic distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "Established pursuant to Article 9, Section 2, of the Framework Act on the National Language, the King Sejong Institute is a public institution set up to coordinate the government's project of propagating Korean language and culture; it also supports the King Sejong Institute, which is the institution's overseas branch. The King Sejong Institute was established in response to:",
"title": "Geographic distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "The TOPIK Korea Institute is a lifelong educational center affiliated with a variety of Korean universities in Seoul, South Korea, whose aim is to promote Korean language and culture, support local Korean teaching internationally, and facilitate cultural exchanges.",
"title": "Geographic distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "The institute is sometimes compared to language and culture promotion organizations such as the King Sejong Institute. Unlike that organization, however, the TOPIK Korea Institute operates within established universities and colleges around the world, providing educational materials. In countries around the world, Korean embassies and cultural centers (한국문화원) administer TOPIK examinations.",
"title": "Geographic distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "For native English-speakers, Korean is generally considered to be one of the most difficult foreign languages to master despite the relative ease of learning Hangul. For instance, the United States' Defense Language Institute places Korean in Category IV with Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese), and Arabic, requiring 64 weeks of instruction (as compared to just 26 weeks for Category I languages like Italian, French, and Spanish) to bring an English-speaking student to a limited working level of proficiency in which they have \"sufficient capability to meet routine social demands and limited job requirements\" and \"can deal with concrete topics in past, present, and future tense.\" Similarly, the Foreign Service Institute's School of Language Studies places Korean in Category IV, the highest level of difficulty.",
"title": "Foreign language"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "The study of the Korean language in the United States is dominated by Korean American heritage language students, who in 2007 were estimated to form over 80% of all students of the language at non-military universities. However, Sejong Institutes in the United States have noted a sharp rise in the number of people of other ethnic backgrounds studying Korean between 2009 and 2011, which they attribute to rising popularity of South Korean music and television shows. In 2018, it was reported that the rise in K-Pop was responsible for the increase in people learning the language in US universities.",
"title": "Foreign language"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "There are two widely used tests of Korean as a foreign language: the Korean Language Proficiency Test (KLPT) and the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK). The Korean Language Proficiency Test, an examination aimed at assessing non-native speakers' competence in Korean, was instituted in 1997; 17,000 people applied for the 2005 sitting of the examination. The TOPIK was first administered in 1997 and was taken by 2,274 people. Since then the total number of people who have taken the TOPIK has surpassed 1 million, with more than 150,000 candidates taking the test in 2012. TOPIK is administered in 45 regions within South Korea and 72 nations outside of South Korea, with a significant portion being administered in Japan and North America, which would suggest the targeted audience for TOPIK is still primarily foreigners of Korean heritage. This is also evident in TOPIK's website, where the examination is introduced as intended for Korean heritage students.",
"title": "Foreign language"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "From Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Korean (Hankuko):",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "모든",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "Modeun",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "인간은",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "Ingan-eun",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "태어날",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "Tae-eonal",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "때부터",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "ttaebuteo",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "자유로우며",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "Jayuroumyeo",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "그",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "Geu",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "존엄과",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "Jon-eomgwa",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "권리에",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "Gwonrie",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "있어",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "Iss-eo",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "동등하다.",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "Dongdeunghada.",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "인간은",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "Ingan-eun",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "천부적으로",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "Cheonbujeog-euro",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "이성과",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "Iseong-gwa",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "양심을",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "Yangsim-eul",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 125,
"text": "부여받았으며",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 126,
"text": "Bu-yeobad-ass-eumyeo",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 127,
"text": "서로",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 128,
"text": "Seoro",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 129,
"text": "형제애의",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 130,
"text": "Hyungje-ae-ui",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 131,
"text": "정신으로",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 132,
"text": "Jeongsin-euro",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 133,
"text": "행동하여야",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 134,
"text": "Haengdongha-yeo-ya",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 135,
"text": "한다.",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 136,
"text": "handa.",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 137,
"text": "모든 인간은 태어날 때부터 자유로우며 그 존엄과 권리에 있어 동등하다. 인간은 천부적으로 이성과 양심을 부여받았으며 서로 형제애의 정신으로 행동하여야 한다.",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 138,
"text": "Modeun Ingan-eun Tae-eonal ttaebuteo Jayuroumyeo Geu Jon-eomgwa Gwonrie Iss-eo Dongdeunghada. Ingan-eun Cheonbujeog-euro Iseong-gwa Yangsim-eul Bu-yeobad-ass-eumyeo Seoro Hyungje-ae-ui Jeongsin-euro Haengdongha-yeo-ya handa.",
"title": "Example text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 139,
"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"
}
] |
Korean is the native language for about 81.7 million people, mostly of Korean descent. It is the official and national language of both South Korea and North Korea. The two countries have established standardized norms for Korean, and the differences between them are similar to those between Standard Chinese in mainland China and Taiwan, but political conflicts between the two countries have highlighted the differences between them. South Korean newspaper Daily NK has claimed North Korea criminalizes the use of the South's standard language with the death penalty, and South Korean education and media often portray the North's language as alien and uncomfortable. Beyond Korea, the language is recognised as a minority language in parts of China, namely Jilin Province, and specifically Yanbian Prefecture, and Changbai County. It is also spoken by Sakhalin Koreans in parts of Sakhalin, the Russian island just north of Japan, and by the Koryo-saram in parts of Central Asia. The language has a few extinct relatives which—along with the Jeju language (Jejuan) of Jeju Island and Korean itself—form the compact Koreanic language family. Even so, Jejuan and Korean are not mutually intelligible. The linguistic homeland of Korean is suggested to be somewhere in contemporary Manchuria. The hierarchy of the society from which the language originates deeply influences the language, leading to a system of speech levels and honorifics indicative of the formality of any given situation. Modern Korean is written in the Korean script, a system developed during the 15th century for that purpose, although it did not become the primary script until the 20th century. The script uses 24 basic letters (jamo) and 27 complex letters formed from the basic ones. When first recorded in historical texts, Korean was only a spoken language; all written records were maintained in Hanmun or classical Chinese along with invented phonetic scripts like as Idu, Gugyeol and Hyangchal. Later, written Chinese characters adapted to the Korean language, Hanja (漢字), were used to write the language for most of Korea's history and are still used to a limited extent in South Korea, most prominently in the humanities and the study of historical texts. Since the turn of the 21st century, aspects of Korean culture have spread to other countries through globalization and cultural exports. As such, interest in Korean language acquisition is also generated by longstanding alliances, military involvement, and diplomacy, such as between South Korea–United States and China–North Korea since the end of World War II and the Korean War. Along with other languages such as Chinese and Arabic, Korean is ranked at the top difficulty level for English speakers by the United States Department of Defense.
|
2001-09-25T14:49:03Z
|
2023-12-21T23:38:52Z
|
[
"Template:Notelist",
"Template:See also",
"Template:Tooltip",
"Template:Pn",
"Template:Cite thesis",
"Template:Curlie",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Break",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Sfnp",
"Template:Angbr IPA",
"Template:Reign",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Cite magazine",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Korean",
"Template:Transliteration",
"Template:Lang-ko",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Cleanup",
"Template:Vn",
"Template:Ref",
"Template:Koreanic languages",
"Template:Linktext",
"Template:IPA",
"Template:IPAslink",
"Template:Efn-ua",
"Template:Note",
"Template:Portal",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Citation needed",
"Template:Sister bar",
"Template:Korean language",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Page needed",
"Template:Korean writing",
"Template:Harvp",
"Template:Fs interlinear",
"Template:Cbignore",
"Template:Infobox language",
"Template:Lang",
"Template:Efn",
"Template:Angbr",
"Template:Dead link",
"Template:Culture of Korea"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_language
|
16,757 |
Kyle MacLachlan
|
Kyle Merritt MacLachlan (/məkˈlɒklən/ mək-LOK-lən; born Kyle Merritt McLachlan on February 22, 1959) is an American actor. He is best known for his collaborations with American filmmaker David Lynch, starring as Dale Cooper on the television series Twin Peaks (1990–1991; 2017), for which he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Drama, and its film prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992). MacLachlan is also known for his roles as Paul Atreides in Dune (1984) and Jeffrey Beaumont in Blue Velvet (1986), both also directed by Lynch. His other film roles include Lloyd Gallagher in The Hidden (1987), Ray Manzarek in The Doors (1991), Cliff Vandercave in The Flintstones (1994), Zack Carey in Showgirls (1995) and the voice of Riley's father in Inside Out (2015).
MacLachlan has had prominent roles on television such as Trey MacDougal on Sex and the City (2000–2002), Orson Hodge on Desperate Housewives (2006–2012), The Captain on How I Met Your Mother (2010–2014) and How I Met Your Father (2022), the Mayor of Portland on Portlandia (2011–2018), and Calvin Johnson on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2014–2015).
MacLachlan was born Kyle Merritt McLachlan (subsequently changing the spelling of his name to reflect his Scottish heritage), at Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital in Yakima, Washington. His mother, Catherine (née Stone; 1934–1986), was a public relations director for a school district and a homemaker who was active in community arts programs. His father, Kent Alan McLachlan (1933–2011), was a stockbroker and lawyer. Kyle has Scottish, Cornish, and German ancestry. He grew up in Yakima, the eldest of three boys. His two younger brothers, Craig and Kent Jr., live in the Seattle area. MacLachlan graduated from Eisenhower High School in Yakima. His mother left his father when he was 17, and his parents divorced in his senior year of high school.
MacLachlan was introduced to stage acting by his mother when she became director of a youth theater program for teenagers that she helped set up in Yakima. She also sent him to piano lessons from the age of 9 to 14, when he also began to study classical singing. While in high school, he performed in plays and in class musicals, acting in his first play aged 15. For his senior year, MacLachlan played the lead role of Brindsley Miller in a production of Peter Shaffer's one-act play Black Comedy and also performed as Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady. In 1982, he graduated cum laude with a BFA in drama from the University of Washington (UW), as a student of the Professional Actor Training Program. He initially planned to major in business and also studied classical voice at UW, but changed his focus to acting.
The first film MacLachlan worked on was The Changeling (1980), part of which was shot on the University of Washington campus. He was paid $10 as an extra.
In the summer of 1981, after his sophomore year at college, he played the lead in three roles at the Old Lyric Repertory Theatre in Logan, Utah and the following summer with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon.
MacLachlan made his film debut in Dune (1984) in the starring role of Paul Atreides. While still in college, MacLachlan was appearing in Molière's Tartuffe in a Seattle-area theater. A casting agent for Dune producer Dino de Laurentiis was looking for a young actor to star in the film, and multiple people recommended MacLachlan. After several screen tests, he hit it off with director David Lynch, aided by their common Pacific Northwest backgrounds, and succeeded in winning the part.
After Dune flopped and met with poor reviews from critics, MacLachlan found it difficult to find work. He moved to Los Angeles in 1985, and auditioned for several films, including Top Gun, but failed to win any roles, eventually dropping his agent, Creative Artists Agency.
Finally, Lynch cast MacLachlan in the starring role of Jeffrey Beaumont in Blue Velvet (1986), which was received more positively. Reflecting on his enduring relationship with Lynch in a 2012 interview, MacLachlan remarked: "David Lynch plucked me from obscurity. He cast me as the lead in Dune and Blue Velvet, and people have seen me as this boy-next-door-cooking-up-something-weird-in-the-basement ever since." Lynch biographer Chris Rodley described MacLachlan as an on-screen incarnation of Lynch's own persona.
He starred in the 1987 science fiction action film The Hidden as FBI agent Lloyd Gallagher.
MacLachlan further collaborated with Lynch in the ABC television series Twin Peaks (1990–91), playing Special Agent Dale Cooper, reprising that role for Lynch's 1992 prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. Lynch commented on those roles in a GQ story about MacLachlan: "Kyle plays innocents who are interested in the mysteries of life. He's the person you trust enough to go into a strange world with". MacLachlan also said he considered Lynch one of his mentors that had a "monumental impact" on him. Lynch, who is known to allow his collaborative partners a large degree of control over their roles when working with him, rewrote scenes in Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks at the request of MacLachlan, who felt they were not right for his characters.
MacLachlan appeared as musician Ray Manzarek in Oliver Stone's 1991 film The Doors, about the band of the same name. He had previously turned down Stone's offer to play Chris in the 1986 movie Platoon, which ultimately went to Charlie Sheen. In the 1993 film version of Franz Kafka's The Trial, with a screenplay by Harold Pinter, MacLachlan played the lead role of the persecuted Josef K.
MacLachlan co-starred with Samuel L. Jackson as a rookie prison guard in John Frankenheimer's 1994 Emmy-winning HBO film Against the Wall about the Attica prison riots. In 1994, he was also featured in The Flintstones, a live-action movie adaptation of the animated sitcom of the same name, portraying Cliff Vandercave, the movie's primary antagonist, opposite John Goodman and Rick Moranis. He played the role of a killer in Tales from the Crypt, in 1991.
In 1995, MacLachlan starred in Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls. The movie was heavily panned by critics and it collected a record seven Golden Raspberry Awards. MacLachlan recalls that when he watched Showgirls for the first time before the premiere, he thought it was "horrible". But he later realised that the movie was "inadvertently funny" and embraced for its campiness. According to MacLachlan, although he skipped the movie's press tour, he had sat through the whole screening, contrary to reports that he walked out.
From 2000 to 2002, MacLachlan had a recurring role in the American television series Sex and the City, portraying Dr. Trey MacDougal, the one-time husband of Charlotte York (Kristin Davis). MacLachlan played King Claudius in the 2000 film Hamlet based on William Shakespeare's play. In the video game Grand Theft Auto III released in 2001, he voiced the character of the sociopathic real-estate developer Donald Love. In 2002, he made his West End debut in John Kolvenbach's On an Average Day with Woody Harrelson.
In 2003, MacLachlan made his Broadway debut as Aston in Harold Pinter's The Caretaker with Patrick Stewart. He portrayed the spirit of Cary Grant in the 2004 film Touch of Pink. His resemblance to Grant had been previously noted in an episode of Twin Peaks. That same year he also had a guest role in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, in which he played a psychiatrist who shot and killed a sociopathic child who had murdered his son. He was a guest star in the show again in 2011, as a politician whose son is involved in a rape accusation.
In 2006, after starring in the short-lived In Justice, MacLachlan appeared in Desperate Housewives as the mysterious dentist Orson Hodge. He first appeared during the show's second season, and became a full-time cast member at the start of season three. In 2007, MacLachlan was one of the presenters at the London leg of Live Earth benefit concerts. He appeared in the 2008 film The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. In the English version of the cult 2006 Norwegian animated film Free Jimmy released in 2008, he voiced the character of "Marius", a militant animal rights activist.
In 2010, after four years of playing Orson Hodge, MacLachlan decided to quit Desperate Housewives as he found the commute from his home in New York City to the set in Los Angeles increasingly difficult since becoming a father in 2008. However, he returned as a guest star in 2012 for season eight, the final season of Desperate Housewives. He also guest starred as George "The Captain" Van Smoot in seasons six, eight and nine of How I Met Your Mother, from 2010 until 2014. He would reprise the role in the first season of the spinoff How I Met Your Father in 2022.
From 2011 to 2018, he played the role of Mayor of Portland, Oregon, in the IFC comedy Portlandia. After the end of the short-lived 2012 series Made in Jersey, where he starred as lawyer Donovan Stark, he was cast as a guest star in The Good Wife. In 2013 and 2014 he appeared as prosecutor Josh Perotti in four episodes of The Good Wife. In 2014 and 2015 he appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe television series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as villain Calvin Johnson / The Doctor. In 2015, he voiced Riley Anderson's father in the Pixar animated feature Inside Out. In January 2015, it was announced that MacLachlan would return as Special Agent Dale Cooper for the new limited television series Twin Peaks: The Return, which debuted on May 21, 2017. In an interview, MacLachlan said he doesn't understand all of Twin Peaks, and that fans understand it much more than him.
In 2018, MacLachlan starred as the main antagonist Isaac Izard in the fantasy-horror family film The House with a Clock in its Walls.
MacLachlan has won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Drama (1990) and was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film in 2017, for playing the role of Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks. He has also been nominated for two Emmy Awards for Twin Peaks.
With many nominations for various other acting awards, he won the Dorian Awards for best TV Performance of the Year and the Saturn Award for Best Actor on Television (see list).
A dedicated wine lover, Kyle is partners with vintner Eric Dunham in Pursued by Bear, a label of Dunham Cellars in Walla Walla, Washington that started in 2005. The name, suggested over dinner by Fred Savage, comes from a stage direction ("Exit, pursued by a bear") in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. It is regarded as one of Washington's highest rated wine labels. Pursued By Bear sells five wines: Twin Bear, Pursued by Bear, Baby Bear, Blushing Bear and Bear Cub.
MacLachlan was devastated when his mother died of ovarian cancer in 1986, aged 53, shortly before Blue Velvet was released. She had been diagnosed while he was filming Dune in 1983, and delayed informing him of the diagnosis. His father died of post-surgery complications in 2011.
He was in a relationship with Blue Velvet co-star Laura Dern for three-and-a-half years, from 1985 to 1989. Subsequently, he was in a relationship with Twin Peaks co-star Lara Flynn Boyle for two-and-a-half years. In 1992, after his relationship with Boyle ended, he began a relationship with supermodel Linda Evangelista after they met at a photo shoot they did together for Barneys New York. According to MacLachlan, they had been engaged for a few years when their six-year relationship ended in 1998.
A year later, he met and began a relationship with publicist Desiree Gruber. Gruber runs her own public relations agency; she became an executive producer of Project Runway in 2004. MacLachlan moved to New York City because he was filming Sex and the City and Gruber was based there. They were married on April 20, 2002. Their son was born on July 25, 2008. The family has residences in Los Angeles and New York.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Kyle Merritt MacLachlan (/məkˈlɒklən/ mək-LOK-lən; born Kyle Merritt McLachlan on February 22, 1959) is an American actor. He is best known for his collaborations with American filmmaker David Lynch, starring as Dale Cooper on the television series Twin Peaks (1990–1991; 2017), for which he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Drama, and its film prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992). MacLachlan is also known for his roles as Paul Atreides in Dune (1984) and Jeffrey Beaumont in Blue Velvet (1986), both also directed by Lynch. His other film roles include Lloyd Gallagher in The Hidden (1987), Ray Manzarek in The Doors (1991), Cliff Vandercave in The Flintstones (1994), Zack Carey in Showgirls (1995) and the voice of Riley's father in Inside Out (2015).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "MacLachlan has had prominent roles on television such as Trey MacDougal on Sex and the City (2000–2002), Orson Hodge on Desperate Housewives (2006–2012), The Captain on How I Met Your Mother (2010–2014) and How I Met Your Father (2022), the Mayor of Portland on Portlandia (2011–2018), and Calvin Johnson on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2014–2015).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "MacLachlan was born Kyle Merritt McLachlan (subsequently changing the spelling of his name to reflect his Scottish heritage), at Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital in Yakima, Washington. His mother, Catherine (née Stone; 1934–1986), was a public relations director for a school district and a homemaker who was active in community arts programs. His father, Kent Alan McLachlan (1933–2011), was a stockbroker and lawyer. Kyle has Scottish, Cornish, and German ancestry. He grew up in Yakima, the eldest of three boys. His two younger brothers, Craig and Kent Jr., live in the Seattle area. MacLachlan graduated from Eisenhower High School in Yakima. His mother left his father when he was 17, and his parents divorced in his senior year of high school.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "MacLachlan was introduced to stage acting by his mother when she became director of a youth theater program for teenagers that she helped set up in Yakima. She also sent him to piano lessons from the age of 9 to 14, when he also began to study classical singing. While in high school, he performed in plays and in class musicals, acting in his first play aged 15. For his senior year, MacLachlan played the lead role of Brindsley Miller in a production of Peter Shaffer's one-act play Black Comedy and also performed as Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady. In 1982, he graduated cum laude with a BFA in drama from the University of Washington (UW), as a student of the Professional Actor Training Program. He initially planned to major in business and also studied classical voice at UW, but changed his focus to acting.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The first film MacLachlan worked on was The Changeling (1980), part of which was shot on the University of Washington campus. He was paid $10 as an extra.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In the summer of 1981, after his sophomore year at college, he played the lead in three roles at the Old Lyric Repertory Theatre in Logan, Utah and the following summer with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "MacLachlan made his film debut in Dune (1984) in the starring role of Paul Atreides. While still in college, MacLachlan was appearing in Molière's Tartuffe in a Seattle-area theater. A casting agent for Dune producer Dino de Laurentiis was looking for a young actor to star in the film, and multiple people recommended MacLachlan. After several screen tests, he hit it off with director David Lynch, aided by their common Pacific Northwest backgrounds, and succeeded in winning the part.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "After Dune flopped and met with poor reviews from critics, MacLachlan found it difficult to find work. He moved to Los Angeles in 1985, and auditioned for several films, including Top Gun, but failed to win any roles, eventually dropping his agent, Creative Artists Agency.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Finally, Lynch cast MacLachlan in the starring role of Jeffrey Beaumont in Blue Velvet (1986), which was received more positively. Reflecting on his enduring relationship with Lynch in a 2012 interview, MacLachlan remarked: \"David Lynch plucked me from obscurity. He cast me as the lead in Dune and Blue Velvet, and people have seen me as this boy-next-door-cooking-up-something-weird-in-the-basement ever since.\" Lynch biographer Chris Rodley described MacLachlan as an on-screen incarnation of Lynch's own persona.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "He starred in the 1987 science fiction action film The Hidden as FBI agent Lloyd Gallagher.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "MacLachlan further collaborated with Lynch in the ABC television series Twin Peaks (1990–91), playing Special Agent Dale Cooper, reprising that role for Lynch's 1992 prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. Lynch commented on those roles in a GQ story about MacLachlan: \"Kyle plays innocents who are interested in the mysteries of life. He's the person you trust enough to go into a strange world with\". MacLachlan also said he considered Lynch one of his mentors that had a \"monumental impact\" on him. Lynch, who is known to allow his collaborative partners a large degree of control over their roles when working with him, rewrote scenes in Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks at the request of MacLachlan, who felt they were not right for his characters.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "MacLachlan appeared as musician Ray Manzarek in Oliver Stone's 1991 film The Doors, about the band of the same name. He had previously turned down Stone's offer to play Chris in the 1986 movie Platoon, which ultimately went to Charlie Sheen. In the 1993 film version of Franz Kafka's The Trial, with a screenplay by Harold Pinter, MacLachlan played the lead role of the persecuted Josef K.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "MacLachlan co-starred with Samuel L. Jackson as a rookie prison guard in John Frankenheimer's 1994 Emmy-winning HBO film Against the Wall about the Attica prison riots. In 1994, he was also featured in The Flintstones, a live-action movie adaptation of the animated sitcom of the same name, portraying Cliff Vandercave, the movie's primary antagonist, opposite John Goodman and Rick Moranis. He played the role of a killer in Tales from the Crypt, in 1991.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In 1995, MacLachlan starred in Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls. The movie was heavily panned by critics and it collected a record seven Golden Raspberry Awards. MacLachlan recalls that when he watched Showgirls for the first time before the premiere, he thought it was \"horrible\". But he later realised that the movie was \"inadvertently funny\" and embraced for its campiness. According to MacLachlan, although he skipped the movie's press tour, he had sat through the whole screening, contrary to reports that he walked out.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "From 2000 to 2002, MacLachlan had a recurring role in the American television series Sex and the City, portraying Dr. Trey MacDougal, the one-time husband of Charlotte York (Kristin Davis). MacLachlan played King Claudius in the 2000 film Hamlet based on William Shakespeare's play. In the video game Grand Theft Auto III released in 2001, he voiced the character of the sociopathic real-estate developer Donald Love. In 2002, he made his West End debut in John Kolvenbach's On an Average Day with Woody Harrelson.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In 2003, MacLachlan made his Broadway debut as Aston in Harold Pinter's The Caretaker with Patrick Stewart. He portrayed the spirit of Cary Grant in the 2004 film Touch of Pink. His resemblance to Grant had been previously noted in an episode of Twin Peaks. That same year he also had a guest role in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, in which he played a psychiatrist who shot and killed a sociopathic child who had murdered his son. He was a guest star in the show again in 2011, as a politician whose son is involved in a rape accusation.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In 2006, after starring in the short-lived In Justice, MacLachlan appeared in Desperate Housewives as the mysterious dentist Orson Hodge. He first appeared during the show's second season, and became a full-time cast member at the start of season three. In 2007, MacLachlan was one of the presenters at the London leg of Live Earth benefit concerts. He appeared in the 2008 film The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. In the English version of the cult 2006 Norwegian animated film Free Jimmy released in 2008, he voiced the character of \"Marius\", a militant animal rights activist.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In 2010, after four years of playing Orson Hodge, MacLachlan decided to quit Desperate Housewives as he found the commute from his home in New York City to the set in Los Angeles increasingly difficult since becoming a father in 2008. However, he returned as a guest star in 2012 for season eight, the final season of Desperate Housewives. He also guest starred as George \"The Captain\" Van Smoot in seasons six, eight and nine of How I Met Your Mother, from 2010 until 2014. He would reprise the role in the first season of the spinoff How I Met Your Father in 2022.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "From 2011 to 2018, he played the role of Mayor of Portland, Oregon, in the IFC comedy Portlandia. After the end of the short-lived 2012 series Made in Jersey, where he starred as lawyer Donovan Stark, he was cast as a guest star in The Good Wife. In 2013 and 2014 he appeared as prosecutor Josh Perotti in four episodes of The Good Wife. In 2014 and 2015 he appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe television series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as villain Calvin Johnson / The Doctor. In 2015, he voiced Riley Anderson's father in the Pixar animated feature Inside Out. In January 2015, it was announced that MacLachlan would return as Special Agent Dale Cooper for the new limited television series Twin Peaks: The Return, which debuted on May 21, 2017. In an interview, MacLachlan said he doesn't understand all of Twin Peaks, and that fans understand it much more than him.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In 2018, MacLachlan starred as the main antagonist Isaac Izard in the fantasy-horror family film The House with a Clock in its Walls.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "MacLachlan has won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Drama (1990) and was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film in 2017, for playing the role of Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks. He has also been nominated for two Emmy Awards for Twin Peaks.",
"title": "Awards"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "With many nominations for various other acting awards, he won the Dorian Awards for best TV Performance of the Year and the Saturn Award for Best Actor on Television (see list).",
"title": "Awards"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "A dedicated wine lover, Kyle is partners with vintner Eric Dunham in Pursued by Bear, a label of Dunham Cellars in Walla Walla, Washington that started in 2005. The name, suggested over dinner by Fred Savage, comes from a stage direction (\"Exit, pursued by a bear\") in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. It is regarded as one of Washington's highest rated wine labels. Pursued By Bear sells five wines: Twin Bear, Pursued by Bear, Baby Bear, Blushing Bear and Bear Cub.",
"title": "Winemaking"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "MacLachlan was devastated when his mother died of ovarian cancer in 1986, aged 53, shortly before Blue Velvet was released. She had been diagnosed while he was filming Dune in 1983, and delayed informing him of the diagnosis. His father died of post-surgery complications in 2011.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "He was in a relationship with Blue Velvet co-star Laura Dern for three-and-a-half years, from 1985 to 1989. Subsequently, he was in a relationship with Twin Peaks co-star Lara Flynn Boyle for two-and-a-half years. In 1992, after his relationship with Boyle ended, he began a relationship with supermodel Linda Evangelista after they met at a photo shoot they did together for Barneys New York. According to MacLachlan, they had been engaged for a few years when their six-year relationship ended in 1998.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "A year later, he met and began a relationship with publicist Desiree Gruber. Gruber runs her own public relations agency; she became an executive producer of Project Runway in 2004. MacLachlan moved to New York City because he was filming Sex and the City and Gruber was based there. They were married on April 20, 2002. Their son was born on July 25, 2008. The family has residences in Los Angeles and New York.",
"title": "Personal life"
}
] |
Kyle Merritt MacLachlan is an American actor. He is best known for his collaborations with American filmmaker David Lynch, starring as Dale Cooper on the television series Twin Peaks, for which he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Drama, and its film prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992). MacLachlan is also known for his roles as Paul Atreides in Dune (1984) and Jeffrey Beaumont in Blue Velvet (1986), both also directed by Lynch. His other film roles include Lloyd Gallagher in The Hidden (1987), Ray Manzarek in The Doors (1991), Cliff Vandercave in The Flintstones (1994), Zack Carey in Showgirls (1995) and the voice of Riley's father in Inside Out (2015). MacLachlan has had prominent roles on television such as Trey MacDougal on Sex and the City (2000–2002), Orson Hodge on Desperate Housewives (2006–2012), The Captain on How I Met Your Mother (2010–2014) and How I Met Your Father (2022), the Mayor of Portland on Portlandia (2011–2018), and Calvin Johnson on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2014–2015).
|
2001-07-25T15:46:39Z
|
2023-12-03T07:41:37Z
|
[
"Template:Infobox person",
"Template:IPAc-en",
"Template:TableTBA",
"Template:Won",
"Template:Cite episode",
"Template:Commons category",
"Template:Use mdy dates",
"Template:Cbignore",
"Template:Cite magazine",
"Template:Citation",
"Template:IMDb name",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Abbr",
"Template:Nom",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Respell",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:GoldenGlobeBestActorTVDrama 1990-2009",
"Template:Saturn Award for Best Actor on Television",
"Template:Short description"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyle_MacLachlan
|
16,759 |
Kevlar
|
Kevlar (para-aramid) is a strong, heat-resistant synthetic fiber, related to other aramids such as Nomex and Technora. Developed by Stephanie Kwolek at DuPont in 1965, the high-strength material was first used commercially in the early 1970s as a replacement for steel in racing tires. It is typically spun into ropes or fabric sheets that can be used as such, or as an ingredient in composite material components.
Kevlar has many applications, ranging from bicycle tires and racing sails to bulletproof vests, all due to its high tensile strength-to-weight ratio; by this measure it is five times stronger than steel. It is also used to make modern marching drumheads that withstand high impact; and for mooring lines and other underwater applications.
A similar fiber called Twaron with the same chemical structure was developed by Akzo in the 1970s; commercial production started in 1986, and Twaron is now manufactured by Teijin.
Poly-paraphenylene terephthalamide (K29) – branded Kevlar – was invented by the American chemist Stephanie Kwolek while working for DuPont, in anticipation of a gasoline shortage. In 1964, her group began searching for a new lightweight strong fiber to use for light, but strong, tires. The polymers she had been working with at the time, poly-p-phenylene-terephthalate and polybenzamide, formed liquid crystals while in solution, something unique to those polymers at the time.
The solution was "cloudy, opalescent upon being stirred, and of low viscosity" and usually was thrown away. However, Kwolek persuaded the technician, Charles Smullen, who ran the spinneret, to test her solution, and was amazed to find that the fiber did not break, unlike nylon. Her supervisor and her laboratory director understood the significance of her discovery and a new field of polymer chemistry quickly arose. By 1971, modern Kevlar was introduced. However, Kwolek was not very involved in developing the applications of Kevlar.
In 1971, Lester Shubin, who was then the Director of Science and Technology for the National Institute for Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice, suggested using Kevlar to replace nylon in bullet-proof vests. Prior to the introduction of Kevlar, flak jackets made of nylon had provided much more limited protection to users. Shubin later recalled how the idea developed: "We folded it over a couple of times and shot at it. The bullets didn't go through." In tests, they strapped Kevlar onto anesthetized goats and shot at their hearts, spinal cords, livers and lungs. They monitored the goats' heart rate and blood gas levels to check for lung injuries. After 24 hours, one goat died and the others had wounds that were not life threatening. Shubin received a $5 million grant to research the use of the fabric in bullet-proof vests.
Kevlar 149 was invented by Jacob Lahijani of Dupont in the 1980s.
Kevlar is synthesized in solution from the monomers 1,4-phenylene-diamine (para-phenylenediamine) and terephthaloyl chloride in a condensation reaction yielding hydrochloric acid as a byproduct. The result has liquid-crystalline behavior, and mechanical drawing orients the polymer chains in the fiber's direction. Hexamethylphosphoramide (HMPA) was the solvent initially used for the polymerization, but for safety reasons, DuPont replaced it by a solution of N-methyl-pyrrolidone and calcium chloride. As this process had been patented by Akzo (see above) in the production of Twaron, a patent war ensued.
Kevlar production is expensive because of the difficulties arising from using concentrated sulfuric acid, needed to keep the water-insoluble polymer in solution during its synthesis and spinning.
Several grades of Kevlar are available:
The ultraviolet component of sunlight degrades and decomposes Kevlar, a problem known as UV degradation, and so it is rarely used outdoors without protection against sunlight.
When Kevlar is spun, the resulting fiber has a tensile strength of about 3,620 MPa (525,000 psi), and a relative density of 1.44 (0.052 lb/in). The polymer owes its high strength to the many inter-chain bonds. These inter-molecular hydrogen bonds form between the carbonyl groups and NH centers. Additional strength is derived from aromatic stacking interactions between adjacent strands. These interactions have a greater influence on Kevlar than the van der Waals interactions and chain length that typically influence the properties of other synthetic polymers and fibers such as ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene. The presence of salts and certain other impurities, especially calcium, could interfere with the strand interactions and care is taken to avoid inclusion in its production. Kevlar's structure consists of relatively rigid molecules which tend to form mostly planar sheet-like structures rather like silk protein.
Kevlar maintains its strength and resilience down to cryogenic temperatures (−196 °C (−320.8 °F)): in fact, it is slightly stronger at low temperatures. At higher temperatures the tensile strength is immediately reduced by about 10–20%, and after some hours the strength progressively reduces further. For example: enduring 160 °C (320 °F) for 500 hours, its strength is reduced by about 10%; and enduring 260 °C (500 °F) for 70 hours, its strength is reduced by about 50%.
Kevlar is often used in the field of cryogenics for its low thermal conductivity and high strength relative to other materials for suspension purposes. It is most often used to suspend a paramagnetic salt enclosure from a superconducting magnet mandrel in order to minimize any heat leaks to the paramagnetic material. It is also used as a thermal standoff or structural support where low heat leaks are desired.
A thin Kevlar window has been used by the NA48 experiment at CERN to separate a vacuum vessel from a vessel at nearly atmospheric pressure, both 192 cm (76 in) in diameter. The window has provided vacuum tightness combined with reasonably small amount of material (only 0.3% to 0.4% of radiation length).
Kevlar is a well-known component of personal armor such as combat helmets, ballistic face masks, and ballistic vests. The PASGT helmet and vest used by United States military forces, use Kevlar as a key component in their construction. Other military uses include bulletproof face masks and spall liners used to protect the crews of armoured fighting vehicles. Nimitz-class aircraft carriers use Kevlar reinforcement in vital areas. Civilian applications include: high heat resistance uniforms worn by firefighters, body armour worn by police officers, security, and police tactical teams such as SWAT.
Kevlar is used to manufacture gloves, sleeves, jackets, chaps and other articles of clothing designed to protect users from cuts, abrasions and heat. Kevlar-based protective gear is often considerably lighter and thinner than equivalent gear made of more traditional materials.
It is used for motorcycle safety clothing, especially in the areas featuring padding such as the shoulders and elbows. In the sport of fencing it is used in the protective jackets, breeches, plastrons and the bib of the masks. It is increasingly being used in the peto, the padded covering which protects the picadors' horses in the bullring. Speed skaters also frequently wear an under-layer of Kevlar fabric to prevent potential wounds from skates in the event of a fall or collision.
In kyudo, or Japanese archery, it may be used for bow strings, as an alternative to the more expensive hemp. It is one of the main materials used for paraglider suspension lines. It is used as an inner lining for some bicycle tires to prevent punctures. In table tennis, plies of Kevlar are added to custom ply blades, or paddles, in order to increase bounce and reduce weight. Tennis racquets are sometimes strung with Kevlar. It is used in sails for high performance racing boats.
In 2013, with advancements in technology, Nike used Kevlar in shoes for the first time. It launched the Elite II Series, with enhancements to its earlier version of basketball shoes by using Kevlar in the anterior as well as the shoe laces. This was done to decrease the elasticity of the tip of the shoe in contrast to the nylon conventionally used, as Kevlar expanded by about 1% against nylon which expanded by about 30%. Shoes in this range included LeBron, HyperDunk and Zoom Kobe VII. However these shoes were launched at a price range much higher than average cost of basketball shoes. It was also used in the laces for the Adidas F50 adiZero Prime football boot.
Several companies, including Continental AG, manufacture cycle tires with Kevlar to protect against punctures.
Folding-bead bicycle tires, introduced to cycling by Tom Ritchey in 1984, use Kevlar as a bead in place of steel for weight reduction and strength. A side effect of the folding bead is a reduction in shelf and floor space needed to display cycle tires in a retail environment, as they are folded and placed in small boxes.
Kevlar has also been found to have useful acoustic properties for loudspeaker cones, specifically for bass and mid range drive units. Additionally, Kevlar has been used as a strength member in fiber optic cables such as the ones used for audio data transmissions.
Kevlar can be used as an acoustic core on bows for string instruments. Kevlar's physical properties provide strength, flexibility, and stability for the bow's user. To date, the only manufacturer of this type of bow is CodaBow.
Kevlar is also presently used as a material for tailcords (a.k.a. tailpiece adjusters), which connect the tailpiece to the endpin of bowed string instruments.
Kevlar is sometimes used as a material on marching snare drums. It allows for an extremely high amount of tension, resulting in a cleaner sound. There is usually a resin poured onto the Kevlar to make the head airtight, and a nylon top layer to provide a flat striking surface. This is one of the primary types of marching snare drum heads. Remo's Falam Slam patch is made with Kevlar and is used to reinforce bass drum heads where the beater strikes.
Kevlar is used in the woodwind reeds of Fibracell. The material of these reeds is a composite of aerospace materials designed to duplicate the way nature constructs cane reed. Very stiff but sound absorbing Kevlar fibers are suspended in a lightweight resin formulation.
Kevlar is sometimes used in structural components of cars, especially high-value performance cars such as the Ferrari F40.
The chopped fiber has been used as a replacement for asbestos in brake pads. Aramids such as Kevlar release less airborne fibres than asbestos brakes and do not have the carcinogenic properties associated with asbestos.
Wicks for fire dancing props are made of composite materials with Kevlar in them. Kevlar by itself does not absorb fuel very well, so it is blended with other materials such as fiberglass or cotton. Kevlar's high heat resistance allows the wicks to be reused many times.
Kevlar is sometimes used as a substitute for Teflon in some non-stick frying pans.
Kevlar fiber is used in rope and in cable, where the fibers are kept parallel within a polyethylene sleeve. The cables have been used in suspension bridges such as the bridge at Aberfeldy, Scotland. They have also been used to stabilize cracking concrete cooling towers by circumferential application followed by tensioning to close the cracks. Kevlar is widely used as a protective outer sheath for optical fiber cable, as its strength protects the cable from damage and kinking. When used in this application it is commonly known by the trademarked name Parafil.
Kevlar was used by scientists at Georgia Institute of Technology as a base textile for an experiment in electricity-producing clothing. This was done by weaving zinc oxide nanowires into the fabric. If successful, the new fabric will generate about 80 milliwatts per square meter.
A retractable roof of over 60,000 sq ft (5,600 m) of Kevlar was a key part of the design of the Olympic Stadium, Montreal for the 1976 Summer Olympics. It was spectacularly unsuccessful, as it was completed 10 years late and replaced just 10 years later in May 1998 after a series of problems.
Kevlar can be found as a reinforcing layer in rubber bellows expansion joints and rubber hoses, for use in high temperature applications, and for its high strength. It is also found as a braid layer used on the outside of hose assemblies, to add protection against sharp objects.
Some cellphones (including the Motorola RAZR Family, the Motorola Droid Maxx, OnePlus 2 and Pocophone F1) have a Kevlar backplate, chosen over other materials such as carbon fiber due to its resilience and lack of interference with signal transmission.
The Kevlar fiber/epoxy matrix composite materials can be used in marine current turbines (MCT) or wind turbines due to their high specific strength and light weight compared to other fibers.
Aramid fibers are widely used for reinforcing composite materials, often in combination with carbon fiber and glass fiber. The matrix for high performance composites is usually epoxy resin. Typical applications include monocoque bodies for Formula 1 cars, helicopter rotor blades, tennis, table tennis, badminton and squash rackets, kayaks, cricket bats, and field hockey, ice hockey and lacrosse sticks.
Kevlar 149, the strongest fiber and most crystalline in structure, is an alternative in certain parts of aircraft construction. The wing leading edge is one application, Kevlar being less prone than carbon or glass fiber to break in bird collisions.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Kevlar (para-aramid) is a strong, heat-resistant synthetic fiber, related to other aramids such as Nomex and Technora. Developed by Stephanie Kwolek at DuPont in 1965, the high-strength material was first used commercially in the early 1970s as a replacement for steel in racing tires. It is typically spun into ropes or fabric sheets that can be used as such, or as an ingredient in composite material components.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Kevlar has many applications, ranging from bicycle tires and racing sails to bulletproof vests, all due to its high tensile strength-to-weight ratio; by this measure it is five times stronger than steel. It is also used to make modern marching drumheads that withstand high impact; and for mooring lines and other underwater applications.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "A similar fiber called Twaron with the same chemical structure was developed by Akzo in the 1970s; commercial production started in 1986, and Twaron is now manufactured by Teijin.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Poly-paraphenylene terephthalamide (K29) – branded Kevlar – was invented by the American chemist Stephanie Kwolek while working for DuPont, in anticipation of a gasoline shortage. In 1964, her group began searching for a new lightweight strong fiber to use for light, but strong, tires. The polymers she had been working with at the time, poly-p-phenylene-terephthalate and polybenzamide, formed liquid crystals while in solution, something unique to those polymers at the time.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The solution was \"cloudy, opalescent upon being stirred, and of low viscosity\" and usually was thrown away. However, Kwolek persuaded the technician, Charles Smullen, who ran the spinneret, to test her solution, and was amazed to find that the fiber did not break, unlike nylon. Her supervisor and her laboratory director understood the significance of her discovery and a new field of polymer chemistry quickly arose. By 1971, modern Kevlar was introduced. However, Kwolek was not very involved in developing the applications of Kevlar.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In 1971, Lester Shubin, who was then the Director of Science and Technology for the National Institute for Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice, suggested using Kevlar to replace nylon in bullet-proof vests. Prior to the introduction of Kevlar, flak jackets made of nylon had provided much more limited protection to users. Shubin later recalled how the idea developed: \"We folded it over a couple of times and shot at it. The bullets didn't go through.\" In tests, they strapped Kevlar onto anesthetized goats and shot at their hearts, spinal cords, livers and lungs. They monitored the goats' heart rate and blood gas levels to check for lung injuries. After 24 hours, one goat died and the others had wounds that were not life threatening. Shubin received a $5 million grant to research the use of the fabric in bullet-proof vests.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Kevlar 149 was invented by Jacob Lahijani of Dupont in the 1980s.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Kevlar is synthesized in solution from the monomers 1,4-phenylene-diamine (para-phenylenediamine) and terephthaloyl chloride in a condensation reaction yielding hydrochloric acid as a byproduct. The result has liquid-crystalline behavior, and mechanical drawing orients the polymer chains in the fiber's direction. Hexamethylphosphoramide (HMPA) was the solvent initially used for the polymerization, but for safety reasons, DuPont replaced it by a solution of N-methyl-pyrrolidone and calcium chloride. As this process had been patented by Akzo (see above) in the production of Twaron, a patent war ensued.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Kevlar production is expensive because of the difficulties arising from using concentrated sulfuric acid, needed to keep the water-insoluble polymer in solution during its synthesis and spinning.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Several grades of Kevlar are available:",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The ultraviolet component of sunlight degrades and decomposes Kevlar, a problem known as UV degradation, and so it is rarely used outdoors without protection against sunlight.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "When Kevlar is spun, the resulting fiber has a tensile strength of about 3,620 MPa (525,000 psi), and a relative density of 1.44 (0.052 lb/in). The polymer owes its high strength to the many inter-chain bonds. These inter-molecular hydrogen bonds form between the carbonyl groups and NH centers. Additional strength is derived from aromatic stacking interactions between adjacent strands. These interactions have a greater influence on Kevlar than the van der Waals interactions and chain length that typically influence the properties of other synthetic polymers and fibers such as ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene. The presence of salts and certain other impurities, especially calcium, could interfere with the strand interactions and care is taken to avoid inclusion in its production. Kevlar's structure consists of relatively rigid molecules which tend to form mostly planar sheet-like structures rather like silk protein.",
"title": "Structure and properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Kevlar maintains its strength and resilience down to cryogenic temperatures (−196 °C (−320.8 °F)): in fact, it is slightly stronger at low temperatures. At higher temperatures the tensile strength is immediately reduced by about 10–20%, and after some hours the strength progressively reduces further. For example: enduring 160 °C (320 °F) for 500 hours, its strength is reduced by about 10%; and enduring 260 °C (500 °F) for 70 hours, its strength is reduced by about 50%.",
"title": "Thermal properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Kevlar is often used in the field of cryogenics for its low thermal conductivity and high strength relative to other materials for suspension purposes. It is most often used to suspend a paramagnetic salt enclosure from a superconducting magnet mandrel in order to minimize any heat leaks to the paramagnetic material. It is also used as a thermal standoff or structural support where low heat leaks are desired.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "A thin Kevlar window has been used by the NA48 experiment at CERN to separate a vacuum vessel from a vessel at nearly atmospheric pressure, both 192 cm (76 in) in diameter. The window has provided vacuum tightness combined with reasonably small amount of material (only 0.3% to 0.4% of radiation length).",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Kevlar is a well-known component of personal armor such as combat helmets, ballistic face masks, and ballistic vests. The PASGT helmet and vest used by United States military forces, use Kevlar as a key component in their construction. Other military uses include bulletproof face masks and spall liners used to protect the crews of armoured fighting vehicles. Nimitz-class aircraft carriers use Kevlar reinforcement in vital areas. Civilian applications include: high heat resistance uniforms worn by firefighters, body armour worn by police officers, security, and police tactical teams such as SWAT.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Kevlar is used to manufacture gloves, sleeves, jackets, chaps and other articles of clothing designed to protect users from cuts, abrasions and heat. Kevlar-based protective gear is often considerably lighter and thinner than equivalent gear made of more traditional materials.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "It is used for motorcycle safety clothing, especially in the areas featuring padding such as the shoulders and elbows. In the sport of fencing it is used in the protective jackets, breeches, plastrons and the bib of the masks. It is increasingly being used in the peto, the padded covering which protects the picadors' horses in the bullring. Speed skaters also frequently wear an under-layer of Kevlar fabric to prevent potential wounds from skates in the event of a fall or collision.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In kyudo, or Japanese archery, it may be used for bow strings, as an alternative to the more expensive hemp. It is one of the main materials used for paraglider suspension lines. It is used as an inner lining for some bicycle tires to prevent punctures. In table tennis, plies of Kevlar are added to custom ply blades, or paddles, in order to increase bounce and reduce weight. Tennis racquets are sometimes strung with Kevlar. It is used in sails for high performance racing boats.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In 2013, with advancements in technology, Nike used Kevlar in shoes for the first time. It launched the Elite II Series, with enhancements to its earlier version of basketball shoes by using Kevlar in the anterior as well as the shoe laces. This was done to decrease the elasticity of the tip of the shoe in contrast to the nylon conventionally used, as Kevlar expanded by about 1% against nylon which expanded by about 30%. Shoes in this range included LeBron, HyperDunk and Zoom Kobe VII. However these shoes were launched at a price range much higher than average cost of basketball shoes. It was also used in the laces for the Adidas F50 adiZero Prime football boot.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Several companies, including Continental AG, manufacture cycle tires with Kevlar to protect against punctures.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Folding-bead bicycle tires, introduced to cycling by Tom Ritchey in 1984, use Kevlar as a bead in place of steel for weight reduction and strength. A side effect of the folding bead is a reduction in shelf and floor space needed to display cycle tires in a retail environment, as they are folded and placed in small boxes.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Kevlar has also been found to have useful acoustic properties for loudspeaker cones, specifically for bass and mid range drive units. Additionally, Kevlar has been used as a strength member in fiber optic cables such as the ones used for audio data transmissions.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Kevlar can be used as an acoustic core on bows for string instruments. Kevlar's physical properties provide strength, flexibility, and stability for the bow's user. To date, the only manufacturer of this type of bow is CodaBow.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Kevlar is also presently used as a material for tailcords (a.k.a. tailpiece adjusters), which connect the tailpiece to the endpin of bowed string instruments.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Kevlar is sometimes used as a material on marching snare drums. It allows for an extremely high amount of tension, resulting in a cleaner sound. There is usually a resin poured onto the Kevlar to make the head airtight, and a nylon top layer to provide a flat striking surface. This is one of the primary types of marching snare drum heads. Remo's Falam Slam patch is made with Kevlar and is used to reinforce bass drum heads where the beater strikes.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Kevlar is used in the woodwind reeds of Fibracell. The material of these reeds is a composite of aerospace materials designed to duplicate the way nature constructs cane reed. Very stiff but sound absorbing Kevlar fibers are suspended in a lightweight resin formulation.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Kevlar is sometimes used in structural components of cars, especially high-value performance cars such as the Ferrari F40.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The chopped fiber has been used as a replacement for asbestos in brake pads. Aramids such as Kevlar release less airborne fibres than asbestos brakes and do not have the carcinogenic properties associated with asbestos.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Wicks for fire dancing props are made of composite materials with Kevlar in them. Kevlar by itself does not absorb fuel very well, so it is blended with other materials such as fiberglass or cotton. Kevlar's high heat resistance allows the wicks to be reused many times.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Kevlar is sometimes used as a substitute for Teflon in some non-stick frying pans.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Kevlar fiber is used in rope and in cable, where the fibers are kept parallel within a polyethylene sleeve. The cables have been used in suspension bridges such as the bridge at Aberfeldy, Scotland. They have also been used to stabilize cracking concrete cooling towers by circumferential application followed by tensioning to close the cracks. Kevlar is widely used as a protective outer sheath for optical fiber cable, as its strength protects the cable from damage and kinking. When used in this application it is commonly known by the trademarked name Parafil.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Kevlar was used by scientists at Georgia Institute of Technology as a base textile for an experiment in electricity-producing clothing. This was done by weaving zinc oxide nanowires into the fabric. If successful, the new fabric will generate about 80 milliwatts per square meter.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "A retractable roof of over 60,000 sq ft (5,600 m) of Kevlar was a key part of the design of the Olympic Stadium, Montreal for the 1976 Summer Olympics. It was spectacularly unsuccessful, as it was completed 10 years late and replaced just 10 years later in May 1998 after a series of problems.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Kevlar can be found as a reinforcing layer in rubber bellows expansion joints and rubber hoses, for use in high temperature applications, and for its high strength. It is also found as a braid layer used on the outside of hose assemblies, to add protection against sharp objects.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Some cellphones (including the Motorola RAZR Family, the Motorola Droid Maxx, OnePlus 2 and Pocophone F1) have a Kevlar backplate, chosen over other materials such as carbon fiber due to its resilience and lack of interference with signal transmission.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The Kevlar fiber/epoxy matrix composite materials can be used in marine current turbines (MCT) or wind turbines due to their high specific strength and light weight compared to other fibers.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Aramid fibers are widely used for reinforcing composite materials, often in combination with carbon fiber and glass fiber. The matrix for high performance composites is usually epoxy resin. Typical applications include monocoque bodies for Formula 1 cars, helicopter rotor blades, tennis, table tennis, badminton and squash rackets, kayaks, cricket bats, and field hockey, ice hockey and lacrosse sticks.",
"title": "Composite materials"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Kevlar 149, the strongest fiber and most crystalline in structure, is an alternative in certain parts of aircraft construction. The wing leading edge is one application, Kevlar being less prone than carbon or glass fiber to break in bird collisions.",
"title": "Composite materials"
}
] |
Kevlar (para-aramid) is a strong, heat-resistant synthetic fiber, related to other aramids such as Nomex and Technora. Developed by Stephanie Kwolek at DuPont in 1965, the high-strength material was first used commercially in the early 1970s as a replacement for steel in racing tires. It is typically spun into ropes or fabric sheets that can be used as such, or as an ingredient in composite material components. Kevlar has many applications, ranging from bicycle tires and racing sails to bulletproof vests, all due to its high tensile strength-to-weight ratio; by this measure it is five times stronger than steel. It is also used to make modern marching drumheads that withstand high impact; and for mooring lines and other underwater applications. A similar fiber called Twaron with the same chemical structure was developed by Akzo in the 1970s; commercial production started in 1986, and Twaron is now manufactured by Teijin.
|
2001-07-26T10:12:44Z
|
2023-11-26T02:58:24Z
|
[
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Citation",
"Template:Official website",
"Template:US patent",
"Template:DuPont",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Chembox",
"Template:Verify inline",
"Template:Fibers",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Commons category",
"Template:Lead too short",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Pp-semi-indef",
"Template:Circular reference",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Structurae",
"Template:Cvt",
"Template:More citations needed section",
"Template:Citation needed"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevlar
|
16,760 |
Kosovo War
|
The Kosovo War was an armed conflict in Kosovo that lasted from 28 February 1998 until 11 June 1999. It was fought between the forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (i.e. Serbia and Montenegro), which controlled Kosovo before the war, and the Kosovo Albanian rebel group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The conflict ended when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intervened by beginning air strikes in March 1999 which resulted in Yugoslav forces withdrawing from Kosovo.
The KLA was formed in the early 1990s to fight against the discrimination of ethnic Albanians and the repression of political dissent by the Serbian authorities, which started after the suppression of Kosovo's autonomy by Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević in 1989. The KLA initiated its first campaign in 1995, after Kosovo's case was left out of the Dayton Agreement and it had become clear that President Rugova's strategy of peaceful resistance had failed to bring Kosovo into the international agenda. In June 1996, the group claimed responsibility for acts of sabotage targeting Kosovo police stations, during the Kosovo Insurgency. In 1997, the organisation acquired a large amount of arms through weapons smuggling from Albania, following a rebellion in which weapons were looted from the country's police and army posts. In early 1998, KLA attacks targeting Yugoslav authorities in Kosovo resulted in an increased presence of Serb paramilitaries and regular forces who subsequently began pursuing a campaign of retribution targeting KLA sympathisers and political opponents; this campaign killed 1,500 to 2,000 civilians and KLA combatants, and had displaced 370,000 Kosovar Albanians by March 1999.
On 20 March 1999, Yugoslav forces began a massive campaign of repression and expulsions of Kosovar Albanians following the withdrawal of the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) and the failure of the proposed Rambouillet Agreement. In response to this, NATO intervened with an aerial bombing campaign that began on March 24, justifying it as a "humanitarian war". The war ended with the Kumanovo Agreement, signed on 9 June, with Yugoslav and Serb forces agreeing to withdraw from Kosovo to make way for an international presence. NATO forces entered Kosovo on June 12. The NATO bombing campaign has remained controversial. It did not gain the approval of the UN Security Council and it caused at least 488 Yugoslav civilian deaths, including substantial numbers of Kosovar refugees.
In 2001 a Supreme Court, based in Kosovo and administered by the United Nations, found that there had been "a systematic campaign of terror, including murders, rapes, arsons and severe maltreatments" against the Albanian population, but that Yugoslav troops had tried to force them out of Kosovo, but not to eradicate them, and therefore it was not genocide. After the war, a list was compiled which documented that over 13,500 people were killed or went missing during the two year conflict. The Yugoslav and Serb forces caused the displacement of between 1.2 million and 1.45 million Kosovo Albanians. After the war, around 200,000 Serbs, Romani, and other non-Albanians fled Kosovo and many of the remaining civilians were victims of abuse.
The Kosovo Liberation Army disbanded soon after the end of the war, with some of its members going on to fight for the UÇPMB in the Preševo Valley and others joining the National Liberation Army (NLA) and Albanian National Army (ANA) during the armed ethnic conflict in Macedonia, while others went on to form the Kosovo Police.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) convicted six Serb/Yugoslav officials for war crimes, and one Albanian commander for war crimes.
The modern Albanian-Serbian conflict has its roots in the expulsion of Albanians in 1877-1878 from areas that were incorporated into the Principality of Serbia expelled Albanians settled in Kosovo and between 1876 and 1878 there were attacks on Serbs and, in 1901, massacres of Kosovan Serbs.
Tensions between the Serbian and Albanian communities in Kosovo simmered throughout the 20th century and occasionally erupted into major violence, particularly during the First Balkan War (1912–13), World War I (1914–18), and World War II (1939–45). The Albanian revolt of 1912 in Kosovo resulted in the Ottoman Empire agreeing to the creation of an Albanian quasi-state but Ottoman forces were soon driven out by opportunistic Bulgarian, Serbian and Montenegrin troops. In the ensuing Balkan Wars, at least 50,000 Albanians were massacred in the present-day territory of Kosovo by the Serbian regular army and irregular Komitadjis with the intention of manipulating population statistics before the borders of Albania were recognized during the London Conference of 1912–1913, after the latter proposed the drawing of the borders of Albania based on ethnic statistics.
After World War I Kosovo was incorporated into the Serb-dominated Kingdom of Yugoslavia despite the Albanian community's demands for union with Albania. Albanian rebels started the Drenica-Dukagjin Uprisings, which ended with the rebellion being crushed after the fall of the government of Fan Noli in Albania in December 1924 and the subsequent withdrawal of support for the Committee for the National Defence of Kosovo by President Zog. Between 1918 and 1939, Yugoslavia expelled hundreds of thousands of Albanians and promoted the settlement of mostly Serb colonists in the region, while Albanian language schools were prohibited. After the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, most of Kosovo was assigned to Italian-controlled Albania, with the rest being controlled by Germany and Bulgaria. During the occupation, Albanian collaborators persecuted Serb and Montenegrin settlers, with thousands killed and between 70,000 and 100,000 expelled from Kosovo or sent to concentration camps in order to Albanianize the province. The return of the expelled colonists was made next to impossible by a decree from Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito, followed by a new law in August 1945, which disallowed the return of colonists who had taken land from Albanian peasants.
The end of World War II saw Kosovo returning to Yugoslav control. The new socialist government under Josip Broz Tito systematically suppressed nationalism among the ethnic groups throughout Yugoslavia, and established six republics (Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina) as constituent parts of the Yugoslav federation. Tito diluted the power of Serbia – the largest and most populous republic – by establishing autonomous governments in the Serbian province of Vojvodina in the north and Kosovo in the south. Until 1963, the region was named the Autonomous Region of Kosovo and Metohija and in 1968 it got renamed to the Socialist Autonomous Province of Kosovo.
The period of 1948–1963 in Kosovo was characterized by a brutal crackdown against Albanian nationalists by Aleksandar Ranković and his secret police (the UDBA). In 1955, a state of emergency was declared in order to squelch unrest that had purportedly been instigated by terror groups from Albania. Following Ranković's ouster in 1966, Tito and his League of Communists Party granted more powers to republics and attempted to improve the political, social and economic situation in Kosovo. In November 1968, large-scale demonstrations took place in Kosovo which were quelled by Yugoslav forces, precipitated by Albanian demands for separate republics in Kosovo and Macedonia. Albanian students and intellectuals pushed for an Albanian language University and greater representative powers for Albanians in both the Serbian and Yugoslav state bodies.
The University of Pristina was established as an independent institution in 1970, ending a long period when the institution had been run as an outpost of University of Belgrade. The lack of Albanian-language educational materials in Yugoslavia hampered Albanian education in Kosovo, so an agreement was struck with Albania itself to supply textbooks.
In 1969 the Serbian Orthodox Church ordered its clergy to compile data on the ongoing problems of Serbs in Kosovo, seeking to pressure the government in Belgrade to do more to protect the interests of Serbs there.
In 1974 Kosovo's political status improved further when a new Yugoslav constitution granted an expanded set of political rights. Along with Vojvodina, Kosovo was declared a province and gained many of the powers of a fully-fledged republic: a seat on the federal presidency and its own assembly, police force and national bank. While trying to balance the interests of Albanians and Serbs, this effectively stratified both communities and prompted Serb fears of Kosovo seceding from Yugoslavia. Student demonstrations continued throughout the 1970s, resulting in the imprisonment of many members of the Albanian National Liberation Movement, including Adem Demaçi. The political and administrative changes that began in 1968 resulted in Kosovo Albanians getting complete control over the province's political, social and cultural issues as well as growing ties between Kosovo and Albania. However, by 1980, economic impoverishment would become the catalyst for further unrest.
Provincial power was still exercised by the League of Communists of Kosovo, but now devolved mainly to ethnic Albanian communists. Tito's death on 4 May 1980 ushered in a long period of political instability, worsened by growing economic crisis and nationalist unrest. The first major outbreak occurred in Kosovo's main city, Pristina, when a protest of University of Pristina students over long queues in their university canteen rapidly escalated and in late March and early April 1981 spread throughout Kosovo, causing mass demonstrations in several towns, the 1981 protests in Kosovo. The disturbances were quelled by the Presidency of Yugoslavia proclaiming a state of emergency, sending in riot police and the army, which resulted in numerous casualties.
In 1981 it was reported that some 4,000 Serbs moved from Kosovo to central Serbia after the Kosovo Albanian riots in March that resulted in several Serb deaths and the desecration of Serbian Orthodox architecture and graveyards. Serbia reacted with a plan to reduce the power of Albanians in the province and a propaganda campaign that claimed Serbs were being pushed out of the province primarily by the growing Albanian population, rather than the bad state of the economy. 33 nationalist formations were dismantled by Yugoslav police, who sentenced some 280 people (800 fined, 100 under investigation) and seized arms caches and propaganda material. Albanian leaders of Kosovo maintained that Serbs were leaving mainly because of the poor economy. The worsening state of Kosovo's economy made the province a poor choice for Serbs seeking work. Albanians, as well as Serbs, tended to favor their compatriots when hiring new employees, but the number of jobs was too few for the population. Kosovo was the poorest entity of Yugoslavia: the average per capita income was $795, compared with the national average of $2,635. Due to its comparative poverty it received substantial amounts of Yugoslav development money, leading to quarrels amongst the republics regarding its quantity and utilization.
In February 1982 a group of priests from Serbia proper petitioned their bishops to ask "why the Serbian Church is silent" and why it did not campaign against "the destruction, arson and sacrilege of the holy shrines of Kosovo". In 1985, two Albanian farmers were falsely accused for the Đorđe Martinović incident, which turned into a cause célèbre in Serbian politics and fueled hatred towards Albanians. In 1987, Aziz Kelmendi, an ethnic-Albanian recruit in the Yugoslav Army (JNA) killed four fellow soldiers in a mass shooting in JNA barracks, with only one of them being an ethnic Serb. Serbian media blamed Albanian nationalism for the event and in response, Yugoslavia sent 400 federal police officers to Kosovo. It was against this tense background that the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU) conducted a survey of Serbs who had left Kosovo in 1985 and 1986, which concluded that a considerable number had left under pressure from Albanians.
The so-called SANU Memorandum, leaked in September 1986, was a draft document that focused on the political difficulties facing Serbs in Yugoslavia, pointing to Tito's deliberate hobbling of Serbia's power and the difficulties faced by Serbs outside Serbia proper. It paid special attention to Kosovo, arguing that the Kosovo Serbs were being subjected to "physical, political, legal and cultural genocide" in an "open and total war" that had been ongoing since the spring of 1981. It claimed that Kosovo's status in 1986 was a worse historical defeat for the Serbs than any event since liberation from the Ottomans in 1804, thus ranking it above such catastrophes as the World war occupations. The Memorandum's authors claimed that 200,000 Serbs had moved out of the province over the previous 20 years and warned that there would soon be none left "unless things changed radically." The remedy, according to the Memorandum, was for "genuine security and unambiguous equality for all peoples living in Kosovo and Metohija [to be] established" and "objective and permanent conditions for the return of the expelled [Serbian] nation [to be] created." It concluded that "Serbia must not be passive and wait and see what the others will say, as it has done so often in the past." The SANU Memorandum provoked split reactions: Albanians saw it as a call for Serbian supremacy at the local level, claiming the Serb emigrants had left Kosovo for economic reasons, while the Slovenes and Croats saw a threat in the call for a more assertive Serbia. Serbs were divided: many welcomed it, while the Communist old guard strongly attacked its message. One of those who denounced it was Serbian Communist Party official Slobodan Milošević.
In April 1987, Serbian President Ivan Stambolić and Slobodan Milošević visited Kosovo with the intention of reducing tensions in the region. A Serb nationalist crowd had gathered near the hall where Milošević was supposed to deliver his speech in Kosovo Polje. The crowd tried to break through the police cordon that was providing security for the gathering, and after clashing with the police, they chanted that Albanian policemen were beating them. Informed of the situation, Milošević walked out of the building and addressed the protesters, telling them "No one will beat you again". He further called upon the crowd to resist the Albanian pressure to leave Kosovo. This speech marked the beginning pf Milošević's use of nationalism to gain power, and he was appointed President of the Presidency of Serbia in May 1989.
In November 1988 Kosovo's head of the provincial committee was arrested. In March 1989 Milošević announced an "anti-bureaucratic revolution" in Kosovo and Vojvodina, curtailing their autonomy as well as imposing a curfew and a state of emergency in Kosovo due to violent demonstrations, resulting in 24 deaths (including two policemen). Milošević and his government claimed that the constitutional changes were necessary to protect Kosovo's remaining Serbs against harassment from the Albanian majority.
On 17 November 1988 Kaqusha Jashari and Azem Vllasi were forced to resign from the leadership of the League of Communists of Kosovo (LCK). In early 1989 the Serbian Assembly proposed amendments to the Constitution of Serbia that would remove the word "Socialist" from the Serbian Republic's title, establish multi-party elections, remove the independence of institutions of the autonomous provinces such as Kosovo and rename Kosovo as the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija. In February Kosovar Albanians demonstrated in large numbers against the proposal, emboldened by striking miners. Serbs in Belgrade protested against the Kosovo Albanian's separatism. On 3 March 1989 the Presidency of Yugoslavia imposed special measures assigning responsibility for public security to the federal government. On 23 March the Assembly of Kosovo voted to accept the proposed amendments although most Albanian delegates abstained. In early 1990 Kosovar Albanians held mass demonstrations against the special measures, which were lifted on 18 April 1990 and responsibility for public security was again assigned to Serbia.
On 26 June 1990 Serbian authorities barred access to the building of the Kosovo Assembly, citing special circumstances. On 2 July 1990, 114 ethnic Albanian delegates of the 180-member Kosovo Assembly gathered in front of the closed building and declared Kosovo an independent republic within Yugoslavia. On 5 July the Serbian Assembly dissolved the Kosovo Assembly. Serbia also dissolved the provincial executive council and assumed full and direct control of the province. Serbia took over management of Kosovo's principal Albanian-language media, halting Albanian-language broadcasts. On 4 September 1990 Kosovar Albanians observed a 24-hour general strike, virtually shutting down the province. On 5 August 1991, the Serbian Assembly suspended the main Albanian-language daily newspaper, Rilindja, declaring its journalism unconstitutional.
On 7 September 1990 the Constitution of Kosovo was promulgated by Albanian members of the disbanded Assembly of Kosovo. Milošević responded by ordering the arrest of the deputies that participated in the meeting. The new controversial Serbian Constitution was promulgated on 28 September 1990. In September 1991, Kosovar Albanians held an unofficial referendum in which they voted overwhelmingly for independence. On 24 May 1992 Kosovar Albanians held unofficial elections for an assembly and president of the Republic of Kosovo and elected Ibrahim Rugova as president.
During this time, the Republic of Kosova started to establish parallel institutions, which were not recognized by Serbia. The presence of Serbian security structures in Kosovo increased considerably and Kosovo was put into constant curfews. Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians were fired from government and state-run institutions. By 1990 most Albanian schools were closed and the Serbian government required Albanian teachers to sign loyalty oaths in order to remain employed, effectively asking them to recognize Serbia, and not Republic of Kosova as their country, which the vast majority refused to sign. By 1991 all Albanian schoolteachers and academic staff had been dismissed and a parallel education system was established by the government of the Republic of Kosova, using donated private homes as classrooms. 350,000 Albanians emigrated out of the region due to economic and social pressures over the next seven years, and the Milosevic regime encouraged Serb settlement to the region. United Nations Special Rapporteur Tadeusz Mazowiecki reported on 26 February 1993 that the police had intensified their repression of the Albanian population since 1990, including depriving them of their basic rights, destroying their education system, and conducting large numbers of political dismissals of civil servants.
According to an Amnesty International report in 1998, due to dismissals from the Yugoslav government it was estimated that by 1998 unemployment rate in the Kosovar Albanian population was higher than 70%. The economic apartheid imposed by Belgrade was aimed at impoverishing an already poor Kosovo Albanian population.
In 1996, 16,000 Serb refugees from Bosnia and Croatia were settled in Kosovo by the Milosevic government, sometimes against their will.
Ibrahim Rugova, first President of the Republic of Kosovo pursued a policy of passive resistance which succeeded in maintaining peace in Kosovo during the earlier wars in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia during the early 1990s. As evidenced by the emergence of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), this came at the cost of increasing frustration among Kosovo's Albanian population. In the mid-1990s, Rugova pleaded for a United Nations peacekeeping force for Kosovo.
Continuing repression convinced many Albanians that only armed resistance would change the situation. On 22 April 1996, four attacks on Serbian security personnel were carried out almost simultaneously in different parts of Kosovo. The KLA, a hitherto-unknown organisation, subsequently claimed responsibility. The nature of the KLA was at first mysterious. It initially seemed that their only goals were to stop repression from Yugoslav authorities. KLA goals also included the establishment of a Greater Albania, a state stretching into surrounding Macedonia, Montenegro and southern Serbia. In July 1998, in an interview for Der Spiegel, KLA spokesman Jakup Krasniqi publicly announced that the KLA's goal was the unification of all Albanian-inhabited lands. Sulejman Selimi, a General Commander of KLA in 1998–1999, said:
There is de facto Albanian nation. The tragedy is that European powers after World War I decided to divide that nation between several Balkan states. We are now fighting to unify the nation, to liberate all Albanians, including those in Macedonia, Montenegro, and other parts of Serbia. We are not just a liberation army for Kosovo.
While Rugova promised to uphold the minority rights of Serbs in Kosovo, the KLA was much less tolerant. Selimi stated that "Serbs who have blood on their hands would have to leave Kosovo".
The crisis escalated in December 1997 at the Peace Implementation Council meeting in Bonn, where the international community (as defined in the Dayton Agreement) agreed to give the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina sweeping powers, including the right to dismiss elected leaders. At the same time, Western diplomats insisted that Kosovo be discussed and that Yugoslavia be responsive to Albanian demands there. The delegation from Yugoslavia stormed out of the meetings in protest. This was followed by the return of the Contact Group that oversaw the last phases of the Bosnian conflict and declarations from European powers demanding that Yugoslavia solve the problem in Kosovo.
The KLA received financial and material support from the Kosovo Albanian diaspora. In early 1997, Albania collapsed into chaos following the fall of President Sali Berisha. Albanian Armed Forces stockpiles were looted with impunity by criminal gangs, with much of the hardware ending up in western Kosovo and boosting the growing KLA arsenal. Bujar Bukoshi, shadow Prime Minister in exile (in Zürich, Switzerland), created a group called FARK (Armed Forces of the Republic of Kosova). FARK and the KLA were initially rivals, but later FARK merged into the KLA. The Yugoslav government considered the KLA to be "terrorists" and "insurgents" who indiscriminately attacked police and civilians, while most Albanians saw the KLA as "freedom fighters".
On 23 February 1998, the United States Special Envoy to the Balkans, Robert Gelbard, stated in Pristina that "the KLA was without any question a terrorist group." He later told the House Committee on International Relations that "while the KLA had committed 'terrorist acts,' it had 'not been classified legally by the U.S. Government as a terrorist organization.'" However, his 23 February statements have been seen as an unwitting "green light" to the Serbian crackdown that followed less than a week later.
KLA attacks intensified, centering on the Drenica valley area with the compound of Adem Jashari being a focal point. Days after Robert Gelbard described the KLA as a terrorist group, Serbian police responded to the KLA attacks in the Likošane area, and pursued some of the KLA to Čirez, resulting in the deaths of 16 Albanian fighters and 26 civilians in the attacks on Likoshane and Çirez. and four Serbian policemen. The KLA's goal was to merge its Drenica stronghold with their stronghold in Albania proper, and this would shape the first few months of the fighting.
Serb police then began to pursue Adem Jashari and his followers in the village of Donje Prekaze. On 5 March 1998, a massive firefight at the Jashari compound led to the massacre of 60 Albanians, of which eighteen were women and ten were under the age of sixteen. The event provoked massive condemnation from western capitals. Madeleine Albright said that "this crisis is not an internal affair of the FRY".
On 24 March, Yugoslav forces surrounded the village of Glodjane and attacked a rebel compound there. Despite superior firepower, the Yugoslav forces failed to destroy the KLA unit, which had been their objective. Although there were deaths and severe injuries on the Albanian side, the insurgency in Glodjane was far from stamped out. The village was in fact to become one of the strongest centres of resistance in the upcoming war.
A new Yugoslav government was formed at this time, led by the Socialist Party of Serbia and the Serbian Radical Party. Ultra-nationalist Radical Party chairman Vojislav Šešelj became a deputy prime minister. This increased the dissatisfaction with the country's position among Western diplomats and spokespersons.
In early April, Serbia arranged for a referendum on the issue of foreign interference in Kosovo. Serbian voters decisively rejected foreign interference in the crisis. Meanwhile, the KLA claimed much of the area in and around Deçan and ran a territory based in the village of Glodjane, encompassing its surroundings. On 31 May 1998, the Yugoslav army and the Serb Ministry of the Interior police began an operation to clear the border of the KLA. NATO's response to this offensive was mid-June's Operation Determined Falcon, a NATO show of force over the Yugoslav borders.
During this time, Yugoslav President Milošević reached an arrangement with Boris Yeltsin of Russia to stop offensive operations and prepare for talks with the Albanians, who refused to talk to the Serbian side throughout the crisis, but would talk with the Yugoslav government. In fact, the only meeting between Milošević and Ibrahim Rugova happened on 15 May in Belgrade, two days after the special presidential envoy Richard Holbrooke announced that it would take place. Holbrooke threatened Milošević that if he did not obey, "what's left of your country will implode". A month later, Holbrooke visited the border areas affected by the fighting in early June, where he was famously photographed with the KLA. The publication of these images sent a signal to the KLA, its supporters and sympathisers, and to observers in general, that the US was decisively backing the KLA and the Albanian population in Kosovo.
The Yeltsin agreement required Milošević to allow international representatives to set up a mission in Kosovo to monitor the situation there. The Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission (KDOM) began operations in early July 1998. The US government welcomed this part of the agreement, but denounced the initiative's call for a mutual cease fire. Rather, the US demanded that the Serbian-Yugoslavian side should cease fire "without linkage ... to a cessation in terrorist activities".
All through June and into mid-July, the KLA maintained its advance. The KLA surrounded Peja and Gjakova, and set up an interim capital in the town of Malisheva (north of Rahovec). KLA troops infiltrated Suva Reka and the northwest of Pristina. They moved on to capture the Belacevec coal pits in late June, threatening energy supplies in the region. Their tactics as usual focused mainly on guerrilla and mountain warfare, and harassing and ambushing Yugoslav forces and Serb police patrols.
The tide turned in mid-July when the KLA captured Rahovec. On 17 July 1998, two nearby villages, Retimlije and Opteruša, were also captured, while less systematic events took place in the larger Serb-populated village of Velika Hoča. The Orthodox monastery of Zočište three miles (4.8 km) was looted and torched. This led to a series of Serb and Yugoslav offensives which would continue into the beginning of August.
A new set of KLA attacks in mid-August triggered Yugoslavian operations in south-central Kosovo, south of the Pristina-Peja road. The KLA began an offensive on 1 September around Prizren, causing Yugoslavian military activity there. In western Kosovo, around Peja, another offensive caused condemnation as international officials expressed fear that a large column of displaced people would be attacked.
In early mid-September, for the first time, KLA activity was reported in northern Kosovo around Podujevo. Finally, in late September, a Yugoslav determined effort was made to clear the KLA out of the northern and central parts of Kosovo and out of the Drenica valley. During this time many threats were made from Western capitals but these were tempered somewhat by the elections in Bosnia, as they did not want Serbian Democrats and Radicals to win. Following the elections, the threats intensified once again. On 28 September, the mutilated corpses of a family were discovered by KDOM outside the village of Gornje Obrinje. The bloody image of a child's doll and streams of displaced persons rallied the international community to action.
Morale was a serious problem for Serb forces; intelligence surveys found that many soldiers disagreed with their comrades' actions. One tank commander reported, "for the entire time I was in Kosovo, I never saw an enemy soldier and my unit was never once involved in firing at enemy targets. The tanks which cost $2.5 million each were used to slaughter Albanian children... I am ashamed".
When retreating from Kosovo after NATO intervention, Yugoslav units appeared combat effective with high morale and displaying large holdings of undamaged equipment. Weeks before the end of hostilities, David Fromkin noted that "it seemed possible that NATO unity might crack before Yugoslav morale did." The announcement by President Clinton that the US would not deploy ground troops gave a tremendous boost to Serbian morale.
On 9 June 1998, US President Bill Clinton declared a "national emergency" (state of emergency) due to the "unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States" imposed by Yugoslavia and Serbia over the Kosovo War.
On 23 September 1998, acting under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1199. This expressed 'grave concern' at reports reaching the Secretary General that over 230,000 people had been displaced from their homes by 'the excessive and indiscriminate use of force by Serbian security forces and the Yugoslav Army', demanding that all parties in Kosovo and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia cease hostilities and maintain a ceasefire. On 24 September the North Atlantic Council (NAC) of NATO issued an "activation warning" taking NATO to an increased level of military preparedness for both a limited air option and a phased air campaign in Kosovo. The other major issue for those who saw no option but to resort to the use of force was the estimated 250,000 displaced Albanians, 30,000 of whom were out in the woods, without warm clothing or shelter, with winter fast approaching.
Meanwhile, the US Ambassador to the Republic of Macedonia, Christopher Hill, was leading shuttle diplomacy between an Albanian delegation, led by Rugova, and the Yugoslav and Serbian authorities. These meetings were shaping the peace plan to be discussed during a period of planned NATO occupation of Kosovo. During a period of two weeks, threats intensified, culminating in NATO's Activation Order being given. NATO was ready to begin airstrikes, and Richard Holbrooke went to Belgrade in the hope of reaching an agreement with Milošević. Officially, the international community demanded an end to fighting. It specifically demanded that Yugoslavia end its offensives against the KLA whilst attempting to convince the KLA to drop its bid for independence. Attempts were made to persuade Milošević to permit NATO peacekeeping troops to enter Kosovo. This, they argued, would allow for the Christopher Hill peace process to proceed and yield a peace agreement.
On 13 October 1998, the North Atlantic Council issued activation orders for the execution of both limited air strikes and a phased air campaign in Yugoslavia which would begin in approximately 96 hours. On 15 October the NATO Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) Agreement for a ceasefire was signed, and the deadline for withdrawal was extended to 27 October. Difficulties implementing the agreement were reported, as clashes continued between government troops and the guerrillas. The Serbian withdrawal commenced on or around 25 October 1998, and Operation Eagle Eye commenced on 30 October.
The KVM was a large contingent of unarmed Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) peace monitors (officially known as verifiers) that moved into Kosovo. Their inadequacy was evident from the start. They were nicknamed the "clockwork oranges" in reference to their brightly coloured vehicles. Fighting resumed in December 1998 after both sides broke the ceasefire, and this surge in violence culminated in the killing of Zvonko Bojanić, the Serb mayor of the town of Kosovo Polje. Yugoslav authorities responded by launching a crackdown against KLA militants.
The January to March 1999 phase of the war brought increasing insecurity in urban areas, including bombings and murders. Such attacks took place during the Rambouillet talks in February and as the Kosovo Verification Agreement unraveled in March. Killings on the roads continued and increased. There were military confrontations in, among other places, the Vushtrri area in February and the heretofore unaffected Kaçanik area in early March.
On 15 January 1999 the Račak massacre occurred when 45 Kosovan Albanians were killed. The bodies had been discovered by OSCE monitors, including Head of Mission William Walker, and foreign news correspondents. Yugoslavia denied a massacre took place. The Račak massacre was the culmination of the conflict between the KLA and Yugoslav forces that had continued throughout the winter of 1998–1999. The incident was immediately condemned as a massacre by the Western countries and the United Nations Security Council, and later became the basis of one of the charges of war crimes leveled against Milošević and his top officials. This massacre was the turning point of the war. NATO decided that the conflict could only be settled by introducing a military peacekeeping force under the auspices of NATO, to forcibly restrain the two sides. Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, had been subjected to heavy firefights and segregation according to OSCE reports.
On 30 January 1999, NATO issued a statement announcing that the North Atlantic Council had agreed that "the NATO Secretary General may authorise air strikes against targets on FRY territory" to "[compel] compliance with the demands of the international community and [to achieve] a political settlement". While this was most obviously a threat to the Milošević government, it also included a coded threat to the Albanians: any decision would depend on the "position and actions of the Kosovo Albanian leadership and all Kosovo Albanian armed elements in and around Kosovo."
Also on 30 January 1999, the Contact Group issued a set of "non-negotiable principles" which made up a package known as "Status Quo Plus" – effectively the restoration of Kosovo's pre-1990 autonomy within Serbia, plus the introduction of democracy and supervision by international organisations. It also called for a peace conference to be held in February 1999 at the Château de Rambouillet, outside Paris.
The Rambouillet talks began on 6 February 1999, with NATO Secretary General Javier Solana negotiating with both sides. They were intended to conclude by 19 February. The FR Yugoslavian delegation was led by then president of Serbia Milan Milutinović, while Milošević himself remained in Belgrade. This was in contrast to the 1995 Dayton conference that ended the war in Bosnia, where Milošević negotiated in person. The absence of Milošević was interpreted as a sign that the real decisions were being made back in Belgrade, a move that aroused criticism in Yugoslavia as well as abroad; Kosovo's Serbian Orthodox bishop Artemije traveled all the way to Rambouillet to protest that the delegation was wholly unrepresentative. At this time, speculation about an indictment of Milošević for war crimes was rife, so his absence may have been motivated by fear of arrest.
The first phase of negotiations was successful. In particular, a statement was issued by the Contact Group co-chairmen on 23 February 1999 that the negotiations "have led to a consensus on substantial autonomy for Kosovo, including on mechanisms for free and fair elections to democratic institutions, for the governance of Kosovo, for the protection of human rights and the rights of members of national communities; and for the establishment of a fair judicial system". They went on to say that "a political framework is now in place", leaving the further work of finalising "the implementation Chapters of the Agreement, including the modalities of the invited international civilian and military presence in Kosovo". While the Serbs agreed to an autonomous government, free elections, and the release of all political prisoners, the West also insisted on the presence of NATO troops.
While the accords did not fully satisfy the Albanians, they were much too radical for the Yugoslavs, who responded by substituting a drastically revised text that even Russia (ally of FR Yugoslavia) found unacceptable. It sought to reopen the painstakingly negotiated political status of Kosovo and deleted all of the proposed implementation measures. Among many other changes in the proposed new version, it eliminated the entire chapter on humanitarian assistance and reconstruction, removed virtually all international oversight and dropped any mention of invoking "the will of the people [of Kosovo]" in determining the final status of the province.
On 18 March 1999, the Albanian, US, and British delegations signed what became known as the Rambouillet Accords, while the Yugoslav and Russian delegations refused. The accords called for NATO administration of Kosovo as an autonomous province within Yugoslavia, a force of 30,000 NATO troops to maintain order in Kosovo; an unhindered right of passage for NATO troops on Yugoslav territory, including Kosovo; and immunity for NATO and its agents to Yugoslav law. They would have also permitted a continuing Yugoslav army presence of 1,500 troops for border monitoring, backed by up to 1,000 troops to perform command and support functions, as well as a small number of border police, 2,500 ordinary MUP for public security purposes (although these were expected to draw down and to be transformed), and 3,000 local police.
Although the Yugoslav Government cited military provisions of Appendix B of the Rambouillet provisions as the reason for its objections, claiming that it was an unacceptable violation of Yugoslavia's sovereignty, these provisions were essentially the same as had been applied to Bosnia for the SFOR (Stabilisation Force) mission there after the Dayton Agreement in 1995. The two sides did not discuss the issue in detail because of their disagreements on more fundamental problems. In particular, the Serb side rejected the idea of any NATO troop presence in Kosovo to replace their security forces, preferring unarmed UN observers. Milošević himself had refused to discuss the annex after informing NATO that it was unacceptable, even after he was asked to propose amendments to the provisions which would have made them acceptable.
After the failure at Rambouillet and the alternative Yugoslav proposal, international monitors from the OSCE withdrew on 22 March, to ensure their safety ahead of the anticipated NATO bombing campaign. On 23 March, the Serbian assembly accepted the principle of autonomy for Kosovo, as well as the non-military aspects of the agreement, but rejected a NATO troop presence.
In a 2009 judgement regarding six former Serb leaders charged with war crimes in Kosovo, the ICTY noted that the causes of the breakdown in the negotiations at Rambouillet were complex and stated that "international negotiators did not take an entirely even-handed approach to the respective positions of the parties and tended to favour the Kosovo Albanians." It further recorded that, according to a witness, on 14 April 1999, at a meeting initiated by the White House with representatives of the Serbian-American community, President Bill Clinton had stated that "the provision for allowing a referendum for the Albanians in Kosovo went too far and that, if he were in the shoes of Milošević, he probably would not have signed the draft [Rambouillet] agreement either."
We are not going to war, but we are called upon to implement a peaceful solution in Kosovo, including by military means!
— German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's announcement to the German people on 24 March 1999.
On 23 March 1999 at 21:30 UTC, Richard Holbrooke returned to Brussels and announced that peace talks had failed and formally handed the matter to NATO for military action. Hours before the announcement, Yugoslavia announced on national television it had declared a state of emergency, citing an imminent threat of war and began a huge mobilisation of troops and resources.
On 23 March 1999 at 22:17 UTC, the Secretary General of NATO, Javier Solana, announced he had directed the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), US Army General Wesley Clark, to "initiate air operations in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia." On 24 March at 19:00 UTC, NATO started its bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.
The NATO bombing campaign lasted from 24 March to 11 June 1999, involving up to 1,000 aircraft operating mainly from bases in Italy and aircraft carriers stationed in the Adriatic. Tomahawk cruise missiles were also extensively used, fired from aircraft, ships, and submarines. With the exception of Greece, all NATO members were involved to some degree. Over the ten weeks of the conflict, NATO aircraft flew over 38,000 combat missions. For the German Air Force (Luftwaffe), it was the second time it had participated in a conflict since World War II, after the Bosnian War.
The proclaimed goal of the NATO operation was summed up by its spokesman as "Serbs out, peacekeepers in, refugees back". That is, Yugoslav troops would have to leave Kosovo and be replaced by international peacekeepers to ensure that the Albanian refugees could return to their homes. The campaign was initially designed to destroy Yugoslav air defences and high-value military targets. It did not go very well at first, with bad weather hindering many sorties early on. NATO had seriously underestimated Milošević's will to resist: few in Brussels thought that the campaign would last more than a few days, and although the initial bombardment was not insignificant, it did not match the intensity of the bombing of Baghdad in 1991.
NATO military operations switched increasingly to attacking Yugoslav units on the ground, hitting targets as small as individual tanks and artillery pieces, as well as continuing with the strategic bombardment. This activity was heavily constrained by politics, as each target needed to be approved by all nineteen member states. Montenegro was bombed on several occasions, but NATO eventually desisted to prop up the precarious position of its anti-Milošević leader, Milo Đukanović.
At the start of May, a NATO aircraft attacked an Albanian refugee convoy, believing it was a Yugoslav military convoy, killing around fifty people. NATO admitted its mistake five days later, and the Yugoslavs accused NATO of deliberately attacking the refugees. A later report conducted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) opined that "civilians were not deliberately attacked in this incident", and that "neither the aircrew nor their commanders displayed the degree of recklessness in failing to take precautionary measures which would sustain criminal charges." On 7 May, NATO bombs hit the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese journalists and outraging Chinese public opinion. The United States and NATO later apologised for the bombing, saying that it occurred because of an outdated map provided by the CIA, although this was challenged by a joint report from The Observer (UK) and Politiken (Denmark) newspapers, which claimed that NATO intentionally bombed the embassy because it was being used as a relay station for Yugoslav army radio signals. The report by the newspaper contradicts findings in the same report by the ICTY which stated that the root of the failures in target location "appears to stem from the land navigation techniques employed by an intelligence officer." In another incident at the Dubrava prison in Kosovo in May 1999, the Yugoslav government attributed as many as 95 civilian deaths to NATO bombing of the facility after NATO cited Serbian and Yugoslav military activity in the area; a Human Rights Watch report later concluded that at least nineteen ethnic Albanian prisoners had been killed by the bombing, but that an uncertain number – probably more than 70 – were killed by Serbian Government forces in the days immediately following the bombing.
By the start of April, the conflict appeared little closer to a resolution, and NATO countries began to seriously consider conducting ground operations in Kosovo. British Prime Minister Tony Blair was a strong advocate of ground forces and pressured the United States to agree; his strong stance caused some alarm in Washington as US forces would be making the largest contribution to any offensive. US President Bill Clinton was extremely reluctant to commit US forces for a ground offensive. Instead, Clinton authorised a CIA operation to look into methods to destabilise the Yugoslav government without training KLA troops. At the same time, Finnish and Russian diplomatic negotiators continued to try to persuade Milošević to back down. Tony Blair would order 50,000 British soldiers to be made ready for a ground offensive: most of the available British Army.
Milošević finally recognised that Russia would not intervene to defend Yugoslavia despite Moscow's strong anti-NATO rhetoric. He thus accepted the conditions offered by a Finnish–Russian mediation team and agreed to a military presence within Kosovo headed by the UN, but incorporating NATO troops.
The Norwegian special forces Hærens Jegerkommando and Forsvarets Spesialkommando cooperated with the KLA in gathering intelligence information. Preparing for an invasion on 12 June, Norwegian special forces worked with the KLA on the Ramno mountain on the border between North Macedonia and Kosovo and acted as scouts to monitor events in Kosovo. Together with British special forces, Norwegian special forces were the first to cross over the border into Kosovo. According to Keith Graves with the television network Sky News, the Norwegians were in Kosovo two days prior to the entry of other forces and were among the first into Pristina. The Hærens Jegerkommando's and Forsvarets Spesialkommando's job was to clear the way between the contending parties and to make local deals to implement the peace deal between the Serbians and the Kosovo Albanians.
On 3 June 1999, Milošević accepted the terms of an international peace plan to end the fighting, with the national parliament adopting the proposal amid contentious debate with delegates coming close to fistfights at some points. On 10 June, the North Atlantic Council ratified the agreement and suspended air operations.
On 12 June, after Milošević accepted the conditions, the NATO-led peacekeeping Kosovo Force (KFOR) of 30,000 soldiers began entering Kosovo. KFOR had been preparing to conduct combat operations, but in the end, its mission was only peacekeeping. The force was based upon the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps headquarters commanded by then Lieutenant General Mike Jackson of the British Army. It consisted of British forces (a brigade built from 4th Armored and 5th Airborne Brigades), a French Army Brigade, a German Army brigade, which entered from the west, while other forces advanced from the south, and Italian Army and United States Army brigades.
The first NATO troops to enter Pristina on the 12th of June 1999 were Norwegian special forces from Forsvarets Spesialkommando (FSK) and soldiers from the British Special Air Service 22 Regiment, although to NATO's diplomatic embarrassment Russian troops arrived at the airport first. Norwegian soldiers were the first to come into contact with Russian troops at the airport. FSK's mission was to level the negotiating field between the belligerent parties, and to fine-tune the detailed, local deals needed to implement the peace deal between the Serbians and the Kosovo Albanians.
The US contribution, known as the Initial Entry Force, was led by the 1st Armored Division, commanded by Brigadier General Peterson, and was spearheaded by a platoon from the 2nd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment attached to the British Forces. Other units included 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) from Stuttgart, Germany and Fort Carson, Colorado, TF 1–6 Infantry (1-6 infantry with C Co 1-35AR) from Baumholder, Germany, the 2nd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment from Schweinfurt, Germany, and Echo Troop, 4th Cavalry Regiment, also from Schweinfurt, Germany. Also attached to the US force was the Greek Army's 501st Mechanised Infantry Battalion. The initial US forces established their area of operation around the towns of Uroševac, the future Camp Bondsteel, and Gnjilane, at Camp Monteith, and spent four months – the start of a stay which continues to date – establishing order in the southeast sector of Kosovo.
During the initial incursion, the US soldiers were greeted by Albanians cheering and throwing flowers as US soldiers and KFOR rolled through their villages. Although no resistance was met, three US soldiers from the Initial Entry Force were killed in accidents.
On 1 October 1999, approximately 150 paratroopers from Alpha Company, 1/508th Airborne Battalion Combat Team from Vicenza, Italy parachuted into Uroševac as part of Operation Rapid Guardian. The purpose of the mission was primarily to warn Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević of NATO resolve and of its rapid military capability. One US soldier, Army Ranger Sgt. Jason Neil Pringle, was killed during operations after his parachute failed to deploy. The paratroopers of the 1/508th then joined paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne and KFOR in patrolling various areas of Kosovo, without incident, through 3 October 1999.
On 15 December 1999, Staff Sergeant Joseph Suponcic of 3rd Battalion/10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) was killed, when the HMMWV in which he was a passenger struck an anti-tank mine planted by Albanians and meant for the Russian contingent with which SSG Suponcic's team was patrolling in Kosovska Kamenica.
Following the military campaign, the involvement of Russian peacekeepers proved to be tense and challenging to the NATO Kosovo force. The Russians expected to have an independent sector of Kosovo, only to be unhappily surprised with the prospect of operating under NATO command. Without prior communication or coordination with NATO, Russian peacekeeping forces entered Kosovo from Bosnia and Herzegovina and occupied Pristina International Airport ahead of the arrival of NATO forces. This resulted in an incident during which NATO Supreme Commander Wesley Clark's wish to forcibly block the runways with NATO vehicles, to prevent any Russian reinforcement, was refused by KFOR commander General Mike Jackson.
In 2010, James Blunt described in an interview how his unit was given the assignment of securing Pristina during the advance of the 30,000-strong peacekeeping force and how the Russian Army had moved in and taken control of the city's airport before his unit's arrival. Blunt shared a part in the difficult task of addressing the potentially violent international incident. According to Blunt's account there was a stand-off with the Russians, and NATO Supreme Commander Clark gave provisional orders to over-power them. Whilst these were questioned by Blunt, they were rejected by General Jackson, with the now famous line, "I'm not having my soldiers responsible for starting World War III."
In June 2000, arms trading relations between Russia and Yugoslavia were exposed, which led to retaliation and bombings of Russian checkpoints and area police stations. Outpost Gunner was established on a high point in the Preševo Valley by Echo Battery 1/161 Field Artillery in an attempt to monitor and assist with peacekeeping efforts in the Russian Sector. Operating under the support of ⅔ Field Artillery, 1st Armored Division, the Battery was able to successfully deploy and continuously operate a Firefinder Radar system, which allowed the NATO forces to keep a closer watch on activities in the Sector and the Preševo Valley. Eventually a deal was struck whereby Russian forces operated as a unit of KFOR but not under the NATO command structure.
Because of the country's restrictive media laws, the Yugoslav media carried little coverage of events in Kosovo, and the attitude of other countries to the humanitarian disaster that was occurring there. Thus, few members of the Yugoslav public expected NATO intervention, instead thinking that a diplomatic agreement would be reached.
Support for the Kosovan War and, in particular, the legitimacy of NATO's bombing campaign came from a variety of sources. In a 2009 article, David Clark claimed "Every member of NATO, every EU country, and most of Yugoslavia's neighbours, supported military action." Statements from the leaders of United States, Czech Republic and United Kingdom, respectively, described the war as one "upholding our values, protecting our interests, and advancing the cause of peace", "the first war for values" and one "to avert what would otherwise be a humanitarian disaster in Kosovo." Others included the then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan who was reported by some sources as acknowledging that the NATO action was legitimate who emphasised that there were times when the use of force was legitimate in the pursuit of peace though Annan stressed that the "[UN Security] Council should have been involved in any decision to use force." The distinction between the legality and legitimacy of the intervention was further highlighted in two separate reports. One was conducted by the Independent International Commission on Kosovo, entitled The Kosovo Report, which found that:
[Yugoslav] forces were engaged in a well-planned campaign of terror and expulsion of the Kosovar Albanians. This campaign is most frequently described as one of "ethnic cleansing," intended to drive many, if not all, Kosovar Albanians from Kosovo, destroy the foundations of their society, and prevent them from returning.
It concluded that "the NATO military intervention was illegal but legitimate", The second report was published by the NATO Office of Information and Press which reported that, "the human rights violations committed on a large scale in Kosovo provide an incontestable ground with reference to the humanitarian aspect of NATO's intervention." Some critics note that NATO did not have the backing of the United Nations Security Council meant that its intervention had no legal basis, but according to some legal scholars, "there are nonetheless certain bases for that action that are not legal, but justified."
Aside from politicians and diplomats, commentators and intellectuals also supported the war. Michael Ignatieff called NATOs intervention a "morally justifiable response to ethnic cleansing and the resulting flood of refugees, and not the cause of the flood of refugees" while Christopher Hitchens said NATO intervened only, "when Serbian forces had resorted to mass deportation and full-dress ethnic 'cleansing.'" Writing in The Nation, Richard A. Falk wrote that, "the NATO campaign achieved the removal of Yugoslav military forces from Kosovo and, even more significant, the departure of the dreaded Serbian paramilitary units and police" while an article in The Guardian wrote that for Mary Kaldor, Kosovo represented a laboratory on her thinking for human security, humanitarian intervention and international peacekeeping, the latter two which she defined as, "a genuine belief in the equality of all human beings; and this entails a readiness to risk lives of peacekeeping troops to save the lives of others where this is necessary." Reports stated there had been no peace between Albanians and Serbs, citing the deaths of 1,500 Albanians and displacement of 270,000 prior to NATO intervention.
The NATO intervention has been seen as a political diversionary tactic, coming as it did on the heels of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, pointing to the fact that coverage of the bombing directly replaced coverage of the scandal in US news cycles. Herbert Foerstel points out that before the bombing, rather than there being an unusually bloody conflict, the KLA was not engaged in a widespread war against Yugoslav forces and the death toll among all concerned (including ethnic Albanians) skyrocketed following NATO intervention. In a post-war report released by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the organization also noted "the pattern of the expulsions and the vast increase in lootings, killings, rape, kidnappings and pillage once the NATO air war began on March 24".
US President Clinton, his administration and NATO governments were accused of inflating the number of Kosovo Albanians killed by state forces. During the NATO bombing campaign, the then Secretary of Defense, William Cohen claimed that 100,000 Kosovo Albanian men of military age were missing, possibly murdered. The conservative media watchdog group Accuracy in Media charged the alliance with distorting the situation in Kosovo and lying about the number of civilian deaths in order to justify U.S. involvement in the conflict.
After the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Chinese President Jiang Zemin said that the US was using its economic and military superiority to aggressively expand its influence and interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. Chinese leaders called the NATO campaign a dangerous precedent of naked aggression, a new form of colonialism, and an aggressive war groundless in morality or law. It was seen as part of a plot by the US to destroy Yugoslavia, expand eastward and control all of Europe.
The United Nations Charter does not allow military interventions in other sovereign countries with few exceptions which, in general, need to be decided upon by the United Nations Security Council; this legal enjoinment has proved controversial with many legal scholars who argue that though the Kosovo War was illegal, it was still legitimate. The issue was brought before the UN Security Council by Russia, in a draft resolution which, inter alia, would affirm "that such unilateral use of force constitutes a flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter". China, Namibia, and Russia voted for the resolution, the other members against, thus it failed to pass.
The war inflicted many casualties. Already by March 1999, an estimated 1,500–2,000 civilians and combatants were dead. However, estimates showed that prior to the bombing campaign on 24 March 1999, approximately 1,800 civilians had been killed in the Kosovo war, mostly Albanians but also Serbs and that there had been no evidence of genocide or ethnic cleansing. By November 1999, 2,108 victims had been exhumed from the province with a total approaching 3,000 expected, but it was unclear how many were civilians and combatants, while the number was also far from the 10,000 minimum civilian death figure cited by Western officials. Final estimates of the casualties are still unavailable for either side.
Perhaps the most controversial deliberate attack of the war was that made against the headquarters of RTS, Serbian public radio and television, on 23 April 1999, which killed at least fourteen people.
Privately, NATO European members were divided about the aims and necessity of the war. Most European allies did not trust the motives of Kosovan Albanians and according to NATO General Wesley Clark, "There was a sense among some that NATO was fighting on the wrong side" in a war between Christians and Muslims.
The Democratic League of Kosovo (DLK) led by Ibrahim Rugova had been the leading political entity in Kosovo since its creation in 1989. Its parallel government in exile was led by Bujar Bukoshi, and its Minister of Defence until 1998 was the former Yugoslav colonel Ahmet Krasniqi. DLK politicians opposed the armed conflict and were not ready to accept KLA as a political factor in the region and tried to persuade the population not to support it. At one point Rugova even claimed that it was set up by Serbian intelligence as an excuse to invade, or to discredit DLK itself. Nevertheless, the support for KLA even within DLK membership and specifically in the diaspora grew, together with the dissatisfaction with and antagonism toward DLK. KLA initial personnel were members or former members of the DLK. With the changes of the international stance towards KLA and its recognition as a factor in the conflict, DLK's position also shifted. The Armed Forces of the Republic of Kosovo, known as FARK, were established in order to place DLK as a military factor in addition to a political one. A parallel paramilitary structure such as FARK was not received well by the KLA.
On 21 September 1998 Ahmet Krasniqi was shot in Tirana. Those responsible were not found, although several theories emerged. The Democratic Party of Albania and its leader Sali Berisha, strong supporters of DLK and FARK, accused SHIK and the Albanian government, which was supporting the KLA, of being responsible. FARK was never a determining factor in the war and was not involved in any battles. It did not number more than few hundred men, and it did not show any commitment to fighting the Serbs, accepting a broader autonomy as a solution rather than independence. Some of the FARK officers were incorporated later under the KLA umbrella. Besides FARK, DLK would also politically and diplomatically oppose KLA and their methods. In a meeting with US President Clinton on 29 May 1999, Rugova, accompanied by Fehmi Agani, Bukoshi, and Veton Surroi, accused KLA of being a left-wing ideology bearer, and some of its leaders as being "nostalgic to known communist figures, such as Enver Hoxha", referring to the People's Movement of Kosovo (LPK) nucleus of KLA, an old underground rival with strong left-wing orientation.
Rugova was present at the negotiations held in Rambouillet and supported the Rambouillet Agreement since the first round, but without any influence. Following the ethnic cleansing of the Albanian population, there was close to a total Albanian support for the NATO campaign, including the DLK side. Surprisingly, Ibrahim Rugova showed up in Belgrade as a guest of Milosevic. At a joint TV appearance on 1 April, ending in a Rugova-Milosevic handshake, Rugova asked for a peaceful solution and the bombings to stop. In the same conference, Millosevic presented his proposal for Kosovo as part of a three-unit federal Yugoslavian state. Rugova's presence in Belgrade scattered another set of accusations from KLA and its supporters. Besides being 'passive' and 'too peaceful', Rugova and DLK were accused as 'traitors'. Following Rugova's passage to Italy on 5 May, Rugova claimed that he had been under duress and any "agreement" with Milosovic had no meaning. The general opinion expected the DLK structures and its leader to vanish from the political scene of Kosovo after the Yugoslav withdrawal. Rugova himself stayed out of Kosovo for several weeks, while the prime-minister Bukoshi and other leading membership returned. With only a fraction of Kosovo Albanians participating actively in the war, the support for DLK increased again as a way of opposing the arrogance of many KLA leaders who openly engaged in controlling the economical and political life within the vacuum created right before the deployment of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). In the October 2000 local elections, DLK was confirmed as the leading political party.
The feud between KLA and DLK continued in the post-war Kosovo. Many political activists of DLK were assassinated and the perpetrators not found, including Xhemajl Mustafa, Rugova's most trusted aide.
In June 2000, the Red Cross reported that 3,368 civilians (mainly Kosovar Albanians, but with several hundred Serbs, and Roma) were still missing, nearly one year after the conflict, most of whom it concluded had to be 'presumed dead'.
A study by researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia published in 2000 in medical journal the Lancet estimated that "12,000 deaths in the total population" could be attributed to war. This number was achieved by surveying 1,197 households from February 1998 through June 1999. 67 out of the 105 deaths reported in the sample population were attributed to war-related trauma, which extrapolates to be 12,000 deaths if the same war-related mortality rate is applied to Kosovo's total population. The highest mortality rates were in men between 15 and 49 (5,421 victims of war) as well as for men over 50 (5,176 victims). For persons younger than 15, the estimates were 160 victims for males and 200 for females. For women between 15 and 49 the estimate is that there were 510 victims; older than 50 years the estimate is 541 victims. The authors stated that it was not "possible to differentiate completely between civilian and military casualties".
In the 2008 joint study by the Humanitarian Law Centre (an NGO from Serbia and Kosovo), The International Commission on Missing Persons, and the Missing Person Commission of Serbia made a name-by-name list of war and post-war victims. According to the updated 2015 Kosovo Memory Book, 13,535 people were killed or missing due to the Kosovo conflict, from 1 January 1998 up until December 2000. Of these, 10,812 were Albanians, 2,197 Serbs and 526 Roma, Bosniaks, Montenegrins and others. 10,317 civilians were killed or went missing, of whom 8,676 were Albanians, 1,196 Serbs and 445 Roma and others. The remaining 3,218 dead or missing were combatants, including 2,131 members of the KLA and FARK, 1,084 members of Serbian forces and 3 members of KFOR. As of 2019, the book had been updated to a total of 13,548. In August 2017, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that between 1998 and 1999, more than 6,000 people had gone missing in Kosovo, and that 1,658 remained missing, with neither the person nor the body having, at that time, been found.
Yugoslavia claimed that NATO attacks caused between 1,200 and 5,700 civilian casualties. NATO's Secretary General, Lord Robertson, wrote after the war that "the actual toll in human lives will never be precisely known" but he then offered the figures found in a report by Human Rights Watch as a reasonable estimate. This report counted between 488 and 527 civilian deaths (90 to 150 of them killed from cluster bomb use) in 90 separate incidents, the worst of which were the 87 Albanian refugees who perished at the hands of NATO bombs, near Koriša.
Various estimates of the number of killings attributed to Yugoslav forces have been announced through the years. An estimated 800,000 Kosovo Albanians fled and an estimated 7,000 to 9,000 were killed, according to The New York Times. The estimate of 10,000 deaths is used by the US Department of State, which cited human rights abuses as its main justification for attacking Yugoslavia.
Statistical experts working on behalf of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) prosecution estimate that the total number of dead is about 10,000. Eric Fruits, a professor at Portland State University, argued that the experts' analyses were based on fundamentally flawed data and that none of its conclusions are supported by any valid statistical analysis or tests.
In August 2000, the ICTY announced that it had exhumed 2,788 bodies in Kosovo, but declined to say how many were thought to be victims of war crimes. KFOR sources told Agence France Presse that of the 2,150 bodies that had been discovered up until July 1999, about 850 were thought to be victims of war crimes.
In an attempt to conceal the corpses of the victims, Yugoslav forces transported the bodies of murdered Albanians deep inside Serbia and buried them in mass graves. According to HLC, many of the bodies were taken to the Mačkatica Aluminium Complex near Surdulica and the Copper Mining And Smelting Complex in Bor, where they were incinerated. There are reports that some bodies of Albanian victims were also burned in the Feronikli plant in Glogovac.
Known mass graves:
The KLA abducted and killed Serbian, Roma, and moderate Albanian civilians during and after the war. The exact number of civilians killed by the KLA is not known, though estimates conducted in the initial post-war months listed several hundreds with the targeting of non-Albanians intensifying in the immediate aftermath of KFOR deployment. Although more than 2,500 non-Albanians are believed to have been killed in the period between 1 January 1998 and 31 December 2000, it is not known how many of them were killed by the KLA or affiliated groups.
Military casualties on the NATO side were light. According to official reports, the alliance suffered no fatalities as a direct result of combat operations. In the early hours of 5 May, a US military AH-64 Apache helicopter crashed not far from the border between Serbia and Albania.
Another US AH-64 helicopter crashed about 40 miles (64 km) northeast of Tirana, Albania's capital, very close to the Albanian/Kosovo border. According to CNN, the crash happened 45 miles (72 km) northeast of Tirana. The two US pilots of the helicopter, Army Chief Warrant Officers David Gibbs and Kevin L. Reichert, died in that crash. They were the only NATO fatalities during the war, according to NATO official statements.
There were other casualties after the war, mostly due to land mines. During the war, the alliance reported the loss of the first US stealth aeroplane (an F-117 Nighthawk) ever shot down by enemy fire. Furthermore, an F-16 fighter was lost near Šabac and 32 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) from different nations were lost. The wreckages of downed UAVs were shown on Serbian television during the war. Some US sources claim a second F-117A was also heavily damaged, and although it made it back to its base, it never flew again. A-10 Thunderbolts have been reported as losses, with two shot down and another two damaged. Three US soldiers riding a Humvee in a routine patrol were captured by Yugoslav special forces across the Macedonian border.
At first, NATO claimed to have killed 10,000 Yugoslav troops, while Yugoslavia claimed only 500 had been killed; the NATO investigative teams later corrected it to a few hundred Yugoslav troops killed by air strikes. In 2001, the Yugoslav authorities claimed 462 soldiers were killed and 299 wounded by NATO airstrikes. Later, in 2013, Serbia claimed that 1,008 Yugoslav soldiers and policemen had been killed by NATO bombing. In early June 1999, NATO claimed that 5,000 Yugoslav servicemen had been killed and 10,000 had been wounded during the NATO air campaign. NATO has since revised this estimate to 1,200 Yugoslav soldiers and policemen killed.
Of military equipment, NATO destroyed around 50 Yugoslav Air Force aircraft including 6 MiG-29s destroyed in air-to-air combat. A number of G-4 Super Galebs were destroyed in their hardened aircraft shelter by bunker-busting bombs which started a fire which spread quickly because the shelter doors were not closed. At the end of war, NATO officially claimed that they had destroyed 93 Yugoslav tanks. Yugoslavia admitted a total of 3 destroyed tanks. The latter figure was verified by European inspectors when Yugoslavia rejoined the Dayton accords, by noting the difference between the number of tanks then and at the last inspection in 1995. NATO claimed that the Yugoslav army lost 93 tanks (M-84's and T-55's), 132 APCs, and 52 artillery pieces. Newsweek, the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S, gained access to a suppressed US Air Force report that claimed the real numbers were "3 tanks, not 120; 18 armored personnel carriers, not 220; 20 artillery pieces, not 450". Another US Air Force report gives a figure of 14 tanks destroyed. Most of the targets hit in Kosovo were decoys, such as tanks made out of plastic sheets with telegraph poles for gun barrels, or old World War II–era tanks which were not functional. Anti-aircraft defences were preserved by the simple expedient of not turning them on, preventing NATO aircraft from detecting them, but forcing them to keep above a ceiling of 15,000 feet (4,600 metres), making accurate bombing much more difficult. Towards the end of the war, it was claimed that carpet bombing by B-52 aircraft had caused huge casualties among Yugoslav troops stationed along the Kosovo–Albania border. Careful searching by NATO investigators found no evidence of any such large-scale casualties.
The most significant loss for the Yugoslav Army was the damaged and destroyed infrastructure. Almost all military air bases and airfields (Batajnica, Lađevci, Slatina, Golubovci and Đakovica) and other military buildings and facilities were badly damaged or destroyed. Unlike the units and their equipment, military buildings could not be camouflaged. thus, defence industry and military technical overhaul facilities were also seriously damaged (Utva, Zastava Arms factory, Moma Stanojlović air force overhaul centre, technical overhaul centres in Čačak and Kragujevac). In an effort to weaken the Yugoslav Army, NATO targeted several important civilian facilities (the Pančevo oil refinery, Novi Sad oil refinery, bridges, TV antennas, railroads, etc.)
Around 1,500 Kosovo Liberation Army soldiers were killed, according to KLA's own estimates. HLC registered 2,131 KLA and FARK insurgents killed in its comprehensive database.
The Yugoslav and Serb forces caused the displacement of between 1.2 million to 1.45 million Kosovo Albanians. After the end of the war in June 1999, numerous Albanian refugees started returning home from neighboring countries. By November 1999, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 848,100 out of 1,108,913 had returned.
According to the 1991 Yugoslavia Census, of the nearly 2 million population of Kosovo in 1991, 194,190 were Serbs, 45,745 were Romani and 20,356 were Montenegrins. According to the Human Rights Watch, 200,000 Serbs and thousands of Roma fled from Kosovo during and after the war. Homes of minorities were burned and Orthodox churches and monasteries were destroyed. The Yugoslav Red Cross had also registered 247,391 mostly Serbian refugees by 26 November. More than 164,000 Serbs left Kosovo during the seven weeks which followed Yugoslav and Serb forces' withdrawal from, and the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) entering Kosovo.
Further inter-ethnic violence took place in 2000, and 2004.
For the government of Serbia, cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia is "still regarded as a distressing obligation, the necessary price for joining the European Union". Religious objects were damaged or destroyed. Of the 498 mosques in Kosovo that were in active use, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) documented that 225 mosques sustained damage or destruction by the Yugoslav Serb army. In all, eighteen months of the Yugoslav Serb counterinsurgency campaign between 1998 and 1999 within Kosovo resulted in 225 or a third out of a total of 600 mosques being damaged, vandalised, or destroyed. During the war, Islamic architectural heritage posed for Yugoslav Serb paramilitary and military forces as Albanian patrimony, with destruction of non-Serbian architectural heritage being a methodical and planned component of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.
Widespread rape and sexual violence by the Serbian army, police and paramilitaries occurred during the conflict and the majority of victims were Kosovo Albanian women, numbering an estimated 20,000. The crimes of rape by the Serb military, paramilitary and police amounted to crimes against humanity and a war crime of torture.
On 27 April 1999, a mass execution of at least 377 Kosovo Albanian civilians, of whom 36 were under 18 years old, was committed by Serbian police and Yugoslav Army forces in the village of Meja near the town of Gjakova. It followed an operation which began after the killing of six Serbian policemen by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The victims were pulled from refugee convoys at a checkpoint in Meja and their families were ordered to proceed to Albania. Men and boys were separated and then executed by the road. It was one of the largest massacres in the Kosovo War.
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević was charged by the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) with crimes against humanity and war crimes. In 2001, then-President Vojislav Koštunica "fought tooth and nail" against attempts to put Milošević before an international court but was unable to prevent this happening after further atrocities were revealed.
By 2014, the ICTY issued final verdicts against the indicted Yugoslav officials who were found guilty of deportation, other inhumane acts (forcible transfer), murder and persecutions (crimes against humanity, Article 5), as well as murder (violations of the laws or customs of war, Article 3):
The ICTY found that:
...FRY and Serbian forces use[d] violence and terror to force a significant number of Kosovo Albanians from their homes and across the borders, in order for the state authorities to maintain control over Kosovo ... This campaign was conducted by army and Interior Ministry police forces (MUP) under the control of FRY and Serbian authorities, who were responsible for mass expulsions of Kosovo Albanian civilians from their homes, as well as incidents of killings, sexual assault, and the intentional destruction of mosques.
The ICTY convicted KLA commander Haradin Bala for murder, torture and cruel treatment in the Lapušnik prison camp, and sentencted him to 13 years’ imprisonment. Fatmir Limaj and Isak Musliu were acquitted.
In 2008, Carla Del Ponte published a book in which she alleged that, after the end of the war in 1999, Kosovo Albanians were smuggling organs of between 100 and 300 Serbs and other minorities from the province to Albania.
In March 2005, a UN tribunal indicted Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj for war crimes against the Serbs. On 8 March, he tendered his resignation. Haradinaj, an ethnic Albanian, was a former commander who led units of the Kosovo Liberation Army and was appointed Prime Minister after winning an election of 72 votes to three in the Kosovo's Parliament in December 2004. Haradinaj was acquitted on all counts along with fellow KLA veterans Idriz Balaj and Lahi Brahimaj. The Office of the Prosecutor appealed their acquittals, resulting in the ICTY ordering a partial retrial. On 29 November 2012 all three were acquitted for the second time on all charges. The trials were rife with accusations of witness intimidation, as media outlets from several different countries wrote that as many as nineteen people who were supposed to be witnesses in the trial against Haradinaj were murdered (the ICTY disputed these reports).
According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), "800 non-Albanian civilians were kidnapped and murdered from 1998 to 1999". After the war, "479 people have gone missing... most of them Serbs". HRW notes that "the intent behind many of the killings and abductions that have occurred in the province since June 1999 appears to be the expulsion of Kosovo's Serb and Roma population rather than a desire for revenge alone. In numerous cases, direct and systematic efforts were made to force Serbs and Roma to leave their homes." Some 200,000 Serbs and Roma fled Kosovo following the withdrawal of Yugoslav forces.
In April 2014, the Assembly of Kosovo considered and approved the establishment of a special court to try cases involving crimes and other serious abuses committed in 1999–2000 by members of the KLA. Reports of abuses and war crimes committed by the KLA during and after the conflict include massacres of civilians, prison camps, burning and looting of homes and destruction of medieval churches and monuments.
Carla Del Ponte said that the US for political reasons, did not want the ICTY to scrutinise war crimes committed by the KLA. According to her, Madeleine Albright who was the Secretary of State at the time told her to proceed slowly with the investigation of Ramush Haradinaj to avoid unrest in Kosovo.
The Yugoslav government and a number of international pressure groups (e.g., Amnesty International) claimed that NATO had carried out war crimes during the conflict, notably the bombing of the Serbian TV headquarters in Belgrade on 23 April 1999, where 16 people were killed and 16 more were injured. Sian Jones of Amnesty stated, "The bombing of the headquarters of Serbian state radio and television was a deliberate attack on a civilian object and as such constitutes a war crime". A report conducted by the ICTY entitled Final Report to the Prosecutor by the Committee Established to Review the NATO Bombing Campaign Against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia concluded that, "Insofar as the attack actually was aimed at disrupting the communications network, it was legally acceptable" and that, "NATO's targeting of the RTS building for propaganda purposes was an incidental (albeit complementary) aim of its primary goal of disabling the Serbian military command and control system and to destroy the nerve system and apparatus that keeps Milosević in power." In regards to civilian casualties, it further stated that though they were, "unfortunately high, they do not appear to be clearly disproportionate."
The Kosovo War had a number of important consequences in terms of the military and political outcome. The status of Kosovo remains unresolved; international negotiations began in 2006 to determine Kosovo's level of autonomy as envisaged under UN Security Council Resolution 1244, but efforts failed. The province is administered by the United Nations despite its unilateral declaration of independence on 17 February 2008.
The UN-backed talks, led by UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari, had begun in February 2006. Whilst progress was made on technical matters, both parties remained diametrically opposed on the question of status itself. In February 2007, Ahtisaari delivered a draft status settlement proposal to leaders in Belgrade and Pristina, the basis for a draft UN Security Council Resolution which proposes "supervised independence" for the province, which is in contrary to UN Security Council Resolution 1244. By July 2007, the draft resolution, which was backed by the United States, United Kingdom, and other European members of the Security Council, had been rewritten four times to try to accommodate Russian concerns that such a resolution would undermine the principle of state sovereignty. Russia, which holds a veto in the Security Council as one of five permanent members, stated that it would not support any resolution which is not acceptable to both Belgrade and Priština.
The campaign exposed significant weaknesses in the US arsenal, which were later addressed for the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns. Apache attack helicopters and AC-130 Spectre gunships were brought up to the front lines but were never used after two Apaches crashed during training in the Albanian mountains. Stocks of many precision missiles were reduced to critically low levels. For combat aircraft, continuous operations resulted in skipped maintenance schedules, and many aircraft were withdrawn from service awaiting spare parts and service. Also, many of the precision-guided weapons proved unable to cope with Balkan weather, as the clouds blocked the laser guidance beams. This was resolved by retrofitting bombs with Global Positioning System satellite guidance devices that are immune to bad weather. Although pilotless surveillance aircraft were extensively used, often attack aircraft could not be brought to the scene quickly enough to hit targets of opportunity. This led missiles being fitted to Predator drones in Afghanistan, reducing the "sensor to shooter" time to virtually zero.
Kosovo also showed that some low-tech tactics could reduce the impact of a high-tech force such as NATO; the Milošević government cooperated with Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime in Iraq, passing on many of the lessons learned in the Gulf War. The Yugoslav army had long expected to need to resist a much stronger enemy, either Soviet or NATO, during the Cold War and had developed tactics of deception and concealment in response. These would have been unlikely to have resisted a full-scale invasion for long, but were probably used to mislead overflying aircraft and satellites. Among the tactics used were:
As a result of the Kosovo War, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation created a second NATO medal, the NATO Medal for Kosovo Service, an international military decoration. Shortly thereafter, NATO created the Non-Article 5 Medal for Balkans service to combine both Yugoslavian and Kosovo operations into one service medal.
Due to the involvement of the United States armed forces, a separate US military decoration, known as the Kosovo Campaign Medal, was established by President Bill Clinton in 2000.
The Kosovo Campaign Medal (KCM) is a military award of the United States Armed Forces established by Executive Order 13154 of President Bill Clinton on 3 May 2000. The medal recognises military service performed in Kosovo from 24 March 1999 through 31 December 2013.
A variety of weapons were used by the Yugoslav security forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army, NATO only operated aircraft and naval units during the conflict.
The weapons used by Yugoslav government were mostly Yugoslav made, while almost all of their AA units were Soviet made.
The weapons used by the Kosovo Liberation Army were mostly Soviet Kalashnikovs and Chinese derivatives of the AK-47 and some Western weaponry.
Aircraft used by NATO were:
Guided missiles used were:
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Kosovo War was an armed conflict in Kosovo that lasted from 28 February 1998 until 11 June 1999. It was fought between the forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (i.e. Serbia and Montenegro), which controlled Kosovo before the war, and the Kosovo Albanian rebel group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The conflict ended when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intervened by beginning air strikes in March 1999 which resulted in Yugoslav forces withdrawing from Kosovo.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The KLA was formed in the early 1990s to fight against the discrimination of ethnic Albanians and the repression of political dissent by the Serbian authorities, which started after the suppression of Kosovo's autonomy by Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević in 1989. The KLA initiated its first campaign in 1995, after Kosovo's case was left out of the Dayton Agreement and it had become clear that President Rugova's strategy of peaceful resistance had failed to bring Kosovo into the international agenda. In June 1996, the group claimed responsibility for acts of sabotage targeting Kosovo police stations, during the Kosovo Insurgency. In 1997, the organisation acquired a large amount of arms through weapons smuggling from Albania, following a rebellion in which weapons were looted from the country's police and army posts. In early 1998, KLA attacks targeting Yugoslav authorities in Kosovo resulted in an increased presence of Serb paramilitaries and regular forces who subsequently began pursuing a campaign of retribution targeting KLA sympathisers and political opponents; this campaign killed 1,500 to 2,000 civilians and KLA combatants, and had displaced 370,000 Kosovar Albanians by March 1999.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "On 20 March 1999, Yugoslav forces began a massive campaign of repression and expulsions of Kosovar Albanians following the withdrawal of the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) and the failure of the proposed Rambouillet Agreement. In response to this, NATO intervened with an aerial bombing campaign that began on March 24, justifying it as a \"humanitarian war\". The war ended with the Kumanovo Agreement, signed on 9 June, with Yugoslav and Serb forces agreeing to withdraw from Kosovo to make way for an international presence. NATO forces entered Kosovo on June 12. The NATO bombing campaign has remained controversial. It did not gain the approval of the UN Security Council and it caused at least 488 Yugoslav civilian deaths, including substantial numbers of Kosovar refugees.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In 2001 a Supreme Court, based in Kosovo and administered by the United Nations, found that there had been \"a systematic campaign of terror, including murders, rapes, arsons and severe maltreatments\" against the Albanian population, but that Yugoslav troops had tried to force them out of Kosovo, but not to eradicate them, and therefore it was not genocide. After the war, a list was compiled which documented that over 13,500 people were killed or went missing during the two year conflict. The Yugoslav and Serb forces caused the displacement of between 1.2 million and 1.45 million Kosovo Albanians. After the war, around 200,000 Serbs, Romani, and other non-Albanians fled Kosovo and many of the remaining civilians were victims of abuse.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The Kosovo Liberation Army disbanded soon after the end of the war, with some of its members going on to fight for the UÇPMB in the Preševo Valley and others joining the National Liberation Army (NLA) and Albanian National Army (ANA) during the armed ethnic conflict in Macedonia, while others went on to form the Kosovo Police.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) convicted six Serb/Yugoslav officials for war crimes, and one Albanian commander for war crimes.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The modern Albanian-Serbian conflict has its roots in the expulsion of Albanians in 1877-1878 from areas that were incorporated into the Principality of Serbia expelled Albanians settled in Kosovo and between 1876 and 1878 there were attacks on Serbs and, in 1901, massacres of Kosovan Serbs.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Tensions between the Serbian and Albanian communities in Kosovo simmered throughout the 20th century and occasionally erupted into major violence, particularly during the First Balkan War (1912–13), World War I (1914–18), and World War II (1939–45). The Albanian revolt of 1912 in Kosovo resulted in the Ottoman Empire agreeing to the creation of an Albanian quasi-state but Ottoman forces were soon driven out by opportunistic Bulgarian, Serbian and Montenegrin troops. In the ensuing Balkan Wars, at least 50,000 Albanians were massacred in the present-day territory of Kosovo by the Serbian regular army and irregular Komitadjis with the intention of manipulating population statistics before the borders of Albania were recognized during the London Conference of 1912–1913, after the latter proposed the drawing of the borders of Albania based on ethnic statistics.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "After World War I Kosovo was incorporated into the Serb-dominated Kingdom of Yugoslavia despite the Albanian community's demands for union with Albania. Albanian rebels started the Drenica-Dukagjin Uprisings, which ended with the rebellion being crushed after the fall of the government of Fan Noli in Albania in December 1924 and the subsequent withdrawal of support for the Committee for the National Defence of Kosovo by President Zog. Between 1918 and 1939, Yugoslavia expelled hundreds of thousands of Albanians and promoted the settlement of mostly Serb colonists in the region, while Albanian language schools were prohibited. After the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, most of Kosovo was assigned to Italian-controlled Albania, with the rest being controlled by Germany and Bulgaria. During the occupation, Albanian collaborators persecuted Serb and Montenegrin settlers, with thousands killed and between 70,000 and 100,000 expelled from Kosovo or sent to concentration camps in order to Albanianize the province. The return of the expelled colonists was made next to impossible by a decree from Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito, followed by a new law in August 1945, which disallowed the return of colonists who had taken land from Albanian peasants.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The end of World War II saw Kosovo returning to Yugoslav control. The new socialist government under Josip Broz Tito systematically suppressed nationalism among the ethnic groups throughout Yugoslavia, and established six republics (Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina) as constituent parts of the Yugoslav federation. Tito diluted the power of Serbia – the largest and most populous republic – by establishing autonomous governments in the Serbian province of Vojvodina in the north and Kosovo in the south. Until 1963, the region was named the Autonomous Region of Kosovo and Metohija and in 1968 it got renamed to the Socialist Autonomous Province of Kosovo.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The period of 1948–1963 in Kosovo was characterized by a brutal crackdown against Albanian nationalists by Aleksandar Ranković and his secret police (the UDBA). In 1955, a state of emergency was declared in order to squelch unrest that had purportedly been instigated by terror groups from Albania. Following Ranković's ouster in 1966, Tito and his League of Communists Party granted more powers to republics and attempted to improve the political, social and economic situation in Kosovo. In November 1968, large-scale demonstrations took place in Kosovo which were quelled by Yugoslav forces, precipitated by Albanian demands for separate republics in Kosovo and Macedonia. Albanian students and intellectuals pushed for an Albanian language University and greater representative powers for Albanians in both the Serbian and Yugoslav state bodies.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The University of Pristina was established as an independent institution in 1970, ending a long period when the institution had been run as an outpost of University of Belgrade. The lack of Albanian-language educational materials in Yugoslavia hampered Albanian education in Kosovo, so an agreement was struck with Albania itself to supply textbooks.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In 1969 the Serbian Orthodox Church ordered its clergy to compile data on the ongoing problems of Serbs in Kosovo, seeking to pressure the government in Belgrade to do more to protect the interests of Serbs there.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In 1974 Kosovo's political status improved further when a new Yugoslav constitution granted an expanded set of political rights. Along with Vojvodina, Kosovo was declared a province and gained many of the powers of a fully-fledged republic: a seat on the federal presidency and its own assembly, police force and national bank. While trying to balance the interests of Albanians and Serbs, this effectively stratified both communities and prompted Serb fears of Kosovo seceding from Yugoslavia. Student demonstrations continued throughout the 1970s, resulting in the imprisonment of many members of the Albanian National Liberation Movement, including Adem Demaçi. The political and administrative changes that began in 1968 resulted in Kosovo Albanians getting complete control over the province's political, social and cultural issues as well as growing ties between Kosovo and Albania. However, by 1980, economic impoverishment would become the catalyst for further unrest.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Provincial power was still exercised by the League of Communists of Kosovo, but now devolved mainly to ethnic Albanian communists. Tito's death on 4 May 1980 ushered in a long period of political instability, worsened by growing economic crisis and nationalist unrest. The first major outbreak occurred in Kosovo's main city, Pristina, when a protest of University of Pristina students over long queues in their university canteen rapidly escalated and in late March and early April 1981 spread throughout Kosovo, causing mass demonstrations in several towns, the 1981 protests in Kosovo. The disturbances were quelled by the Presidency of Yugoslavia proclaiming a state of emergency, sending in riot police and the army, which resulted in numerous casualties.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In 1981 it was reported that some 4,000 Serbs moved from Kosovo to central Serbia after the Kosovo Albanian riots in March that resulted in several Serb deaths and the desecration of Serbian Orthodox architecture and graveyards. Serbia reacted with a plan to reduce the power of Albanians in the province and a propaganda campaign that claimed Serbs were being pushed out of the province primarily by the growing Albanian population, rather than the bad state of the economy. 33 nationalist formations were dismantled by Yugoslav police, who sentenced some 280 people (800 fined, 100 under investigation) and seized arms caches and propaganda material. Albanian leaders of Kosovo maintained that Serbs were leaving mainly because of the poor economy. The worsening state of Kosovo's economy made the province a poor choice for Serbs seeking work. Albanians, as well as Serbs, tended to favor their compatriots when hiring new employees, but the number of jobs was too few for the population. Kosovo was the poorest entity of Yugoslavia: the average per capita income was $795, compared with the national average of $2,635. Due to its comparative poverty it received substantial amounts of Yugoslav development money, leading to quarrels amongst the republics regarding its quantity and utilization.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In February 1982 a group of priests from Serbia proper petitioned their bishops to ask \"why the Serbian Church is silent\" and why it did not campaign against \"the destruction, arson and sacrilege of the holy shrines of Kosovo\". In 1985, two Albanian farmers were falsely accused for the Đorđe Martinović incident, which turned into a cause célèbre in Serbian politics and fueled hatred towards Albanians. In 1987, Aziz Kelmendi, an ethnic-Albanian recruit in the Yugoslav Army (JNA) killed four fellow soldiers in a mass shooting in JNA barracks, with only one of them being an ethnic Serb. Serbian media blamed Albanian nationalism for the event and in response, Yugoslavia sent 400 federal police officers to Kosovo. It was against this tense background that the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU) conducted a survey of Serbs who had left Kosovo in 1985 and 1986, which concluded that a considerable number had left under pressure from Albanians.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The so-called SANU Memorandum, leaked in September 1986, was a draft document that focused on the political difficulties facing Serbs in Yugoslavia, pointing to Tito's deliberate hobbling of Serbia's power and the difficulties faced by Serbs outside Serbia proper. It paid special attention to Kosovo, arguing that the Kosovo Serbs were being subjected to \"physical, political, legal and cultural genocide\" in an \"open and total war\" that had been ongoing since the spring of 1981. It claimed that Kosovo's status in 1986 was a worse historical defeat for the Serbs than any event since liberation from the Ottomans in 1804, thus ranking it above such catastrophes as the World war occupations. The Memorandum's authors claimed that 200,000 Serbs had moved out of the province over the previous 20 years and warned that there would soon be none left \"unless things changed radically.\" The remedy, according to the Memorandum, was for \"genuine security and unambiguous equality for all peoples living in Kosovo and Metohija [to be] established\" and \"objective and permanent conditions for the return of the expelled [Serbian] nation [to be] created.\" It concluded that \"Serbia must not be passive and wait and see what the others will say, as it has done so often in the past.\" The SANU Memorandum provoked split reactions: Albanians saw it as a call for Serbian supremacy at the local level, claiming the Serb emigrants had left Kosovo for economic reasons, while the Slovenes and Croats saw a threat in the call for a more assertive Serbia. Serbs were divided: many welcomed it, while the Communist old guard strongly attacked its message. One of those who denounced it was Serbian Communist Party official Slobodan Milošević.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In April 1987, Serbian President Ivan Stambolić and Slobodan Milošević visited Kosovo with the intention of reducing tensions in the region. A Serb nationalist crowd had gathered near the hall where Milošević was supposed to deliver his speech in Kosovo Polje. The crowd tried to break through the police cordon that was providing security for the gathering, and after clashing with the police, they chanted that Albanian policemen were beating them. Informed of the situation, Milošević walked out of the building and addressed the protesters, telling them \"No one will beat you again\". He further called upon the crowd to resist the Albanian pressure to leave Kosovo. This speech marked the beginning pf Milošević's use of nationalism to gain power, and he was appointed President of the Presidency of Serbia in May 1989.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In November 1988 Kosovo's head of the provincial committee was arrested. In March 1989 Milošević announced an \"anti-bureaucratic revolution\" in Kosovo and Vojvodina, curtailing their autonomy as well as imposing a curfew and a state of emergency in Kosovo due to violent demonstrations, resulting in 24 deaths (including two policemen). Milošević and his government claimed that the constitutional changes were necessary to protect Kosovo's remaining Serbs against harassment from the Albanian majority.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "On 17 November 1988 Kaqusha Jashari and Azem Vllasi were forced to resign from the leadership of the League of Communists of Kosovo (LCK). In early 1989 the Serbian Assembly proposed amendments to the Constitution of Serbia that would remove the word \"Socialist\" from the Serbian Republic's title, establish multi-party elections, remove the independence of institutions of the autonomous provinces such as Kosovo and rename Kosovo as the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija. In February Kosovar Albanians demonstrated in large numbers against the proposal, emboldened by striking miners. Serbs in Belgrade protested against the Kosovo Albanian's separatism. On 3 March 1989 the Presidency of Yugoslavia imposed special measures assigning responsibility for public security to the federal government. On 23 March the Assembly of Kosovo voted to accept the proposed amendments although most Albanian delegates abstained. In early 1990 Kosovar Albanians held mass demonstrations against the special measures, which were lifted on 18 April 1990 and responsibility for public security was again assigned to Serbia.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "On 26 June 1990 Serbian authorities barred access to the building of the Kosovo Assembly, citing special circumstances. On 2 July 1990, 114 ethnic Albanian delegates of the 180-member Kosovo Assembly gathered in front of the closed building and declared Kosovo an independent republic within Yugoslavia. On 5 July the Serbian Assembly dissolved the Kosovo Assembly. Serbia also dissolved the provincial executive council and assumed full and direct control of the province. Serbia took over management of Kosovo's principal Albanian-language media, halting Albanian-language broadcasts. On 4 September 1990 Kosovar Albanians observed a 24-hour general strike, virtually shutting down the province. On 5 August 1991, the Serbian Assembly suspended the main Albanian-language daily newspaper, Rilindja, declaring its journalism unconstitutional.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "On 7 September 1990 the Constitution of Kosovo was promulgated by Albanian members of the disbanded Assembly of Kosovo. Milošević responded by ordering the arrest of the deputies that participated in the meeting. The new controversial Serbian Constitution was promulgated on 28 September 1990. In September 1991, Kosovar Albanians held an unofficial referendum in which they voted overwhelmingly for independence. On 24 May 1992 Kosovar Albanians held unofficial elections for an assembly and president of the Republic of Kosovo and elected Ibrahim Rugova as president.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "During this time, the Republic of Kosova started to establish parallel institutions, which were not recognized by Serbia. The presence of Serbian security structures in Kosovo increased considerably and Kosovo was put into constant curfews. Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians were fired from government and state-run institutions. By 1990 most Albanian schools were closed and the Serbian government required Albanian teachers to sign loyalty oaths in order to remain employed, effectively asking them to recognize Serbia, and not Republic of Kosova as their country, which the vast majority refused to sign. By 1991 all Albanian schoolteachers and academic staff had been dismissed and a parallel education system was established by the government of the Republic of Kosova, using donated private homes as classrooms. 350,000 Albanians emigrated out of the region due to economic and social pressures over the next seven years, and the Milosevic regime encouraged Serb settlement to the region. United Nations Special Rapporteur Tadeusz Mazowiecki reported on 26 February 1993 that the police had intensified their repression of the Albanian population since 1990, including depriving them of their basic rights, destroying their education system, and conducting large numbers of political dismissals of civil servants.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "According to an Amnesty International report in 1998, due to dismissals from the Yugoslav government it was estimated that by 1998 unemployment rate in the Kosovar Albanian population was higher than 70%. The economic apartheid imposed by Belgrade was aimed at impoverishing an already poor Kosovo Albanian population.",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In 1996, 16,000 Serb refugees from Bosnia and Croatia were settled in Kosovo by the Milosevic government, sometimes against their will.",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Ibrahim Rugova, first President of the Republic of Kosovo pursued a policy of passive resistance which succeeded in maintaining peace in Kosovo during the earlier wars in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia during the early 1990s. As evidenced by the emergence of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), this came at the cost of increasing frustration among Kosovo's Albanian population. In the mid-1990s, Rugova pleaded for a United Nations peacekeeping force for Kosovo.",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Continuing repression convinced many Albanians that only armed resistance would change the situation. On 22 April 1996, four attacks on Serbian security personnel were carried out almost simultaneously in different parts of Kosovo. The KLA, a hitherto-unknown organisation, subsequently claimed responsibility. The nature of the KLA was at first mysterious. It initially seemed that their only goals were to stop repression from Yugoslav authorities. KLA goals also included the establishment of a Greater Albania, a state stretching into surrounding Macedonia, Montenegro and southern Serbia. In July 1998, in an interview for Der Spiegel, KLA spokesman Jakup Krasniqi publicly announced that the KLA's goal was the unification of all Albanian-inhabited lands. Sulejman Selimi, a General Commander of KLA in 1998–1999, said:",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "There is de facto Albanian nation. The tragedy is that European powers after World War I decided to divide that nation between several Balkan states. We are now fighting to unify the nation, to liberate all Albanians, including those in Macedonia, Montenegro, and other parts of Serbia. We are not just a liberation army for Kosovo.",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "While Rugova promised to uphold the minority rights of Serbs in Kosovo, the KLA was much less tolerant. Selimi stated that \"Serbs who have blood on their hands would have to leave Kosovo\".",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The crisis escalated in December 1997 at the Peace Implementation Council meeting in Bonn, where the international community (as defined in the Dayton Agreement) agreed to give the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina sweeping powers, including the right to dismiss elected leaders. At the same time, Western diplomats insisted that Kosovo be discussed and that Yugoslavia be responsive to Albanian demands there. The delegation from Yugoslavia stormed out of the meetings in protest. This was followed by the return of the Contact Group that oversaw the last phases of the Bosnian conflict and declarations from European powers demanding that Yugoslavia solve the problem in Kosovo.",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The KLA received financial and material support from the Kosovo Albanian diaspora. In early 1997, Albania collapsed into chaos following the fall of President Sali Berisha. Albanian Armed Forces stockpiles were looted with impunity by criminal gangs, with much of the hardware ending up in western Kosovo and boosting the growing KLA arsenal. Bujar Bukoshi, shadow Prime Minister in exile (in Zürich, Switzerland), created a group called FARK (Armed Forces of the Republic of Kosova). FARK and the KLA were initially rivals, but later FARK merged into the KLA. The Yugoslav government considered the KLA to be \"terrorists\" and \"insurgents\" who indiscriminately attacked police and civilians, while most Albanians saw the KLA as \"freedom fighters\".",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "On 23 February 1998, the United States Special Envoy to the Balkans, Robert Gelbard, stated in Pristina that \"the KLA was without any question a terrorist group.\" He later told the House Committee on International Relations that \"while the KLA had committed 'terrorist acts,' it had 'not been classified legally by the U.S. Government as a terrorist organization.'\" However, his 23 February statements have been seen as an unwitting \"green light\" to the Serbian crackdown that followed less than a week later.",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "KLA attacks intensified, centering on the Drenica valley area with the compound of Adem Jashari being a focal point. Days after Robert Gelbard described the KLA as a terrorist group, Serbian police responded to the KLA attacks in the Likošane area, and pursued some of the KLA to Čirez, resulting in the deaths of 16 Albanian fighters and 26 civilians in the attacks on Likoshane and Çirez. and four Serbian policemen. The KLA's goal was to merge its Drenica stronghold with their stronghold in Albania proper, and this would shape the first few months of the fighting.",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Serb police then began to pursue Adem Jashari and his followers in the village of Donje Prekaze. On 5 March 1998, a massive firefight at the Jashari compound led to the massacre of 60 Albanians, of which eighteen were women and ten were under the age of sixteen. The event provoked massive condemnation from western capitals. Madeleine Albright said that \"this crisis is not an internal affair of the FRY\".",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "On 24 March, Yugoslav forces surrounded the village of Glodjane and attacked a rebel compound there. Despite superior firepower, the Yugoslav forces failed to destroy the KLA unit, which had been their objective. Although there were deaths and severe injuries on the Albanian side, the insurgency in Glodjane was far from stamped out. The village was in fact to become one of the strongest centres of resistance in the upcoming war.",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "A new Yugoslav government was formed at this time, led by the Socialist Party of Serbia and the Serbian Radical Party. Ultra-nationalist Radical Party chairman Vojislav Šešelj became a deputy prime minister. This increased the dissatisfaction with the country's position among Western diplomats and spokespersons.",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In early April, Serbia arranged for a referendum on the issue of foreign interference in Kosovo. Serbian voters decisively rejected foreign interference in the crisis. Meanwhile, the KLA claimed much of the area in and around Deçan and ran a territory based in the village of Glodjane, encompassing its surroundings. On 31 May 1998, the Yugoslav army and the Serb Ministry of the Interior police began an operation to clear the border of the KLA. NATO's response to this offensive was mid-June's Operation Determined Falcon, a NATO show of force over the Yugoslav borders.",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "During this time, Yugoslav President Milošević reached an arrangement with Boris Yeltsin of Russia to stop offensive operations and prepare for talks with the Albanians, who refused to talk to the Serbian side throughout the crisis, but would talk with the Yugoslav government. In fact, the only meeting between Milošević and Ibrahim Rugova happened on 15 May in Belgrade, two days after the special presidential envoy Richard Holbrooke announced that it would take place. Holbrooke threatened Milošević that if he did not obey, \"what's left of your country will implode\". A month later, Holbrooke visited the border areas affected by the fighting in early June, where he was famously photographed with the KLA. The publication of these images sent a signal to the KLA, its supporters and sympathisers, and to observers in general, that the US was decisively backing the KLA and the Albanian population in Kosovo.",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The Yeltsin agreement required Milošević to allow international representatives to set up a mission in Kosovo to monitor the situation there. The Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission (KDOM) began operations in early July 1998. The US government welcomed this part of the agreement, but denounced the initiative's call for a mutual cease fire. Rather, the US demanded that the Serbian-Yugoslavian side should cease fire \"without linkage ... to a cessation in terrorist activities\".",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "All through June and into mid-July, the KLA maintained its advance. The KLA surrounded Peja and Gjakova, and set up an interim capital in the town of Malisheva (north of Rahovec). KLA troops infiltrated Suva Reka and the northwest of Pristina. They moved on to capture the Belacevec coal pits in late June, threatening energy supplies in the region. Their tactics as usual focused mainly on guerrilla and mountain warfare, and harassing and ambushing Yugoslav forces and Serb police patrols.",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The tide turned in mid-July when the KLA captured Rahovec. On 17 July 1998, two nearby villages, Retimlije and Opteruša, were also captured, while less systematic events took place in the larger Serb-populated village of Velika Hoča. The Orthodox monastery of Zočište three miles (4.8 km) was looted and torched. This led to a series of Serb and Yugoslav offensives which would continue into the beginning of August.",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "A new set of KLA attacks in mid-August triggered Yugoslavian operations in south-central Kosovo, south of the Pristina-Peja road. The KLA began an offensive on 1 September around Prizren, causing Yugoslavian military activity there. In western Kosovo, around Peja, another offensive caused condemnation as international officials expressed fear that a large column of displaced people would be attacked.",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "In early mid-September, for the first time, KLA activity was reported in northern Kosovo around Podujevo. Finally, in late September, a Yugoslav determined effort was made to clear the KLA out of the northern and central parts of Kosovo and out of the Drenica valley. During this time many threats were made from Western capitals but these were tempered somewhat by the elections in Bosnia, as they did not want Serbian Democrats and Radicals to win. Following the elections, the threats intensified once again. On 28 September, the mutilated corpses of a family were discovered by KDOM outside the village of Gornje Obrinje. The bloody image of a child's doll and streams of displaced persons rallied the international community to action.",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Morale was a serious problem for Serb forces; intelligence surveys found that many soldiers disagreed with their comrades' actions. One tank commander reported, \"for the entire time I was in Kosovo, I never saw an enemy soldier and my unit was never once involved in firing at enemy targets. The tanks which cost $2.5 million each were used to slaughter Albanian children... I am ashamed\".",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "When retreating from Kosovo after NATO intervention, Yugoslav units appeared combat effective with high morale and displaying large holdings of undamaged equipment. Weeks before the end of hostilities, David Fromkin noted that \"it seemed possible that NATO unity might crack before Yugoslav morale did.\" The announcement by President Clinton that the US would not deploy ground troops gave a tremendous boost to Serbian morale.",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "On 9 June 1998, US President Bill Clinton declared a \"national emergency\" (state of emergency) due to the \"unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States\" imposed by Yugoslavia and Serbia over the Kosovo War.",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "On 23 September 1998, acting under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1199. This expressed 'grave concern' at reports reaching the Secretary General that over 230,000 people had been displaced from their homes by 'the excessive and indiscriminate use of force by Serbian security forces and the Yugoslav Army', demanding that all parties in Kosovo and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia cease hostilities and maintain a ceasefire. On 24 September the North Atlantic Council (NAC) of NATO issued an \"activation warning\" taking NATO to an increased level of military preparedness for both a limited air option and a phased air campaign in Kosovo. The other major issue for those who saw no option but to resort to the use of force was the estimated 250,000 displaced Albanians, 30,000 of whom were out in the woods, without warm clothing or shelter, with winter fast approaching.",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Meanwhile, the US Ambassador to the Republic of Macedonia, Christopher Hill, was leading shuttle diplomacy between an Albanian delegation, led by Rugova, and the Yugoslav and Serbian authorities. These meetings were shaping the peace plan to be discussed during a period of planned NATO occupation of Kosovo. During a period of two weeks, threats intensified, culminating in NATO's Activation Order being given. NATO was ready to begin airstrikes, and Richard Holbrooke went to Belgrade in the hope of reaching an agreement with Milošević. Officially, the international community demanded an end to fighting. It specifically demanded that Yugoslavia end its offensives against the KLA whilst attempting to convince the KLA to drop its bid for independence. Attempts were made to persuade Milošević to permit NATO peacekeeping troops to enter Kosovo. This, they argued, would allow for the Christopher Hill peace process to proceed and yield a peace agreement.",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "On 13 October 1998, the North Atlantic Council issued activation orders for the execution of both limited air strikes and a phased air campaign in Yugoslavia which would begin in approximately 96 hours. On 15 October the NATO Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) Agreement for a ceasefire was signed, and the deadline for withdrawal was extended to 27 October. Difficulties implementing the agreement were reported, as clashes continued between government troops and the guerrillas. The Serbian withdrawal commenced on or around 25 October 1998, and Operation Eagle Eye commenced on 30 October.",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The KVM was a large contingent of unarmed Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) peace monitors (officially known as verifiers) that moved into Kosovo. Their inadequacy was evident from the start. They were nicknamed the \"clockwork oranges\" in reference to their brightly coloured vehicles. Fighting resumed in December 1998 after both sides broke the ceasefire, and this surge in violence culminated in the killing of Zvonko Bojanić, the Serb mayor of the town of Kosovo Polje. Yugoslav authorities responded by launching a crackdown against KLA militants.",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The January to March 1999 phase of the war brought increasing insecurity in urban areas, including bombings and murders. Such attacks took place during the Rambouillet talks in February and as the Kosovo Verification Agreement unraveled in March. Killings on the roads continued and increased. There were military confrontations in, among other places, the Vushtrri area in February and the heretofore unaffected Kaçanik area in early March.",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "On 15 January 1999 the Račak massacre occurred when 45 Kosovan Albanians were killed. The bodies had been discovered by OSCE monitors, including Head of Mission William Walker, and foreign news correspondents. Yugoslavia denied a massacre took place. The Račak massacre was the culmination of the conflict between the KLA and Yugoslav forces that had continued throughout the winter of 1998–1999. The incident was immediately condemned as a massacre by the Western countries and the United Nations Security Council, and later became the basis of one of the charges of war crimes leveled against Milošević and his top officials. This massacre was the turning point of the war. NATO decided that the conflict could only be settled by introducing a military peacekeeping force under the auspices of NATO, to forcibly restrain the two sides. Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, had been subjected to heavy firefights and segregation according to OSCE reports.",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "On 30 January 1999, NATO issued a statement announcing that the North Atlantic Council had agreed that \"the NATO Secretary General may authorise air strikes against targets on FRY territory\" to \"[compel] compliance with the demands of the international community and [to achieve] a political settlement\". While this was most obviously a threat to the Milošević government, it also included a coded threat to the Albanians: any decision would depend on the \"position and actions of the Kosovo Albanian leadership and all Kosovo Albanian armed elements in and around Kosovo.\"",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Also on 30 January 1999, the Contact Group issued a set of \"non-negotiable principles\" which made up a package known as \"Status Quo Plus\" – effectively the restoration of Kosovo's pre-1990 autonomy within Serbia, plus the introduction of democracy and supervision by international organisations. It also called for a peace conference to be held in February 1999 at the Château de Rambouillet, outside Paris.",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "The Rambouillet talks began on 6 February 1999, with NATO Secretary General Javier Solana negotiating with both sides. They were intended to conclude by 19 February. The FR Yugoslavian delegation was led by then president of Serbia Milan Milutinović, while Milošević himself remained in Belgrade. This was in contrast to the 1995 Dayton conference that ended the war in Bosnia, where Milošević negotiated in person. The absence of Milošević was interpreted as a sign that the real decisions were being made back in Belgrade, a move that aroused criticism in Yugoslavia as well as abroad; Kosovo's Serbian Orthodox bishop Artemije traveled all the way to Rambouillet to protest that the delegation was wholly unrepresentative. At this time, speculation about an indictment of Milošević for war crimes was rife, so his absence may have been motivated by fear of arrest.",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The first phase of negotiations was successful. In particular, a statement was issued by the Contact Group co-chairmen on 23 February 1999 that the negotiations \"have led to a consensus on substantial autonomy for Kosovo, including on mechanisms for free and fair elections to democratic institutions, for the governance of Kosovo, for the protection of human rights and the rights of members of national communities; and for the establishment of a fair judicial system\". They went on to say that \"a political framework is now in place\", leaving the further work of finalising \"the implementation Chapters of the Agreement, including the modalities of the invited international civilian and military presence in Kosovo\". While the Serbs agreed to an autonomous government, free elections, and the release of all political prisoners, the West also insisted on the presence of NATO troops.",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "While the accords did not fully satisfy the Albanians, they were much too radical for the Yugoslavs, who responded by substituting a drastically revised text that even Russia (ally of FR Yugoslavia) found unacceptable. It sought to reopen the painstakingly negotiated political status of Kosovo and deleted all of the proposed implementation measures. Among many other changes in the proposed new version, it eliminated the entire chapter on humanitarian assistance and reconstruction, removed virtually all international oversight and dropped any mention of invoking \"the will of the people [of Kosovo]\" in determining the final status of the province.",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "On 18 March 1999, the Albanian, US, and British delegations signed what became known as the Rambouillet Accords, while the Yugoslav and Russian delegations refused. The accords called for NATO administration of Kosovo as an autonomous province within Yugoslavia, a force of 30,000 NATO troops to maintain order in Kosovo; an unhindered right of passage for NATO troops on Yugoslav territory, including Kosovo; and immunity for NATO and its agents to Yugoslav law. They would have also permitted a continuing Yugoslav army presence of 1,500 troops for border monitoring, backed by up to 1,000 troops to perform command and support functions, as well as a small number of border police, 2,500 ordinary MUP for public security purposes (although these were expected to draw down and to be transformed), and 3,000 local police.",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Although the Yugoslav Government cited military provisions of Appendix B of the Rambouillet provisions as the reason for its objections, claiming that it was an unacceptable violation of Yugoslavia's sovereignty, these provisions were essentially the same as had been applied to Bosnia for the SFOR (Stabilisation Force) mission there after the Dayton Agreement in 1995. The two sides did not discuss the issue in detail because of their disagreements on more fundamental problems. In particular, the Serb side rejected the idea of any NATO troop presence in Kosovo to replace their security forces, preferring unarmed UN observers. Milošević himself had refused to discuss the annex after informing NATO that it was unacceptable, even after he was asked to propose amendments to the provisions which would have made them acceptable.",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "After the failure at Rambouillet and the alternative Yugoslav proposal, international monitors from the OSCE withdrew on 22 March, to ensure their safety ahead of the anticipated NATO bombing campaign. On 23 March, the Serbian assembly accepted the principle of autonomy for Kosovo, as well as the non-military aspects of the agreement, but rejected a NATO troop presence.",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "In a 2009 judgement regarding six former Serb leaders charged with war crimes in Kosovo, the ICTY noted that the causes of the breakdown in the negotiations at Rambouillet were complex and stated that \"international negotiators did not take an entirely even-handed approach to the respective positions of the parties and tended to favour the Kosovo Albanians.\" It further recorded that, according to a witness, on 14 April 1999, at a meeting initiated by the White House with representatives of the Serbian-American community, President Bill Clinton had stated that \"the provision for allowing a referendum for the Albanians in Kosovo went too far and that, if he were in the shoes of Milošević, he probably would not have signed the draft [Rambouillet] agreement either.\"",
"title": "Eruption of war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "We are not going to war, but we are called upon to implement a peaceful solution in Kosovo, including by military means!",
"title": "NATO bombing timeline"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "— German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's announcement to the German people on 24 March 1999.",
"title": "NATO bombing timeline"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "On 23 March 1999 at 21:30 UTC, Richard Holbrooke returned to Brussels and announced that peace talks had failed and formally handed the matter to NATO for military action. Hours before the announcement, Yugoslavia announced on national television it had declared a state of emergency, citing an imminent threat of war and began a huge mobilisation of troops and resources.",
"title": "NATO bombing timeline"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "On 23 March 1999 at 22:17 UTC, the Secretary General of NATO, Javier Solana, announced he had directed the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), US Army General Wesley Clark, to \"initiate air operations in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.\" On 24 March at 19:00 UTC, NATO started its bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.",
"title": "NATO bombing timeline"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "The NATO bombing campaign lasted from 24 March to 11 June 1999, involving up to 1,000 aircraft operating mainly from bases in Italy and aircraft carriers stationed in the Adriatic. Tomahawk cruise missiles were also extensively used, fired from aircraft, ships, and submarines. With the exception of Greece, all NATO members were involved to some degree. Over the ten weeks of the conflict, NATO aircraft flew over 38,000 combat missions. For the German Air Force (Luftwaffe), it was the second time it had participated in a conflict since World War II, after the Bosnian War.",
"title": "NATO bombing timeline"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "The proclaimed goal of the NATO operation was summed up by its spokesman as \"Serbs out, peacekeepers in, refugees back\". That is, Yugoslav troops would have to leave Kosovo and be replaced by international peacekeepers to ensure that the Albanian refugees could return to their homes. The campaign was initially designed to destroy Yugoslav air defences and high-value military targets. It did not go very well at first, with bad weather hindering many sorties early on. NATO had seriously underestimated Milošević's will to resist: few in Brussels thought that the campaign would last more than a few days, and although the initial bombardment was not insignificant, it did not match the intensity of the bombing of Baghdad in 1991.",
"title": "NATO bombing timeline"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "NATO military operations switched increasingly to attacking Yugoslav units on the ground, hitting targets as small as individual tanks and artillery pieces, as well as continuing with the strategic bombardment. This activity was heavily constrained by politics, as each target needed to be approved by all nineteen member states. Montenegro was bombed on several occasions, but NATO eventually desisted to prop up the precarious position of its anti-Milošević leader, Milo Đukanović.",
"title": "NATO bombing timeline"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "At the start of May, a NATO aircraft attacked an Albanian refugee convoy, believing it was a Yugoslav military convoy, killing around fifty people. NATO admitted its mistake five days later, and the Yugoslavs accused NATO of deliberately attacking the refugees. A later report conducted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) opined that \"civilians were not deliberately attacked in this incident\", and that \"neither the aircrew nor their commanders displayed the degree of recklessness in failing to take precautionary measures which would sustain criminal charges.\" On 7 May, NATO bombs hit the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese journalists and outraging Chinese public opinion. The United States and NATO later apologised for the bombing, saying that it occurred because of an outdated map provided by the CIA, although this was challenged by a joint report from The Observer (UK) and Politiken (Denmark) newspapers, which claimed that NATO intentionally bombed the embassy because it was being used as a relay station for Yugoslav army radio signals. The report by the newspaper contradicts findings in the same report by the ICTY which stated that the root of the failures in target location \"appears to stem from the land navigation techniques employed by an intelligence officer.\" In another incident at the Dubrava prison in Kosovo in May 1999, the Yugoslav government attributed as many as 95 civilian deaths to NATO bombing of the facility after NATO cited Serbian and Yugoslav military activity in the area; a Human Rights Watch report later concluded that at least nineteen ethnic Albanian prisoners had been killed by the bombing, but that an uncertain number – probably more than 70 – were killed by Serbian Government forces in the days immediately following the bombing.",
"title": "NATO bombing timeline"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "By the start of April, the conflict appeared little closer to a resolution, and NATO countries began to seriously consider conducting ground operations in Kosovo. British Prime Minister Tony Blair was a strong advocate of ground forces and pressured the United States to agree; his strong stance caused some alarm in Washington as US forces would be making the largest contribution to any offensive. US President Bill Clinton was extremely reluctant to commit US forces for a ground offensive. Instead, Clinton authorised a CIA operation to look into methods to destabilise the Yugoslav government without training KLA troops. At the same time, Finnish and Russian diplomatic negotiators continued to try to persuade Milošević to back down. Tony Blair would order 50,000 British soldiers to be made ready for a ground offensive: most of the available British Army.",
"title": "NATO bombing timeline"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Milošević finally recognised that Russia would not intervene to defend Yugoslavia despite Moscow's strong anti-NATO rhetoric. He thus accepted the conditions offered by a Finnish–Russian mediation team and agreed to a military presence within Kosovo headed by the UN, but incorporating NATO troops.",
"title": "NATO bombing timeline"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "The Norwegian special forces Hærens Jegerkommando and Forsvarets Spesialkommando cooperated with the KLA in gathering intelligence information. Preparing for an invasion on 12 June, Norwegian special forces worked with the KLA on the Ramno mountain on the border between North Macedonia and Kosovo and acted as scouts to monitor events in Kosovo. Together with British special forces, Norwegian special forces were the first to cross over the border into Kosovo. According to Keith Graves with the television network Sky News, the Norwegians were in Kosovo two days prior to the entry of other forces and were among the first into Pristina. The Hærens Jegerkommando's and Forsvarets Spesialkommando's job was to clear the way between the contending parties and to make local deals to implement the peace deal between the Serbians and the Kosovo Albanians.",
"title": "NATO bombing timeline"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "On 3 June 1999, Milošević accepted the terms of an international peace plan to end the fighting, with the national parliament adopting the proposal amid contentious debate with delegates coming close to fistfights at some points. On 10 June, the North Atlantic Council ratified the agreement and suspended air operations.",
"title": "Yugoslav army withdrawal and the entry of KFOR"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "On 12 June, after Milošević accepted the conditions, the NATO-led peacekeeping Kosovo Force (KFOR) of 30,000 soldiers began entering Kosovo. KFOR had been preparing to conduct combat operations, but in the end, its mission was only peacekeeping. The force was based upon the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps headquarters commanded by then Lieutenant General Mike Jackson of the British Army. It consisted of British forces (a brigade built from 4th Armored and 5th Airborne Brigades), a French Army Brigade, a German Army brigade, which entered from the west, while other forces advanced from the south, and Italian Army and United States Army brigades.",
"title": "Yugoslav army withdrawal and the entry of KFOR"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "The first NATO troops to enter Pristina on the 12th of June 1999 were Norwegian special forces from Forsvarets Spesialkommando (FSK) and soldiers from the British Special Air Service 22 Regiment, although to NATO's diplomatic embarrassment Russian troops arrived at the airport first. Norwegian soldiers were the first to come into contact with Russian troops at the airport. FSK's mission was to level the negotiating field between the belligerent parties, and to fine-tune the detailed, local deals needed to implement the peace deal between the Serbians and the Kosovo Albanians.",
"title": "Yugoslav army withdrawal and the entry of KFOR"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "The US contribution, known as the Initial Entry Force, was led by the 1st Armored Division, commanded by Brigadier General Peterson, and was spearheaded by a platoon from the 2nd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment attached to the British Forces. Other units included 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) from Stuttgart, Germany and Fort Carson, Colorado, TF 1–6 Infantry (1-6 infantry with C Co 1-35AR) from Baumholder, Germany, the 2nd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment from Schweinfurt, Germany, and Echo Troop, 4th Cavalry Regiment, also from Schweinfurt, Germany. Also attached to the US force was the Greek Army's 501st Mechanised Infantry Battalion. The initial US forces established their area of operation around the towns of Uroševac, the future Camp Bondsteel, and Gnjilane, at Camp Monteith, and spent four months – the start of a stay which continues to date – establishing order in the southeast sector of Kosovo.",
"title": "Yugoslav army withdrawal and the entry of KFOR"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "During the initial incursion, the US soldiers were greeted by Albanians cheering and throwing flowers as US soldiers and KFOR rolled through their villages. Although no resistance was met, three US soldiers from the Initial Entry Force were killed in accidents.",
"title": "Yugoslav army withdrawal and the entry of KFOR"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "On 1 October 1999, approximately 150 paratroopers from Alpha Company, 1/508th Airborne Battalion Combat Team from Vicenza, Italy parachuted into Uroševac as part of Operation Rapid Guardian. The purpose of the mission was primarily to warn Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević of NATO resolve and of its rapid military capability. One US soldier, Army Ranger Sgt. Jason Neil Pringle, was killed during operations after his parachute failed to deploy. The paratroopers of the 1/508th then joined paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne and KFOR in patrolling various areas of Kosovo, without incident, through 3 October 1999.",
"title": "Yugoslav army withdrawal and the entry of KFOR"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "On 15 December 1999, Staff Sergeant Joseph Suponcic of 3rd Battalion/10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) was killed, when the HMMWV in which he was a passenger struck an anti-tank mine planted by Albanians and meant for the Russian contingent with which SSG Suponcic's team was patrolling in Kosovska Kamenica.",
"title": "Yugoslav army withdrawal and the entry of KFOR"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Following the military campaign, the involvement of Russian peacekeepers proved to be tense and challenging to the NATO Kosovo force. The Russians expected to have an independent sector of Kosovo, only to be unhappily surprised with the prospect of operating under NATO command. Without prior communication or coordination with NATO, Russian peacekeeping forces entered Kosovo from Bosnia and Herzegovina and occupied Pristina International Airport ahead of the arrival of NATO forces. This resulted in an incident during which NATO Supreme Commander Wesley Clark's wish to forcibly block the runways with NATO vehicles, to prevent any Russian reinforcement, was refused by KFOR commander General Mike Jackson.",
"title": "Yugoslav army withdrawal and the entry of KFOR"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "In 2010, James Blunt described in an interview how his unit was given the assignment of securing Pristina during the advance of the 30,000-strong peacekeeping force and how the Russian Army had moved in and taken control of the city's airport before his unit's arrival. Blunt shared a part in the difficult task of addressing the potentially violent international incident. According to Blunt's account there was a stand-off with the Russians, and NATO Supreme Commander Clark gave provisional orders to over-power them. Whilst these were questioned by Blunt, they were rejected by General Jackson, with the now famous line, \"I'm not having my soldiers responsible for starting World War III.\"",
"title": "Yugoslav army withdrawal and the entry of KFOR"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "In June 2000, arms trading relations between Russia and Yugoslavia were exposed, which led to retaliation and bombings of Russian checkpoints and area police stations. Outpost Gunner was established on a high point in the Preševo Valley by Echo Battery 1/161 Field Artillery in an attempt to monitor and assist with peacekeeping efforts in the Russian Sector. Operating under the support of ⅔ Field Artillery, 1st Armored Division, the Battery was able to successfully deploy and continuously operate a Firefinder Radar system, which allowed the NATO forces to keep a closer watch on activities in the Sector and the Preševo Valley. Eventually a deal was struck whereby Russian forces operated as a unit of KFOR but not under the NATO command structure.",
"title": "Yugoslav army withdrawal and the entry of KFOR"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Because of the country's restrictive media laws, the Yugoslav media carried little coverage of events in Kosovo, and the attitude of other countries to the humanitarian disaster that was occurring there. Thus, few members of the Yugoslav public expected NATO intervention, instead thinking that a diplomatic agreement would be reached.",
"title": "Reaction to the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Support for the Kosovan War and, in particular, the legitimacy of NATO's bombing campaign came from a variety of sources. In a 2009 article, David Clark claimed \"Every member of NATO, every EU country, and most of Yugoslavia's neighbours, supported military action.\" Statements from the leaders of United States, Czech Republic and United Kingdom, respectively, described the war as one \"upholding our values, protecting our interests, and advancing the cause of peace\", \"the first war for values\" and one \"to avert what would otherwise be a humanitarian disaster in Kosovo.\" Others included the then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan who was reported by some sources as acknowledging that the NATO action was legitimate who emphasised that there were times when the use of force was legitimate in the pursuit of peace though Annan stressed that the \"[UN Security] Council should have been involved in any decision to use force.\" The distinction between the legality and legitimacy of the intervention was further highlighted in two separate reports. One was conducted by the Independent International Commission on Kosovo, entitled The Kosovo Report, which found that:",
"title": "Reaction to the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "[Yugoslav] forces were engaged in a well-planned campaign of terror and expulsion of the Kosovar Albanians. This campaign is most frequently described as one of \"ethnic cleansing,\" intended to drive many, if not all, Kosovar Albanians from Kosovo, destroy the foundations of their society, and prevent them from returning.",
"title": "Reaction to the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "It concluded that \"the NATO military intervention was illegal but legitimate\", The second report was published by the NATO Office of Information and Press which reported that, \"the human rights violations committed on a large scale in Kosovo provide an incontestable ground with reference to the humanitarian aspect of NATO's intervention.\" Some critics note that NATO did not have the backing of the United Nations Security Council meant that its intervention had no legal basis, but according to some legal scholars, \"there are nonetheless certain bases for that action that are not legal, but justified.\"",
"title": "Reaction to the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Aside from politicians and diplomats, commentators and intellectuals also supported the war. Michael Ignatieff called NATOs intervention a \"morally justifiable response to ethnic cleansing and the resulting flood of refugees, and not the cause of the flood of refugees\" while Christopher Hitchens said NATO intervened only, \"when Serbian forces had resorted to mass deportation and full-dress ethnic 'cleansing.'\" Writing in The Nation, Richard A. Falk wrote that, \"the NATO campaign achieved the removal of Yugoslav military forces from Kosovo and, even more significant, the departure of the dreaded Serbian paramilitary units and police\" while an article in The Guardian wrote that for Mary Kaldor, Kosovo represented a laboratory on her thinking for human security, humanitarian intervention and international peacekeeping, the latter two which she defined as, \"a genuine belief in the equality of all human beings; and this entails a readiness to risk lives of peacekeeping troops to save the lives of others where this is necessary.\" Reports stated there had been no peace between Albanians and Serbs, citing the deaths of 1,500 Albanians and displacement of 270,000 prior to NATO intervention.",
"title": "Reaction to the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "The NATO intervention has been seen as a political diversionary tactic, coming as it did on the heels of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, pointing to the fact that coverage of the bombing directly replaced coverage of the scandal in US news cycles. Herbert Foerstel points out that before the bombing, rather than there being an unusually bloody conflict, the KLA was not engaged in a widespread war against Yugoslav forces and the death toll among all concerned (including ethnic Albanians) skyrocketed following NATO intervention. In a post-war report released by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the organization also noted \"the pattern of the expulsions and the vast increase in lootings, killings, rape, kidnappings and pillage once the NATO air war began on March 24\".",
"title": "Reaction to the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "US President Clinton, his administration and NATO governments were accused of inflating the number of Kosovo Albanians killed by state forces. During the NATO bombing campaign, the then Secretary of Defense, William Cohen claimed that 100,000 Kosovo Albanian men of military age were missing, possibly murdered. The conservative media watchdog group Accuracy in Media charged the alliance with distorting the situation in Kosovo and lying about the number of civilian deaths in order to justify U.S. involvement in the conflict.",
"title": "Reaction to the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "After the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Chinese President Jiang Zemin said that the US was using its economic and military superiority to aggressively expand its influence and interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. Chinese leaders called the NATO campaign a dangerous precedent of naked aggression, a new form of colonialism, and an aggressive war groundless in morality or law. It was seen as part of a plot by the US to destroy Yugoslavia, expand eastward and control all of Europe.",
"title": "Reaction to the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "The United Nations Charter does not allow military interventions in other sovereign countries with few exceptions which, in general, need to be decided upon by the United Nations Security Council; this legal enjoinment has proved controversial with many legal scholars who argue that though the Kosovo War was illegal, it was still legitimate. The issue was brought before the UN Security Council by Russia, in a draft resolution which, inter alia, would affirm \"that such unilateral use of force constitutes a flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter\". China, Namibia, and Russia voted for the resolution, the other members against, thus it failed to pass.",
"title": "Reaction to the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "The war inflicted many casualties. Already by March 1999, an estimated 1,500–2,000 civilians and combatants were dead. However, estimates showed that prior to the bombing campaign on 24 March 1999, approximately 1,800 civilians had been killed in the Kosovo war, mostly Albanians but also Serbs and that there had been no evidence of genocide or ethnic cleansing. By November 1999, 2,108 victims had been exhumed from the province with a total approaching 3,000 expected, but it was unclear how many were civilians and combatants, while the number was also far from the 10,000 minimum civilian death figure cited by Western officials. Final estimates of the casualties are still unavailable for either side.",
"title": "Reaction to the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Perhaps the most controversial deliberate attack of the war was that made against the headquarters of RTS, Serbian public radio and television, on 23 April 1999, which killed at least fourteen people.",
"title": "Reaction to the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Privately, NATO European members were divided about the aims and necessity of the war. Most European allies did not trust the motives of Kosovan Albanians and according to NATO General Wesley Clark, \"There was a sense among some that NATO was fighting on the wrong side\" in a war between Christians and Muslims.",
"title": "Reaction to the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "The Democratic League of Kosovo (DLK) led by Ibrahim Rugova had been the leading political entity in Kosovo since its creation in 1989. Its parallel government in exile was led by Bujar Bukoshi, and its Minister of Defence until 1998 was the former Yugoslav colonel Ahmet Krasniqi. DLK politicians opposed the armed conflict and were not ready to accept KLA as a political factor in the region and tried to persuade the population not to support it. At one point Rugova even claimed that it was set up by Serbian intelligence as an excuse to invade, or to discredit DLK itself. Nevertheless, the support for KLA even within DLK membership and specifically in the diaspora grew, together with the dissatisfaction with and antagonism toward DLK. KLA initial personnel were members or former members of the DLK. With the changes of the international stance towards KLA and its recognition as a factor in the conflict, DLK's position also shifted. The Armed Forces of the Republic of Kosovo, known as FARK, were established in order to place DLK as a military factor in addition to a political one. A parallel paramilitary structure such as FARK was not received well by the KLA.",
"title": "Democratic League of Kosovo and FARK"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "On 21 September 1998 Ahmet Krasniqi was shot in Tirana. Those responsible were not found, although several theories emerged. The Democratic Party of Albania and its leader Sali Berisha, strong supporters of DLK and FARK, accused SHIK and the Albanian government, which was supporting the KLA, of being responsible. FARK was never a determining factor in the war and was not involved in any battles. It did not number more than few hundred men, and it did not show any commitment to fighting the Serbs, accepting a broader autonomy as a solution rather than independence. Some of the FARK officers were incorporated later under the KLA umbrella. Besides FARK, DLK would also politically and diplomatically oppose KLA and their methods. In a meeting with US President Clinton on 29 May 1999, Rugova, accompanied by Fehmi Agani, Bukoshi, and Veton Surroi, accused KLA of being a left-wing ideology bearer, and some of its leaders as being \"nostalgic to known communist figures, such as Enver Hoxha\", referring to the People's Movement of Kosovo (LPK) nucleus of KLA, an old underground rival with strong left-wing orientation.",
"title": "Democratic League of Kosovo and FARK"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "Rugova was present at the negotiations held in Rambouillet and supported the Rambouillet Agreement since the first round, but without any influence. Following the ethnic cleansing of the Albanian population, there was close to a total Albanian support for the NATO campaign, including the DLK side. Surprisingly, Ibrahim Rugova showed up in Belgrade as a guest of Milosevic. At a joint TV appearance on 1 April, ending in a Rugova-Milosevic handshake, Rugova asked for a peaceful solution and the bombings to stop. In the same conference, Millosevic presented his proposal for Kosovo as part of a three-unit federal Yugoslavian state. Rugova's presence in Belgrade scattered another set of accusations from KLA and its supporters. Besides being 'passive' and 'too peaceful', Rugova and DLK were accused as 'traitors'. Following Rugova's passage to Italy on 5 May, Rugova claimed that he had been under duress and any \"agreement\" with Milosovic had no meaning. The general opinion expected the DLK structures and its leader to vanish from the political scene of Kosovo after the Yugoslav withdrawal. Rugova himself stayed out of Kosovo for several weeks, while the prime-minister Bukoshi and other leading membership returned. With only a fraction of Kosovo Albanians participating actively in the war, the support for DLK increased again as a way of opposing the arrogance of many KLA leaders who openly engaged in controlling the economical and political life within the vacuum created right before the deployment of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). In the October 2000 local elections, DLK was confirmed as the leading political party.",
"title": "Democratic League of Kosovo and FARK"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "The feud between KLA and DLK continued in the post-war Kosovo. Many political activists of DLK were assassinated and the perpetrators not found, including Xhemajl Mustafa, Rugova's most trusted aide.",
"title": "Democratic League of Kosovo and FARK"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "In June 2000, the Red Cross reported that 3,368 civilians (mainly Kosovar Albanians, but with several hundred Serbs, and Roma) were still missing, nearly one year after the conflict, most of whom it concluded had to be 'presumed dead'.",
"title": "Casualties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "A study by researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia published in 2000 in medical journal the Lancet estimated that \"12,000 deaths in the total population\" could be attributed to war. This number was achieved by surveying 1,197 households from February 1998 through June 1999. 67 out of the 105 deaths reported in the sample population were attributed to war-related trauma, which extrapolates to be 12,000 deaths if the same war-related mortality rate is applied to Kosovo's total population. The highest mortality rates were in men between 15 and 49 (5,421 victims of war) as well as for men over 50 (5,176 victims). For persons younger than 15, the estimates were 160 victims for males and 200 for females. For women between 15 and 49 the estimate is that there were 510 victims; older than 50 years the estimate is 541 victims. The authors stated that it was not \"possible to differentiate completely between civilian and military casualties\".",
"title": "Casualties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "In the 2008 joint study by the Humanitarian Law Centre (an NGO from Serbia and Kosovo), The International Commission on Missing Persons, and the Missing Person Commission of Serbia made a name-by-name list of war and post-war victims. According to the updated 2015 Kosovo Memory Book, 13,535 people were killed or missing due to the Kosovo conflict, from 1 January 1998 up until December 2000. Of these, 10,812 were Albanians, 2,197 Serbs and 526 Roma, Bosniaks, Montenegrins and others. 10,317 civilians were killed or went missing, of whom 8,676 were Albanians, 1,196 Serbs and 445 Roma and others. The remaining 3,218 dead or missing were combatants, including 2,131 members of the KLA and FARK, 1,084 members of Serbian forces and 3 members of KFOR. As of 2019, the book had been updated to a total of 13,548. In August 2017, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that between 1998 and 1999, more than 6,000 people had gone missing in Kosovo, and that 1,658 remained missing, with neither the person nor the body having, at that time, been found.",
"title": "Casualties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "Yugoslavia claimed that NATO attacks caused between 1,200 and 5,700 civilian casualties. NATO's Secretary General, Lord Robertson, wrote after the war that \"the actual toll in human lives will never be precisely known\" but he then offered the figures found in a report by Human Rights Watch as a reasonable estimate. This report counted between 488 and 527 civilian deaths (90 to 150 of them killed from cluster bomb use) in 90 separate incidents, the worst of which were the 87 Albanian refugees who perished at the hands of NATO bombs, near Koriša.",
"title": "Casualties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "Various estimates of the number of killings attributed to Yugoslav forces have been announced through the years. An estimated 800,000 Kosovo Albanians fled and an estimated 7,000 to 9,000 were killed, according to The New York Times. The estimate of 10,000 deaths is used by the US Department of State, which cited human rights abuses as its main justification for attacking Yugoslavia.",
"title": "Casualties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "Statistical experts working on behalf of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) prosecution estimate that the total number of dead is about 10,000. Eric Fruits, a professor at Portland State University, argued that the experts' analyses were based on fundamentally flawed data and that none of its conclusions are supported by any valid statistical analysis or tests.",
"title": "Casualties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "In August 2000, the ICTY announced that it had exhumed 2,788 bodies in Kosovo, but declined to say how many were thought to be victims of war crimes. KFOR sources told Agence France Presse that of the 2,150 bodies that had been discovered up until July 1999, about 850 were thought to be victims of war crimes.",
"title": "Casualties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "In an attempt to conceal the corpses of the victims, Yugoslav forces transported the bodies of murdered Albanians deep inside Serbia and buried them in mass graves. According to HLC, many of the bodies were taken to the Mačkatica Aluminium Complex near Surdulica and the Copper Mining And Smelting Complex in Bor, where they were incinerated. There are reports that some bodies of Albanian victims were also burned in the Feronikli plant in Glogovac.",
"title": "Casualties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "Known mass graves:",
"title": "Casualties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "The KLA abducted and killed Serbian, Roma, and moderate Albanian civilians during and after the war. The exact number of civilians killed by the KLA is not known, though estimates conducted in the initial post-war months listed several hundreds with the targeting of non-Albanians intensifying in the immediate aftermath of KFOR deployment. Although more than 2,500 non-Albanians are believed to have been killed in the period between 1 January 1998 and 31 December 2000, it is not known how many of them were killed by the KLA or affiliated groups.",
"title": "Casualties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "Military casualties on the NATO side were light. According to official reports, the alliance suffered no fatalities as a direct result of combat operations. In the early hours of 5 May, a US military AH-64 Apache helicopter crashed not far from the border between Serbia and Albania.",
"title": "Casualties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "Another US AH-64 helicopter crashed about 40 miles (64 km) northeast of Tirana, Albania's capital, very close to the Albanian/Kosovo border. According to CNN, the crash happened 45 miles (72 km) northeast of Tirana. The two US pilots of the helicopter, Army Chief Warrant Officers David Gibbs and Kevin L. Reichert, died in that crash. They were the only NATO fatalities during the war, according to NATO official statements.",
"title": "Casualties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "There were other casualties after the war, mostly due to land mines. During the war, the alliance reported the loss of the first US stealth aeroplane (an F-117 Nighthawk) ever shot down by enemy fire. Furthermore, an F-16 fighter was lost near Šabac and 32 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) from different nations were lost. The wreckages of downed UAVs were shown on Serbian television during the war. Some US sources claim a second F-117A was also heavily damaged, and although it made it back to its base, it never flew again. A-10 Thunderbolts have been reported as losses, with two shot down and another two damaged. Three US soldiers riding a Humvee in a routine patrol were captured by Yugoslav special forces across the Macedonian border.",
"title": "Casualties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "At first, NATO claimed to have killed 10,000 Yugoslav troops, while Yugoslavia claimed only 500 had been killed; the NATO investigative teams later corrected it to a few hundred Yugoslav troops killed by air strikes. In 2001, the Yugoslav authorities claimed 462 soldiers were killed and 299 wounded by NATO airstrikes. Later, in 2013, Serbia claimed that 1,008 Yugoslav soldiers and policemen had been killed by NATO bombing. In early June 1999, NATO claimed that 5,000 Yugoslav servicemen had been killed and 10,000 had been wounded during the NATO air campaign. NATO has since revised this estimate to 1,200 Yugoslav soldiers and policemen killed.",
"title": "Casualties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "Of military equipment, NATO destroyed around 50 Yugoslav Air Force aircraft including 6 MiG-29s destroyed in air-to-air combat. A number of G-4 Super Galebs were destroyed in their hardened aircraft shelter by bunker-busting bombs which started a fire which spread quickly because the shelter doors were not closed. At the end of war, NATO officially claimed that they had destroyed 93 Yugoslav tanks. Yugoslavia admitted a total of 3 destroyed tanks. The latter figure was verified by European inspectors when Yugoslavia rejoined the Dayton accords, by noting the difference between the number of tanks then and at the last inspection in 1995. NATO claimed that the Yugoslav army lost 93 tanks (M-84's and T-55's), 132 APCs, and 52 artillery pieces. Newsweek, the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S, gained access to a suppressed US Air Force report that claimed the real numbers were \"3 tanks, not 120; 18 armored personnel carriers, not 220; 20 artillery pieces, not 450\". Another US Air Force report gives a figure of 14 tanks destroyed. Most of the targets hit in Kosovo were decoys, such as tanks made out of plastic sheets with telegraph poles for gun barrels, or old World War II–era tanks which were not functional. Anti-aircraft defences were preserved by the simple expedient of not turning them on, preventing NATO aircraft from detecting them, but forcing them to keep above a ceiling of 15,000 feet (4,600 metres), making accurate bombing much more difficult. Towards the end of the war, it was claimed that carpet bombing by B-52 aircraft had caused huge casualties among Yugoslav troops stationed along the Kosovo–Albania border. Careful searching by NATO investigators found no evidence of any such large-scale casualties.",
"title": "Casualties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "The most significant loss for the Yugoslav Army was the damaged and destroyed infrastructure. Almost all military air bases and airfields (Batajnica, Lađevci, Slatina, Golubovci and Đakovica) and other military buildings and facilities were badly damaged or destroyed. Unlike the units and their equipment, military buildings could not be camouflaged. thus, defence industry and military technical overhaul facilities were also seriously damaged (Utva, Zastava Arms factory, Moma Stanojlović air force overhaul centre, technical overhaul centres in Čačak and Kragujevac). In an effort to weaken the Yugoslav Army, NATO targeted several important civilian facilities (the Pančevo oil refinery, Novi Sad oil refinery, bridges, TV antennas, railroads, etc.)",
"title": "Casualties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "Around 1,500 Kosovo Liberation Army soldiers were killed, according to KLA's own estimates. HLC registered 2,131 KLA and FARK insurgents killed in its comprehensive database.",
"title": "Casualties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "The Yugoslav and Serb forces caused the displacement of between 1.2 million to 1.45 million Kosovo Albanians. After the end of the war in June 1999, numerous Albanian refugees started returning home from neighboring countries. By November 1999, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 848,100 out of 1,108,913 had returned.",
"title": "Casualties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "According to the 1991 Yugoslavia Census, of the nearly 2 million population of Kosovo in 1991, 194,190 were Serbs, 45,745 were Romani and 20,356 were Montenegrins. According to the Human Rights Watch, 200,000 Serbs and thousands of Roma fled from Kosovo during and after the war. Homes of minorities were burned and Orthodox churches and monasteries were destroyed. The Yugoslav Red Cross had also registered 247,391 mostly Serbian refugees by 26 November. More than 164,000 Serbs left Kosovo during the seven weeks which followed Yugoslav and Serb forces' withdrawal from, and the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) entering Kosovo.",
"title": "Casualties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "Further inter-ethnic violence took place in 2000, and 2004.",
"title": "Casualties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "For the government of Serbia, cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia is \"still regarded as a distressing obligation, the necessary price for joining the European Union\". Religious objects were damaged or destroyed. Of the 498 mosques in Kosovo that were in active use, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) documented that 225 mosques sustained damage or destruction by the Yugoslav Serb army. In all, eighteen months of the Yugoslav Serb counterinsurgency campaign between 1998 and 1999 within Kosovo resulted in 225 or a third out of a total of 600 mosques being damaged, vandalised, or destroyed. During the war, Islamic architectural heritage posed for Yugoslav Serb paramilitary and military forces as Albanian patrimony, with destruction of non-Serbian architectural heritage being a methodical and planned component of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.",
"title": "War crimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "Widespread rape and sexual violence by the Serbian army, police and paramilitaries occurred during the conflict and the majority of victims were Kosovo Albanian women, numbering an estimated 20,000. The crimes of rape by the Serb military, paramilitary and police amounted to crimes against humanity and a war crime of torture.",
"title": "War crimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "On 27 April 1999, a mass execution of at least 377 Kosovo Albanian civilians, of whom 36 were under 18 years old, was committed by Serbian police and Yugoslav Army forces in the village of Meja near the town of Gjakova. It followed an operation which began after the killing of six Serbian policemen by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The victims were pulled from refugee convoys at a checkpoint in Meja and their families were ordered to proceed to Albania. Men and boys were separated and then executed by the road. It was one of the largest massacres in the Kosovo War.",
"title": "War crimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević was charged by the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) with crimes against humanity and war crimes. In 2001, then-President Vojislav Koštunica \"fought tooth and nail\" against attempts to put Milošević before an international court but was unable to prevent this happening after further atrocities were revealed.",
"title": "War crimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "By 2014, the ICTY issued final verdicts against the indicted Yugoslav officials who were found guilty of deportation, other inhumane acts (forcible transfer), murder and persecutions (crimes against humanity, Article 5), as well as murder (violations of the laws or customs of war, Article 3):",
"title": "War crimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "The ICTY found that:",
"title": "War crimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 125,
"text": "...FRY and Serbian forces use[d] violence and terror to force a significant number of Kosovo Albanians from their homes and across the borders, in order for the state authorities to maintain control over Kosovo ... This campaign was conducted by army and Interior Ministry police forces (MUP) under the control of FRY and Serbian authorities, who were responsible for mass expulsions of Kosovo Albanian civilians from their homes, as well as incidents of killings, sexual assault, and the intentional destruction of mosques.",
"title": "War crimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 126,
"text": "The ICTY convicted KLA commander Haradin Bala for murder, torture and cruel treatment in the Lapušnik prison camp, and sentencted him to 13 years’ imprisonment. Fatmir Limaj and Isak Musliu were acquitted.",
"title": "War crimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 127,
"text": "In 2008, Carla Del Ponte published a book in which she alleged that, after the end of the war in 1999, Kosovo Albanians were smuggling organs of between 100 and 300 Serbs and other minorities from the province to Albania.",
"title": "War crimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 128,
"text": "In March 2005, a UN tribunal indicted Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj for war crimes against the Serbs. On 8 March, he tendered his resignation. Haradinaj, an ethnic Albanian, was a former commander who led units of the Kosovo Liberation Army and was appointed Prime Minister after winning an election of 72 votes to three in the Kosovo's Parliament in December 2004. Haradinaj was acquitted on all counts along with fellow KLA veterans Idriz Balaj and Lahi Brahimaj. The Office of the Prosecutor appealed their acquittals, resulting in the ICTY ordering a partial retrial. On 29 November 2012 all three were acquitted for the second time on all charges. The trials were rife with accusations of witness intimidation, as media outlets from several different countries wrote that as many as nineteen people who were supposed to be witnesses in the trial against Haradinaj were murdered (the ICTY disputed these reports).",
"title": "War crimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 129,
"text": "According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), \"800 non-Albanian civilians were kidnapped and murdered from 1998 to 1999\". After the war, \"479 people have gone missing... most of them Serbs\". HRW notes that \"the intent behind many of the killings and abductions that have occurred in the province since June 1999 appears to be the expulsion of Kosovo's Serb and Roma population rather than a desire for revenge alone. In numerous cases, direct and systematic efforts were made to force Serbs and Roma to leave their homes.\" Some 200,000 Serbs and Roma fled Kosovo following the withdrawal of Yugoslav forces.",
"title": "War crimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 130,
"text": "In April 2014, the Assembly of Kosovo considered and approved the establishment of a special court to try cases involving crimes and other serious abuses committed in 1999–2000 by members of the KLA. Reports of abuses and war crimes committed by the KLA during and after the conflict include massacres of civilians, prison camps, burning and looting of homes and destruction of medieval churches and monuments.",
"title": "War crimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 131,
"text": "Carla Del Ponte said that the US for political reasons, did not want the ICTY to scrutinise war crimes committed by the KLA. According to her, Madeleine Albright who was the Secretary of State at the time told her to proceed slowly with the investigation of Ramush Haradinaj to avoid unrest in Kosovo.",
"title": "War crimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 132,
"text": "The Yugoslav government and a number of international pressure groups (e.g., Amnesty International) claimed that NATO had carried out war crimes during the conflict, notably the bombing of the Serbian TV headquarters in Belgrade on 23 April 1999, where 16 people were killed and 16 more were injured. Sian Jones of Amnesty stated, \"The bombing of the headquarters of Serbian state radio and television was a deliberate attack on a civilian object and as such constitutes a war crime\". A report conducted by the ICTY entitled Final Report to the Prosecutor by the Committee Established to Review the NATO Bombing Campaign Against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia concluded that, \"Insofar as the attack actually was aimed at disrupting the communications network, it was legally acceptable\" and that, \"NATO's targeting of the RTS building for propaganda purposes was an incidental (albeit complementary) aim of its primary goal of disabling the Serbian military command and control system and to destroy the nerve system and apparatus that keeps Milosević in power.\" In regards to civilian casualties, it further stated that though they were, \"unfortunately high, they do not appear to be clearly disproportionate.\"",
"title": "War crimes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 133,
"text": "The Kosovo War had a number of important consequences in terms of the military and political outcome. The status of Kosovo remains unresolved; international negotiations began in 2006 to determine Kosovo's level of autonomy as envisaged under UN Security Council Resolution 1244, but efforts failed. The province is administered by the United Nations despite its unilateral declaration of independence on 17 February 2008.",
"title": "Military and political consequences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 134,
"text": "The UN-backed talks, led by UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari, had begun in February 2006. Whilst progress was made on technical matters, both parties remained diametrically opposed on the question of status itself. In February 2007, Ahtisaari delivered a draft status settlement proposal to leaders in Belgrade and Pristina, the basis for a draft UN Security Council Resolution which proposes \"supervised independence\" for the province, which is in contrary to UN Security Council Resolution 1244. By July 2007, the draft resolution, which was backed by the United States, United Kingdom, and other European members of the Security Council, had been rewritten four times to try to accommodate Russian concerns that such a resolution would undermine the principle of state sovereignty. Russia, which holds a veto in the Security Council as one of five permanent members, stated that it would not support any resolution which is not acceptable to both Belgrade and Priština.",
"title": "Military and political consequences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 135,
"text": "The campaign exposed significant weaknesses in the US arsenal, which were later addressed for the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns. Apache attack helicopters and AC-130 Spectre gunships were brought up to the front lines but were never used after two Apaches crashed during training in the Albanian mountains. Stocks of many precision missiles were reduced to critically low levels. For combat aircraft, continuous operations resulted in skipped maintenance schedules, and many aircraft were withdrawn from service awaiting spare parts and service. Also, many of the precision-guided weapons proved unable to cope with Balkan weather, as the clouds blocked the laser guidance beams. This was resolved by retrofitting bombs with Global Positioning System satellite guidance devices that are immune to bad weather. Although pilotless surveillance aircraft were extensively used, often attack aircraft could not be brought to the scene quickly enough to hit targets of opportunity. This led missiles being fitted to Predator drones in Afghanistan, reducing the \"sensor to shooter\" time to virtually zero.",
"title": "Military and political consequences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 136,
"text": "Kosovo also showed that some low-tech tactics could reduce the impact of a high-tech force such as NATO; the Milošević government cooperated with Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime in Iraq, passing on many of the lessons learned in the Gulf War. The Yugoslav army had long expected to need to resist a much stronger enemy, either Soviet or NATO, during the Cold War and had developed tactics of deception and concealment in response. These would have been unlikely to have resisted a full-scale invasion for long, but were probably used to mislead overflying aircraft and satellites. Among the tactics used were:",
"title": "Military and political consequences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 137,
"text": "As a result of the Kosovo War, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation created a second NATO medal, the NATO Medal for Kosovo Service, an international military decoration. Shortly thereafter, NATO created the Non-Article 5 Medal for Balkans service to combine both Yugoslavian and Kosovo operations into one service medal.",
"title": "Military decorations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 138,
"text": "Due to the involvement of the United States armed forces, a separate US military decoration, known as the Kosovo Campaign Medal, was established by President Bill Clinton in 2000.",
"title": "Military decorations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 139,
"text": "The Kosovo Campaign Medal (KCM) is a military award of the United States Armed Forces established by Executive Order 13154 of President Bill Clinton on 3 May 2000. The medal recognises military service performed in Kosovo from 24 March 1999 through 31 December 2013.",
"title": "Military decorations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 140,
"text": "A variety of weapons were used by the Yugoslav security forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army, NATO only operated aircraft and naval units during the conflict.",
"title": "Weaponry and vehicles used"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 141,
"text": "The weapons used by Yugoslav government were mostly Yugoslav made, while almost all of their AA units were Soviet made.",
"title": "Weaponry and vehicles used"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 142,
"text": "The weapons used by the Kosovo Liberation Army were mostly Soviet Kalashnikovs and Chinese derivatives of the AK-47 and some Western weaponry.",
"title": "Weaponry and vehicles used"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 143,
"text": "Aircraft used by NATO were:",
"title": "Weaponry and vehicles used"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 144,
"text": "Guided missiles used were:",
"title": "Weaponry and vehicles used"
}
] |
The Kosovo War was an armed conflict in Kosovo that lasted from 28 February 1998 until 11 June 1999. It was fought between the forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which controlled Kosovo before the war, and the Kosovo Albanian rebel group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The conflict ended when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intervened by beginning air strikes in March 1999 which resulted in Yugoslav forces withdrawing from Kosovo. The KLA was formed in the early 1990s to fight against the discrimination of ethnic Albanians and the repression of political dissent by the Serbian authorities, which started after the suppression of Kosovo's autonomy by Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević in 1989. The KLA initiated its first campaign in 1995, after Kosovo's case was left out of the Dayton Agreement and it had become clear that President Rugova's strategy of peaceful resistance had failed to bring Kosovo into the international agenda. In June 1996, the group claimed responsibility for acts of sabotage targeting Kosovo police stations, during the Kosovo Insurgency. In 1997, the organisation acquired a large amount of arms through weapons smuggling from Albania, following a rebellion in which weapons were looted from the country's police and army posts. In early 1998, KLA attacks targeting Yugoslav authorities in Kosovo resulted in an increased presence of Serb paramilitaries and regular forces who subsequently began pursuing a campaign of retribution targeting KLA sympathisers and political opponents; this campaign killed 1,500 to 2,000 civilians and KLA combatants, and had displaced 370,000 Kosovar Albanians by March 1999. On 20 March 1999, Yugoslav forces began a massive campaign of repression and expulsions of Kosovar Albanians following the withdrawal of the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) and the failure of the proposed Rambouillet Agreement. In response to this, NATO intervened with an aerial bombing campaign that began on March 24, justifying it as a "humanitarian war". The war ended with the Kumanovo Agreement, signed on 9 June, with Yugoslav and Serb forces agreeing to withdraw from Kosovo to make way for an international presence. NATO forces entered Kosovo on June 12. The NATO bombing campaign has remained controversial. It did not gain the approval of the UN Security Council and it caused at least 488 Yugoslav civilian deaths, including substantial numbers of Kosovar refugees. In 2001 a Supreme Court, based in Kosovo and administered by the United Nations, found that there had been "a systematic campaign of terror, including murders, rapes, arsons and severe maltreatments" against the Albanian population, but that Yugoslav troops had tried to force them out of Kosovo, but not to eradicate them, and therefore it was not genocide. After the war, a list was compiled which documented that over 13,500 people were killed or went missing during the two year conflict. The Yugoslav and Serb forces caused the displacement of between 1.2 million and 1.45 million Kosovo Albanians. After the war, around 200,000 Serbs, Romani, and other non-Albanians fled Kosovo and many of the remaining civilians were victims of abuse. The Kosovo Liberation Army disbanded soon after the end of the war, with some of its members going on to fight for the UÇPMB in the Preševo Valley and others joining the National Liberation Army (NLA) and Albanian National Army (ANA) during the armed ethnic conflict in Macedonia, while others went on to form the Kosovo Police. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) convicted six Serb/Yugoslav officials for war crimes, and one Albanian commander for war crimes.
|
2001-07-31T19:30:10Z
|
2023-12-30T23:42:32Z
|
[
"Template:Snd",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Sfn",
"Template:Kosovo War",
"Template:Cn",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Executive Order",
"Template:Cite press release",
"Template:Kosovo–Serbia relations",
"Template:Infobox military conflict",
"Template:Multiple image",
"Template:USS",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Citation",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Yugoslavia topics",
"Template:Pp-vandalism",
"Template:Blockquote",
"Template:Citation needed",
"Template:Quote box",
"Template:Div col",
"Template:USFR",
"Template:Commons category",
"Template:Kosovo topics",
"Template:Use British English",
"Template:Better source needed",
"Template:Flagicon",
"Template:Notelist",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Harvnb",
"Template:Very long",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:' \"",
"Template:Self-published inline",
"Template:Page needed",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Campaignbox Kosovo War",
"Template:Convert",
"Template:When",
"Template:Portal",
"Template:Self-published source",
"Template:Redirect",
"Template:Div col end",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite report",
"Template:Post-Cold War European conflicts"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_War
|
16,766 |
Kent
|
Kent is a county in the South East England region, the closest county to continental Europe. It borders Essex across the entire estuary of the River Thames to the north; the French department of Pas-de-Calais across the Strait of Dover to the south-east; East Sussex to the south-west; Surrey to the west and Greater London to the north-west. The county town is Maidstone.
It is the fifth most populous county in England, the most populous non-metropolitan county and the most populous of the Home Counties, an area influenced by the capital such as commutes and transport connections to the capital. Twenty-eight per cent of the county forms part of two Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty: the North Downs and The High Weald.
Kent was one of the first British territories to be settled by Germanic tribes, most notably the Jutes, following the withdrawal of the Romans. Canterbury Cathedral in Kent, the oldest cathedral in England, has been the seat of the Archbishops of Canterbury since the conversion of England to Christianity that began in the 6th century with Saint Augustine. Rochester Cathedral in Medway is England's second-oldest cathedral. Located between London and the Strait of Dover, which separates England from mainland Europe, Kent has been the setting for both conflict and diplomacy, including the Battle of Britain in World War II and the Leeds Castle peace talks of 1978 and 2004.
England relied on the county's ports to provide warships through much of its history; the Cinque Ports in the 10th–14th centuries and Chatham Dockyard in the 16th–20th centuries were of particular importance. France can be seen clearly in fine weather from Folkestone and the White Cliffs of Dover. Hills in the form of the North Downs and the Greensand Ridge span the length of the county and in the Vale of Holmesdale in between and to the south are most of the county's 26 castles.
The county has agriculture, haulage, logistics and tourism industries. As the land between the capital and the wider continent, it is a high-income county. Agriculture of the county is a notable sector: "The Garden of England" is a nickname for the county, which has multiple orchards and allotments. In north-west Kent, industries include aggregate building material extraction, printing and scientific research. Coal mining has also played its part in the county's industrial heritage.
The name Kent is believed to be of Celtic origin. The meaning has been explained as 'coastal district,' 'corner-land' or 'land on the edge' (compare Welsh cant 'bordering of a circle, tyre, edge;' Breton cant 'circle;' Dutch kant 'side, edge'). In Latin sources the area is called Cantia or Cantium, while the Anglo-Saxons referred to it as Cent, Cent lond or Centrice.
The area has been occupied since the Palaeolithic era, as attested by finds from the quarries at Swanscombe. The Medway megaliths were built during the Neolithic era. There is a rich sequence of Bronze Age, Celtic Iron Age, and Britto-Roman era occupation, as indicated by finds and features such as the Ringlemere gold cup and the Roman villas of the Darent valley.
Julius Caesar described the area as Cantium, or the home of the Cantiaci, in 51 BC. The extreme west of the modern county was by the time of Roman Britain occupied by a Celtic Iron Age tribe known as the Regni. Caesar wrote that the people of Kent were 'by far the most civilised inhabitants of Britain'.
Following the withdrawal of the Romans, large numbers of Germanic speakers from mainland Europe settled in Kent, bringing their language, which came to be Old English. While they expelled the native Romano-British population, some likely remained in the area, eventually assimilating with the newcomers. Of the invading tribes, the Jutes were the most prominent, and the area became a Jutish kingdom recorded as Cantia in about 730 and Cent in 835. The early medieval inhabitants of the county were referred to as the Cantwara, or Kentish people. The city of Canterbury was the largest in Kent.
In 597, Pope Gregory I appointed the religious missionary (who became Saint Augustine of Canterbury after his death) as the first Archbishop of Canterbury. In the previous year, Augustine successfully converted the pagan King Æthelberht of Kent to Christianity. The Diocese of Canterbury became England's first Episcopal See with first cathedral and has since remained England's centre of Christianity. The second designated English cathedral was for West Kent at Rochester Cathedral.
Kent was traditionally partitioned into East and West Kent, and into lathes and hundreds. The traditional border of East and West Kent was the county's main river, the Medway. Men and women from east of the Medway are Men (or Maids) of Kent, those from the west are Kentishmen or Kentish Maids. The divide has been explained by some as originating in the Anglo-Saxon migrations, with Jutes mainly settling east of the Medway and Saxons settling west of it.
In the 11th century, the people of Kent adopted the motto Invicta, meaning "undefeated" or "unconquered". This naming followed the invasion of Britain by William of Normandy as he was unable to subdue the county and they negotiated favourable terms. The continued resistance of the Kentish people against the Normans led to Kent's designation as a semi-autonomous county palatine in 1067. Under the nominal rule of William's half-brother Odo of Bayeux, the county was granted similar powers to those granted in the areas bordering Wales and Scotland.
During the medieval and early modern period, Kent played a major role in several of England's most notable rebellions, including the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, led by Wat Tyler, Jack Cade's Kent rebellion of 1450, and Wyatt's Rebellion of 1554 against Queen Mary I.
The Royal Navy first used the River Medway in 1547. By the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603) a small dockyard had been established at Chatham. By 1618, storehouses, a ropewalk, a drydock, and houses for officials had been built downstream from Chatham.
By the 17th century, tensions between Britain and the powers of the Netherlands and France led to increasing military build-up in the county. Forts were built all along the coast following the raid on the Medway, a successful attack by the Dutch navy on the shipyards of the Medway towns in 1667.
The 18th century was dominated by wars with France, during which the Medway became the primary base for a fleet that could act along the Dutch and French coasts. When the theatre of operation moved to the Atlantic, this role was assumed by Portsmouth and Plymouth, with Chatham concentrating on shipbuilding and ship repair. As an indication of the area's military importance, the first Ordnance Survey map ever drawn was a one-inch map of Kent, published in 1801. Many of the Georgian naval buildings still stand.
In the early 19th century, smugglers were very active on the Kent coastline. Gangs such as The Aldington Gang brought spirits, tobacco and salt to the county, and transported goods such as wool across the sea to France.
In 1889, the County of London was created and took over responsibility for local administration of parts of north-west Kent. These included the towns of Greenwich, Woolwich, Deptford, Lee, Eltham, Charlton, and Kidbrooke. In 1900, however, Kent absorbed the district of Penge. Some of Kent is contiguous with the Greater London sprawl, notably parts of Dartford.
Originally, the border between Kent and Sussex (later East Sussex) ran through the towns of Tunbridge Wells and Lamberhurst. In 1894, by the Local Government Act, the parts of these towns that lay in East Sussex were absorbed by Kent.
During the Second World War, much of the Battle of Britain was fought in the skies over Kent.
Between June 1944 and March 1945, more than 10,000 V1 flying bombs, or "Doodlebugs", were fired towards London from bases in Northern France. Although many were destroyed by aircraft, anti-aircraft guns and barrage balloons, both London and Kent were hit by around 2,500 of these bombs.
After the war, Kent's borders changed several more times. In 1965, the London boroughs of Bromley and Bexley were created from nine towns formerly in Kent. In 1998, Rochester, Chatham, Gillingham and Rainham left the administrative county of Kent to form the Unitary Authority of Medway. Plans for another unitary authority in north-west Kent were dropped, but in 2016 consultations began between five Kent local authorities (Canterbury, Thanet, Dover, Folkestone & Hythe, and Ashford) with a view to forming a new unified authority for East Kent, although remaining within the auspices of Kent County Council. This idea was eventually dropped.
For almost nine centuries, a small part of present-day East London (the North Woolwich, London E16 area), formed part of Kent.
Kent is in the southeastern corner of England. It borders the Thames Estuary and the North Sea to the north, and the Straits of Dover and the English Channel to the south. France is 34 kilometres (21 mi) across the Strait.
The major geographical features of the county are based on a series of ridges and valleys running east–west across the county. These are the results of erosion of the Wealden dome, a dome across Kent and Sussex created by alpine movements 20–10 million years ago. This dome consists of an upper layer of chalk above successive layers of Upper Greensand, Gault Clay, Lower Greensand, Weald Clay, and Wealden sandstone. The ridges and valleys formed when the exposed clay eroded faster than the exposed chalk, greensand, or sandstone.
Sevenoaks, Maidstone, Ashford, and Folkestone are built on greensand, while Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells are built on sandstone. Dartford, Gravesend, the Medway towns, Sittingbourne, Faversham, Canterbury, Deal, and Dover are built on chalk. The easterly section of the Wealden dome has been eroded away by the sea, and cliffs such as the White Cliffs of Dover are present where a chalk ridge known as the North Downs meets the coast. Spanning Dover and Westerham is the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
The Wealden dome is a Mesozoic structure lying on a Palaeozoic foundation, which can often create the right conditions for coal formation. This is found in East Kent roughly between Deal, Canterbury, and Dover. The Coal Measures within the Westphalian Sandstone are about 250–400 m (820–1,310 ft) deep, and are subject to flooding. They occur in two major troughs, which extend under the English Channel.
Seismic activity has occasionally been recorded in Kent, though the epicentres were offshore. In 1382 and 1580 there were two earthquakes exceeding 6.0 on the Richter Scale. In 1776, 1950, and on 28 April 2007 there were earthquakes of around 4.3. The 2007 earthquake caused physical damage in Folkestone. A further quake on 22 May 2015 measured 4.2 on the Richter Scale. It was centred in the Sandwich area of east Kent at about ten miles below the surface. There was little if any damage reported.
The coastline of Kent is continuously changing, due to tectonic uplift and coastal erosion. Until about 960, the Isle of Thanet was an island, separated by the Wantsum channel, formed around a deposit of chalk; over time, the channels silted up with alluvium. Similarly Romney Marsh and Dungeness have been formed by accumulation of alluvium.
Kent's principal river, the River Medway, rises near East Grinstead in Sussex and flows eastwards to Maidstone. Here it turns north and breaks through the North Downs at Rochester, then joins the estuary of the River Thames near Sheerness. The Medway is some 112 kilometres (70 mi) long. The river is tidal as far as Allington lock, but in earlier times, cargo-carrying vessels reached as far upstream as Tonbridge. The Medway has captured the head waters of other rivers such as the River Darent. Other rivers of Kent include the River Stour in the east.
A 2014 study found that Kent shares significant reserves of shale oil with other neighbouring counties, totalling 4.4 billion barrels of oil, which then Business and Energy Minister Michael Fallon said "will bring jobs and business opportunities" and significantly help with UK energy self-sufficiency. Fracking in the area is required to achieve these objectives; it has been opposed by environmental groups.
Kent is one of the warmest parts of Britain. On 10 August 2003, in the hamlet of Brogdale near Faversham the temperature reached 38.5 °C (101.3 °F), at that time the highest temperature ever officially recorded in the United Kingdom. The record still stands as the hottest August day ever recorded.
Kent County Council (KCC) and its 12 district councils administer most of the county (3352 km), while the Medway Towns Council, a unitary authority and commonly called Medway Council, administers the more densely populated remainder (192 km). Together they have around 300 town and parish councils. Kent County Council's headquarters are in Maidstone, while Medway's offices are at Gun Wharf, Chatham.
At the 2013 county council elections, control of Kent County Council was held by the Conservatives, who won 44 of the council's 83 seats. 17 seats were won by the United Kingdom Independence Party, 13 by the Labour Party, 7 by the Liberal Democrats, 1 by the Green Party and 1 by the Swanscombe and Greenhithe Residents Association. At the 2007 local elections, control of Medway Council was held by the Conservatives; 33 of the council's 55 seats were held by the Conservatives, 13 by the Labour Party, 8 by the Liberal Democrats and 1 by an Independent. All but one of Kent's district councils are controlled by the Conservatives: a minority Labour administration took control of Thanet District in December 2011 after a Conservative councillor defected to the Independent group. In the council elections of May 2015 the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) took control of the Council, the first and so far only one in the UK. In October 2015 UKIP lost overall control following a series of resignations, although remaining the largest party, only for UKIP to regain control once more following ward elections in August 2016.
At the national level, Kent is represented in Parliament by 17 MPs, all of whom are Conservative except Rosie Duffield, Labour MP for Canterbury since 2017.
At the 2011 census, Kent, including Medway, had 1,727,665 residents (18.0% of which in Medway); had 711,847 households (17.5% of which in Medway) and had 743,436 dwellings (14.8% of which in Medway). 51.1% of Kent's population excluding Medway was female — as to Medway, this proportion was 50.4%.
The tables below provide statistics for the administrative county of Kent, that is, excluding Medway.
At the 2001 UK census, employment statistics for the residents in Kent, including Medway, were as follows: 41.1% in full-time employment, 12.4% in part-time employment, 9.1% self-employed, 2.9% unemployed, 2.3% students with jobs, 3.7% students without jobs, 12.3% retired, 7.3% looking after home or family, 4.3% permanently sick or disabled, and 2.7% economically inactive for other reasons. Of residents aged 16–74, 16% had a higher education qualification or the equivalent, compared to 20% nationwide.
The average hours worked per week by residents of Kent were 43.1 for males and 30.9 for females. Their industry of employment was 17.3% retail, 12.4% manufacturing, 11.8% real estate, 10.3% health and social work, 8.9% construction, 8.2% transport and communications, 7.9% education, 6.0% public administration and defence, 5.6% finance, 4.8% other community and personal service activities, 4.1% hotels and restaurants, 1.6% agriculture, 0.8% energy and water supply, 0.2% mining, and 0.1% private households. This is higher than the whole of England for construction and transport/communications and lower for manufacturing.
Kent is sometimes known as the "Garden of England" for its abundance of orchards and hop gardens. In particular the county produces tree-grown fruits, strawberries and hazelnuts. Distinctive hop-drying buildings called oasts are common in the countryside, although many have been converted into dwellings. Nearer to London, market gardens also flourish. Kent is the main area for hazelnut production in the UK.
However, in recent years, there has been a significant drop in agriculture, and industry and services are increasing their utilisation of the area. This is illustrated by the following table of economic indicator gross value added (GVA) between 1995 and 2003 (figures are in £ millions):
North Kent is heavily industrialised, with cement-making at Northfleet and Cuxton, brickmaking at Sittingbourne, shipbuilding on the Medway and Swale, engineering and aircraft design and construction at Rochester, chemicals at Dartford, papermaking at Swanley, and oil refining at Grain. There is a steel mini mill in Sheerness and a rolling mill in Queenborough. There are two nuclear power stations at Dungeness, although the older one, Dungeness A, built in 1965, was decommissioned in 2006.
Cement-making, papermaking, and coal-mining were important industries in Kent during the 19th and 20th centuries. Cement came to the fore in the 19th century when massive building projects were undertaken. The ready supply of chalk and huge pits between Stone and Gravesend bear testament to that industry. There were also other workings around Burham on the tidal Medway. Chalk, gravel and clay were excavated on Dartford Heath for centuries.
Kent's original paper mills stood on streams like the River Darent, tributaries of the River Medway, and on the River Stour. Two 18th century mills were on the River Len and at Tovil on the River Loose. In the late 19th century huge modern mills were built at Dartford and Northfleet on the River Thames and at Kemsley on The Swale. In pre-industrial times, almost every village and town had its own windmill or watermill, with over 400 windmills known to have stood at some time. Twenty-eight survive within the county today, plus two replica mills and a further two in that part of Kent now absorbed into London. All the major rivers in the county were used to power watermills.
From about 1900, several coal pits operated in East Kent. The Kent Coalfield was mined during the 20th century at several collieries, including Chislet, Tilmanstone, Betteshanger, and the Snowdown Colliery, which ran from 1908 to 1986.
The west of the county (including Tunbridge Wells, Tonbridge, and Sevenoaks) has less than 50% of the average claimant count for low incomes or worklessness as the coastal districts of Dover, Folkestone and Hythe, and Thanet (chiefly three resorts: Ramsgate, Broadstairs, and Margate). West and Central Kent have long had many City of London commuters.
Kent's geographical location between the Straits of Dover and London has influenced its architecture, as has its Cretaceous geology and its good farming land and fine building clays. Kent's countryside pattern was determined by a gavelkind inheritance system that generated a proliferation of small settlements. There was no open-field system, and the large tracts were owned by the two great abbeys, Christ Church, Canterbury and St Augustine's Abbey, that did not pass into the hands of the king during the Reformation. Canterbury Cathedral is the United Kingdom's metropolitan cathedral; it was founded in AD 598 and displays architecture from all periods. There are nine Anglo-Saxon churches in Kent. Rochester Cathedral is England's second-oldest cathedral, the present building built in the Early English Style. These two dioceses ensured that every village had a parish church.
The sites of Richborough Castle and Dover Castle, along with two strategic sites along Watling Street, were fortified by the Romans and the Dukes of Kent. Other important sites include Canterbury city walls and Rochester Castle. There remained a need to defend London and thus Kent. Deal Castle, Walmer Castle, Sandown Castle (whose remains were eroded by the sea in the 1990s) were constructed in late mediaeval times, and HM Dockyard, at Chatham and its surrounding castles and forts—Upnor Castle, Great Lines, and Fort Amherst—more recently.
Kent has three unique vernacular architecture forms: the oast house, the Wealden hall house, and Kentish peg-tiles.
Kent has bridge trusts to maintain its bridges, and though the great bridge (1387) at Rochester was replaced there are medieval structures at Aylesford, Yalding and Teston. With the motorways in the late twentieth century came the M2 motorway bridge spanning the Medway and the Dartford tunnel and the Dartford Bridge spanning the Thames.
Kent has provided inspiration for several notable writers and artists. Canterbury's religious role gave rise to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, a key development in the English language. The father of novelist Charles Dickens worked at the Chatham Dockyard; in many of his books, the celebrated novelist featured the scenery of Chatham, Rochester, and the Cliffe marshes. During the late 1930s, Nobel Prize-awarded novelist William Golding worked as a teacher at Maidstone Grammar School, where he met his future wife Ann Brookfield. William Caxton, who first introduced the printing press to England, was born in Kent; the recent invention was key in helping many Kent dialect words and spellings to become standard in English. Lord Northbourne hosted a biodynamic agriculture conference on his estate at Betteshanger in the summer of 1939, he coined the term 'organic farming' and published his manifesto of organic agriculture the following year spawning a global movement for sustainable agriculture and food.
A number of significant artists came from Kent, including Thomas Sidney Cooper, a painter of landscapes, often incorporating farm animals, Richard Dadd, a maker of faery paintings, and Mary Tourtel, the creator of the children's book character, Rupert Bear. The artist Clive Head was also born in Kent. The landscape painter J. M. W. Turner spent part of his childhood in the town of Margate in East Kent, and regularly returned to visit it throughout his life. The East Kent coast inspired many of his works, including some of his most famous seascapes. Kent has also been the home to artists including Frank Auerbach, Tracey Emin and Stass Paraskos.
Kent was also the location of the largest number of art schools in the country during the nineteenth century, estimated by the art historian David Haste, to approach two hundred. This is believed to be the result of Kent being a front line county during the Napoleonic Wars. At this time, before the invention of photography, draughtsmen were used to draw maps and topographical representations of the fields of battle, and after the wars ended many of these settled permanently in the county in which they had been based. Once the idea of art schools had been established, even in small towns in Kent, the tradition continued, although most of the schools were very small one-man operations, each teaching a small number of daughters of the upper classes how to draw and make watercolour paintings. Nonetheless, some of these small art schools developed into much larger organisations, including Canterbury College of Art, founded by Thomas Sidney Cooper in 1868, which is today the University for the Creative Arts.
Blean near Canterbury was home to Smallfilms, the production company founded by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin and responsible for children's TV favourites Noggin the Nog, Ivor the Engine and Bagpuss.
The county's largest theatre is the Marlowe Theatre in the centre of Canterbury.
Music festivals that take place in Kent include Chilled in a Field Festival, Electric Gardens, Hop Farm Festival, In the Woods Festival, Lounge On The Farm and the annual Smugglers Festival near Deal. Other venues for live music include Leas Cliff Hall in Folkestone and the Assembly Hall in Tunbridge Wells.
Kentish people have long viewed themselves as Kentish first and British second, and to this day refer to themselves as either 'Men of Kent' or 'Kentish men' depending on whether they live to the East or West of the River Medway. After the 2016 Brexit referendum and subsequent proposals for "border checks" on the Kentish border, effectively making Kent a country within a country, this pride in being Kentish began to form into calls from some areas for an independent Kent or an autonomous republic within the UK, especially from the county's prominent newspapers, with the idea being discussed in detail in some areas - with some ideas such as mock passports and "tongue-in-cheek" manifestos being created. These calls for independence can be explained by the individualistic and rebellious mentality that has always existed in the county, which can be explained by the counties position in the very South-East of the United Kingdom, having been a prominent and independent kingdom for centuries as well as being the source of many major rebellions that have occurred in the United Kingdom.
With the Roman invasion, a road network was constructed to connect London to the Channel ports of Dover, Lympne and Richborough. The London–Dover road was Watling Street. These roads are now approximately the A2, B2068, A257, and the A28. The A2 runs through Dartford (A207), Gravesend, Rochester, Canterbury, and Dover; the A20 through Eltham, Wrotham, Maidstone, Charing, Ashford. Hythe, Folkestone and Dover; the A21 around Sevenoaks, Tonbridge, Tunbridge Wells and on to Hastings in East Sussex. In the 1960s, two motorways were built; the M2 from Medway to Faversham, and the M20 from Swanley to Folkestone. Part of the M25 runs through Kent, from Westerham to the Dartford Crossing. The M26 motorway, built in 1980, provides a short link between the M25 at Sevenoaks and the M20 near Wrotham. Kent currently has more motorways by distance than any other county in the UK, with sections of the M2, M20, M25 and M26 totalling 173 km (107 mi) within the extents of the ceremonial county.
In the run-up to Britain leaving the European Union, Government minister Michael Gove confirmed that the Government intended to impose a de facto border between Kent and the rest of England for freight lorries, in order to deal with expected lorry queues of 7,000 or more at Folkestone, Dover and other ports. Heavy goods vehicle operators need to apply for a 24-hour Kent Access Permit (KAP) to take a vehicle of 7.5 tonnes or more into Kent if their intention is to cross to the EU via Dover or the Eurotunnel.
The medieval Cinque Ports, except for the Port of Dover, have all now silted up. The Medway Estuary has been an important port and naval base for 500 years. The River Medway is tidal up to Allington and navigable up to Tonbridge. Kent's two canals are the Royal Military Canal between Hythe and Rye, which still exists, and the Thames and Medway Canal between Strood and Gravesend. Built-in 1824, it was purchased in 1846 by the railways, which partially backfilled it. Container ports are at Ramsgate and Thamesport. Following the closures across the lower Medway, and the Swale to the Isle of Sheppey, during the 20th century, the Woolwich Ferry is the only domestic ferry that runs in the broadest definition of the county.
The earliest locomotive-driven passenger-carrying railway in Britain was the Canterbury & Whitstable Railway which opened in 1830. This and the London & Greenwich Railway later merged into South Eastern Railway (SER). By the 1850s, SER's networks had expanded to Ashford, Ramsgate, Canterbury, Tunbridge Wells, and the Medway towns. SER's major London termini were London Bridge, Charing Cross, and Cannon Street. Kent also had a second major railway, the London, Chatham & Dover Railway. Originally the East Kent Railway in 1858, it linked the northeast Kent coast with London terminals at Victoria and Blackfriars.
The two companies merged in 1899, forming the South Eastern & Chatham Railway, further amalgamated with other railways by the Railways Act 1921 to form the Southern Railway. Britain's railways were nationalised in 1948, forming British Railways. The railways were privatised in 1996 and most Kent passenger services were franchised to Connex South Eastern. Following financial difficulties, Connex lost the franchise and was replaced by South Eastern Trains and after Southeastern.
The Channel Tunnel was completed in 1994 and High Speed 1 in November 2007 with a London terminus at St Pancras. A new station, Ebbsfleet International, opened between Dartford and Gravesend, serving northern Kent. The high speed lines will be utilised to provide a faster train service to coastal towns like Ramsgate and Folkestone. This station is in addition to the existing station at Ashford International, which has suffered a massive cut in service as a result.
In addition to the "main line" railways, there are several light, heritage, and industrial railways in Kent. There are three heritage, standard gauge railways; Spa Valley Railway near Tunbridge Wells on the old Tunbridge Wells West branch, East Kent Railway on the old East Kent coalfield area and the Kent & East Sussex Railway on the Weald around Tenterden. In addition, there is the 15-inch (380 mm) gauge, Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway on the southeast Kent coast along the Dungeness peninsula. Finally, there is the 2 ft 6 in (0.76 m), industrial Sittingbourne & Kemsley Light Railway, previously the Bowaters Paper Railway.
Charter flights are provided by Lydd Airport at Lydd.
In 2002, it was revealed that the government was considering building a new four-runway airport on the marshland near the village of Cliffe on Hoo Peninsula. This plan was dropped in 2003 following protests by cultural and environmental groups. However further plans for a Thames Estuary Airport on the Kent coast have subsequently emerged, including the Thames Hub Airport, again sited on the Isle of Grain and designed by Lord Foster, and the London Britannia Airport plan, colloquially known as "Boris Island" due to its being championed by the former Mayor of London Boris Johnson, which would see a six runway airport built on an artificial island to be towards the Shivering Sands area, north-east of Whitstable. Both of these options were dropped in 2014 in favour of expansion at either Gatwick or Heathrow Airport, the latter finally being the chosen option following Theresa May's installation as Prime Minister in summer 2016.
Manston Airport, located near the village of Manston in the Thanet district, was a former RAF facility that also handled some civilian flights. It closed in 2014.
Kent has four universities: Canterbury Christ Church University with campuses throughout East Kent; University of Kent, with campuses in Canterbury and Medway; University of Greenwich (a London University), with sites at Woolwich, Eltham, London and Medway; the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) also has three of its five campuses in the county.
Although much of Britain adopted a comprehensive education system in the 1970s, Kent County Council (KCC) and Medway Unitary Authority are among around fifteen local authorities still providing wholly selective education through the eleven-plus examination with students allocated a place at a secondary modern school or at a grammar school.
Together, the two Kent authorities have 38 of the 164 grammar schools remaining in Britain.
Kent County Council has the largest education department of any local council in Britain, providing school places for over 289,000 pupils.
In 2005–06, Kent County Council and Medway introduced a standardised school year, based on six terms, as recommended by the Local Government Association in its 2000 report, "The Rhythms of Schooling".
Kent County Council Local Education Authority maintains 96 secondary schools, of which 33 are selective schools and 63 are secondary modern schools.
Music education is provided by Kent Music (formerly Kent Music School), which has its origins in the 1940s. Kent Music provides services across the county including Kent County Youth Orchestra, Kent Youth Choirs, and an annual summer school at Benenden School.
In 2010, Kent had the highest number of National Challenge schools in England: schools which are branded 'failing' based on the British Government's floor targets that 30% of pupils achieve at least 5 GCSE grades A* to C. Of the 63 secondary modern schools, 33 missed this target; thus 52% of Kent secondary modern schools (34% out of all 96 maintained secondary schools) are 'failing'.
In association football, Kent's highest ranked football team is Gillingham FC (nicknamed 'The Gills') who play in Football League Two, having been demoted at the end of the 2021–22 season. Maidstone United was a Football League side from 1989 until going bankrupt in 1992. Kent clubs in the higher levels of non-league football include the current incarnation of Maidstone United and Dover Athletic playing in the National League along with Ebbsfleet United, who were promoted in 2017. Dartford currently play in National League South, the sixth tier of the English football pyramid.
Kent is represented in cricket by Kent County Cricket Club. The club was a founder member of the County Championship in 1890 and has won the competition, the major domestic first-class cricket competition, seven times. The club is based at the St Lawrence Ground in Canterbury and also plays matches at the Nevill Ground in Royal Tunbridge Wells and the County Cricket Ground, Beckenham. The Kent Women cricket team has won the Women's County Championship seven times since it was established in 1997. Cricket has traditionally been a popular sport in the county and Kent is considered one of the locations in which the game first developed. Teams have represented the county since the early 18th century. The Kent Cricket League is the top level of club competition within Kent and features teams from throughout the county, including areas such as Beckenham and Bexley which were formerly part of the county.
Canterbury Hockey Club and Holcombe Hockey Club both play in the top division in both the men's and women's England Hockey Leagues. Sevenoaks Hockey Club's women first XI plays in the second tier of national competition.
In rugby union, Tonbridge Juddians and Canterbury RFC play in the fourth-tier of English rugby in the National League 2 South. Gravesend RFC play in the seventh-tier London 2 South-East. Blackheath FC, a club within the historic boundaries of the county, play in fourth-tier National League 2 South. Both Tonbridge Juddians and Blackheath RFC played in National league 1 (the third-tier of English rugby) up until the end of the 2021–2022 season.
In motorsport, the Brands Hatch circuit near Swanley has played host to a number of national and international racing events and hosted 12 runnings of the British Grand Prix in various years between 1964 and 1986.
There have been multiple American football teams based in Kent since the game was popularised in the UK. Currently, the Canterbury is the home of the East Kent Mavericks, the 2023 BAFA National Leagues Southern Football Conference 2 Champions, as well as teams from both universities.
Kent is home to two National League netball clubs, both based in northwest Kent: Telstars (Premier Division 2) and KCNC (Premier Division 3).
In basketball, the Kent Panthers participate in Division 3 of the National Basketball League.
The 2021–2022 season has seen three Kentish clubs demoted from the third-tier of their respective sports to the fourth-tier, with rugby clubs Tonbridge Juddians and Blackheath RFC being demoted in rugby and Gillingham FC being demoted in football.
Much of Kent is served by the BBC's South East region, which is based in Tunbridge Wells and provides local news for the county and East Sussex. Its commercial rival is ITV Meridian Ltd, which has a newsroom at The Maidstone Studios despite the main studio being based in Hampshire. Main transmitters providing these services are at West Hougham, near Dover and Blue Bell Hill, between Chatham and Maidstone. A powerful relay transmitter at Tunbridge Wells serves the town and surrounding area. Those parts of Kent closest to London such as Swanley, Westerham, Dartford, Gravesend, and Sevenoaks lie within the ITV London and BBC London areas, taking their television signals from the Crystal Palace transmitter.
Kent has two county-wide stations – BBC Radio Kent, based in Tunbridge Wells; and the commercial station KMFM, owned by the KM Group. KMFM previously consisted of seven local stations which covered different areas of the county (and are still technically seven different licences) but have shared all programming since 2012
The county's first commercial station was originally known as Invicta FM and began broadcasting in 1984. After various buyouts, the station was rebranded into Heart Kent in 2009 as part of the Heart Network. The station was closed and merged with several other Heart stations in the south of England in 2019 to form Heart South, with the Kent studios in Whitstable closing and production moving to Fareham in Hampshire.
There are several community radio stations in Kent including:
The KM Group, KOS Media and Kent Regional News and Media all provide local newspapers for most of the large towns and cities. County-wide papers include the Kent Messenger, Kent on Saturday, Kent on Sunday, and the Kent and Sussex Courier.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Kent is a county in the South East England region, the closest county to continental Europe. It borders Essex across the entire estuary of the River Thames to the north; the French department of Pas-de-Calais across the Strait of Dover to the south-east; East Sussex to the south-west; Surrey to the west and Greater London to the north-west. The county town is Maidstone.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "It is the fifth most populous county in England, the most populous non-metropolitan county and the most populous of the Home Counties, an area influenced by the capital such as commutes and transport connections to the capital. Twenty-eight per cent of the county forms part of two Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty: the North Downs and The High Weald.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Kent was one of the first British territories to be settled by Germanic tribes, most notably the Jutes, following the withdrawal of the Romans. Canterbury Cathedral in Kent, the oldest cathedral in England, has been the seat of the Archbishops of Canterbury since the conversion of England to Christianity that began in the 6th century with Saint Augustine. Rochester Cathedral in Medway is England's second-oldest cathedral. Located between London and the Strait of Dover, which separates England from mainland Europe, Kent has been the setting for both conflict and diplomacy, including the Battle of Britain in World War II and the Leeds Castle peace talks of 1978 and 2004.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "England relied on the county's ports to provide warships through much of its history; the Cinque Ports in the 10th–14th centuries and Chatham Dockyard in the 16th–20th centuries were of particular importance. France can be seen clearly in fine weather from Folkestone and the White Cliffs of Dover. Hills in the form of the North Downs and the Greensand Ridge span the length of the county and in the Vale of Holmesdale in between and to the south are most of the county's 26 castles.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The county has agriculture, haulage, logistics and tourism industries. As the land between the capital and the wider continent, it is a high-income county. Agriculture of the county is a notable sector: \"The Garden of England\" is a nickname for the county, which has multiple orchards and allotments. In north-west Kent, industries include aggregate building material extraction, printing and scientific research. Coal mining has also played its part in the county's industrial heritage.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The name Kent is believed to be of Celtic origin. The meaning has been explained as 'coastal district,' 'corner-land' or 'land on the edge' (compare Welsh cant 'bordering of a circle, tyre, edge;' Breton cant 'circle;' Dutch kant 'side, edge'). In Latin sources the area is called Cantia or Cantium, while the Anglo-Saxons referred to it as Cent, Cent lond or Centrice.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The area has been occupied since the Palaeolithic era, as attested by finds from the quarries at Swanscombe. The Medway megaliths were built during the Neolithic era. There is a rich sequence of Bronze Age, Celtic Iron Age, and Britto-Roman era occupation, as indicated by finds and features such as the Ringlemere gold cup and the Roman villas of the Darent valley.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Julius Caesar described the area as Cantium, or the home of the Cantiaci, in 51 BC. The extreme west of the modern county was by the time of Roman Britain occupied by a Celtic Iron Age tribe known as the Regni. Caesar wrote that the people of Kent were 'by far the most civilised inhabitants of Britain'.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Following the withdrawal of the Romans, large numbers of Germanic speakers from mainland Europe settled in Kent, bringing their language, which came to be Old English. While they expelled the native Romano-British population, some likely remained in the area, eventually assimilating with the newcomers. Of the invading tribes, the Jutes were the most prominent, and the area became a Jutish kingdom recorded as Cantia in about 730 and Cent in 835. The early medieval inhabitants of the county were referred to as the Cantwara, or Kentish people. The city of Canterbury was the largest in Kent.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In 597, Pope Gregory I appointed the religious missionary (who became Saint Augustine of Canterbury after his death) as the first Archbishop of Canterbury. In the previous year, Augustine successfully converted the pagan King Æthelberht of Kent to Christianity. The Diocese of Canterbury became England's first Episcopal See with first cathedral and has since remained England's centre of Christianity. The second designated English cathedral was for West Kent at Rochester Cathedral.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Kent was traditionally partitioned into East and West Kent, and into lathes and hundreds. The traditional border of East and West Kent was the county's main river, the Medway. Men and women from east of the Medway are Men (or Maids) of Kent, those from the west are Kentishmen or Kentish Maids. The divide has been explained by some as originating in the Anglo-Saxon migrations, with Jutes mainly settling east of the Medway and Saxons settling west of it.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In the 11th century, the people of Kent adopted the motto Invicta, meaning \"undefeated\" or \"unconquered\". This naming followed the invasion of Britain by William of Normandy as he was unable to subdue the county and they negotiated favourable terms. The continued resistance of the Kentish people against the Normans led to Kent's designation as a semi-autonomous county palatine in 1067. Under the nominal rule of William's half-brother Odo of Bayeux, the county was granted similar powers to those granted in the areas bordering Wales and Scotland.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "During the medieval and early modern period, Kent played a major role in several of England's most notable rebellions, including the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, led by Wat Tyler, Jack Cade's Kent rebellion of 1450, and Wyatt's Rebellion of 1554 against Queen Mary I.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The Royal Navy first used the River Medway in 1547. By the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603) a small dockyard had been established at Chatham. By 1618, storehouses, a ropewalk, a drydock, and houses for officials had been built downstream from Chatham.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "By the 17th century, tensions between Britain and the powers of the Netherlands and France led to increasing military build-up in the county. Forts were built all along the coast following the raid on the Medway, a successful attack by the Dutch navy on the shipyards of the Medway towns in 1667.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The 18th century was dominated by wars with France, during which the Medway became the primary base for a fleet that could act along the Dutch and French coasts. When the theatre of operation moved to the Atlantic, this role was assumed by Portsmouth and Plymouth, with Chatham concentrating on shipbuilding and ship repair. As an indication of the area's military importance, the first Ordnance Survey map ever drawn was a one-inch map of Kent, published in 1801. Many of the Georgian naval buildings still stand.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In the early 19th century, smugglers were very active on the Kent coastline. Gangs such as The Aldington Gang brought spirits, tobacco and salt to the county, and transported goods such as wool across the sea to France.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In 1889, the County of London was created and took over responsibility for local administration of parts of north-west Kent. These included the towns of Greenwich, Woolwich, Deptford, Lee, Eltham, Charlton, and Kidbrooke. In 1900, however, Kent absorbed the district of Penge. Some of Kent is contiguous with the Greater London sprawl, notably parts of Dartford.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Originally, the border between Kent and Sussex (later East Sussex) ran through the towns of Tunbridge Wells and Lamberhurst. In 1894, by the Local Government Act, the parts of these towns that lay in East Sussex were absorbed by Kent.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "During the Second World War, much of the Battle of Britain was fought in the skies over Kent.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Between June 1944 and March 1945, more than 10,000 V1 flying bombs, or \"Doodlebugs\", were fired towards London from bases in Northern France. Although many were destroyed by aircraft, anti-aircraft guns and barrage balloons, both London and Kent were hit by around 2,500 of these bombs.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "After the war, Kent's borders changed several more times. In 1965, the London boroughs of Bromley and Bexley were created from nine towns formerly in Kent. In 1998, Rochester, Chatham, Gillingham and Rainham left the administrative county of Kent to form the Unitary Authority of Medway. Plans for another unitary authority in north-west Kent were dropped, but in 2016 consultations began between five Kent local authorities (Canterbury, Thanet, Dover, Folkestone & Hythe, and Ashford) with a view to forming a new unified authority for East Kent, although remaining within the auspices of Kent County Council. This idea was eventually dropped.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "For almost nine centuries, a small part of present-day East London (the North Woolwich, London E16 area), formed part of Kent.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Kent is in the southeastern corner of England. It borders the Thames Estuary and the North Sea to the north, and the Straits of Dover and the English Channel to the south. France is 34 kilometres (21 mi) across the Strait.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The major geographical features of the county are based on a series of ridges and valleys running east–west across the county. These are the results of erosion of the Wealden dome, a dome across Kent and Sussex created by alpine movements 20–10 million years ago. This dome consists of an upper layer of chalk above successive layers of Upper Greensand, Gault Clay, Lower Greensand, Weald Clay, and Wealden sandstone. The ridges and valleys formed when the exposed clay eroded faster than the exposed chalk, greensand, or sandstone.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Sevenoaks, Maidstone, Ashford, and Folkestone are built on greensand, while Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells are built on sandstone. Dartford, Gravesend, the Medway towns, Sittingbourne, Faversham, Canterbury, Deal, and Dover are built on chalk. The easterly section of the Wealden dome has been eroded away by the sea, and cliffs such as the White Cliffs of Dover are present where a chalk ridge known as the North Downs meets the coast. Spanning Dover and Westerham is the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The Wealden dome is a Mesozoic structure lying on a Palaeozoic foundation, which can often create the right conditions for coal formation. This is found in East Kent roughly between Deal, Canterbury, and Dover. The Coal Measures within the Westphalian Sandstone are about 250–400 m (820–1,310 ft) deep, and are subject to flooding. They occur in two major troughs, which extend under the English Channel.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Seismic activity has occasionally been recorded in Kent, though the epicentres were offshore. In 1382 and 1580 there were two earthquakes exceeding 6.0 on the Richter Scale. In 1776, 1950, and on 28 April 2007 there were earthquakes of around 4.3. The 2007 earthquake caused physical damage in Folkestone. A further quake on 22 May 2015 measured 4.2 on the Richter Scale. It was centred in the Sandwich area of east Kent at about ten miles below the surface. There was little if any damage reported.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The coastline of Kent is continuously changing, due to tectonic uplift and coastal erosion. Until about 960, the Isle of Thanet was an island, separated by the Wantsum channel, formed around a deposit of chalk; over time, the channels silted up with alluvium. Similarly Romney Marsh and Dungeness have been formed by accumulation of alluvium.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Kent's principal river, the River Medway, rises near East Grinstead in Sussex and flows eastwards to Maidstone. Here it turns north and breaks through the North Downs at Rochester, then joins the estuary of the River Thames near Sheerness. The Medway is some 112 kilometres (70 mi) long. The river is tidal as far as Allington lock, but in earlier times, cargo-carrying vessels reached as far upstream as Tonbridge. The Medway has captured the head waters of other rivers such as the River Darent. Other rivers of Kent include the River Stour in the east.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "A 2014 study found that Kent shares significant reserves of shale oil with other neighbouring counties, totalling 4.4 billion barrels of oil, which then Business and Energy Minister Michael Fallon said \"will bring jobs and business opportunities\" and significantly help with UK energy self-sufficiency. Fracking in the area is required to achieve these objectives; it has been opposed by environmental groups.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Kent is one of the warmest parts of Britain. On 10 August 2003, in the hamlet of Brogdale near Faversham the temperature reached 38.5 °C (101.3 °F), at that time the highest temperature ever officially recorded in the United Kingdom. The record still stands as the hottest August day ever recorded.",
"title": "Geography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Kent County Council (KCC) and its 12 district councils administer most of the county (3352 km), while the Medway Towns Council, a unitary authority and commonly called Medway Council, administers the more densely populated remainder (192 km). Together they have around 300 town and parish councils. Kent County Council's headquarters are in Maidstone, while Medway's offices are at Gun Wharf, Chatham.",
"title": "Governance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "At the 2013 county council elections, control of Kent County Council was held by the Conservatives, who won 44 of the council's 83 seats. 17 seats were won by the United Kingdom Independence Party, 13 by the Labour Party, 7 by the Liberal Democrats, 1 by the Green Party and 1 by the Swanscombe and Greenhithe Residents Association. At the 2007 local elections, control of Medway Council was held by the Conservatives; 33 of the council's 55 seats were held by the Conservatives, 13 by the Labour Party, 8 by the Liberal Democrats and 1 by an Independent. All but one of Kent's district councils are controlled by the Conservatives: a minority Labour administration took control of Thanet District in December 2011 after a Conservative councillor defected to the Independent group. In the council elections of May 2015 the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) took control of the Council, the first and so far only one in the UK. In October 2015 UKIP lost overall control following a series of resignations, although remaining the largest party, only for UKIP to regain control once more following ward elections in August 2016.",
"title": "Governance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "At the national level, Kent is represented in Parliament by 17 MPs, all of whom are Conservative except Rosie Duffield, Labour MP for Canterbury since 2017.",
"title": "Governance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "At the 2011 census, Kent, including Medway, had 1,727,665 residents (18.0% of which in Medway); had 711,847 households (17.5% of which in Medway) and had 743,436 dwellings (14.8% of which in Medway). 51.1% of Kent's population excluding Medway was female — as to Medway, this proportion was 50.4%.",
"title": "Demography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The tables below provide statistics for the administrative county of Kent, that is, excluding Medway.",
"title": "Demography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "At the 2001 UK census, employment statistics for the residents in Kent, including Medway, were as follows: 41.1% in full-time employment, 12.4% in part-time employment, 9.1% self-employed, 2.9% unemployed, 2.3% students with jobs, 3.7% students without jobs, 12.3% retired, 7.3% looking after home or family, 4.3% permanently sick or disabled, and 2.7% economically inactive for other reasons. Of residents aged 16–74, 16% had a higher education qualification or the equivalent, compared to 20% nationwide.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "The average hours worked per week by residents of Kent were 43.1 for males and 30.9 for females. Their industry of employment was 17.3% retail, 12.4% manufacturing, 11.8% real estate, 10.3% health and social work, 8.9% construction, 8.2% transport and communications, 7.9% education, 6.0% public administration and defence, 5.6% finance, 4.8% other community and personal service activities, 4.1% hotels and restaurants, 1.6% agriculture, 0.8% energy and water supply, 0.2% mining, and 0.1% private households. This is higher than the whole of England for construction and transport/communications and lower for manufacturing.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Kent is sometimes known as the \"Garden of England\" for its abundance of orchards and hop gardens. In particular the county produces tree-grown fruits, strawberries and hazelnuts. Distinctive hop-drying buildings called oasts are common in the countryside, although many have been converted into dwellings. Nearer to London, market gardens also flourish. Kent is the main area for hazelnut production in the UK.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "However, in recent years, there has been a significant drop in agriculture, and industry and services are increasing their utilisation of the area. This is illustrated by the following table of economic indicator gross value added (GVA) between 1995 and 2003 (figures are in £ millions):",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "North Kent is heavily industrialised, with cement-making at Northfleet and Cuxton, brickmaking at Sittingbourne, shipbuilding on the Medway and Swale, engineering and aircraft design and construction at Rochester, chemicals at Dartford, papermaking at Swanley, and oil refining at Grain. There is a steel mini mill in Sheerness and a rolling mill in Queenborough. There are two nuclear power stations at Dungeness, although the older one, Dungeness A, built in 1965, was decommissioned in 2006.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Cement-making, papermaking, and coal-mining were important industries in Kent during the 19th and 20th centuries. Cement came to the fore in the 19th century when massive building projects were undertaken. The ready supply of chalk and huge pits between Stone and Gravesend bear testament to that industry. There were also other workings around Burham on the tidal Medway. Chalk, gravel and clay were excavated on Dartford Heath for centuries.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Kent's original paper mills stood on streams like the River Darent, tributaries of the River Medway, and on the River Stour. Two 18th century mills were on the River Len and at Tovil on the River Loose. In the late 19th century huge modern mills were built at Dartford and Northfleet on the River Thames and at Kemsley on The Swale. In pre-industrial times, almost every village and town had its own windmill or watermill, with over 400 windmills known to have stood at some time. Twenty-eight survive within the county today, plus two replica mills and a further two in that part of Kent now absorbed into London. All the major rivers in the county were used to power watermills.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "From about 1900, several coal pits operated in East Kent. The Kent Coalfield was mined during the 20th century at several collieries, including Chislet, Tilmanstone, Betteshanger, and the Snowdown Colliery, which ran from 1908 to 1986.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "The west of the county (including Tunbridge Wells, Tonbridge, and Sevenoaks) has less than 50% of the average claimant count for low incomes or worklessness as the coastal districts of Dover, Folkestone and Hythe, and Thanet (chiefly three resorts: Ramsgate, Broadstairs, and Margate). West and Central Kent have long had many City of London commuters.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Kent's geographical location between the Straits of Dover and London has influenced its architecture, as has its Cretaceous geology and its good farming land and fine building clays. Kent's countryside pattern was determined by a gavelkind inheritance system that generated a proliferation of small settlements. There was no open-field system, and the large tracts were owned by the two great abbeys, Christ Church, Canterbury and St Augustine's Abbey, that did not pass into the hands of the king during the Reformation. Canterbury Cathedral is the United Kingdom's metropolitan cathedral; it was founded in AD 598 and displays architecture from all periods. There are nine Anglo-Saxon churches in Kent. Rochester Cathedral is England's second-oldest cathedral, the present building built in the Early English Style. These two dioceses ensured that every village had a parish church.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The sites of Richborough Castle and Dover Castle, along with two strategic sites along Watling Street, were fortified by the Romans and the Dukes of Kent. Other important sites include Canterbury city walls and Rochester Castle. There remained a need to defend London and thus Kent. Deal Castle, Walmer Castle, Sandown Castle (whose remains were eroded by the sea in the 1990s) were constructed in late mediaeval times, and HM Dockyard, at Chatham and its surrounding castles and forts—Upnor Castle, Great Lines, and Fort Amherst—more recently.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Kent has three unique vernacular architecture forms: the oast house, the Wealden hall house, and Kentish peg-tiles.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Kent has bridge trusts to maintain its bridges, and though the great bridge (1387) at Rochester was replaced there are medieval structures at Aylesford, Yalding and Teston. With the motorways in the late twentieth century came the M2 motorway bridge spanning the Medway and the Dartford tunnel and the Dartford Bridge spanning the Thames.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Kent has provided inspiration for several notable writers and artists. Canterbury's religious role gave rise to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, a key development in the English language. The father of novelist Charles Dickens worked at the Chatham Dockyard; in many of his books, the celebrated novelist featured the scenery of Chatham, Rochester, and the Cliffe marshes. During the late 1930s, Nobel Prize-awarded novelist William Golding worked as a teacher at Maidstone Grammar School, where he met his future wife Ann Brookfield. William Caxton, who first introduced the printing press to England, was born in Kent; the recent invention was key in helping many Kent dialect words and spellings to become standard in English. Lord Northbourne hosted a biodynamic agriculture conference on his estate at Betteshanger in the summer of 1939, he coined the term 'organic farming' and published his manifesto of organic agriculture the following year spawning a global movement for sustainable agriculture and food.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "A number of significant artists came from Kent, including Thomas Sidney Cooper, a painter of landscapes, often incorporating farm animals, Richard Dadd, a maker of faery paintings, and Mary Tourtel, the creator of the children's book character, Rupert Bear. The artist Clive Head was also born in Kent. The landscape painter J. M. W. Turner spent part of his childhood in the town of Margate in East Kent, and regularly returned to visit it throughout his life. The East Kent coast inspired many of his works, including some of his most famous seascapes. Kent has also been the home to artists including Frank Auerbach, Tracey Emin and Stass Paraskos.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Kent was also the location of the largest number of art schools in the country during the nineteenth century, estimated by the art historian David Haste, to approach two hundred. This is believed to be the result of Kent being a front line county during the Napoleonic Wars. At this time, before the invention of photography, draughtsmen were used to draw maps and topographical representations of the fields of battle, and after the wars ended many of these settled permanently in the county in which they had been based. Once the idea of art schools had been established, even in small towns in Kent, the tradition continued, although most of the schools were very small one-man operations, each teaching a small number of daughters of the upper classes how to draw and make watercolour paintings. Nonetheless, some of these small art schools developed into much larger organisations, including Canterbury College of Art, founded by Thomas Sidney Cooper in 1868, which is today the University for the Creative Arts.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Blean near Canterbury was home to Smallfilms, the production company founded by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin and responsible for children's TV favourites Noggin the Nog, Ivor the Engine and Bagpuss.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "The county's largest theatre is the Marlowe Theatre in the centre of Canterbury.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Music festivals that take place in Kent include Chilled in a Field Festival, Electric Gardens, Hop Farm Festival, In the Woods Festival, Lounge On The Farm and the annual Smugglers Festival near Deal. Other venues for live music include Leas Cliff Hall in Folkestone and the Assembly Hall in Tunbridge Wells.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Kentish people have long viewed themselves as Kentish first and British second, and to this day refer to themselves as either 'Men of Kent' or 'Kentish men' depending on whether they live to the East or West of the River Medway. After the 2016 Brexit referendum and subsequent proposals for \"border checks\" on the Kentish border, effectively making Kent a country within a country, this pride in being Kentish began to form into calls from some areas for an independent Kent or an autonomous republic within the UK, especially from the county's prominent newspapers, with the idea being discussed in detail in some areas - with some ideas such as mock passports and \"tongue-in-cheek\" manifestos being created. These calls for independence can be explained by the individualistic and rebellious mentality that has always existed in the county, which can be explained by the counties position in the very South-East of the United Kingdom, having been a prominent and independent kingdom for centuries as well as being the source of many major rebellions that have occurred in the United Kingdom.",
"title": "Culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "With the Roman invasion, a road network was constructed to connect London to the Channel ports of Dover, Lympne and Richborough. The London–Dover road was Watling Street. These roads are now approximately the A2, B2068, A257, and the A28. The A2 runs through Dartford (A207), Gravesend, Rochester, Canterbury, and Dover; the A20 through Eltham, Wrotham, Maidstone, Charing, Ashford. Hythe, Folkestone and Dover; the A21 around Sevenoaks, Tonbridge, Tunbridge Wells and on to Hastings in East Sussex. In the 1960s, two motorways were built; the M2 from Medway to Faversham, and the M20 from Swanley to Folkestone. Part of the M25 runs through Kent, from Westerham to the Dartford Crossing. The M26 motorway, built in 1980, provides a short link between the M25 at Sevenoaks and the M20 near Wrotham. Kent currently has more motorways by distance than any other county in the UK, with sections of the M2, M20, M25 and M26 totalling 173 km (107 mi) within the extents of the ceremonial county.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "In the run-up to Britain leaving the European Union, Government minister Michael Gove confirmed that the Government intended to impose a de facto border between Kent and the rest of England for freight lorries, in order to deal with expected lorry queues of 7,000 or more at Folkestone, Dover and other ports. Heavy goods vehicle operators need to apply for a 24-hour Kent Access Permit (KAP) to take a vehicle of 7.5 tonnes or more into Kent if their intention is to cross to the EU via Dover or the Eurotunnel.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The medieval Cinque Ports, except for the Port of Dover, have all now silted up. The Medway Estuary has been an important port and naval base for 500 years. The River Medway is tidal up to Allington and navigable up to Tonbridge. Kent's two canals are the Royal Military Canal between Hythe and Rye, which still exists, and the Thames and Medway Canal between Strood and Gravesend. Built-in 1824, it was purchased in 1846 by the railways, which partially backfilled it. Container ports are at Ramsgate and Thamesport. Following the closures across the lower Medway, and the Swale to the Isle of Sheppey, during the 20th century, the Woolwich Ferry is the only domestic ferry that runs in the broadest definition of the county.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "The earliest locomotive-driven passenger-carrying railway in Britain was the Canterbury & Whitstable Railway which opened in 1830. This and the London & Greenwich Railway later merged into South Eastern Railway (SER). By the 1850s, SER's networks had expanded to Ashford, Ramsgate, Canterbury, Tunbridge Wells, and the Medway towns. SER's major London termini were London Bridge, Charing Cross, and Cannon Street. Kent also had a second major railway, the London, Chatham & Dover Railway. Originally the East Kent Railway in 1858, it linked the northeast Kent coast with London terminals at Victoria and Blackfriars.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "The two companies merged in 1899, forming the South Eastern & Chatham Railway, further amalgamated with other railways by the Railways Act 1921 to form the Southern Railway. Britain's railways were nationalised in 1948, forming British Railways. The railways were privatised in 1996 and most Kent passenger services were franchised to Connex South Eastern. Following financial difficulties, Connex lost the franchise and was replaced by South Eastern Trains and after Southeastern.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "The Channel Tunnel was completed in 1994 and High Speed 1 in November 2007 with a London terminus at St Pancras. A new station, Ebbsfleet International, opened between Dartford and Gravesend, serving northern Kent. The high speed lines will be utilised to provide a faster train service to coastal towns like Ramsgate and Folkestone. This station is in addition to the existing station at Ashford International, which has suffered a massive cut in service as a result.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "In addition to the \"main line\" railways, there are several light, heritage, and industrial railways in Kent. There are three heritage, standard gauge railways; Spa Valley Railway near Tunbridge Wells on the old Tunbridge Wells West branch, East Kent Railway on the old East Kent coalfield area and the Kent & East Sussex Railway on the Weald around Tenterden. In addition, there is the 15-inch (380 mm) gauge, Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway on the southeast Kent coast along the Dungeness peninsula. Finally, there is the 2 ft 6 in (0.76 m), industrial Sittingbourne & Kemsley Light Railway, previously the Bowaters Paper Railway.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Charter flights are provided by Lydd Airport at Lydd.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "In 2002, it was revealed that the government was considering building a new four-runway airport on the marshland near the village of Cliffe on Hoo Peninsula. This plan was dropped in 2003 following protests by cultural and environmental groups. However further plans for a Thames Estuary Airport on the Kent coast have subsequently emerged, including the Thames Hub Airport, again sited on the Isle of Grain and designed by Lord Foster, and the London Britannia Airport plan, colloquially known as \"Boris Island\" due to its being championed by the former Mayor of London Boris Johnson, which would see a six runway airport built on an artificial island to be towards the Shivering Sands area, north-east of Whitstable. Both of these options were dropped in 2014 in favour of expansion at either Gatwick or Heathrow Airport, the latter finally being the chosen option following Theresa May's installation as Prime Minister in summer 2016.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Manston Airport, located near the village of Manston in the Thanet district, was a former RAF facility that also handled some civilian flights. It closed in 2014.",
"title": "Transport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Kent has four universities: Canterbury Christ Church University with campuses throughout East Kent; University of Kent, with campuses in Canterbury and Medway; University of Greenwich (a London University), with sites at Woolwich, Eltham, London and Medway; the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) also has three of its five campuses in the county.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Although much of Britain adopted a comprehensive education system in the 1970s, Kent County Council (KCC) and Medway Unitary Authority are among around fifteen local authorities still providing wholly selective education through the eleven-plus examination with students allocated a place at a secondary modern school or at a grammar school.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Together, the two Kent authorities have 38 of the 164 grammar schools remaining in Britain.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Kent County Council has the largest education department of any local council in Britain, providing school places for over 289,000 pupils.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "In 2005–06, Kent County Council and Medway introduced a standardised school year, based on six terms, as recommended by the Local Government Association in its 2000 report, \"The Rhythms of Schooling\".",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Kent County Council Local Education Authority maintains 96 secondary schools, of which 33 are selective schools and 63 are secondary modern schools.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Music education is provided by Kent Music (formerly Kent Music School), which has its origins in the 1940s. Kent Music provides services across the county including Kent County Youth Orchestra, Kent Youth Choirs, and an annual summer school at Benenden School.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "In 2010, Kent had the highest number of National Challenge schools in England: schools which are branded 'failing' based on the British Government's floor targets that 30% of pupils achieve at least 5 GCSE grades A* to C. Of the 63 secondary modern schools, 33 missed this target; thus 52% of Kent secondary modern schools (34% out of all 96 maintained secondary schools) are 'failing'.",
"title": "Education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "In association football, Kent's highest ranked football team is Gillingham FC (nicknamed 'The Gills') who play in Football League Two, having been demoted at the end of the 2021–22 season. Maidstone United was a Football League side from 1989 until going bankrupt in 1992. Kent clubs in the higher levels of non-league football include the current incarnation of Maidstone United and Dover Athletic playing in the National League along with Ebbsfleet United, who were promoted in 2017. Dartford currently play in National League South, the sixth tier of the English football pyramid.",
"title": "Sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Kent is represented in cricket by Kent County Cricket Club. The club was a founder member of the County Championship in 1890 and has won the competition, the major domestic first-class cricket competition, seven times. The club is based at the St Lawrence Ground in Canterbury and also plays matches at the Nevill Ground in Royal Tunbridge Wells and the County Cricket Ground, Beckenham. The Kent Women cricket team has won the Women's County Championship seven times since it was established in 1997. Cricket has traditionally been a popular sport in the county and Kent is considered one of the locations in which the game first developed. Teams have represented the county since the early 18th century. The Kent Cricket League is the top level of club competition within Kent and features teams from throughout the county, including areas such as Beckenham and Bexley which were formerly part of the county.",
"title": "Sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Canterbury Hockey Club and Holcombe Hockey Club both play in the top division in both the men's and women's England Hockey Leagues. Sevenoaks Hockey Club's women first XI plays in the second tier of national competition.",
"title": "Sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "In rugby union, Tonbridge Juddians and Canterbury RFC play in the fourth-tier of English rugby in the National League 2 South. Gravesend RFC play in the seventh-tier London 2 South-East. Blackheath FC, a club within the historic boundaries of the county, play in fourth-tier National League 2 South. Both Tonbridge Juddians and Blackheath RFC played in National league 1 (the third-tier of English rugby) up until the end of the 2021–2022 season.",
"title": "Sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "In motorsport, the Brands Hatch circuit near Swanley has played host to a number of national and international racing events and hosted 12 runnings of the British Grand Prix in various years between 1964 and 1986.",
"title": "Sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "There have been multiple American football teams based in Kent since the game was popularised in the UK. Currently, the Canterbury is the home of the East Kent Mavericks, the 2023 BAFA National Leagues Southern Football Conference 2 Champions, as well as teams from both universities.",
"title": "Sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Kent is home to two National League netball clubs, both based in northwest Kent: Telstars (Premier Division 2) and KCNC (Premier Division 3).",
"title": "Sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "In basketball, the Kent Panthers participate in Division 3 of the National Basketball League.",
"title": "Sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "The 2021–2022 season has seen three Kentish clubs demoted from the third-tier of their respective sports to the fourth-tier, with rugby clubs Tonbridge Juddians and Blackheath RFC being demoted in rugby and Gillingham FC being demoted in football.",
"title": "Sport"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Much of Kent is served by the BBC's South East region, which is based in Tunbridge Wells and provides local news for the county and East Sussex. Its commercial rival is ITV Meridian Ltd, which has a newsroom at The Maidstone Studios despite the main studio being based in Hampshire. Main transmitters providing these services are at West Hougham, near Dover and Blue Bell Hill, between Chatham and Maidstone. A powerful relay transmitter at Tunbridge Wells serves the town and surrounding area. Those parts of Kent closest to London such as Swanley, Westerham, Dartford, Gravesend, and Sevenoaks lie within the ITV London and BBC London areas, taking their television signals from the Crystal Palace transmitter.",
"title": "News and media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Kent has two county-wide stations – BBC Radio Kent, based in Tunbridge Wells; and the commercial station KMFM, owned by the KM Group. KMFM previously consisted of seven local stations which covered different areas of the county (and are still technically seven different licences) but have shared all programming since 2012",
"title": "News and media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "The county's first commercial station was originally known as Invicta FM and began broadcasting in 1984. After various buyouts, the station was rebranded into Heart Kent in 2009 as part of the Heart Network. The station was closed and merged with several other Heart stations in the south of England in 2019 to form Heart South, with the Kent studios in Whitstable closing and production moving to Fareham in Hampshire.",
"title": "News and media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "There are several community radio stations in Kent including:",
"title": "News and media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "The KM Group, KOS Media and Kent Regional News and Media all provide local newspapers for most of the large towns and cities. County-wide papers include the Kent Messenger, Kent on Saturday, Kent on Sunday, and the Kent and Sussex Courier.",
"title": "News and media"
}
] |
Kent is a county in the South East England region, the closest county to continental Europe. It borders Essex across the entire estuary of the River Thames to the north; the French department of Pas-de-Calais across the Strait of Dover to the south-east; East Sussex to the south-west; Surrey to the west and Greater London to the north-west. The county town is Maidstone. It is the fifth most populous county in England, the most populous non-metropolitan county and the most populous of the Home Counties, an area influenced by the capital such as commutes and transport connections to the capital. Twenty-eight per cent of the county forms part of two Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty: the North Downs and The High Weald. Kent was one of the first British territories to be settled by Germanic tribes, most notably the Jutes, following the withdrawal of the Romans. Canterbury Cathedral in Kent, the oldest cathedral in England, has been the seat of the Archbishops of Canterbury since the conversion of England to Christianity that began in the 6th century with Saint Augustine. Rochester Cathedral in Medway is England's second-oldest cathedral. Located between London and the Strait of Dover, which separates England from mainland Europe, Kent has been the setting for both conflict and diplomacy, including the Battle of Britain in World War II and the Leeds Castle peace talks of 1978 and 2004. England relied on the county's ports to provide warships through much of its history; the Cinque Ports in the 10th–14th centuries and Chatham Dockyard in the 16th–20th centuries were of particular importance. France can be seen clearly in fine weather from Folkestone and the White Cliffs of Dover. Hills in the form of the North Downs and the Greensand Ridge span the length of the county and in the Vale of Holmesdale in between and to the south are most of the county's 26 castles. The county has agriculture, haulage, logistics and tourism industries. As the land between the capital and the wider continent, it is a high-income county. Agriculture of the county is a notable sector: "The Garden of England" is a nickname for the county, which has multiple orchards and allotments. In north-west Kent, industries include aggregate building material extraction, printing and scientific research. Coal mining has also played its part in the county's industrial heritage.
|
2001-10-26T07:07:51Z
|
2023-12-22T20:29:08Z
|
[
"Template:Ref label",
"Template:Citation needed",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Cite encyclopedia",
"Template:Adjacent communities",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Cite report",
"Template:Curlie",
"Template:Infobox English county",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Fix",
"Template:Portal",
"Template:Clear",
"Template:About",
"Template:See also",
"Template:Unreferenced section",
"Template:Citation",
"Template:Kent",
"Template:England counties",
"Template:Use British English",
"Template:Convert",
"Template:Weather box",
"Template:Note label",
"Template:Prone to spam",
"Template:Commons category",
"Template:Wikivoyage",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Authority control"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent
|
16,767 |
King James Version
|
The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version (AV) is an Early Modern English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, by sponsorship of King James VI and I. The 80 books of the King James Version include 39 books of the Old Testament, 14 books of Apocrypha, and the 27 books of the New Testament.
Noted for its "majesty of style", the King James Version has been described as one of the most important books in English culture and a driving force in the shaping of the English-speaking world. The King James Version remains the preferred translation of many Christian fundamentalists and religious movements, and it is also considered to be one of the important literary accomplishments of early modern England.
The KJV was first printed by John Norton and Robert Barker, who both held the post of the King's Printer, and was the third translation into the English language approved by the English Church authorities: The first had been the Great Bible, commissioned in the reign of King Henry VIII (1535), and the second had been the Bishops' Bible, commissioned in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1568). In Geneva, Switzerland, the first generation of Protestant Reformers had produced the Geneva Bible which was published in 1560 by Sir Rowland Hill having referred to the original Hebrew and Greek scriptures, which was influential in the writing of the Authorized King James Version. The English Church initially used the officially sanctioned "Bishops' Bible", which, however, was hardly used by the population. More popular was the named "Geneva Bible", which was created on the basis of the Tyndale translation in Geneva under the direct successor of the reformer John Calvin for his English followers. However, their footnotes represented a Calvinistic Puritanism that was too radical for King James. In particular, the decidedly anti-royalist tone of the Geneva Bible was unbearable for King James I, for he was a strict advocate of divine right. The translators of the Geneva Bible had translated the word king as tyrant about four hundred times—the word tyrant does not appear once in the KJB. Because of this, it has been assumed that King James purposely had the translators of the KJV mistranslate the word "tyrant" as either "troubling", "oppressor," or some other word to avoid people being critical of his monarchy, though there is no evidence to back up that claim. For his project, King James convened the Hampton Court Conference in January 1604, where a new English version was conceived in response to the problems of the earlier translations perceived by the Puritans, a faction of the Church of England. James gave the translators instructions intended to ensure that the new version would conform to the ecclesiology, and reflect the episcopal structure, of the Church of England and its belief in an ordained clergy. The translation was done by six panels of translators (47 men in all, most of whom were leading biblical scholars in England) who had the work divided up between them: the Old Testament was entrusted to three panels, the New Testament to two, and the Apocrypha to one. In common with most other translations of the period, the New Testament was translated from Greek, the Old Testament from Hebrew and Aramaic, and the Apocrypha from Greek and Latin. In the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the text of the Authorized Version replaced the text of the Great Bible for Epistle and Gospel readings (but not for the Psalter, which substantially retained Coverdale's Great Bible version), and as such was authorized by Act of Parliament.
By the first half of the 18th century, the Authorized Version had become effectively unchallenged as the only English translation used in Anglican and other English Protestant churches, except for the Psalms and some short passages in the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England. Over the course of the 18th century, the Authorized Version supplanted the Latin Vulgate as the standard version of scripture for English-speaking scholars. With the development of stereotype printing at the beginning of the 19th century, this version of the Bible had become the most widely printed book in history, almost all such printings presenting the standard text of 1769 extensively re-edited by Benjamin Blayney at Oxford, and nearly always omitting the books of the Apocrypha. Today the unqualified title "King James Version" usually indicates this Oxford standard text.
The title of the first edition of the translation, in Early Modern English, was "THE HOLY BIBLE, Conteyning the Old Teſtament, AND THE NEW: Newly Tranſlated out of the Originall tongues: & with the former Tranſlations diligently compared and reuiſed, by his Maiesties ſpeciall Cõmandement". The title page carries the words "Appointed to be read in Churches", and F. F. Bruce suggests it was "probably authorised by order in council", but no record of the authorisation survives "because the Privy Council registers from 1600 to 1613 were destroyed by fire in January 1618/19".
For many years it was common not to give the translation any specific name. In his Leviathan of 1651, Thomas Hobbes referred to it as "the English Translation made in the beginning of the Reign of King James". A 1761 "Brief Account of the various Translations of the Bible into English" refers to the 1611 version merely as "a new, compleat, and more accurate Translation", despite referring to the Great Bible by its name, and despite using the name "Rhemish Testament" for the Douay–Rheims Bible version. Similarly, a "History of England", whose fifth edition was published in 1775, writes merely that "[a] new translation of the Bible, viz., that now in Use, was begun in 1607, and published in 1611".
King James's Bible is used as the name for the 1611 translation (on a par with the Genevan Bible or the Rhemish Testament) in Charles Butler's Horae Biblicae (first published 1797). Other works from the early 19th century confirm the widespread use of this name on both sides of the Atlantic: it is found both in a "historical sketch of the English translations of the Bible" published in Massachusetts in 1815 and in an English publication from 1818, which explicitly states that the 1611 version is "generally known by the name of King James's Bible". This name was also found as King James' Bible (without the final "s"): for example in a book review from 1811. The phrase "King James's Bible" is used as far back as 1715, although in this case it is not clear whether this is a name or merely a description.
The use of Authorized Version, capitalized and used as a name, is found as early as 1814. For some time before this, descriptive phrases such as "our present, and only publicly authorised version" (1783), "our Authorized version" (1731, 1792) and "the authorized version" (1801, uncapitalized) are found. A more common appellation in the 17th and 18th centuries was "our English translation" or "our English version", as can be seen by searching one or other of the major online archives of printed books. In Britain, the 1611 translation is generally known as the "Authorized Version" today. The term is somewhat of a misnomer because the text itself was never formally "authorized", nor were English parish churches ever ordered to procure copies of it.
King James' Version, evidently a descriptive phrase, is found being used as early as 1814. "The King James Version" is found, unequivocally used as a name, in a letter from 1855. The next year King James Bible, with no possessive, appears as a name in a Scottish source. In the United States, the "1611 translation" (actually editions following the standard text of 1769, see below) is generally known as the King James Version today.
The followers of John Wycliffe undertook the first complete English translations of the Christian scriptures in the 14th century. These translations were banned in 1409 due to their association with the Lollards. The Wycliffe Bible pre-dated the printing press but it was circulated very widely in manuscript form, often inscribed with a date which was earlier than 1409 in order to avoid the legal ban. Because the text of the various versions of the Wycliffe Bible was translated from the Latin Vulgate, and because it also contained no heterodox readings, the ecclesiastical authorities had no practical way to distinguish the banned version. Consequently, many Catholic commentators of the 15th and 16th centuries (such as Thomas More) took these manuscripts of English Bibles and claimed that they represented an anonymous earlier orthodox translation.
In 1525, William Tyndale, an English contemporary of Martin Luther, undertook a translation of the New Testament. Tyndale's translation was the first printed Bible in English. Over the next ten years, Tyndale revised his New Testament in the light of rapidly advancing biblical scholarship, and embarked on a translation of the Old Testament. Despite some controversial translation choices, and in spite of Tyndale's execution on charges of heresy for having made the translated Bible, the merits of Tyndale's work and prose style made his translation the ultimate basis for all subsequent renditions into Early Modern English.
With these translations lightly edited and adapted by Myles Coverdale, in 1539, Tyndale's New Testament and his incomplete work on the Old Testament became the basis for the Great Bible. This was the first "authorised version" issued by the Church of England during the reign of King Henry VIII. When Mary I succeeded to the throne in 1553, she returned the Church of England to the communion of the Catholic faith and many English religious reformers fled the country, some establishing an English-speaking colony at Geneva. Under the leadership of John Calvin, Geneva became the chief international centre of Reformed Protestantism and Latin biblical scholarship.
These English expatriates undertook a translation that became known as the Geneva Bible. This translation, dated to 1560, was a revision of Tyndale's Bible and the Great Bible on the basis of the original languages. Soon after Elizabeth I took the throne in 1558, the flaws of both the Great Bible and the Geneva Bible (namely, that the Geneva Bible did not "conform to the ecclesiology and reflect the episcopal structure of the Church of England and its beliefs about an ordained clergy") became apparent. In 1568, the Church of England responded with the Bishops' Bible, a revision of the Great Bible in the light of the Geneva version.
While officially approved, this new version failed to displace the Geneva translation as the most popular English Bible of the age—in part because the full Bible was only printed in lectern editions of prodigious size and at a cost of several pounds. Accordingly, Elizabethan lay people overwhelmingly read the Bible in the Geneva Version—small editions were available at a relatively low cost. At the same time, there was a substantial clandestine importation of the rival Douay–Rheims New Testament of 1582, undertaken by exiled Catholics. This translation, though still derived from Tyndale, claimed to represent the text of the Latin Vulgate.
In May 1601, King James VI of Scotland attended the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland at Saint Columba's Church in Burntisland, Fife, at which proposals were put forward for a new translation of the Bible into English. Two years later, he ascended to the throne of England as James I.
The newly crowned King James convened the Hampton Court Conference in 1604. That gathering proposed a new English version in response to the perceived problems of earlier translations as detected by the Puritan faction of the Church of England. Here are three examples of problems the Puritans perceived with the Bishops and Great Bibles:
First, Galatians iv. 25 (from the Bishops' Bible). The Greek word susoichei is not well translated as now it is, bordereth neither expressing the force of the word, nor the apostle's sense, nor the situation of the place. Secondly, psalm cv. 28 (from the Great Bible), 'They were not obedient;' the original being, 'They were not disobedient.' Thirdly, psalm cvi. 30 (also from the Great Bible), 'Then stood up Phinees and prayed,' the Hebrew hath, 'executed judgment.'
Instructions were given to the translators that were intended to use Formal Equivalence and limit the Puritan influence on this new translation. The Bishop of London added a qualification that the translators would add no marginal notes (which had been an issue in the Geneva Bible). King James cited two passages in the Geneva translation where he found the marginal notes offensive to the principles of divinely ordained royal supremacy: Exodus 1:19, where the Geneva Bible notes had commended the example of civil disobedience to the Egyptian Pharaoh showed by the Hebrew midwives, and also II Chronicles 15:16, where the Geneva Bible had criticized King Asa for not having executed his idolatrous 'mother', Queen Maachah (Maachah had actually been Asa's grandmother, but James considered the Geneva Bible reference as sanctioning the execution of his own mother Mary, Queen of Scots).
Further, the King gave the translators instructions designed to guarantee that the new version would conform to the ecclesiology of the Church of England. Certain Greek and Hebrew words were to be translated in a manner that reflected the traditional usage of the church. For example, old ecclesiastical words such as the word "church" were to be retained and not to be translated as "congregation". The new translation would reflect the episcopal structure of the Church of England and traditional beliefs about ordained clergy.
The source material for the translation of the New Testament was the Textus Receptus version of the Greek compiled by Erasmus; for the Old Testament, the Masoretic text of the Hebrew was used; for some of the apocrypha, the Septuagint Greek text was used, or for apocrypha for which the Greek was unavailable, the Vulgate Latin.
James' instructions included several requirements that kept the new translation familiar to its listeners and readers. The text of the Bishops' Bible would serve as the primary guide for the translators, and the familiar proper names of the biblical characters would all be retained. If the Bishops' Bible was deemed problematic in any situation, the translators were permitted to consult other translations from a pre-approved list: the Tyndale Bible, the Coverdale Bible, Matthew's Bible, the Great Bible, and the Geneva Bible. In addition, later scholars have detected an influence on the Authorized Version from the translations of Taverner's Bible and the New Testament of the Douay–Rheims Bible.
It is for this reason that the flyleaf of most printings of the Authorized Version observes that the text had been "translated out of the original tongues, and with the former translations diligently compared and revised, by His Majesty's special commandment." As the work proceeded, more detailed rules were adopted as to how variant and uncertain readings in the Hebrew and Greek source texts should be indicated, including the requirement that words supplied in English to 'complete the meaning' of the originals should be printed in a different type face.
The task of translation was undertaken by 47 scholars, although 54 were originally approved. All were members of the Church of England and all except Sir Henry Savile were clergy. The scholars worked in six committees, two based in each of the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, and Westminster. The committees included scholars with Puritan sympathies, as well as high churchmen. Forty unbound copies of the 1602 edition of the Bishops' Bible were specially printed so that the agreed changes of each committee could be recorded in the margins.
The committees worked on certain parts separately and the drafts produced by each committee were then compared and revised for harmony with each other. The scholars were not paid directly for their translation work. Instead, a circular letter was sent to bishops encouraging them to consider the translators for appointment to well-paid livings as these fell vacant. Several were supported by the various colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, while others were promoted to bishoprics, deaneries and prebends through royal patronage.
The committees started work towards the end of 1604. King James VI and I, on 22 July 1604, sent a letter to Archbishop Bancroft asking him to contact all English churchmen requesting that they make donations to his project.
Right trusty and well beloved, we greet you well. Whereas we have appointed certain learned men, to the number of 4 and 50, for the translating of the Bible, and in this number, divers of them have either no ecclesiastical preferment at all, or else so very small, as the same is far unmeet for men of their deserts and yet we in ourself in any convenient time cannot well remedy it, therefor we do hereby require you, that presently you write in our name as well to the Archbishop of York, as to the rest of the bishops of the province of Cant.[erbury] signifying unto them, that we do well and straitly charge everyone of them ... that (all excuses set apart) when a prebend or parsonage ... shall next upon any occasion happen to be void ... we may commend for the same some such of the learned men, as we shall think fit to be preferred unto it ... Given unto our signet at our palace of West.[minister] on 2 and 20 July, in the 2nd year of our reign of England, France, and of Ireland, and of Scotland xxxvii.
They had all completed their sections by 1608, the Apocrypha committee finishing first. From January 1609, a General Committee of Review met at Stationers' Hall, London to review the completed marked texts from each of the six committees. The General Committee included John Bois, Andrew Downes and John Harmar, and others known only by their initials, including "AL" (who may be Arthur Lake), and were paid for their attendance by the Stationers' Company. John Bois prepared a note of their deliberations (in Latin) – which has partly survived in two later transcripts. Also surviving of the translators' working papers are a bound-together set of marked-up corrections to one of the forty Bishops' Bibles—covering the Old Testament and Gospels, and also a manuscript translation of the text of the Epistles, excepting those verses where no change was being recommended to the readings in the Bishops' Bible. Archbishop Bancroft insisted on having a final say making fourteen further changes, of which one was the term "bishopricke" at Acts 1:20.
The original printing of the Authorized Version was published by Robert Barker, the King's Printer, in 1611 as a complete folio Bible. It was sold looseleaf for ten shillings, or bound for twelve. Robert Barker's father, Christopher, had, in 1589, been granted by Elizabeth I the title of royal Printer, with the perpetual Royal Privilege to print Bibles in England. Robert Barker invested very large sums in printing the new edition, and consequently ran into serious debt, such that he was compelled to sub-lease the privilege to two rival London printers, Bonham Norton and John Bill. It appears that it was initially intended that each printer would print a portion of the text, share printed sheets with the others, and split the proceeds. Bitter financial disputes broke out, as Barker accused Norton and Bill of concealing their profits, while Norton and Bill accused Barker of selling sheets properly due to them as partial Bibles for ready money. There followed decades of continual litigation, and consequent imprisonment for debt for members of the Barker and Norton printing dynasties, while each issued rival editions of the whole Bible. In 1629 the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge successfully managed to assert separate and prior royal licences for Bible printing, for their own university presses—and Cambridge University took the opportunity to print revised editions of the Authorized Version in 1629, and 1638. The editors of these editions included John Bois and John Ward from the original translators. This did not, however, impede the commercial rivalries of the London printers, especially as the Barker family refused to allow any other printers access to the authoritative manuscript of the Authorized Version.
Two editions of the whole Bible are recognized as having been produced in 1611, which may be distinguished by their rendering of Ruth 3:15; the first edition reading "he went into the city", where the second reads "she went into the city"; these are known colloquially as the "He" and "She" Bibles.
The original printing was made before English spelling was standardized, and when printers, as a matter of course, expanded and contracted the spelling of the same words in different places, so as to achieve an even column of text. They set v for initial u and v, and u for u and v everywhere else. They used the long s (ſ) for non-final s. The letter or glyph j occurs only after i, as in the final letter in a Roman numeral, such as XIIJ. Punctuation was relatively heavy (frequent) and differed from modern practice. When space needed to be saved, the printers sometimes used ye for the (replacing the Middle English thorn, Þ, with the continental y), set ã for an or am (in the style of scribe's shorthand), and set & for and. On the contrary, on a few occasions, they appear to have inserted these words when they thought a line needed to be padded. Later printings regularized these spellings; the punctuation has also been standardized, but still varies from current usage.
As can be seen in the example page on the left, the first printing used a blackletter typeface instead of a roman typeface, which itself made a political and a religious statement. Like the Great Bible and the Bishops' Bible, the Authorized Version was "appointed to be read in churches". It was a large folio volume meant for public use, not private devotion; the weight of the type—blackletter type was heavy physically as well as visually—mirrored the weight of establishment authority behind it. However, smaller editions and roman-type editions followed rapidly, e.g. quarto roman-type editions of the Bible in 1612. This contrasted with the Geneva Bible, which was the first English Bible printed in a roman typeface (although black-letter editions, particularly in folio format, were issued later).
In contrast to the Geneva Bible and the Bishops' Bible, which had both been extensively illustrated, there were no illustrations in the 1611 edition of the Authorized Version, the main form of decoration being the historiated initial letters provided for books and chapters – together with the decorative title pages to the Bible itself, and to the New Testament.
In the Great Bible, readings derived from the Vulgate but not found in published Hebrew and Greek texts had been distinguished by being printed in smaller roman type. In the Geneva Bible, a distinct typeface had instead been applied to distinguish text supplied by translators, or thought needful for English grammar but not present in the Greek or Hebrew; and the original printing of the Authorized Version used roman type for this purpose, albeit sparsely and inconsistently. This results in perhaps the most significant difference between the original printed text of the King James Bible and the current text. When, from the later 17th century onwards, the Authorized Version began to be printed in roman type, the typeface for supplied words was changed to italics, this application being regularized and greatly expanded. This was intended to de-emphasize the words.
The original printing contained two prefatory texts; the first was a formal Epistle Dedicatory to "the most high and mighty Prince" King James. Many British printings reproduce this, while most non-British printings do not.
The second preface was called Translators to the Reader, a long and learned essay that defends the undertaking of the new version. It observes the translators' stated goal, that they "never thought from the beginning that [they] should need to make a new translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a good one, ... but to make a good one better, or out of many good ones, one principal good one, not justly to be excepted against; that hath been our endeavour, that our mark." They also give their opinion of previous English Bible translations, stating, "We do not deny, nay, we affirm and avow, that the very meanest translation of the Bible in English, set forth by men of our profession, (for we have seen none of theirs [Catholics] of the whole Bible as yet) containeth the word of God, nay, is the word of God." As with the first preface, some British printings reproduce this, while most non-British printings do not. Almost every printing that includes the second preface also includes the first. The first printing contained a number of other apparatus, including a table for the reading of the Psalms at matins and evensong, and a calendar, an almanac, and a table of holy days and observances. Much of this material became obsolete with the adoption of the Gregorian calendar by Britain and its colonies in 1752, and thus modern editions invariably omit it.
So as to make it easier to know a particular passage, each chapter was headed by a brief précis of its contents with verse numbers. Later editors freely substituted their own chapter summaries, or omitted such material entirely. Pilcrow marks are used to indicate the beginnings of paragraphs except after the book of Acts.
The Authorized Version was meant to replace the Bishops' Bible as the official version for readings in the Church of England. No record of its authorization exists; it was probably effected by an order of the Privy Council, but the records for the years 1600 to 1613 were destroyed by fire in January 1618/19, and it is commonly known as the Authorized Version in the United Kingdom. The King's Printer issued no further editions of the Bishops' Bible, so necessarily the Authorized Version replaced it as the standard lectern Bible in parish church use in England.
In the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the text of the Authorized Version finally supplanted that of the Great Bible in the Epistle and Gospel readings—though the Prayer Book Psalter nevertheless continues in the Great Bible version.
The case was different in Scotland, where the Geneva Bible had long been the standard church Bible. It was not until 1633 that a Scottish edition of the Authorized Version was printed—in conjunction with the Scots coronation in that year of Charles I. The inclusion of illustrations in the edition raised accusations of Popery from opponents of the religious policies of Charles and William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury. However, official policy favoured the Authorized Version, and this favour returned during the Commonwealth—as London printers succeeded in re-asserting their monopoly on Bible printing with support from Oliver Cromwell—and the "New Translation" was the only edition on the market. F. F. Bruce reports that the last recorded instance of a Scots parish continuing to use the "Old Translation" (i.e. Geneva) as being in 1674.
The Authorized Version's acceptance by the general public took longer. The Geneva Bible continued to be popular, and large numbers were imported from Amsterdam, where printing continued up to 1644 in editions carrying a false London imprint. However, few if any genuine Geneva editions appear to have been printed in London after 1616, and in 1637 Archbishop Laud prohibited their printing or importation. In the period of the English Civil War, soldiers of the New Model Army were issued a book of Geneva selections called "The Soldiers' Bible". In the first half of the 17th century the Authorized Version is most commonly referred to as "The Bible without notes", thereby distinguishing it from the Geneva "Bible with notes".
There were several printings of the Authorized Version in Amsterdam—one as late as 1715 which combined the Authorized Version translation text with the Geneva marginal notes; one such edition was printed in London in 1649. During the Commonwealth a commission was established by Parliament to recommend a revision of the Authorized Version with acceptably Protestant explanatory notes, but the project was abandoned when it became clear that these would nearly double the bulk of the Bible text. After the English Restoration, the Geneva Bible was held to be politically suspect and a reminder of the repudiated Puritan era. Furthermore, disputes over the lucrative rights to print the Authorized Version dragged on through the 17th century, so none of the printers involved saw any commercial advantage in marketing a rival translation. The Authorized Version became the only then current version circulating among English-speaking people.
A small minority of critical scholars were slow to accept the latest translation. Hugh Broughton, who was the most highly regarded English Hebraist of his time but had been excluded from the panel of translators because of his utterly uncongenial temperament, issued in 1611 a total condemnation of the new version. He especially criticized the translators' rejection of word-for-word equivalence and stated that "he would rather be torn in pieces by wild horses than that this abominable translation (KJV) should ever be foisted upon the English people". Walton's London Polyglot of 1657 disregards the Authorized Version (and indeed the English language) entirely. Walton's reference text throughout is the Vulgate.
The Vulgate Latin is also found as the standard text of scripture in Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan of 1651. Hobbes gives Vulgate chapter and verse numbers (e.g., Job 41:24, not Job 41:33) for his head text. In Chapter 35: 'The Signification in Scripture of Kingdom of God', Hobbes discusses Exodus 19:5, first in his own translation of the 'Vulgar Latin', and then subsequently as found in the versions he terms "... the English translation made in the beginning of the reign of King James", and "The Geneva French" (i.e. Olivétan). Hobbes advances detailed critical arguments why the Vulgate rendering is to be preferred. For most of the 17th century the assumption remained that, while it had been of vital importance to provide the scriptures in the vernacular for ordinary people, nevertheless for those with sufficient education to do so, Biblical study was best undertaken within the international common medium of Latin. It was only in 1700 that modern bilingual Bibles appeared in which the Authorized Version was compared with counterpart Dutch and French Protestant vernacular Bibles.
In consequence of the continual disputes over printing privileges, successive printings of the Authorized Version were notably less careful than the 1611 edition had been—compositors freely varying spelling, capitalization and punctuation—and also, over the years, introducing about 1,500 misprints (some of which, like the omission of "not" from the commandment "Thou shalt not commit adultery" in the "Wicked Bible", became notorious). The two Cambridge editions of 1629 and 1638 attempted to restore the proper text—while introducing over 200 revisions of the original translators' work, chiefly by incorporating into the main text a more literal reading originally presented as a marginal note. A more thoroughly corrected edition was proposed following the Restoration, in conjunction with the revised 1662 Book of Common Prayer, but Parliament then decided against it.
By the first half of the 18th century, the Authorized Version was effectively unchallenged as the sole English translation in then current use in Protestant churches, and was so dominant that the Catholic Church in England issued in 1750 a revision of the 1610 Douay–Rheims Bible by Richard Challoner that was much closer to the Authorized Version than to the original. However, general standards of spelling, punctuation, typesetting, capitalization and grammar had changed radically in the 100 years since the first edition of the Authorized Version, and all printers in the market were introducing continual piecemeal changes to their Bible texts to bring them into line with then current practice—and with public expectations of standardized spelling and grammatical construction.
Over the course of the 18th century, the Authorized Version supplanted the Hebrew, Greek and the Latin Vulgate as the standard version of scripture for English speaking scholars and divines, and indeed came to be regarded by some as an inspired text in itself—so much so that any challenge to its readings or textual base came to be regarded by many as an assault on Holy Scripture.
In the 18th century there was a serious shortage of Bibles in the American colonies. To meet the demand various printers, beginning with Samuel Kneeland in 1752, printed the King James Bible without authorization from the Crown. To avert prosecution and detection of an unauthorized printing they would include the royal insignia on the title page, using the same materials in its printing as the authorized version was produced from, which were imported from England.
By the mid-18th century the wide variation in the various modernized printed texts of the Authorized Version, combined with the notorious accumulation of misprints, had reached the proportion of a scandal, and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge both sought to produce an updated standard text. First of the two was the Cambridge edition of 1760, the culmination of 20 years' work by Francis Sawyer Parris, who died in May of that year. This 1760 edition was reprinted without change in 1762 and in John Baskerville's fine folio edition of 1763.
This was effectively superseded by the 1769 Oxford edition, edited by Benjamin Blayney, though with comparatively few changes from Parris's edition; but which became the Oxford standard text, and is reproduced almost unchanged in most current printings. Parris and Blayney sought consistently to remove those elements of the 1611 and subsequent editions that they believed were due to the vagaries of printers, while incorporating most of the revised readings of the Cambridge editions of 1629 and 1638, and each also introducing a few improved readings of their own.
They undertook the mammoth task of standardizing the wide variation in punctuation and spelling of the original, making many thousands of minor changes to the text. In addition, Blayney and Parris thoroughly revised and greatly extended the italicization of "supplied" words not found in the original languages by cross-checking against the presumed source texts. Blayney seems to have worked from the 1550 Stephanus edition of the Textus Receptus, rather than the later editions of Theodore Beza that the translators of the 1611 New Testament had favoured; accordingly the current Oxford standard text alters around a dozen italicizations where Beza and Stephanus differ. Like the 1611 edition, the 1769 Oxford edition included the Apocrypha, although Blayney tended to remove cross-references to the Books of the Apocrypha from the margins of their Old and New Testaments wherever these had been provided by the original translators. It also includes both prefaces from the 1611 edition. Altogether, the standardization of spelling and punctuation caused Blayney's 1769 text to differ from the 1611 text in around 24,000 places.
The 1611 and 1769 texts of the first three verses from I Corinthians 13 are given below.
[1611] 1. Though I speake with the tongues of men & of Angels, and haue not charity, I am become as sounding brasse or a tinkling cymbal. 2 And though I haue the gift of prophesie, and vnderstand all mysteries and all knowledge: and though I haue all faith, so that I could remooue mountaines, and haue no charitie, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestowe all my goods to feede the poore, and though I giue my body to bee burned, and haue not charitie, it profiteth me nothing.
[1769] 1. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.
There are a number of superficial edits in these three verses: 11 changes of spelling, 16 changes of typesetting (including the changed conventions for the use of u and v), three changes of punctuation, and one variant text—where "not charity" is substituted for "no charity" in verse two, in the belief that the original reading was a misprint.
A particular verse for which Blayney's 1769 text differs from Parris's 1760 version is Matthew 5:13, where Parris (1760) has
Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out, and to be troden under foot of men.
Blayney (1769) changes 'lost his savour' to 'lost its savour', and troden to trodden.
For a period, Cambridge continued to issue Bibles using the Parris text, but the market demand for absolute standardization was now such that they eventually adapted Blayney's work but omitted some of the idiosyncratic Oxford spellings. By the mid-19th century, almost all printings of the Authorized Version were derived from the 1769 Oxford text—increasingly without Blayney's variant notes and cross references, and commonly excluding the Apocrypha. One exception to this was a scrupulous original-spelling, page-for-page, and line-for-line reprint of the 1611 edition (including all chapter headings, marginalia, and original italicization, but with Roman type substituted for the black letter of the original), published by Oxford in 1833.
Another important exception was the 1873 Cambridge Paragraph Bible, thoroughly revised, modernized and re-edited by F. H. A. Scrivener, who for the first time consistently identified the source texts underlying the 1611 translation and its marginal notes. Scrivener, like Blayney, opted to revise the translation where he considered the judgement of the 1611 translators had been faulty. In 2005, Cambridge University Press released its New Cambridge Paragraph Bible with Apocrypha, edited by David Norton, which followed in the spirit of Scrivener's work, attempting to bring spelling to present-day standards. Norton also innovated with the introduction of quotation marks, while returning to a hypothetical 1611 text, so far as possible, to the wording used by its translators, especially in the light of the re-emphasis on some of their draft documents. This text has been issued in paperback by Penguin Books.
From the early 19th century the Authorized Version has remained almost completely unchanged—and since, due to advances in printing technology, it could now be produced in very large editions for mass sale, it established complete dominance in public and ecclesiastical use in the English-speaking Protestant world. Academic debate through that century, however, increasingly reflected concerns about the Authorized Version shared by some scholars: (a) that subsequent study in oriental languages suggested a need to revise the translation of the Hebrew Bible—both in terms of specific vocabulary, and also in distinguishing descriptive terms from proper names; (b) that the Authorized Version was unsatisfactory in translating the same Greek words and phrases into different English, especially where parallel passages are found in the synoptic gospels; and (c) in the light of subsequent ancient manuscript discoveries, the New Testament translation base of the Greek Textus Receptus could no longer be considered to be the best representation of the original text.
Responding to these concerns, the Convocation of Canterbury resolved in 1870 to undertake a revision of the text of the Authorized Version, intending to retain the original text "except where in the judgement of competent scholars such a change is necessary". The resulting revision was issued as the Revised Version in 1881 (New Testament), 1885 (Old Testament) and 1894 (Apocrypha); but, although it sold widely, the revision did not find popular favour, and it was only reluctantly in 1899 that Convocation approved it for reading in churches.
By the early 20th century, editing had been completed in Cambridge's text, with at least 6 new changes since 1769, and the reversing of at least 30 of the standard Oxford readings. The distinct Cambridge text was printed in the millions, and after the Second World War "the unchanging steadiness of the KJB was a huge asset."
F. H. A. Scrivener and D. Norton have both written in detail on editorial variations which have occurred through the history of the publishing of the Authorized Version from 1611 to 1769. In the 19th century, there were effectively three main guardians of the text. Norton identified five variations among the Oxford, Cambridge, and London (Eyre and Spottiswoode) texts of 1857, such as the spelling of "farther" or "further" at Matthew 26:39.
In the 20th century, variation between the editions was reduced to comparing the Cambridge to the Oxford. Distinctly identified Cambridge readings included "or Sheba", "sin", "clifts", "vapour", "flieth", "further" and a number of other references. In effect the Cambridge was considered the current text in comparison to the Oxford. These are instances where both Oxford and Cambridge have now diverged from Blayney's 1769 Edition. The distinctions between the Oxford and Cambridge editions have been a major point in the Bible version debate, and a potential theological issue, particularly in regard to the identification of the Pure Cambridge Edition.
Cambridge University Press introduced a change at 1 John 5:8 in 1985, reversing its longstanding tradition of printing the word "spirit" in lower case by using a capital letter "S". A Rev. Hardin of Bedford, Pennsylvania, wrote a letter to Cambridge inquiring about this verse, and received a reply on 3 June 1985 from the Bible Director, Jerry L. Hooper, claiming that it was a "matter of some embarrassment regarding the lower case 's' in Spirit".
In obedience to their instructions, the translators provided no marginal interpretation of the text, but in some 8,500 places a marginal note offers an alternative English wording. The majority of these notes offer a more literal rendering of the original, introduced as "Heb", "Chal" (Chaldee, referring to Aramaic), "Gr" or "Lat". Others indicate a variant reading of the source text (introduced by "or"). Some of the annotated variants derive from alternative editions in the original languages, or from variant forms quoted in the fathers. More commonly, though, they indicate a difference between the literal original language reading and that in the translators' preferred recent Latin versions: Tremellius for the Old Testament, Junius for the Apocrypha, and Beza for the New Testament. At thirteen places in the New Testament a marginal note records a variant reading found in some Greek manuscript copies; in almost all cases reproducing a counterpart textual note at the same place in Beza's editions.
A few more extensive notes clarify Biblical names and units of measurement or currency. Modern reprintings rarely reproduce these annotated variants—although they are to be found in the New Cambridge Paragraph Bible. In addition, there were originally some 9,000 scriptural cross-references, in which one text was related to another. Such cross-references had long been common in Latin Bibles, and most of those in the Authorized Version were copied unaltered from this Latin tradition. Consequently the early editions of the KJV retain many Vulgate verse references—e.g. in the numbering of the Psalms. At the head of each chapter, the translators provided a short précis of its contents, with verse numbers; these are rarely included in complete form in modern editions.
Also in obedience to their instructions, the translators indicated 'supplied' words in a different typeface; but there was no attempt to regularize the instances where this practice had been applied across the different companies; and especially in the New Testament, it was used much less frequently in the 1611 edition than would later be the case. In one verse, 1 John 2:23, an entire clause was printed in roman type (as it had also been in the Great Bible and Bishop's Bible); indicating a reading then primarily derived from the Vulgate, albeit one for which the later editions of Beza had provided a Greek text.
In the Old Testament the translators render the Tetragrammaton (YHWH) by "the LORD" (in later editions in small capitals as LORD), or "the LORD God" (for YHWH Elohim, יהוה אלהים), except in four places by "IEHOVAH". However, if the Tetragrammaton occurs with the Hebrew word adonai (Lord) then it is rendered not as the "Lord LORD" but as the "Lord God". In later editions it appears as "Lord GOD", with "GOD" in small capitals, indicating to the reader that God's name appears in the original Hebrew.
For the Old Testament, the translators used a text originating in the editions of the Hebrew Rabbinic Bible by Daniel Bomberg (1524/5), but adjusted this to conform to the Greek LXX or Latin Vulgate in passages to which Christian tradition had attached a Christological interpretation. For example, the Septuagint reading "They pierced my hands and my feet" was used in Psalm 22:16 (vs. the Masoretes' reading of the Hebrew "like lions my hands and feet"). Otherwise, however, the Authorized Version is closer to the Hebrew tradition than any previous English translation—especially in making use of the rabbinic commentaries, such as Kimhi, in elucidating obscure passages in the Masoretic Text; earlier versions had been more likely to adopt LXX or Vulgate readings in such places. Following the practice of the Geneva Bible, the books of 1 Esdras and 2 Esdras in the medieval Vulgate Old Testament were renamed 'Ezra' and 'Nehemiah'; 3 Esdras and 4 Esdras in the Apocrypha being renamed '1 Esdras' and '2 Esdras'.
For the New Testament, the translators chiefly used the 1598 and 1588/89 Greek editions of Theodore Beza, which also present Beza's Latin version of the Greek and Stephanus's edition of the Latin Vulgate. Both of these versions were extensively referred to, as the translators conducted all discussions amongst themselves in Latin. F. H. A. Scrivener identifies 190 readings where the Authorized Version translators depart from Beza's Greek text, generally in maintaining the wording of the Bishops' Bible and other earlier English translations. In about half of these instances, the Authorized Version translators appear to follow the earlier 1550 Greek Textus Receptus of Stephanus. For the other half, Scrivener was usually able to find corresponding Greek readings in the editions of Erasmus, or in the Complutensian Polyglot. However, in several dozen readings he notes that no printed Greek text corresponds to the English of the Authorized Version, which in these places derives directly from the Vulgate. For example, at John 10:16, the Authorized Version reads "one fold" (as did the Bishops' Bible, and the 16th-century vernacular versions produced in Geneva), following the Latin Vulgate "unum ovile", whereas Tyndale had agreed more closely with the Greek, "one flocke" (μία ποίμνη). The Authorized Version New Testament owes much more to the Vulgate than does the Old Testament; still, at least 80% of the text is unaltered from Tyndale's translation.
Unlike the rest of the Bible, the translators of the Apocrypha identified their source texts in their marginal notes. From these it can be determined that the books of the Apocrypha were translated from the Septuagint—primarily, from the Greek Old Testament column in the Antwerp Polyglot—but with extensive reference to the counterpart Latin Vulgate text, and to Junius's Latin translation. The translators record references to the Sixtine Septuagint of 1587, which is substantially a printing of the Old Testament text from the Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1209, and also to the 1518 Greek Septuagint edition of Aldus Manutius. They had, however, no Greek texts for 2 Esdras, or for the Prayer of Manasses, and Scrivener found that they here used an unidentified Latin manuscript.
The translators appear to have otherwise made no first-hand study of ancient manuscript sources, even those that—like the Codex Bezae—would have been readily available to them. In addition to all previous English versions (including, and contrary to their instructions, the Rheimish New Testament which in their preface they criticized), they made wide and eclectic use of all printed editions in the original languages then available, including the ancient Syriac New Testament printed with an interlinear Latin gloss in the Antwerp Polyglot of 1573. In the preface the translators acknowledge consulting translations and commentaries in Chaldee, Hebrew, Syrian, Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, Italian, and German.
The translators took the Bishops' Bible as their source text, and where they departed from that in favour of another translation, this was most commonly the Geneva Bible. However, the degree to which readings from the Bishops' Bible survived into final text of the King James Bible varies greatly from company to company, as did the propensity of the King James translators to coin phrases of their own. John Bois's notes of the General Committee of Review show that they discussed readings derived from a wide variety of versions and patristic sources, including explicitly both Henry Savile's 1610 edition of the works of John Chrysostom and the Rheims New Testament, which was the primary source for many of the literal alternative readings provided for the marginal notes.
A number of Bible verses in the King James Version of the New Testament are not found in more recent Bible translations, where these are based on modern critical texts. In the early seventeenth century, the source Greek texts of the New Testament which were used to produce Protestant Bible versions were mainly dependent on manuscripts of the late Byzantine text-type, and they also contained minor variations which became known as the Textus Receptus. With the subsequent identification of much earlier manuscripts, most modern textual scholars value the evidence of manuscripts which belong to the Alexandrian family as better witnesses to the original text of the biblical authors, without giving it, or any family, automatic preference.
A primary concern of the translators was to produce an appropriate Bible, dignified and resonant in public reading. Although the Authorized Version's written style is an important part of its influence on English, research has found only one verse—Hebrews 13:8—for which translators debated the wording's literary merits. While they stated in the preface that they used stylistic variation, finding multiple English words or verbal forms in places where the original language employed repetition, in practice they also did the opposite; for example, 14 different Hebrew words were translated into the single English word "prince".
In a period of rapid linguistic change the translators avoided contemporary idioms, tending instead towards forms that were already slightly archaic, like verily and it came to pass. The pronouns thou/thee and ye/you are consistently used as singular and plural respectively, even though by this time you was often found as the singular in general English usage, especially when addressing a social superior (as is evidenced, for example, in Shakespeare). For the possessive of the third person pronoun, the word its, first recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1598, is avoided. The older his is usually employed, as for example at Matthew 5:13: "if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted?"; in other places of it, thereof or bare it are found. Another sign of linguistic conservatism is the invariable use of -eth for the third person singular present form of the verb, as at Matthew 2:13: "the Angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dreame". The rival ending -(e)s, as found in present-day English, was already widely used by this time (for example, it predominates over -eth in the plays of Shakespeare and Marlowe). Furthermore, the translators preferred which to who or whom as the relative pronoun for persons, as in Genesis 13:5: "And Lot also which went with Abram, had flocks and heards, & tents" although who(m) is also found.
The Authorized Version is notably more Latinate than previous English versions, especially the Geneva Bible. This results in part from the academic stylistic preferences of a number of the translators—several of whom admitted to being more comfortable writing in Latin than in English—but was also, in part, a consequence of the royal proscription against explanatory notes. Hence, where the Geneva Bible might use a common English word, and gloss its particular application in a marginal note, the Authorized Version tends rather to prefer a technical term, frequently in Anglicized Latin. Consequently, although the King had instructed the translators to use the Bishops' Bible as a base text, the New Testament in particular owes much stylistically to the Catholic Rheims New Testament, whose translators had also been concerned to find English equivalents for Latin terminology. In addition, the translators of the New Testament books transliterate names found in the Old Testament in their Greek forms rather than in the forms closer to the Old Testament Hebrew (e.g. "Elias" and "Noe" for "Elijah" and "Noah", respectively).
While the Authorized Version remains among the most widely sold, modern critical New Testament translations differ substantially from it in a number of passages, primarily because they rely on source manuscripts not then accessible to (or not then highly regarded by) early-17th-century Biblical scholarship. In the Old Testament, there are also many differences from modern translations that are based not on manuscript differences, but on a different understanding of Ancient Hebrew vocabulary or grammar by the translators. For example, in modern translations it is clear that Job 28:1–11 is referring throughout to mining operations, which is not at all apparent from the text of the Authorized Version.
The King James Version contains several alleged mistranslations, especially in the Old Testament where the knowledge of Hebrew and cognate languages was uncertain at the time. Among the most commonly cited errors is in the Hebrew of Job and Deuteronomy, where Hebrew: רְאֵם, romanized: Re'em with the probable meaning of "wild-ox, aurochs", is translated in the KJV as "unicorn"; following in this the Vulgate unicornis and several medieval rabbinic commentators. The translators of the KJV note the alternative rendering, "rhinocerots" [sic] in the margin at Isaiah 34:7. On a similar note Martin Luther's German translation had also relied on the Latin Vulgate on this point, consistently translating רְאֵם using the German word for unicorn, Einhorn. Otherwise, the translators are accused on several occasions to have mistakenly interpreted a Hebrew descriptive phrase as a proper name (or vice versa); as at 2 Samuel 1:18 where 'the Book of Jasher' Hebrew: סֵפֶר הַיׇּשׇׁר, romanized: sepher ha-yasher properly refers not to a work by an author of that name, but should rather be rendered as "the Book of the Upright" (which was proposed as an alternative reading in a marginal note to the KJV text).
Despite royal patronage and encouragement, there was never any overt mandate to use the new translation. It was not until 1661 that the Authorized Version replaced the Bishops' Bible in the Epistle and Gospel lessons of the Book of Common Prayer, and it never did replace the older translation in the Psalter. In 1763 The Critical Review complained that "many false interpretations, ambiguous phrases, obsolete words and indelicate expressions ... excite the derision of the scorner". Blayney's 1769 version, with its revised spelling and punctuation, helped change the public perception of the Authorized Version to a masterpiece of the English language. By the 19th century, F. W. Faber could say of the translation, "It lives on the ear, like music that can never be forgotten, like the sound of church bells, which the convert hardly knows how he can forego."
Geddes MacGregor called the Authorized Version "the most influential version of the most influential book in the world, in what is now its most influential language", "the most important book in English religion and culture", and "the most celebrated book in the English-speaking world". David Crystal has estimated that it is responsible for 257 idioms in English; examples include feet of clay and reap the whirlwind. Furthermore, prominent atheist figures such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins have praised the King James Version as being "a giant step in the maturing of English literature" and "a great work of literature", respectively, with Dawkins then adding, "A native speaker of English who has never read a word of the King James Bible is verging on the barbarian".
The King James Version is one of the versions authorized to be used in the services of the Episcopal Church and other parts of the Anglican Communion, as it is the historical Bible of this church.
Other Christian denominations have also accepted the King James Version. The King James Version is used by English-speaking Conservative Anabaptists, along with Methodists of the conservative holiness movement, in addition to certain Baptists. In the Orthodox Church in America, it is used liturgically and was made "the 'official' translation for a whole generation of American Orthodox". The later Service Book of the Antiochian archdiocese, in vogue today, also uses the King James Version. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints continues to use its own edition of the Authorized Version as its official English Bible.
Although the Authorized Version's preeminence in the English-speaking world has diminished—for example, the Church of England recommends six other versions in addition to it—it is still the most used translation in the United States, especially as the Scofield Reference Bible for Evangelicals. However, over the past forty years it has been gradually overtaken by modern versions, principally the New International Version (1973), the New Revised Standard Version (1989), and the English Standard Version (2001), the latter of which is seen as a successor to the King James Version.
The Authorized Version is in the public domain in most of the world. In the United Kingdom, the right to print, publish and distribute it is a royal prerogative and the Crown licenses publishers to reproduce it under letters patent. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland the letters patent are held by the King's Printer, and in Scotland by the Scottish Bible Board. The office of King's Printer has been associated with the right to reproduce the Bible for centuries, the earliest known reference coming in 1577.
In the 18th century, all surviving interests in the monopoly were bought out by John Baskett. The Baskett rights descended through a number of printers and, in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the King's Printer is now Cambridge University Press, which inherited the right when they took over the firm of Eyre & Spottiswoode in 1990.
Other royal charters of similar antiquity grant Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press the right to produce the Authorized Version independently of the King's Printer. In Scotland, the Authorized Version is published by Collins under licence from the Scottish Bible Board. The terms of the letters patent prohibit any other than the holders, or those authorized by the holders, from printing, publishing or importing the Authorized Version into the United Kingdom. The protection that the Authorized Version, and also the Book of Common Prayer, enjoy is the last remnant of the time when the Crown held a monopoly over all printing and publishing in the United Kingdom. Almost all provisions granting copyright in perpetuity were abolished by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, but because the Authorized Version is protected by royal prerogative rather than copyright, it will remain protected, as specified in CDPA s171(1)(b).
Within the United Kingdom, Cambridge University Press permits the reproduction of at most 500 verses for "liturgical and non-commercial educational use", provided that their prescribed acknowledgement is included, the quoted verses do not exceed 25% of the publication quoting them and do not include a complete Bible book. For use beyond this, the Press is willing to consider permission requested on a case-by-case basis and in 2011 a spokesman said the Press generally does not charge a fee but tries to ensure that a reputable source text is used.
Translations of the books of the biblical apocrypha were necessary for the King James version, as readings from these books were included in the daily Old Testament lectionary of the Book of Common Prayer. Protestant Bibles in the 16th century included the books of the Apocrypha—generally, following the Luther Bible, in a separate section between the Old and New Testaments to indicate they were not considered part of the Old Testament text—and there is evidence that these were widely read as popular literature, especially in Puritan circles.
The Apocrypha of the King James Version has the same 14 books as had been found in the Apocrypha of the Bishops' Bible; however, following the practice of the Geneva Bible, the first two books of the Apocrypha were renamed 1 Esdras and 2 Esdras, as compared to the names in the Thirty-nine Articles, with the corresponding Old Testament books being renamed Ezra and Nehemiah. Starting in 1630, volumes of the Geneva Bible were occasionally bound with the pages of the Apocrypha section excluded. In 1644 the Long Parliament forbade the reading of the Apocrypha in churches and in 1666 the first editions of the King James Bible without the Apocrypha were bound.
The standardization of the text of the Authorized Version after 1769 together with the technological development of stereotype printing made it possible to produce Bibles in large print-runs at very low unit prices. For commercial and charitable publishers, editions of the Authorized Version without the Apocrypha reduced the cost, while having increased market appeal to non-Anglican Protestant readers.
With the rise of the Bible societies, most editions have omitted the whole section of Apocryphal books. The British and Foreign Bible Society withdrew subsidies for Bible printing and dissemination in 1826, under the following resolution:
That the funds of the Society be applied to the printing and circulation of the Canonical Books of Scripture, to the exclusion of those Books and parts of Books usually termed Apocryphal;
The American Bible Society adopted a similar policy. Both societies eventually reversed these policies in light of 20th-century ecumenical efforts on translations, the ABS doing so in 1964 and the BFBS in 1966.
The King James Only movement advocates the belief that the King James Version is superior to all other English translations of the Bible. Most adherents of the movement believe that the Textus Receptus is very close, if not identical, to the original autographs, thereby making it the ideal Greek source for the translation. They argue that manuscripts such as the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, on which most modern English translations are based, are corrupted New Testament texts. One of them, Perry Demopoulos, was a director of the translation of the King James Bible into Russian. In 2010 the Russian translation of the KJV of the New Testament was released in Kyiv, Ukraine. In 2017, the first complete edition of a Russian King James Bible was released. In 2017, a Faroese translation of the King James Bible was released as well.
Chronological order of publication (newest first)
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version (AV) is an Early Modern English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, by sponsorship of King James VI and I. The 80 books of the King James Version include 39 books of the Old Testament, 14 books of Apocrypha, and the 27 books of the New Testament.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Noted for its \"majesty of style\", the King James Version has been described as one of the most important books in English culture and a driving force in the shaping of the English-speaking world. The King James Version remains the preferred translation of many Christian fundamentalists and religious movements, and it is also considered to be one of the important literary accomplishments of early modern England.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The KJV was first printed by John Norton and Robert Barker, who both held the post of the King's Printer, and was the third translation into the English language approved by the English Church authorities: The first had been the Great Bible, commissioned in the reign of King Henry VIII (1535), and the second had been the Bishops' Bible, commissioned in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1568). In Geneva, Switzerland, the first generation of Protestant Reformers had produced the Geneva Bible which was published in 1560 by Sir Rowland Hill having referred to the original Hebrew and Greek scriptures, which was influential in the writing of the Authorized King James Version. The English Church initially used the officially sanctioned \"Bishops' Bible\", which, however, was hardly used by the population. More popular was the named \"Geneva Bible\", which was created on the basis of the Tyndale translation in Geneva under the direct successor of the reformer John Calvin for his English followers. However, their footnotes represented a Calvinistic Puritanism that was too radical for King James. In particular, the decidedly anti-royalist tone of the Geneva Bible was unbearable for King James I, for he was a strict advocate of divine right. The translators of the Geneva Bible had translated the word king as tyrant about four hundred times—the word tyrant does not appear once in the KJB. Because of this, it has been assumed that King James purposely had the translators of the KJV mistranslate the word \"tyrant\" as either \"troubling\", \"oppressor,\" or some other word to avoid people being critical of his monarchy, though there is no evidence to back up that claim. For his project, King James convened the Hampton Court Conference in January 1604, where a new English version was conceived in response to the problems of the earlier translations perceived by the Puritans, a faction of the Church of England. James gave the translators instructions intended to ensure that the new version would conform to the ecclesiology, and reflect the episcopal structure, of the Church of England and its belief in an ordained clergy. The translation was done by six panels of translators (47 men in all, most of whom were leading biblical scholars in England) who had the work divided up between them: the Old Testament was entrusted to three panels, the New Testament to two, and the Apocrypha to one. In common with most other translations of the period, the New Testament was translated from Greek, the Old Testament from Hebrew and Aramaic, and the Apocrypha from Greek and Latin. In the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the text of the Authorized Version replaced the text of the Great Bible for Epistle and Gospel readings (but not for the Psalter, which substantially retained Coverdale's Great Bible version), and as such was authorized by Act of Parliament.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "By the first half of the 18th century, the Authorized Version had become effectively unchallenged as the only English translation used in Anglican and other English Protestant churches, except for the Psalms and some short passages in the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England. Over the course of the 18th century, the Authorized Version supplanted the Latin Vulgate as the standard version of scripture for English-speaking scholars. With the development of stereotype printing at the beginning of the 19th century, this version of the Bible had become the most widely printed book in history, almost all such printings presenting the standard text of 1769 extensively re-edited by Benjamin Blayney at Oxford, and nearly always omitting the books of the Apocrypha. Today the unqualified title \"King James Version\" usually indicates this Oxford standard text.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The title of the first edition of the translation, in Early Modern English, was \"THE HOLY BIBLE, Conteyning the Old Teſtament, AND THE NEW: Newly Tranſlated out of the Originall tongues: & with the former Tranſlations diligently compared and reuiſed, by his Maiesties ſpeciall Cõmandement\". The title page carries the words \"Appointed to be read in Churches\", and F. F. Bruce suggests it was \"probably authorised by order in council\", but no record of the authorisation survives \"because the Privy Council registers from 1600 to 1613 were destroyed by fire in January 1618/19\".",
"title": "Name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "For many years it was common not to give the translation any specific name. In his Leviathan of 1651, Thomas Hobbes referred to it as \"the English Translation made in the beginning of the Reign of King James\". A 1761 \"Brief Account of the various Translations of the Bible into English\" refers to the 1611 version merely as \"a new, compleat, and more accurate Translation\", despite referring to the Great Bible by its name, and despite using the name \"Rhemish Testament\" for the Douay–Rheims Bible version. Similarly, a \"History of England\", whose fifth edition was published in 1775, writes merely that \"[a] new translation of the Bible, viz., that now in Use, was begun in 1607, and published in 1611\".",
"title": "Name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "King James's Bible is used as the name for the 1611 translation (on a par with the Genevan Bible or the Rhemish Testament) in Charles Butler's Horae Biblicae (first published 1797). Other works from the early 19th century confirm the widespread use of this name on both sides of the Atlantic: it is found both in a \"historical sketch of the English translations of the Bible\" published in Massachusetts in 1815 and in an English publication from 1818, which explicitly states that the 1611 version is \"generally known by the name of King James's Bible\". This name was also found as King James' Bible (without the final \"s\"): for example in a book review from 1811. The phrase \"King James's Bible\" is used as far back as 1715, although in this case it is not clear whether this is a name or merely a description.",
"title": "Name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The use of Authorized Version, capitalized and used as a name, is found as early as 1814. For some time before this, descriptive phrases such as \"our present, and only publicly authorised version\" (1783), \"our Authorized version\" (1731, 1792) and \"the authorized version\" (1801, uncapitalized) are found. A more common appellation in the 17th and 18th centuries was \"our English translation\" or \"our English version\", as can be seen by searching one or other of the major online archives of printed books. In Britain, the 1611 translation is generally known as the \"Authorized Version\" today. The term is somewhat of a misnomer because the text itself was never formally \"authorized\", nor were English parish churches ever ordered to procure copies of it.",
"title": "Name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "King James' Version, evidently a descriptive phrase, is found being used as early as 1814. \"The King James Version\" is found, unequivocally used as a name, in a letter from 1855. The next year King James Bible, with no possessive, appears as a name in a Scottish source. In the United States, the \"1611 translation\" (actually editions following the standard text of 1769, see below) is generally known as the King James Version today.",
"title": "Name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The followers of John Wycliffe undertook the first complete English translations of the Christian scriptures in the 14th century. These translations were banned in 1409 due to their association with the Lollards. The Wycliffe Bible pre-dated the printing press but it was circulated very widely in manuscript form, often inscribed with a date which was earlier than 1409 in order to avoid the legal ban. Because the text of the various versions of the Wycliffe Bible was translated from the Latin Vulgate, and because it also contained no heterodox readings, the ecclesiastical authorities had no practical way to distinguish the banned version. Consequently, many Catholic commentators of the 15th and 16th centuries (such as Thomas More) took these manuscripts of English Bibles and claimed that they represented an anonymous earlier orthodox translation.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In 1525, William Tyndale, an English contemporary of Martin Luther, undertook a translation of the New Testament. Tyndale's translation was the first printed Bible in English. Over the next ten years, Tyndale revised his New Testament in the light of rapidly advancing biblical scholarship, and embarked on a translation of the Old Testament. Despite some controversial translation choices, and in spite of Tyndale's execution on charges of heresy for having made the translated Bible, the merits of Tyndale's work and prose style made his translation the ultimate basis for all subsequent renditions into Early Modern English.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "With these translations lightly edited and adapted by Myles Coverdale, in 1539, Tyndale's New Testament and his incomplete work on the Old Testament became the basis for the Great Bible. This was the first \"authorised version\" issued by the Church of England during the reign of King Henry VIII. When Mary I succeeded to the throne in 1553, she returned the Church of England to the communion of the Catholic faith and many English religious reformers fled the country, some establishing an English-speaking colony at Geneva. Under the leadership of John Calvin, Geneva became the chief international centre of Reformed Protestantism and Latin biblical scholarship.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "These English expatriates undertook a translation that became known as the Geneva Bible. This translation, dated to 1560, was a revision of Tyndale's Bible and the Great Bible on the basis of the original languages. Soon after Elizabeth I took the throne in 1558, the flaws of both the Great Bible and the Geneva Bible (namely, that the Geneva Bible did not \"conform to the ecclesiology and reflect the episcopal structure of the Church of England and its beliefs about an ordained clergy\") became apparent. In 1568, the Church of England responded with the Bishops' Bible, a revision of the Great Bible in the light of the Geneva version.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "While officially approved, this new version failed to displace the Geneva translation as the most popular English Bible of the age—in part because the full Bible was only printed in lectern editions of prodigious size and at a cost of several pounds. Accordingly, Elizabethan lay people overwhelmingly read the Bible in the Geneva Version—small editions were available at a relatively low cost. At the same time, there was a substantial clandestine importation of the rival Douay–Rheims New Testament of 1582, undertaken by exiled Catholics. This translation, though still derived from Tyndale, claimed to represent the text of the Latin Vulgate.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In May 1601, King James VI of Scotland attended the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland at Saint Columba's Church in Burntisland, Fife, at which proposals were put forward for a new translation of the Bible into English. Two years later, he ascended to the throne of England as James I.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The newly crowned King James convened the Hampton Court Conference in 1604. That gathering proposed a new English version in response to the perceived problems of earlier translations as detected by the Puritan faction of the Church of England. Here are three examples of problems the Puritans perceived with the Bishops and Great Bibles:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "First, Galatians iv. 25 (from the Bishops' Bible). The Greek word susoichei is not well translated as now it is, bordereth neither expressing the force of the word, nor the apostle's sense, nor the situation of the place. Secondly, psalm cv. 28 (from the Great Bible), 'They were not obedient;' the original being, 'They were not disobedient.' Thirdly, psalm cvi. 30 (also from the Great Bible), 'Then stood up Phinees and prayed,' the Hebrew hath, 'executed judgment.'",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Instructions were given to the translators that were intended to use Formal Equivalence and limit the Puritan influence on this new translation. The Bishop of London added a qualification that the translators would add no marginal notes (which had been an issue in the Geneva Bible). King James cited two passages in the Geneva translation where he found the marginal notes offensive to the principles of divinely ordained royal supremacy: Exodus 1:19, where the Geneva Bible notes had commended the example of civil disobedience to the Egyptian Pharaoh showed by the Hebrew midwives, and also II Chronicles 15:16, where the Geneva Bible had criticized King Asa for not having executed his idolatrous 'mother', Queen Maachah (Maachah had actually been Asa's grandmother, but James considered the Geneva Bible reference as sanctioning the execution of his own mother Mary, Queen of Scots).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Further, the King gave the translators instructions designed to guarantee that the new version would conform to the ecclesiology of the Church of England. Certain Greek and Hebrew words were to be translated in a manner that reflected the traditional usage of the church. For example, old ecclesiastical words such as the word \"church\" were to be retained and not to be translated as \"congregation\". The new translation would reflect the episcopal structure of the Church of England and traditional beliefs about ordained clergy.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The source material for the translation of the New Testament was the Textus Receptus version of the Greek compiled by Erasmus; for the Old Testament, the Masoretic text of the Hebrew was used; for some of the apocrypha, the Septuagint Greek text was used, or for apocrypha for which the Greek was unavailable, the Vulgate Latin.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "James' instructions included several requirements that kept the new translation familiar to its listeners and readers. The text of the Bishops' Bible would serve as the primary guide for the translators, and the familiar proper names of the biblical characters would all be retained. If the Bishops' Bible was deemed problematic in any situation, the translators were permitted to consult other translations from a pre-approved list: the Tyndale Bible, the Coverdale Bible, Matthew's Bible, the Great Bible, and the Geneva Bible. In addition, later scholars have detected an influence on the Authorized Version from the translations of Taverner's Bible and the New Testament of the Douay–Rheims Bible.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "It is for this reason that the flyleaf of most printings of the Authorized Version observes that the text had been \"translated out of the original tongues, and with the former translations diligently compared and revised, by His Majesty's special commandment.\" As the work proceeded, more detailed rules were adopted as to how variant and uncertain readings in the Hebrew and Greek source texts should be indicated, including the requirement that words supplied in English to 'complete the meaning' of the originals should be printed in a different type face.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The task of translation was undertaken by 47 scholars, although 54 were originally approved. All were members of the Church of England and all except Sir Henry Savile were clergy. The scholars worked in six committees, two based in each of the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, and Westminster. The committees included scholars with Puritan sympathies, as well as high churchmen. Forty unbound copies of the 1602 edition of the Bishops' Bible were specially printed so that the agreed changes of each committee could be recorded in the margins.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The committees worked on certain parts separately and the drafts produced by each committee were then compared and revised for harmony with each other. The scholars were not paid directly for their translation work. Instead, a circular letter was sent to bishops encouraging them to consider the translators for appointment to well-paid livings as these fell vacant. Several were supported by the various colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, while others were promoted to bishoprics, deaneries and prebends through royal patronage.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The committees started work towards the end of 1604. King James VI and I, on 22 July 1604, sent a letter to Archbishop Bancroft asking him to contact all English churchmen requesting that they make donations to his project.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Right trusty and well beloved, we greet you well. Whereas we have appointed certain learned men, to the number of 4 and 50, for the translating of the Bible, and in this number, divers of them have either no ecclesiastical preferment at all, or else so very small, as the same is far unmeet for men of their deserts and yet we in ourself in any convenient time cannot well remedy it, therefor we do hereby require you, that presently you write in our name as well to the Archbishop of York, as to the rest of the bishops of the province of Cant.[erbury] signifying unto them, that we do well and straitly charge everyone of them ... that (all excuses set apart) when a prebend or parsonage ... shall next upon any occasion happen to be void ... we may commend for the same some such of the learned men, as we shall think fit to be preferred unto it ... Given unto our signet at our palace of West.[minister] on 2 and 20 July, in the 2nd year of our reign of England, France, and of Ireland, and of Scotland xxxvii.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "They had all completed their sections by 1608, the Apocrypha committee finishing first. From January 1609, a General Committee of Review met at Stationers' Hall, London to review the completed marked texts from each of the six committees. The General Committee included John Bois, Andrew Downes and John Harmar, and others known only by their initials, including \"AL\" (who may be Arthur Lake), and were paid for their attendance by the Stationers' Company. John Bois prepared a note of their deliberations (in Latin) – which has partly survived in two later transcripts. Also surviving of the translators' working papers are a bound-together set of marked-up corrections to one of the forty Bishops' Bibles—covering the Old Testament and Gospels, and also a manuscript translation of the text of the Epistles, excepting those verses where no change was being recommended to the readings in the Bishops' Bible. Archbishop Bancroft insisted on having a final say making fourteen further changes, of which one was the term \"bishopricke\" at Acts 1:20.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The original printing of the Authorized Version was published by Robert Barker, the King's Printer, in 1611 as a complete folio Bible. It was sold looseleaf for ten shillings, or bound for twelve. Robert Barker's father, Christopher, had, in 1589, been granted by Elizabeth I the title of royal Printer, with the perpetual Royal Privilege to print Bibles in England. Robert Barker invested very large sums in printing the new edition, and consequently ran into serious debt, such that he was compelled to sub-lease the privilege to two rival London printers, Bonham Norton and John Bill. It appears that it was initially intended that each printer would print a portion of the text, share printed sheets with the others, and split the proceeds. Bitter financial disputes broke out, as Barker accused Norton and Bill of concealing their profits, while Norton and Bill accused Barker of selling sheets properly due to them as partial Bibles for ready money. There followed decades of continual litigation, and consequent imprisonment for debt for members of the Barker and Norton printing dynasties, while each issued rival editions of the whole Bible. In 1629 the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge successfully managed to assert separate and prior royal licences for Bible printing, for their own university presses—and Cambridge University took the opportunity to print revised editions of the Authorized Version in 1629, and 1638. The editors of these editions included John Bois and John Ward from the original translators. This did not, however, impede the commercial rivalries of the London printers, especially as the Barker family refused to allow any other printers access to the authoritative manuscript of the Authorized Version.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Two editions of the whole Bible are recognized as having been produced in 1611, which may be distinguished by their rendering of Ruth 3:15; the first edition reading \"he went into the city\", where the second reads \"she went into the city\"; these are known colloquially as the \"He\" and \"She\" Bibles.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The original printing was made before English spelling was standardized, and when printers, as a matter of course, expanded and contracted the spelling of the same words in different places, so as to achieve an even column of text. They set v for initial u and v, and u for u and v everywhere else. They used the long s (ſ) for non-final s. The letter or glyph j occurs only after i, as in the final letter in a Roman numeral, such as XIIJ. Punctuation was relatively heavy (frequent) and differed from modern practice. When space needed to be saved, the printers sometimes used ye for the (replacing the Middle English thorn, Þ, with the continental y), set ã for an or am (in the style of scribe's shorthand), and set & for and. On the contrary, on a few occasions, they appear to have inserted these words when they thought a line needed to be padded. Later printings regularized these spellings; the punctuation has also been standardized, but still varies from current usage.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "As can be seen in the example page on the left, the first printing used a blackletter typeface instead of a roman typeface, which itself made a political and a religious statement. Like the Great Bible and the Bishops' Bible, the Authorized Version was \"appointed to be read in churches\". It was a large folio volume meant for public use, not private devotion; the weight of the type—blackletter type was heavy physically as well as visually—mirrored the weight of establishment authority behind it. However, smaller editions and roman-type editions followed rapidly, e.g. quarto roman-type editions of the Bible in 1612. This contrasted with the Geneva Bible, which was the first English Bible printed in a roman typeface (although black-letter editions, particularly in folio format, were issued later).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In contrast to the Geneva Bible and the Bishops' Bible, which had both been extensively illustrated, there were no illustrations in the 1611 edition of the Authorized Version, the main form of decoration being the historiated initial letters provided for books and chapters – together with the decorative title pages to the Bible itself, and to the New Testament.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In the Great Bible, readings derived from the Vulgate but not found in published Hebrew and Greek texts had been distinguished by being printed in smaller roman type. In the Geneva Bible, a distinct typeface had instead been applied to distinguish text supplied by translators, or thought needful for English grammar but not present in the Greek or Hebrew; and the original printing of the Authorized Version used roman type for this purpose, albeit sparsely and inconsistently. This results in perhaps the most significant difference between the original printed text of the King James Bible and the current text. When, from the later 17th century onwards, the Authorized Version began to be printed in roman type, the typeface for supplied words was changed to italics, this application being regularized and greatly expanded. This was intended to de-emphasize the words.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The original printing contained two prefatory texts; the first was a formal Epistle Dedicatory to \"the most high and mighty Prince\" King James. Many British printings reproduce this, while most non-British printings do not.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The second preface was called Translators to the Reader, a long and learned essay that defends the undertaking of the new version. It observes the translators' stated goal, that they \"never thought from the beginning that [they] should need to make a new translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a good one, ... but to make a good one better, or out of many good ones, one principal good one, not justly to be excepted against; that hath been our endeavour, that our mark.\" They also give their opinion of previous English Bible translations, stating, \"We do not deny, nay, we affirm and avow, that the very meanest translation of the Bible in English, set forth by men of our profession, (for we have seen none of theirs [Catholics] of the whole Bible as yet) containeth the word of God, nay, is the word of God.\" As with the first preface, some British printings reproduce this, while most non-British printings do not. Almost every printing that includes the second preface also includes the first. The first printing contained a number of other apparatus, including a table for the reading of the Psalms at matins and evensong, and a calendar, an almanac, and a table of holy days and observances. Much of this material became obsolete with the adoption of the Gregorian calendar by Britain and its colonies in 1752, and thus modern editions invariably omit it.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "So as to make it easier to know a particular passage, each chapter was headed by a brief précis of its contents with verse numbers. Later editors freely substituted their own chapter summaries, or omitted such material entirely. Pilcrow marks are used to indicate the beginnings of paragraphs except after the book of Acts.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The Authorized Version was meant to replace the Bishops' Bible as the official version for readings in the Church of England. No record of its authorization exists; it was probably effected by an order of the Privy Council, but the records for the years 1600 to 1613 were destroyed by fire in January 1618/19, and it is commonly known as the Authorized Version in the United Kingdom. The King's Printer issued no further editions of the Bishops' Bible, so necessarily the Authorized Version replaced it as the standard lectern Bible in parish church use in England.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the text of the Authorized Version finally supplanted that of the Great Bible in the Epistle and Gospel readings—though the Prayer Book Psalter nevertheless continues in the Great Bible version.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "The case was different in Scotland, where the Geneva Bible had long been the standard church Bible. It was not until 1633 that a Scottish edition of the Authorized Version was printed—in conjunction with the Scots coronation in that year of Charles I. The inclusion of illustrations in the edition raised accusations of Popery from opponents of the religious policies of Charles and William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury. However, official policy favoured the Authorized Version, and this favour returned during the Commonwealth—as London printers succeeded in re-asserting their monopoly on Bible printing with support from Oliver Cromwell—and the \"New Translation\" was the only edition on the market. F. F. Bruce reports that the last recorded instance of a Scots parish continuing to use the \"Old Translation\" (i.e. Geneva) as being in 1674.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The Authorized Version's acceptance by the general public took longer. The Geneva Bible continued to be popular, and large numbers were imported from Amsterdam, where printing continued up to 1644 in editions carrying a false London imprint. However, few if any genuine Geneva editions appear to have been printed in London after 1616, and in 1637 Archbishop Laud prohibited their printing or importation. In the period of the English Civil War, soldiers of the New Model Army were issued a book of Geneva selections called \"The Soldiers' Bible\". In the first half of the 17th century the Authorized Version is most commonly referred to as \"The Bible without notes\", thereby distinguishing it from the Geneva \"Bible with notes\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "There were several printings of the Authorized Version in Amsterdam—one as late as 1715 which combined the Authorized Version translation text with the Geneva marginal notes; one such edition was printed in London in 1649. During the Commonwealth a commission was established by Parliament to recommend a revision of the Authorized Version with acceptably Protestant explanatory notes, but the project was abandoned when it became clear that these would nearly double the bulk of the Bible text. After the English Restoration, the Geneva Bible was held to be politically suspect and a reminder of the repudiated Puritan era. Furthermore, disputes over the lucrative rights to print the Authorized Version dragged on through the 17th century, so none of the printers involved saw any commercial advantage in marketing a rival translation. The Authorized Version became the only then current version circulating among English-speaking people.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "A small minority of critical scholars were slow to accept the latest translation. Hugh Broughton, who was the most highly regarded English Hebraist of his time but had been excluded from the panel of translators because of his utterly uncongenial temperament, issued in 1611 a total condemnation of the new version. He especially criticized the translators' rejection of word-for-word equivalence and stated that \"he would rather be torn in pieces by wild horses than that this abominable translation (KJV) should ever be foisted upon the English people\". Walton's London Polyglot of 1657 disregards the Authorized Version (and indeed the English language) entirely. Walton's reference text throughout is the Vulgate.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The Vulgate Latin is also found as the standard text of scripture in Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan of 1651. Hobbes gives Vulgate chapter and verse numbers (e.g., Job 41:24, not Job 41:33) for his head text. In Chapter 35: 'The Signification in Scripture of Kingdom of God', Hobbes discusses Exodus 19:5, first in his own translation of the 'Vulgar Latin', and then subsequently as found in the versions he terms \"... the English translation made in the beginning of the reign of King James\", and \"The Geneva French\" (i.e. Olivétan). Hobbes advances detailed critical arguments why the Vulgate rendering is to be preferred. For most of the 17th century the assumption remained that, while it had been of vital importance to provide the scriptures in the vernacular for ordinary people, nevertheless for those with sufficient education to do so, Biblical study was best undertaken within the international common medium of Latin. It was only in 1700 that modern bilingual Bibles appeared in which the Authorized Version was compared with counterpart Dutch and French Protestant vernacular Bibles.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "In consequence of the continual disputes over printing privileges, successive printings of the Authorized Version were notably less careful than the 1611 edition had been—compositors freely varying spelling, capitalization and punctuation—and also, over the years, introducing about 1,500 misprints (some of which, like the omission of \"not\" from the commandment \"Thou shalt not commit adultery\" in the \"Wicked Bible\", became notorious). The two Cambridge editions of 1629 and 1638 attempted to restore the proper text—while introducing over 200 revisions of the original translators' work, chiefly by incorporating into the main text a more literal reading originally presented as a marginal note. A more thoroughly corrected edition was proposed following the Restoration, in conjunction with the revised 1662 Book of Common Prayer, but Parliament then decided against it.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "By the first half of the 18th century, the Authorized Version was effectively unchallenged as the sole English translation in then current use in Protestant churches, and was so dominant that the Catholic Church in England issued in 1750 a revision of the 1610 Douay–Rheims Bible by Richard Challoner that was much closer to the Authorized Version than to the original. However, general standards of spelling, punctuation, typesetting, capitalization and grammar had changed radically in the 100 years since the first edition of the Authorized Version, and all printers in the market were introducing continual piecemeal changes to their Bible texts to bring them into line with then current practice—and with public expectations of standardized spelling and grammatical construction.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Over the course of the 18th century, the Authorized Version supplanted the Hebrew, Greek and the Latin Vulgate as the standard version of scripture for English speaking scholars and divines, and indeed came to be regarded by some as an inspired text in itself—so much so that any challenge to its readings or textual base came to be regarded by many as an assault on Holy Scripture.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "In the 18th century there was a serious shortage of Bibles in the American colonies. To meet the demand various printers, beginning with Samuel Kneeland in 1752, printed the King James Bible without authorization from the Crown. To avert prosecution and detection of an unauthorized printing they would include the royal insignia on the title page, using the same materials in its printing as the authorized version was produced from, which were imported from England.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "By the mid-18th century the wide variation in the various modernized printed texts of the Authorized Version, combined with the notorious accumulation of misprints, had reached the proportion of a scandal, and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge both sought to produce an updated standard text. First of the two was the Cambridge edition of 1760, the culmination of 20 years' work by Francis Sawyer Parris, who died in May of that year. This 1760 edition was reprinted without change in 1762 and in John Baskerville's fine folio edition of 1763.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "This was effectively superseded by the 1769 Oxford edition, edited by Benjamin Blayney, though with comparatively few changes from Parris's edition; but which became the Oxford standard text, and is reproduced almost unchanged in most current printings. Parris and Blayney sought consistently to remove those elements of the 1611 and subsequent editions that they believed were due to the vagaries of printers, while incorporating most of the revised readings of the Cambridge editions of 1629 and 1638, and each also introducing a few improved readings of their own.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "They undertook the mammoth task of standardizing the wide variation in punctuation and spelling of the original, making many thousands of minor changes to the text. In addition, Blayney and Parris thoroughly revised and greatly extended the italicization of \"supplied\" words not found in the original languages by cross-checking against the presumed source texts. Blayney seems to have worked from the 1550 Stephanus edition of the Textus Receptus, rather than the later editions of Theodore Beza that the translators of the 1611 New Testament had favoured; accordingly the current Oxford standard text alters around a dozen italicizations where Beza and Stephanus differ. Like the 1611 edition, the 1769 Oxford edition included the Apocrypha, although Blayney tended to remove cross-references to the Books of the Apocrypha from the margins of their Old and New Testaments wherever these had been provided by the original translators. It also includes both prefaces from the 1611 edition. Altogether, the standardization of spelling and punctuation caused Blayney's 1769 text to differ from the 1611 text in around 24,000 places.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The 1611 and 1769 texts of the first three verses from I Corinthians 13 are given below.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "[1611] 1. Though I speake with the tongues of men & of Angels, and haue not charity, I am become as sounding brasse or a tinkling cymbal. 2 And though I haue the gift of prophesie, and vnderstand all mysteries and all knowledge: and though I haue all faith, so that I could remooue mountaines, and haue no charitie, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestowe all my goods to feede the poore, and though I giue my body to bee burned, and haue not charitie, it profiteth me nothing.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "[1769] 1. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "There are a number of superficial edits in these three verses: 11 changes of spelling, 16 changes of typesetting (including the changed conventions for the use of u and v), three changes of punctuation, and one variant text—where \"not charity\" is substituted for \"no charity\" in verse two, in the belief that the original reading was a misprint.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "A particular verse for which Blayney's 1769 text differs from Parris's 1760 version is Matthew 5:13, where Parris (1760) has",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out, and to be troden under foot of men.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Blayney (1769) changes 'lost his savour' to 'lost its savour', and troden to trodden.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "For a period, Cambridge continued to issue Bibles using the Parris text, but the market demand for absolute standardization was now such that they eventually adapted Blayney's work but omitted some of the idiosyncratic Oxford spellings. By the mid-19th century, almost all printings of the Authorized Version were derived from the 1769 Oxford text—increasingly without Blayney's variant notes and cross references, and commonly excluding the Apocrypha. One exception to this was a scrupulous original-spelling, page-for-page, and line-for-line reprint of the 1611 edition (including all chapter headings, marginalia, and original italicization, but with Roman type substituted for the black letter of the original), published by Oxford in 1833.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Another important exception was the 1873 Cambridge Paragraph Bible, thoroughly revised, modernized and re-edited by F. H. A. Scrivener, who for the first time consistently identified the source texts underlying the 1611 translation and its marginal notes. Scrivener, like Blayney, opted to revise the translation where he considered the judgement of the 1611 translators had been faulty. In 2005, Cambridge University Press released its New Cambridge Paragraph Bible with Apocrypha, edited by David Norton, which followed in the spirit of Scrivener's work, attempting to bring spelling to present-day standards. Norton also innovated with the introduction of quotation marks, while returning to a hypothetical 1611 text, so far as possible, to the wording used by its translators, especially in the light of the re-emphasis on some of their draft documents. This text has been issued in paperback by Penguin Books.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "From the early 19th century the Authorized Version has remained almost completely unchanged—and since, due to advances in printing technology, it could now be produced in very large editions for mass sale, it established complete dominance in public and ecclesiastical use in the English-speaking Protestant world. Academic debate through that century, however, increasingly reflected concerns about the Authorized Version shared by some scholars: (a) that subsequent study in oriental languages suggested a need to revise the translation of the Hebrew Bible—both in terms of specific vocabulary, and also in distinguishing descriptive terms from proper names; (b) that the Authorized Version was unsatisfactory in translating the same Greek words and phrases into different English, especially where parallel passages are found in the synoptic gospels; and (c) in the light of subsequent ancient manuscript discoveries, the New Testament translation base of the Greek Textus Receptus could no longer be considered to be the best representation of the original text.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Responding to these concerns, the Convocation of Canterbury resolved in 1870 to undertake a revision of the text of the Authorized Version, intending to retain the original text \"except where in the judgement of competent scholars such a change is necessary\". The resulting revision was issued as the Revised Version in 1881 (New Testament), 1885 (Old Testament) and 1894 (Apocrypha); but, although it sold widely, the revision did not find popular favour, and it was only reluctantly in 1899 that Convocation approved it for reading in churches.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "By the early 20th century, editing had been completed in Cambridge's text, with at least 6 new changes since 1769, and the reversing of at least 30 of the standard Oxford readings. The distinct Cambridge text was printed in the millions, and after the Second World War \"the unchanging steadiness of the KJB was a huge asset.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "F. H. A. Scrivener and D. Norton have both written in detail on editorial variations which have occurred through the history of the publishing of the Authorized Version from 1611 to 1769. In the 19th century, there were effectively three main guardians of the text. Norton identified five variations among the Oxford, Cambridge, and London (Eyre and Spottiswoode) texts of 1857, such as the spelling of \"farther\" or \"further\" at Matthew 26:39.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "In the 20th century, variation between the editions was reduced to comparing the Cambridge to the Oxford. Distinctly identified Cambridge readings included \"or Sheba\", \"sin\", \"clifts\", \"vapour\", \"flieth\", \"further\" and a number of other references. In effect the Cambridge was considered the current text in comparison to the Oxford. These are instances where both Oxford and Cambridge have now diverged from Blayney's 1769 Edition. The distinctions between the Oxford and Cambridge editions have been a major point in the Bible version debate, and a potential theological issue, particularly in regard to the identification of the Pure Cambridge Edition.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Cambridge University Press introduced a change at 1 John 5:8 in 1985, reversing its longstanding tradition of printing the word \"spirit\" in lower case by using a capital letter \"S\". A Rev. Hardin of Bedford, Pennsylvania, wrote a letter to Cambridge inquiring about this verse, and received a reply on 3 June 1985 from the Bible Director, Jerry L. Hooper, claiming that it was a \"matter of some embarrassment regarding the lower case 's' in Spirit\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "In obedience to their instructions, the translators provided no marginal interpretation of the text, but in some 8,500 places a marginal note offers an alternative English wording. The majority of these notes offer a more literal rendering of the original, introduced as \"Heb\", \"Chal\" (Chaldee, referring to Aramaic), \"Gr\" or \"Lat\". Others indicate a variant reading of the source text (introduced by \"or\"). Some of the annotated variants derive from alternative editions in the original languages, or from variant forms quoted in the fathers. More commonly, though, they indicate a difference between the literal original language reading and that in the translators' preferred recent Latin versions: Tremellius for the Old Testament, Junius for the Apocrypha, and Beza for the New Testament. At thirteen places in the New Testament a marginal note records a variant reading found in some Greek manuscript copies; in almost all cases reproducing a counterpart textual note at the same place in Beza's editions.",
"title": "Literary attributes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "A few more extensive notes clarify Biblical names and units of measurement or currency. Modern reprintings rarely reproduce these annotated variants—although they are to be found in the New Cambridge Paragraph Bible. In addition, there were originally some 9,000 scriptural cross-references, in which one text was related to another. Such cross-references had long been common in Latin Bibles, and most of those in the Authorized Version were copied unaltered from this Latin tradition. Consequently the early editions of the KJV retain many Vulgate verse references—e.g. in the numbering of the Psalms. At the head of each chapter, the translators provided a short précis of its contents, with verse numbers; these are rarely included in complete form in modern editions.",
"title": "Literary attributes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Also in obedience to their instructions, the translators indicated 'supplied' words in a different typeface; but there was no attempt to regularize the instances where this practice had been applied across the different companies; and especially in the New Testament, it was used much less frequently in the 1611 edition than would later be the case. In one verse, 1 John 2:23, an entire clause was printed in roman type (as it had also been in the Great Bible and Bishop's Bible); indicating a reading then primarily derived from the Vulgate, albeit one for which the later editions of Beza had provided a Greek text.",
"title": "Literary attributes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "In the Old Testament the translators render the Tetragrammaton (YHWH) by \"the LORD\" (in later editions in small capitals as LORD), or \"the LORD God\" (for YHWH Elohim, יהוה אלהים), except in four places by \"IEHOVAH\". However, if the Tetragrammaton occurs with the Hebrew word adonai (Lord) then it is rendered not as the \"Lord LORD\" but as the \"Lord God\". In later editions it appears as \"Lord GOD\", with \"GOD\" in small capitals, indicating to the reader that God's name appears in the original Hebrew.",
"title": "Literary attributes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "For the Old Testament, the translators used a text originating in the editions of the Hebrew Rabbinic Bible by Daniel Bomberg (1524/5), but adjusted this to conform to the Greek LXX or Latin Vulgate in passages to which Christian tradition had attached a Christological interpretation. For example, the Septuagint reading \"They pierced my hands and my feet\" was used in Psalm 22:16 (vs. the Masoretes' reading of the Hebrew \"like lions my hands and feet\"). Otherwise, however, the Authorized Version is closer to the Hebrew tradition than any previous English translation—especially in making use of the rabbinic commentaries, such as Kimhi, in elucidating obscure passages in the Masoretic Text; earlier versions had been more likely to adopt LXX or Vulgate readings in such places. Following the practice of the Geneva Bible, the books of 1 Esdras and 2 Esdras in the medieval Vulgate Old Testament were renamed 'Ezra' and 'Nehemiah'; 3 Esdras and 4 Esdras in the Apocrypha being renamed '1 Esdras' and '2 Esdras'.",
"title": "Literary attributes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "For the New Testament, the translators chiefly used the 1598 and 1588/89 Greek editions of Theodore Beza, which also present Beza's Latin version of the Greek and Stephanus's edition of the Latin Vulgate. Both of these versions were extensively referred to, as the translators conducted all discussions amongst themselves in Latin. F. H. A. Scrivener identifies 190 readings where the Authorized Version translators depart from Beza's Greek text, generally in maintaining the wording of the Bishops' Bible and other earlier English translations. In about half of these instances, the Authorized Version translators appear to follow the earlier 1550 Greek Textus Receptus of Stephanus. For the other half, Scrivener was usually able to find corresponding Greek readings in the editions of Erasmus, or in the Complutensian Polyglot. However, in several dozen readings he notes that no printed Greek text corresponds to the English of the Authorized Version, which in these places derives directly from the Vulgate. For example, at John 10:16, the Authorized Version reads \"one fold\" (as did the Bishops' Bible, and the 16th-century vernacular versions produced in Geneva), following the Latin Vulgate \"unum ovile\", whereas Tyndale had agreed more closely with the Greek, \"one flocke\" (μία ποίμνη). The Authorized Version New Testament owes much more to the Vulgate than does the Old Testament; still, at least 80% of the text is unaltered from Tyndale's translation.",
"title": "Literary attributes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Unlike the rest of the Bible, the translators of the Apocrypha identified their source texts in their marginal notes. From these it can be determined that the books of the Apocrypha were translated from the Septuagint—primarily, from the Greek Old Testament column in the Antwerp Polyglot—but with extensive reference to the counterpart Latin Vulgate text, and to Junius's Latin translation. The translators record references to the Sixtine Septuagint of 1587, which is substantially a printing of the Old Testament text from the Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1209, and also to the 1518 Greek Septuagint edition of Aldus Manutius. They had, however, no Greek texts for 2 Esdras, or for the Prayer of Manasses, and Scrivener found that they here used an unidentified Latin manuscript.",
"title": "Literary attributes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "The translators appear to have otherwise made no first-hand study of ancient manuscript sources, even those that—like the Codex Bezae—would have been readily available to them. In addition to all previous English versions (including, and contrary to their instructions, the Rheimish New Testament which in their preface they criticized), they made wide and eclectic use of all printed editions in the original languages then available, including the ancient Syriac New Testament printed with an interlinear Latin gloss in the Antwerp Polyglot of 1573. In the preface the translators acknowledge consulting translations and commentaries in Chaldee, Hebrew, Syrian, Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, Italian, and German.",
"title": "Literary attributes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "The translators took the Bishops' Bible as their source text, and where they departed from that in favour of another translation, this was most commonly the Geneva Bible. However, the degree to which readings from the Bishops' Bible survived into final text of the King James Bible varies greatly from company to company, as did the propensity of the King James translators to coin phrases of their own. John Bois's notes of the General Committee of Review show that they discussed readings derived from a wide variety of versions and patristic sources, including explicitly both Henry Savile's 1610 edition of the works of John Chrysostom and the Rheims New Testament, which was the primary source for many of the literal alternative readings provided for the marginal notes.",
"title": "Literary attributes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "A number of Bible verses in the King James Version of the New Testament are not found in more recent Bible translations, where these are based on modern critical texts. In the early seventeenth century, the source Greek texts of the New Testament which were used to produce Protestant Bible versions were mainly dependent on manuscripts of the late Byzantine text-type, and they also contained minor variations which became known as the Textus Receptus. With the subsequent identification of much earlier manuscripts, most modern textual scholars value the evidence of manuscripts which belong to the Alexandrian family as better witnesses to the original text of the biblical authors, without giving it, or any family, automatic preference.",
"title": "Literary attributes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "A primary concern of the translators was to produce an appropriate Bible, dignified and resonant in public reading. Although the Authorized Version's written style is an important part of its influence on English, research has found only one verse—Hebrews 13:8—for which translators debated the wording's literary merits. While they stated in the preface that they used stylistic variation, finding multiple English words or verbal forms in places where the original language employed repetition, in practice they also did the opposite; for example, 14 different Hebrew words were translated into the single English word \"prince\".",
"title": "Literary attributes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "In a period of rapid linguistic change the translators avoided contemporary idioms, tending instead towards forms that were already slightly archaic, like verily and it came to pass. The pronouns thou/thee and ye/you are consistently used as singular and plural respectively, even though by this time you was often found as the singular in general English usage, especially when addressing a social superior (as is evidenced, for example, in Shakespeare). For the possessive of the third person pronoun, the word its, first recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1598, is avoided. The older his is usually employed, as for example at Matthew 5:13: \"if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted?\"; in other places of it, thereof or bare it are found. Another sign of linguistic conservatism is the invariable use of -eth for the third person singular present form of the verb, as at Matthew 2:13: \"the Angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dreame\". The rival ending -(e)s, as found in present-day English, was already widely used by this time (for example, it predominates over -eth in the plays of Shakespeare and Marlowe). Furthermore, the translators preferred which to who or whom as the relative pronoun for persons, as in Genesis 13:5: \"And Lot also which went with Abram, had flocks and heards, & tents\" although who(m) is also found.",
"title": "Literary attributes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "The Authorized Version is notably more Latinate than previous English versions, especially the Geneva Bible. This results in part from the academic stylistic preferences of a number of the translators—several of whom admitted to being more comfortable writing in Latin than in English—but was also, in part, a consequence of the royal proscription against explanatory notes. Hence, where the Geneva Bible might use a common English word, and gloss its particular application in a marginal note, the Authorized Version tends rather to prefer a technical term, frequently in Anglicized Latin. Consequently, although the King had instructed the translators to use the Bishops' Bible as a base text, the New Testament in particular owes much stylistically to the Catholic Rheims New Testament, whose translators had also been concerned to find English equivalents for Latin terminology. In addition, the translators of the New Testament books transliterate names found in the Old Testament in their Greek forms rather than in the forms closer to the Old Testament Hebrew (e.g. \"Elias\" and \"Noe\" for \"Elijah\" and \"Noah\", respectively).",
"title": "Literary attributes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "While the Authorized Version remains among the most widely sold, modern critical New Testament translations differ substantially from it in a number of passages, primarily because they rely on source manuscripts not then accessible to (or not then highly regarded by) early-17th-century Biblical scholarship. In the Old Testament, there are also many differences from modern translations that are based not on manuscript differences, but on a different understanding of Ancient Hebrew vocabulary or grammar by the translators. For example, in modern translations it is clear that Job 28:1–11 is referring throughout to mining operations, which is not at all apparent from the text of the Authorized Version.",
"title": "Literary attributes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "The King James Version contains several alleged mistranslations, especially in the Old Testament where the knowledge of Hebrew and cognate languages was uncertain at the time. Among the most commonly cited errors is in the Hebrew of Job and Deuteronomy, where Hebrew: רְאֵם, romanized: Re'em with the probable meaning of \"wild-ox, aurochs\", is translated in the KJV as \"unicorn\"; following in this the Vulgate unicornis and several medieval rabbinic commentators. The translators of the KJV note the alternative rendering, \"rhinocerots\" [sic] in the margin at Isaiah 34:7. On a similar note Martin Luther's German translation had also relied on the Latin Vulgate on this point, consistently translating רְאֵם using the German word for unicorn, Einhorn. Otherwise, the translators are accused on several occasions to have mistakenly interpreted a Hebrew descriptive phrase as a proper name (or vice versa); as at 2 Samuel 1:18 where 'the Book of Jasher' Hebrew: סֵפֶר הַיׇּשׇׁר, romanized: sepher ha-yasher properly refers not to a work by an author of that name, but should rather be rendered as \"the Book of the Upright\" (which was proposed as an alternative reading in a marginal note to the KJV text).",
"title": "Literary attributes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Despite royal patronage and encouragement, there was never any overt mandate to use the new translation. It was not until 1661 that the Authorized Version replaced the Bishops' Bible in the Epistle and Gospel lessons of the Book of Common Prayer, and it never did replace the older translation in the Psalter. In 1763 The Critical Review complained that \"many false interpretations, ambiguous phrases, obsolete words and indelicate expressions ... excite the derision of the scorner\". Blayney's 1769 version, with its revised spelling and punctuation, helped change the public perception of the Authorized Version to a masterpiece of the English language. By the 19th century, F. W. Faber could say of the translation, \"It lives on the ear, like music that can never be forgotten, like the sound of church bells, which the convert hardly knows how he can forego.\"",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Geddes MacGregor called the Authorized Version \"the most influential version of the most influential book in the world, in what is now its most influential language\", \"the most important book in English religion and culture\", and \"the most celebrated book in the English-speaking world\". David Crystal has estimated that it is responsible for 257 idioms in English; examples include feet of clay and reap the whirlwind. Furthermore, prominent atheist figures such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins have praised the King James Version as being \"a giant step in the maturing of English literature\" and \"a great work of literature\", respectively, with Dawkins then adding, \"A native speaker of English who has never read a word of the King James Bible is verging on the barbarian\".",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "The King James Version is one of the versions authorized to be used in the services of the Episcopal Church and other parts of the Anglican Communion, as it is the historical Bible of this church.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Other Christian denominations have also accepted the King James Version. The King James Version is used by English-speaking Conservative Anabaptists, along with Methodists of the conservative holiness movement, in addition to certain Baptists. In the Orthodox Church in America, it is used liturgically and was made \"the 'official' translation for a whole generation of American Orthodox\". The later Service Book of the Antiochian archdiocese, in vogue today, also uses the King James Version. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints continues to use its own edition of the Authorized Version as its official English Bible.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Although the Authorized Version's preeminence in the English-speaking world has diminished—for example, the Church of England recommends six other versions in addition to it—it is still the most used translation in the United States, especially as the Scofield Reference Bible for Evangelicals. However, over the past forty years it has been gradually overtaken by modern versions, principally the New International Version (1973), the New Revised Standard Version (1989), and the English Standard Version (2001), the latter of which is seen as a successor to the King James Version.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "The Authorized Version is in the public domain in most of the world. In the United Kingdom, the right to print, publish and distribute it is a royal prerogative and the Crown licenses publishers to reproduce it under letters patent. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland the letters patent are held by the King's Printer, and in Scotland by the Scottish Bible Board. The office of King's Printer has been associated with the right to reproduce the Bible for centuries, the earliest known reference coming in 1577.",
"title": "Copyright status"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "In the 18th century, all surviving interests in the monopoly were bought out by John Baskett. The Baskett rights descended through a number of printers and, in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the King's Printer is now Cambridge University Press, which inherited the right when they took over the firm of Eyre & Spottiswoode in 1990.",
"title": "Copyright status"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Other royal charters of similar antiquity grant Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press the right to produce the Authorized Version independently of the King's Printer. In Scotland, the Authorized Version is published by Collins under licence from the Scottish Bible Board. The terms of the letters patent prohibit any other than the holders, or those authorized by the holders, from printing, publishing or importing the Authorized Version into the United Kingdom. The protection that the Authorized Version, and also the Book of Common Prayer, enjoy is the last remnant of the time when the Crown held a monopoly over all printing and publishing in the United Kingdom. Almost all provisions granting copyright in perpetuity were abolished by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, but because the Authorized Version is protected by royal prerogative rather than copyright, it will remain protected, as specified in CDPA s171(1)(b).",
"title": "Copyright status"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Within the United Kingdom, Cambridge University Press permits the reproduction of at most 500 verses for \"liturgical and non-commercial educational use\", provided that their prescribed acknowledgement is included, the quoted verses do not exceed 25% of the publication quoting them and do not include a complete Bible book. For use beyond this, the Press is willing to consider permission requested on a case-by-case basis and in 2011 a spokesman said the Press generally does not charge a fee but tries to ensure that a reputable source text is used.",
"title": "Copyright status"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Translations of the books of the biblical apocrypha were necessary for the King James version, as readings from these books were included in the daily Old Testament lectionary of the Book of Common Prayer. Protestant Bibles in the 16th century included the books of the Apocrypha—generally, following the Luther Bible, in a separate section between the Old and New Testaments to indicate they were not considered part of the Old Testament text—and there is evidence that these were widely read as popular literature, especially in Puritan circles.",
"title": "Copyright status"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "The Apocrypha of the King James Version has the same 14 books as had been found in the Apocrypha of the Bishops' Bible; however, following the practice of the Geneva Bible, the first two books of the Apocrypha were renamed 1 Esdras and 2 Esdras, as compared to the names in the Thirty-nine Articles, with the corresponding Old Testament books being renamed Ezra and Nehemiah. Starting in 1630, volumes of the Geneva Bible were occasionally bound with the pages of the Apocrypha section excluded. In 1644 the Long Parliament forbade the reading of the Apocrypha in churches and in 1666 the first editions of the King James Bible without the Apocrypha were bound.",
"title": "Copyright status"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "The standardization of the text of the Authorized Version after 1769 together with the technological development of stereotype printing made it possible to produce Bibles in large print-runs at very low unit prices. For commercial and charitable publishers, editions of the Authorized Version without the Apocrypha reduced the cost, while having increased market appeal to non-Anglican Protestant readers.",
"title": "Copyright status"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "With the rise of the Bible societies, most editions have omitted the whole section of Apocryphal books. The British and Foreign Bible Society withdrew subsidies for Bible printing and dissemination in 1826, under the following resolution:",
"title": "Copyright status"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "That the funds of the Society be applied to the printing and circulation of the Canonical Books of Scripture, to the exclusion of those Books and parts of Books usually termed Apocryphal;",
"title": "Copyright status"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "The American Bible Society adopted a similar policy. Both societies eventually reversed these policies in light of 20th-century ecumenical efforts on translations, the ABS doing so in 1964 and the BFBS in 1966.",
"title": "Copyright status"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "The King James Only movement advocates the belief that the King James Version is superior to all other English translations of the Bible. Most adherents of the movement believe that the Textus Receptus is very close, if not identical, to the original autographs, thereby making it the ideal Greek source for the translation. They argue that manuscripts such as the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, on which most modern English translations are based, are corrupted New Testament texts. One of them, Perry Demopoulos, was a director of the translation of the King James Bible into Russian. In 2010 the Russian translation of the KJV of the New Testament was released in Kyiv, Ukraine. In 2017, the first complete edition of a Russian King James Bible was released. In 2017, a Faroese translation of the King James Bible was released as well.",
"title": "Copyright status"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "Chronological order of publication (newest first)",
"title": "References"
}
] |
The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version (AV) is an Early Modern English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, by sponsorship of King James VI and I. The 80 books of the King James Version include 39 books of the Old Testament, 14 books of Apocrypha, and the 27 books of the New Testament. Noted for its "majesty of style", the King James Version has been described as one of the most important books in English culture and a driving force in the shaping of the English-speaking world. The King James Version remains the preferred translation of many Christian fundamentalists and religious movements, and it is also considered to be one of the important literary accomplishments of early modern England. The KJV was first printed by John Norton and Robert Barker, who both held the post of the King's Printer, and was the third translation into the English language approved by the English Church authorities: The first had been the Great Bible, commissioned in the reign of King Henry VIII (1535), and the second had been the Bishops' Bible, commissioned in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1568). In Geneva, Switzerland, the first generation of Protestant Reformers had produced the Geneva Bible which was published in 1560 by Sir Rowland Hill having referred to the original Hebrew and Greek scriptures, which was influential in the writing of the Authorized King James Version.
The English Church initially used the officially sanctioned "Bishops' Bible", which, however, was hardly used by the population. More popular was the named "Geneva Bible", which was created on the basis of the Tyndale translation in Geneva under the direct successor of the reformer John Calvin for his English followers. However, their footnotes represented a Calvinistic Puritanism that was too radical for King James. In particular, the decidedly anti-royalist tone of the Geneva Bible was unbearable for King James I, for he was a strict advocate of divine right. The translators of the Geneva Bible had translated the word king as tyrant about four hundred times—the word tyrant does not appear once in the KJB. Because of this, it has been assumed that King James purposely had the translators of the KJV mistranslate the word "tyrant" as either "troubling", "oppressor," or some other word to avoid people being critical of his monarchy, though there is no evidence to back up that claim. For his project, King James convened the Hampton Court Conference in January 1604, where a new English version was conceived in response to the problems of the earlier translations perceived by the Puritans, a faction of the Church of England.
James gave the translators instructions intended to ensure that the new version would conform to the ecclesiology, and reflect the episcopal structure, of the Church of England and its belief in an ordained clergy. The translation was done by six panels of translators who had the work divided up between them: the Old Testament was entrusted to three panels, the New Testament to two, and the Apocrypha to one. In common with most other translations of the period, the New Testament was translated from Greek, the Old Testament from Hebrew and Aramaic, and the Apocrypha from Greek and Latin. In the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the text of the Authorized Version replaced the text of the Great Bible for Epistle and Gospel readings, and as such was authorized by Act of Parliament. By the first half of the 18th century, the Authorized Version had become effectively unchallenged as the only English translation used in Anglican and other English Protestant churches, except for the Psalms and some short passages in the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England. Over the course of the 18th century, the Authorized Version supplanted the Latin Vulgate as the standard version of scripture for English-speaking scholars. With the development of stereotype printing at the beginning of the 19th century, this version of the Bible had become the most widely printed book in history, almost all such printings presenting the standard text of 1769 extensively re-edited by Benjamin Blayney at Oxford, and nearly always omitting the books of the Apocrypha. Today the unqualified title "King James Version" usually indicates this Oxford standard text.
|
2001-10-24T00:22:22Z
|
2023-12-15T00:59:13Z
|
[
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:BibleHistory",
"Template:Sic",
"Template:Cite wikisource",
"Template:Wikiquote",
"Template:Books",
"Template:Sc",
"Template:Context inline",
"Template:Use Oxford spelling",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Sfn",
"Template:See also",
"Template:Explain",
"Template:'",
"Template:Further",
"Template:ISBN",
"Template:Refbegin",
"Template:English Bible translation navbox",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Redirect",
"Template:Spaced ndash",
"Template:Not a typo",
"Template:Wikisource",
"Template:Librivox author",
"Template:King James Version",
"Template:R",
"Template:Notelist",
"Template:Bibleref",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Commons category",
"Template:Citation needed",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Cite magazine",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Refend",
"Template:Lead too long",
"Template:Bible translation infobox",
"Template:Efn",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Cbignore",
"Template:Portal",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Blockquote",
"Template:How",
"Template:LORD",
"Template:Lang",
"Template:Failed verification",
"Template:Lang-he"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_James_Version
|
16,768 |
Kevin Spacey
|
Kevin Spacey Fowler (born July 26, 1959) is an American actor. Known for his work on stage and screen, he has received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Tony Award, and two Laurence Olivier Awards. Spacey was named an honorary Commander and Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2010 and 2015, respectively.
Spacey had small roles in Mike Nichols's comedy-drama films Heartburn (1986) and Working Girl (1988). He won two Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actor for playing a con man in The Usual Suspects (1995) and Best Actor for playing a suburban husband and father going through a midlife crisis in American Beauty (1999). His other films include Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), Se7en (1995), L.A. Confidential (1997), Pay It Forward (2000), Superman Returns (2006), 21 (2008), Margin Call (2011), and Baby Driver (2017). He has also directed the films Albino Alligator (1996) and Beyond the Sea (2004).
In Broadway theatre, Spacey starred in a revival of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night in 1986. He won a Tony Award in 1991 for his role in Lost in Yonkers. He won a Laurence Olivier Award for his performance in a revival of The Iceman Cometh in 1999. Spacey portrayed the title role in Richard III in 2011 and Clarence Darrow in a West End production of Darrow in 2015. He was the artistic director of the Old Vic theatre in London from 2004 to 2015, for which he received the Society of London Theatre Special Award. In 2017, he hosted the 71st Tony Awards.
In television, Spacey portrayed Ron Klain in Recount (2008) and produced Bernard and Doris (2008), both for HBO Films. From 2013 to 2017, he starred as Frank Underwood in the Netflix political drama series House of Cards, which won him a Golden Globe Award and two consecutive Screen Actors Guild Awards for Best Actor. Both Spacey and the show itself were nominated for five consecutive Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series and Outstanding Drama Series, respectively.
In 2017, Spacey faced several allegations of sexual misconduct. In the wake of these claims, Netflix cut ties with Spacey, shelving his biopic of Gore Vidal and removing him from the last season of House of Cards. His completed role as J. Paul Getty in Ridley Scott's film All the Money in the World (2017) was reshot with Christopher Plummer. Spacey has denied the accusations and was found not liable in a 2022 lawsuit in New York. In a separate case in London, he was acquitted by a jury of sexual assault charges in 2023.
Kevin Spacey Fowler was born in South Orange, New Jersey, to Kathleen Ann (née Knutson), a secretary, and Thomas Geoffrey Fowler, a technical writer and data consultant. His family relocated to Southern California when he was four years old. Spacey has a sister and an older brother, Randy Fowler, from whom Spacey is estranged. His brother has stated that their father, whom he described as a racist "Nazi supporter", was sexually and physically abusive, and that Spacey shut down emotionally and became "very sly and smart" to avoid beatings. Spacey first addressed the matter in October 2022, saying that his father was "a white supremacist and a neo-Nazi" who would call him "an F-word that is very derogatory to the gay community". He stated that, as a result, he became extremely private about his personal life and did not come out as gay earlier in his life. Spacey had previously described his father as "a very normal, middle-class man".
Spacey attended Northridge Military Academy, Canoga Park High School in the 10th and 11th grades. He graduated co-valedictorian (along with Mare Winningham) of the class of 1977 of Chatsworth High School in Chatsworth, California. At Chatsworth, Spacey starred in the school's senior production of The Sound of Music, playing the part of Captain Georg von Trapp, with Winningham as Maria von Trapp. He started using his middle name "Spacey", which was his paternal grandmother's maiden name.
Spacey had tried to succeed as a comedian for several years before attending the Juilliard School in New York City, as a member of Group 12, where he studied drama with teacher Marian Seldes between 1979 and 1981. During this time period, he performed stand-up comedy in bowling alley talent contests.
Spacey's first professional stage appearance was as a spear carrier in a New York Shakespeare Festival performance of Henry VI, Part 1 in 1981. The following year, he made his first Broadway appearance, as Oswald in a production of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts, starring Liv Ullmann and director John Neville, which opened at the Eisenhower Theater in Washington's Kennedy Center. He then portrayed Philinte in Molière's The Misanthrope. In 1984, Spacey appeared in a production of David Rabe's Hurlyburly, in which he rotated through each of the male parts (he would later play Mickey in the film version). Next came Anton Chekhov's The Seagull alongside David Strathairn and Colleen Dewhurst. In 1986, Spacey appeared in a production of Sleuth in a New Jersey dinner theatre.
Spacey's prominence as a stage actor began in 1986, when he was cast opposite Jack Lemmon, Peter Gallagher, and Bethel Leslie, as Jamie, the eldest Tyrone son, in Jonathan Miller's lauded production of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night. Lemmon in particular would become a mentor to Spacey and was invited, along with Spacey's high school drama teacher, to be present when Spacey received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1999.
Spacey remained actively involved in the live theatre community. In 1991, he won a Tony Award for his portrayal of Uncle Louie in Neil Simon's Broadway hit Lost in Yonkers. His father was unconvinced that Spacey could make a career for himself as an actor and did not change his mind until Spacey became well known. In 1999, Spacey won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor and earned another Tony Award nomination in 1999 for The Iceman Cometh.
In February 2003, Spacey announced that he was to become the artistic director of the Old Vic, one of London's oldest theatres. Appearing at a press conference with Judi Dench and Elton John, Spacey promised both to appear on stage and to bring in big-name talent. He undertook to remain in the post for a full ten years. The Old Vic Theatre Company staged shows eight months out of the year. Spacey's first season started in September 2004, opening with the British premiere of the play Cloaca by Maria Goos, directed by Spacey, which opened to mixed reviews. In the 2005 season, Spacey made his UK Shakespearean debut, to good notices, in the title role of Richard II, directed by Trevor Nunn.
On June 16, 2016, Spacey was awarded an honorary knighthood for his services to theatre, arts education, and international culture in the 2015 Queen's Birthday Honours. The honour, Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, was given at Clarence House by then-Prince Charles. As a non-Commonwealth Realm citizen, the award is honorary and he is not entitled to the honorific "Sir". Spacey had previously been awarded the lesser rank of honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to drama in 2010.
Spacey was a patron of the Shakespeare Schools Festival, a charity that enables school children across the UK to perform Shakespeare in professional theatres. He also sits on the board of directors of the Motion Picture and Television Fund.
In mid-2006, Spacey said that he was having the time of his life working at the Old Vic; at that point in his career, he said, he was "trying to do things now that are much bigger and outside [myself]". Spacey performed in productions of National Anthems by Dennis McIntyre, and The Philadelphia Story by Philip Barry, in which he played C.K. Dexter Haven, the Cary Grant role in the film version. Critics applauded Spacey for taking on the management of a theatre, but noted that while his acting was impressive, his skills and judgment as a producer/manager had yet to develop.
In the 2006 season, Spacey suffered a major setback with a production of Arthur Miller's Resurrection Blues, directed by Robert Altman. Despite an all-star cast (including Matthew Modine and future House of Cards co-star Neve Campbell) and the pedigree of Miller's script, Spacey's decision to lure Altman to the stage proved disastrous: after a fraught rehearsal period, the play opened to a critical panning, and closed after only a few weeks. Later in the year, Spacey starred in Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten, along with Colm Meaney and Eve Best. The play received excellent reviews for Spacey and Best, and was transferred to Broadway in 2007. For the spring part of the 2007–08 season, Jeff Goldblum and Laura Michelle Kelly joined Spacey as the three characters in David Mamet's 1988 play Speed-the-Plow.
In 2009, he directed the premiere of Joe Sutton's Complicit, with Richard Dreyfuss, David Suchet and Elizabeth McGovern. Later that year, Trevor Nunn directed Spacey in a revival of Inherit the Wind. Spacey played defense lawyer Henry Drummond, a role that was made famous by Spencer Tracy in the 1960 film of the same name. Sam Mendes directed Spacey in Shakespeare's Richard III; Spacey played the title role. The show began in June 2011, commencing a worldwide tour culminating in New York in early 2012. In March 2014, it was announced that Spacey would star in a one-man play at the Old Vic to celebrate his ten years as artistic director. He took on the part of Clarence Darrow in the play.
In 1986, Spacey made his first film appearance in Mike Nichols's Heartburn starring Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson. Spacey plays a small role credited as a subway thief. In 1988, Spacey also briefly appeared in another Nichols film, Working Girl, as businessman Bob Speck. Some of Spacey's other early roles include a widowed millionaire on L.A. Law; the television miniseries The Murder of Mary Phagan (1988), opposite Lemmon; and the comedy See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989). Spacey quickly developed a reputation as a character actor, and was cast in bigger roles, including the malevolent office manager in the ensemble film adaptation of the David Mamet play Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) starring Al Pacino, as well as news reporter Harry Kingsley in a film based on a 1917 dog sled race Iron Will (1994) directed by Charles Haid. Spacey also played one-half of a bickering Connecticut couple alongside Judy Davis in the dark comedy Christmas film The Ref (1994), and a malicious Hollywood studio boss in the satire Swimming with Sharks (1995).
Spacey's performance as the enigmatic criminal Verbal Kint in Bryan Singer's 1995 neo-noir film The Usual Suspects won him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
In 1995, Spacey also appeared in the David Fincher detective thriller Seven, making a sudden entrance late in the film as serial killer John Doe after going uncredited and unmentioned in the film's advertisements and opening credits. His work in Seven, The Usual Suspects and Outbreak earned him Best Supporting Actor honors at the 1995 Society of Texas Film Critics Awards. Spacey played an egomaniacal district attorney in A Time to Kill (1996) and founded Trigger Street Productions in 1997 with the purpose of producing and developing entertainment across various media. Spacey made his directorial debut with the film Albino Alligator (1996). The film was a box office bomb, grossing $339,379 with a budget of $6 million, but critics praised Spacey's direction. He also voiced Hopper in the animated film A Bug's Life (1998).
Throughout his career, Spacey has been well known for playing villains; he remarked in 2013: "I think people just like me evil for some reason. They want me to be a son of a bitch."
In 1999, Spacey acted alongside Annette Bening in Sam Mendes's American Beauty. In the film he played the role of Lester Burnham, a depressed suburban father and advertising executive who becomes attracted to his teenage daughter's best friend. For this role, Spacey won his second Oscar, this time for Best Actor in a Leading Role. In his acceptance speech he dedicated his Oscar to Jack Lemmon, praising him as an influence, mentor, and father figure. He also stated, "[Lemmon's] performance in The Apartment stands as one of the finest we've ever had". That same year, he was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Spacey played a physically and emotionally scarred grade school teacher in Pay It Forward (2000), a patient in a mental institution who may or may not be an alien in K-Pax (2001), and singer Bobby Darin in Beyond the Sea (2004). The latter was a lifelong dream project for Spacey, who took on co-writing, directing, co-producing and starring duties in the biography/musical about Darin's life, career and relationship with actress Sandra Dee. Facing little interest for backing in the U.S., Spacey went to the United Kingdom and Germany for funding. Almost all of the film was made in Berlin. Spacey provided his own vocals on the film's soundtrack and appeared in several tribute concerts around the time of its release. Spacey received mostly positive reviews for his singing, as well as a Golden Globe nomination for his performance. However, reviewers debated the age disparity between Spacey and Darin, noting that Spacey was too old to convincingly portray Darin, particularly during the early stages of the singer's life depicted in the film.
In 2006, Spacey played Lex Luthor in the Bryan Singer superhero film Superman Returns starring Brandon Routh. He was to return for its 2009 sequel, but the series was instead rebooted with the 2013 film Man of Steel. Spacey also appeared in Edison, which received a direct-to-video release in 2006. The film was released in theaters in Netherlands on March 12, 2006.
In 2008, Spacey played a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) lecturer in the film 21. The film is based on Ben Mezrich's best seller Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions, a story of student MIT card-counters who used mathematical probability to aid them in card games such as blackjack. In early 2010, Spacey went to China to star in writer-director Dayyan Eng's black comedy film Inseparable, becoming the first Hollywood actor to star in a fully Chinese-funded film.
In 2011, Spacey starred in J.C. Chandor's financial thriller Margin Call alongside Paul Bettany, Jeremy Irons, Zachary Quinto, Demi Moore, and Stanley Tucci. The story at large takes place over a 24-hour period at a large Wall Street investment bank during the initial stages of the financial crisis of 2007–2008. The film, which focuses on the actions taken by a group of employees during the subsequent financial collapse, made its debut at the Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim. Spacey received the Independent Spirit Robert Altman Award along with the cast. That same year, Spacey co-starred in the black comedy film Horrible Bosses, which grossed over $209.6 million at the box office. In 2013 he executive-produced the biographical survival thriller film Captain Phillips, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.
He starred as President Richard Nixon in the comedy-drama Elvis & Nixon (2016), which is based on the meeting that took place between Nixon and singer Elvis Presley (Michael Shannon) in December 1970 wherein Presley requested that Nixon swear him in as an undercover agent in the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. He next starred in the comedy film Nine Lives, as a man trapped in the body of a cat. The film was released on August 5, 2016.
In January 2016 it was announced that Relativity Media, which was just emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy, had acquired Trigger Street Productions and that Spacey would become chairman of Relativity Studios, while Dana Brunetti would become the studio's president. Spacey called the move "an incredible opportunity to make great entertainment" and said he considered it the "next evolution in my career". However, when the paperwork for the studio was filed for the court, it emerged that Spacey had opted out of assuming the chairmanship of the studios, and by the end of 2016 Brunetti had also left Relativity, while both remained executive producers on House of Cards and Manifesto.
In March 2017, it was announced that Spacey would portray J. Paul Getty in Ridley Scott's All the Money in the World. He shot his role in the film in ten days over the summer of 2017. But because of the sexual assault allegations against Spacey, it was announced on November 8, 2017, that all of his footage would be excised, and that Christopher Plummer would replace him in reshoots. In spite of the very tight schedule, TriStar Pictures completed the new version of the film in time for a December 25 release.
Spacey appeared in the film Billionaire Boys Club, which had a limited release on August 17, 2018. Vertical Entertainment stated that it would take no action to remove Spacey from the film, as it had been completed in late 2016, before the allegations made in October 2017.
We don't condone sexual harassment on any level and we fully support victims of it. At the same time, this is neither an easy nor insensitive decision to release this film in theatres, but we believe in giving the cast, as well as hundreds of crew members who worked hard on the film, the chance to see their final product reach audiences.
Following the allegations leveled against him, Spacey maintained a lower profile and his career stalled. In May 2021, it was announced that he had been cast in a supporting role as a police detective in the crime drama film The Man Who Drew God, directed by and starring Franco Nero, which is about a blind artist who is wrongly accused of sexually abusing a child. The film reunited Spacey with Faye Dunaway, whom he directed in Albino Alligator. In August 2021, it was reported that he was filming in California for a small production, Peter Five Eight, directed by Michael Zaiko Hall. In the movie, Spacey is said to play a charismatic serial killer.
On November 3, 2022, Variety reported that Spacey was set to speak at the National Museum of Cinema and was going to receive a lifetime achievement award on January 16, 2023, despite the allegations against him. On November 28, 2022, after winning a sexual battery lawsuit against him filed by Anthony Rapp, Spacey was cast in the British indie thriller Control. Its director, Gene Fallaize, dismissed concerns about working with Spacey.
In 2022, Spacey was cast as the late Croatian leader Franjo Tudjman in the political drama Once Upon a Time in Croatia, directed by Jakov Sedlar.
In 1987, Spacey made his first major television appearance in the second-season premiere of Crime Story, playing a Kennedy-esque American senator. That same year he appeared in spy thriller series The Equalizer as Detective Sergeant Cole in the episode "Solo". He earned a fan base after playing the criminally insane arms dealer Mel Profitt on the television series Wiseguy (1988).
Spacey hosted Saturday Night Live twice: first in 1997 with musical guest Beck and special guests Michael Palin and John Cleese from Monty Python's Flying Circus and again in May 2006 with musical guest Nelly Furtado.
In 2008 Spacey starred as Ron Klain in the HBO original political drama film Recount revolving around Florida's vote recount during the 2000 United States presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore. The film was written by Danny Strong and directed by Jay Roach and starred Bob Balaban, Laura Dern, John Hurt, Denis Leary, and Tom Wilkinson. The television film won three Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Television Movie. For his performance in the film, Spacey was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Miniseries or Television Film. That same year Spacey produced the TV movie Bernard and Doris, an HBO semi-fictionalized account of the relationship that developed between socialite heiress and philanthropist Doris Duke and her self-destructive Irish butler Bernard Lafferty later in her life. The film starred Ralph Fiennes and Susan Sarandon and was directed by Bob Balaban. The film premiered at the Hamptons International Film Festival to critical acclaim, and Spacey was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Television Movie. Spacey portrayed the antagonist Jonathan Irons in the 2014 video game Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare through motion capture.
Spacey is well known in Hollywood for his impressions. When he appeared on Inside the Actors Studio, he imitated (at host James Lipton's request) Jack Lemmon, James Stewart, Johnny Carson, Katharine Hepburn, Clint Eastwood, John Gielgud, Marlon Brando, Christopher Walken, and Al Pacino. On The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Spacey admitted to using his vocal skills as a young actor in New York City to pretend to be Carson's son in order to obtain free theatre tickets and to enter Studio 54. Spacey's Capitol/EMI album Forever Cool (2007) features two duets with Spacey and an earlier recording of Dean Martin: "Ain't That a Kick in the Head" and "King of the Road". In December 2007, Spacey co-hosted the Nobel Peace Prize Concert along with Uma Thurman.
On March 18, 2011, it was announced that Spacey was cast as Frank Underwood in the Netflix series House of Cards, adapted from a 1990 BBC political drama of the same name. He was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series at the 65th Primetime Emmy Awards in 2013, becoming the first lead actor to be Primetime Emmy-nominated from a web television series. Spacey went on to win the Golden Globe award for Best Actor in a Television Series Drama at the 72nd Golden Globe Awards and Screen Actors Guild nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series at the 21st Screen Actors Guild Awards for his season 2 performance. He was fired from the series after the fifth season following multiple allegations of sexual misconduct.
In 2018, Earl Blue, owner of the security company VIP Protective Services, claimed that Spacey had used racial slurs against his predominantly African-American staff when they were hired on the House of Cards set in 2012, before getting Blue fired.
Spacey's career has spanned 30 years across film, television, video games and theatre. His film career started in the late 1980s after small parts in the Mike Nichols films Heartburn (1986) and Working Girl (1988). In the '90s he had supporting roles in films such as Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) opposite Jack Lemmon and Al Pacino and the black comedy film The Ref before being cast in the role of Roger "Verbal" Kint in 1995's The Usual Suspects, which earned him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. That same year he played serial killer John Doe in Se7en opposite Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman. He went on to star in noir crime drama L.A. Confidential (1997) alongside Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce, Clint Eastwood's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997), and American Beauty (1999), for which he earned his second Academy Award, this time for Best Actor.
In the 2000s he appeared in the films Pay It Forward with Helen Hunt (2000), Superman Returns as Lex Luthor (2006), and 21 with Jim Sturgess (2008), the last of which he also produced. In 2004 he wrote, directed and starred in the biopic musical Beyond the Sea (2004). In 2011 he co-starred with Paul Bettany and Jeremy Irons in the drama film Margin Call. That same year he played antagonist Dave Harken in the comedy Horrible Bosses with Jason Bateman, a role he reprised in the 2014 sequel film Horrible Bosses 2. He played Doc in the 2017 film Baby Driver with Ansel Elgort.
From 2013 to 2017, he played Francis "Frank" Underwood in the Netflix series House of Cards alongside Robin Wright. Spacey also starred in the HBO television film Recount (2008) and produced the 2006 film Bernard and Doris.
Spacey has won two Academy Awards, a Tony Award, a Golden Globe Award, four Screen Actors Guild Awards and a British Academy Film Award. He was nominated for a Grammy Award and for 12 Primetime Emmy Awards. Spacey received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1999 and was named an honorary Commander and Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2010 and 2015, respectively.
An article in The Sunday Times Magazine in 1999 stated that Spacey's "love affair with acting, and the absence of a visible partner in the life of an attractive 40-year-old, has resulted in Esquire magazine asserting two years ago that he must be gay". Spacey responded to the rumors by telling Playboy and other interviewers that he was not gay and by telling Lesley White of The Sunday Times:
I chose for a long time not to answer these questions because of the manner in which they were asked, and because I was never talking to someone I trusted, so why should I? Recently I chose to participate because it's a little hard on the people I love.
In 1999, reports suggested Spacey was dating a script supervisor named Dianne Dreyer, with their relationship possibly dating back as far as 1992. In 2000, Spacey brought Dreyer to the Academy Awards; during the acceptance speech for his Best Actor award, Spacey said, "Dianne, thank you for teaching me about caring about the right things, and I love you."
In 2007, Gotham magazine quoted Spacey saying:
I've never believed in pimping my personal life out for publicity. Although I might be interested in doing it, I will never do it. People can gossip all they want; they can speculate all they want. I just happen to believe that there's a separation between the public life and the private life. Everybody has the right to a private life no matter what their professions are.
Spacey is a Democrat and has been described as left-leaning, with his personal views mirroring some of those professed by his fictional character in House of Cards.
Spacey worked on Jimmy Carter's 1976 presidential campaign.
He is a friend of President Bill Clinton, having met Clinton before his presidency began. Spacey once described Clinton as "one of the shining lights" in the political process. He additionally made a cameo appearance in the short film President Clinton: Final Days, a light-hearted political satire produced by the Clinton Administration for the 2000 White House Correspondents Dinner.
Spacey has undertaken activism in the domain of HIV/AIDS. In 2002, Spacey, actor Chris Tucker, and Jeffrey Epstein accompanied Bill Clinton on a trip throughout several African countries to promote AIDS awareness on the continent. He also participated in several fundraisers for HIV/AIDS healthcare, including amfAR Cinema Against AIDS in 2016 and the 25th Annual Elton John AIDS Foundation Academy Award Party in 2017.
Spacey met Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez in September 2007 but never spoke to the press about their encounter. During the trip, he visited the Venezuelan film studio Villa del Cine. In March 2011, following Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko's crackdown on the Belarusian democracy movement, Spacey joined Jude Law in a street protest in London against Lukashenko's regime.
In October 2008, Spacey started the Kevin Spacey Foundation in the UK to encourage youth involvement in the arts. Headquartered in England and Wales, its purpose was to provide grants to individuals and organizations to help young people study the arts, particularly theatre. The charity shut down in February 2018 following sexual misconduct allegations against Spacey.
In September 2006, Spacey said that he intended to take up British citizenship when it is offered to him. When asked about the UK's 2016 European Union membership referendum, Spacey replied, "I appreciate you asking me the question, but I am not a British citizen, I am a resident of Great Britain. And I have never in my twelve years ever gotten involved in politics in Great Britain. I think it's inappropriate for me as a, really as a guest, in Great Britain, so I'll leave that to the British people."
On October 29, 2017, actor Anthony Rapp alleged that Spacey, while appearing intoxicated, made a sexual advance toward him at a party in 1986, when Rapp was 14 and Spacey was 26. Rapp had also shared this story in a 2001 interview with The Advocate, but Spacey's name was redacted from publication to avoid legal disputes and public outing. Spacey stated on Twitter that he did not remember the encounter, but that he owed Rapp "the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior" if he had behaved as asserted. On September 9, 2020, Rapp sued Spacey for sexual assault, sexual battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress under the Child Victims Act.
Fifteen others then came forward alleging similar abuse, including Boston anchorwoman Heather Unruh, who alleged that Spacey sexually assaulted her son; filmmaker Tony Montana; actor Roberto Cavazos; Richard Dreyfuss's son Harry; and eight people who worked on House of Cards. The Guardian was contacted by "a number of people" who alleged that Spacey "groped and behaved in an inappropriate way with young men" as artistic director of the Old Vic.
Spacey also appears on flight logs from Jeffrey Epstein's private jet from the early 2000s.
On the same day as Rapp's allegations against him, Spacey came out as gay when apologizing to Rapp. He said, "I have had relationships with both men and women. I have loved and had romantic encounters with men throughout my life, and I choose now to live as a gay man." His decision to come out via his statement was criticized by gay celebrities, including Billy Eichner, George Takei, Lance Bass, and Wanda Sykes, as an attempt to change the subject and shift focus from Rapp's accusation, for using his own drunkenness as an excuse for making a sexual advance on a minor, and for implying a connection between homosexuality and child sexual abuse.
Some readers additionally felt that by claiming that he was "horrified" by Rapp's story, Spacey was attempting to paint himself as the victim of the alleged abuse. In October 2022, Spacey expressed regret over the way he came out and said that it was "never [his] intention" to deflect from the allegations against him or conflate them with his sexual orientation.
Amid the allegations, filming was suspended on the sixth and final season of House of Cards. The show's production company had implemented "an anonymous complaint hotline, crisis counselors, and sexual harassment legal advisors for the crew", and stated that in 2012, "someone on the crew shared a complaint about a specific remark and gesture made by Kevin Spacey. Immediate action was taken following our review of the situation and we are confident the issue was resolved promptly to the satisfaction of all involved." According to the production company, Spacey "willingly participated in a training process and since that time MRC has not been made aware of any other complaints" involving him. The show had been due to end in 2018. The season was shortened from 13 episodes to eight, and Spacey was removed from the cast and from his role as executive producer.
The Gore Vidal biographical film Gore, starring Spacey, which was set to be distributed by Netflix, was canceled, and Netflix went on to sever all ties with him. He was due to appear in All the Money in the World as industrialist J. Paul Getty; his scenes were cut and Christopher Plummer replaced him as Getty in reshoots. In an interview with Variety, Plummer said: "It's really not replacing [Spacey]. It's starting all over again." Plummer added: "I think it's very sad what happened to him... Kevin is such a talented and a terrifically gifted actor, and it's so sad. It's such a shame. That's all I can say, because that's it."
The International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences reversed its decision to honor Spacey with the 2017 International Emmy Founders Award. On November 2, 2017, Variety reported that his publicist Staci Wolfe and talent agency Creative Artists Agency were ending their relationships with him.
From 2018 to 2020, and in 2023, Spacey posted an annual video to his YouTube channel on Christmas Eve.
On December 24, 2018, Spacey uploaded a video titled "Let Me Be Frank", in which he – while in character as Frank Underwood – appeared to deny the real-life allegations leveled against him. The video was described by Slate writer Daniel Politi as "bizarre" and "stomach-churning", while drawing derision from actresses such as Ellen Barkin, Patricia Arquette, and Alyssa Milano, who called it "creepy". As of December 2022, the video has over 13 million views.
On December 24, 2019, Spacey posted another video, titled "KTWK" (short for "kill them with kindness"), to his YouTube channel, once again in character as Underwood. In 2020, Spacey posted a third Christmas Eve video, titled "1-800 XMAS", in which he spoke in Underwood's accent before breaking character and speaking in his natural voice. He then expressed sympathy for people struggling amid the COVID-19 pandemic and promoted two suicide and substance abuse hotlines. The annual videos have been described as "tone-deaf" by Eric Hegedus in the New York Post with respect to the allegations against him.
On December 24, 2023, Spacey posted a video where he stayed in character as Underwood, conversing with Tucker Carlson. The two discussed Netflix and the upcoming 2024 presidential election.
The Los Angeles District Attorney's office stated, in April 2018, that it would investigate an allegation that Spacey had sexually assaulted an adult male in 1992. In July 2018, three more allegations of sexual assault against Spacey were revealed by Scotland Yard, bringing the total number of open investigations in the UK to six. In September 2018, a lawsuit filed at Los Angeles Superior Court claimed that Spacey sexually assaulted an unnamed masseur in October 2016 at a house in Malibu, California.
In December 2018, Spacey was charged with a felony for allegedly sexually assaulting journalist Heather Unruh's 18-year-old son in Nantucket, Massachusetts, in July 2016. Spacey pleaded not guilty to the charge on January 7, 2019. Unruh's son told police that he was texting with his girlfriend throughout the alleged "groping" incident. Spacey's defense attorneys spent months trying to obtain copies of the texts and the phone itself. In mid-May 2019, Unruh's son's personal attorney informed the court that the phone in question was "missing". On June 4, 2019, the defense learned that, when Unruh gave the police her son's phone in 2017, she admitted that she had deleted some of the text messages. Later that month, her son filed a lawsuit against Spacey, claiming emotional damages. Shortly later, on July 5, 2019, they withdrew the lawsuit.
On July 17, 2019, the criminal assault charge against Spacey was dropped by the Cape and Islands prosecutors. When the anonymous massage therapist who accused him died, the last remaining criminal case against Spacey was closed.
On September 9, 2020, Anthony Rapp accused Spacey in a complaint about actions that allegedly happened in 1986 (sexual assault and sexual battery) and intentional infliction of emotional distress under the Child Victims Act, which extended New York's statute of limitations for suits related to child sexual abuse. Joining Rapp in the suit against Spacey was a man who requested to remain anonymous who accused Spacey of sexually abusing him in 1983, when he was 14 and Spacey was 24. On June 17, 2021, the anonymous accuser was dismissed from the case due to his refusal to publicly identify himself. As Rapp's trial lawsuit against Spacey commenced in October 2022, it was revealed that he had given an inaccurate description of the apartment where he alleged the abuse took place. On October 17, the judge dismissed the emotional-distress charges as a "duplicate" of the battery charges. On October 20, a jury found Spacey not liable.
In 2020, Spacey and his production companies M. Profitt Productions and Trigger Street Productions were ordered to pay $31 million to MRC, the studio that produced House of Cards, for violating its sexual harassment policy. Spacey appealed to have the arbitration award overturned, but the request was denied on August 4, 2022.
On May 26, 2022, Spacey was charged by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in the United Kingdom with four counts of sexual assault against three complainants. The alleged offenses occurred between 2005 and 2013 in London and Gloucestershire. According to the Crown Prosecution Service, it would be possible to formally charge Spacey only if he entered England or Wales either voluntarily or through an extradition request. Nevertheless, in a statement to Good Morning America on May 31, 2022, Spacey said he would "voluntarily appear in the U.K. as soon as can be arranged".
In his first British court appearance, on June 16, Spacey denied the allegations against him. On July 14, he pleaded not guilty to the charges in London. On November 16, the CPS authorized an additional seven charges against Spacey, all related to a single complainant arising from incidents alleged to have occurred between 2001 and 2004. Three charges were dismissed before or during the trial, which began on June 28, 2023, and, on July 26, 2023, a jury found Spacey not guilty of the remaining nine charges.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Kevin Spacey Fowler (born July 26, 1959) is an American actor. Known for his work on stage and screen, he has received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Tony Award, and two Laurence Olivier Awards. Spacey was named an honorary Commander and Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2010 and 2015, respectively.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Spacey had small roles in Mike Nichols's comedy-drama films Heartburn (1986) and Working Girl (1988). He won two Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actor for playing a con man in The Usual Suspects (1995) and Best Actor for playing a suburban husband and father going through a midlife crisis in American Beauty (1999). His other films include Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), Se7en (1995), L.A. Confidential (1997), Pay It Forward (2000), Superman Returns (2006), 21 (2008), Margin Call (2011), and Baby Driver (2017). He has also directed the films Albino Alligator (1996) and Beyond the Sea (2004).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In Broadway theatre, Spacey starred in a revival of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night in 1986. He won a Tony Award in 1991 for his role in Lost in Yonkers. He won a Laurence Olivier Award for his performance in a revival of The Iceman Cometh in 1999. Spacey portrayed the title role in Richard III in 2011 and Clarence Darrow in a West End production of Darrow in 2015. He was the artistic director of the Old Vic theatre in London from 2004 to 2015, for which he received the Society of London Theatre Special Award. In 2017, he hosted the 71st Tony Awards.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In television, Spacey portrayed Ron Klain in Recount (2008) and produced Bernard and Doris (2008), both for HBO Films. From 2013 to 2017, he starred as Frank Underwood in the Netflix political drama series House of Cards, which won him a Golden Globe Award and two consecutive Screen Actors Guild Awards for Best Actor. Both Spacey and the show itself were nominated for five consecutive Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series and Outstanding Drama Series, respectively.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In 2017, Spacey faced several allegations of sexual misconduct. In the wake of these claims, Netflix cut ties with Spacey, shelving his biopic of Gore Vidal and removing him from the last season of House of Cards. His completed role as J. Paul Getty in Ridley Scott's film All the Money in the World (2017) was reshot with Christopher Plummer. Spacey has denied the accusations and was found not liable in a 2022 lawsuit in New York. In a separate case in London, he was acquitted by a jury of sexual assault charges in 2023.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Kevin Spacey Fowler was born in South Orange, New Jersey, to Kathleen Ann (née Knutson), a secretary, and Thomas Geoffrey Fowler, a technical writer and data consultant. His family relocated to Southern California when he was four years old. Spacey has a sister and an older brother, Randy Fowler, from whom Spacey is estranged. His brother has stated that their father, whom he described as a racist \"Nazi supporter\", was sexually and physically abusive, and that Spacey shut down emotionally and became \"very sly and smart\" to avoid beatings. Spacey first addressed the matter in October 2022, saying that his father was \"a white supremacist and a neo-Nazi\" who would call him \"an F-word that is very derogatory to the gay community\". He stated that, as a result, he became extremely private about his personal life and did not come out as gay earlier in his life. Spacey had previously described his father as \"a very normal, middle-class man\".",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Spacey attended Northridge Military Academy, Canoga Park High School in the 10th and 11th grades. He graduated co-valedictorian (along with Mare Winningham) of the class of 1977 of Chatsworth High School in Chatsworth, California. At Chatsworth, Spacey starred in the school's senior production of The Sound of Music, playing the part of Captain Georg von Trapp, with Winningham as Maria von Trapp. He started using his middle name \"Spacey\", which was his paternal grandmother's maiden name.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Spacey had tried to succeed as a comedian for several years before attending the Juilliard School in New York City, as a member of Group 12, where he studied drama with teacher Marian Seldes between 1979 and 1981. During this time period, he performed stand-up comedy in bowling alley talent contests.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Spacey's first professional stage appearance was as a spear carrier in a New York Shakespeare Festival performance of Henry VI, Part 1 in 1981. The following year, he made his first Broadway appearance, as Oswald in a production of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts, starring Liv Ullmann and director John Neville, which opened at the Eisenhower Theater in Washington's Kennedy Center. He then portrayed Philinte in Molière's The Misanthrope. In 1984, Spacey appeared in a production of David Rabe's Hurlyburly, in which he rotated through each of the male parts (he would later play Mickey in the film version). Next came Anton Chekhov's The Seagull alongside David Strathairn and Colleen Dewhurst. In 1986, Spacey appeared in a production of Sleuth in a New Jersey dinner theatre.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Spacey's prominence as a stage actor began in 1986, when he was cast opposite Jack Lemmon, Peter Gallagher, and Bethel Leslie, as Jamie, the eldest Tyrone son, in Jonathan Miller's lauded production of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night. Lemmon in particular would become a mentor to Spacey and was invited, along with Spacey's high school drama teacher, to be present when Spacey received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1999.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Spacey remained actively involved in the live theatre community. In 1991, he won a Tony Award for his portrayal of Uncle Louie in Neil Simon's Broadway hit Lost in Yonkers. His father was unconvinced that Spacey could make a career for himself as an actor and did not change his mind until Spacey became well known. In 1999, Spacey won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor and earned another Tony Award nomination in 1999 for The Iceman Cometh.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In February 2003, Spacey announced that he was to become the artistic director of the Old Vic, one of London's oldest theatres. Appearing at a press conference with Judi Dench and Elton John, Spacey promised both to appear on stage and to bring in big-name talent. He undertook to remain in the post for a full ten years. The Old Vic Theatre Company staged shows eight months out of the year. Spacey's first season started in September 2004, opening with the British premiere of the play Cloaca by Maria Goos, directed by Spacey, which opened to mixed reviews. In the 2005 season, Spacey made his UK Shakespearean debut, to good notices, in the title role of Richard II, directed by Trevor Nunn.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "On June 16, 2016, Spacey was awarded an honorary knighthood for his services to theatre, arts education, and international culture in the 2015 Queen's Birthday Honours. The honour, Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, was given at Clarence House by then-Prince Charles. As a non-Commonwealth Realm citizen, the award is honorary and he is not entitled to the honorific \"Sir\". Spacey had previously been awarded the lesser rank of honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to drama in 2010.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Spacey was a patron of the Shakespeare Schools Festival, a charity that enables school children across the UK to perform Shakespeare in professional theatres. He also sits on the board of directors of the Motion Picture and Television Fund.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In mid-2006, Spacey said that he was having the time of his life working at the Old Vic; at that point in his career, he said, he was \"trying to do things now that are much bigger and outside [myself]\". Spacey performed in productions of National Anthems by Dennis McIntyre, and The Philadelphia Story by Philip Barry, in which he played C.K. Dexter Haven, the Cary Grant role in the film version. Critics applauded Spacey for taking on the management of a theatre, but noted that while his acting was impressive, his skills and judgment as a producer/manager had yet to develop.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In the 2006 season, Spacey suffered a major setback with a production of Arthur Miller's Resurrection Blues, directed by Robert Altman. Despite an all-star cast (including Matthew Modine and future House of Cards co-star Neve Campbell) and the pedigree of Miller's script, Spacey's decision to lure Altman to the stage proved disastrous: after a fraught rehearsal period, the play opened to a critical panning, and closed after only a few weeks. Later in the year, Spacey starred in Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten, along with Colm Meaney and Eve Best. The play received excellent reviews for Spacey and Best, and was transferred to Broadway in 2007. For the spring part of the 2007–08 season, Jeff Goldblum and Laura Michelle Kelly joined Spacey as the three characters in David Mamet's 1988 play Speed-the-Plow.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In 2009, he directed the premiere of Joe Sutton's Complicit, with Richard Dreyfuss, David Suchet and Elizabeth McGovern. Later that year, Trevor Nunn directed Spacey in a revival of Inherit the Wind. Spacey played defense lawyer Henry Drummond, a role that was made famous by Spencer Tracy in the 1960 film of the same name. Sam Mendes directed Spacey in Shakespeare's Richard III; Spacey played the title role. The show began in June 2011, commencing a worldwide tour culminating in New York in early 2012. In March 2014, it was announced that Spacey would star in a one-man play at the Old Vic to celebrate his ten years as artistic director. He took on the part of Clarence Darrow in the play.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In 1986, Spacey made his first film appearance in Mike Nichols's Heartburn starring Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson. Spacey plays a small role credited as a subway thief. In 1988, Spacey also briefly appeared in another Nichols film, Working Girl, as businessman Bob Speck. Some of Spacey's other early roles include a widowed millionaire on L.A. Law; the television miniseries The Murder of Mary Phagan (1988), opposite Lemmon; and the comedy See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989). Spacey quickly developed a reputation as a character actor, and was cast in bigger roles, including the malevolent office manager in the ensemble film adaptation of the David Mamet play Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) starring Al Pacino, as well as news reporter Harry Kingsley in a film based on a 1917 dog sled race Iron Will (1994) directed by Charles Haid. Spacey also played one-half of a bickering Connecticut couple alongside Judy Davis in the dark comedy Christmas film The Ref (1994), and a malicious Hollywood studio boss in the satire Swimming with Sharks (1995).",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Spacey's performance as the enigmatic criminal Verbal Kint in Bryan Singer's 1995 neo-noir film The Usual Suspects won him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In 1995, Spacey also appeared in the David Fincher detective thriller Seven, making a sudden entrance late in the film as serial killer John Doe after going uncredited and unmentioned in the film's advertisements and opening credits. His work in Seven, The Usual Suspects and Outbreak earned him Best Supporting Actor honors at the 1995 Society of Texas Film Critics Awards. Spacey played an egomaniacal district attorney in A Time to Kill (1996) and founded Trigger Street Productions in 1997 with the purpose of producing and developing entertainment across various media. Spacey made his directorial debut with the film Albino Alligator (1996). The film was a box office bomb, grossing $339,379 with a budget of $6 million, but critics praised Spacey's direction. He also voiced Hopper in the animated film A Bug's Life (1998).",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Throughout his career, Spacey has been well known for playing villains; he remarked in 2013: \"I think people just like me evil for some reason. They want me to be a son of a bitch.\"",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In 1999, Spacey acted alongside Annette Bening in Sam Mendes's American Beauty. In the film he played the role of Lester Burnham, a depressed suburban father and advertising executive who becomes attracted to his teenage daughter's best friend. For this role, Spacey won his second Oscar, this time for Best Actor in a Leading Role. In his acceptance speech he dedicated his Oscar to Jack Lemmon, praising him as an influence, mentor, and father figure. He also stated, \"[Lemmon's] performance in The Apartment stands as one of the finest we've ever had\". That same year, he was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Spacey played a physically and emotionally scarred grade school teacher in Pay It Forward (2000), a patient in a mental institution who may or may not be an alien in K-Pax (2001), and singer Bobby Darin in Beyond the Sea (2004). The latter was a lifelong dream project for Spacey, who took on co-writing, directing, co-producing and starring duties in the biography/musical about Darin's life, career and relationship with actress Sandra Dee. Facing little interest for backing in the U.S., Spacey went to the United Kingdom and Germany for funding. Almost all of the film was made in Berlin. Spacey provided his own vocals on the film's soundtrack and appeared in several tribute concerts around the time of its release. Spacey received mostly positive reviews for his singing, as well as a Golden Globe nomination for his performance. However, reviewers debated the age disparity between Spacey and Darin, noting that Spacey was too old to convincingly portray Darin, particularly during the early stages of the singer's life depicted in the film.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In 2006, Spacey played Lex Luthor in the Bryan Singer superhero film Superman Returns starring Brandon Routh. He was to return for its 2009 sequel, but the series was instead rebooted with the 2013 film Man of Steel. Spacey also appeared in Edison, which received a direct-to-video release in 2006. The film was released in theaters in Netherlands on March 12, 2006.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In 2008, Spacey played a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) lecturer in the film 21. The film is based on Ben Mezrich's best seller Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions, a story of student MIT card-counters who used mathematical probability to aid them in card games such as blackjack. In early 2010, Spacey went to China to star in writer-director Dayyan Eng's black comedy film Inseparable, becoming the first Hollywood actor to star in a fully Chinese-funded film.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In 2011, Spacey starred in J.C. Chandor's financial thriller Margin Call alongside Paul Bettany, Jeremy Irons, Zachary Quinto, Demi Moore, and Stanley Tucci. The story at large takes place over a 24-hour period at a large Wall Street investment bank during the initial stages of the financial crisis of 2007–2008. The film, which focuses on the actions taken by a group of employees during the subsequent financial collapse, made its debut at the Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim. Spacey received the Independent Spirit Robert Altman Award along with the cast. That same year, Spacey co-starred in the black comedy film Horrible Bosses, which grossed over $209.6 million at the box office. In 2013 he executive-produced the biographical survival thriller film Captain Phillips, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "He starred as President Richard Nixon in the comedy-drama Elvis & Nixon (2016), which is based on the meeting that took place between Nixon and singer Elvis Presley (Michael Shannon) in December 1970 wherein Presley requested that Nixon swear him in as an undercover agent in the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. He next starred in the comedy film Nine Lives, as a man trapped in the body of a cat. The film was released on August 5, 2016.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In January 2016 it was announced that Relativity Media, which was just emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy, had acquired Trigger Street Productions and that Spacey would become chairman of Relativity Studios, while Dana Brunetti would become the studio's president. Spacey called the move \"an incredible opportunity to make great entertainment\" and said he considered it the \"next evolution in my career\". However, when the paperwork for the studio was filed for the court, it emerged that Spacey had opted out of assuming the chairmanship of the studios, and by the end of 2016 Brunetti had also left Relativity, while both remained executive producers on House of Cards and Manifesto.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In March 2017, it was announced that Spacey would portray J. Paul Getty in Ridley Scott's All the Money in the World. He shot his role in the film in ten days over the summer of 2017. But because of the sexual assault allegations against Spacey, it was announced on November 8, 2017, that all of his footage would be excised, and that Christopher Plummer would replace him in reshoots. In spite of the very tight schedule, TriStar Pictures completed the new version of the film in time for a December 25 release.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Spacey appeared in the film Billionaire Boys Club, which had a limited release on August 17, 2018. Vertical Entertainment stated that it would take no action to remove Spacey from the film, as it had been completed in late 2016, before the allegations made in October 2017.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "We don't condone sexual harassment on any level and we fully support victims of it. At the same time, this is neither an easy nor insensitive decision to release this film in theatres, but we believe in giving the cast, as well as hundreds of crew members who worked hard on the film, the chance to see their final product reach audiences.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Following the allegations leveled against him, Spacey maintained a lower profile and his career stalled. In May 2021, it was announced that he had been cast in a supporting role as a police detective in the crime drama film The Man Who Drew God, directed by and starring Franco Nero, which is about a blind artist who is wrongly accused of sexually abusing a child. The film reunited Spacey with Faye Dunaway, whom he directed in Albino Alligator. In August 2021, it was reported that he was filming in California for a small production, Peter Five Eight, directed by Michael Zaiko Hall. In the movie, Spacey is said to play a charismatic serial killer.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "On November 3, 2022, Variety reported that Spacey was set to speak at the National Museum of Cinema and was going to receive a lifetime achievement award on January 16, 2023, despite the allegations against him. On November 28, 2022, after winning a sexual battery lawsuit against him filed by Anthony Rapp, Spacey was cast in the British indie thriller Control. Its director, Gene Fallaize, dismissed concerns about working with Spacey.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In 2022, Spacey was cast as the late Croatian leader Franjo Tudjman in the political drama Once Upon a Time in Croatia, directed by Jakov Sedlar.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In 1987, Spacey made his first major television appearance in the second-season premiere of Crime Story, playing a Kennedy-esque American senator. That same year he appeared in spy thriller series The Equalizer as Detective Sergeant Cole in the episode \"Solo\". He earned a fan base after playing the criminally insane arms dealer Mel Profitt on the television series Wiseguy (1988).",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Spacey hosted Saturday Night Live twice: first in 1997 with musical guest Beck and special guests Michael Palin and John Cleese from Monty Python's Flying Circus and again in May 2006 with musical guest Nelly Furtado.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "In 2008 Spacey starred as Ron Klain in the HBO original political drama film Recount revolving around Florida's vote recount during the 2000 United States presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore. The film was written by Danny Strong and directed by Jay Roach and starred Bob Balaban, Laura Dern, John Hurt, Denis Leary, and Tom Wilkinson. The television film won three Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Television Movie. For his performance in the film, Spacey was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Miniseries or Television Film. That same year Spacey produced the TV movie Bernard and Doris, an HBO semi-fictionalized account of the relationship that developed between socialite heiress and philanthropist Doris Duke and her self-destructive Irish butler Bernard Lafferty later in her life. The film starred Ralph Fiennes and Susan Sarandon and was directed by Bob Balaban. The film premiered at the Hamptons International Film Festival to critical acclaim, and Spacey was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Television Movie. Spacey portrayed the antagonist Jonathan Irons in the 2014 video game Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare through motion capture.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Spacey is well known in Hollywood for his impressions. When he appeared on Inside the Actors Studio, he imitated (at host James Lipton's request) Jack Lemmon, James Stewart, Johnny Carson, Katharine Hepburn, Clint Eastwood, John Gielgud, Marlon Brando, Christopher Walken, and Al Pacino. On The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Spacey admitted to using his vocal skills as a young actor in New York City to pretend to be Carson's son in order to obtain free theatre tickets and to enter Studio 54. Spacey's Capitol/EMI album Forever Cool (2007) features two duets with Spacey and an earlier recording of Dean Martin: \"Ain't That a Kick in the Head\" and \"King of the Road\". In December 2007, Spacey co-hosted the Nobel Peace Prize Concert along with Uma Thurman.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "On March 18, 2011, it was announced that Spacey was cast as Frank Underwood in the Netflix series House of Cards, adapted from a 1990 BBC political drama of the same name. He was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series at the 65th Primetime Emmy Awards in 2013, becoming the first lead actor to be Primetime Emmy-nominated from a web television series. Spacey went on to win the Golden Globe award for Best Actor in a Television Series Drama at the 72nd Golden Globe Awards and Screen Actors Guild nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series at the 21st Screen Actors Guild Awards for his season 2 performance. He was fired from the series after the fifth season following multiple allegations of sexual misconduct.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "In 2018, Earl Blue, owner of the security company VIP Protective Services, claimed that Spacey had used racial slurs against his predominantly African-American staff when they were hired on the House of Cards set in 2012, before getting Blue fired.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Spacey's career has spanned 30 years across film, television, video games and theatre. His film career started in the late 1980s after small parts in the Mike Nichols films Heartburn (1986) and Working Girl (1988). In the '90s he had supporting roles in films such as Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) opposite Jack Lemmon and Al Pacino and the black comedy film The Ref before being cast in the role of Roger \"Verbal\" Kint in 1995's The Usual Suspects, which earned him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. That same year he played serial killer John Doe in Se7en opposite Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman. He went on to star in noir crime drama L.A. Confidential (1997) alongside Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce, Clint Eastwood's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997), and American Beauty (1999), for which he earned his second Academy Award, this time for Best Actor.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "In the 2000s he appeared in the films Pay It Forward with Helen Hunt (2000), Superman Returns as Lex Luthor (2006), and 21 with Jim Sturgess (2008), the last of which he also produced. In 2004 he wrote, directed and starred in the biopic musical Beyond the Sea (2004). In 2011 he co-starred with Paul Bettany and Jeremy Irons in the drama film Margin Call. That same year he played antagonist Dave Harken in the comedy Horrible Bosses with Jason Bateman, a role he reprised in the 2014 sequel film Horrible Bosses 2. He played Doc in the 2017 film Baby Driver with Ansel Elgort.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "From 2013 to 2017, he played Francis \"Frank\" Underwood in the Netflix series House of Cards alongside Robin Wright. Spacey also starred in the HBO television film Recount (2008) and produced the 2006 film Bernard and Doris.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Spacey has won two Academy Awards, a Tony Award, a Golden Globe Award, four Screen Actors Guild Awards and a British Academy Film Award. He was nominated for a Grammy Award and for 12 Primetime Emmy Awards. Spacey received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1999 and was named an honorary Commander and Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2010 and 2015, respectively.",
"title": "Awards and nominations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "An article in The Sunday Times Magazine in 1999 stated that Spacey's \"love affair with acting, and the absence of a visible partner in the life of an attractive 40-year-old, has resulted in Esquire magazine asserting two years ago that he must be gay\". Spacey responded to the rumors by telling Playboy and other interviewers that he was not gay and by telling Lesley White of The Sunday Times:",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "I chose for a long time not to answer these questions because of the manner in which they were asked, and because I was never talking to someone I trusted, so why should I? Recently I chose to participate because it's a little hard on the people I love.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "In 1999, reports suggested Spacey was dating a script supervisor named Dianne Dreyer, with their relationship possibly dating back as far as 1992. In 2000, Spacey brought Dreyer to the Academy Awards; during the acceptance speech for his Best Actor award, Spacey said, \"Dianne, thank you for teaching me about caring about the right things, and I love you.\"",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "In 2007, Gotham magazine quoted Spacey saying:",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "I've never believed in pimping my personal life out for publicity. Although I might be interested in doing it, I will never do it. People can gossip all they want; they can speculate all they want. I just happen to believe that there's a separation between the public life and the private life. Everybody has the right to a private life no matter what their professions are.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Spacey is a Democrat and has been described as left-leaning, with his personal views mirroring some of those professed by his fictional character in House of Cards.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Spacey worked on Jimmy Carter's 1976 presidential campaign.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "He is a friend of President Bill Clinton, having met Clinton before his presidency began. Spacey once described Clinton as \"one of the shining lights\" in the political process. He additionally made a cameo appearance in the short film President Clinton: Final Days, a light-hearted political satire produced by the Clinton Administration for the 2000 White House Correspondents Dinner.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Spacey has undertaken activism in the domain of HIV/AIDS. In 2002, Spacey, actor Chris Tucker, and Jeffrey Epstein accompanied Bill Clinton on a trip throughout several African countries to promote AIDS awareness on the continent. He also participated in several fundraisers for HIV/AIDS healthcare, including amfAR Cinema Against AIDS in 2016 and the 25th Annual Elton John AIDS Foundation Academy Award Party in 2017.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Spacey met Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez in September 2007 but never spoke to the press about their encounter. During the trip, he visited the Venezuelan film studio Villa del Cine. In March 2011, following Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko's crackdown on the Belarusian democracy movement, Spacey joined Jude Law in a street protest in London against Lukashenko's regime.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "In October 2008, Spacey started the Kevin Spacey Foundation in the UK to encourage youth involvement in the arts. Headquartered in England and Wales, its purpose was to provide grants to individuals and organizations to help young people study the arts, particularly theatre. The charity shut down in February 2018 following sexual misconduct allegations against Spacey.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "In September 2006, Spacey said that he intended to take up British citizenship when it is offered to him. When asked about the UK's 2016 European Union membership referendum, Spacey replied, \"I appreciate you asking me the question, but I am not a British citizen, I am a resident of Great Britain. And I have never in my twelve years ever gotten involved in politics in Great Britain. I think it's inappropriate for me as a, really as a guest, in Great Britain, so I'll leave that to the British people.\"",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "On October 29, 2017, actor Anthony Rapp alleged that Spacey, while appearing intoxicated, made a sexual advance toward him at a party in 1986, when Rapp was 14 and Spacey was 26. Rapp had also shared this story in a 2001 interview with The Advocate, but Spacey's name was redacted from publication to avoid legal disputes and public outing. Spacey stated on Twitter that he did not remember the encounter, but that he owed Rapp \"the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior\" if he had behaved as asserted. On September 9, 2020, Rapp sued Spacey for sexual assault, sexual battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress under the Child Victims Act.",
"title": "Sexual misconduct allegations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Fifteen others then came forward alleging similar abuse, including Boston anchorwoman Heather Unruh, who alleged that Spacey sexually assaulted her son; filmmaker Tony Montana; actor Roberto Cavazos; Richard Dreyfuss's son Harry; and eight people who worked on House of Cards. The Guardian was contacted by \"a number of people\" who alleged that Spacey \"groped and behaved in an inappropriate way with young men\" as artistic director of the Old Vic.",
"title": "Sexual misconduct allegations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Spacey also appears on flight logs from Jeffrey Epstein's private jet from the early 2000s.",
"title": "Sexual misconduct allegations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "On the same day as Rapp's allegations against him, Spacey came out as gay when apologizing to Rapp. He said, \"I have had relationships with both men and women. I have loved and had romantic encounters with men throughout my life, and I choose now to live as a gay man.\" His decision to come out via his statement was criticized by gay celebrities, including Billy Eichner, George Takei, Lance Bass, and Wanda Sykes, as an attempt to change the subject and shift focus from Rapp's accusation, for using his own drunkenness as an excuse for making a sexual advance on a minor, and for implying a connection between homosexuality and child sexual abuse.",
"title": "Sexual misconduct allegations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Some readers additionally felt that by claiming that he was \"horrified\" by Rapp's story, Spacey was attempting to paint himself as the victim of the alleged abuse. In October 2022, Spacey expressed regret over the way he came out and said that it was \"never [his] intention\" to deflect from the allegations against him or conflate them with his sexual orientation.",
"title": "Sexual misconduct allegations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Amid the allegations, filming was suspended on the sixth and final season of House of Cards. The show's production company had implemented \"an anonymous complaint hotline, crisis counselors, and sexual harassment legal advisors for the crew\", and stated that in 2012, \"someone on the crew shared a complaint about a specific remark and gesture made by Kevin Spacey. Immediate action was taken following our review of the situation and we are confident the issue was resolved promptly to the satisfaction of all involved.\" According to the production company, Spacey \"willingly participated in a training process and since that time MRC has not been made aware of any other complaints\" involving him. The show had been due to end in 2018. The season was shortened from 13 episodes to eight, and Spacey was removed from the cast and from his role as executive producer.",
"title": "Sexual misconduct allegations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "The Gore Vidal biographical film Gore, starring Spacey, which was set to be distributed by Netflix, was canceled, and Netflix went on to sever all ties with him. He was due to appear in All the Money in the World as industrialist J. Paul Getty; his scenes were cut and Christopher Plummer replaced him as Getty in reshoots. In an interview with Variety, Plummer said: \"It's really not replacing [Spacey]. It's starting all over again.\" Plummer added: \"I think it's very sad what happened to him... Kevin is such a talented and a terrifically gifted actor, and it's so sad. It's such a shame. That's all I can say, because that's it.\"",
"title": "Sexual misconduct allegations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "The International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences reversed its decision to honor Spacey with the 2017 International Emmy Founders Award. On November 2, 2017, Variety reported that his publicist Staci Wolfe and talent agency Creative Artists Agency were ending their relationships with him.",
"title": "Sexual misconduct allegations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "From 2018 to 2020, and in 2023, Spacey posted an annual video to his YouTube channel on Christmas Eve.",
"title": "Sexual misconduct allegations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "On December 24, 2018, Spacey uploaded a video titled \"Let Me Be Frank\", in which he – while in character as Frank Underwood – appeared to deny the real-life allegations leveled against him. The video was described by Slate writer Daniel Politi as \"bizarre\" and \"stomach-churning\", while drawing derision from actresses such as Ellen Barkin, Patricia Arquette, and Alyssa Milano, who called it \"creepy\". As of December 2022, the video has over 13 million views.",
"title": "Sexual misconduct allegations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "On December 24, 2019, Spacey posted another video, titled \"KTWK\" (short for \"kill them with kindness\"), to his YouTube channel, once again in character as Underwood. In 2020, Spacey posted a third Christmas Eve video, titled \"1-800 XMAS\", in which he spoke in Underwood's accent before breaking character and speaking in his natural voice. He then expressed sympathy for people struggling amid the COVID-19 pandemic and promoted two suicide and substance abuse hotlines. The annual videos have been described as \"tone-deaf\" by Eric Hegedus in the New York Post with respect to the allegations against him.",
"title": "Sexual misconduct allegations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "On December 24, 2023, Spacey posted a video where he stayed in character as Underwood, conversing with Tucker Carlson. The two discussed Netflix and the upcoming 2024 presidential election.",
"title": "Sexual misconduct allegations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "The Los Angeles District Attorney's office stated, in April 2018, that it would investigate an allegation that Spacey had sexually assaulted an adult male in 1992. In July 2018, three more allegations of sexual assault against Spacey were revealed by Scotland Yard, bringing the total number of open investigations in the UK to six. In September 2018, a lawsuit filed at Los Angeles Superior Court claimed that Spacey sexually assaulted an unnamed masseur in October 2016 at a house in Malibu, California.",
"title": "Sexual misconduct allegations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "In December 2018, Spacey was charged with a felony for allegedly sexually assaulting journalist Heather Unruh's 18-year-old son in Nantucket, Massachusetts, in July 2016. Spacey pleaded not guilty to the charge on January 7, 2019. Unruh's son told police that he was texting with his girlfriend throughout the alleged \"groping\" incident. Spacey's defense attorneys spent months trying to obtain copies of the texts and the phone itself. In mid-May 2019, Unruh's son's personal attorney informed the court that the phone in question was \"missing\". On June 4, 2019, the defense learned that, when Unruh gave the police her son's phone in 2017, she admitted that she had deleted some of the text messages. Later that month, her son filed a lawsuit against Spacey, claiming emotional damages. Shortly later, on July 5, 2019, they withdrew the lawsuit.",
"title": "Sexual misconduct allegations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "On July 17, 2019, the criminal assault charge against Spacey was dropped by the Cape and Islands prosecutors. When the anonymous massage therapist who accused him died, the last remaining criminal case against Spacey was closed.",
"title": "Sexual misconduct allegations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "On September 9, 2020, Anthony Rapp accused Spacey in a complaint about actions that allegedly happened in 1986 (sexual assault and sexual battery) and intentional infliction of emotional distress under the Child Victims Act, which extended New York's statute of limitations for suits related to child sexual abuse. Joining Rapp in the suit against Spacey was a man who requested to remain anonymous who accused Spacey of sexually abusing him in 1983, when he was 14 and Spacey was 24. On June 17, 2021, the anonymous accuser was dismissed from the case due to his refusal to publicly identify himself. As Rapp's trial lawsuit against Spacey commenced in October 2022, it was revealed that he had given an inaccurate description of the apartment where he alleged the abuse took place. On October 17, the judge dismissed the emotional-distress charges as a \"duplicate\" of the battery charges. On October 20, a jury found Spacey not liable.",
"title": "Sexual misconduct allegations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "In 2020, Spacey and his production companies M. Profitt Productions and Trigger Street Productions were ordered to pay $31 million to MRC, the studio that produced House of Cards, for violating its sexual harassment policy. Spacey appealed to have the arbitration award overturned, but the request was denied on August 4, 2022.",
"title": "Sexual misconduct allegations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "On May 26, 2022, Spacey was charged by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in the United Kingdom with four counts of sexual assault against three complainants. The alleged offenses occurred between 2005 and 2013 in London and Gloucestershire. According to the Crown Prosecution Service, it would be possible to formally charge Spacey only if he entered England or Wales either voluntarily or through an extradition request. Nevertheless, in a statement to Good Morning America on May 31, 2022, Spacey said he would \"voluntarily appear in the U.K. as soon as can be arranged\".",
"title": "Sexual misconduct allegations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "In his first British court appearance, on June 16, Spacey denied the allegations against him. On July 14, he pleaded not guilty to the charges in London. On November 16, the CPS authorized an additional seven charges against Spacey, all related to a single complainant arising from incidents alleged to have occurred between 2001 and 2004. Three charges were dismissed before or during the trial, which began on June 28, 2023, and, on July 26, 2023, a jury found Spacey not guilty of the remaining nine charges.",
"title": "Sexual misconduct allegations"
}
] |
Kevin Spacey Fowler is an American actor. Known for his work on stage and screen, he has received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Tony Award, and two Laurence Olivier Awards. Spacey was named an honorary Commander and Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2010 and 2015, respectively. Spacey had small roles in Mike Nichols's comedy-drama films Heartburn (1986) and Working Girl (1988). He won two Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actor for playing a con man in The Usual Suspects (1995) and Best Actor for playing a suburban husband and father going through a midlife crisis in American Beauty (1999). His other films include Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), Se7en (1995), L.A. Confidential (1997), Pay It Forward (2000), Superman Returns (2006), 21 (2008), Margin Call (2011), and Baby Driver (2017). He has also directed the films Albino Alligator (1996) and Beyond the Sea (2004). In Broadway theatre, Spacey starred in a revival of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night in 1986. He won a Tony Award in 1991 for his role in Lost in Yonkers. He won a Laurence Olivier Award for his performance in a revival of The Iceman Cometh in 1999. Spacey portrayed the title role in Richard III in 2011 and Clarence Darrow in a West End production of Darrow in 2015. He was the artistic director of the Old Vic theatre in London from 2004 to 2015, for which he received the Society of London Theatre Special Award. In 2017, he hosted the 71st Tony Awards. In television, Spacey portrayed Ron Klain in Recount (2008) and produced Bernard and Doris (2008), both for HBO Films. From 2013 to 2017, he starred as Frank Underwood in the Netflix political drama series House of Cards, which won him a Golden Globe Award and two consecutive Screen Actors Guild Awards for Best Actor. Both Spacey and the show itself were nominated for five consecutive Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series and Outstanding Drama Series, respectively. In 2017, Spacey faced several allegations of sexual misconduct. In the wake of these claims, Netflix cut ties with Spacey, shelving his biopic of Gore Vidal and removing him from the last season of House of Cards. His completed role as J. Paul Getty in Ridley Scott's film All the Money in the World (2017) was reshot with Christopher Plummer. Spacey has denied the accusations and was found not liable in a 2022 lawsuit in New York. In a separate case in London, he was acquitted by a jury of sexual assault charges in 2023.
|
2001-07-29T04:28:46Z
|
2023-12-29T01:53:51Z
|
[
"Template:External media",
"Template:Navboxes",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Sister project links",
"Template:See also",
"Template:Cbignore",
"Template:Subscription required",
"Template:Pp-blp",
"Template:Use mdy dates",
"Template:Blockquote",
"Template:Cite encyclopedia",
"Template:Cite tweet",
"Template:Pp-move-indef",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:IBDB name",
"Template:Cite episode",
"Template:Dead link",
"Template:Official website",
"Template:Iobdb name",
"Template:Infobox person",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite magazine",
"Template:Cite AV media",
"Template:Portal bar",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Citation needed",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Cite interview",
"Template:IMDb name"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Spacey
|
16,769 |
K. Eric Drexler
|
Kim Eric Drexler (born April 25, 1955) is an American engineer best known for introducing molecular nanotechnology (MNT), and his studies of its potential from the 1970s and 1980s. His 1991 doctoral thesis at Massachusetts Institute of Technology was revised and published as the book Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery Manufacturing and Computation (1992), which received the Association of American Publishers award for Best Computer Science Book of 1992. He has been called the "godfather of nanotechnology".
K. Eric Drexler was strongly influenced by ideas on limits to growth in the early 1970s. During his first year at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he sought out someone who was working on extraterrestrial resources. He found Gerard K. O'Neill of Princeton University, a physicist famous for his work on storage rings for particle accelerators and his landmark work on the concepts of space colonization. Drexler participated in NASA summer studies on space colonies in 1975 and 1976. He fabricated metal films a few tens of nanometers thick on a wax support to demonstrate the potentials of high-performance solar sails. He was active in space politics, helping the L5 Society defeat the Moon Treaty in 1980. Besides working summers for O'Neill, building mass driver prototypes, Drexler delivered papers at the first three Space Manufacturing conferences at Princeton. The 1977 and 1979 papers were co-authored with Keith Henson, and patents were issued on both subjects, vapor phase fabrication and space radiators.
During the late 1970s, Drexler began to develop ideas about molecular nanotechnology (MNT). In 1979, he encountered Richard Feynman's provocative 1959 talk "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom." In 1981, Drexler wrote a seminal research article, published by PNAS, "Molecular engineering: An approach to the development of general capabilities for molecular manipulation". This article has continued to be cited, more than 620 times, during the following 35 years.
The term "nano-technology" had been coined by the Tokyo University of Science professor Norio Taniguchi in 1974 to describe the precision manufacture of materials with nanometer tolerances, and Drexler unknowingly used a related term in his 1986 book Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology to describe what later became known as molecular nanotechnology (MNT). In that book, he proposed the idea of a nanoscale "assembler" which would be able to build a copy of itself and of other items of arbitrary complexity. He also first published the term "grey goo" to describe what might happen if a hypothetical self-replicating molecular nanotechnology went out of control. He has subsequently tried to clarify his concerns about out-of-control self-replicators, and make the case that molecular manufacturing does not require such devices.
Drexler holds three degrees from MIT. He received his B.S. in Interdisciplinary Sciences in 1977 and his M.S. in 1979 in Astro/Aerospace Engineering with a Master's thesis titled "Design of a High Performance Solar Sail System." In 1991, he earned a Ph.D. through the MIT Media Lab (formally, the Media Arts and Sciences Section, School of Architecture and Planning) after the department of electrical engineering and computer science refused to approve Drexler's plan of study.
His Ph.D. work was the first doctoral degree on the topic of molecular nanotechnology and his thesis, "Molecular Machinery and Manufacturing with Applications to Computation," was published (with minor editing) as Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing and Computation (1992), which received the Association of American Publishers award for Best Computer Science Book of 1992.
Drexler was married to Christine Peterson for 21 years. The marriage ended in 2002.
In 2006, Drexler married Rosa Wang, a former investment banker who works with Ashoka: Innovators for the Public on improving the social capital markets.
Drexler has arranged to be cryonically preserved in the event of legal death.
Drexler's work on nanotechnology was criticized as naive by Nobel Prize winner Richard Smalley in a 2001 Scientific American article. Smalley first argued that "fat fingers" made MNT impossible. He later argued that nanomachines would have to resemble chemical enzymes more than Drexler's assemblers and could only work in water. Drexler maintained that both were straw man arguments, and in the case of enzymes, wrote that "Prof. Klibanov wrote in 1994, ' ... using an enzyme in organic solvents eliminates several obstacles ... '" Drexler had difficulty in getting Smalley to respond, but in December 2003, Chemical and Engineering news carried a four-part debate. Ray Kurzweil disputes Smalley's arguments.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, in its 2006 review of the National Nanotechnology Initiative, argues that it is difficult to predict the future capabilities of nanotechnology:
Although theoretical calculations can be made today, the eventually attainable range of chemical reaction cycles, error rates, speed of operation, and thermodynamic efficiencies of such bottom-up manufacturing systems cannot be reliably predicted at this time. Thus, the eventually attainable perfection and complexity of manufactured products, while they can be calculated in theory, cannot be predicted with confidence. Finally, the optimum research paths that might lead to systems which greatly exceed the thermodynamic efficiencies and other capabilities of biological systems cannot be reliably predicted at this time. Research funding that is based on the ability of investigators to produce experimental demonstrations that link to abstract models and guide long-term vision is most appropriate to achieve this goal.
Drexler is mentioned in Neal Stephenson's science fiction novel The Diamond Age as one of the heroes of a future world where nanotechnology is ubiquitous.
In the science fiction novel Newton's Wake by Ken MacLeod, a 'drexler' is a nanotech assembler of pretty much anything that can fit in the volume of the particular machine—from socks to starships.
Drexler is also mentioned in the science fiction book Decipher by Stel Pavlou; his book is mentioned as one of the starting points of nanomachine construction, as well as giving a better understanding of the way carbon 60 was to be applied.
James Rollins references Drexler's Engines of Creation in his novel Excavation, using his theory of a molecular machine in two sections as a possible explanation for the mysterious "Substance Z" in the story.
Drexler gets a mention in Timothy Leary's Design for Dying in the "Mutation" section, briefly detailing the 8-circuit model of consciousness (pg. 91).
Drexler is mentioned in DC Comics' Doom Patrol vol. 2, #57 (published July 1992).
Drexler is mentioned in Michael Crichton's 2002 novel Prey in the introduction (pg xii).
The Drexler Facility (ドレクサー機関) of molecular nanotechnology research in the Japanese eroge visual novels Baldr Sky is named after him. The "Assemblers" are its key invention.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Kim Eric Drexler (born April 25, 1955) is an American engineer best known for introducing molecular nanotechnology (MNT), and his studies of its potential from the 1970s and 1980s. His 1991 doctoral thesis at Massachusetts Institute of Technology was revised and published as the book Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery Manufacturing and Computation (1992), which received the Association of American Publishers award for Best Computer Science Book of 1992. He has been called the \"godfather of nanotechnology\".",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "K. Eric Drexler was strongly influenced by ideas on limits to growth in the early 1970s. During his first year at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he sought out someone who was working on extraterrestrial resources. He found Gerard K. O'Neill of Princeton University, a physicist famous for his work on storage rings for particle accelerators and his landmark work on the concepts of space colonization. Drexler participated in NASA summer studies on space colonies in 1975 and 1976. He fabricated metal films a few tens of nanometers thick on a wax support to demonstrate the potentials of high-performance solar sails. He was active in space politics, helping the L5 Society defeat the Moon Treaty in 1980. Besides working summers for O'Neill, building mass driver prototypes, Drexler delivered papers at the first three Space Manufacturing conferences at Princeton. The 1977 and 1979 papers were co-authored with Keith Henson, and patents were issued on both subjects, vapor phase fabrication and space radiators.",
"title": "Life and work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "During the late 1970s, Drexler began to develop ideas about molecular nanotechnology (MNT). In 1979, he encountered Richard Feynman's provocative 1959 talk \"There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom.\" In 1981, Drexler wrote a seminal research article, published by PNAS, \"Molecular engineering: An approach to the development of general capabilities for molecular manipulation\". This article has continued to be cited, more than 620 times, during the following 35 years.",
"title": "Life and work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The term \"nano-technology\" had been coined by the Tokyo University of Science professor Norio Taniguchi in 1974 to describe the precision manufacture of materials with nanometer tolerances, and Drexler unknowingly used a related term in his 1986 book Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology to describe what later became known as molecular nanotechnology (MNT). In that book, he proposed the idea of a nanoscale \"assembler\" which would be able to build a copy of itself and of other items of arbitrary complexity. He also first published the term \"grey goo\" to describe what might happen if a hypothetical self-replicating molecular nanotechnology went out of control. He has subsequently tried to clarify his concerns about out-of-control self-replicators, and make the case that molecular manufacturing does not require such devices.",
"title": "Life and work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Drexler holds three degrees from MIT. He received his B.S. in Interdisciplinary Sciences in 1977 and his M.S. in 1979 in Astro/Aerospace Engineering with a Master's thesis titled \"Design of a High Performance Solar Sail System.\" In 1991, he earned a Ph.D. through the MIT Media Lab (formally, the Media Arts and Sciences Section, School of Architecture and Planning) after the department of electrical engineering and computer science refused to approve Drexler's plan of study.",
"title": "Life and work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "His Ph.D. work was the first doctoral degree on the topic of molecular nanotechnology and his thesis, \"Molecular Machinery and Manufacturing with Applications to Computation,\" was published (with minor editing) as Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing and Computation (1992), which received the Association of American Publishers award for Best Computer Science Book of 1992.",
"title": "Life and work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Drexler was married to Christine Peterson for 21 years. The marriage ended in 2002.",
"title": "Life and work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In 2006, Drexler married Rosa Wang, a former investment banker who works with Ashoka: Innovators for the Public on improving the social capital markets.",
"title": "Life and work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Drexler has arranged to be cryonically preserved in the event of legal death.",
"title": "Life and work"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Drexler's work on nanotechnology was criticized as naive by Nobel Prize winner Richard Smalley in a 2001 Scientific American article. Smalley first argued that \"fat fingers\" made MNT impossible. He later argued that nanomachines would have to resemble chemical enzymes more than Drexler's assemblers and could only work in water. Drexler maintained that both were straw man arguments, and in the case of enzymes, wrote that \"Prof. Klibanov wrote in 1994, ' ... using an enzyme in organic solvents eliminates several obstacles ... '\" Drexler had difficulty in getting Smalley to respond, but in December 2003, Chemical and Engineering news carried a four-part debate. Ray Kurzweil disputes Smalley's arguments.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, in its 2006 review of the National Nanotechnology Initiative, argues that it is difficult to predict the future capabilities of nanotechnology:",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Although theoretical calculations can be made today, the eventually attainable range of chemical reaction cycles, error rates, speed of operation, and thermodynamic efficiencies of such bottom-up manufacturing systems cannot be reliably predicted at this time. Thus, the eventually attainable perfection and complexity of manufactured products, while they can be calculated in theory, cannot be predicted with confidence. Finally, the optimum research paths that might lead to systems which greatly exceed the thermodynamic efficiencies and other capabilities of biological systems cannot be reliably predicted at this time. Research funding that is based on the ability of investigators to produce experimental demonstrations that link to abstract models and guide long-term vision is most appropriate to achieve this goal.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Drexler is mentioned in Neal Stephenson's science fiction novel The Diamond Age as one of the heroes of a future world where nanotechnology is ubiquitous.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In the science fiction novel Newton's Wake by Ken MacLeod, a 'drexler' is a nanotech assembler of pretty much anything that can fit in the volume of the particular machine—from socks to starships.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Drexler is also mentioned in the science fiction book Decipher by Stel Pavlou; his book is mentioned as one of the starting points of nanomachine construction, as well as giving a better understanding of the way carbon 60 was to be applied.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "James Rollins references Drexler's Engines of Creation in his novel Excavation, using his theory of a molecular machine in two sections as a possible explanation for the mysterious \"Substance Z\" in the story.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Drexler gets a mention in Timothy Leary's Design for Dying in the \"Mutation\" section, briefly detailing the 8-circuit model of consciousness (pg. 91).",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Drexler is mentioned in DC Comics' Doom Patrol vol. 2, #57 (published July 1992).",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Drexler is mentioned in Michael Crichton's 2002 novel Prey in the introduction (pg xii).",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The Drexler Facility (ドレクサー機関) of molecular nanotechnology research in the Japanese eroge visual novels Baldr Sky is named after him. The \"Assemblers\" are its key invention.",
"title": "Reception"
}
] |
Kim Eric Drexler is an American engineer best known for introducing molecular nanotechnology (MNT), and his studies of its potential from the 1970s and 1980s. His 1991 doctoral thesis at Massachusetts Institute of Technology was revised and published as the book Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery Manufacturing and Computation (1992), which received the Association of American Publishers award for Best Computer Science Book of 1992. He has been called the "godfather of nanotechnology".
|
2001-07-30T07:43:04Z
|
2023-11-07T04:46:15Z
|
[
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Official website",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Blockquote",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Infobox scientist",
"Template:Future of Humanity Institute",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Commonscat",
"Template:Triangulation",
"Template:Existential risk from artificial intelligence",
"Template:Molecular nanotechnology footer",
"Template:See also",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Transhumanism footer",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:ISBN"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K._Eric_Drexler
|
16,771 |
Kernel
|
Kernel may refer to:
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Kernel may refer to:",
"title": ""
}
] |
Kernel may refer to:
|
2001-10-31T08:16:44Z
|
2023-11-02T16:56:29Z
|
[
"Template:Wiktionary",
"Template:TOC right",
"Template:Anchor",
"Template:Disambiguation"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel
|
16,772 |
Korean War
|
The Korean War was fought between North Korea and South Korea from 1950 to 1953. The war began on 25 June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea following years of internal instability and hostilities between the two states. North Korea was supported by China and the Soviet Union while South Korea was supported by the United States and allied countries. The fighting ended with an armistice on 27 July 1953.
In 1910, the Empire of Japan annexed Korea as a colony for 35 years until its surrender at the end of World War II on 15 August 1945. The United States and the Soviet Union divided Korea along the 38th parallel into two zones of occupation. The Soviets administered the northern zone, and the Americans administered the southern zone. In 1948, as a result of Cold War tensions, the occupation zones became two sovereign states. A communist state, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, was established in the north under the government led by Premier Kim Il Sung, while a capitalist state, the Republic of Korea, was established in the south under the government led by President Syngman Rhee. Both governments claimed to be the sole legitimate government of all of Korea and neither accepted the border as permanent.
The years prior to North Korea's invasion of South Korea were marked by border clashes between the two countries and an insurgency in the South that was backed by the North. After failed attempts to stop the fighting and unify the Koreas, North Korean forces (Korean People's Army or KPA) crossed the 38th parallel on 25 June 1950, formally starting the war. The United Nations Security Council denounced North Korea's actions and authorized the formation of the United Nations Command and the dispatch of forces to Korea to repel it. The Soviet Union was boycotting the UN for recognizing Taiwan (Republic of China) as China, and the People's Republic of China was not recognized by the UN, so neither could support their ally North Korea at the Security Council meeting. Twenty-one countries of the United Nations eventually contributed to the UN force, with the United States providing around 90% of the military personnel, and represented the first attempt at collective security under the United Nations system.
After the first two months of war, the South Korean army (ROKA) and hastily dispatched American forces were on the point of defeat, retreating to a small area behind a defensive line known as the Pusan Perimeter. In September 1950, a risky amphibious UN counteroffensive was launched at Incheon, cutting off KPA troops and supply lines in South Korea. Those who escaped envelopment and capture were forced back north. UN forces then invaded North Korea in October 1950 and moved rapidly towards the Yalu River—the border with China—but on 19 October 1950, Chinese forces - the People's Volunteer Army (PVA) - crossed the Yalu and entered the war. The UN retreated from North Korea following the PVA's First Phase Offensive and the Second Phase Offensive. China along with their North Korean and Soviet allies pressed their offensive, invading the South and capturing Seoul by early January of 1951. A UN force recaptured the city from them, and the communist forces were pushed back to positions around the 38th parallel following PVA's abortive Fifth Phase Offensive. After this, the front which was close to where the war had started stabilized, and the last two years were a war of attrition.
The fighting ended on 27 July 1953 when the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed. The agreement created the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) to separate North and South Korea, and allowed the return of prisoners. However, no peace treaty was ever signed, and the two Koreas are technically still at war, engaged in a frozen conflict. In April 2018, the leaders of North and South Korea met at the DMZ and agreed to work toward a treaty to end the Korean War formally.
The Korean War was a major conflict of the Cold War and among the most destructive conflicts of the modern era, with approximately 3 million war fatalities and a larger proportional civilian death toll than World War II or the Vietnam War. It resulted in the destruction of virtually all of Korea's major cities, with thousands of massacres committed by both sides—including the mass killing of tens of thousands of suspected communists by the South Korean government, and the torture and starvation of prisoners of war by the North Koreans. North Korea became among the most heavily bombed countries in history. Over the course of the war 1.5 million North Koreans are estimated to have fled North Korea.
In South Korea, the war is usually referred to as the "625 War" (6·25 전쟁; 六二五戰爭), the "625 Upheaval" (6·25 동란; 六二五動亂; yugio dongnan), or simply "625", reflecting the date of its commencement on 25 June.
In North Korea, the war is officially referred to as the "Fatherland Liberation War" (Choguk haebang chŏnjaeng) or alternatively the "Chosŏn [Korean] War" (조선전쟁; Chosŏn chŏnjaeng).
In mainland China, the segment of the war after the intervention of the People's Volunteer Army is most commonly and officially known as the "Resisting America and Assisting Korea War" (Chinese: 抗美援朝战争; pinyin: Kàngměi Yuáncháo Zhànzhēng), although the term "Chosŏn War" (Chinese: 朝鮮戰爭; pinyin: Cháoxiǎn Zhànzhēng) is sometimes used unofficially. The term "Hán (Korean) War" (Chinese: 韓戰; pinyin: Hán Zhàn) is most commonly used in Taiwan (Republic of China), Hong Kong and Macau.
In the U.S., the war was initially described by President Harry S. Truman as a "police action", as the United States never formally declared war on its opponents, and the operation was conducted under the auspices of the United Nations. It has been sometimes referred to in the English-speaking world as "The Forgotten War" or "The Unknown War" because of the lack of public attention it received both during and after the war, relative to the global scale of World War II, which preceded it, and the subsequent angst of the Vietnam War, which succeeded it.
Imperial Japan severely diminished the influence of China over Korea in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), ushering in the short-lived Korean Empire. A decade later, after defeating Imperial Russia in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05), Japan made the Korean Empire its protectorate with the Eulsa Treaty in 1905, then annexed it with the Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty in 1910. After that, the Korean Empire fell, and Korea was directly ruled by Japan from 1910 to 1945.
Many Korean nationalists fled the country. The Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea was founded in 1919 in Nationalist China. It failed to achieve international recognition, failed to unite the various nationalist groups, and had a fractious relationship with its U.S.-based founding president, Syngman Rhee. From 1919 to 1925 and beyond, Korean communists led internal and external warfare against the Japanese.
In China, the nationalist National Revolutionary Army and the communist People's Liberation Army (PLA) helped organize Korean refugees against the Japanese military, which had also occupied parts of China. The Nationalist-backed Koreans, led by Yi Pom-Sok, fought in the Burma campaign (December 1941 – August 1945). The communists, led by, among others, Kim Il Sung, fought the Japanese in Korea and Manchuria.
At the Cairo Conference in November 1943, China, the United Kingdom and the United States all decided that "in due course Korea shall become free and independent".
At the Tehran Conference in November 1943 and the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the Soviet Union promised to join its allies in the Pacific War within three months of the victory in Europe. Germany officially surrendered on 8 May 1945, and the USSR declared war on Japan and invaded Manchuria on 8 August 1945, three months later. This was three days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. By 10 August, the Red Army had begun to occupy the north of Korea.
On the night of 10 August in Washington, U.S. Colonels Dean Rusk and Charles H. Bonesteel III were assigned to divide Korea into Soviet and U.S. occupation zones and proposed the 38th parallel as the dividing line. This was incorporated into the U.S. General Order No. 1, which responded to the Japanese surrender on 15 August. Explaining the choice of the 38th parallel, Rusk observed, "even though it was further north than could be realistically reached by U. S. [sic] forces in the event of Soviet disagreement ... we felt it important to include the capital of Korea in the area of responsibility of American troops". He noted that he was "faced with the scarcity of U.S. forces immediately available and time and space factors which would make it difficult to reach very far north before Soviet troops could enter the area". As Rusk's comments indicate, the U.S. doubted whether the Soviet government would agree to this. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, however, maintained his wartime policy of co-operation, and on 16 August the Red Army halted at the 38th parallel for three weeks to await the arrival of U.S. forces in the south.
On 7 September 1945, General Douglas MacArthur issued Proclamation No. 1 to the people of Korea, announcing U.S. military control over Korea south of the 38th parallel and establishing English as the official language during military control. On 8 September U.S. Lieutenant General John R. Hodge arrived in Incheon to accept the Japanese surrender south of the 38th parallel. Appointed as military governor, Hodge directly controlled South Korea as head of the United States Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK 1945–48).
In December 1945, Korea was administered by a U.S.–Soviet Union Joint Commission, as agreed at the Moscow Conference, with the aim of granting independence after a five-year trusteeship. The idea (to have to wait 5 years for independence) was not popular among Koreans, and riots broke out. To contain them, the USAMGIK banned strikes on 8 December and outlawed the PRK Revolutionary Government and the PRK People's Committees on 12 December. Following further large-scale civilian unrest, the USAMGIK declared martial law.
Citing the inability of the Joint Commission to make progress, the U.S. government decided to hold an election under United Nations auspices with the aim of creating an independent Korea. The Soviet authorities and the Korean communists refused to co-operate on the grounds that it would not be fair, and many South Korean politicians boycotted it. A general election was held in the South on 10 May 1948. North Korea held parliamentary elections three months later on 25 August. The resultant South Korean government promulgated a national political constitution on 17 July and elected Syngman Rhee as president on 20 July. The Republic of Korea (South Korea) was established on 15 August 1948. In the Soviet Korean Zone of Occupation, the Soviet Union agreed to the establishment of a communist government led by Kim Il Sung.
The Soviet Union withdrew its forces from Korea in 1948, and U.S. troops withdrew in 1949.
With the end of the war with Japan, the Chinese Civil War resumed in earnest between the Communists and the Nationalist-led government. While the Communists were struggling for supremacy in Manchuria, they were supported by the North Korean government with matériel and manpower. According to Chinese sources, the North Koreans donated 2,000 railway cars worth of supplies while thousands of Koreans served in the Chinese PLA during the war. North Korea also provided the Chinese Communists in Manchuria with a safe refuge for non-combatants and communications with the rest of China.
The North Korean contributions to the Chinese Communist victory were not forgotten after the creation of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. As a token of gratitude, between 50,000 and 70,000 Korean veterans that served in the PLA were sent back along with their weapons, and they later played a significant role in the initial invasion of South Korea. China promised to support the North Koreans in the event of a war against South Korea.
By 1948, a large-scale, North Korea-backed insurgency had broken out in the southern half of the peninsula. This was exacerbated by the ongoing undeclared border war between the Koreas, which saw division-level engagements and thousands of deaths on both sides. The ROK in this time was almost entirely trained and focused on counterinsurgency, rather than conventional warfare. They were equipped and advised by a force of a few hundred American officers, who were largely successful in helping the ROKA to subdue guerrillas and hold its own against North Korean military (Korean People's Army, KPA) forces along the 38th parallel. Approximately 8,000 South Korean soldiers and police died in the insurgent war and border clashes.
The first socialist uprising occurred without direct North Korean participation, though the guerrillas still professed support for the northern government. Beginning in April 1948 on the isolated island of Jeju, the campaign saw mass arrests and repression by the South Korean government in the fight against the South Korean Labor Party, resulting in a total of 30,000 violent deaths, among them 14,373 civilians (of whom ~2,000 were killed by rebels and ~12,000 by ROK security forces). The Yeosu–Suncheon rebellion overlapped with it, as several thousand army defectors waving red flags massacred right-leaning families. This resulted in another brutal suppression by the government and between 2,976 and 3,392 deaths. By May 1949, both uprisings had been crushed.
Insurgency reignited in the spring of 1949 when attacks by guerrillas in the mountainous regions (buttressed by army defectors and North Korean agents) increased. Insurgent activity peaked in late 1949 as the ROKA engaged so-called People's Guerrilla Units. Organized and armed by the North Korean government, and backed up by 2,400 KPA commandos who had infiltrated through the border, these guerrillas launched a large offensive in September aimed at undermining the South Korean government and preparing the country for the KPA's arrival in force. This offensive failed. However, by this point, the guerrillas were firmly entrenched in the Taebaek-san region of the North Gyeongsang Province (around Taegu), as well as in the border areas of the Gangwon Province.
While the insurgency was ongoing, the ROKA and KPA engaged in multiple battalion-sized battles along the border, starting in May 1949. Serious border clashes between South and North continued on 4 August 1949, when thousands of North Korean troops attacked South Korean troops occupying territory north of the 38th parallel. The 2nd and 18th ROK Infantry Regiments repulsed initial attacks in Kuksa-bong (above the 38th parallel), and at the end of the clashes ROK troops were "completely routed". Border incidents decreased significantly by the start of 1950.
Meanwhile, counterinsurgency efforts in the South Korean interior intensified; persistent operations, paired with worsening weather conditions, eventually denied the guerrillas sanctuary and wore away their fighting strength. North Korea responded by sending more troops to link up with existing insurgents and build more partisan cadres; the number of North Korean infiltrators had reached 3,000 soldiers in 12 units by the start of 1950, but all of these units were destroyed or scattered by the ROKA. On 1 October 1949, the ROKA launched a three-pronged assault on the insurgents in South Cholla and Taegu. By March 1950, the ROKA claimed 5,621 guerrillas killed or captured and 1,066 small arms seized. This operation crippled the insurgency. Soon after, the North Koreans made two final attempts to keep the uprising active, sending two battalion-sized units of infiltrators under the commands of Kim Sang-ho and Kim Moo-hyon. The first battalion was reduced in annihilation to a single man over the course of several engagements by the ROKA 8th Division. The second battalion was annihilated by a two-battalion hammer-and-anvil maneuver by units of the ROKA 6th Division, resulting in a loss toll of 584 KPA guerrillas (480 killed, 104 captured) and 69 ROKA troops killed, plus 184 wounded. By spring of 1950, guerrilla activity had mostly subsided; the border, too, was calm.
By 1949, South Korean and U.S. military actions had reduced the active number of indigenous communist guerrillas in the South from 5,000 to 1,000. However, Kim Il Sung believed that widespread uprisings had weakened the South Korean military and that a North Korean invasion would be welcomed by much of the South Korean population. Kim began seeking Stalin's support for an invasion in March 1949, traveling to Moscow to attempt to persuade him.
Stalin initially did not think the time was right for a war in Korea. PLA forces were still embroiled in the Chinese Civil War, while U.S. forces remained stationed in South Korea. By spring 1950, he believed that the strategic situation had changed: PLA forces under Mao Zedong had secured final victory in China, U.S. forces had withdrawn from Korea, and the Soviets had detonated their first nuclear bomb, breaking the U.S. atomic monopoly. As the U.S. had not directly intervened to stop the communist victory in China, Stalin calculated that they would be even less willing to fight in Korea, which had much less strategic significance. The Soviets had also cracked the codes used by the U.S. to communicate with their embassy in Moscow, and reading these dispatches convinced Stalin that Korea did not have the importance to the U.S. that would warrant a nuclear confrontation. Stalin began a more aggressive strategy in Asia based on these developments, including promising economic and military aid to China through the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance.
In April 1950, Stalin gave Kim permission to attack the government in the South under the condition that Mao would agree to send reinforcements if needed. For Kim, this was the fulfilment of his goal to unite Korea after its division by foreign powers. Stalin made it clear that Soviet forces would not openly engage in combat, to avoid a direct war with the U.S. Kim met with Mao in May 1950 and differing historical interpretations of the outcome of the meeting have been put forward. According to Barbara Barnouin and Yu Changgeng, Mao agreed to support Kim despite concerns of American intervention, as China desperately needed the economic and military aid promised by the Soviets. Kathryn Weathersby cites Soviet documents which said Kim secured Mao's support. Along with Mark O'Neill, she says this accelerated Kim's war preparations. Chen Jian argues Mao never seriously challenged Kim’s plans and that Kim had every reason to inform Stalin that he had obtained Mao's support. Citing recent scholarship, Zhao Suisheng contends Mao did not approve of Kim's war proposal and requested verification from Stalin which he provided via a telegram. Mao accepted the decision made by Kim and Stalin to unify the Koreas but cautioned Kim over possible US intervention.
Soviet generals with extensive combat experience from the Second World War were sent to North Korea as the Soviet Advisory Group. These generals completed the plans for the attack by May. The original plans called for a skirmish to be initiated in the Ongjin Peninsula on the west coast of Korea. The North Koreans would then launch an attack that would capture Seoul and encircle and destroy the ROK. The final stage would involve destroying South Korean government remnants and capturing the rest of South Korea, including the ports.
On 7 June 1950, Kim called for a Korea-wide election on 5–8 August 1950 and a consultative conference in Haeju on 15–17 June. On 11 June, the North sent three diplomats to the South as a peace overture which Rhee rejected outright. On 21 June, Kim revised his war plan to involve a general attack across the 38th parallel, rather than a limited operation in the Ongjin Peninsula. Kim was concerned that South Korean agents had learned about the plans and that South Korean forces were strengthening their defenses. Stalin agreed to this change of plan.
While these preparations were underway in the North, there were frequent clashes along the 38th parallel, especially at Kaesong and Ongjin, many initiated by the South. The ROK was being trained by the U.S. Korean Military Advisory Group (KMAG). On the eve of war, KMAG commander General William Lynn Roberts voiced utmost confidence in the ROK and boasted that any North Korean invasion would merely provide "target practice". For his part, Syngman Rhee repeatedly expressed his desire to conquer the North, including when U.S. diplomat John Foster Dulles visited Korea on 18 June.
Although some South Korean and U.S. intelligence officers predicted an attack from the North, similar predictions had been made before and nothing had happened. The Central Intelligence Agency noted the southward movement by the KPA but assessed this as a "defensive measure" and concluded an invasion was "unlikely". On 23 June UN observers inspected the border and did not detect that war was imminent.
Throughout 1949 and 1950, the Soviets continued arming North Korea. After the communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, ethnic Korean units in the PLA were sent to North Korea. Chinese involvement was extensive from the beginning, building on previous collaboration between the Chinese and Korean communists during the Chinese Civil War. In the fall of 1949, two PLA divisions composed mainly of Korean-Chinese troops (the 164th and 166th) entered North Korea, followed by smaller units throughout the rest of 1949; these troops brought with them not only their experience and training, but also their weapons and other equipment, changing little but their uniforms. The reinforcement of the KPA with PLA veterans continued into 1950, with the 156th Division and several other units of the former Fourth Field Army arriving (also with their equipment) in February; the PLA 156th Division was reorganized as the KPA 7th Division. By mid-1950, between 50,000 and 70,000 former PLA troops had entered North Korea, forming a significant part of the KPA's strength on the eve of the war's beginning. Several generals, such as Lee Kwon-mu, were PLA veterans born to ethnic Koreans in China. The combat veterans and equipment from China, the tanks, artillery and aircraft supplied by the Soviets, and rigorous training increased North Korea's military superiority over the South, armed by the U.S. military with mostly small arms, but no heavy weaponry such as tanks. While older histories of the conflict often referred to these ethnic Korean PLA veterans as being sent from northern Korea to fight in the Chinese Civil War before being sent back, recent Chinese archival sources studied by Kim Donggill indicate that this was not the case. Rather, the soldiers were indigenous to China (part of China's longstanding ethnic Korean community) and were recruited to the PLA in the same way as any other Chinese citizen.
According to the first official census in 1949, the population of North Korea numbered 9,620,000, and by mid-1950, North Korean forces numbered between 150,000 and 200,000 troops, organized into 10 infantry divisions, one tank division, and one air force division, with 210 fighter planes and 280 tanks, who captured scheduled objectives and territory, among them Kaesong, Chuncheon, Uijeongbu and Ongjin. Their forces included 274 T-34-85 tanks, 200 artillery pieces, 110 attack bombers, and some 150 Yak fighter planes, and 35 reconnaissance aircraft. In addition to the invasion force, the North had 114 fighters, 78 bombers, 105 T-34-85 tanks, and some 30,000 soldiers stationed in reserve in North Korea. Although each navy consisted of only several small warships, the North and South Korean navies fought in the war as seaborne artillery for their armies.
In contrast, the South Korean population was estimated at 20 million, but its army was unprepared and ill-equipped. As of 25 June 1950, the ROK had 98,000 soldiers (65,000 combat, 33,000 support), no tanks (they had been requested from the U.S. military, but requests were denied), and a 22-plane air force comprising 12 liaison-type and 10 AT-6 advanced-trainer airplanes. Large U.S. garrisons and air forces were in Japan, but only 200–300 U.S. troops were in Korea.
At dawn on 25 June 1950, the KPA crossed the 38th parallel behind artillery fire. The KPA justified its assault with the claim that ROK troops attacked first and that the KPA were aiming to arrest and execute the "bandit traitor Syngman Rhee". Fighting began on the strategic Ongjin Peninsula in the west. There were initial South Korean claims that the 17th Regiment had counterattacked at Haeju; some scholars argue the claimed counterattack was instead the instigating attack, and therefore that the South Koreans may have fired first. However, the report that contained the Haeju claim also contained numerous other errors and outright falsehoods.
Whoever fired the first shots in Ongjin, KPA forces attacked all along the 38th parallel within an hour. The KPA had a combined arms force including tanks supported by heavy artillery. The ROK had no tanks, anti-tank weapons or heavy artillery to stop such an attack. In addition, the South Koreans committed their forces in a piecemeal fashion, and these were routed in a few days.
On 27 June, Rhee evacuated Seoul with some of the government. At 02:00 on 28 June the ROK blew up the Hangang Bridge across the Han River in an attempt to stop the KPA. The bridge was detonated while 4,000 refugees were crossing it, and hundreds were killed. Destroying the bridge also trapped many ROK units north of the Han River. In spite of such desperate measures, Seoul fell that same day. A number of South Korean National Assemblymen remained in Seoul when it fell, and 48 subsequently pledged allegiance to the North.
On 28 June, Rhee ordered the massacre of suspected political opponents in his own country. In five days, the ROK, which had 95,000 troops on 25 June, was down to less than 22,000 troops. In early July, when U.S. forces arrived, what was left of the ROK was placed under U.S. operational command of the United Nations Command.
The Truman administration was unprepared for the invasion. Korea was not included in the strategic Asian Defense Perimeter outlined by United States Secretary of State Dean Acheson. Military strategists were more concerned with the security of Europe against the Soviet Union than East Asia. At the same time, the administration was worried that a war in Korea could quickly escalate without American intervention. Said diplomat John Foster Dulles in a cable: "To sit by while Korea is overrun by unprovoked armed attack would start a disastrous chain of events leading most probably to world war."
While there was initial hesitance by some in the U.S. government to get involved in the war, considerations about Japan played a part in the ultimate decision to engage on behalf of South Korea. Especially after the fall of China to the communists, U.S. experts on East Asia saw Japan as the critical counterweight to the Soviet Union and China in the region. While there was no U.S. policy dealing with South Korea directly as a national interest, its proximity to Japan increased the importance of South Korea. Said Kim: "The recognition that the security of Japan required a non-hostile Korea led directly to President Truman's decision to intervene ... The essential point ... is that the American response to the North Korean attack stemmed from considerations of U.S. policy toward Japan."
Another major consideration was the possible Soviet reaction if the U.S. intervened. The Truman administration was fearful that a war in Korea was a diversionary assault that would escalate to a general war in Europe once the United States committed in Korea. At the same time, "[t]here was no suggestion from anyone that the United Nations or the United States could back away from [the conflict]". Yugoslavia—a possible Soviet target because of the Tito-Stalin split—was vital to the defense of Italy and Greece, and the country was first on the list of the National Security Council's post-North Korea invasion list of "chief danger spots". Truman believed if aggression went unchecked, a chain reaction would be initiated that would marginalize the UN and encourage communist aggression elsewhere. The UN Security Council approved the use of force to help the South Koreans, and the U.S. immediately began using air and naval forces that were in the area to that end. The Truman administration still refrained from committing troops on the ground because some advisers believed the North Koreans could be stopped by air and naval power alone.
The Truman administration was still uncertain if the attack was a ploy by the Soviet Union or just a test of U.S. resolve. The decision to commit ground troops became viable when a communiqué was received on 27 June indicating the Soviet Union would not move against U.S. forces in Korea. The Truman administration believed it could intervene in Korea without undermining its commitments elsewhere.
On 25 June 1950, the United Nations Security Council unanimously condemned the North Korean invasion of South Korea with UN Security Council Resolution 82. The Soviet Union, a veto-wielding power, had boycotted the Council meetings since January 1950, protesting Taiwan's occupation of China's permanent seat in the UN Security Council. After debating the matter, the Security Council, on 27 June 1950, published Resolution 83 recommending member states provide military assistance to the Republic of Korea. On 27 June President Truman ordered U.S. air and sea forces to help South Korea. On 4 July the Soviet deputy foreign minister accused the U.S. of starting armed intervention on behalf of South Korea.
The Soviet Union challenged the legitimacy of the war for several reasons. The ROK intelligence upon which Resolution 83 was based came from U.S. Intelligence; North Korea was not invited as a sitting temporary member of the UN, which violated UN Charter Article 32; and the fighting was beyond the UN Charter's scope, because the initial north–south border fighting was classed as a civil war. Because the Soviet Union was boycotting the Security Council at the time, legal scholars posited that deciding upon an action of this type required the unanimous vote of all the five permanent members including the Soviet Union.
Within days of the invasion, masses of ROK soldiers—of dubious loyalty to the Syngman Rhee regime—were retreating southwards or defecting en masse to the northern side, the KPA.
As soon as word of the attack was received, Acheson informed President Truman that the North Koreans had invaded South Korea. Truman and Acheson discussed a U.S. invasion response and agreed that the U.S. was obligated to act, comparing the North Korean invasion with Adolf Hitler's aggressions in the 1930s, with the conclusion being that the mistake of appeasement must not be repeated. Several U.S. industries were mobilized to supply materials, labor, capital, production facilities, and other services necessary to support the military objectives of the Korean War. Truman later explained that he believed fighting the invasion was essential to the U.S. goal of the global containment of communism as outlined in the National Security Council Report 68 (NSC 68) (declassified in 1975):
Communism was acting in Korea, just as Hitler, Mussolini and the Japanese had ten, fifteen, and twenty years earlier. I felt certain that if South Korea was allowed to fall, Communist leaders would be emboldened to override nations closer to our own shores. If the Communists were permitted to force their way into the Republic of Korea without opposition from the free world, no small nation would have the courage to resist threat and aggression by stronger Communist neighbors.
In August 1950, Truman and Acheson obtained the consent of Congress to appropriate $12 billion for military action in Korea, equivalent to $146 billion in 2022. Because of the extensive defense cuts and the emphasis placed on building a nuclear bomber force, none of the services were in a position to make a robust response with conventional military strength. General Omar Bradley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was faced with reorganizing and deploying a U.S. military force that was a shadow of its World War II counterpart.
Acting on Acheson's recommendation, Truman ordered Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in Japan General Douglas MacArthur to transfer matériel to the South Korean military while giving air cover to the evacuation of U.S. nationals. Truman disagreed with advisers who recommended unilateral bombing of the North Korean forces and ordered the U.S. Seventh Fleet to protect the Republic of China (Taiwan), whose government asked to fight in Korea. The United States denied Taiwan's request for combat, lest it provoke a PRC retaliation. Because the United States had sent the Seventh Fleet to "neutralize" the Taiwan Strait, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai criticized both the UN and U.S. initiatives as "armed aggression on Chinese territory".
The Battle of Osan, the first significant U.S. engagement of the Korean War, involved the 540-soldier Task Force Smith, which was a small forward element of the 24th Infantry Division which had been flown in from Japan. On 5 July 1950, Task Force Smith attacked the KPA at Osan but without weapons capable of destroying the KPA tanks. The KPA defeated the U.S. soldiers; the result was 180 American casualties. The KPA progressed southwards, pushing back U.S. forces at Pyongtaek, Chonan, and Chochiwon, forcing the 24th Division's retreat to Taejeon, which the KPA captured in the Battle of Taejon; the 24th Division suffered 3,602 dead and wounded and 2,962 captured, including its commander, Major General William F. Dean.
By August, the KPA steadily pushed back the ROK and the Eighth United States Army southwards. The impact of the Truman administration's defense budget cutbacks was now keenly felt, as U.S. troops fought a series of costly rearguard actions. Facing a veteran and well-led KPA force, and lacking sufficient anti-tank weapons, artillery or armor, the Americans retreated and the KPA advanced down the Korean Peninsula. During their advance, the KPA purged South Korea's intelligentsia by killing civil servants and intellectuals. On 20 August, MacArthur warned Kim Il Sung that he would be held responsible for the KPA's atrocities. By September, UN forces were hemmed into a small corner of southeast Korea, near Pusan. This 230-kilometre (140-mile) perimeter enclosed about 10% of Korea, in a line partially defined by the Nakdong River.
Although Kim's early successes led him to predict he would end the war by the end of August, Chinese leaders were more pessimistic. To counter a possible U.S. deployment, Zhou secured a Soviet commitment to have the Soviet Union support Chinese forces with air cover, and he deployed 260,000 soldiers along the Korean border, under the command of Gao Gang. Zhou authorized a topographical survey of Korea and directed Lei Yingfu, Zhou's military adviser in Korea, to analyze the military situation in Korea. Lei concluded that MacArthur would most likely attempt a landing at Incheon. After conferring with Mao that this would be MacArthur's most likely strategy, Zhou briefed Soviet and North Korean advisers of Lei's findings, and issued orders to PLA commanders deployed on the Korean border to prepare for U.S. naval activity in the Korea Strait.
In the resulting Battle of Pusan Perimeter (August–September 1950), the UN forces withstood KPA attacks meant to capture the city at the Naktong Bulge, P'ohang-dong, and Taegu. The United States Air Force (USAF) interrupted KPA logistics with 40 daily ground support sorties, which destroyed 32 bridges, halting most daytime road and rail traffic. KPA forces were forced to hide in tunnels by day and move only at night. To deny military equipment and supplies to the KPA, the USAF destroyed logistics depots, petroleum refineries, and harbors, while the U.S. Navy aircraft attacked transport hubs. Consequently, the overextended KPA could not be supplied throughout the south. On 27 August, 67th Fighter Squadron aircraft mistakenly attacked facilities in Chinese territory, and the Soviet Union called the UN Security Council's attention to China's complaint about the incident. The U.S. proposed that a commission of India and Sweden determine what the U.S. should pay in compensation, but the Soviets vetoed the U.S. proposal.
Meanwhile, U.S. garrisons in Japan continually dispatched soldiers and military supplies to reinforce defenders in the Pusan Perimeter. MacArthur went so far as to call for Japan's rearmament. Tank battalions deployed to Korea directly from the U.S. mainland from the port of San Francisco to the port of Pusan, the largest Korean port. By late August, the Pusan Perimeter had some 500 medium tanks battle-ready. In early September 1950, UN forces outnumbered the KPA 180,000 to 100,000 soldiers.
Against the rested and rearmed Pusan Perimeter defenders and their reinforcements, the KPA were undermanned and poorly supplied; unlike the UN forces, they lacked naval and air support. To relieve the Pusan Perimeter, MacArthur recommended an amphibious landing at Incheon, near Seoul and well over 160 km (100 mi) behind the KPA lines. On 6 July, he ordered Major General Hobart R. Gay, commander of the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division, to plan the division's amphibious landing at Incheon; on 12–14 July, the 1st Cavalry Division embarked from Yokohama, Japan, to reinforce the 24th Infantry Division inside the Pusan Perimeter.
Soon after the war began, MacArthur began planning a landing at Incheon, but the Pentagon opposed him. When authorized, he activated a combined U.S. Army and Marine Corps, and ROK force. The X Corps, led by Major General Edward Almond, consisted of 40,000 troops of the 1st Marine Division, the 7th Infantry Division and around 8,600 ROK soldiers. By 15 September, the amphibious assault force faced few KPA defenders at Incheon: military intelligence, psychological warfare, guerrilla reconnaissance, and protracted bombardment facilitated a relatively light battle. However, the bombardment destroyed most of Incheon.
On 16 September Eighth Army began its breakout from the Pusan Perimeter. Task Force Lynch, 3rd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, and two 70th Tank Battalion units (Charlie Company and the Intelligence–Reconnaissance Platoon) advanced through 171.2 km (106.4 mi) of KPA territory to join the 7th Infantry Division at Osan on 27 September. X Corps rapidly defeated the KPA defenders around Seoul, thus threatening to trap the main KPA force in southern Korea.
On 18 September, Stalin dispatched General H. M. Zakharov to North Korea to advise Kim to halt his offensive around the Pusan Perimeter and to redeploy his forces to defend Seoul. Chinese commanders were not briefed on North Korean troop numbers or operational plans. As the overall commander of Chinese forces, Zhou suggested that the North Koreans should attempt to eliminate the UN forces at Incheon only if they had reserves of at least 100,000 men; otherwise, he advised the North Koreans to withdraw their forces north.
On 25 September, Seoul was recaptured by UN forces. U.S. air raids caused heavy damage to the KPA, destroying most of its tanks and much of its artillery. KPA troops in the south, instead of effectively withdrawing north, rapidly disintegrated, leaving Pyongyang vulnerable. During the general retreat, only 25,000 to 30,000 KPA soldiers managed to reach the KPA lines. On 27 September, Stalin convened an emergency session of the Politburo, in which he condemned the incompetence of the KPA command and held Soviet military advisers responsible for the defeat.
On 27 September, MacArthur received the top secret National Security Council Memorandum 81/1 from Truman reminding him that operations north of the 38th parallel were authorized only if "at the time of such operation there was no entry into North Korea by major Soviet or Chinese Communist forces, no announcements of intended entry, nor a threat to counter our operations militarily". On 29 September, MacArthur restored the government of the Republic of Korea under Syngman Rhee. The Joint Chiefs of Staff on 27 September sent to MacArthur a comprehensive directive to govern his future actions: the directive stated that the primary goal was the destruction of the KPA, with unification of the Korean Peninsula under Rhee as a secondary objective "if possible"; the Joint Chiefs added that this objective was dependent on whether the Chinese and Soviets would intervene, and was subject to changing conditions.
On 30 September, Zhou warned the U.S. that China was prepared to intervene in Korea if the U.S. crossed the 38th parallel. Zhou attempted to advise KPA commanders on how to conduct a general withdrawal by using the same tactics that allowed Chinese communist forces to successfully escape Chiang Kai-shek's encirclement campaigns in the 1930s, but by some accounts, KPA commanders did not use these tactics effectively. Historian Bruce Cumings argues, however, that the KPA's rapid withdrawal was strategic, with troops melting into the mountains from where they could launch guerrilla raids on the UN forces spread out on the coasts.
By 1 October the UN Command had repelled the KPA northwards past the 38th parallel; the ROK advanced after them into North Korea. MacArthur made a statement demanding the KPA's unconditional surrender. Six days later, on 7 October, with UN authorization, the UN Command forces followed the ROK forces northwards. The Eighth U.S. Army drove up western Korea and captured Pyongyang on 19 October. The 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team made their first of two combat jumps during the Korean War on 20 October at Sunchon and Sukchon. The mission was to cut the road north going to China, preventing North Korean leaders from escaping from Pyongyang; and to rescue U.S. prisoners of war.
At month's end, UN forces held 135,000 KPA prisoners of war. As they neared the Sino-Korean border, the UN forces in the west were divided from those in the east by 80–161 km (50–100 mi) of mountainous terrain. In addition to the 135,000 captured, the KPA had also suffered some 200,000 soldiers killed or wounded for a total of 335,000 casualties since the end of June 1950, and had lost 313 tanks (mostly T-34/85 models). A mere 25,000 KPA regulars retreated across the 38th parallel, as their military had entirely collapsed. The UN forces on the peninsula numbered 229,722 combat troops (including 125,126 Americans and 82,786 South Koreans), 119,559 rear area troops, and 36,667 U.S. Air Force personnel. Taking advantage of the UN Command's strategic momentum against the communists, MacArthur believed it necessary to extend the Korean War into China to destroy depots supplying the North Korean war effort. Truman disagreed and ordered caution at the Sino-Korean border.
On 3 October 1950, China attempted to warn the United States by way of its embassy in India that it would intervene if UN forces crossed the Yalu River. The United States did not respond as policymakers in Washington, including Truman, considered the warning to be a bluff.
On 15 October Truman and MacArthur met at Wake Island. This meeting was much publicized because of MacArthurs's discourteous refusal to meet the president in the continental United States. To Truman, MacArthur speculated there was little risk of Chinese intervention in Korea, and that the PRC's opportunity for aiding the KPA had lapsed. He believed the PRC had some 300,000 soldiers in Manchuria and some 100,000–125,000 soldiers at the Yalu River. He further concluded that, although half of those forces might cross south, "if the Chinese tried to get down to Pyongyang, there would be the greatest slaughter" without Soviet air force protection.
Meanwhile on 13 October, the Politburo decided that China would intervene even in the absence of Soviet air support, basing its decision on a belief that superior morale could defeat an enemy that had superior equipment. To that end, 200,000 People's Volunteer Army (PVA) troops crossed the Yalu into North Korea. UN aerial reconnaissance had difficulty sighting PVA units in daytime, because their march and bivouac discipline minimized aerial detection. The PVA marched "dark-to-dark" (19:00–03:00), and aerial camouflage (concealing soldiers, pack animals, and equipment) was deployed by 05:30. Meanwhile, daylight advance parties scouted for the next bivouac site. During daylight activity or marching, soldiers were to remain motionless if an aircraft appeared, until it flew away; PVA officers were under order to shoot security violators. Such battlefield discipline allowed a three-division army to march the 460 km (286 mi) from An-tung, Manchuria, to the combat zone in some 19 days. Another division night-marched a circuitous mountain route, averaging 29 km (18 mi) daily for 18 days.
After secretly crossing the Yalu River on 19 October, the PVA 13th Army Group launched the First Phase Offensive on 25 October, attacking the advancing UN forces near the Sino-Korean border. This military decision made solely by China changed the attitude of the Soviet Union. Twelve days after PVA troops entered the war, Stalin allowed the Soviet Air Forces to provide air cover and supported more aid to China. After inflicting heavy losses on the ROK II Corps at the Battle of Onjong, the first confrontation between Chinese and U.S. military occurred on 1 November 1950. Deep in North Korea, thousands of soldiers from the PVA 39th Army encircled and attacked the U.S. 8th Cavalry Regiment with three-prong assaults—from the north, northwest, and west—and overran the defensive position flanks in the Battle of Unsan.
On 13 November, Mao appointed Zhou the overall commander and coordinator of the war effort, with Peng Dehuai as field commander. On 25 November, on the Korean western front, the PVA 13th Army Group attacked and overran the ROK II Corps at the Battle of the Ch'ongch'on River, and then inflicted heavy losses on the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division on the UN forces' right flank. Believing that they could not hold against the PVA, the Eighth Army began to retreat from North Korea crossing the 38th parallel in mid-December.
In the east, on 27 November, the PVA 9th Army Group initiated the Battle of Chosin Reservoir. Here, the UN forces fared comparatively better: like the Eighth Army, the surprise attack also forced X Corps to retreat from northeast Korea, but they were, in the process, able to break out from the attempted encirclement by the PVA and execute a successful tactical withdrawal. X Corps managed to establish a defensive perimeter at the port city of Hungnam on 11 December and were able to evacuate by 24 December to reinforce the badly depleted Eighth Army to the south. During the evacuation, about 193 shiploads of UN forces and matériel (approximately 105,000 soldiers, 98,000 civilians, 17,500 vehicles, and 350,000 tons of supplies) were evacuated to Pusan. The SS Meredith Victory was noted for evacuating 14,000 refugees, the largest rescue operation by a single ship, even though it was designed to hold 12 passengers. Before escaping, the UN forces razed most of Hungnam city, with particular attention to the port facilities.
In early December UN forces, including the British Army's 29th Infantry Brigade, evacuated Pyongyang along with large numbers of refugees. Around 4.5 million North Koreans are estimated to have fled from North Korea to either the South or elsewhere abroad. On 16 December Truman declared a national state of emergency with Presidential Proclamation No. 2914, 3 C.F.R. 99 (1953), which remained in force until 14 September 1978. The next day, 17 December, Kim Il Sung was deprived of the right of command of KPA by China.
A ceasefire presented by the UN to the PRC shortly after the Battle of the Ch'ongch'on River on 11 December was rejected by the Chinese government, which was convinced of the PVA's invincibility after its victory in that battle and the wider Second Phase Offensive. With Lieutenant General Matthew Ridgway assuming the command of the Eighth Army on 26 December, the PVA and the KPA launched their Third Phase Offensive (also known as the "Chinese New Year's Offensive") on New Year's Eve of 1950/51. Utilizing night attacks in which UN fighting positions were encircled and then assaulted by numerically superior troops who had the element of surprise, the attacks were accompanied by loud trumpets and gongs, which fulfilled the double purpose of facilitating tactical communication and mentally disorienting the enemy. UN forces initially had no familiarity with this tactic, and as a result, some soldiers panicked, abandoning their weapons and retreating to the south. The offensive overwhelmed UN forces, allowing the PVA and KPA to capture Seoul for the second time on 4 January 1951.
These setbacks prompted General MacArthur to consider using nuclear weapons against the Chinese or North Korean interiors, intending radioactive fallout zones to interrupt the Chinese supply chains. However, upon the arrival of the charismatic General Ridgway, the esprit de corps of the bloodied Eighth Army immediately began to revive.
UN forces retreated to Suwon in the west, Wonju in the center, and the territory north of Samcheok in the east, where the battlefront stabilized and held. The PVA had outrun its logistics capability and thus were unable to press on beyond Seoul as food, ammunition, and matériel were carried nightly, on foot and bicycle, from the border at the Yalu River to the three battle lines. On 25 late January, upon finding that the PVA had abandoned their battle lines, Ridgway ordered a reconnaissance-in-force, which became Operation Thunderbolt. A full-scale advance fully exploited the UN's air superiority, concluding with the UN forces reaching the Han River and recapturing Wonju.
Following the failure of ceasefire negotiations in January, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 498 on 1 February, condemning the PRC as an aggressor, and called upon its forces to withdraw from Korea.
In early February, the ROK 11th Division ran an operation to destroy guerrillas and pro-DPRK sympathizers in the South Gyeongsang Province. During the operation, the division and police committed the Geochang and Sancheong–Hamyang massacres. In mid-February, the PVA counterattacked with the Fourth Phase Offensive and achieved initial victory at Hoengseong. However, the offensive was blunted by U.S. IX Corps at Chipyong-ni in the center. The U.S. 23rd Regimental Combat Team and the French Battalion fought a short but desperate battle that broke the attack's momentum. The battle is sometimes known as the "Gettysburg of the Korean War": 5,600 U.S., and French troops were surrounded on all sides by 25,000 PVA. UN forces had previously retreated in the face of large PVA/KPA forces instead of getting cut off, but this time, they stood and fought, and won.
In the last two weeks of February 1951, Operation Thunderbolt was followed by Operation Killer, carried out by the revitalized Eighth Army. It was a full-scale, battlefront-length attack staged for maximum exploitation of firepower to kill as many KPA and PVA troops as possible. Operation Killer concluded with U.S. I Corps re-occupying the territory south of the Han River, and IX Corps capturing Hoengseong. On 7 March the Eighth Army attacked with Operation Ripper, expelling the PVA and the KPA from Seoul on 14 March. This was the fourth and final conquest of the city in a year's time, leaving it a ruin; the 1.5 million pre-war population was down to 200,000, and people were suffering from severe food shortages.
On 1 March Mao sent a cable to Stalin emphasizing the difficulties faced by Chinese forces and the need for air cover, especially over supply lines. Apparently impressed by the Chinese war effort, Stalin agreed to supply two air force divisions, three anti-aircraft divisions, and 6,000 trucks. PVA troops in Korea continued to suffer severe logistical problems throughout the war.
In late April, Peng sent his deputy, Hong Xuezhi, to brief Zhou in Beijing. What Chinese soldiers feared, Hong said, was not the enemy, but having no food, bullets, or trucks to transport them to the rear when they were wounded. Zhou attempted to respond to the PVA's logistical concerns by increasing Chinese production and improving supply methods, but these efforts were never sufficient. At the same time, large-scale air defense training programs were carried out, and the People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) began participating in the war from September 1951 onward. The Fourth Phase Offensive had catastrophically failed, in contrast to the success of the Second Phase Offensive and limited gains of the Third Phase Offensive. The UN forces, after earlier defeats and subsequent retraining, proved much harder to infiltrate by Chinese light infantry than they had been in previous months. From 31 January to 21 April, the Chinese had suffered 53,000 casualties.
On 11 April Truman relieved General MacArthur as supreme commander in Korea. There were several reasons for the dismissal. MacArthur had crossed the 38th parallel in the mistaken belief that the Chinese would not enter the war, leading to major allied losses. He believed that the use of nuclear weapons should be his decision, not the president's. MacArthur threatened to destroy China unless it surrendered. While MacArthur felt total victory was the only honorable outcome, Truman was more pessimistic about his chances once involved in a larger war, feeling that a truce and orderly withdrawal from Korea could be a valid solution. MacArthur was the subject of congressional hearings in May and June 1951, which determined that he had defied the orders of the president and thus had violated the U.S. Constitution. A popular criticism of MacArthur was that he never spent a night in Korea and directed the war from the safety of Tokyo.
Ridgway was appointed supreme commander in Korea, and he regrouped the UN forces for successful counterattacks, while General James Van Fleet assumed command of the Eighth Army. Further attacks slowly depleted the PVA and KPA forces; Operations Courageous (23–28 March) and Tomahawk (23 March) (a combat jump by the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team) were joint ground and airborne infiltrations meant to trap PVA forces between Kaesong and Seoul. UN forces advanced to the Kansas Line, north of the 38th parallel.
The PVA counterattacked in April 1951, with the Fifth Phase Offensive, with three field armies (approximately 700,000 men). The first thrust of the offensive fell upon I Corps, which fiercely resisted in the Battle of the Imjin River (22–25 April) and the Battle of Kapyong (22–25 April), blunting the impetus of the offensive, which was halted at the No-name Line north of Seoul. Casualty ratios were grievously disproportionate; Peng had expected a 1:1 or 2:1 ratio, but instead, Chinese combat casualties from 22 to 29 April totaled between 40,000 and 60,000 compared to only 4,000 for the UN —a casualty ratio between 10:1 and 15:1. By the time Peng had called off the attack in the western sector on 29 April, the three participating armies had lost a third of their front-line combat strength within a week. Additional casualties were incurred on 30 April. On 15 May the PVA commenced the second impulse of the spring offensive and attacked the ROK and U.S. X Corps in the east at the Soyang River. Approximately 370,000 PVA and 114,000 KPA troops had been mobilized, with the bulk attacking in the eastern sector with about a quarter attempting to pin the I Corps and IX Corps in the western sector. After initial success, they were halted by 20 May and repulsed over the following days, with Western histories generally designating 22 May as the end of the offensive.
At month's end, the Chinese planned the third step of the Fifth Phase Offensive (withdrawal), which they estimated would take 10 to 15 days to complete for their 340,000 remaining men, and set the retreat date for the night of 23 May. They were caught off guard when the Eighth Army counterattacked and regained the Kansas Line on the morning of 12 May, 23 hours before the expected withdrawal. The surprise attack turned the retreat into "the most severe loss since our forces had entered Korea"; from 16 May to 23 May, the PVA suffered another 45,000 to 60,000 casualties before their remaining soldiers managed to evacuate back north. Per official Chinese statistics, the Fifth Phase Offensive as a whole had cost the PVA 102,000 soldiers (85,000 killed/wounded, 17,000 captured), with unknown but significant losses for the KPA.
The end of the Fifth Phase Offensive preceded the start of the UN May–June 1951 counteroffensive. During the counteroffensive, the U.S.-led coalition captured land up to about 10 km (6 mi) north of the 38th parallel, with most forces stopping at the Kansas Line and a minority going further to the Wyoming Line. PVA and KPA forces suffered greatly during this offensive, especially in the Chuncheon sector and at Chiam-ni and Hwacheon; in the latter sector alone the PVA/KPA suffered over 73,207 casualties, including 8,749 captured, compared to 2,647 total casualties of the IX Corps which engaged them.
The halt at the Kansas Line and subsequent offensive action stand-down began the stalemate that lasted until the armistice of 1953. The disastrous failure of the Fifth Phase Offensive (which Peng later recalled as one of only four mistakes he made in his military career) "led Chinese leaders to change their goal from driving the UNF out of Korea to merely defending China's security and ending the war through negotiations".
For the remainder of the war, the UN and the PVA/KPA fought but exchanged little territory, as the stalemate held. Large-scale bombing of North Korea continued, and protracted armistice negotiations began on 10 July 1951 at Kaesong in the North. On the Chinese side, Zhou directed peace talks, and Li Kenong and Qiao Guanghua headed the negotiation team. Combat continued while the belligerents negotiated; the goal of the UN forces was to recapture all of South Korea and to avoid losing territory. The PVA and the KPA attempted similar operations and later effected military and psychological operations to test the UN Command's resolve to continue the war.
The two sides constantly traded artillery fire along the front, with American-led forces possessing a large firepower advantage over the Chinese-led forces. For example, in the last three months of 1952 the UN fired 3,553,518 field gun shells and 2,569,941 mortar shells, while the communists fired 377,782 field gun shells and 672,194 mortar shells: an overall 5.83:1 ratio in the UN's favor. The communist insurgency, reinvigorated by North Korean support and scattered bands of KPA stragglers, also resurged in the south.
In the autumn of 1951, Eighth Army Commander General James Van Fleet ordered Major General Paik Sun-yup to break the back of guerrilla activity. From December 1951 to March 1952, ROK security forces claimed to have killed 11,090 partisans and sympathizers and captured 9,916 more.
PVA troops suffered from deficient military equipment, serious logistical problems, overextended communication and supply lines, and the constant threat of UN bombers. All of these factors generally led to a rate of Chinese casualties that was far greater than the casualties suffered by UN troops. The situation became so serious that in November 1951 Zhou called a conference in Shenyang to discuss the PVA's logistical problems. At the meeting, it was decided to accelerate the construction of railways and airfields in the area to increase the number of trucks available to the army, and to improve air defense by any means possible. These commitments did little to address the problems directly that confronted PVA troops.
In the months after the Shenyang conference, Peng went to Beijing several times to brief Mao and Zhou about the heavy casualties suffered by Chinese troops and the increasing difficulty of keeping the front lines supplied with basic necessities. Peng was convinced that the war would be protracted and that neither side would be able to achieve victory in the near future. On 24 February 1952, the Military Commission, presided over by Zhou, discussed the PVA's logistical problems with members of various government agencies involved in the war effort. After the government representatives emphasized their inability to meet the demands of the war, Peng, in an angry outburst, shouted: "You have this and that problem... You should go to the front and see with your own eyes what food and clothing the soldiers have! Not to speak of the casualties! For what are they giving their lives? We have no aircraft. We have only a few guns. Transports are not protected. More and more soldiers are dying of starvation. Can't you overcome some of your difficulties?" The atmosphere became so tense that Zhou was forced to adjourn the conference. Zhou subsequently called a series of meetings, where it was agreed that the PVA would be divided into three groups, to be dispatched to Korea in shifts; to accelerate the training of Chinese pilots; to provide more anti-aircraft guns to the front lines; to purchase more military equipment and ammunition from the Soviet Union; to provide the army with more food and clothing; and to transfer the responsibility of logistics to the central government.
With peace negotiations ongoing, the Chinese attempted one final offensive in the final weeks of the war to capture territory: on 10 June, 30,000 Chinese troops struck two South Korean and one U.S. divisions on a 13 km (8 mi) front, and on 13 July, 80,000 Chinese soldiers struck the east-central Kumsong sector, with the brunt of their attack falling on four South Korean divisions. In both cases, the Chinese had some success in penetrating South Korean lines but failed to capitalize, particularly when the U.S. forces present responded with overwhelming firepower. Chinese casualties in their final major offensive of the war (above normal wastage for the front) were about 72,000, including 25,000 killed in action compared to 14,000 for the UN (the vast majority of these deaths were South Koreans, though 1,611 were Americans).
The on-again, off-again armistice negotiations continued for two years, first at Kaesong then at the neighboring village of Panmunjom. A major problematic negotiation point was prisoner of war (POW) repatriation. The PVA, KPA and UN Command could not agree on a system of repatriation because many PVA and KPA soldiers refused to be repatriated back to the north, which was unacceptable to the Chinese and North Koreans. A Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission, under the chairman Indian General K. S. Thimayya, was subsequently set up to handle the matter.
On 29 November 1952 U.S. President-Elect Dwight D. Eisenhower went to Korea to learn what might end the Korean War. Eisenhower took office on 20 January 1953. Stalin died a few weeks later on 5 March. The new Soviet leaders, engaged in their internal power struggle, had no desire to continue supporting China's efforts in Korea and issued a statement calling for an end to the hostilities. China could not continue the war without Soviet aid, and North Korea was no longer a major player. Armistice talks entered a new phase. With the United Nations' acceptance of India's proposed Korean War armistice, the KPA, the PVA and the UN Command signed the armistice agreement on 27 July 1953. South Korean president Syngman Rhee refused to sign the agreement. The war is considered to have ended at this point, even though there was no peace treaty. North Korea nevertheless claims that it won the Korean War.
Under the agreement, the belligerents established the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) along the front line, which vaguely follows the 38th parallel. In the eastern part, the DMZ runs north of the 38th parallel; to the west, it travels south of it. Kaesong, site of the initial armistice negotiations, was originally in pre-war South Korea but now is part of North Korea. The DMZ has since been patrolled by the KPA and the ROK, with the U.S. still operating as the UN Command.
After the war, Operation Glory was conducted from July to November 1954, to allow combatant countries to exchange their dead. The remains of 4,167 U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps dead were exchanged for 13,528 KPA and PVA dead, and 546 civilians dead in UN prisoner-of-war camps were delivered to the South Korean government. After Operation Glory, 416 Korean War unknown soldiers were buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (The Punchbowl), on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) records indicate that the PRC and North Korea transmitted 1,394 names, of which 858 were correct. From 4,167 containers of returned remains, forensic examination identified 4,219 individuals. Of these, 2,944 were identified as from the U.S., and all but 416 were identified by name. From 1996 to 2006, North Korea recovered 220 remains near the Sino-Korean border.
The Korean Armistice Agreement provided for monitoring by an international commission. Since 1953, the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission, composed of members from the Swiss and Swedish armed forces, has been stationed near the DMZ.
In April 1975, South Vietnam's capital of Saigon was captured by the People's Army of Vietnam. Encouraged by the success of the communist revolution in Indochina, Kim Il Sung saw it as an opportunity to invade South Korea. Kim visited China in April 1975 and met with Mao and Zhou to ask for military aid. Despite Pyongyang's expectations, however, Beijing refused to help North Korea for another war in Korea.
Since the armistice, there have been numerous incursions and acts of aggression by North Korea. From 1966 to 1969, a large number of cross-border incursions took place in what has been referred to as the Korean DMZ Conflict or the Second Korean War. In 1968, a North Korean commando team unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate South Korean president Park Chung Hee in the Blue House Raid. In 1976, the axe murder incident was widely publicized. Since 1974, four incursion tunnels leading to Seoul have been uncovered. In 2010, a North Korean submarine torpedoed and sank the South Korean corvette ROKS Cheonan, resulting in the deaths of 46 sailors. Again in 2010, North Korea fired artillery shells on Yeonpyeong island, killing two military personnel and two civilians.
After a new wave of UN sanctions, on 11 March 2013, North Korea claimed that the armistice had become invalid. On 13 March 2013, North Korea confirmed it ended the 1953 Armistice and declared North Korea "is not restrained by the North-South declaration on non-aggression". On 30 March 2013, North Korea stated that it entered a "state of war" with South Korea and declared that "The long-standing situation of the Korean peninsula being neither at peace nor at war is finally over". Speaking on 4 April 2013, U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel informed the press that Pyongyang "formally informed" the Pentagon that it "ratified" the potential use of a nuclear weapon against South Korea, Japan and the United States of America, including Guam and Hawaii. Hagel also stated the U.S. would deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-ballistic missile system to Guam because of a credible and realistic nuclear threat from North Korea.
In 2016, it was revealed that North Korea approached the United States about conducting formal peace talks to end the war officially. While the White House agreed to secret peace talks, the plan was rejected because North Korea refused to discuss nuclear disarmament as part of the terms of the treaty.
On 27 April 2018, it was announced that North Korea and South Korea agreed to talks to end the ongoing 65-year conflict. They committed themselves to the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-In signed the Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Reunification of the Korean Peninsula. On 22 September 2021, Moon reiterated his call to end the Korean War formally, in his speech at the UN General Assembly.
Approximately 3 million people died in the Korean War, the majority of whom were civilians, making it perhaps the deadliest conflict of the Cold War era. Samuel S. Kim lists the Korean War as the deadliest conflict in East Asia—the region most affected by armed conflict related to the Cold War. Although only rough estimates of civilian fatalities are available, scholars from Guenter Lewy to Bruce Cumings have noted that the percentage of civilian casualties in Korea was higher than in World War II or the Vietnam War, with Cumings putting civilian casualties at 2 million and Lewy estimating civilian deaths in the range of 2 million to 3 million.
Cumings states that civilians represent at least half of the war's casualties, while Lewy suggests that the civilian portion of the death toll may have gone as high as 70%, compared to Lewy's estimates of 42% in World War II and 30%–46% in the Vietnam War. Data compiled by the Peace Research Institute Oslo lists just under 1 million battle deaths over the course of the Korean War (with a range of 644,696 to 1.5 million) and a mid-value estimate of 3 million total deaths (with a range of 1.5 million to 4.5 million), attributing the difference to excess mortality among civilians from one-sided massacres, starvation, and disease. Compounding this devastation for Korean civilians, virtually all major cities on the Korean Peninsula were destroyed as a result of the war. In both per capita and absolute terms, North Korea was the country most devastated by the war. According to Charles K. Armstrong, the war resulted in the death of an estimated 12%–15% of the North Korean population (c. 10 million), "a figure close to or surpassing the proportion of Soviet citizens killed in World War II".
South Korea reported some 137,899 military deaths and 24,495 missing, 450,742 wounded, 8,343 POW.
According to the data from the US Department of Defense, the US suffered 33,686 battle deaths, 7,586 missing, along with 2,830 non-battle deaths. There were 17,730 other non-battle US military deaths that occurred outside Korea during the same period that were erroneously included as Korean War deaths until 2000. In addition, the U.S. suffered 103,284 wounded in action. The United Nations losses, excluding those of the United States or South Korea, amounted to 4,141 dead and 12,044 wounded in action.
American combat casualties were over 90% of non-Korean UN losses. US battle deaths were 8,516 up to their first engagement with the Chinese on 1 November 1950. The first four months prior to the Chinese intervention (which started near the end of October) were by far the bloodiest per day for the US forces as they engaged and destroyed the comparatively well-equipped KPA in intense fighting. American medical records show that from July to October 1950, the US Army sustained 31% of the combat deaths it ultimately incurred in the entire 37-month war. The US spent US$30 billion on the war. Some 1,789,000 American soldiers served in the Korean War, accounting for 31% of the 5,720,000 Americans who served on active duty worldwide from June 1950 to July 1953.
Deaths from the other non-American UN militaries totaled 3,730, with another 379 missing.
Data from official Chinese sources reported that the PVA had suffered 114,000 battle deaths, 21,000 deaths from wounds, 13,000 deaths from illness, 340,000 wounded, and 7,600 missing. 7,110 Chinese POWs were repatriated to China. In 2010, the Chinese government revised their official tally of war losses to 183,108 dead (114,084 in combat, 70,000 deaths from wounds, illness and other causes) and 25,621 missing. Overall, 73% of Chinese infantry troops served in Korea (25 of 34 armies, or 79 of 109 infantry divisions, were rotated in). More than 52% of the Chinese air force, 55% of the tank units, 67% of the artillery divisions, and 100% of the railroad engineering divisions were sent to Korea as well. Chinese soldiers who served in Korea faced a greater chance of being killed than those who served in World War II or the Chinese Civil War. In terms of financial cost, China spent over 10 billion yuan on the war (roughly US$3.3 billion), not counting USSR aid that had been donated or forgiven. This included $1.3 billion in money owed to the Soviet Union by the end of it. This was a relatively large cost, as China had only 4% of the national income of the United States. Spending on the Korean War constituted 34–43% of China's annual government budget from 1950 to 1953, depending on the year. Despite its underdeveloped economy, Chinese military spending was the world's fourth largest globally for most of the war after that of the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom; however, by 1953, with the winding down of the Korean War and the escalation of the First Indochina War (which reached its peak in 1953–1954), French spending also surpassed Chinese spending by about a third.
According to the South Korean Ministry of National Defense, North Korean military losses totaled 294,151 dead, 91,206 missing, and 229,849 wounded, giving North Korea the highest military deaths of any belligerent in both absolute and relative terms. The PRIO Battle Deaths Dataset gave a similar figure for North Korean military deaths of 316,579. Chinese sources reported similar figures for the North Korean military of 290,000 "casualties" and 90,000 captured. The financial cost of the war for North Korea is unknown but was known to be massive in terms of both direct losses and lost economic activity; the country was devastated both by the cost of the war itself and the American strategic bombing campaign, which, among other things, destroyed 85% of North Korea's buildings and 95% of its power generation capacity. The Soviet Union suffered 299 dead, with 335 planes lost.
The Chinese and North Koreans estimated that about 390,000 soldiers from the United States, 660,000 soldiers from South Korea and 29,000 other UN soldiers were "eliminated" from the battlefield. Western sources estimate the PVA suffered about 400,000 killed and 486,000 wounded, while the KPA suffered 215,000 killed, 303,000 wounded, and over 101,000 captured or missing. Cumings cites a much higher figure of 900,000 fatalities among Chinese soldiers.
According to the South Korean Ministry of National Defense, there were over 750,000 confirmed violent civilians deaths during the war, another million civilians were pronounced missing, and millions more ended up as refugees. In South Korea, some 373,500 civilians were killed, more than 225,600 wounded, and over 387,740 were listed as missing. During the first communist occupation of Seoul alone, the KPA massacred 128,936 civilians and deported another 84,523 to North Korea. On the other side of the border, some 1,594,000 North Koreans were reported as casualties including 406,000 civilians reported as killed, and 680,000 missing. Over 1.5 million North Koreans fled to the South during the war.
In a postwar analysis of the unpreparedness of U.S. Army forces deployed to Korea during the summer and fall of 1950, Army Major General Floyd L. Parks stated "Many who never lived to tell the tale had to fight the full range of ground warfare from offensive to delaying action, unit by unit, man by man ... [T]hat we were able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat ... does not relieve us from the blame of having placed our own flesh and blood in such a predicament."
By 1950, U.S. Secretary of Defense Louis A. Johnson had established a policy of faithfully following President Truman's defense economization plans and had aggressively attempted to implement it even in the face of steadily increasing external threats. He consequently received much of the blame for the initial setbacks in Korea and the widespread reports of ill-equipped and inadequately trained U.S. military forces in the war's early stages.
As an initial response to the invasion, Truman called for a naval blockade of North Korea and was shocked to learn that such a blockade could be imposed only "on paper" since the U.S. Navy no longer had the warships with which to carry out his request. Army officials, desperate for weaponry, recovered Sherman tanks and other equipment from Pacific War battlefields and reconditioned them for shipment to Korea. Army ordnance officials at Fort Knox pulled down M26 Pershing tanks from display pedestals around Fort Knox in order to equip the third company of the Army's hastily formed 70th Tank Battalion. Without adequate numbers of tactical fighter-bomber aircraft, the Air Force took F-51 (P-51) propeller-driven aircraft out of storage or from existing Air National Guard squadrons and rushed them into front-line service. A shortage of spare parts and qualified maintenance personnel resulted in improvised repairs and overhauls. A Navy helicopter pilot aboard an active duty warship recalled fixing damaged rotor blades with masking tape in the absence of spares.
U.S. Army Reserve and Army National Guard infantry soldiers and new inductees (called to duty to fill out understrength infantry divisions) found themselves short of nearly everything needed to repel the North Korean forces: artillery, ammunition, heavy tanks, ground-support aircraft, even effective anti-tank weapons such as the M20 3.5-inch (89 mm) "Super Bazooka". Some Army combat units sent to Korea were supplied with worn-out, "red-lined" M1 rifles or carbines in immediate need of ordnance depot overhaul or repair. Only the Marine Corps, whose commanders had stored and maintained their World War II surplus inventories of equipment and weapons, proved ready for deployment, though they still were woefully understrength, as well as in need of suitable landing craft to practice amphibious operations (Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson had transferred most of the remaining craft to the Navy and reserved them for use in training Army units).
The initial assault by KPA forces was aided by the use of Soviet T-34-85 tanks. A KPA tank corps equipped with about 120 T-34s spearheaded the invasion. These faced an ROK that had few anti-tank weapons adequate to deal with the T-34s. Additional Soviet armor was added as the offensive progressed. The KPA tanks had a good deal of early successes against ROK infantry, Task Force Smith, and the U.S. M24 Chaffee light tanks that they encountered. Interdiction by ground attack aircraft was the only means of slowing the advancing KPA armor. The tide turned in favor of the UN forces in August 1950 when the KPA suffered major tank losses during a series of battles in which the UN forces brought heavier equipment to bear, including M4A3 Sherman and M26 medium tanks, as well as the British Centurion, Churchill and Cromwell tanks.
The Incheon landings on 15 September cut off the KPA supply lines, causing their armored forces and infantry to run out of fuel, ammunition, and other supplies. As a result of this and the Pusan perimeter breakout, the KPA had to retreat, and many of the T-34s and heavy weapons had to be abandoned. By the time the KPA withdrew from the South, 239 T-34s and 74 SU-76 self-propelled guns were lost. After November 1950, KPA armor was rarely encountered.
Following the initial assault by the North, the Korean War saw limited use of tanks and featured no large-scale tank battles. The mountainous, forested terrain, especially in the eastern central zone, was poor tank country, limiting their mobility. Through the last two years of the war in Korea, UN tanks served largely as infantry support and mobile artillery pieces.
Because neither Korea had a significant navy, the war featured few naval battles. A skirmish between North Korea and the UN Command occurred on 2 July 1950; the U.S. Navy cruiser USS Juneau, the Royal Navy cruiser HMS Jamaica and the Royal Navy frigate HMS Black Swan fought four North Korean torpedo boats and two mortar gunboats, and sank them. USS Juneau later sank several ammunition ships that had been present. The last sea battle of the Korean War occurred days before the Battle of Incheon; the ROK ship PC-703 sank a North Korean minelayer in the Battle of Haeju Island, near Incheon. Three other supply ships were sunk by PC-703 two days later in the Yellow Sea.
During most of the war, the UN navies patrolled the west and east coasts of North Korea, sinking supply and ammunition ships and denying the North Koreans the ability to resupply from the sea. Aside from very occasional gunfire from North Korean shore batteries, the main threat to UN navy ships was from magnetic mines. During the war, five U.S. Navy ships were lost to mines: two minesweepers, two minesweeper escorts, and one ocean tug. Mines and gunfire from North Korean coastal artillery damaged another 87 U.S. warships, resulting in slight to moderate damage.
The war was the first in which jet aircraft played the central role in air combat. Once-formidable fighters such as the P-51 Mustang, F4U Corsair, and Hawker Sea Fury—all piston-engined, propeller-driven, and designed during World War II—relinquished their air-superiority roles to a new generation of faster, jet-powered fighters arriving in the theater. For the initial months of the war, the P-80 Shooting Star, F9F Panther, Gloster Meteor, and other jets under the UN flag dominated the Korean People's Air Force (KPAF) propeller-driven Soviet Yakovlev Yak-9 and Lavochkin La-9s. By early August 1950, the KPAF was reduced to only about 20 planes.
The Chinese intervention in late October 1950 bolstered the KPAF with the MiG-15, one of the world's most advanced jet fighters. The USAF countered the MiG-15 by sending over three squadrons of its most capable fighter, the F-86 Sabre. These arrived in December 1950. The Soviet Union denied the involvement of their personnel in anything other than an advisory role, but air combat quickly resulted in Soviet pilots dropping their code signals and speaking over the radio in Russian. This known direct Soviet participation was a casus belli that the UN Command deliberately overlooked, lest the war expand to include the Soviet Union and potentially escalate into atomic warfare.
After the war and to the present day, the USAF reported an inflated F-86 Sabre kill ratio in excess of 10:1, with 792 MiG-15s and 108 other aircraft shot down by Sabres, and 78 Sabres lost to enemy fire. The Soviet Air Force reported some 1,100 air-to-air victories and 335 MiG combat losses, while China's PLAAF reported 231 combat losses, mostly MiG-15s, and 168 other aircraft lost. The KPAF reported no data, but the UN Command estimates some 200 KPAF aircraft lost in the war's first stage, and 70 additional aircraft after the Chinese intervention. The USAF disputes Soviet and Chinese claims of 650 and 211 downed F-86s, respectively.
More modern estimates place the overall USAF kill ratio at around 1.8:1 with the ratio dropping to 1.3:1 against MiG-15s with Soviet pilots but increasing to a dominant 12:1 against Chinese and North Korean adversaries.
Reports by Lieutenant General Sidor Slyusarev, commander of Soviet air forces in Korea, are more favorable to the communist side. The 64th Corps claimed a total 1,097 enemy aircraft of all types during operations, for the loss of 335 aircraft (including lost to enemy ground fire, accidents, etc) and 110 pilots. Soviet reports put the overall kill ratio at 3.4:1 in favor of Soviet pilots. As reported, effectiveness of the Soviet fighters declined as the war progressed. from an overall kill ratio of 7.9:1 from November 1950 through January 1952, declining to 2.2:1 in later 1952 and 1.9:1 in 1953. This was because more advanced jet fighters appeared on the UN side as well as improved U.S. tactics.
Regardless of the actual ratio, American Sabres were very effective at controlling the skies over Korea. Since no other UN fighter could contend with the MiG-15, F-86s largely took over air combat once they arrived, relegating other aircraft to air-to-ground operations. Despite much greater numbers (the number of Sabres in theater never exceeded 150 while MiG-15s reached 900 at their peak), communist aircraft were seldom encountered south of Pyongyang. UN ground forces, supply lines, and infrastructure were not attacked from the air. Although North Korea had 75 airfields capable of supporting MiGs, after 1951, any serious effort to operate from them was abandoned. The MiGs were instead based across the Yalu River in the safety of China. This confined most air-to-air engagements to MiG Alley. UN aircraft had free rein to conduct strike missions over enemy territory with little fear of interception. Although jet dogfights are remembered as a prominent part of the Korean War, counter-air missions comprised just 12% of Far East Air Forces sorties, and four times as many sorties were performed for close air support and interdiction.
The war marked a major milestone not only for fixed-wing aircraft, but also for rotorcraft, featuring the first large-scale deployment of helicopters for medical evacuation (medevac). In 1944–45, during World War II, the YR-4 helicopter had seen limited ambulance duty. In Korea, where rough terrain prevented use of the jeep as a speedy medevac vehicle, helicopters like the Sikorsky H-19 were heavily used. This helped reduce fatal casualties to a dramatic degree when combined with complementary medical innovations such as Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals (MASH). As such, the medical evacuation and care system for the wounded was so effective for the UN forces that a wounded soldier who arrived at a MASH unit alive typically had a 97% chance of survival. The limitations of jet aircraft for close air support highlighted the helicopter's potential in the role, leading to the development of the helicopter gunships used in the Vietnam War.
The initial bombing attack on North Korea was approved on the fourth day of the war, 29 June 1950, by General Douglas MacArthur immediately upon request by the commanding general of the Far East Air Forces (FEAF), George E. Stratemeyer. Major bombing began in late July. U.S. airpower conducted 7,000 close support and interdiction airstrikes that month, which helped slow the North Korean rate of advance to 3 km (2 mi) per day. On 12 August 1950, the USAF dropped 625 tons of bombs on North Korea; two weeks later, the daily tonnage increased to some 800 tons.
The U.S. dropped a total of 635,000 tons of bombs, including 32,557 tons of napalm, on Korea, more than during the entire Pacific War. North Korea ranks alongside Cambodia (500,000 tons), Laos (2 million tons) and South Vietnam (4 million tons) as among the most heavily bombed countries in history, with Laos suffering the most extensive bombardment relative to its size and population.
Almost every substantial building in North Korea was destroyed as a result. The war's highest-ranking U.S. POW, Major General William F. Dean, reported that the majority of North Korean cities and villages he saw were either rubble or snow-covered wasteland. North Korean factories, schools, hospitals, and government offices were forced to move underground, and air defenses were "non-existent".
In May 1953, five major North Korean dams were bombed. According to Charles K. Armstrong, the bombing of these dams and ensuing floods threatened several million North Koreans with starvation, although large-scale famine was averted with emergency aid provided by North Korea's allies.
General Matthew Ridgway said that except for air power, "the war would have been over in 60 days with all Korea in Communist hands". UN air forces flew 1,040,708 combat and combat support sorties during the war. FEAF flew the majority at 710,886 (69.3% of sorties), with the U.S. Navy performing 16.1%, the U.S. Marine Corps 10.3%, and 4.3% by other allied air forces.
As well as conventional bombing, the communist side claimed that the U.S. used biological weapons. These claims have been disputed; Conrad Crane asserts that while the U.S. worked towards developing chemical and biological weapons, the U.S. military "possessed neither the ability, nor the will", to use them in combat.
On 5 November 1950, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff issued orders for the retaliatory atomic bombing of Manchurian PRC military bases, if either of their armies crossed into Korea or if PRC or KPA bombers attacked Korea from there. President Truman ordered the transfer of nine Mark 4 nuclear bombs "to the Air Force's Ninth Bomb Group, the designated carrier of the weapons ... [and] signed an order to use them against Chinese and Korean targets", which he never transmitted.
Many U.S. officials viewed the deployment of nuclear-capable (but not nuclear-armed) B-29 bombers to Britain as helping to resolve the Berlin Blockade of 1948–1949. Truman and Eisenhower both had military experience and viewed nuclear weapons as potentially usable components of their military. During Truman's first meeting to discuss the war on 25 June 1950, he ordered plans be prepared for attacking Soviet forces if they entered the war. By July, Truman approved another B-29 deployment to Britain, this time with bombs (but without their cores), to remind the Soviets of U.S. offensive ability. Deployment of a similar fleet to Guam was leaked to The New York Times. As UN forces retreated to Pusan, and the CIA reported that mainland China was building up forces for a possible invasion of Taiwan, the Pentagon believed that Congress and the public would demand using nuclear weapons if the situation in Korea required them.
As PVA forces pushed back the UN forces from the Yalu River, Truman stated during a 30 November 1950 press conference that using nuclear weapons was "always [under] active consideration", with control under the local military commander. Indian ambassador K. Madhava Panikkar reports "that Truman announced he was thinking of using the atom bomb in Korea. But the Chinese seemed unmoved by this threat ... The PRC's propaganda against the U.S. was stepped up. The 'Aid Korea to resist America' campaign was made the slogan for increased production, greater national integration, and more rigid control over anti-national activities. One could not help feeling that Truman's threat came in useful to the leaders of the Revolution, to enable them to keep up the tempo of their activities."
After his statement caused concern in Europe, Truman met on 4 December with UK prime minister and Commonwealth spokesman Clement Attlee, French Premier René Pleven, and French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman to discuss their worries about atomic warfare and its likely continental expansion. The U.S.' forgoing atomic warfare was not because of "a disinclination by the Soviet Union and People's Republic of China to escalate [the Korean War]", but because UN allies—notably the UK, the Commonwealth, and France—were concerned about a geopolitical imbalance rendering NATO defenseless while the U.S. fought China, who then might persuade the Soviet Union to conquer Western Europe. The Joint Chiefs of Staff advised Truman to tell Attlee that the U.S. would use nuclear weapons only if necessary to protect an evacuation of UN troops, or to prevent a "major military disaster".
On 6 December after the Chinese intervention repelled the UN armies from northern North Korea, General J. Lawton Collins (Army Chief of Staff), General MacArthur, Admiral C. Turner Joy, General Stratemeyer and staff officers Major General Doyle Hickey, Major General Charles A. Willoughby and Major General Edwin K. Wright met in Tokyo to plan strategy countering the Chinese intervention; they considered three potential atomic warfare scenarios encompassing the next weeks and months of warfare.
Both the Pentagon and the State Department were cautious about using nuclear weapons because of the risk of general war with China and the diplomatic ramifications. Truman and his senior advisors agreed and never seriously considered using them in early December 1950 despite the poor military situation in Korea.
In 1951, the U.S. escalated closest to atomic warfare in Korea. Because China deployed new armies to the Sino-Korean frontier, ground crews at the Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, assembled atomic bombs for Korean warfare, "lacking only the essential pit nuclear cores." In October 1951, the United States effected Operation Hudson Harbor to establish a nuclear weapons capability. USAF B-29 bombers practiced individual bombing runs from Okinawa to North Korea (using dummy nuclear or conventional bombs), coordinated from Yokota Air Base in east-central Japan. Hudson Harbor tested "actual functioning of all activities which would be involved in an atomic strike, including weapons assembly and testing, leading, [and] ground control of bomb aiming". The bombing run data indicated that atomic bombs would be tactically ineffective against massed infantry, because the "timely identification of large masses of enemy troops was extremely rare".
Ridgway was authorized to use nuclear weapons if a major air attack originated from outside Korea. An envoy was sent to Hong Kong to deliver a warning to China. The message likely caused Chinese leaders to be more cautious about potential U.S. use of nuclear weapons, but whether they learned about the B-29 deployment is unclear, and the failure of the two major Chinese offensives that month likely was what caused them to shift to a defensive strategy in Korea. The B-29s returned to the United States in June.
Despite the greater destructive power that atomic weapons would bring to the war, their effects on determining the war's outcome would have likely been minimal. Tactically, given the dispersed nature of PVA/KPA forces, the relatively primitive infrastructure for staging and logistics centers, and the small number of bombs available (most would have been conserved for use against the Soviets), atomic attacks would have limited effects against the ability of China to mobilize and move forces. Strategically, attacking Chinese cities to destroy civilian industry and infrastructure would cause the immediate dispersion of the leadership away from such areas and give propaganda value for the communists to galvanize the support of Chinese civilians. Since the Soviets were not expected to intervene with their few primitive atomic weapons on China or North Korea's behalf, the threat of a possible nuclear exchange was unimportant in the decision not to deploy atomic bombs; their use offered little operational advantage and would undesirably lower the "threshold" for using atomic weapons against non-nuclear states in future conflicts.
When Eisenhower succeeded Truman in early 1953, he was similarly cautious about using nuclear weapons in Korea. The administration prepared contingency plans to use them against China, but like Truman, he feared that doing so would result in Soviet attacks on Japan. The war ended as it began, without U.S. nuclear weapons deployed near battle.
There were numerous atrocities and massacres of civilians throughout the Korean War committed by both sides, starting in the war's first days. In 2005–2010, a South Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigated atrocities and other human rights violations through much of the 20th century, from the Japanese colonial period through the Korean War and beyond. It excavated some mass graves from the Bodo League massacres and confirmed the general outlines of those political executions. Of the Korean War-era massacres the commission was petitioned to investigate, 82% were perpetrated by South Korean forces, with 18% perpetrated by North Korean forces.
The commission also received petitions alleging more than 200 large-scale killings of South Korean civilians by the U.S. military during the war, mostly air attacks. It confirmed several such cases, including refugees crowded into a cave attacked with napalm bombs, which survivors said killed 360 people, and an air attack that killed 197 refugees gathered in a field in the far south. It recommended South Korea seek reparations from the United States, but in 2010, a reorganized commission under a new, conservative government concluded that most U.S. mass killings resulted from "military necessity", while in a small number of cases, they concluded, the U.S. military had acted with "low levels of unlawfulness", but the commission recommended against seeking reparations.
Chinese sources claim at Geoje prison camp on Geoje Island, Chinese POWs experienced anti-communist lecturing and missionary work from secret agents from the U.S. and Taiwan. Pro-communist POWs experienced torture, cutting off of limbs, or were executed in public. Being forced to write confession letters and receiving tattoos of an anti-communism slogan and Flag of the Republic of China were also commonly seen, in case any wanted to go back to mainland China. Pro-communist POWs who could not endure the torture formed an underground group to fight the pro-nationalist POWs secretly by assassination, which led to the Geoje uprising. The rebellion captured Francis Dodd, and was suppressed by the 187th Infantry Regiment.
In the end, 14,235 Chinese POWs went to Taiwan and fewer than 6,000 POWs returned to mainland China. Those who went to Taiwan are called "righteous men" and experienced brainwashing again and were sent to the army or were arrested; while the survivors who returned to mainland China were welcomed as a "hero" first, but experienced anti-brainwashing, strict interrogation, and house arrest eventually, after the tattoos were discovered. After 1988, the Taiwanese government allowed POWs to go back to mainland China and helped remove anti-communist tattoos; while the mainland Chinese government started to allow mainland Chinese prisoners of war to return from Taiwan.
The United States reported that North Korea mistreated prisoners of war: soldiers were beaten, starved, put to forced labor, marched to death, and summarily executed.
The KPA killed POWs at the battles for Hill 312, Hill 303, the Pusan Perimeter, Daejeon and Sunchon; these massacres were discovered afterwards by the UN forces. Later, a U.S. Congress war crimes investigation, the United States Senate Subcommittee on Korean War Atrocities of the Permanent Subcommittee of the Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations, reported that "two-thirds of all American prisoners of war in Korea died as a result of war crimes".
Although the Chinese rarely executed prisoners like their North Korean counterparts, mass starvation and diseases swept through the Chinese-run POW camps during the winter of 1950–51. About 43% of U.S. POWs died during this period. The Chinese defended their actions by stating that all Chinese soldiers during this period were suffering mass starvation and diseases because of logistical difficulties. The UN POWs said that most of the Chinese camps were located near the easily supplied Sino-Korean border and that the Chinese withheld food to force the prisoners to accept the communism indoctrination programs. According to Chinese reports, over a thousand U.S. POWs died by the end of June 1951, while a dozen British POWs died, and all Turkish POWs survived. According to Hastings, wounded U.S. POWs died for lack of medical attention and were fed a diet of corn and millet "devoid of vegetables, almost barren of proteins, minerals, or vitamins" with only 1/3 the calories of their usual diet. Especially in early 1951, thousands of prisoners lost the will to live and "declined to eat the mess of sorghum and rice they were provided".
The unpreparedness of U.S. POWs to resist heavy communist indoctrination during the Korean War led to the Code of the United States Fighting Force which governs how U.S. military personnel in combat should act when they must "evade capture, resist while a prisoner or escape from the enemy".
North Korea may have detained up to 50,000 South Korean POWs after the ceasefire. Over 88,000 South Korean soldiers were missing and the KPA claimed they captured 70,000 South Koreans. However, when ceasefire negotiations began in 1951, the KPA reported they held only 8,000 South Koreans. The UN Command protested the discrepancies and alleged that the KPA were forcing South Korean POWs to join the KPA. The KPA denied such allegations. They claimed their POW rosters were small because many POWs were killed in UN air raids and that they had released ROK soldiers at the front. They insisted only volunteers were allowed to serve in the KPA. By early 1952, UN negotiators gave up trying to get back the missing South Koreans. The POW exchange proceeded without access to South Korean POWs who were not on the PVA/KPA rosters.
North Korea continued to claim that any South Korean POW who stayed in the North did so voluntarily. However, since 1994, South Korean POWs have been escaping North Korea on their own after decades of captivity. As of 2010, the South Korean Ministry of Unification reported that 79 ROK POWs escaped the North. The South Korean government estimates 500 South Korean POWs continue to be detained in North Korea. The escaped POWs have testified about their treatment and written memoirs about their lives in North Korea. They report they were not told about the POW exchange procedures and were assigned to work in mines in the remote northeastern regions near the Chinese and Russian border. Declassified Soviet Foreign Ministry documents corroborate such testimony.
In December 1950, the South Korean National Defense Corps was founded; the soldiers were 406,000 drafted citizens. In the winter of 1951, 50,000 to 90,000 South Korean National Defense Corps soldiers starved to death while marching southward under the PVA offensive when their commanding officers embezzled funds earmarked for their food. This event is called the National Defense Corps Incident. Although his political allies certainly profited from corruption, it remains controversial if Syngman Rhee was personally involved in or benefited from the corruption.
As a result of the war, "North Korea had been virtually destroyed as an industrial society". After the armistice, Kim Il Sung requested Soviet economic and industrial assistance. In September 1953, the Soviet government agreed to "cancel or postpone repayment for all ... outstanding debts", and promised to grant North Korea one billion rubles in monetary aid, industrial equipment and consumer goods. Eastern European members of the Soviet Bloc also contributed with "logistical support, technical aid, [and] medical supplies". China canceled North Korea's war debts, provided 800 million yuan, promised trade cooperation and sent in thousands of troops to rebuild damaged infrastructure. Contemporary North Korea remains underdeveloped and continues to be a totalitarian dictatorship since the end of the war, with an elaborate cult of personality around the Kim dynasty.
The means of production are owned by the state through state-run enterprises and collectivized farms. Most services—such as healthcare, education, housing and food production—are subsidized or state-funded. Estimates based on the most recent North Korean census suggest that 240,000 to 420,000 people died as a result of the 1990s North Korean famine and that there were 600,000 to 850,000 unnatural deaths in North Korea from 1993 to 2008. A study by South Korean anthropologists of North Korean children who had defected to China found that 18-year-old males were 13 cm (5 in) shorter than South Koreans their age because of malnutrition.
Present-day North Korea follows Songun, or "military-first" policy and has the highest number of military and paramilitary personnel in the world, with 7,769,000 active, reserve and paramilitary personnel, or approximately 30% of its population. Its active-duty army of 1.28 million is the fourth largest in the world, after China, the United States and India; consisting of 4.9% of its population. North Korea possesses nuclear weapons. A 2014 UN inquiry into abuses of human rights in North Korea concluded that, "the gravity, scale and nature of these violations reveal a state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world," with Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch holding similar views.
Postwar recovery was different in the two Koreas. South Korea, which started from a far lower industrial base than North Korea (the latter contained 80% of Korea's heavy industry in 1945), stagnated in the first postwar decade. In 1953, South Korea and the United States signed a Mutual Defense Treaty.
South Korean anti-Americanism after the war was fueled by the presence and behavior of United States Forces Korea military personnel and U.S. support for Park's authoritarian regime, a fact still evident during the country's democratic transition in the 1980s. However, anti-Americanism has declined significantly in South Korea in recent years, from 46% favorable in 2003 to 74% favorable in 2011, making South Korea one of the most pro-U.S. countries in the world.
A large number of mixed-race "GI babies" (offspring of U.S. and other UN soldiers and Korean women) were filling up the country's orphanages. Because Korean traditional society places significant weight on paternal family ties, bloodlines, and purity of race, children of mixed race or those without fathers are not easily accepted in South Korean society. International adoption of Korean children began in 1954. The U.S. Immigration Act of 1952 legalized the naturalization of non-Blacks and non-Whites as U.S. citizens and made possible the entry of military spouses and children from South Korea. With the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965, which substantially changed U.S. immigration policy toward non-Europeans, Koreans became one of the fastest-growing Asian groups in the United States.
Mao Zedong's decision to take on the United States was a direct attempt to confront what the communist bloc viewed as the strongest anti-communist power in the world, undertaken at a time when the Chinese communist regime was still consolidating its own power after winning the Chinese Civil War. Mao supported intervention not to save North Korea, but because he believed that a military conflict with the U.S. was inevitable after the U.S. entered the war, and to appease the Soviet Union to secure military dispensation and achieve Mao's goal of making China a major world military power. Mao was equally ambitious in improving his own prestige inside the communist international community by demonstrating that his Marxist concerns were international. In his later years, Mao believed that Stalin only gained a positive opinion of him after China's entrance into the Korean War. Inside mainland China, the war improved the long-term prestige of Mao, Zhou, and Peng, allowing the Chinese Communist Party to increase its legitimacy while weakening anti-communist dissent.
The Chinese government has encouraged the viewpoint that the war was initiated by the United States and South Korea, though ComIntern documents have shown that Mao sought approval from Stalin to enter the war. In Chinese media, the Chinese war effort is considered as an example of China's engaging the strongest power in the world with an underequipped army, forcing it to retreat, and fighting it to a military stalemate. These successes were contrasted with China's historical humiliations by Japan and by Western powers over the previous hundred years, highlighting the abilities of the PLA and the Chinese Communist Party. The most significant negative long-term consequence of the war for China was that it led the United States to guarantee the safety of Chiang Kaishek's regime in Taiwan, effectively ensuring that Taiwan would remain outside of PRC control through the present day. Mao had also discovered the usefulness of large-scale mass movements in the war while implementing them among most of his ruling measures over PRC. Anti-U.S. sentiments, which were already a significant factor during the Chinese Civil War, were ingrained into Chinese culture during the communist propaganda campaigns of the Korean War.
The Korean War affected other participant combatants. Turkey, for example, entered NATO in 1952, and the foundation was laid for bilateral diplomatic and trade relations with South Korea. The war also played role in the refugee crisis in Turkey in 1950-1951.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Korean War was fought between North Korea and South Korea from 1950 to 1953. The war began on 25 June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea following years of internal instability and hostilities between the two states. North Korea was supported by China and the Soviet Union while South Korea was supported by the United States and allied countries. The fighting ended with an armistice on 27 July 1953.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "In 1910, the Empire of Japan annexed Korea as a colony for 35 years until its surrender at the end of World War II on 15 August 1945. The United States and the Soviet Union divided Korea along the 38th parallel into two zones of occupation. The Soviets administered the northern zone, and the Americans administered the southern zone. In 1948, as a result of Cold War tensions, the occupation zones became two sovereign states. A communist state, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, was established in the north under the government led by Premier Kim Il Sung, while a capitalist state, the Republic of Korea, was established in the south under the government led by President Syngman Rhee. Both governments claimed to be the sole legitimate government of all of Korea and neither accepted the border as permanent.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The years prior to North Korea's invasion of South Korea were marked by border clashes between the two countries and an insurgency in the South that was backed by the North. After failed attempts to stop the fighting and unify the Koreas, North Korean forces (Korean People's Army or KPA) crossed the 38th parallel on 25 June 1950, formally starting the war. The United Nations Security Council denounced North Korea's actions and authorized the formation of the United Nations Command and the dispatch of forces to Korea to repel it. The Soviet Union was boycotting the UN for recognizing Taiwan (Republic of China) as China, and the People's Republic of China was not recognized by the UN, so neither could support their ally North Korea at the Security Council meeting. Twenty-one countries of the United Nations eventually contributed to the UN force, with the United States providing around 90% of the military personnel, and represented the first attempt at collective security under the United Nations system.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "After the first two months of war, the South Korean army (ROKA) and hastily dispatched American forces were on the point of defeat, retreating to a small area behind a defensive line known as the Pusan Perimeter. In September 1950, a risky amphibious UN counteroffensive was launched at Incheon, cutting off KPA troops and supply lines in South Korea. Those who escaped envelopment and capture were forced back north. UN forces then invaded North Korea in October 1950 and moved rapidly towards the Yalu River—the border with China—but on 19 October 1950, Chinese forces - the People's Volunteer Army (PVA) - crossed the Yalu and entered the war. The UN retreated from North Korea following the PVA's First Phase Offensive and the Second Phase Offensive. China along with their North Korean and Soviet allies pressed their offensive, invading the South and capturing Seoul by early January of 1951. A UN force recaptured the city from them, and the communist forces were pushed back to positions around the 38th parallel following PVA's abortive Fifth Phase Offensive. After this, the front which was close to where the war had started stabilized, and the last two years were a war of attrition.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The fighting ended on 27 July 1953 when the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed. The agreement created the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) to separate North and South Korea, and allowed the return of prisoners. However, no peace treaty was ever signed, and the two Koreas are technically still at war, engaged in a frozen conflict. In April 2018, the leaders of North and South Korea met at the DMZ and agreed to work toward a treaty to end the Korean War formally.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The Korean War was a major conflict of the Cold War and among the most destructive conflicts of the modern era, with approximately 3 million war fatalities and a larger proportional civilian death toll than World War II or the Vietnam War. It resulted in the destruction of virtually all of Korea's major cities, with thousands of massacres committed by both sides—including the mass killing of tens of thousands of suspected communists by the South Korean government, and the torture and starvation of prisoners of war by the North Koreans. North Korea became among the most heavily bombed countries in history. Over the course of the war 1.5 million North Koreans are estimated to have fled North Korea.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In South Korea, the war is usually referred to as the \"625 War\" (6·25 전쟁; 六二五戰爭), the \"625 Upheaval\" (6·25 동란; 六二五動亂; yugio dongnan), or simply \"625\", reflecting the date of its commencement on 25 June.",
"title": "Names"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In North Korea, the war is officially referred to as the \"Fatherland Liberation War\" (Choguk haebang chŏnjaeng) or alternatively the \"Chosŏn [Korean] War\" (조선전쟁; Chosŏn chŏnjaeng).",
"title": "Names"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In mainland China, the segment of the war after the intervention of the People's Volunteer Army is most commonly and officially known as the \"Resisting America and Assisting Korea War\" (Chinese: 抗美援朝战争; pinyin: Kàngměi Yuáncháo Zhànzhēng), although the term \"Chosŏn War\" (Chinese: 朝鮮戰爭; pinyin: Cháoxiǎn Zhànzhēng) is sometimes used unofficially. The term \"Hán (Korean) War\" (Chinese: 韓戰; pinyin: Hán Zhàn) is most commonly used in Taiwan (Republic of China), Hong Kong and Macau.",
"title": "Names"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In the U.S., the war was initially described by President Harry S. Truman as a \"police action\", as the United States never formally declared war on its opponents, and the operation was conducted under the auspices of the United Nations. It has been sometimes referred to in the English-speaking world as \"The Forgotten War\" or \"The Unknown War\" because of the lack of public attention it received both during and after the war, relative to the global scale of World War II, which preceded it, and the subsequent angst of the Vietnam War, which succeeded it.",
"title": "Names"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Imperial Japan severely diminished the influence of China over Korea in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), ushering in the short-lived Korean Empire. A decade later, after defeating Imperial Russia in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05), Japan made the Korean Empire its protectorate with the Eulsa Treaty in 1905, then annexed it with the Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty in 1910. After that, the Korean Empire fell, and Korea was directly ruled by Japan from 1910 to 1945.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Many Korean nationalists fled the country. The Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea was founded in 1919 in Nationalist China. It failed to achieve international recognition, failed to unite the various nationalist groups, and had a fractious relationship with its U.S.-based founding president, Syngman Rhee. From 1919 to 1925 and beyond, Korean communists led internal and external warfare against the Japanese.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In China, the nationalist National Revolutionary Army and the communist People's Liberation Army (PLA) helped organize Korean refugees against the Japanese military, which had also occupied parts of China. The Nationalist-backed Koreans, led by Yi Pom-Sok, fought in the Burma campaign (December 1941 – August 1945). The communists, led by, among others, Kim Il Sung, fought the Japanese in Korea and Manchuria.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "At the Cairo Conference in November 1943, China, the United Kingdom and the United States all decided that \"in due course Korea shall become free and independent\".",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "At the Tehran Conference in November 1943 and the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the Soviet Union promised to join its allies in the Pacific War within three months of the victory in Europe. Germany officially surrendered on 8 May 1945, and the USSR declared war on Japan and invaded Manchuria on 8 August 1945, three months later. This was three days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. By 10 August, the Red Army had begun to occupy the north of Korea.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "On the night of 10 August in Washington, U.S. Colonels Dean Rusk and Charles H. Bonesteel III were assigned to divide Korea into Soviet and U.S. occupation zones and proposed the 38th parallel as the dividing line. This was incorporated into the U.S. General Order No. 1, which responded to the Japanese surrender on 15 August. Explaining the choice of the 38th parallel, Rusk observed, \"even though it was further north than could be realistically reached by U. S. [sic] forces in the event of Soviet disagreement ... we felt it important to include the capital of Korea in the area of responsibility of American troops\". He noted that he was \"faced with the scarcity of U.S. forces immediately available and time and space factors which would make it difficult to reach very far north before Soviet troops could enter the area\". As Rusk's comments indicate, the U.S. doubted whether the Soviet government would agree to this. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, however, maintained his wartime policy of co-operation, and on 16 August the Red Army halted at the 38th parallel for three weeks to await the arrival of U.S. forces in the south.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "On 7 September 1945, General Douglas MacArthur issued Proclamation No. 1 to the people of Korea, announcing U.S. military control over Korea south of the 38th parallel and establishing English as the official language during military control. On 8 September U.S. Lieutenant General John R. Hodge arrived in Incheon to accept the Japanese surrender south of the 38th parallel. Appointed as military governor, Hodge directly controlled South Korea as head of the United States Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK 1945–48).",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In December 1945, Korea was administered by a U.S.–Soviet Union Joint Commission, as agreed at the Moscow Conference, with the aim of granting independence after a five-year trusteeship. The idea (to have to wait 5 years for independence) was not popular among Koreans, and riots broke out. To contain them, the USAMGIK banned strikes on 8 December and outlawed the PRK Revolutionary Government and the PRK People's Committees on 12 December. Following further large-scale civilian unrest, the USAMGIK declared martial law.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Citing the inability of the Joint Commission to make progress, the U.S. government decided to hold an election under United Nations auspices with the aim of creating an independent Korea. The Soviet authorities and the Korean communists refused to co-operate on the grounds that it would not be fair, and many South Korean politicians boycotted it. A general election was held in the South on 10 May 1948. North Korea held parliamentary elections three months later on 25 August. The resultant South Korean government promulgated a national political constitution on 17 July and elected Syngman Rhee as president on 20 July. The Republic of Korea (South Korea) was established on 15 August 1948. In the Soviet Korean Zone of Occupation, the Soviet Union agreed to the establishment of a communist government led by Kim Il Sung.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The Soviet Union withdrew its forces from Korea in 1948, and U.S. troops withdrew in 1949.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "With the end of the war with Japan, the Chinese Civil War resumed in earnest between the Communists and the Nationalist-led government. While the Communists were struggling for supremacy in Manchuria, they were supported by the North Korean government with matériel and manpower. According to Chinese sources, the North Koreans donated 2,000 railway cars worth of supplies while thousands of Koreans served in the Chinese PLA during the war. North Korea also provided the Chinese Communists in Manchuria with a safe refuge for non-combatants and communications with the rest of China.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The North Korean contributions to the Chinese Communist victory were not forgotten after the creation of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. As a token of gratitude, between 50,000 and 70,000 Korean veterans that served in the PLA were sent back along with their weapons, and they later played a significant role in the initial invasion of South Korea. China promised to support the North Koreans in the event of a war against South Korea.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "By 1948, a large-scale, North Korea-backed insurgency had broken out in the southern half of the peninsula. This was exacerbated by the ongoing undeclared border war between the Koreas, which saw division-level engagements and thousands of deaths on both sides. The ROK in this time was almost entirely trained and focused on counterinsurgency, rather than conventional warfare. They were equipped and advised by a force of a few hundred American officers, who were largely successful in helping the ROKA to subdue guerrillas and hold its own against North Korean military (Korean People's Army, KPA) forces along the 38th parallel. Approximately 8,000 South Korean soldiers and police died in the insurgent war and border clashes.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The first socialist uprising occurred without direct North Korean participation, though the guerrillas still professed support for the northern government. Beginning in April 1948 on the isolated island of Jeju, the campaign saw mass arrests and repression by the South Korean government in the fight against the South Korean Labor Party, resulting in a total of 30,000 violent deaths, among them 14,373 civilians (of whom ~2,000 were killed by rebels and ~12,000 by ROK security forces). The Yeosu–Suncheon rebellion overlapped with it, as several thousand army defectors waving red flags massacred right-leaning families. This resulted in another brutal suppression by the government and between 2,976 and 3,392 deaths. By May 1949, both uprisings had been crushed.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Insurgency reignited in the spring of 1949 when attacks by guerrillas in the mountainous regions (buttressed by army defectors and North Korean agents) increased. Insurgent activity peaked in late 1949 as the ROKA engaged so-called People's Guerrilla Units. Organized and armed by the North Korean government, and backed up by 2,400 KPA commandos who had infiltrated through the border, these guerrillas launched a large offensive in September aimed at undermining the South Korean government and preparing the country for the KPA's arrival in force. This offensive failed. However, by this point, the guerrillas were firmly entrenched in the Taebaek-san region of the North Gyeongsang Province (around Taegu), as well as in the border areas of the Gangwon Province.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "While the insurgency was ongoing, the ROKA and KPA engaged in multiple battalion-sized battles along the border, starting in May 1949. Serious border clashes between South and North continued on 4 August 1949, when thousands of North Korean troops attacked South Korean troops occupying territory north of the 38th parallel. The 2nd and 18th ROK Infantry Regiments repulsed initial attacks in Kuksa-bong (above the 38th parallel), and at the end of the clashes ROK troops were \"completely routed\". Border incidents decreased significantly by the start of 1950.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Meanwhile, counterinsurgency efforts in the South Korean interior intensified; persistent operations, paired with worsening weather conditions, eventually denied the guerrillas sanctuary and wore away their fighting strength. North Korea responded by sending more troops to link up with existing insurgents and build more partisan cadres; the number of North Korean infiltrators had reached 3,000 soldiers in 12 units by the start of 1950, but all of these units were destroyed or scattered by the ROKA. On 1 October 1949, the ROKA launched a three-pronged assault on the insurgents in South Cholla and Taegu. By March 1950, the ROKA claimed 5,621 guerrillas killed or captured and 1,066 small arms seized. This operation crippled the insurgency. Soon after, the North Koreans made two final attempts to keep the uprising active, sending two battalion-sized units of infiltrators under the commands of Kim Sang-ho and Kim Moo-hyon. The first battalion was reduced in annihilation to a single man over the course of several engagements by the ROKA 8th Division. The second battalion was annihilated by a two-battalion hammer-and-anvil maneuver by units of the ROKA 6th Division, resulting in a loss toll of 584 KPA guerrillas (480 killed, 104 captured) and 69 ROKA troops killed, plus 184 wounded. By spring of 1950, guerrilla activity had mostly subsided; the border, too, was calm.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "By 1949, South Korean and U.S. military actions had reduced the active number of indigenous communist guerrillas in the South from 5,000 to 1,000. However, Kim Il Sung believed that widespread uprisings had weakened the South Korean military and that a North Korean invasion would be welcomed by much of the South Korean population. Kim began seeking Stalin's support for an invasion in March 1949, traveling to Moscow to attempt to persuade him.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Stalin initially did not think the time was right for a war in Korea. PLA forces were still embroiled in the Chinese Civil War, while U.S. forces remained stationed in South Korea. By spring 1950, he believed that the strategic situation had changed: PLA forces under Mao Zedong had secured final victory in China, U.S. forces had withdrawn from Korea, and the Soviets had detonated their first nuclear bomb, breaking the U.S. atomic monopoly. As the U.S. had not directly intervened to stop the communist victory in China, Stalin calculated that they would be even less willing to fight in Korea, which had much less strategic significance. The Soviets had also cracked the codes used by the U.S. to communicate with their embassy in Moscow, and reading these dispatches convinced Stalin that Korea did not have the importance to the U.S. that would warrant a nuclear confrontation. Stalin began a more aggressive strategy in Asia based on these developments, including promising economic and military aid to China through the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In April 1950, Stalin gave Kim permission to attack the government in the South under the condition that Mao would agree to send reinforcements if needed. For Kim, this was the fulfilment of his goal to unite Korea after its division by foreign powers. Stalin made it clear that Soviet forces would not openly engage in combat, to avoid a direct war with the U.S. Kim met with Mao in May 1950 and differing historical interpretations of the outcome of the meeting have been put forward. According to Barbara Barnouin and Yu Changgeng, Mao agreed to support Kim despite concerns of American intervention, as China desperately needed the economic and military aid promised by the Soviets. Kathryn Weathersby cites Soviet documents which said Kim secured Mao's support. Along with Mark O'Neill, she says this accelerated Kim's war preparations. Chen Jian argues Mao never seriously challenged Kim’s plans and that Kim had every reason to inform Stalin that he had obtained Mao's support. Citing recent scholarship, Zhao Suisheng contends Mao did not approve of Kim's war proposal and requested verification from Stalin which he provided via a telegram. Mao accepted the decision made by Kim and Stalin to unify the Koreas but cautioned Kim over possible US intervention.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Soviet generals with extensive combat experience from the Second World War were sent to North Korea as the Soviet Advisory Group. These generals completed the plans for the attack by May. The original plans called for a skirmish to be initiated in the Ongjin Peninsula on the west coast of Korea. The North Koreans would then launch an attack that would capture Seoul and encircle and destroy the ROK. The final stage would involve destroying South Korean government remnants and capturing the rest of South Korea, including the ports.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "On 7 June 1950, Kim called for a Korea-wide election on 5–8 August 1950 and a consultative conference in Haeju on 15–17 June. On 11 June, the North sent three diplomats to the South as a peace overture which Rhee rejected outright. On 21 June, Kim revised his war plan to involve a general attack across the 38th parallel, rather than a limited operation in the Ongjin Peninsula. Kim was concerned that South Korean agents had learned about the plans and that South Korean forces were strengthening their defenses. Stalin agreed to this change of plan.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "While these preparations were underway in the North, there were frequent clashes along the 38th parallel, especially at Kaesong and Ongjin, many initiated by the South. The ROK was being trained by the U.S. Korean Military Advisory Group (KMAG). On the eve of war, KMAG commander General William Lynn Roberts voiced utmost confidence in the ROK and boasted that any North Korean invasion would merely provide \"target practice\". For his part, Syngman Rhee repeatedly expressed his desire to conquer the North, including when U.S. diplomat John Foster Dulles visited Korea on 18 June.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Although some South Korean and U.S. intelligence officers predicted an attack from the North, similar predictions had been made before and nothing had happened. The Central Intelligence Agency noted the southward movement by the KPA but assessed this as a \"defensive measure\" and concluded an invasion was \"unlikely\". On 23 June UN observers inspected the border and did not detect that war was imminent.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Throughout 1949 and 1950, the Soviets continued arming North Korea. After the communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, ethnic Korean units in the PLA were sent to North Korea. Chinese involvement was extensive from the beginning, building on previous collaboration between the Chinese and Korean communists during the Chinese Civil War. In the fall of 1949, two PLA divisions composed mainly of Korean-Chinese troops (the 164th and 166th) entered North Korea, followed by smaller units throughout the rest of 1949; these troops brought with them not only their experience and training, but also their weapons and other equipment, changing little but their uniforms. The reinforcement of the KPA with PLA veterans continued into 1950, with the 156th Division and several other units of the former Fourth Field Army arriving (also with their equipment) in February; the PLA 156th Division was reorganized as the KPA 7th Division. By mid-1950, between 50,000 and 70,000 former PLA troops had entered North Korea, forming a significant part of the KPA's strength on the eve of the war's beginning. Several generals, such as Lee Kwon-mu, were PLA veterans born to ethnic Koreans in China. The combat veterans and equipment from China, the tanks, artillery and aircraft supplied by the Soviets, and rigorous training increased North Korea's military superiority over the South, armed by the U.S. military with mostly small arms, but no heavy weaponry such as tanks. While older histories of the conflict often referred to these ethnic Korean PLA veterans as being sent from northern Korea to fight in the Chinese Civil War before being sent back, recent Chinese archival sources studied by Kim Donggill indicate that this was not the case. Rather, the soldiers were indigenous to China (part of China's longstanding ethnic Korean community) and were recruited to the PLA in the same way as any other Chinese citizen.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "According to the first official census in 1949, the population of North Korea numbered 9,620,000, and by mid-1950, North Korean forces numbered between 150,000 and 200,000 troops, organized into 10 infantry divisions, one tank division, and one air force division, with 210 fighter planes and 280 tanks, who captured scheduled objectives and territory, among them Kaesong, Chuncheon, Uijeongbu and Ongjin. Their forces included 274 T-34-85 tanks, 200 artillery pieces, 110 attack bombers, and some 150 Yak fighter planes, and 35 reconnaissance aircraft. In addition to the invasion force, the North had 114 fighters, 78 bombers, 105 T-34-85 tanks, and some 30,000 soldiers stationed in reserve in North Korea. Although each navy consisted of only several small warships, the North and South Korean navies fought in the war as seaborne artillery for their armies.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "In contrast, the South Korean population was estimated at 20 million, but its army was unprepared and ill-equipped. As of 25 June 1950, the ROK had 98,000 soldiers (65,000 combat, 33,000 support), no tanks (they had been requested from the U.S. military, but requests were denied), and a 22-plane air force comprising 12 liaison-type and 10 AT-6 advanced-trainer airplanes. Large U.S. garrisons and air forces were in Japan, but only 200–300 U.S. troops were in Korea.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "At dawn on 25 June 1950, the KPA crossed the 38th parallel behind artillery fire. The KPA justified its assault with the claim that ROK troops attacked first and that the KPA were aiming to arrest and execute the \"bandit traitor Syngman Rhee\". Fighting began on the strategic Ongjin Peninsula in the west. There were initial South Korean claims that the 17th Regiment had counterattacked at Haeju; some scholars argue the claimed counterattack was instead the instigating attack, and therefore that the South Koreans may have fired first. However, the report that contained the Haeju claim also contained numerous other errors and outright falsehoods.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Whoever fired the first shots in Ongjin, KPA forces attacked all along the 38th parallel within an hour. The KPA had a combined arms force including tanks supported by heavy artillery. The ROK had no tanks, anti-tank weapons or heavy artillery to stop such an attack. In addition, the South Koreans committed their forces in a piecemeal fashion, and these were routed in a few days.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "On 27 June, Rhee evacuated Seoul with some of the government. At 02:00 on 28 June the ROK blew up the Hangang Bridge across the Han River in an attempt to stop the KPA. The bridge was detonated while 4,000 refugees were crossing it, and hundreds were killed. Destroying the bridge also trapped many ROK units north of the Han River. In spite of such desperate measures, Seoul fell that same day. A number of South Korean National Assemblymen remained in Seoul when it fell, and 48 subsequently pledged allegiance to the North.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "On 28 June, Rhee ordered the massacre of suspected political opponents in his own country. In five days, the ROK, which had 95,000 troops on 25 June, was down to less than 22,000 troops. In early July, when U.S. forces arrived, what was left of the ROK was placed under U.S. operational command of the United Nations Command.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The Truman administration was unprepared for the invasion. Korea was not included in the strategic Asian Defense Perimeter outlined by United States Secretary of State Dean Acheson. Military strategists were more concerned with the security of Europe against the Soviet Union than East Asia. At the same time, the administration was worried that a war in Korea could quickly escalate without American intervention. Said diplomat John Foster Dulles in a cable: \"To sit by while Korea is overrun by unprovoked armed attack would start a disastrous chain of events leading most probably to world war.\"",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "While there was initial hesitance by some in the U.S. government to get involved in the war, considerations about Japan played a part in the ultimate decision to engage on behalf of South Korea. Especially after the fall of China to the communists, U.S. experts on East Asia saw Japan as the critical counterweight to the Soviet Union and China in the region. While there was no U.S. policy dealing with South Korea directly as a national interest, its proximity to Japan increased the importance of South Korea. Said Kim: \"The recognition that the security of Japan required a non-hostile Korea led directly to President Truman's decision to intervene ... The essential point ... is that the American response to the North Korean attack stemmed from considerations of U.S. policy toward Japan.\"",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Another major consideration was the possible Soviet reaction if the U.S. intervened. The Truman administration was fearful that a war in Korea was a diversionary assault that would escalate to a general war in Europe once the United States committed in Korea. At the same time, \"[t]here was no suggestion from anyone that the United Nations or the United States could back away from [the conflict]\". Yugoslavia—a possible Soviet target because of the Tito-Stalin split—was vital to the defense of Italy and Greece, and the country was first on the list of the National Security Council's post-North Korea invasion list of \"chief danger spots\". Truman believed if aggression went unchecked, a chain reaction would be initiated that would marginalize the UN and encourage communist aggression elsewhere. The UN Security Council approved the use of force to help the South Koreans, and the U.S. immediately began using air and naval forces that were in the area to that end. The Truman administration still refrained from committing troops on the ground because some advisers believed the North Koreans could be stopped by air and naval power alone.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The Truman administration was still uncertain if the attack was a ploy by the Soviet Union or just a test of U.S. resolve. The decision to commit ground troops became viable when a communiqué was received on 27 June indicating the Soviet Union would not move against U.S. forces in Korea. The Truman administration believed it could intervene in Korea without undermining its commitments elsewhere.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "On 25 June 1950, the United Nations Security Council unanimously condemned the North Korean invasion of South Korea with UN Security Council Resolution 82. The Soviet Union, a veto-wielding power, had boycotted the Council meetings since January 1950, protesting Taiwan's occupation of China's permanent seat in the UN Security Council. After debating the matter, the Security Council, on 27 June 1950, published Resolution 83 recommending member states provide military assistance to the Republic of Korea. On 27 June President Truman ordered U.S. air and sea forces to help South Korea. On 4 July the Soviet deputy foreign minister accused the U.S. of starting armed intervention on behalf of South Korea.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The Soviet Union challenged the legitimacy of the war for several reasons. The ROK intelligence upon which Resolution 83 was based came from U.S. Intelligence; North Korea was not invited as a sitting temporary member of the UN, which violated UN Charter Article 32; and the fighting was beyond the UN Charter's scope, because the initial north–south border fighting was classed as a civil war. Because the Soviet Union was boycotting the Security Council at the time, legal scholars posited that deciding upon an action of this type required the unanimous vote of all the five permanent members including the Soviet Union.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Within days of the invasion, masses of ROK soldiers—of dubious loyalty to the Syngman Rhee regime—were retreating southwards or defecting en masse to the northern side, the KPA.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "As soon as word of the attack was received, Acheson informed President Truman that the North Koreans had invaded South Korea. Truman and Acheson discussed a U.S. invasion response and agreed that the U.S. was obligated to act, comparing the North Korean invasion with Adolf Hitler's aggressions in the 1930s, with the conclusion being that the mistake of appeasement must not be repeated. Several U.S. industries were mobilized to supply materials, labor, capital, production facilities, and other services necessary to support the military objectives of the Korean War. Truman later explained that he believed fighting the invasion was essential to the U.S. goal of the global containment of communism as outlined in the National Security Council Report 68 (NSC 68) (declassified in 1975):",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Communism was acting in Korea, just as Hitler, Mussolini and the Japanese had ten, fifteen, and twenty years earlier. I felt certain that if South Korea was allowed to fall, Communist leaders would be emboldened to override nations closer to our own shores. If the Communists were permitted to force their way into the Republic of Korea without opposition from the free world, no small nation would have the courage to resist threat and aggression by stronger Communist neighbors.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "In August 1950, Truman and Acheson obtained the consent of Congress to appropriate $12 billion for military action in Korea, equivalent to $146 billion in 2022. Because of the extensive defense cuts and the emphasis placed on building a nuclear bomber force, none of the services were in a position to make a robust response with conventional military strength. General Omar Bradley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was faced with reorganizing and deploying a U.S. military force that was a shadow of its World War II counterpart.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Acting on Acheson's recommendation, Truman ordered Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in Japan General Douglas MacArthur to transfer matériel to the South Korean military while giving air cover to the evacuation of U.S. nationals. Truman disagreed with advisers who recommended unilateral bombing of the North Korean forces and ordered the U.S. Seventh Fleet to protect the Republic of China (Taiwan), whose government asked to fight in Korea. The United States denied Taiwan's request for combat, lest it provoke a PRC retaliation. Because the United States had sent the Seventh Fleet to \"neutralize\" the Taiwan Strait, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai criticized both the UN and U.S. initiatives as \"armed aggression on Chinese territory\".",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The Battle of Osan, the first significant U.S. engagement of the Korean War, involved the 540-soldier Task Force Smith, which was a small forward element of the 24th Infantry Division which had been flown in from Japan. On 5 July 1950, Task Force Smith attacked the KPA at Osan but without weapons capable of destroying the KPA tanks. The KPA defeated the U.S. soldiers; the result was 180 American casualties. The KPA progressed southwards, pushing back U.S. forces at Pyongtaek, Chonan, and Chochiwon, forcing the 24th Division's retreat to Taejeon, which the KPA captured in the Battle of Taejon; the 24th Division suffered 3,602 dead and wounded and 2,962 captured, including its commander, Major General William F. Dean.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "By August, the KPA steadily pushed back the ROK and the Eighth United States Army southwards. The impact of the Truman administration's defense budget cutbacks was now keenly felt, as U.S. troops fought a series of costly rearguard actions. Facing a veteran and well-led KPA force, and lacking sufficient anti-tank weapons, artillery or armor, the Americans retreated and the KPA advanced down the Korean Peninsula. During their advance, the KPA purged South Korea's intelligentsia by killing civil servants and intellectuals. On 20 August, MacArthur warned Kim Il Sung that he would be held responsible for the KPA's atrocities. By September, UN forces were hemmed into a small corner of southeast Korea, near Pusan. This 230-kilometre (140-mile) perimeter enclosed about 10% of Korea, in a line partially defined by the Nakdong River.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Although Kim's early successes led him to predict he would end the war by the end of August, Chinese leaders were more pessimistic. To counter a possible U.S. deployment, Zhou secured a Soviet commitment to have the Soviet Union support Chinese forces with air cover, and he deployed 260,000 soldiers along the Korean border, under the command of Gao Gang. Zhou authorized a topographical survey of Korea and directed Lei Yingfu, Zhou's military adviser in Korea, to analyze the military situation in Korea. Lei concluded that MacArthur would most likely attempt a landing at Incheon. After conferring with Mao that this would be MacArthur's most likely strategy, Zhou briefed Soviet and North Korean advisers of Lei's findings, and issued orders to PLA commanders deployed on the Korean border to prepare for U.S. naval activity in the Korea Strait.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "In the resulting Battle of Pusan Perimeter (August–September 1950), the UN forces withstood KPA attacks meant to capture the city at the Naktong Bulge, P'ohang-dong, and Taegu. The United States Air Force (USAF) interrupted KPA logistics with 40 daily ground support sorties, which destroyed 32 bridges, halting most daytime road and rail traffic. KPA forces were forced to hide in tunnels by day and move only at night. To deny military equipment and supplies to the KPA, the USAF destroyed logistics depots, petroleum refineries, and harbors, while the U.S. Navy aircraft attacked transport hubs. Consequently, the overextended KPA could not be supplied throughout the south. On 27 August, 67th Fighter Squadron aircraft mistakenly attacked facilities in Chinese territory, and the Soviet Union called the UN Security Council's attention to China's complaint about the incident. The U.S. proposed that a commission of India and Sweden determine what the U.S. should pay in compensation, but the Soviets vetoed the U.S. proposal.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Meanwhile, U.S. garrisons in Japan continually dispatched soldiers and military supplies to reinforce defenders in the Pusan Perimeter. MacArthur went so far as to call for Japan's rearmament. Tank battalions deployed to Korea directly from the U.S. mainland from the port of San Francisco to the port of Pusan, the largest Korean port. By late August, the Pusan Perimeter had some 500 medium tanks battle-ready. In early September 1950, UN forces outnumbered the KPA 180,000 to 100,000 soldiers.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Against the rested and rearmed Pusan Perimeter defenders and their reinforcements, the KPA were undermanned and poorly supplied; unlike the UN forces, they lacked naval and air support. To relieve the Pusan Perimeter, MacArthur recommended an amphibious landing at Incheon, near Seoul and well over 160 km (100 mi) behind the KPA lines. On 6 July, he ordered Major General Hobart R. Gay, commander of the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division, to plan the division's amphibious landing at Incheon; on 12–14 July, the 1st Cavalry Division embarked from Yokohama, Japan, to reinforce the 24th Infantry Division inside the Pusan Perimeter.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Soon after the war began, MacArthur began planning a landing at Incheon, but the Pentagon opposed him. When authorized, he activated a combined U.S. Army and Marine Corps, and ROK force. The X Corps, led by Major General Edward Almond, consisted of 40,000 troops of the 1st Marine Division, the 7th Infantry Division and around 8,600 ROK soldiers. By 15 September, the amphibious assault force faced few KPA defenders at Incheon: military intelligence, psychological warfare, guerrilla reconnaissance, and protracted bombardment facilitated a relatively light battle. However, the bombardment destroyed most of Incheon.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "On 16 September Eighth Army began its breakout from the Pusan Perimeter. Task Force Lynch, 3rd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, and two 70th Tank Battalion units (Charlie Company and the Intelligence–Reconnaissance Platoon) advanced through 171.2 km (106.4 mi) of KPA territory to join the 7th Infantry Division at Osan on 27 September. X Corps rapidly defeated the KPA defenders around Seoul, thus threatening to trap the main KPA force in southern Korea.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "On 18 September, Stalin dispatched General H. M. Zakharov to North Korea to advise Kim to halt his offensive around the Pusan Perimeter and to redeploy his forces to defend Seoul. Chinese commanders were not briefed on North Korean troop numbers or operational plans. As the overall commander of Chinese forces, Zhou suggested that the North Koreans should attempt to eliminate the UN forces at Incheon only if they had reserves of at least 100,000 men; otherwise, he advised the North Koreans to withdraw their forces north.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "On 25 September, Seoul was recaptured by UN forces. U.S. air raids caused heavy damage to the KPA, destroying most of its tanks and much of its artillery. KPA troops in the south, instead of effectively withdrawing north, rapidly disintegrated, leaving Pyongyang vulnerable. During the general retreat, only 25,000 to 30,000 KPA soldiers managed to reach the KPA lines. On 27 September, Stalin convened an emergency session of the Politburo, in which he condemned the incompetence of the KPA command and held Soviet military advisers responsible for the defeat.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "On 27 September, MacArthur received the top secret National Security Council Memorandum 81/1 from Truman reminding him that operations north of the 38th parallel were authorized only if \"at the time of such operation there was no entry into North Korea by major Soviet or Chinese Communist forces, no announcements of intended entry, nor a threat to counter our operations militarily\". On 29 September, MacArthur restored the government of the Republic of Korea under Syngman Rhee. The Joint Chiefs of Staff on 27 September sent to MacArthur a comprehensive directive to govern his future actions: the directive stated that the primary goal was the destruction of the KPA, with unification of the Korean Peninsula under Rhee as a secondary objective \"if possible\"; the Joint Chiefs added that this objective was dependent on whether the Chinese and Soviets would intervene, and was subject to changing conditions.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "On 30 September, Zhou warned the U.S. that China was prepared to intervene in Korea if the U.S. crossed the 38th parallel. Zhou attempted to advise KPA commanders on how to conduct a general withdrawal by using the same tactics that allowed Chinese communist forces to successfully escape Chiang Kai-shek's encirclement campaigns in the 1930s, but by some accounts, KPA commanders did not use these tactics effectively. Historian Bruce Cumings argues, however, that the KPA's rapid withdrawal was strategic, with troops melting into the mountains from where they could launch guerrilla raids on the UN forces spread out on the coasts.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "By 1 October the UN Command had repelled the KPA northwards past the 38th parallel; the ROK advanced after them into North Korea. MacArthur made a statement demanding the KPA's unconditional surrender. Six days later, on 7 October, with UN authorization, the UN Command forces followed the ROK forces northwards. The Eighth U.S. Army drove up western Korea and captured Pyongyang on 19 October. The 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team made their first of two combat jumps during the Korean War on 20 October at Sunchon and Sukchon. The mission was to cut the road north going to China, preventing North Korean leaders from escaping from Pyongyang; and to rescue U.S. prisoners of war.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "At month's end, UN forces held 135,000 KPA prisoners of war. As they neared the Sino-Korean border, the UN forces in the west were divided from those in the east by 80–161 km (50–100 mi) of mountainous terrain. In addition to the 135,000 captured, the KPA had also suffered some 200,000 soldiers killed or wounded for a total of 335,000 casualties since the end of June 1950, and had lost 313 tanks (mostly T-34/85 models). A mere 25,000 KPA regulars retreated across the 38th parallel, as their military had entirely collapsed. The UN forces on the peninsula numbered 229,722 combat troops (including 125,126 Americans and 82,786 South Koreans), 119,559 rear area troops, and 36,667 U.S. Air Force personnel. Taking advantage of the UN Command's strategic momentum against the communists, MacArthur believed it necessary to extend the Korean War into China to destroy depots supplying the North Korean war effort. Truman disagreed and ordered caution at the Sino-Korean border.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "On 3 October 1950, China attempted to warn the United States by way of its embassy in India that it would intervene if UN forces crossed the Yalu River. The United States did not respond as policymakers in Washington, including Truman, considered the warning to be a bluff.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "On 15 October Truman and MacArthur met at Wake Island. This meeting was much publicized because of MacArthurs's discourteous refusal to meet the president in the continental United States. To Truman, MacArthur speculated there was little risk of Chinese intervention in Korea, and that the PRC's opportunity for aiding the KPA had lapsed. He believed the PRC had some 300,000 soldiers in Manchuria and some 100,000–125,000 soldiers at the Yalu River. He further concluded that, although half of those forces might cross south, \"if the Chinese tried to get down to Pyongyang, there would be the greatest slaughter\" without Soviet air force protection.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Meanwhile on 13 October, the Politburo decided that China would intervene even in the absence of Soviet air support, basing its decision on a belief that superior morale could defeat an enemy that had superior equipment. To that end, 200,000 People's Volunteer Army (PVA) troops crossed the Yalu into North Korea. UN aerial reconnaissance had difficulty sighting PVA units in daytime, because their march and bivouac discipline minimized aerial detection. The PVA marched \"dark-to-dark\" (19:00–03:00), and aerial camouflage (concealing soldiers, pack animals, and equipment) was deployed by 05:30. Meanwhile, daylight advance parties scouted for the next bivouac site. During daylight activity or marching, soldiers were to remain motionless if an aircraft appeared, until it flew away; PVA officers were under order to shoot security violators. Such battlefield discipline allowed a three-division army to march the 460 km (286 mi) from An-tung, Manchuria, to the combat zone in some 19 days. Another division night-marched a circuitous mountain route, averaging 29 km (18 mi) daily for 18 days.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "After secretly crossing the Yalu River on 19 October, the PVA 13th Army Group launched the First Phase Offensive on 25 October, attacking the advancing UN forces near the Sino-Korean border. This military decision made solely by China changed the attitude of the Soviet Union. Twelve days after PVA troops entered the war, Stalin allowed the Soviet Air Forces to provide air cover and supported more aid to China. After inflicting heavy losses on the ROK II Corps at the Battle of Onjong, the first confrontation between Chinese and U.S. military occurred on 1 November 1950. Deep in North Korea, thousands of soldiers from the PVA 39th Army encircled and attacked the U.S. 8th Cavalry Regiment with three-prong assaults—from the north, northwest, and west—and overran the defensive position flanks in the Battle of Unsan.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "On 13 November, Mao appointed Zhou the overall commander and coordinator of the war effort, with Peng Dehuai as field commander. On 25 November, on the Korean western front, the PVA 13th Army Group attacked and overran the ROK II Corps at the Battle of the Ch'ongch'on River, and then inflicted heavy losses on the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division on the UN forces' right flank. Believing that they could not hold against the PVA, the Eighth Army began to retreat from North Korea crossing the 38th parallel in mid-December.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "In the east, on 27 November, the PVA 9th Army Group initiated the Battle of Chosin Reservoir. Here, the UN forces fared comparatively better: like the Eighth Army, the surprise attack also forced X Corps to retreat from northeast Korea, but they were, in the process, able to break out from the attempted encirclement by the PVA and execute a successful tactical withdrawal. X Corps managed to establish a defensive perimeter at the port city of Hungnam on 11 December and were able to evacuate by 24 December to reinforce the badly depleted Eighth Army to the south. During the evacuation, about 193 shiploads of UN forces and matériel (approximately 105,000 soldiers, 98,000 civilians, 17,500 vehicles, and 350,000 tons of supplies) were evacuated to Pusan. The SS Meredith Victory was noted for evacuating 14,000 refugees, the largest rescue operation by a single ship, even though it was designed to hold 12 passengers. Before escaping, the UN forces razed most of Hungnam city, with particular attention to the port facilities.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "In early December UN forces, including the British Army's 29th Infantry Brigade, evacuated Pyongyang along with large numbers of refugees. Around 4.5 million North Koreans are estimated to have fled from North Korea to either the South or elsewhere abroad. On 16 December Truman declared a national state of emergency with Presidential Proclamation No. 2914, 3 C.F.R. 99 (1953), which remained in force until 14 September 1978. The next day, 17 December, Kim Il Sung was deprived of the right of command of KPA by China.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "A ceasefire presented by the UN to the PRC shortly after the Battle of the Ch'ongch'on River on 11 December was rejected by the Chinese government, which was convinced of the PVA's invincibility after its victory in that battle and the wider Second Phase Offensive. With Lieutenant General Matthew Ridgway assuming the command of the Eighth Army on 26 December, the PVA and the KPA launched their Third Phase Offensive (also known as the \"Chinese New Year's Offensive\") on New Year's Eve of 1950/51. Utilizing night attacks in which UN fighting positions were encircled and then assaulted by numerically superior troops who had the element of surprise, the attacks were accompanied by loud trumpets and gongs, which fulfilled the double purpose of facilitating tactical communication and mentally disorienting the enemy. UN forces initially had no familiarity with this tactic, and as a result, some soldiers panicked, abandoning their weapons and retreating to the south. The offensive overwhelmed UN forces, allowing the PVA and KPA to capture Seoul for the second time on 4 January 1951.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "These setbacks prompted General MacArthur to consider using nuclear weapons against the Chinese or North Korean interiors, intending radioactive fallout zones to interrupt the Chinese supply chains. However, upon the arrival of the charismatic General Ridgway, the esprit de corps of the bloodied Eighth Army immediately began to revive.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "UN forces retreated to Suwon in the west, Wonju in the center, and the territory north of Samcheok in the east, where the battlefront stabilized and held. The PVA had outrun its logistics capability and thus were unable to press on beyond Seoul as food, ammunition, and matériel were carried nightly, on foot and bicycle, from the border at the Yalu River to the three battle lines. On 25 late January, upon finding that the PVA had abandoned their battle lines, Ridgway ordered a reconnaissance-in-force, which became Operation Thunderbolt. A full-scale advance fully exploited the UN's air superiority, concluding with the UN forces reaching the Han River and recapturing Wonju.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Following the failure of ceasefire negotiations in January, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 498 on 1 February, condemning the PRC as an aggressor, and called upon its forces to withdraw from Korea.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "In early February, the ROK 11th Division ran an operation to destroy guerrillas and pro-DPRK sympathizers in the South Gyeongsang Province. During the operation, the division and police committed the Geochang and Sancheong–Hamyang massacres. In mid-February, the PVA counterattacked with the Fourth Phase Offensive and achieved initial victory at Hoengseong. However, the offensive was blunted by U.S. IX Corps at Chipyong-ni in the center. The U.S. 23rd Regimental Combat Team and the French Battalion fought a short but desperate battle that broke the attack's momentum. The battle is sometimes known as the \"Gettysburg of the Korean War\": 5,600 U.S., and French troops were surrounded on all sides by 25,000 PVA. UN forces had previously retreated in the face of large PVA/KPA forces instead of getting cut off, but this time, they stood and fought, and won.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "In the last two weeks of February 1951, Operation Thunderbolt was followed by Operation Killer, carried out by the revitalized Eighth Army. It was a full-scale, battlefront-length attack staged for maximum exploitation of firepower to kill as many KPA and PVA troops as possible. Operation Killer concluded with U.S. I Corps re-occupying the territory south of the Han River, and IX Corps capturing Hoengseong. On 7 March the Eighth Army attacked with Operation Ripper, expelling the PVA and the KPA from Seoul on 14 March. This was the fourth and final conquest of the city in a year's time, leaving it a ruin; the 1.5 million pre-war population was down to 200,000, and people were suffering from severe food shortages.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "On 1 March Mao sent a cable to Stalin emphasizing the difficulties faced by Chinese forces and the need for air cover, especially over supply lines. Apparently impressed by the Chinese war effort, Stalin agreed to supply two air force divisions, three anti-aircraft divisions, and 6,000 trucks. PVA troops in Korea continued to suffer severe logistical problems throughout the war.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "In late April, Peng sent his deputy, Hong Xuezhi, to brief Zhou in Beijing. What Chinese soldiers feared, Hong said, was not the enemy, but having no food, bullets, or trucks to transport them to the rear when they were wounded. Zhou attempted to respond to the PVA's logistical concerns by increasing Chinese production and improving supply methods, but these efforts were never sufficient. At the same time, large-scale air defense training programs were carried out, and the People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) began participating in the war from September 1951 onward. The Fourth Phase Offensive had catastrophically failed, in contrast to the success of the Second Phase Offensive and limited gains of the Third Phase Offensive. The UN forces, after earlier defeats and subsequent retraining, proved much harder to infiltrate by Chinese light infantry than they had been in previous months. From 31 January to 21 April, the Chinese had suffered 53,000 casualties.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "On 11 April Truman relieved General MacArthur as supreme commander in Korea. There were several reasons for the dismissal. MacArthur had crossed the 38th parallel in the mistaken belief that the Chinese would not enter the war, leading to major allied losses. He believed that the use of nuclear weapons should be his decision, not the president's. MacArthur threatened to destroy China unless it surrendered. While MacArthur felt total victory was the only honorable outcome, Truman was more pessimistic about his chances once involved in a larger war, feeling that a truce and orderly withdrawal from Korea could be a valid solution. MacArthur was the subject of congressional hearings in May and June 1951, which determined that he had defied the orders of the president and thus had violated the U.S. Constitution. A popular criticism of MacArthur was that he never spent a night in Korea and directed the war from the safety of Tokyo.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Ridgway was appointed supreme commander in Korea, and he regrouped the UN forces for successful counterattacks, while General James Van Fleet assumed command of the Eighth Army. Further attacks slowly depleted the PVA and KPA forces; Operations Courageous (23–28 March) and Tomahawk (23 March) (a combat jump by the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team) were joint ground and airborne infiltrations meant to trap PVA forces between Kaesong and Seoul. UN forces advanced to the Kansas Line, north of the 38th parallel.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "The PVA counterattacked in April 1951, with the Fifth Phase Offensive, with three field armies (approximately 700,000 men). The first thrust of the offensive fell upon I Corps, which fiercely resisted in the Battle of the Imjin River (22–25 April) and the Battle of Kapyong (22–25 April), blunting the impetus of the offensive, which was halted at the No-name Line north of Seoul. Casualty ratios were grievously disproportionate; Peng had expected a 1:1 or 2:1 ratio, but instead, Chinese combat casualties from 22 to 29 April totaled between 40,000 and 60,000 compared to only 4,000 for the UN —a casualty ratio between 10:1 and 15:1. By the time Peng had called off the attack in the western sector on 29 April, the three participating armies had lost a third of their front-line combat strength within a week. Additional casualties were incurred on 30 April. On 15 May the PVA commenced the second impulse of the spring offensive and attacked the ROK and U.S. X Corps in the east at the Soyang River. Approximately 370,000 PVA and 114,000 KPA troops had been mobilized, with the bulk attacking in the eastern sector with about a quarter attempting to pin the I Corps and IX Corps in the western sector. After initial success, they were halted by 20 May and repulsed over the following days, with Western histories generally designating 22 May as the end of the offensive.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "At month's end, the Chinese planned the third step of the Fifth Phase Offensive (withdrawal), which they estimated would take 10 to 15 days to complete for their 340,000 remaining men, and set the retreat date for the night of 23 May. They were caught off guard when the Eighth Army counterattacked and regained the Kansas Line on the morning of 12 May, 23 hours before the expected withdrawal. The surprise attack turned the retreat into \"the most severe loss since our forces had entered Korea\"; from 16 May to 23 May, the PVA suffered another 45,000 to 60,000 casualties before their remaining soldiers managed to evacuate back north. Per official Chinese statistics, the Fifth Phase Offensive as a whole had cost the PVA 102,000 soldiers (85,000 killed/wounded, 17,000 captured), with unknown but significant losses for the KPA.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "The end of the Fifth Phase Offensive preceded the start of the UN May–June 1951 counteroffensive. During the counteroffensive, the U.S.-led coalition captured land up to about 10 km (6 mi) north of the 38th parallel, with most forces stopping at the Kansas Line and a minority going further to the Wyoming Line. PVA and KPA forces suffered greatly during this offensive, especially in the Chuncheon sector and at Chiam-ni and Hwacheon; in the latter sector alone the PVA/KPA suffered over 73,207 casualties, including 8,749 captured, compared to 2,647 total casualties of the IX Corps which engaged them.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "The halt at the Kansas Line and subsequent offensive action stand-down began the stalemate that lasted until the armistice of 1953. The disastrous failure of the Fifth Phase Offensive (which Peng later recalled as one of only four mistakes he made in his military career) \"led Chinese leaders to change their goal from driving the UNF out of Korea to merely defending China's security and ending the war through negotiations\".",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "For the remainder of the war, the UN and the PVA/KPA fought but exchanged little territory, as the stalemate held. Large-scale bombing of North Korea continued, and protracted armistice negotiations began on 10 July 1951 at Kaesong in the North. On the Chinese side, Zhou directed peace talks, and Li Kenong and Qiao Guanghua headed the negotiation team. Combat continued while the belligerents negotiated; the goal of the UN forces was to recapture all of South Korea and to avoid losing territory. The PVA and the KPA attempted similar operations and later effected military and psychological operations to test the UN Command's resolve to continue the war.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "The two sides constantly traded artillery fire along the front, with American-led forces possessing a large firepower advantage over the Chinese-led forces. For example, in the last three months of 1952 the UN fired 3,553,518 field gun shells and 2,569,941 mortar shells, while the communists fired 377,782 field gun shells and 672,194 mortar shells: an overall 5.83:1 ratio in the UN's favor. The communist insurgency, reinvigorated by North Korean support and scattered bands of KPA stragglers, also resurged in the south.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "In the autumn of 1951, Eighth Army Commander General James Van Fleet ordered Major General Paik Sun-yup to break the back of guerrilla activity. From December 1951 to March 1952, ROK security forces claimed to have killed 11,090 partisans and sympathizers and captured 9,916 more.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "PVA troops suffered from deficient military equipment, serious logistical problems, overextended communication and supply lines, and the constant threat of UN bombers. All of these factors generally led to a rate of Chinese casualties that was far greater than the casualties suffered by UN troops. The situation became so serious that in November 1951 Zhou called a conference in Shenyang to discuss the PVA's logistical problems. At the meeting, it was decided to accelerate the construction of railways and airfields in the area to increase the number of trucks available to the army, and to improve air defense by any means possible. These commitments did little to address the problems directly that confronted PVA troops.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "In the months after the Shenyang conference, Peng went to Beijing several times to brief Mao and Zhou about the heavy casualties suffered by Chinese troops and the increasing difficulty of keeping the front lines supplied with basic necessities. Peng was convinced that the war would be protracted and that neither side would be able to achieve victory in the near future. On 24 February 1952, the Military Commission, presided over by Zhou, discussed the PVA's logistical problems with members of various government agencies involved in the war effort. After the government representatives emphasized their inability to meet the demands of the war, Peng, in an angry outburst, shouted: \"You have this and that problem... You should go to the front and see with your own eyes what food and clothing the soldiers have! Not to speak of the casualties! For what are they giving their lives? We have no aircraft. We have only a few guns. Transports are not protected. More and more soldiers are dying of starvation. Can't you overcome some of your difficulties?\" The atmosphere became so tense that Zhou was forced to adjourn the conference. Zhou subsequently called a series of meetings, where it was agreed that the PVA would be divided into three groups, to be dispatched to Korea in shifts; to accelerate the training of Chinese pilots; to provide more anti-aircraft guns to the front lines; to purchase more military equipment and ammunition from the Soviet Union; to provide the army with more food and clothing; and to transfer the responsibility of logistics to the central government.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "With peace negotiations ongoing, the Chinese attempted one final offensive in the final weeks of the war to capture territory: on 10 June, 30,000 Chinese troops struck two South Korean and one U.S. divisions on a 13 km (8 mi) front, and on 13 July, 80,000 Chinese soldiers struck the east-central Kumsong sector, with the brunt of their attack falling on four South Korean divisions. In both cases, the Chinese had some success in penetrating South Korean lines but failed to capitalize, particularly when the U.S. forces present responded with overwhelming firepower. Chinese casualties in their final major offensive of the war (above normal wastage for the front) were about 72,000, including 25,000 killed in action compared to 14,000 for the UN (the vast majority of these deaths were South Koreans, though 1,611 were Americans).",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "The on-again, off-again armistice negotiations continued for two years, first at Kaesong then at the neighboring village of Panmunjom. A major problematic negotiation point was prisoner of war (POW) repatriation. The PVA, KPA and UN Command could not agree on a system of repatriation because many PVA and KPA soldiers refused to be repatriated back to the north, which was unacceptable to the Chinese and North Koreans. A Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission, under the chairman Indian General K. S. Thimayya, was subsequently set up to handle the matter.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "On 29 November 1952 U.S. President-Elect Dwight D. Eisenhower went to Korea to learn what might end the Korean War. Eisenhower took office on 20 January 1953. Stalin died a few weeks later on 5 March. The new Soviet leaders, engaged in their internal power struggle, had no desire to continue supporting China's efforts in Korea and issued a statement calling for an end to the hostilities. China could not continue the war without Soviet aid, and North Korea was no longer a major player. Armistice talks entered a new phase. With the United Nations' acceptance of India's proposed Korean War armistice, the KPA, the PVA and the UN Command signed the armistice agreement on 27 July 1953. South Korean president Syngman Rhee refused to sign the agreement. The war is considered to have ended at this point, even though there was no peace treaty. North Korea nevertheless claims that it won the Korean War.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "Under the agreement, the belligerents established the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) along the front line, which vaguely follows the 38th parallel. In the eastern part, the DMZ runs north of the 38th parallel; to the west, it travels south of it. Kaesong, site of the initial armistice negotiations, was originally in pre-war South Korea but now is part of North Korea. The DMZ has since been patrolled by the KPA and the ROK, with the U.S. still operating as the UN Command.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "After the war, Operation Glory was conducted from July to November 1954, to allow combatant countries to exchange their dead. The remains of 4,167 U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps dead were exchanged for 13,528 KPA and PVA dead, and 546 civilians dead in UN prisoner-of-war camps were delivered to the South Korean government. After Operation Glory, 416 Korean War unknown soldiers were buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (The Punchbowl), on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) records indicate that the PRC and North Korea transmitted 1,394 names, of which 858 were correct. From 4,167 containers of returned remains, forensic examination identified 4,219 individuals. Of these, 2,944 were identified as from the U.S., and all but 416 were identified by name. From 1996 to 2006, North Korea recovered 220 remains near the Sino-Korean border.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "The Korean Armistice Agreement provided for monitoring by an international commission. Since 1953, the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission, composed of members from the Swiss and Swedish armed forces, has been stationed near the DMZ.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "In April 1975, South Vietnam's capital of Saigon was captured by the People's Army of Vietnam. Encouraged by the success of the communist revolution in Indochina, Kim Il Sung saw it as an opportunity to invade South Korea. Kim visited China in April 1975 and met with Mao and Zhou to ask for military aid. Despite Pyongyang's expectations, however, Beijing refused to help North Korea for another war in Korea.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "Since the armistice, there have been numerous incursions and acts of aggression by North Korea. From 1966 to 1969, a large number of cross-border incursions took place in what has been referred to as the Korean DMZ Conflict or the Second Korean War. In 1968, a North Korean commando team unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate South Korean president Park Chung Hee in the Blue House Raid. In 1976, the axe murder incident was widely publicized. Since 1974, four incursion tunnels leading to Seoul have been uncovered. In 2010, a North Korean submarine torpedoed and sank the South Korean corvette ROKS Cheonan, resulting in the deaths of 46 sailors. Again in 2010, North Korea fired artillery shells on Yeonpyeong island, killing two military personnel and two civilians.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "After a new wave of UN sanctions, on 11 March 2013, North Korea claimed that the armistice had become invalid. On 13 March 2013, North Korea confirmed it ended the 1953 Armistice and declared North Korea \"is not restrained by the North-South declaration on non-aggression\". On 30 March 2013, North Korea stated that it entered a \"state of war\" with South Korea and declared that \"The long-standing situation of the Korean peninsula being neither at peace nor at war is finally over\". Speaking on 4 April 2013, U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel informed the press that Pyongyang \"formally informed\" the Pentagon that it \"ratified\" the potential use of a nuclear weapon against South Korea, Japan and the United States of America, including Guam and Hawaii. Hagel also stated the U.S. would deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-ballistic missile system to Guam because of a credible and realistic nuclear threat from North Korea.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "In 2016, it was revealed that North Korea approached the United States about conducting formal peace talks to end the war officially. While the White House agreed to secret peace talks, the plan was rejected because North Korea refused to discuss nuclear disarmament as part of the terms of the treaty.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "On 27 April 2018, it was announced that North Korea and South Korea agreed to talks to end the ongoing 65-year conflict. They committed themselves to the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-In signed the Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Reunification of the Korean Peninsula. On 22 September 2021, Moon reiterated his call to end the Korean War formally, in his speech at the UN General Assembly.",
"title": "Course of the war"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "Approximately 3 million people died in the Korean War, the majority of whom were civilians, making it perhaps the deadliest conflict of the Cold War era. Samuel S. Kim lists the Korean War as the deadliest conflict in East Asia—the region most affected by armed conflict related to the Cold War. Although only rough estimates of civilian fatalities are available, scholars from Guenter Lewy to Bruce Cumings have noted that the percentage of civilian casualties in Korea was higher than in World War II or the Vietnam War, with Cumings putting civilian casualties at 2 million and Lewy estimating civilian deaths in the range of 2 million to 3 million.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "Cumings states that civilians represent at least half of the war's casualties, while Lewy suggests that the civilian portion of the death toll may have gone as high as 70%, compared to Lewy's estimates of 42% in World War II and 30%–46% in the Vietnam War. Data compiled by the Peace Research Institute Oslo lists just under 1 million battle deaths over the course of the Korean War (with a range of 644,696 to 1.5 million) and a mid-value estimate of 3 million total deaths (with a range of 1.5 million to 4.5 million), attributing the difference to excess mortality among civilians from one-sided massacres, starvation, and disease. Compounding this devastation for Korean civilians, virtually all major cities on the Korean Peninsula were destroyed as a result of the war. In both per capita and absolute terms, North Korea was the country most devastated by the war. According to Charles K. Armstrong, the war resulted in the death of an estimated 12%–15% of the North Korean population (c. 10 million), \"a figure close to or surpassing the proportion of Soviet citizens killed in World War II\".",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "South Korea reported some 137,899 military deaths and 24,495 missing, 450,742 wounded, 8,343 POW.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "According to the data from the US Department of Defense, the US suffered 33,686 battle deaths, 7,586 missing, along with 2,830 non-battle deaths. There were 17,730 other non-battle US military deaths that occurred outside Korea during the same period that were erroneously included as Korean War deaths until 2000. In addition, the U.S. suffered 103,284 wounded in action. The United Nations losses, excluding those of the United States or South Korea, amounted to 4,141 dead and 12,044 wounded in action.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "American combat casualties were over 90% of non-Korean UN losses. US battle deaths were 8,516 up to their first engagement with the Chinese on 1 November 1950. The first four months prior to the Chinese intervention (which started near the end of October) were by far the bloodiest per day for the US forces as they engaged and destroyed the comparatively well-equipped KPA in intense fighting. American medical records show that from July to October 1950, the US Army sustained 31% of the combat deaths it ultimately incurred in the entire 37-month war. The US spent US$30 billion on the war. Some 1,789,000 American soldiers served in the Korean War, accounting for 31% of the 5,720,000 Americans who served on active duty worldwide from June 1950 to July 1953.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "Deaths from the other non-American UN militaries totaled 3,730, with another 379 missing.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "Data from official Chinese sources reported that the PVA had suffered 114,000 battle deaths, 21,000 deaths from wounds, 13,000 deaths from illness, 340,000 wounded, and 7,600 missing. 7,110 Chinese POWs were repatriated to China. In 2010, the Chinese government revised their official tally of war losses to 183,108 dead (114,084 in combat, 70,000 deaths from wounds, illness and other causes) and 25,621 missing. Overall, 73% of Chinese infantry troops served in Korea (25 of 34 armies, or 79 of 109 infantry divisions, were rotated in). More than 52% of the Chinese air force, 55% of the tank units, 67% of the artillery divisions, and 100% of the railroad engineering divisions were sent to Korea as well. Chinese soldiers who served in Korea faced a greater chance of being killed than those who served in World War II or the Chinese Civil War. In terms of financial cost, China spent over 10 billion yuan on the war (roughly US$3.3 billion), not counting USSR aid that had been donated or forgiven. This included $1.3 billion in money owed to the Soviet Union by the end of it. This was a relatively large cost, as China had only 4% of the national income of the United States. Spending on the Korean War constituted 34–43% of China's annual government budget from 1950 to 1953, depending on the year. Despite its underdeveloped economy, Chinese military spending was the world's fourth largest globally for most of the war after that of the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom; however, by 1953, with the winding down of the Korean War and the escalation of the First Indochina War (which reached its peak in 1953–1954), French spending also surpassed Chinese spending by about a third.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "According to the South Korean Ministry of National Defense, North Korean military losses totaled 294,151 dead, 91,206 missing, and 229,849 wounded, giving North Korea the highest military deaths of any belligerent in both absolute and relative terms. The PRIO Battle Deaths Dataset gave a similar figure for North Korean military deaths of 316,579. Chinese sources reported similar figures for the North Korean military of 290,000 \"casualties\" and 90,000 captured. The financial cost of the war for North Korea is unknown but was known to be massive in terms of both direct losses and lost economic activity; the country was devastated both by the cost of the war itself and the American strategic bombing campaign, which, among other things, destroyed 85% of North Korea's buildings and 95% of its power generation capacity. The Soviet Union suffered 299 dead, with 335 planes lost.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "The Chinese and North Koreans estimated that about 390,000 soldiers from the United States, 660,000 soldiers from South Korea and 29,000 other UN soldiers were \"eliminated\" from the battlefield. Western sources estimate the PVA suffered about 400,000 killed and 486,000 wounded, while the KPA suffered 215,000 killed, 303,000 wounded, and over 101,000 captured or missing. Cumings cites a much higher figure of 900,000 fatalities among Chinese soldiers.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "According to the South Korean Ministry of National Defense, there were over 750,000 confirmed violent civilians deaths during the war, another million civilians were pronounced missing, and millions more ended up as refugees. In South Korea, some 373,500 civilians were killed, more than 225,600 wounded, and over 387,740 were listed as missing. During the first communist occupation of Seoul alone, the KPA massacred 128,936 civilians and deported another 84,523 to North Korea. On the other side of the border, some 1,594,000 North Koreans were reported as casualties including 406,000 civilians reported as killed, and 680,000 missing. Over 1.5 million North Koreans fled to the South during the war.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "In a postwar analysis of the unpreparedness of U.S. Army forces deployed to Korea during the summer and fall of 1950, Army Major General Floyd L. Parks stated \"Many who never lived to tell the tale had to fight the full range of ground warfare from offensive to delaying action, unit by unit, man by man ... [T]hat we were able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat ... does not relieve us from the blame of having placed our own flesh and blood in such a predicament.\"",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "By 1950, U.S. Secretary of Defense Louis A. Johnson had established a policy of faithfully following President Truman's defense economization plans and had aggressively attempted to implement it even in the face of steadily increasing external threats. He consequently received much of the blame for the initial setbacks in Korea and the widespread reports of ill-equipped and inadequately trained U.S. military forces in the war's early stages.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "As an initial response to the invasion, Truman called for a naval blockade of North Korea and was shocked to learn that such a blockade could be imposed only \"on paper\" since the U.S. Navy no longer had the warships with which to carry out his request. Army officials, desperate for weaponry, recovered Sherman tanks and other equipment from Pacific War battlefields and reconditioned them for shipment to Korea. Army ordnance officials at Fort Knox pulled down M26 Pershing tanks from display pedestals around Fort Knox in order to equip the third company of the Army's hastily formed 70th Tank Battalion. Without adequate numbers of tactical fighter-bomber aircraft, the Air Force took F-51 (P-51) propeller-driven aircraft out of storage or from existing Air National Guard squadrons and rushed them into front-line service. A shortage of spare parts and qualified maintenance personnel resulted in improvised repairs and overhauls. A Navy helicopter pilot aboard an active duty warship recalled fixing damaged rotor blades with masking tape in the absence of spares.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "U.S. Army Reserve and Army National Guard infantry soldiers and new inductees (called to duty to fill out understrength infantry divisions) found themselves short of nearly everything needed to repel the North Korean forces: artillery, ammunition, heavy tanks, ground-support aircraft, even effective anti-tank weapons such as the M20 3.5-inch (89 mm) \"Super Bazooka\". Some Army combat units sent to Korea were supplied with worn-out, \"red-lined\" M1 rifles or carbines in immediate need of ordnance depot overhaul or repair. Only the Marine Corps, whose commanders had stored and maintained their World War II surplus inventories of equipment and weapons, proved ready for deployment, though they still were woefully understrength, as well as in need of suitable landing craft to practice amphibious operations (Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson had transferred most of the remaining craft to the Navy and reserved them for use in training Army units).",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "The initial assault by KPA forces was aided by the use of Soviet T-34-85 tanks. A KPA tank corps equipped with about 120 T-34s spearheaded the invasion. These faced an ROK that had few anti-tank weapons adequate to deal with the T-34s. Additional Soviet armor was added as the offensive progressed. The KPA tanks had a good deal of early successes against ROK infantry, Task Force Smith, and the U.S. M24 Chaffee light tanks that they encountered. Interdiction by ground attack aircraft was the only means of slowing the advancing KPA armor. The tide turned in favor of the UN forces in August 1950 when the KPA suffered major tank losses during a series of battles in which the UN forces brought heavier equipment to bear, including M4A3 Sherman and M26 medium tanks, as well as the British Centurion, Churchill and Cromwell tanks.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "The Incheon landings on 15 September cut off the KPA supply lines, causing their armored forces and infantry to run out of fuel, ammunition, and other supplies. As a result of this and the Pusan perimeter breakout, the KPA had to retreat, and many of the T-34s and heavy weapons had to be abandoned. By the time the KPA withdrew from the South, 239 T-34s and 74 SU-76 self-propelled guns were lost. After November 1950, KPA armor was rarely encountered.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "Following the initial assault by the North, the Korean War saw limited use of tanks and featured no large-scale tank battles. The mountainous, forested terrain, especially in the eastern central zone, was poor tank country, limiting their mobility. Through the last two years of the war in Korea, UN tanks served largely as infantry support and mobile artillery pieces.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "Because neither Korea had a significant navy, the war featured few naval battles. A skirmish between North Korea and the UN Command occurred on 2 July 1950; the U.S. Navy cruiser USS Juneau, the Royal Navy cruiser HMS Jamaica and the Royal Navy frigate HMS Black Swan fought four North Korean torpedo boats and two mortar gunboats, and sank them. USS Juneau later sank several ammunition ships that had been present. The last sea battle of the Korean War occurred days before the Battle of Incheon; the ROK ship PC-703 sank a North Korean minelayer in the Battle of Haeju Island, near Incheon. Three other supply ships were sunk by PC-703 two days later in the Yellow Sea.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "During most of the war, the UN navies patrolled the west and east coasts of North Korea, sinking supply and ammunition ships and denying the North Koreans the ability to resupply from the sea. Aside from very occasional gunfire from North Korean shore batteries, the main threat to UN navy ships was from magnetic mines. During the war, five U.S. Navy ships were lost to mines: two minesweepers, two minesweeper escorts, and one ocean tug. Mines and gunfire from North Korean coastal artillery damaged another 87 U.S. warships, resulting in slight to moderate damage.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "The war was the first in which jet aircraft played the central role in air combat. Once-formidable fighters such as the P-51 Mustang, F4U Corsair, and Hawker Sea Fury—all piston-engined, propeller-driven, and designed during World War II—relinquished their air-superiority roles to a new generation of faster, jet-powered fighters arriving in the theater. For the initial months of the war, the P-80 Shooting Star, F9F Panther, Gloster Meteor, and other jets under the UN flag dominated the Korean People's Air Force (KPAF) propeller-driven Soviet Yakovlev Yak-9 and Lavochkin La-9s. By early August 1950, the KPAF was reduced to only about 20 planes.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "The Chinese intervention in late October 1950 bolstered the KPAF with the MiG-15, one of the world's most advanced jet fighters. The USAF countered the MiG-15 by sending over three squadrons of its most capable fighter, the F-86 Sabre. These arrived in December 1950. The Soviet Union denied the involvement of their personnel in anything other than an advisory role, but air combat quickly resulted in Soviet pilots dropping their code signals and speaking over the radio in Russian. This known direct Soviet participation was a casus belli that the UN Command deliberately overlooked, lest the war expand to include the Soviet Union and potentially escalate into atomic warfare.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "After the war and to the present day, the USAF reported an inflated F-86 Sabre kill ratio in excess of 10:1, with 792 MiG-15s and 108 other aircraft shot down by Sabres, and 78 Sabres lost to enemy fire. The Soviet Air Force reported some 1,100 air-to-air victories and 335 MiG combat losses, while China's PLAAF reported 231 combat losses, mostly MiG-15s, and 168 other aircraft lost. The KPAF reported no data, but the UN Command estimates some 200 KPAF aircraft lost in the war's first stage, and 70 additional aircraft after the Chinese intervention. The USAF disputes Soviet and Chinese claims of 650 and 211 downed F-86s, respectively.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 125,
"text": "More modern estimates place the overall USAF kill ratio at around 1.8:1 with the ratio dropping to 1.3:1 against MiG-15s with Soviet pilots but increasing to a dominant 12:1 against Chinese and North Korean adversaries.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 126,
"text": "Reports by Lieutenant General Sidor Slyusarev, commander of Soviet air forces in Korea, are more favorable to the communist side. The 64th Corps claimed a total 1,097 enemy aircraft of all types during operations, for the loss of 335 aircraft (including lost to enemy ground fire, accidents, etc) and 110 pilots. Soviet reports put the overall kill ratio at 3.4:1 in favor of Soviet pilots. As reported, effectiveness of the Soviet fighters declined as the war progressed. from an overall kill ratio of 7.9:1 from November 1950 through January 1952, declining to 2.2:1 in later 1952 and 1.9:1 in 1953. This was because more advanced jet fighters appeared on the UN side as well as improved U.S. tactics.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 127,
"text": "Regardless of the actual ratio, American Sabres were very effective at controlling the skies over Korea. Since no other UN fighter could contend with the MiG-15, F-86s largely took over air combat once they arrived, relegating other aircraft to air-to-ground operations. Despite much greater numbers (the number of Sabres in theater never exceeded 150 while MiG-15s reached 900 at their peak), communist aircraft were seldom encountered south of Pyongyang. UN ground forces, supply lines, and infrastructure were not attacked from the air. Although North Korea had 75 airfields capable of supporting MiGs, after 1951, any serious effort to operate from them was abandoned. The MiGs were instead based across the Yalu River in the safety of China. This confined most air-to-air engagements to MiG Alley. UN aircraft had free rein to conduct strike missions over enemy territory with little fear of interception. Although jet dogfights are remembered as a prominent part of the Korean War, counter-air missions comprised just 12% of Far East Air Forces sorties, and four times as many sorties were performed for close air support and interdiction.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 128,
"text": "The war marked a major milestone not only for fixed-wing aircraft, but also for rotorcraft, featuring the first large-scale deployment of helicopters for medical evacuation (medevac). In 1944–45, during World War II, the YR-4 helicopter had seen limited ambulance duty. In Korea, where rough terrain prevented use of the jeep as a speedy medevac vehicle, helicopters like the Sikorsky H-19 were heavily used. This helped reduce fatal casualties to a dramatic degree when combined with complementary medical innovations such as Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals (MASH). As such, the medical evacuation and care system for the wounded was so effective for the UN forces that a wounded soldier who arrived at a MASH unit alive typically had a 97% chance of survival. The limitations of jet aircraft for close air support highlighted the helicopter's potential in the role, leading to the development of the helicopter gunships used in the Vietnam War.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 129,
"text": "The initial bombing attack on North Korea was approved on the fourth day of the war, 29 June 1950, by General Douglas MacArthur immediately upon request by the commanding general of the Far East Air Forces (FEAF), George E. Stratemeyer. Major bombing began in late July. U.S. airpower conducted 7,000 close support and interdiction airstrikes that month, which helped slow the North Korean rate of advance to 3 km (2 mi) per day. On 12 August 1950, the USAF dropped 625 tons of bombs on North Korea; two weeks later, the daily tonnage increased to some 800 tons.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 130,
"text": "The U.S. dropped a total of 635,000 tons of bombs, including 32,557 tons of napalm, on Korea, more than during the entire Pacific War. North Korea ranks alongside Cambodia (500,000 tons), Laos (2 million tons) and South Vietnam (4 million tons) as among the most heavily bombed countries in history, with Laos suffering the most extensive bombardment relative to its size and population.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 131,
"text": "Almost every substantial building in North Korea was destroyed as a result. The war's highest-ranking U.S. POW, Major General William F. Dean, reported that the majority of North Korean cities and villages he saw were either rubble or snow-covered wasteland. North Korean factories, schools, hospitals, and government offices were forced to move underground, and air defenses were \"non-existent\".",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 132,
"text": "In May 1953, five major North Korean dams were bombed. According to Charles K. Armstrong, the bombing of these dams and ensuing floods threatened several million North Koreans with starvation, although large-scale famine was averted with emergency aid provided by North Korea's allies.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 133,
"text": "General Matthew Ridgway said that except for air power, \"the war would have been over in 60 days with all Korea in Communist hands\". UN air forces flew 1,040,708 combat and combat support sorties during the war. FEAF flew the majority at 710,886 (69.3% of sorties), with the U.S. Navy performing 16.1%, the U.S. Marine Corps 10.3%, and 4.3% by other allied air forces.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 134,
"text": "As well as conventional bombing, the communist side claimed that the U.S. used biological weapons. These claims have been disputed; Conrad Crane asserts that while the U.S. worked towards developing chemical and biological weapons, the U.S. military \"possessed neither the ability, nor the will\", to use them in combat.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 135,
"text": "On 5 November 1950, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff issued orders for the retaliatory atomic bombing of Manchurian PRC military bases, if either of their armies crossed into Korea or if PRC or KPA bombers attacked Korea from there. President Truman ordered the transfer of nine Mark 4 nuclear bombs \"to the Air Force's Ninth Bomb Group, the designated carrier of the weapons ... [and] signed an order to use them against Chinese and Korean targets\", which he never transmitted.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 136,
"text": "Many U.S. officials viewed the deployment of nuclear-capable (but not nuclear-armed) B-29 bombers to Britain as helping to resolve the Berlin Blockade of 1948–1949. Truman and Eisenhower both had military experience and viewed nuclear weapons as potentially usable components of their military. During Truman's first meeting to discuss the war on 25 June 1950, he ordered plans be prepared for attacking Soviet forces if they entered the war. By July, Truman approved another B-29 deployment to Britain, this time with bombs (but without their cores), to remind the Soviets of U.S. offensive ability. Deployment of a similar fleet to Guam was leaked to The New York Times. As UN forces retreated to Pusan, and the CIA reported that mainland China was building up forces for a possible invasion of Taiwan, the Pentagon believed that Congress and the public would demand using nuclear weapons if the situation in Korea required them.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 137,
"text": "As PVA forces pushed back the UN forces from the Yalu River, Truman stated during a 30 November 1950 press conference that using nuclear weapons was \"always [under] active consideration\", with control under the local military commander. Indian ambassador K. Madhava Panikkar reports \"that Truman announced he was thinking of using the atom bomb in Korea. But the Chinese seemed unmoved by this threat ... The PRC's propaganda against the U.S. was stepped up. The 'Aid Korea to resist America' campaign was made the slogan for increased production, greater national integration, and more rigid control over anti-national activities. One could not help feeling that Truman's threat came in useful to the leaders of the Revolution, to enable them to keep up the tempo of their activities.\"",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 138,
"text": "After his statement caused concern in Europe, Truman met on 4 December with UK prime minister and Commonwealth spokesman Clement Attlee, French Premier René Pleven, and French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman to discuss their worries about atomic warfare and its likely continental expansion. The U.S.' forgoing atomic warfare was not because of \"a disinclination by the Soviet Union and People's Republic of China to escalate [the Korean War]\", but because UN allies—notably the UK, the Commonwealth, and France—were concerned about a geopolitical imbalance rendering NATO defenseless while the U.S. fought China, who then might persuade the Soviet Union to conquer Western Europe. The Joint Chiefs of Staff advised Truman to tell Attlee that the U.S. would use nuclear weapons only if necessary to protect an evacuation of UN troops, or to prevent a \"major military disaster\".",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 139,
"text": "On 6 December after the Chinese intervention repelled the UN armies from northern North Korea, General J. Lawton Collins (Army Chief of Staff), General MacArthur, Admiral C. Turner Joy, General Stratemeyer and staff officers Major General Doyle Hickey, Major General Charles A. Willoughby and Major General Edwin K. Wright met in Tokyo to plan strategy countering the Chinese intervention; they considered three potential atomic warfare scenarios encompassing the next weeks and months of warfare.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 140,
"text": "Both the Pentagon and the State Department were cautious about using nuclear weapons because of the risk of general war with China and the diplomatic ramifications. Truman and his senior advisors agreed and never seriously considered using them in early December 1950 despite the poor military situation in Korea.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 141,
"text": "In 1951, the U.S. escalated closest to atomic warfare in Korea. Because China deployed new armies to the Sino-Korean frontier, ground crews at the Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, assembled atomic bombs for Korean warfare, \"lacking only the essential pit nuclear cores.\" In October 1951, the United States effected Operation Hudson Harbor to establish a nuclear weapons capability. USAF B-29 bombers practiced individual bombing runs from Okinawa to North Korea (using dummy nuclear or conventional bombs), coordinated from Yokota Air Base in east-central Japan. Hudson Harbor tested \"actual functioning of all activities which would be involved in an atomic strike, including weapons assembly and testing, leading, [and] ground control of bomb aiming\". The bombing run data indicated that atomic bombs would be tactically ineffective against massed infantry, because the \"timely identification of large masses of enemy troops was extremely rare\".",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 142,
"text": "Ridgway was authorized to use nuclear weapons if a major air attack originated from outside Korea. An envoy was sent to Hong Kong to deliver a warning to China. The message likely caused Chinese leaders to be more cautious about potential U.S. use of nuclear weapons, but whether they learned about the B-29 deployment is unclear, and the failure of the two major Chinese offensives that month likely was what caused them to shift to a defensive strategy in Korea. The B-29s returned to the United States in June.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 143,
"text": "Despite the greater destructive power that atomic weapons would bring to the war, their effects on determining the war's outcome would have likely been minimal. Tactically, given the dispersed nature of PVA/KPA forces, the relatively primitive infrastructure for staging and logistics centers, and the small number of bombs available (most would have been conserved for use against the Soviets), atomic attacks would have limited effects against the ability of China to mobilize and move forces. Strategically, attacking Chinese cities to destroy civilian industry and infrastructure would cause the immediate dispersion of the leadership away from such areas and give propaganda value for the communists to galvanize the support of Chinese civilians. Since the Soviets were not expected to intervene with their few primitive atomic weapons on China or North Korea's behalf, the threat of a possible nuclear exchange was unimportant in the decision not to deploy atomic bombs; their use offered little operational advantage and would undesirably lower the \"threshold\" for using atomic weapons against non-nuclear states in future conflicts.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 144,
"text": "When Eisenhower succeeded Truman in early 1953, he was similarly cautious about using nuclear weapons in Korea. The administration prepared contingency plans to use them against China, but like Truman, he feared that doing so would result in Soviet attacks on Japan. The war ended as it began, without U.S. nuclear weapons deployed near battle.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 145,
"text": "There were numerous atrocities and massacres of civilians throughout the Korean War committed by both sides, starting in the war's first days. In 2005–2010, a South Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigated atrocities and other human rights violations through much of the 20th century, from the Japanese colonial period through the Korean War and beyond. It excavated some mass graves from the Bodo League massacres and confirmed the general outlines of those political executions. Of the Korean War-era massacres the commission was petitioned to investigate, 82% were perpetrated by South Korean forces, with 18% perpetrated by North Korean forces.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 146,
"text": "The commission also received petitions alleging more than 200 large-scale killings of South Korean civilians by the U.S. military during the war, mostly air attacks. It confirmed several such cases, including refugees crowded into a cave attacked with napalm bombs, which survivors said killed 360 people, and an air attack that killed 197 refugees gathered in a field in the far south. It recommended South Korea seek reparations from the United States, but in 2010, a reorganized commission under a new, conservative government concluded that most U.S. mass killings resulted from \"military necessity\", while in a small number of cases, they concluded, the U.S. military had acted with \"low levels of unlawfulness\", but the commission recommended against seeking reparations.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 147,
"text": "Chinese sources claim at Geoje prison camp on Geoje Island, Chinese POWs experienced anti-communist lecturing and missionary work from secret agents from the U.S. and Taiwan. Pro-communist POWs experienced torture, cutting off of limbs, or were executed in public. Being forced to write confession letters and receiving tattoos of an anti-communism slogan and Flag of the Republic of China were also commonly seen, in case any wanted to go back to mainland China. Pro-communist POWs who could not endure the torture formed an underground group to fight the pro-nationalist POWs secretly by assassination, which led to the Geoje uprising. The rebellion captured Francis Dodd, and was suppressed by the 187th Infantry Regiment.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 148,
"text": "In the end, 14,235 Chinese POWs went to Taiwan and fewer than 6,000 POWs returned to mainland China. Those who went to Taiwan are called \"righteous men\" and experienced brainwashing again and were sent to the army or were arrested; while the survivors who returned to mainland China were welcomed as a \"hero\" first, but experienced anti-brainwashing, strict interrogation, and house arrest eventually, after the tattoos were discovered. After 1988, the Taiwanese government allowed POWs to go back to mainland China and helped remove anti-communist tattoos; while the mainland Chinese government started to allow mainland Chinese prisoners of war to return from Taiwan.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 149,
"text": "The United States reported that North Korea mistreated prisoners of war: soldiers were beaten, starved, put to forced labor, marched to death, and summarily executed.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 150,
"text": "The KPA killed POWs at the battles for Hill 312, Hill 303, the Pusan Perimeter, Daejeon and Sunchon; these massacres were discovered afterwards by the UN forces. Later, a U.S. Congress war crimes investigation, the United States Senate Subcommittee on Korean War Atrocities of the Permanent Subcommittee of the Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations, reported that \"two-thirds of all American prisoners of war in Korea died as a result of war crimes\".",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 151,
"text": "Although the Chinese rarely executed prisoners like their North Korean counterparts, mass starvation and diseases swept through the Chinese-run POW camps during the winter of 1950–51. About 43% of U.S. POWs died during this period. The Chinese defended their actions by stating that all Chinese soldiers during this period were suffering mass starvation and diseases because of logistical difficulties. The UN POWs said that most of the Chinese camps were located near the easily supplied Sino-Korean border and that the Chinese withheld food to force the prisoners to accept the communism indoctrination programs. According to Chinese reports, over a thousand U.S. POWs died by the end of June 1951, while a dozen British POWs died, and all Turkish POWs survived. According to Hastings, wounded U.S. POWs died for lack of medical attention and were fed a diet of corn and millet \"devoid of vegetables, almost barren of proteins, minerals, or vitamins\" with only 1/3 the calories of their usual diet. Especially in early 1951, thousands of prisoners lost the will to live and \"declined to eat the mess of sorghum and rice they were provided\".",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 152,
"text": "The unpreparedness of U.S. POWs to resist heavy communist indoctrination during the Korean War led to the Code of the United States Fighting Force which governs how U.S. military personnel in combat should act when they must \"evade capture, resist while a prisoner or escape from the enemy\".",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 153,
"text": "North Korea may have detained up to 50,000 South Korean POWs after the ceasefire. Over 88,000 South Korean soldiers were missing and the KPA claimed they captured 70,000 South Koreans. However, when ceasefire negotiations began in 1951, the KPA reported they held only 8,000 South Koreans. The UN Command protested the discrepancies and alleged that the KPA were forcing South Korean POWs to join the KPA. The KPA denied such allegations. They claimed their POW rosters were small because many POWs were killed in UN air raids and that they had released ROK soldiers at the front. They insisted only volunteers were allowed to serve in the KPA. By early 1952, UN negotiators gave up trying to get back the missing South Koreans. The POW exchange proceeded without access to South Korean POWs who were not on the PVA/KPA rosters.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 154,
"text": "North Korea continued to claim that any South Korean POW who stayed in the North did so voluntarily. However, since 1994, South Korean POWs have been escaping North Korea on their own after decades of captivity. As of 2010, the South Korean Ministry of Unification reported that 79 ROK POWs escaped the North. The South Korean government estimates 500 South Korean POWs continue to be detained in North Korea. The escaped POWs have testified about their treatment and written memoirs about their lives in North Korea. They report they were not told about the POW exchange procedures and were assigned to work in mines in the remote northeastern regions near the Chinese and Russian border. Declassified Soviet Foreign Ministry documents corroborate such testimony.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 155,
"text": "In December 1950, the South Korean National Defense Corps was founded; the soldiers were 406,000 drafted citizens. In the winter of 1951, 50,000 to 90,000 South Korean National Defense Corps soldiers starved to death while marching southward under the PVA offensive when their commanding officers embezzled funds earmarked for their food. This event is called the National Defense Corps Incident. Although his political allies certainly profited from corruption, it remains controversial if Syngman Rhee was personally involved in or benefited from the corruption.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 156,
"text": "As a result of the war, \"North Korea had been virtually destroyed as an industrial society\". After the armistice, Kim Il Sung requested Soviet economic and industrial assistance. In September 1953, the Soviet government agreed to \"cancel or postpone repayment for all ... outstanding debts\", and promised to grant North Korea one billion rubles in monetary aid, industrial equipment and consumer goods. Eastern European members of the Soviet Bloc also contributed with \"logistical support, technical aid, [and] medical supplies\". China canceled North Korea's war debts, provided 800 million yuan, promised trade cooperation and sent in thousands of troops to rebuild damaged infrastructure. Contemporary North Korea remains underdeveloped and continues to be a totalitarian dictatorship since the end of the war, with an elaborate cult of personality around the Kim dynasty.",
"title": "Aftermath"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 157,
"text": "The means of production are owned by the state through state-run enterprises and collectivized farms. Most services—such as healthcare, education, housing and food production—are subsidized or state-funded. Estimates based on the most recent North Korean census suggest that 240,000 to 420,000 people died as a result of the 1990s North Korean famine and that there were 600,000 to 850,000 unnatural deaths in North Korea from 1993 to 2008. A study by South Korean anthropologists of North Korean children who had defected to China found that 18-year-old males were 13 cm (5 in) shorter than South Koreans their age because of malnutrition.",
"title": "Aftermath"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 158,
"text": "Present-day North Korea follows Songun, or \"military-first\" policy and has the highest number of military and paramilitary personnel in the world, with 7,769,000 active, reserve and paramilitary personnel, or approximately 30% of its population. Its active-duty army of 1.28 million is the fourth largest in the world, after China, the United States and India; consisting of 4.9% of its population. North Korea possesses nuclear weapons. A 2014 UN inquiry into abuses of human rights in North Korea concluded that, \"the gravity, scale and nature of these violations reveal a state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world,\" with Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch holding similar views.",
"title": "Aftermath"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 159,
"text": "Postwar recovery was different in the two Koreas. South Korea, which started from a far lower industrial base than North Korea (the latter contained 80% of Korea's heavy industry in 1945), stagnated in the first postwar decade. In 1953, South Korea and the United States signed a Mutual Defense Treaty.",
"title": "Aftermath"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 160,
"text": "South Korean anti-Americanism after the war was fueled by the presence and behavior of United States Forces Korea military personnel and U.S. support for Park's authoritarian regime, a fact still evident during the country's democratic transition in the 1980s. However, anti-Americanism has declined significantly in South Korea in recent years, from 46% favorable in 2003 to 74% favorable in 2011, making South Korea one of the most pro-U.S. countries in the world.",
"title": "Aftermath"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 161,
"text": "A large number of mixed-race \"GI babies\" (offspring of U.S. and other UN soldiers and Korean women) were filling up the country's orphanages. Because Korean traditional society places significant weight on paternal family ties, bloodlines, and purity of race, children of mixed race or those without fathers are not easily accepted in South Korean society. International adoption of Korean children began in 1954. The U.S. Immigration Act of 1952 legalized the naturalization of non-Blacks and non-Whites as U.S. citizens and made possible the entry of military spouses and children from South Korea. With the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965, which substantially changed U.S. immigration policy toward non-Europeans, Koreans became one of the fastest-growing Asian groups in the United States.",
"title": "Aftermath"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 162,
"text": "Mao Zedong's decision to take on the United States was a direct attempt to confront what the communist bloc viewed as the strongest anti-communist power in the world, undertaken at a time when the Chinese communist regime was still consolidating its own power after winning the Chinese Civil War. Mao supported intervention not to save North Korea, but because he believed that a military conflict with the U.S. was inevitable after the U.S. entered the war, and to appease the Soviet Union to secure military dispensation and achieve Mao's goal of making China a major world military power. Mao was equally ambitious in improving his own prestige inside the communist international community by demonstrating that his Marxist concerns were international. In his later years, Mao believed that Stalin only gained a positive opinion of him after China's entrance into the Korean War. Inside mainland China, the war improved the long-term prestige of Mao, Zhou, and Peng, allowing the Chinese Communist Party to increase its legitimacy while weakening anti-communist dissent.",
"title": "Aftermath"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 163,
"text": "The Chinese government has encouraged the viewpoint that the war was initiated by the United States and South Korea, though ComIntern documents have shown that Mao sought approval from Stalin to enter the war. In Chinese media, the Chinese war effort is considered as an example of China's engaging the strongest power in the world with an underequipped army, forcing it to retreat, and fighting it to a military stalemate. These successes were contrasted with China's historical humiliations by Japan and by Western powers over the previous hundred years, highlighting the abilities of the PLA and the Chinese Communist Party. The most significant negative long-term consequence of the war for China was that it led the United States to guarantee the safety of Chiang Kaishek's regime in Taiwan, effectively ensuring that Taiwan would remain outside of PRC control through the present day. Mao had also discovered the usefulness of large-scale mass movements in the war while implementing them among most of his ruling measures over PRC. Anti-U.S. sentiments, which were already a significant factor during the Chinese Civil War, were ingrained into Chinese culture during the communist propaganda campaigns of the Korean War.",
"title": "Aftermath"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 164,
"text": "The Korean War affected other participant combatants. Turkey, for example, entered NATO in 1952, and the foundation was laid for bilateral diplomatic and trade relations with South Korea. The war also played role in the refugee crisis in Turkey in 1950-1951.",
"title": "Aftermath"
}
] |
The Korean War was fought between North Korea and South Korea from 1950 to 1953. The war began on 25 June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea following years of internal instability and hostilities between the two states. North Korea was supported by China and the Soviet Union while South Korea was supported by the United States and allied countries. The fighting ended with an armistice on 27 July 1953. In 1910, the Empire of Japan annexed Korea as a colony for 35 years until its surrender at the end of World War II on 15 August 1945. The United States and the Soviet Union divided Korea along the 38th parallel into two zones of occupation. The Soviets administered the northern zone, and the Americans administered the southern zone. In 1948, as a result of Cold War tensions, the occupation zones became two sovereign states. A communist state, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, was established in the north under the government led by Premier Kim Il Sung, while a capitalist state, the Republic of Korea, was established in the south under the government led by President Syngman Rhee. Both governments claimed to be the sole legitimate government of all of Korea and neither accepted the border as permanent. The years prior to North Korea's invasion of South Korea were marked by border clashes between the two countries and an insurgency in the South that was backed by the North. After failed attempts to stop the fighting and unify the Koreas, North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel on 25 June 1950, formally starting the war. The United Nations Security Council denounced North Korea's actions and authorized the formation of the United Nations Command and the dispatch of forces to Korea to repel it. The Soviet Union was boycotting the UN for recognizing Taiwan as China, and the People's Republic of China was not recognized by the UN, so neither could support their ally North Korea at the Security Council meeting. Twenty-one countries of the United Nations eventually contributed to the UN force, with the United States providing around 90% of the military personnel, and represented the first attempt at collective security under the United Nations system. After the first two months of war, the South Korean army (ROKA) and hastily dispatched American forces were on the point of defeat, retreating to a small area behind a defensive line known as the Pusan Perimeter. In September 1950, a risky amphibious UN counteroffensive was launched at Incheon, cutting off KPA troops and supply lines in South Korea. Those who escaped envelopment and capture were forced back north. UN forces then invaded North Korea in October 1950 and moved rapidly towards the Yalu River—the border with China—but on 19 October 1950, Chinese forces - the People's Volunteer Army (PVA) - crossed the Yalu and entered the war. The UN retreated from North Korea following the PVA's First Phase Offensive and the Second Phase Offensive. China along with their North Korean and Soviet allies pressed their offensive, invading the South and capturing Seoul by early January of 1951. A UN force recaptured the city from them, and the communist forces were pushed back to positions around the 38th parallel following PVA's abortive Fifth Phase Offensive. After this, the front which was close to where the war had started stabilized, and the last two years were a war of attrition. The fighting ended on 27 July 1953 when the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed. The agreement created the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) to separate North and South Korea, and allowed the return of prisoners. However, no peace treaty was ever signed, and the two Koreas are technically still at war, engaged in a frozen conflict. In April 2018, the leaders of North and South Korea met at the DMZ and agreed to work toward a treaty to end the Korean War formally. The Korean War was a major conflict of the Cold War and among the most destructive conflicts of the modern era, with approximately 3 million war fatalities and a larger proportional civilian death toll than World War II or the Vietnam War. It resulted in the destruction of virtually all of Korea's major cities, with thousands of massacres committed by both sides—including the mass killing of tens of thousands of suspected communists by the South Korean government, and the torture and starvation of prisoners of war by the North Koreans. North Korea became among the most heavily bombed countries in history. Over the course of the war 1.5 million North Koreans are estimated to have fled North Korea.
|
2001-08-02T03:45:51Z
|
2023-12-31T23:48:03Z
|
[
"Template:Pp",
"Template:Cold War",
"Template:American conflicts",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Very long",
"Template:Stack",
"Template:See also",
"Template:Circa",
"Template:As of",
"Template:Use American English",
"Template:Collapsible list",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Infobox military conflict",
"Template:Rp",
"Template:Notelist",
"Template:ISBN",
"Template:Russian Conflicts",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Div col",
"Template:Source attribution",
"Template:Legend",
"Template:Inflation",
"Template:Refn",
"Template:Korean War",
"Template:Korean",
"Template:Div col end",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Sfn",
"Template:Infobox Chinese",
"Template:Further",
"Template:Portal bar",
"Template:Transliteration",
"Template:ROKS",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Convert",
"Template:Cite encyclopedia",
"Template:Refend",
"Template:Sister project links",
"Template:Efn",
"Template:Inflation/year",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Citation",
"Template:HMS",
"Template:R",
"Template:Percentage",
"Template:Philippine involvement in Korean War",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:USS",
"Template:Naval engagements of the Korean War",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:PRC conflicts",
"Template:Refbegin",
"Template:Internet Archive short film",
"Template:Philippines conflicts",
"Template:For-multi",
"Template:Zh",
"Template:When",
"Template:Blockquote",
"Template:Ref"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War
|
16,773 |
Kite (disambiguation)
|
A kite is a tethered heavier-than-air or lighter-than-air craft with wing surfaces.
Kite or kites may also refer to:
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "A kite is a tethered heavier-than-air or lighter-than-air craft with wing surfaces.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Kite or kites may also refer to:",
"title": ""
}
] |
A kite is a tethered heavier-than-air or lighter-than-air craft with wing surfaces. Kite or kites may also refer to: Kite (bird), the common name for a number of birds of prey
Kite (geometry), a quadrilateral with reflection symmetry across a diagonal
|
2023-06-26T12:50:26Z
|
[
"Template:USS",
"Template:Disambiguation",
"Template:Wiktionary",
"Template:TOC right",
"Template:HMS",
"Template:SS"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kite_(disambiguation)
|
|
16,774 |
Karl Dönitz
|
Karl Dönitz (sometimes spelled Doenitz; German: [ˈdøːnɪts] ; 16 September 1891 – 24 December 1980) was a German admiral who briefly succeeded Adolf Hitler as head of state in May 1945, holding the position until the dissolution of the Flensburg Government following Germany's unconditional surrender to the Allies days later. As Supreme Commander of the Navy beginning in 1943, he played a major role in the naval history of World War II.
He began his career in the Imperial German Navy before World War I. In 1918, he was commanding UB-68, and was taken prisoner of war by British forces. While in a POW camp, he formulated what he later called Rudeltaktik ("pack tactic", commonly called "wolfpack").
By the start of the Second World War, Dönitz was supreme commander of the Kriegsmarine's U-boat arm (Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote (BdU)). In January 1943, Dönitz achieved the rank of Großadmiral (grand admiral) and replaced Grand Admiral Erich Raeder as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy. Dönitz was the main enemy of Allied naval forces in the Battle of the Atlantic. From 1939 to 1943 the U-boats fought effectively but lost the initiative from May 1943. Dönitz ordered his submarines into battle until 1945 to relieve the pressure on other branches of the Wehrmacht (armed forces). 648 U-boats were lost—429 with no survivors. Furthermore, of these, 215 were lost on their first patrol. Around 30,000 of the 40,000 men who served in U-boats perished.
On 30 April 1945, after the suicide of Adolf Hitler and in accordance with his last will and testament, Dönitz was named Hitler's successor as head of state in what became known as the Goebbels cabinet after his second-in-command, Joseph Goebbels, until Goebbels' suicide led to Dönitz's cabinet being reformed into the Flensburg Government instead. On 7 May 1945, he ordered Alfred Jodl, Chief of Operations Staff of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), to sign the German instruments of surrender in Reims, France, formally ending the War in Europe. Dönitz remained as head of state with the titles of President of Germany and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces until his cabinet was dissolved by the Allied powers on 23 May de facto and on 5 June de jure.
By his own admission, Dönitz was a dedicated Nazi and supporter of Hitler. Following the war, he was indicted as a major war criminal at the Nuremberg trials on three counts: conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity; planning, initiating, and waging wars of aggression; and crimes against the laws of war. He was found not guilty of committing crimes against humanity, but guilty of committing crimes against peace and war crimes against the laws of war. He was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment; after his release, he lived in a village near Hamburg until his death in 1980.
Dönitz was born on 16 September 1891 in Grünau, near Berlin, to Anna Beyer and Emil Dönitz, an engineer. Karl had an older brother. In 1910, Dönitz enlisted in the Kaiserliche Marine ("Imperial Navy").
On 27 September 1913, Dönitz was commissioned as a Leutnant zur See (acting sub-lieutenant). When World War I began, he served on the light cruiser SMS Breslau in the Mediterranean Sea. In August 1914, the Breslau and the battlecruiser SMS Goeben were sold to the Ottoman Navy; the ships were renamed the Midilli and the Yavuz Sultan Selim, respectively. They began operating out of Constantinople, under Rear Admiral Wilhelm Souchon, engaging Russian forces in the Black Sea. On 22 March 1916, Dönitz was promoted to Oberleutnant zur See. He requested a transfer to the submarine forces, which became effective on 1 October 1916. He attended the submariner's school at Flensburg-Mürwik and passed out on 3 January 1917. He served as watch officer on U-39, and from February 1918 onward as commander of UC-25. On 2 July 1918, he became commander of UB-68, operating in the Mediterranean. On 4 October, after suffering technical difficulties, Dönitz was forced to surface and scuttled his boat. He was captured by the British and incarcerated in the Redmires camp near Sheffield. He remained a prisoner of war until 1919 and in 1920 he returned to Germany.
On 27 May 1916, Dönitz married a nurse named Ingeborg Weber (1893–1962), the daughter of German general Erich Weber (1860–1933). They had three children whom they raised as Protestant Christians: daughter Ursula (1917–1990) and sons Klaus (1920–1944) and Peter (1922–1943). Both of Dönitz's sons were killed during the Second World War. Peter was killed on 19 May 1943 when U-954 was sunk in the North Atlantic with all hands.
Hitler had issued a policy stating that if a senior officer such as Dönitz lost a son in battle and had other sons in the military, the latter could withdraw from combat and return to civilian life. After Peter's death, Klaus was forbidden to have any combat role and was allowed to leave the military to begin studying to become a naval doctor. He returned to sea and was killed on 13 May 1944; he had persuaded his friends to let him go on the E-boat S-141 for a raid on Selsey on his 24th birthday. The boat was sunk by the French destroyer La Combattante.
He continued his naval career in the naval arm of the Weimar Republic's armed forces. On 10 January 1921, he became a Kapitänleutnant (lieutenant) in the new German navy (Vorläufige Reichsmarine). Dönitz commanded torpedo boats, becoming a Korvettenkapitän (lieutenant-commander) on 1 November 1928. On 1 September 1933, he became a Fregattenkapitän (commander) and, in 1934, was put in command of the cruiser Emden, the ship on which cadets and midshipmen took a year-long world cruise as training.
In 1935, the Reichsmarine was renamed Kriegsmarine. Germany was prohibited by the Treaty of Versailles from possessing a submarine fleet. The Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935 allowed submarines and he was placed in command of the U-boat flotilla Weddigen, which comprised three boats; U-7; U-8 and; U-9. On 1 September 1935, he was promoted to Kapitän zur See (naval captain).
Dönitz opposed Raeder's views that surface ships should be given priority in the Kriegsmarine during the war, but in 1935 Dönitz doubted U-boat suitability in a naval trade war on account of their slow speed. This phenomenal contrast with Dönitz's wartime policy is explained in the 1935 Anglo-German Naval Agreement. The accord was viewed by the navy with optimism, Dönitz included. He remarked, "Britain, in the circumstances, could not possibly be included in the number of potential enemies." The statement, made after June 1935, was uttered at a time when the naval staff were sure France and the Soviet Union were likely to be Germany's only enemies. Dönitz's statement was partially correct. Britain was not foreseen as an immediate enemy, but the navy still held onto a cadre of imperial officers, which along with its Nazi-instigated intake, understood war would be certain in the distant future, perhaps not until the mid-1940s.
Dönitz came to recognise the need for more of these vessels. Only 26 were in commission or under construction that summer. In the time before his command of submarines, he perfected the group tactics that first appealed to him in 1917. At this time Dönitz first expressed his procurement policies. His preference for the submarine fleet was in the production of large numbers of small craft. In contrast to other warships, the fighting power of the U-boat, in his opinion, was not dependent on its size as the torpedo, not the gun, was the machine's main weapon. Dönitz had a tendency to be critical of larger submarines and listed a number of disadvantages in their production, operation and tactical use. Dönitz recommended the Type VII submarine as the ideal submarine. The boat was reliable and had a range of 6,200 miles. Modifications lengthened this to 8,700 miles.
Dönitz revived Hermann Bauer's idea of grouping several submarines together into a Rudeltaktik ("pack tactic", commonly called "wolfpack") to overwhelm a merchant convoy's escorts. Implementation of wolfpacks had been difficult in World War I owing to the limitations of available radios. In the interwar years, Germany had developed ultra high frequency transmitters, (ukw) while the Enigma cipher machine was believed to have made communications secure. A 1922 paper written by Kapitäinleutnant Wessner of the Wehrabteilung (Defence Ministry) pointed to the success of surface attacks at night and the need to coordinate operations with multiple boats to defeat the escorts. Dönitz knew of the paper and improved the ideas suggested by Wessner. This tactic had the added advantage that a submarine on the surface was undetectable by ASDIC (an early form of sonar). Dönitz claimed after the war he would not allow his service to be intimidated by British disclosures about ASDIC and the course of the war had proven him right. In reality, Dönitz harboured fears stretching back to 1937 that the new technology would render the U-boat impotent. Dönitz published his ideas on night attacks in January 1939 in a booklet called Die U-Bootwaffe which apparently went unnoticed by the British. The Royal Navy's overconfidence in Asdic encouraged the Admiralty to suppose it could deal with submarines whatever strategy they adopted — in this they were proven wrong; submarines were difficult to locate and destroy under operational conditions.
In 1939 he expressed his belief that he could win the war with 300 vessels. The Nazi leadership's rearmament priorities were fundamentally geared to land and aerial warfare. From 1933 to 1936, the navy was granted only 13 per cent of total armament expenditure. The production of U-boats, despite the existing Z Plan, remained low. In 1935 shipyards produced 14 submarines, 21 in 1936, 1 in 1937. In 1938 nine were commissioned and in 1939 18 U-boats were built. Dönitz's vision may have been misguided. The British had planned for contingency construction programmes for the summer, 1939. At least 78 small escorts and a crash construction programme of "Whale catchers" had been invoked. The British, according to one historian, had taken all the sensible steps necessary to deal with the U-boat menace as it existed in 1939 and were well placed to deal with large numbers of submarines, prior to events in 1940.
On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Britain and France soon declared war on Germany, and World War II began. On Sunday 3 September, Dönitz chaired a conference at Wilhelmshaven. At 11:15 am the British Admiralty sent out a signal "Total Germany". B-Dienst intercepted the message and it was promptly reported to Dönitz. Dönitz paced around the room and his staff purportedly heard him repeatedly say, "My God! So it's war with England again!"
Dönitz abandoned the conference to return within the hour a far more composed man. He announced to his officers, "we know our enemy. We have today the weapon and a leadership that can face up to this enemy. The war will last a long time; but if each does his duty we will win." Dönitz had only 57 boats; of those, 27 were capable of reaching the Atlantic Ocean from their German bases. A small building program was already under way but the number of U-boats did not rise noticeably until the autumn of 1941.
Dönitz's first major action was the cover up of the sinking of the British passenger liner Athenia later the same day. Acutely sensitive to international opinion and relations with the United States, the death of more than a hundred civilians was damaging. Dönitz suppressed the truth that the ship was sunk by a German submarine. He accepted the commander's explanation that he genuinely believed the ship was armed. Dönitz ordered the engagement to be struck from the submarine's logbook. Dönitz did not admit the cover up until 1946.
Hitler's original orders to wage war only in accordance with the Prize Regulations were not issued in any altruistic spirit but in the belief hostilities with the Western Allies would be brief. On 23 September 1939, Hitler, on the recommendation of Admiral Raeder, approved that all merchant ships making use of their wireless on being stopped by U-boats should be sunk or captured. This German order marked a considerable step towards unrestricted warfare. Four days later enforcement of Prize Regulations in the North Sea was withdrawn; and on 2 October complete freedom was given to attack darkened ships encountered off the British and French coasts. Two days later the Prize Regulations were cancelled in waters extending as far as 15° West, and on 17 October the German Naval Staff gave U-boats permission to attack without warning all ships identified as hostile. The zone where darkened ships could be attacked with complete freedom was extended to 20° West on 19 October. Practically the only restrictions now placed on U-boats concerned attacks on passenger liners and, on 17 November, they too were allowed to be attacked without warning if clearly identifiable as hostile.
Although the phrase was not used, by November 1939 the BdU was practicing unrestricted submarine warfare. Neutral shipping was warned by the Germans against entering the zone which, by American neutrality legislation, was forbidden to American shipping, and against steaming without lights, zigzagging or taking any defensive precautions. The complete practice of unrestricted warfare was not enforced for fear of antagonising neutral powers, particularly the Americans. Admirals Raeder and Dönitz and the German Naval Staff had always wished and intended to introduce unrestricted warfare as rapidly as Hitler could be persuaded to accept the possible consequences.
Dönitz and Raeder accepted the death of the Z Plan upon the outbreak of war. The U-boat programme would be the only portion of it to survive 1939. Both men lobbied Hitler to increase the planned production of submarines to at least 29 per month. The immediate obstacle to the proposals was Hermann Göring, head of the Four Year Plan, commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe and future successor to Hitler. Göring would not acquiesce and in March 1940 Raeder was forced to drop the figure from 29 to 25, but even that plan proved illusory. In the first half of 1940, two boats were delivered, increased to six in the final half of the year. In 1941 the deliveries increased to 13 to June, and then 20 to December. It was not until late 1941 the number of vessels began to increase quickly. From September 1939 through to March 1940, 15 U-boats were lost—nine to convoy escorts. The impressive tonnage sunk had little impact on the Allied war effort at that point.
On 1 October 1939, Dönitz became a Konteradmiral (rear admiral) and "Commander of the Submarines" (Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote, BdU). For the first part of the war, despite disagreements with Raeder where best to deploy his men, Dönitz was given considerable operational freedom for his junior rank.
From September–December 1939 U-boats sank 221 ships for 755,237 gross tons, at the cost of nine U-boats. Only 47 merchant ships were sunk in the North Atlantic, a tonnage of 249,195. Dönitz had difficulty in organising Wolfpack operations in 1939. A number of his submarines were lost en route to the Atlantic, through either the North Sea or the heavily defended English Channel. Torpedo failures plagued commanders during convoy attacks. Along with successes against single ships, Dönitz authorised the abandonment of pack attacks in the autumn. The Norwegian Campaign amplified the defects. Dönitz wrote in May 1940, "I doubt whether men have ever had to rely on such a useless weapon." He ordered the removal of magnetic pistols in favour of contact fuses and their faulty depth control systems. In no fewer than 40 attacks on Allied warships, not a single sinking was achieved. The statistics show that from the outbreak of war to approximately the spring, 1940, faulty German torpedoes saved 50–60 ships equating to 300,000 GRT.
Dönitz was encouraged in operations against warships by the sinking of the aircraft carrier Courageous. On 28 September 1939 he said, "it is not true Britain possesses the means to eliminate the U-boat menace." The first specific operation—named "Special Operation P"—authorised by Dönitz was Günther Prien's attack on Scapa Flow, which sank the battleship Royal Oak. The attack became a propaganda success though Prien purportedly was unenthusiastic about being used that way. Stephen Roskill wrote, "It is now known that this operation was planned with great care by Admiral Dönitz, who was correctly informed of the weak state of the defences of the eastern entrances. Full credit must also be given to Lieutenant Prien for the nerve and determination with which he put Dönitz's plan into execution."
In May 1940, 101 ships were sunk—but only nine in the Atlantic—followed by 140 in June; 53 of them in the Atlantic for a total of 585,496 GRT that month. The first six months in 1940 cost Dönitz 15 U-boats. Until mid-1940 there remained a chronic problem with the reliability of the G7e torpedo. As the battles of Norway and Western Europe raged, the Luftwaffe sank more ships than the U-boats. In May 1940, German aircraft sank 48 ships (158 GRT), three times that of German submarines. The Allied evacuations from western Europe and Scandinavia in June 1940 attracted Allied warships in large numbers, leaving many of the Atlantic convoys travelling through the Western Approaches unprotected. From June 1940, the German submarines began to exact a heavy toll. In the same month, the Luftwaffe sank just 22 ships (195,193 GRT) in a reversal of the previous months.
Germany's defeat of Norway gave the U-boats new bases much nearer to their main area of operations off the Western Approaches. The U-boats operated in groups or 'wolf packs' which were coordinated by radio from land. With the fall of France, Germany acquired U-boat bases at Lorient, Brest, St Nazaire, and La Pallice/La Rochelle and Bordeaux. This extended the range of Type VIIs. Regardless, the war with Britain continued. The admiral remained sceptical of Operation Sea Lion, a planned invasion and expected a long war. The destruction of seaborne trade became German strategy against Britain after the defeat of the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain. Hitler was content with The Blitz and cutting off Britain's imports. Dönitz gained importance as the prospect of a quick victory faded. Dönitz concentrated groups of U-boats against the convoys and had them attack on the surface at night. In addition the Germans were helped by Italian submarines which in early 1941 actually surpassed the number of German U-boats. Having failed to persuade the Nazi leadership to prioritise U-boat construction, a task made more difficult by military victories in 1940 which convinced many people that Britain would give up the struggle, Dönitz welcomed the deployment of 26 Italian submarines to his force. Dönitz complimented Italian bravery and daring, but was critical of their training and submarine designs. Dönitz remarked they lacked the necessary toughness and discipline and consequently were "of no great assistance to us in the Atlantic."
The establishment of German bases on the French Atlantic coast allowed for the prospect of aerial support. Small numbers of German aircraft, such as the long-range Focke-Wulf Fw 200, sank a large number of ships in the Atlantic in the last quarter of 1940. In the long term, Göring proved an insurmountable problem in effecting cooperation between the navy and the Luftwaffe. In early 1941, while Göring was on leave, Dönitz approached Hitler and secured from him a single bomber/maritime patrol unit for the navy. Göring succeeded in overturning this decision and both Dönitz and Raeder were forced to settle for a specialist maritime air command under Luftwaffe control. Poorly supplied, Fliegerführer Atlantik achieved modest success in 1941, but thereafter failed to have an impact as British counter-measures evolved. Cooperation between the Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe remained dysfunctional to the war's end. Göring and his unassailable position at the Reichsluftfahrtministerium (Air Ministry) prevented all but limited collaboration.
The U-boat fleet's successes in 1940 and early 1941 were spearheaded by a small number of highly trained and experienced pre-war commanders. Otto Kretschmer, Joachim Schepke, and Günther Prien were the most famous, but others included Hans Jenisch, Victor Oehrn, Engelbert Endrass, Herbert Schultze and Hans-Rudolf Rösing. Although skilled and with impeccable judgement, the shipping lanes they descended upon were poorly defended. The U-boat force did not escape unscathed. Within the space of several days in March 1941, Prien and Schepke were dead and Kretschmer was a prisoner. All of them fell in battle with a convoy system. The number of boats in the Atlantic remained low. Six fewer existed in May 1940 than in September 1939. In January 1941 there were just six on station in the Atlantic—the lowest during the war, while still suffering from unreliable torpedoes. Dönitz insisted that operations continue while "the smallest prospect of hits" remained.
For his part, Dönitz was involved in the daily operations of his boats and all the major operational level decisions. His assistant, Eberhard Godt, was left to manage daily operations as the war continued. Dönitz was debriefed personally by his captains which helped establish a rapport between leader and led. Dönitz neglected nothing that would make the bond firmer. Often there would be a distribution of medals or awards. As an ex-submariner, Dönitz did not like to contemplate the thought of a man who had done well heading out to sea, perhaps never to return, without being rewarded or receiving recognition. Dönitz acknowledged where decorations were concerned there was no red tape and that awards were "psychologically important."
Intelligence played an important role in the Battle of the Atlantic. In general, BdU intelligence was poor. Counter-intelligence was not much better. At the height of the battle in mid-1943 some 2,000 signals were sent from the 110 U-boats at sea. Radio traffic compromised his ciphers by giving the Allies more messages to work with. Furthermore, replies from the boats enabled the Allies to use High-frequency direction finding (HF/DF, called "Huff-Duff") to locate a U-boat using its radio, track it and attack it. The over-centralised command structure of BdU and its insistence on micro-managing every aspect of U-boat operations with endless signals provided the Allied navies with enormous intelligence. The enormous "paper chase" [cross-referencing of materials] operations pursued by Allied intelligence agencies was not thought possible by BdU. The Germans did not suspect the Allies had identified the codes broken by B-Dienst. Conversely, when Dönitz suspected the enemy had penetrated his own communications BdU's response was to suspect internal sabotage and reduce the number of the staff officers to the most reliable, exacerbating the problem of over-centralisation. In contrast to the Allies, the Wehrmacht was suspicious of civilian scientific advisors and generally distrusted outsiders. The Germans were never as open to new ideas or thinking of war in intelligence terms. According to one analyst BdU "lacked imagination and intellectual daring" in the naval war. These Allied advantages failed to avert heavy losses in the June 1940 – May 1941 period, known to U-boat crews as the "First Happy Time." In June 1941, 68 ships were sunk in the North Atlantic (318,740 GRT) at a cost of four U-boats, but the German submarines would not eclipse that number for the remainder of the year. Just 10 transports were sunk in November and December 1941.
On 7 May 1941, the Royal Navy captured the German Arctic meteorological vessel München and took its Enigma machine intact, this allowed the Royal Navy to decode U-boat radio communications in June 1941. Two days later the capture of U-110 was an intelligence coup for the British. The settings for high-level "officer-only" signals, "short-signals" (Kurzsignale) and codes standardising messages to defeat HF/DF fixes by sheer speed were found. Only the Hydra settings for May were missing. The papers were the only stores destroyed by the crew. The capture on 28 June of another weather ship, Lauenburg, enabled British decryption operations to read radio traffic in July 1941. Beginning in August 1941, Bletchley Park operatives could decrypt signals between Dönitz and his U-boats at sea without any restriction. The capture of the U-110 allowed the Admiralty to identify individual boats, their commanders, operational readiness, damage reports, location, type, speed, endurance from working up in the Baltic to Atlantic patrols. On 1 February 1942, the Germans had introduced the M4 cipher machine, which secured communications until it was cracked in December 1942. Even so, the U-boats achieved their best success against the convoys in March 1943, due to an increase in U-boat numbers, and the protection of the shipping lanes was in jeopardy. Due to the cracked M4 and the use of radar, the Allies began to send air and surface reinforcements to convoys under threat. The shipping lanes were secured, which came as a great surprise to Dönitz. The lack of intelligence and increased numbers of U-boats contributed enormously to Allied losses that year.
Signals security aroused Dönitz's suspicions during the war. On 12 January 1942 German supply submarine U-459 arrived 800 nautical miles west of Freetown, well clear of convoy lanes. It was scheduled to rendezvous with an Italian submarine, until intercepted by a warship. The German captain's report coincided with reports of a decrease in sightings and a period of tension between Dönitz and Raeder. The number of U-boats in the Atlantic, by logic, should have increased, not lowered the number of sightings and the reasons for this made Dönitz uneasy. Despite several investigations, the conclusion of the BdU staff was that Enigma was impenetrable. His signals officer responded to the U-459 incident with answers ranging from coincidence, direction finding to Italian treachery. General Erich Fellgiebel, Chief Signal Officer of Army High Command and of Supreme Command of Armed Forces (Chef des Heeresnachrichtenwesens), apparently concurred with Dönitz. He concluded that there was "convincing evidence" that, after an "exhaustive investigation" that the Allied codebreakers had been reading high level communications. Other departments in the navy downplayed or dismissed these concerns. They vaguely implied "some components" of Enigma had been compromised, but there was "no real basis for acute anxiety as regards any compromise of operational security."
Following Hitler's declaration of war on the United States on 11 December 1941, Dönitz implemented Operation Drumbeat (Unternehmen Paukenschlag). The entry of the United States benefited German submarines in the short term. Dönitz intended to strike close to shore in American and Canadian waters and prevent the convoys—the most effective anti–U-boat system—from ever forming. Dönitz was determined to take advantage of Canadian and American unpreparedness before the situation changed.
The problem inhibiting Dönitz's plan was a lack of boats. On paper he had 259, but in January 1942, 99 were still undergoing sea trials and 59 were assigned to training flotillas, leaving only 101 on war operations. 35 of these were under repair in port, leaving 66 operational, of which 18 were low on fuel and returning to base, 23 were en route to areas where fuel and torpedoes needed to be conserved, and one was heading to the Mediterranean. Therefore, on 1 January Dönitz had a fighting strength of 16–25 in the Atlantic (six near to Iceland on "Norwegian operations"), three in the Arctic Ocean, three in the Mediterranean and three operating west of Gibraltar. Dönitz was severely limited to what he could accomplish in American waters in an initial offensive.
From 13 January 1942, Dönitz planned to begin a surprise offensive from the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to Cape Hatteras. Unknown to him, Ultra had read his Enigma signals and knew the position, size, and intentions of his boats, down to the date the operation was scheduled to begin. The attacks, when they came, were not a surprise. Of the 12 U-boats that began the offensive from the Grand Banks southward, just two survived the war. The operation began the Battle of the St. Lawrence, a series of battles which lasted into 1944. It remained possible for a U-boat to operate in the Gulf into 1944, but countermeasures were strong. In 1942, the global ratio of ships-to-U-boats sunk in Canadian waters was 112:1. The global average was 10.3:1. The solitary kill was achieved by the RCAF. Canadian operations, as with American efforts, were a failure during this year.
Along with conventional U-boat operations Dönitz authorised clandestine activities in Canadian waters, including spying, mine-laying, and recovery of German prisoners of war (as Dönitz wished to extract information from rescued submariners concerning Allied tactics). All of these things tied down Canadian military power and imposed industrial, fiscal, and psychological costs. The impunity with which U-boats carried out these operations in Canadian waters into 1944 provided a propaganda effect. One of these operations was the well-known Operation Kiebitz to rescue Otto Kretschmer.
Even with operational problems great success was achieved in American waters. From January to July 1942, Dönitz's submarines were able to attack unescorted ships off the United States' east coast and in the Caribbean Sea; U-boats sank more ships and tonnage than at any other time in the war. After a convoy system was introduced to protect the shipping, Dönitz shifted his U-boats back to the North Atlantic. The period, known in the U-boat Arm as the "Second Happy Time", represented one of the greatest naval disasters of all time, and largest defeat suffered by American sea power. The success was achieved with only five U-boats initially which sank 397 ships in waters protected by the United States Navy with an additional 23 sunk at the Panama Sea Frontier. Dönitz put the successes down to the American failure to initialize a blackout along the East Coast of the United States and ship captains' insistence on following peace-time safety procedures. The failure to implement a blackout stemmed from the American government's concern it would affect tourism trade. Dönitz wrote in his memoirs that the lighthouses and buoys "shone forth, though perhaps a little less brightly than usually".
By the time improved American air and naval defences had driven German submarines from American shores, 5,000 Allied sailors had been killed for negligible losses in U-boats. Dönitz ordered simultaneous operations in the Caribbean Sea. The ensuing Battle of the Caribbean resulted in immediate dividends for U-boats. In a short time, at least 100 transports had been destroyed or sunk. The sinkings damaged inter-island trade substantially. Operation Neuland was among the most damaging naval campaigns in the region. Oil refinery production in region declined while the tanker fleet suffered losses of up to ten per cent within twenty-four hours. However, ultimately Dönitz could not hope to sink more ships than American industry could build, so he targeted the tanker fleet in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico in the hope that depleting oil transports would paralyze shipyard output. 33 transports were sunk in July before Dönitz lost his first crew. The USN introduced effective convoy systems thereafter, ending the "carnage."
Dönitz maintained his demands for the concentration of all his crews in the Atlantic. As the military situation in North Africa and on the Eastern Front began to deteriorate Hitler diverted a number of submarines to the Battle of the Mediterranean upon the suggestions of Admiral Eberhard Weichold. Raeder and Dönitz resisted the deployment to the Mediterranean to no avail. Hitler felt compelled to act against Allied sea forces which were having an enormous impact on Axis supply lines to North Africa. The decision defied logic, for a victory in the Atlantic would end the war in the Mediterranean. The U-boat war in the Mediterranean was a costly failure, despite successes against warships. Approximately 60 crews were lost and only one crew managed to withdraw through the Strait of Gibraltar. Albrecht Brandi was one of Dönitz's highest performers but his record is a matter of controversy; post-war records prove systematic over-claiming of sinkings. He survived his boat's sinking and was smuggled to Germany through Spain. Dönitz had met his end as a submarine commander in the Mediterranean two decades earlier.
In 1942 Dönitz summed up his philosophy in one simple paragraph; "The enemy's shipping constitutes one single, great entity. It is therefore immaterial where a ship is sunk. Once it has been destroyed it has to be replaced by a new ship; and that's that." The remark was the green light to unrestricted submarine warfare and began the tonnage war proper. BdU intelligence concluded the Americans could produce 15,300,000 tons of shipping in 1942 and 1943—two million tons under actual production figures. Dönitz always calculated the worst-case scenario using the highest figures of enemy production potential. Some 700,000 tons per month needed to be sunk to win the war. The "second happy time" reached a peak in June 1942, with 325,000 tons sunk, up from 311,000 in May, 255,000 in April and the highest since the 327,000 tons sunk in March 1942. With support from the Royal Navy and Royal Canadian Navy, the new convoy systems compelled Dönitz to withdraw his captains to the mid-Atlantic once again. Nevertheless, there was still cause for optimism. B-Dienst had cracked the convoy ciphers and by July 1942 he could call upon 311 boats, 140 operational, to conduct a renewed assault. By October 1942 he had 196 operational from 365. Dönitz's force finally reached the desired number both he and Raeder had hoped for in 1939. Unaware of it, Dönitz and his men were aided by the Ultra blackout. The addition of a fourth rotor to the Enigma left radio detection the only way to gather intelligence on dispositions and intentions of the German naval forces. German code breakers had their own success in the capture of the code book to Cipher Code Number 3 from a merchant ship. It was a treble success for the BdU.
Dönitz was content that he now had the naval power to extend U-boat operations to other areas aside the North Atlantic. The Caribbean, Brazilian waters with the coast of West Africa designated operational theatres. Waters in the southern hemisphere to South Africa could also be attacked with the new Type IX submarine. The strategy was sound and his tactical ideas were effective. The number of boats available allowed him to form Wolfpacks to comb convoy routes from east to west attacking one when found and pursuing it across the ocean. The pack then refuelled from a U-boat tanker and worked from west to east. Raeder and the operations staff disputed the value in attacking convoys heading westward with empty cargo holds. The tactics were successful but placed great strain on crews who spent up to eight days in constant action.
November 1942 was a new high in the Atlantic. 134 ships were sunk for 807,754 tons. 119 were destroyed by submarines, 83 (508,707 tons) in the Atlantic. The same month Dönitz suffered strategic defeat. His submarines failed to prevent Operation Torch, even with 196 of them operating in the Atlantic. Dönitz considered it a major self-inflicted defeat. Allied morale radically improved after the victories of Torch, the Second Battle of El Alamein and the Battle of Stalingrad; all occurred within days of one another. The U-boat war was the only military success the Germans enjoyed at the end of the year.
On 30 January 1943, Dönitz replaced Erich Raeder as Commander-in-chief of the navy (Oberbefehlshaber der Kriegsmarine) and Großadmiral (grand admiral) of the Naval High Command (Oberkommando der Marine). In a communique to the navy he announced his intentions to retain practical control of the U-boats and his desire to fight to the end for Hitler. Dönitz's inability to delegate control of the U-boat service has been construed as a weakness in the U-boat arm, contributing to the perception that Dönitz was an "impatient warrior", preoccupied with fighting battles and tactics rather than a strategist or organiser.
Dönitz's promotion earned Hitler his undying loyalty. For Dönitz, Hitler had given him a "true home-coming at last, to a country in which unemployment appeared to have been abolished, the class war no longer tore the nation apart, and the shame of defeat in 1918 was being expunged." When war came, Dönitz became more firmly wedded to his Nazi faith. Hitler recognised his patriotism, professionalism but above all, his loyalty. Dönitz remained so, long after the war was lost. In so doing, he wilfully ignored the genocidal nature of the regime and claimed ignorance of the Holocaust.
In the last quarter of 1942, 69 submarines had been commissioned taking the total number to 393, with 212 operational. Dönitz was not satisfied and immediately began a naval construction programme which in contrast to Raeder's, laid all its emphasis on torpedo boats and submarines. Dönitz's proposed expansion ran into difficulties experienced by all of his predecessors; the lack of steel. The navy had no representation on Albert Speer's armaments ministry, for naval production was the only sphere not under his control. Dönitz understood this worked against the navy because it lacked the elasticity to cope with breakdowns of production at any point, whereas the other services could make good production by compensating one sector at the expense of another. Without any representatives the battle of priorities was left to Speer and Göring. Dönitz had the sense to place U-boat production under Speer on the provision 40 per month were completed. Dönitz persuaded Hitler not to scrap the surface fleet capital ships, though they played no role in the Atlantic during his time in command. Dönitz reasoned the destruction of the surface fleet would provide the British with a victory and heap pressure on the U-boats, for these warships were tying down British air and naval forces that would otherwise be sent into the Atlantic.
New construction procedures, dispensing with prototypes and the abandonment of modifications reduced construction times from 460,000-man hours to 260–300,000 to meet Speer's quota. In the spring 1944, the Type XXI submarine was scheduled to reach frontline units. In 1943 the Combined Bomber Offensive undid German plans. Dönitz and Speer were appalled by the destruction of Hamburg, a major construction site. The battles of 1943 and 1944 were fought with the existing Type VII and Type IX submarines. The Type VII remained the backbone of the fleet in 1943.
At the end of 1942, Dönitz was faced with the appearance of escort carriers, and long-range aircraft working with convoy escorts. To protect his boats against the latter, he ordered his boats to restrict their operations to the Mid-Atlantic Gap, a stretch of ocean out of the range of land‐based aircraft. Allied air forces had few aircraft equipped with ASV radar for U-boat detection into April and May 1943, and such units would not exist in Newfoundland until June. Convoys relied on RAF Coastal Command aircraft operating from Northern Ireland and Iceland. The aircraft imposed restraints on U-boat captains, who feared them for their ability to sink a submarine or alert surface warships to their position. In 1942 Coastal Command began forming units combined with ASV and Leigh Light to attack U-boats at night in transit to the Atlantic via the Bay of Biscay, which continued into 1943. The Command was moderately successful after mid-1942.
1943 began with continued tactical success for Dönitz in battle. In January Convoy TM 1 was nearly destroyed. The loss of 100,000 tons of fuel in one convoy represented the most devastating loss percentage of the war—only two of nine tankers reached port. The Eighth Army were forced to ration their fuel for a time, earning Dönitz the gratitude of the Afrika Korps. The Casablanca Conference, held that month, identified the Atlantic as the priority. It was agreed that until the defeat of Dönitz and his men, there could be no amphibious landings in continental Europe. Unknown to Dönitz, Bletchley Park had broken the Shark cypher and restored the flow of Enigma information; the Admiralty was able to route convoys around wolfpacks. During January and February 1943 information was decrypted within 24 hours proving operationally useful, although this slipped at the end of the second month contributing to German interceptions. Even so, in appalling weather, the Germans sank only 44 ships during the month, even with 100 U-boats at sea, the majority stationed in the mid-Atlantic gap.
In February 1943 the strength of Allied defences were ominous for Dönitz. The battle of convoy HX 224 was ended upon the intervention of air power from Iceland. Dönitz sent 20 boats to attack SC 118 and both sides suffered heavy losses—11 merchant ships for three U-boats plus four damaged. It was "what both sides considered one of the hardest fought battles of the Atlantic war". Despite sending 20 crews into action, Dönitz was concerned that most captains did not press home attacks. The majority of the ships sunk were by one crew, commanded by Siegfried von Forstner—he sank seven.
In March, Convoy SC 121 was attacked by 31 U-boats in two patrol lines. It was the most successful battle of the war for Dönitz. The battle of Convoys HX 229/SC 122 was the largest convoy battle, with 40 U-boats involved. Each operation was successful but all were fought in the mid-Atlantic. Allied losses reached a peak in March 1943. The Admiralty later issued a report on the matter; "The Germans never came so near [to] disrupting communications between the new world and the old as in the first twenty days of March 1943." Dönitz later conceded the March battles were to be the U-boats' last victories. New Allied techniques, tactics and technology began to turn the tide. By April 1943 U-boat morale was reaching a crisis point. Ninety-eight new boats were sent into the Atlantic that month and although the training was thorough the crews were inexperienced and it showed. Fifteen U-boats were destroyed in March 1943 and another 15 in April. Werner Hartenstein and Johann Mohr were notable casualties over the course of these eight weeks; the former's decision to rescue survivors of a sunken ship led to Dönitz's Laconia Order, which later formed part of the criminal case against Dönitz.
Ominous for BdU was the sudden growth of Allied air power. The Allied command accepted that air cover over the mid-Atlantic was inadequate and had drawn attention to the fact that not one VLR (Very Long Range) aircraft was to be found at any Allied air base west of Iceland. The Americans released 255 Liberators for the North Atlantic. At the end of March 1943 20 VLR aircraft were operational rising to 41 by mid-April, all of them flown by British crews. Twenty-eight anti-submarine and 11 anti-shipping squadrons were available to RAF Coastal Command, 619 aircraft in all—a striking change since September 1939. The influx of radar equipped aircraft into mid-Atlantic was matched by air patrols over the Bay of Biscay. Dönitz detected a drop in morale among his captains, as did the British. Dönitz encouraged his commanders to show a "hunter's instinct" and "warrior spirit" in the face of the air–surface support group threat.
Along with air power, the BdU was forced to contend with a large increase in Allied convoy escorts which fuelled from tankers in the convoys allowing escort across the ocean. The escort carrier support groups, protected by destroyers, which, in the words of the official naval historian of the Second World War, proved decisive; "it was the advent of the Support Groups, the Escort Carriers and the Very Long Range Aircraft which turned the tables on the U-boats-and did so with astonishing rapidity".
A hundred and eight ships were sunk in the first 20 days of March, and just 15 in the last 10. The official naval historian wrote, "The collapse of the enemy's offensive, when it came, was so sudden that it took him completely by surprise. We now know that, in fact, a downward trend in the U-boats' recent accomplishments could have forewarned him, but was concealed from him by the exaggerated claims made by their commanders." In April Dönitz lost five crews to the Coastal Command ASV Biscay offensive. Encouraged by the isolated successes of anti-aircraft artillery installed on submarines, he ordered crews to stay on the surface and fight it out with the aircraft. The decision caused casualties—four boats were lost in the first week of May alone, and three more by the end.
For the month of April Allied losses fell to 56 ships of 327,943 tons. In May 1943 the battle reached a climax with the battles of Convoy ONS 5, Convoy SC 129, Convoy SC 130. Throughout the battles only two ships were sunk in convoy in the Atlantic while an air anti-submarine escort was present. Dönitz depended on the surface manoeuvrability of his U-boats to locate targets, assemble wolfpacks and the complicated business of positioning his forces ahead of a convoy for an attack. Allied air power determined where and when U-boats could move freely on the surface. It was the combination of convoy escorts and air power that made the Atlantic unsuitable for pack operations. The US Navy introduced the K-class blimp. They forced a commander to dive to prevent the aircraft marking his position or attacking. From 10 to 24 May 1943, ten convoys passed through the mid-Atlantic. Six of the 370 ships were sunk; three were stragglers. Thirteen U-boats were sunk; four by warships, seven by aircraft, and two shared.
By 24 May, when Dönitz conceded defeat and withdrew the surviving crews from the field of battle, they had already lost 33 U-boats. At the end of May it had risen to 41. Dönitz tried to limit the damage to morale by declaring that the withdrawal was only temporary "to avoid unnecessary losses in a period when our weapons are shown to be at a disadvantage" and that "the battle in the north Atlantic—the decisive area—will be resumed". Dönitz did make a further attempt to regain the initiative, but the battle never reached the same pitch of intensity or hung in the balance, as during the spring of 1943. The Allied success won the Battle of the Atlantic. On 24 May Dönitz ordered the suspension of Atlantic operations, bringing an end to Black May.
Defeat in the mid-Atlantic left Dönitz in a dilemma. The U-boats had proven unable to elude convoy escorts and attack convoys with success. He was concerned about crew morale suffering from idleness and a loss of experience with the latest Allied developments in anti-submarine warfare. Aside from problems of seaworthiness among machines and crew, there were not enough Submarine pens to store idle boats and they were a target for aircraft in port. Dönitz would not withdraw his submarines from combat operations, for he felt the ships, men and aircraft engaged in suppressing the U-boats could then be turned on Germany directly; the U-boat war was to continue.
From mid-June 1943 the technological and industrial superiority of the Allied navies allowed the Americans, Canadians, and British to form hunter-killer groups consisting of fast anti-submarine escorts and aircraft carriers. The purpose of naval operations changed from avoiding U-boats and safeguarding convoys to seeking them out and destroying them wherever they operated. USN hunter-killer groups operated throughout the Atlantic. Argentia had been an important base for the naval taskforces until superseded by the Royal Canadian Navy in early 1943. U-boat operations were "crushed" by these task forces: 14 were sunk and only two of seven crews operating in Brazilian waters returned to Germany.
Dönitz reacted by deploying his U-boats near the Azores where land-based aircraft still had difficulty reaching them. In this region he hoped to threaten the Gibraltar–Britain convoy route. Dönitz intended to concentrate his power in a rough arc from West Africa to South America and the Caribbean. He hoped to maintain a presence in the western and central Atlantic, reduce losses and await new weapons and anti-detection devices. In this, he failed to "stem the tide of U-boat losses." A large portion of the 39 U-boats deployed on these operations were intercepted. From May 1943, one historian wrote "U-boats rash enough to close with an Atlantic convoy...were simply inviting destruction."
Dönitz's crews faced danger from the outset. The transit routes through the Bay of Biscay were heavily patrolled by aircraft. From May to December 1943, 25 U-boats were sunk by Coastal Command, more were sunk by the USAAF and Royal Navy—five and four respectively; with one shared by the navy and Coastal Command. To counter radar aircraft, Dönitz ordered his submarines to group together and merge their powerful anti-aircraft armament together while surfaced and recharging their batteries, after initially ordering the groups to remain surfaced throughout the journey and fight off aerial attackers with gunfire. The decision was to cost BdU heavy casualties. A group of U-boats were more likely to attract a radar contact, and Allied pilots soon learned to swarm their targets. Dönitz ordered his captains to traverse the Bay under the lee of the neutral Spanish coast, with a sharply rising coast which shielded U-boats from radar. After 4 August 1943, the number of destroyed U-boats fell from one every four days, to one every 27 until June 1944.
US hunter–killer groups extended their patrols to the central Atlantic in the summer. They sank 15 U-boats from June through to August 1943. A number of supply submarines were destroyed crippling the Germans' ability to conduct long range operations. At the end of the summer, practically all supply U-boats had been destroyed. In September 1943, Dönitz ordered his submarines back to the North Atlantic. U-boats were equipped with the G7es torpedo, an acoustic torpedo, which the grand admiral hoped would wrest the technological initiative back. The torpedo was the centrepiece to Dönitz's plan. Great faith was also placed in the installation of Wanze radar to detect aircraft. It was intended as a successor to the Metox radar detector. A number of his boats were later retrofitted with the submarine snorkel, permitting the submarine to stay submerged. Dönitz placed much faith in the Type XXI submarine. He accepted that the older submarines were obsolete now that Allied defences in the air were complete. He required a "true submarine", equipped with a snorkel to allow his crews to stay submerged, at least to snorkel-depth, and evade radar-equipped aircraft. Dönitz was pleased with the promised top speed of 18 knots.
That month, 21 boats fought a battle with two formations; Convoys ONS 18/ON 202. The battle was a failure. In October an attack on Convoy SC 143 failed, even with limited air support from the Luftwaffe. The battle with Convoys ONS 20/ON 206 in the same month was a comprehensive defeat. A fourth major battle, Convoy SL 138/MKS 28, developed in the last days of October and ended in another failure for Dönitz. The November battle around Convoy SL 139/MKS 30 ended in the repulse of 29 U-boats with the loss of only a single ship. Intelligence proved its worth. During the battles of convoys ONS 18/ON 202, Dönitz's admonitions to his commanders allowed the Allied intelligence services to uncover German tactical intentions. Dönitz had tried and failed to push his forces through lethal convoy defences. The hunter-killer groups were called in to hunt the remaining members of the wolfpacks, with predictable results. In mid-December 1943, Dönitz finally conceded not only the Atlantic, but the Gibraltar routes as well.
The hunter-killer and convoy escorts brought the wolfpack era to an end at the close of 1943. Dönitz resorted to sending out single submarines to the far reaches of the oceans in a bid to escape Allied naval power. In November 1943 he sent the last U-boat into the Gulf of Mexico just after the blackout restrictions were lifted. U-193 achieved one final success. The end of 1943 ended the attempt of the U-boat arm to achieve a strategic victory in the Atlantic. That left only the Arctic convoys to the Soviet Union. On Christmas Eve, this became the sole preserve of the U-boats after the dispatch of Scharnhorst at the Battle of the North Cape.
Dönitz's plan for 1944 was simply to survive and await the XXI and Type XXIII submarines. New radars were on the horizon and a direction finding antenna for Naxos was scheduled for use. Dönitz established a naval operations scientific staff to focus on more powerful centimetric radars. Production of submarines was streamlined. Parts for eight major sections were fabricated across 60 plants in Europe and assembled at Hamburg, Danzig and Bremen to ease the pressure of bombing and congestion at shipyards. The first of the new generation boats were expected by April 1944. Dönitz hoped for 33 per month by September. In early 1944, Dönitz opted to concentrate west of Ireland, at 15 and 17° west, in the hope convoys would come to them. Single boats were still sent to the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean. With 66 vessels at sea at any one time, and with 200 boats operational, the BdU was still a viable threat and he believed the force could achieve modest success. The U-boats were painfully slow, strategically, operationally and tactically. Crossing the Atlantic took up to a month compared to a week in 1942. Positioning west of Ireland could take several weeks submerged. In the first quarter of 1944, U-boats sank only three of the 3,360 ships that passed south of Ireland. In return 29 crews were lost.
A major concern to Dönitz was Operation Overlord, the long predicted landing in France, and what role the U-boat arm and surface forces could play in the defence. He was sensitive to a landing on the Bay of Biscay but retained boats there only for operational readiness. Dönitz ended reconnaissance operations in the region. In the BdU war diary he wrote of ending operations since "otherwise the strong enemy air activity will lead to high losses which would only be acceptable if an immediate landing on the Biscay coast were expected. As this is no longer considered an acute danger the boats will remain at readiness in the concrete shelters."
When the D-day landings took place on 6 June 1944, the U-boats were ordered into action with the awareness that the western flank of the invasion would be well protected at sea. Operational experience with the snorkel was too scant to devise instructions for its use. The narrow, shallow, waters of the English Channel provided few opportunities for charging the batteries. Dönitz feared the task was impossible. The Holzbein group based at Brest, sent 15 submarines into action against the Cherbourg peninsula landings part of a 36-strong flotilla. Only eight had snorkels. The seven non-snorkel boats were ordered to attack on the surface. The BdU war diary entry on 6 June 1944 states that "for those boats without schnorchel this means the last operation." Of the 15, only five got near to the invasion fleet. Five of the snorkel boats survived. In exchange for 10 U-boats with the survivors damaged, two frigates, four freighters, and one tank landing ship were sunk. 22 U-boats were sunk from 6 to 30 June 1944. On 5 July 1944, the Allied Operation Dredger permitted hunter-killer groups to roam the Western Approaches and Biscay making it a "no-go area" for U-boats. U-boat operations against Normandy landings were a fiasco. Dönitz and the high command had been ignorant of the true scale of the naval D-day effort. Dönitz claimed his men sank five escorts, 12 merchant ships and four landing craft for 20 submarines and 1,000 men, of whom 238 were rescued. Dönitz's claims underplayed German losses, which were, in fact, 41 submarines from 82 in France, a 50 per cent loss rate.
The collapse of the German front in Normandy left only the bases in German-occupied Norway nearest to the Atlantic. The newer boats were not forthcoming either. Ninety Type XXI and 31 Type XIII boats were built by the end of 1944. Sixty of the former and 23 of the latter were in service but none were operational. Dönitz was left with the old VIIs to carry the war into 1945. A large number had snorkels, which enabled them to surface only upon reaching port. Submerged, this meant no radio or Enigma communications and far fewer sightings for the Allied intelligence network to exploit. Dönitz ordered his submarines to British coastal waters with some success in November and December 1944, achieving 85,639 tons. Admiral Andrew Cunningham remarked of the strategy, "We are having a difficult time with the U-boats....the air are about 90 percent out of business and Asdic is failing us." The inshore waters impeded the use of Asdic, which became confused with wrecks, rocks, and tidal swirls. The new types could conceivably have capitalised on these developments but the war was nearly over. On 1 January 1945, Dönitz had 425 submarines; 144 operational. On 1 April 1945, it was 166 from 429. He threw into battle every available weapon as the German Reich collapsed. Dönitz supported the use of Human torpedoes; the Neger, Marder, Seehund and Biber were all used in suicide missions on his orders, perhaps inspired by the Japanese Kamikaze.
On 30 April 1945 Adolf Hitler committed suicide. Dönitz succeeded him as head of state. Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg succeeded Dönitz as commander-in-chief of the Kriegsmarine. On 4 May 1945 the German surrender at Lüneburg Heath took place. Dönitz issued an order to all U-boats to cease combat operations and return to port or surrender to Allied naval vessels. The order was obeyed with a handful of notable exceptions—the Actions of 5–6 May 1945, and Actions of 7–8 May 1945 occurred after the surrender. The surrendered U-boats numbered into the hundreds and were destroyed in the postwar Operation Deadlight. The U-boat war finally came to an end on 9 May 1945, the date of the German Instrument of Surrender.
Dönitz admired Hitler and was vocal about the qualities he perceived in Hitler's leadership. In August 1943, he praised his foresightedness and confidence; "anyone who thinks he can do better than the Führer is stupid." Dönitz's relationship with Hitler strengthened through to the end of the war, particularly after the 20 July plot, for the naval staff officers were not involved; when news of it came there was indignation in the OKM. Even after the war, Dönitz said he could never have joined the conspirators. Dönitz tried to imbue Nazi ideas among his officers, though the indoctrination of the naval officer corps was not the brainchild of Dönitz, but rather a continuation of the Nazification of the navy begun under his predecessor Raeder. Naval officers were required to attend a five-day education course in Nazi ideology. Dönitz's loyalty to him and the cause was rewarded by Hitler, who, owing to Dönitz's leadership, never felt abandoned by the navy. In gratitude, Hitler appointed the navy's commander as his successor before he committed suicide.
Dönitz's influence on military matters was also evident. Hitler acted on Dönitz's advice in September 1944 to block the Gulf of Finland after Finland abandoned the Axis powers. Operation Tanne Ost was a poorly executed disaster. Dönitz shared Hitler's senseless strategic judgement—with the Courland Pocket on the verge of collapse, and the air and army forces requesting a withdrawal, the two men were preoccupied in planning an attack on an isolated island in the far north. Hitler's willingness to listen to the naval commander was based on his high opinion of the navy's usefulness at this time. It reinforced isolated coastal garrisons along the Baltic and evacuated thousands of German soldiers and civilians in order that they might continue to participate in the war effort into the spring of 1945.
Through 1944 and 1945, the Dönitz-initiated Operation Hannibal had the distinction of being the largest naval evacuation in history. The Baltic Fleet was presented with a mass of targets, the subsequent Soviet submarine Baltic Sea campaign in 1944 and Soviet naval Baltic Sea campaign in 1945 inflicted grievous losses during Hannibal. The most notable was the sinking of the MV Wilhelm Gustloff by a Soviet submarine. The liner had nearly 10,000 people on board. The evacuations continued after the surrender. From 3 to 9 May 1945, 81,000 of the 150,000 persons waiting on the Hel Peninsula were evacuated without loss. Albrecht Brandi, commander of the eastern Baltic, initiated a counter operation, the Gulf of Finland campaign, but failed to have an impact.
In the final days of the war, after Hitler had taken refuge in the Führerbunker beneath the Reich Chancellery garden in Berlin, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring was considered the obvious successor to Hitler, followed by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. Göring, however, infuriated Hitler by radioing him in Berlin asking for permission to assume leadership of the Reich. Himmler also tried to seize power by entering into negotiations with Count Bernadotte. On 28 April 1945, the BBC reported Himmler had offered surrender to the western Allies and that the offer had been declined.
From mid-April 1945, Dönitz and elements of what remained of the Reich government moved into the buildings of the Stadtheide Barracks in Plön. In his last will and testament, dated 29 April 1945, Hitler named Dönitz his successor as Staatsoberhaupt (Head of State), with the titles of Reichspräsident (President) and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. The same document named Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels as Head of Government with the title of Reichskanzler (Chancellor). Hitler would not name any successors to hold his titles of Führer or leader of the Nazi Party. Furthermore, Hitler declared both Göring and Himmler traitors and expelled them from the party. He committed suicide on 30 April.
On 1 May, the day after Hitler's own suicide, Goebbels committed suicide. Dönitz thus became the sole representative of the collapsing German Reich. On 2 May, the new government of the Reich fled to Flensburg-Mürwik; Dönitz remained there until his arrest on 23 May 1945. That night, 2 May, Dönitz made a nationwide radio address in which he announced Hitler's death and said the war would continue in the East "to save Germany from destruction by the advancing Bolshevik enemy."
Dönitz knew that Germany's position was untenable and the Wehrmacht was no longer capable of offering meaningful resistance. During his brief period in office, he devoted most of his effort to ensuring the loyalty of the German armed forces and trying to ensure German personnel would surrender to the British or Americans and not the Soviets. He feared vengeful Soviet reprisals, and hoped to strike a deal with the Western Allies. In the end, Dönitz's tactics were moderately successful, enabling about 1.8 million German soldiers to escape Soviet capture. As many as 2.2 million may have been evacuated.
On 4 May, Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg, representing Dönitz, surrendered all German forces in the Netherlands, Denmark, and northwestern Germany to Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery at Lüneburg Heath southeast of Hamburg, signaling the end of World War II in northwestern Europe.
A day later, Dönitz sent Friedeburg to US General Dwight D. Eisenhower's headquarters in Rheims, France, to negotiate a surrender to the Allies. The Chief of Staff of OKW, Generaloberst (Colonel-General) Alfred Jodl, arrived a day later. Dönitz had instructed them to draw out the negotiations for as long as possible so that German troops and refugees could surrender to the Western powers, but when Eisenhower let it be known he would not tolerate their stalling, Dönitz authorized Jodl to sign the instrument of unconditional surrender at 1:30 on the morning of 7 May. Just over an hour later, Jodl signed the documents. The surrender documents included the phrase, "All forces under German control to cease active operations at 23:01 hours Central European Time on 8 May 1945." At Stalin's insistence, on 8 May, shortly before midnight, (Generalfeldmarschall) Wilhelm Keitel repeated the signing in Berlin at Marshal Georgy Zhukov's headquarters, with General Carl Spaatz of the USAAF present as Eisenhower's representative. At the time specified, World War II in Europe ended.
On 23 May, the Dönitz government was dissolved when Dönitz was arrested by an RAF Regiment task force. The Großadmiral's Kriegsmarine flag, which was removed from his headquarters, can be seen at the RAF Regiment Heritage Centre at RAF Honington. Generaloberst Jodl, Reichsminister Speer and other members were also handed over to troops of the Herefordshire Regiment at Flensburg. His ceremonial baton, awarded to him by Hitler, can be seen in the regimental museum of the Kings Shropshire Light Infantry in Shrewsbury Castle and his car pennant in the regimental museum of the Herefordshire Light Infantry.
Dönitz was a dedicated Nazi and a passionate supporter of Hitler, something he attempted to obscure after the war. Raeder described him as "a picture-book Nazi and confirmed anti-Semite". Several naval officers described him as "closely tied to Hitler and Nazi ideology." On occasion, he spoke of Hitler's humanity. His fervent pro-Hitler attitude led to him being known ironically as "Hitler Youth Quex", after the fictional hero of a Nazi novel and feature film. He refused to help Albert Speer stop the scorched earth policy dictated by Hitler and is also noted to have declared, "In comparison to Hitler we are all pipsqueaks. Anyone who believes he can do better than the Führer is stupid."
Dönitz contributed to the spread of Nazism within the Kriegsmarine. He insisted that officers share his political views and, as head of the Kriegsmarine, formally joined the Nazi Party on 1 February 1944, as member 9,664,999. He was awarded the Golden Party Badge for his loyalty to the party later that year. Dönitz's influence over naval officers contributed to none joining the attempts to kill Hitler.
From an ideological standpoint, Dönitz was anti-Marxist and antisemitic and believed that Germany needed to fight the "poison of Jewry". Several anti-Semitic statements by Dönitz are known. When Sweden closed its international waters to Germany, he blamed this action on their fear and dependence on "international Jewish capital." In August 1944, he declared, "I would rather eat dirt than see my grandchildren grow up in the filthy, poisonous atmosphere of Jewry."
His fellow officers noted he was under Hitler's influence, and closely wedded to Nazi ideology. On German Heroes' Day (12 March) of 1944, Dönitz declared that, without Adolf Hitler, Germany would be beset by "the poison of Jewry," and the country destroyed for lack of the "uncompromising ideology" of National Socialism:
What would have become of our country today, if the Führer had not united us under National Socialism? Divided along party lines, beset with the spreading poison of Jewry and vulnerable to it, because we lacked the defense of our present uncompromising ideology, we would have long since succumbed under the burden of this war and delivered ourselves to the enemy who would have mercilessly destroyed us.
At the Nuremberg trials, Dönitz claimed the statement about the "poison of Jewry" was regarding "the endurance, the power to endure, of the people, as it was composed, could be better preserved than if there were Jewish elements in the nation." Later, during the Nuremberg trials, Dönitz claimed to know nothing about the extermination of Jews and declared that nobody among "my men thought about violence against Jews." Dönitz told Leon Goldensohn, an American psychiatrist at Nuremberg, "I never had any idea of the goings-on as far as Jews were concerned. Hitler said each man should take care of his business and mine was U-boats and the Navy." After the war, Dönitz tried to hide his knowledge of the Holocaust. He was present at the October 1943 Posen Conference where Himmler described the mass murder of Jews with the intent of making the audience complicit in this crime. It cannot be proven beyond doubt that he was present during Himmler's segment of the conference, which openly discussed the mass murder of European Jews.
Even after the Nuremberg Trials, with the crimes of the Nazi state well-known, Dönitz remained an antisemite. In April 1953, he told Speer that if it was the choice of the Americans and not the Jews, he would have been released.
Following the war, Dönitz was held as a prisoner of war by the Allies. He was indicted as a major war criminal at the Nuremberg Trials on three counts. One: conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Two: planning, initiating, and waging wars of aggression. Three: crimes against the laws of war. Dönitz was found not guilty on count one of the indictment, but guilty on counts two and three.
During the trial, army psychologist Gustave Gilbert was allowed to examine Nazi leaders on trial for war crimes. Among other tests, a German version of the Wechsler–Bellevue IQ test was administered. Dönitz and Hermann Göring scored 138, which made them equally the third-highest among the Nazi leaders tested.
At the trial, Dönitz was charged with waging unrestricted submarine warfare against neutral shipping, permitting Hitler's Commando Order of 18 October 1942 to remain in full force when he became commander-in-chief of the Navy, and to that extent responsibility for that crime. His defence was that the order excluded men captured in naval warfare, and that the order had not been acted upon by any men under his command. Added to that was his knowledge of 12,000 involuntary foreign workers working in the shipyards, and doing nothing to stop it. Dönitz was unable to defend himself on this charge convincingly when cross-examined by prosecutor Sir David Maxwell Fyfe.
On 25 February 1945, Hitler asked Dönitz whether the Geneva Convention should be denounced. Hitler's motives were twofold. The first was that reprisals could be taken against Western Allied prisoners of war; second, it would deter German forces from surrendering to the Western Allies, as was happening on the Eastern Front where the convention was in abeyance. Instead of arguing the conventions should never be denounced, Dönitz suggested it was not expedient to do so, so the court found against him on this issue; but as the convention was not denounced by Germany, and British prisoners in camps under Dönitz's jurisdiction were treated strictly according to the Convention, the Court considered these mitigating circumstances.
Among the war-crimes charges, Dönitz was accused of waging unrestricted submarine warfare for issuing War Order No. 154 in 1939, and another similar order after the Laconia incident in 1942, not to rescue survivors from ships attacked by submarine. By issuing these two orders, he was found guilty of causing Germany to be in breach of the Second London Naval Treaty of 1936. However, as evidence of similar conduct by the Allies was presented at his trial, his sentence was not assessed on the grounds of this breach of international law.
On the specific war crimes charge of ordering unrestricted submarine warfare, Dönitz was found "[not] guilty for his conduct of submarine warfare against British armed merchant ships", because they were often armed and equipped with radios which they used to notify the admiralty of attack. As stated by the judges:
Dönitz is charged with waging unrestricted submarine warfare contrary to the Naval Protocol of 1936 to which Germany acceded, and which reaffirmed the rules of submarine warfare laid down in the London Naval Agreement of 1930 ... The order of Dönitz to sink neutral ships without warning when found within these zones was, therefore, in the opinion of the Tribunal, violation of the Protocol ... The orders, then, prove Dönitz is guilty of a violation of the Protocol ... The sentence of Dönitz is not assessed on the ground of his breaches of the international law of submarine warfare.
His sentence on unrestricted submarine warfare was not assessed because of similar actions by the Allies. In particular, the British Admiralty, on 8 May 1940, had ordered all vessels in the Skagerrak sunk on sight, and Admiral Chester Nimitz, wartime commander-in-chief of the US Pacific Fleet, stated the US Navy had waged unrestricted submarine warfare in the Pacific from the day the US officially entered the war. Thus, Dönitz was not charged of waging unrestricted submarine warfare against unarmed neutral shipping by ordering all ships in designated areas in international waters to be sunk without warning.
Dönitz was imprisoned for 10 years in Spandau Prison in what was then West Berlin. During his period in prison he was unrepentant, and maintained that he had done nothing wrong. He also rejected Speer's attempts to persuade him to end his devotion to Hitler and accept responsibility for the wrongs the German Government had committed. Conversely, over 100 senior Allied officers sent letters to Dönitz conveying their disappointment over the unfairness and verdict of his trial.
Dönitz was released on 1 October 1956 and retired to the small village of Aumühle in Schleswig-Holstein in northern West Germany. There, he worked on two books. His memoirs, Zehn Jahre, Zwanzig Tage (Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days), were released in Germany in 1958 and became available in an English translation the following year. This book recounted Dönitz's experiences as U-boat commander (10 years) and President of Germany (20 days). In it, Dönitz explains the Nazi regime as a product of its time, but argues he was not a politician and thus not morally responsible for many of the regime's crimes. He likewise criticizes dictatorship as a fundamentally flawed form of government and blames it for many of the Nazi era's failings. Historian Alan P. Rems has written that Dönitz's memoirs are unconvincing and that "unimpeded by a meaningful Nuremberg verdict, Dönitz fashioned a legend that could be embraced by the most unregenerate Nazis as well as credulous Allied officers who accepted his sanitized version of history and showered Dönitz with letters of support as a wronged brother-in-arms".
Dönitz's second book, Mein wechselvolles Leben (My Ever-Changing Life) is less known, perhaps because it deals with the events of his life before 1934. This book was first published in 1968, and a new edition was released in 1998 with the revised title Mein soldatisches Leben (My Martial Life). In 1973, he appeared in the Thames Television production The World at War, in one of his few television appearances.
Dönitz was unrepentant regarding his role in World War II, saying that he had acted at all times out of duty to his nation. In 1976, Dönitz appeared in The Memory of Justice. In the documentary, Dönitz explains about the Nuremberg Trials and his experience during the trials in 1946 along with Albert Speer. He lived out the rest of his life in relative obscurity in Aumühle, occasionally corresponding with collectors of German naval history, and died there of a heart attack on Christmas Eve 1980 at the age of 89. As the last German officer with the rank of Großadmiral (grand admiral), he was honoured by many former servicemen and foreign naval officers who came to pay their respects at his funeral on 6 January 1981. He was buried in Waldfriedhof Cemetery in Aumühle without military honours, and service members were not allowed to wear uniforms to the funeral. Also in attendance were over 100 holders of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross.
Attribution:
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Karl Dönitz (sometimes spelled Doenitz; German: [ˈdøːnɪts] ; 16 September 1891 – 24 December 1980) was a German admiral who briefly succeeded Adolf Hitler as head of state in May 1945, holding the position until the dissolution of the Flensburg Government following Germany's unconditional surrender to the Allies days later. As Supreme Commander of the Navy beginning in 1943, he played a major role in the naval history of World War II.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "He began his career in the Imperial German Navy before World War I. In 1918, he was commanding UB-68, and was taken prisoner of war by British forces. While in a POW camp, he formulated what he later called Rudeltaktik (\"pack tactic\", commonly called \"wolfpack\").",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "By the start of the Second World War, Dönitz was supreme commander of the Kriegsmarine's U-boat arm (Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote (BdU)). In January 1943, Dönitz achieved the rank of Großadmiral (grand admiral) and replaced Grand Admiral Erich Raeder as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy. Dönitz was the main enemy of Allied naval forces in the Battle of the Atlantic. From 1939 to 1943 the U-boats fought effectively but lost the initiative from May 1943. Dönitz ordered his submarines into battle until 1945 to relieve the pressure on other branches of the Wehrmacht (armed forces). 648 U-boats were lost—429 with no survivors. Furthermore, of these, 215 were lost on their first patrol. Around 30,000 of the 40,000 men who served in U-boats perished.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "On 30 April 1945, after the suicide of Adolf Hitler and in accordance with his last will and testament, Dönitz was named Hitler's successor as head of state in what became known as the Goebbels cabinet after his second-in-command, Joseph Goebbels, until Goebbels' suicide led to Dönitz's cabinet being reformed into the Flensburg Government instead. On 7 May 1945, he ordered Alfred Jodl, Chief of Operations Staff of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), to sign the German instruments of surrender in Reims, France, formally ending the War in Europe. Dönitz remained as head of state with the titles of President of Germany and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces until his cabinet was dissolved by the Allied powers on 23 May de facto and on 5 June de jure.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "By his own admission, Dönitz was a dedicated Nazi and supporter of Hitler. Following the war, he was indicted as a major war criminal at the Nuremberg trials on three counts: conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity; planning, initiating, and waging wars of aggression; and crimes against the laws of war. He was found not guilty of committing crimes against humanity, but guilty of committing crimes against peace and war crimes against the laws of war. He was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment; after his release, he lived in a village near Hamburg until his death in 1980.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Dönitz was born on 16 September 1891 in Grünau, near Berlin, to Anna Beyer and Emil Dönitz, an engineer. Karl had an older brother. In 1910, Dönitz enlisted in the Kaiserliche Marine (\"Imperial Navy\").",
"title": "Early career and personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "On 27 September 1913, Dönitz was commissioned as a Leutnant zur See (acting sub-lieutenant). When World War I began, he served on the light cruiser SMS Breslau in the Mediterranean Sea. In August 1914, the Breslau and the battlecruiser SMS Goeben were sold to the Ottoman Navy; the ships were renamed the Midilli and the Yavuz Sultan Selim, respectively. They began operating out of Constantinople, under Rear Admiral Wilhelm Souchon, engaging Russian forces in the Black Sea. On 22 March 1916, Dönitz was promoted to Oberleutnant zur See. He requested a transfer to the submarine forces, which became effective on 1 October 1916. He attended the submariner's school at Flensburg-Mürwik and passed out on 3 January 1917. He served as watch officer on U-39, and from February 1918 onward as commander of UC-25. On 2 July 1918, he became commander of UB-68, operating in the Mediterranean. On 4 October, after suffering technical difficulties, Dönitz was forced to surface and scuttled his boat. He was captured by the British and incarcerated in the Redmires camp near Sheffield. He remained a prisoner of war until 1919 and in 1920 he returned to Germany.",
"title": "Early career and personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "On 27 May 1916, Dönitz married a nurse named Ingeborg Weber (1893–1962), the daughter of German general Erich Weber (1860–1933). They had three children whom they raised as Protestant Christians: daughter Ursula (1917–1990) and sons Klaus (1920–1944) and Peter (1922–1943). Both of Dönitz's sons were killed during the Second World War. Peter was killed on 19 May 1943 when U-954 was sunk in the North Atlantic with all hands.",
"title": "Early career and personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Hitler had issued a policy stating that if a senior officer such as Dönitz lost a son in battle and had other sons in the military, the latter could withdraw from combat and return to civilian life. After Peter's death, Klaus was forbidden to have any combat role and was allowed to leave the military to begin studying to become a naval doctor. He returned to sea and was killed on 13 May 1944; he had persuaded his friends to let him go on the E-boat S-141 for a raid on Selsey on his 24th birthday. The boat was sunk by the French destroyer La Combattante.",
"title": "Early career and personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "He continued his naval career in the naval arm of the Weimar Republic's armed forces. On 10 January 1921, he became a Kapitänleutnant (lieutenant) in the new German navy (Vorläufige Reichsmarine). Dönitz commanded torpedo boats, becoming a Korvettenkapitän (lieutenant-commander) on 1 November 1928. On 1 September 1933, he became a Fregattenkapitän (commander) and, in 1934, was put in command of the cruiser Emden, the ship on which cadets and midshipmen took a year-long world cruise as training.",
"title": "Interwar period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In 1935, the Reichsmarine was renamed Kriegsmarine. Germany was prohibited by the Treaty of Versailles from possessing a submarine fleet. The Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935 allowed submarines and he was placed in command of the U-boat flotilla Weddigen, which comprised three boats; U-7; U-8 and; U-9. On 1 September 1935, he was promoted to Kapitän zur See (naval captain).",
"title": "Interwar period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Dönitz opposed Raeder's views that surface ships should be given priority in the Kriegsmarine during the war, but in 1935 Dönitz doubted U-boat suitability in a naval trade war on account of their slow speed. This phenomenal contrast with Dönitz's wartime policy is explained in the 1935 Anglo-German Naval Agreement. The accord was viewed by the navy with optimism, Dönitz included. He remarked, \"Britain, in the circumstances, could not possibly be included in the number of potential enemies.\" The statement, made after June 1935, was uttered at a time when the naval staff were sure France and the Soviet Union were likely to be Germany's only enemies. Dönitz's statement was partially correct. Britain was not foreseen as an immediate enemy, but the navy still held onto a cadre of imperial officers, which along with its Nazi-instigated intake, understood war would be certain in the distant future, perhaps not until the mid-1940s.",
"title": "Interwar period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Dönitz came to recognise the need for more of these vessels. Only 26 were in commission or under construction that summer. In the time before his command of submarines, he perfected the group tactics that first appealed to him in 1917. At this time Dönitz first expressed his procurement policies. His preference for the submarine fleet was in the production of large numbers of small craft. In contrast to other warships, the fighting power of the U-boat, in his opinion, was not dependent on its size as the torpedo, not the gun, was the machine's main weapon. Dönitz had a tendency to be critical of larger submarines and listed a number of disadvantages in their production, operation and tactical use. Dönitz recommended the Type VII submarine as the ideal submarine. The boat was reliable and had a range of 6,200 miles. Modifications lengthened this to 8,700 miles.",
"title": "Interwar period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Dönitz revived Hermann Bauer's idea of grouping several submarines together into a Rudeltaktik (\"pack tactic\", commonly called \"wolfpack\") to overwhelm a merchant convoy's escorts. Implementation of wolfpacks had been difficult in World War I owing to the limitations of available radios. In the interwar years, Germany had developed ultra high frequency transmitters, (ukw) while the Enigma cipher machine was believed to have made communications secure. A 1922 paper written by Kapitäinleutnant Wessner of the Wehrabteilung (Defence Ministry) pointed to the success of surface attacks at night and the need to coordinate operations with multiple boats to defeat the escorts. Dönitz knew of the paper and improved the ideas suggested by Wessner. This tactic had the added advantage that a submarine on the surface was undetectable by ASDIC (an early form of sonar). Dönitz claimed after the war he would not allow his service to be intimidated by British disclosures about ASDIC and the course of the war had proven him right. In reality, Dönitz harboured fears stretching back to 1937 that the new technology would render the U-boat impotent. Dönitz published his ideas on night attacks in January 1939 in a booklet called Die U-Bootwaffe which apparently went unnoticed by the British. The Royal Navy's overconfidence in Asdic encouraged the Admiralty to suppose it could deal with submarines whatever strategy they adopted — in this they were proven wrong; submarines were difficult to locate and destroy under operational conditions.",
"title": "Interwar period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In 1939 he expressed his belief that he could win the war with 300 vessels. The Nazi leadership's rearmament priorities were fundamentally geared to land and aerial warfare. From 1933 to 1936, the navy was granted only 13 per cent of total armament expenditure. The production of U-boats, despite the existing Z Plan, remained low. In 1935 shipyards produced 14 submarines, 21 in 1936, 1 in 1937. In 1938 nine were commissioned and in 1939 18 U-boats were built. Dönitz's vision may have been misguided. The British had planned for contingency construction programmes for the summer, 1939. At least 78 small escorts and a crash construction programme of \"Whale catchers\" had been invoked. The British, according to one historian, had taken all the sensible steps necessary to deal with the U-boat menace as it existed in 1939 and were well placed to deal with large numbers of submarines, prior to events in 1940.",
"title": "Interwar period"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Britain and France soon declared war on Germany, and World War II began. On Sunday 3 September, Dönitz chaired a conference at Wilhelmshaven. At 11:15 am the British Admiralty sent out a signal \"Total Germany\". B-Dienst intercepted the message and it was promptly reported to Dönitz. Dönitz paced around the room and his staff purportedly heard him repeatedly say, \"My God! So it's war with England again!\"",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Dönitz abandoned the conference to return within the hour a far more composed man. He announced to his officers, \"we know our enemy. We have today the weapon and a leadership that can face up to this enemy. The war will last a long time; but if each does his duty we will win.\" Dönitz had only 57 boats; of those, 27 were capable of reaching the Atlantic Ocean from their German bases. A small building program was already under way but the number of U-boats did not rise noticeably until the autumn of 1941.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Dönitz's first major action was the cover up of the sinking of the British passenger liner Athenia later the same day. Acutely sensitive to international opinion and relations with the United States, the death of more than a hundred civilians was damaging. Dönitz suppressed the truth that the ship was sunk by a German submarine. He accepted the commander's explanation that he genuinely believed the ship was armed. Dönitz ordered the engagement to be struck from the submarine's logbook. Dönitz did not admit the cover up until 1946.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Hitler's original orders to wage war only in accordance with the Prize Regulations were not issued in any altruistic spirit but in the belief hostilities with the Western Allies would be brief. On 23 September 1939, Hitler, on the recommendation of Admiral Raeder, approved that all merchant ships making use of their wireless on being stopped by U-boats should be sunk or captured. This German order marked a considerable step towards unrestricted warfare. Four days later enforcement of Prize Regulations in the North Sea was withdrawn; and on 2 October complete freedom was given to attack darkened ships encountered off the British and French coasts. Two days later the Prize Regulations were cancelled in waters extending as far as 15° West, and on 17 October the German Naval Staff gave U-boats permission to attack without warning all ships identified as hostile. The zone where darkened ships could be attacked with complete freedom was extended to 20° West on 19 October. Practically the only restrictions now placed on U-boats concerned attacks on passenger liners and, on 17 November, they too were allowed to be attacked without warning if clearly identifiable as hostile.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Although the phrase was not used, by November 1939 the BdU was practicing unrestricted submarine warfare. Neutral shipping was warned by the Germans against entering the zone which, by American neutrality legislation, was forbidden to American shipping, and against steaming without lights, zigzagging or taking any defensive precautions. The complete practice of unrestricted warfare was not enforced for fear of antagonising neutral powers, particularly the Americans. Admirals Raeder and Dönitz and the German Naval Staff had always wished and intended to introduce unrestricted warfare as rapidly as Hitler could be persuaded to accept the possible consequences.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Dönitz and Raeder accepted the death of the Z Plan upon the outbreak of war. The U-boat programme would be the only portion of it to survive 1939. Both men lobbied Hitler to increase the planned production of submarines to at least 29 per month. The immediate obstacle to the proposals was Hermann Göring, head of the Four Year Plan, commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe and future successor to Hitler. Göring would not acquiesce and in March 1940 Raeder was forced to drop the figure from 29 to 25, but even that plan proved illusory. In the first half of 1940, two boats were delivered, increased to six in the final half of the year. In 1941 the deliveries increased to 13 to June, and then 20 to December. It was not until late 1941 the number of vessels began to increase quickly. From September 1939 through to March 1940, 15 U-boats were lost—nine to convoy escorts. The impressive tonnage sunk had little impact on the Allied war effort at that point.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "On 1 October 1939, Dönitz became a Konteradmiral (rear admiral) and \"Commander of the Submarines\" (Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote, BdU). For the first part of the war, despite disagreements with Raeder where best to deploy his men, Dönitz was given considerable operational freedom for his junior rank.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "From September–December 1939 U-boats sank 221 ships for 755,237 gross tons, at the cost of nine U-boats. Only 47 merchant ships were sunk in the North Atlantic, a tonnage of 249,195. Dönitz had difficulty in organising Wolfpack operations in 1939. A number of his submarines were lost en route to the Atlantic, through either the North Sea or the heavily defended English Channel. Torpedo failures plagued commanders during convoy attacks. Along with successes against single ships, Dönitz authorised the abandonment of pack attacks in the autumn. The Norwegian Campaign amplified the defects. Dönitz wrote in May 1940, \"I doubt whether men have ever had to rely on such a useless weapon.\" He ordered the removal of magnetic pistols in favour of contact fuses and their faulty depth control systems. In no fewer than 40 attacks on Allied warships, not a single sinking was achieved. The statistics show that from the outbreak of war to approximately the spring, 1940, faulty German torpedoes saved 50–60 ships equating to 300,000 GRT.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Dönitz was encouraged in operations against warships by the sinking of the aircraft carrier Courageous. On 28 September 1939 he said, \"it is not true Britain possesses the means to eliminate the U-boat menace.\" The first specific operation—named \"Special Operation P\"—authorised by Dönitz was Günther Prien's attack on Scapa Flow, which sank the battleship Royal Oak. The attack became a propaganda success though Prien purportedly was unenthusiastic about being used that way. Stephen Roskill wrote, \"It is now known that this operation was planned with great care by Admiral Dönitz, who was correctly informed of the weak state of the defences of the eastern entrances. Full credit must also be given to Lieutenant Prien for the nerve and determination with which he put Dönitz's plan into execution.\"",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In May 1940, 101 ships were sunk—but only nine in the Atlantic—followed by 140 in June; 53 of them in the Atlantic for a total of 585,496 GRT that month. The first six months in 1940 cost Dönitz 15 U-boats. Until mid-1940 there remained a chronic problem with the reliability of the G7e torpedo. As the battles of Norway and Western Europe raged, the Luftwaffe sank more ships than the U-boats. In May 1940, German aircraft sank 48 ships (158 GRT), three times that of German submarines. The Allied evacuations from western Europe and Scandinavia in June 1940 attracted Allied warships in large numbers, leaving many of the Atlantic convoys travelling through the Western Approaches unprotected. From June 1940, the German submarines began to exact a heavy toll. In the same month, the Luftwaffe sank just 22 ships (195,193 GRT) in a reversal of the previous months.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Germany's defeat of Norway gave the U-boats new bases much nearer to their main area of operations off the Western Approaches. The U-boats operated in groups or 'wolf packs' which were coordinated by radio from land. With the fall of France, Germany acquired U-boat bases at Lorient, Brest, St Nazaire, and La Pallice/La Rochelle and Bordeaux. This extended the range of Type VIIs. Regardless, the war with Britain continued. The admiral remained sceptical of Operation Sea Lion, a planned invasion and expected a long war. The destruction of seaborne trade became German strategy against Britain after the defeat of the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain. Hitler was content with The Blitz and cutting off Britain's imports. Dönitz gained importance as the prospect of a quick victory faded. Dönitz concentrated groups of U-boats against the convoys and had them attack on the surface at night. In addition the Germans were helped by Italian submarines which in early 1941 actually surpassed the number of German U-boats. Having failed to persuade the Nazi leadership to prioritise U-boat construction, a task made more difficult by military victories in 1940 which convinced many people that Britain would give up the struggle, Dönitz welcomed the deployment of 26 Italian submarines to his force. Dönitz complimented Italian bravery and daring, but was critical of their training and submarine designs. Dönitz remarked they lacked the necessary toughness and discipline and consequently were \"of no great assistance to us in the Atlantic.\"",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The establishment of German bases on the French Atlantic coast allowed for the prospect of aerial support. Small numbers of German aircraft, such as the long-range Focke-Wulf Fw 200, sank a large number of ships in the Atlantic in the last quarter of 1940. In the long term, Göring proved an insurmountable problem in effecting cooperation between the navy and the Luftwaffe. In early 1941, while Göring was on leave, Dönitz approached Hitler and secured from him a single bomber/maritime patrol unit for the navy. Göring succeeded in overturning this decision and both Dönitz and Raeder were forced to settle for a specialist maritime air command under Luftwaffe control. Poorly supplied, Fliegerführer Atlantik achieved modest success in 1941, but thereafter failed to have an impact as British counter-measures evolved. Cooperation between the Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe remained dysfunctional to the war's end. Göring and his unassailable position at the Reichsluftfahrtministerium (Air Ministry) prevented all but limited collaboration.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The U-boat fleet's successes in 1940 and early 1941 were spearheaded by a small number of highly trained and experienced pre-war commanders. Otto Kretschmer, Joachim Schepke, and Günther Prien were the most famous, but others included Hans Jenisch, Victor Oehrn, Engelbert Endrass, Herbert Schultze and Hans-Rudolf Rösing. Although skilled and with impeccable judgement, the shipping lanes they descended upon were poorly defended. The U-boat force did not escape unscathed. Within the space of several days in March 1941, Prien and Schepke were dead and Kretschmer was a prisoner. All of them fell in battle with a convoy system. The number of boats in the Atlantic remained low. Six fewer existed in May 1940 than in September 1939. In January 1941 there were just six on station in the Atlantic—the lowest during the war, while still suffering from unreliable torpedoes. Dönitz insisted that operations continue while \"the smallest prospect of hits\" remained.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "For his part, Dönitz was involved in the daily operations of his boats and all the major operational level decisions. His assistant, Eberhard Godt, was left to manage daily operations as the war continued. Dönitz was debriefed personally by his captains which helped establish a rapport between leader and led. Dönitz neglected nothing that would make the bond firmer. Often there would be a distribution of medals or awards. As an ex-submariner, Dönitz did not like to contemplate the thought of a man who had done well heading out to sea, perhaps never to return, without being rewarded or receiving recognition. Dönitz acknowledged where decorations were concerned there was no red tape and that awards were \"psychologically important.\"",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Intelligence played an important role in the Battle of the Atlantic. In general, BdU intelligence was poor. Counter-intelligence was not much better. At the height of the battle in mid-1943 some 2,000 signals were sent from the 110 U-boats at sea. Radio traffic compromised his ciphers by giving the Allies more messages to work with. Furthermore, replies from the boats enabled the Allies to use High-frequency direction finding (HF/DF, called \"Huff-Duff\") to locate a U-boat using its radio, track it and attack it. The over-centralised command structure of BdU and its insistence on micro-managing every aspect of U-boat operations with endless signals provided the Allied navies with enormous intelligence. The enormous \"paper chase\" [cross-referencing of materials] operations pursued by Allied intelligence agencies was not thought possible by BdU. The Germans did not suspect the Allies had identified the codes broken by B-Dienst. Conversely, when Dönitz suspected the enemy had penetrated his own communications BdU's response was to suspect internal sabotage and reduce the number of the staff officers to the most reliable, exacerbating the problem of over-centralisation. In contrast to the Allies, the Wehrmacht was suspicious of civilian scientific advisors and generally distrusted outsiders. The Germans were never as open to new ideas or thinking of war in intelligence terms. According to one analyst BdU \"lacked imagination and intellectual daring\" in the naval war. These Allied advantages failed to avert heavy losses in the June 1940 – May 1941 period, known to U-boat crews as the \"First Happy Time.\" In June 1941, 68 ships were sunk in the North Atlantic (318,740 GRT) at a cost of four U-boats, but the German submarines would not eclipse that number for the remainder of the year. Just 10 transports were sunk in November and December 1941.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "On 7 May 1941, the Royal Navy captured the German Arctic meteorological vessel München and took its Enigma machine intact, this allowed the Royal Navy to decode U-boat radio communications in June 1941. Two days later the capture of U-110 was an intelligence coup for the British. The settings for high-level \"officer-only\" signals, \"short-signals\" (Kurzsignale) and codes standardising messages to defeat HF/DF fixes by sheer speed were found. Only the Hydra settings for May were missing. The papers were the only stores destroyed by the crew. The capture on 28 June of another weather ship, Lauenburg, enabled British decryption operations to read radio traffic in July 1941. Beginning in August 1941, Bletchley Park operatives could decrypt signals between Dönitz and his U-boats at sea without any restriction. The capture of the U-110 allowed the Admiralty to identify individual boats, their commanders, operational readiness, damage reports, location, type, speed, endurance from working up in the Baltic to Atlantic patrols. On 1 February 1942, the Germans had introduced the M4 cipher machine, which secured communications until it was cracked in December 1942. Even so, the U-boats achieved their best success against the convoys in March 1943, due to an increase in U-boat numbers, and the protection of the shipping lanes was in jeopardy. Due to the cracked M4 and the use of radar, the Allies began to send air and surface reinforcements to convoys under threat. The shipping lanes were secured, which came as a great surprise to Dönitz. The lack of intelligence and increased numbers of U-boats contributed enormously to Allied losses that year.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Signals security aroused Dönitz's suspicions during the war. On 12 January 1942 German supply submarine U-459 arrived 800 nautical miles west of Freetown, well clear of convoy lanes. It was scheduled to rendezvous with an Italian submarine, until intercepted by a warship. The German captain's report coincided with reports of a decrease in sightings and a period of tension between Dönitz and Raeder. The number of U-boats in the Atlantic, by logic, should have increased, not lowered the number of sightings and the reasons for this made Dönitz uneasy. Despite several investigations, the conclusion of the BdU staff was that Enigma was impenetrable. His signals officer responded to the U-459 incident with answers ranging from coincidence, direction finding to Italian treachery. General Erich Fellgiebel, Chief Signal Officer of Army High Command and of Supreme Command of Armed Forces (Chef des Heeresnachrichtenwesens), apparently concurred with Dönitz. He concluded that there was \"convincing evidence\" that, after an \"exhaustive investigation\" that the Allied codebreakers had been reading high level communications. Other departments in the navy downplayed or dismissed these concerns. They vaguely implied \"some components\" of Enigma had been compromised, but there was \"no real basis for acute anxiety as regards any compromise of operational security.\"",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Following Hitler's declaration of war on the United States on 11 December 1941, Dönitz implemented Operation Drumbeat (Unternehmen Paukenschlag). The entry of the United States benefited German submarines in the short term. Dönitz intended to strike close to shore in American and Canadian waters and prevent the convoys—the most effective anti–U-boat system—from ever forming. Dönitz was determined to take advantage of Canadian and American unpreparedness before the situation changed.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The problem inhibiting Dönitz's plan was a lack of boats. On paper he had 259, but in January 1942, 99 were still undergoing sea trials and 59 were assigned to training flotillas, leaving only 101 on war operations. 35 of these were under repair in port, leaving 66 operational, of which 18 were low on fuel and returning to base, 23 were en route to areas where fuel and torpedoes needed to be conserved, and one was heading to the Mediterranean. Therefore, on 1 January Dönitz had a fighting strength of 16–25 in the Atlantic (six near to Iceland on \"Norwegian operations\"), three in the Arctic Ocean, three in the Mediterranean and three operating west of Gibraltar. Dönitz was severely limited to what he could accomplish in American waters in an initial offensive.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "From 13 January 1942, Dönitz planned to begin a surprise offensive from the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to Cape Hatteras. Unknown to him, Ultra had read his Enigma signals and knew the position, size, and intentions of his boats, down to the date the operation was scheduled to begin. The attacks, when they came, were not a surprise. Of the 12 U-boats that began the offensive from the Grand Banks southward, just two survived the war. The operation began the Battle of the St. Lawrence, a series of battles which lasted into 1944. It remained possible for a U-boat to operate in the Gulf into 1944, but countermeasures were strong. In 1942, the global ratio of ships-to-U-boats sunk in Canadian waters was 112:1. The global average was 10.3:1. The solitary kill was achieved by the RCAF. Canadian operations, as with American efforts, were a failure during this year.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Along with conventional U-boat operations Dönitz authorised clandestine activities in Canadian waters, including spying, mine-laying, and recovery of German prisoners of war (as Dönitz wished to extract information from rescued submariners concerning Allied tactics). All of these things tied down Canadian military power and imposed industrial, fiscal, and psychological costs. The impunity with which U-boats carried out these operations in Canadian waters into 1944 provided a propaganda effect. One of these operations was the well-known Operation Kiebitz to rescue Otto Kretschmer.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Even with operational problems great success was achieved in American waters. From January to July 1942, Dönitz's submarines were able to attack unescorted ships off the United States' east coast and in the Caribbean Sea; U-boats sank more ships and tonnage than at any other time in the war. After a convoy system was introduced to protect the shipping, Dönitz shifted his U-boats back to the North Atlantic. The period, known in the U-boat Arm as the \"Second Happy Time\", represented one of the greatest naval disasters of all time, and largest defeat suffered by American sea power. The success was achieved with only five U-boats initially which sank 397 ships in waters protected by the United States Navy with an additional 23 sunk at the Panama Sea Frontier. Dönitz put the successes down to the American failure to initialize a blackout along the East Coast of the United States and ship captains' insistence on following peace-time safety procedures. The failure to implement a blackout stemmed from the American government's concern it would affect tourism trade. Dönitz wrote in his memoirs that the lighthouses and buoys \"shone forth, though perhaps a little less brightly than usually\".",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "By the time improved American air and naval defences had driven German submarines from American shores, 5,000 Allied sailors had been killed for negligible losses in U-boats. Dönitz ordered simultaneous operations in the Caribbean Sea. The ensuing Battle of the Caribbean resulted in immediate dividends for U-boats. In a short time, at least 100 transports had been destroyed or sunk. The sinkings damaged inter-island trade substantially. Operation Neuland was among the most damaging naval campaigns in the region. Oil refinery production in region declined while the tanker fleet suffered losses of up to ten per cent within twenty-four hours. However, ultimately Dönitz could not hope to sink more ships than American industry could build, so he targeted the tanker fleet in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico in the hope that depleting oil transports would paralyze shipyard output. 33 transports were sunk in July before Dönitz lost his first crew. The USN introduced effective convoy systems thereafter, ending the \"carnage.\"",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Dönitz maintained his demands for the concentration of all his crews in the Atlantic. As the military situation in North Africa and on the Eastern Front began to deteriorate Hitler diverted a number of submarines to the Battle of the Mediterranean upon the suggestions of Admiral Eberhard Weichold. Raeder and Dönitz resisted the deployment to the Mediterranean to no avail. Hitler felt compelled to act against Allied sea forces which were having an enormous impact on Axis supply lines to North Africa. The decision defied logic, for a victory in the Atlantic would end the war in the Mediterranean. The U-boat war in the Mediterranean was a costly failure, despite successes against warships. Approximately 60 crews were lost and only one crew managed to withdraw through the Strait of Gibraltar. Albrecht Brandi was one of Dönitz's highest performers but his record is a matter of controversy; post-war records prove systematic over-claiming of sinkings. He survived his boat's sinking and was smuggled to Germany through Spain. Dönitz had met his end as a submarine commander in the Mediterranean two decades earlier.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "In 1942 Dönitz summed up his philosophy in one simple paragraph; \"The enemy's shipping constitutes one single, great entity. It is therefore immaterial where a ship is sunk. Once it has been destroyed it has to be replaced by a new ship; and that's that.\" The remark was the green light to unrestricted submarine warfare and began the tonnage war proper. BdU intelligence concluded the Americans could produce 15,300,000 tons of shipping in 1942 and 1943—two million tons under actual production figures. Dönitz always calculated the worst-case scenario using the highest figures of enemy production potential. Some 700,000 tons per month needed to be sunk to win the war. The \"second happy time\" reached a peak in June 1942, with 325,000 tons sunk, up from 311,000 in May, 255,000 in April and the highest since the 327,000 tons sunk in March 1942. With support from the Royal Navy and Royal Canadian Navy, the new convoy systems compelled Dönitz to withdraw his captains to the mid-Atlantic once again. Nevertheless, there was still cause for optimism. B-Dienst had cracked the convoy ciphers and by July 1942 he could call upon 311 boats, 140 operational, to conduct a renewed assault. By October 1942 he had 196 operational from 365. Dönitz's force finally reached the desired number both he and Raeder had hoped for in 1939. Unaware of it, Dönitz and his men were aided by the Ultra blackout. The addition of a fourth rotor to the Enigma left radio detection the only way to gather intelligence on dispositions and intentions of the German naval forces. German code breakers had their own success in the capture of the code book to Cipher Code Number 3 from a merchant ship. It was a treble success for the BdU.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Dönitz was content that he now had the naval power to extend U-boat operations to other areas aside the North Atlantic. The Caribbean, Brazilian waters with the coast of West Africa designated operational theatres. Waters in the southern hemisphere to South Africa could also be attacked with the new Type IX submarine. The strategy was sound and his tactical ideas were effective. The number of boats available allowed him to form Wolfpacks to comb convoy routes from east to west attacking one when found and pursuing it across the ocean. The pack then refuelled from a U-boat tanker and worked from west to east. Raeder and the operations staff disputed the value in attacking convoys heading westward with empty cargo holds. The tactics were successful but placed great strain on crews who spent up to eight days in constant action.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "November 1942 was a new high in the Atlantic. 134 ships were sunk for 807,754 tons. 119 were destroyed by submarines, 83 (508,707 tons) in the Atlantic. The same month Dönitz suffered strategic defeat. His submarines failed to prevent Operation Torch, even with 196 of them operating in the Atlantic. Dönitz considered it a major self-inflicted defeat. Allied morale radically improved after the victories of Torch, the Second Battle of El Alamein and the Battle of Stalingrad; all occurred within days of one another. The U-boat war was the only military success the Germans enjoyed at the end of the year.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "On 30 January 1943, Dönitz replaced Erich Raeder as Commander-in-chief of the navy (Oberbefehlshaber der Kriegsmarine) and Großadmiral (grand admiral) of the Naval High Command (Oberkommando der Marine). In a communique to the navy he announced his intentions to retain practical control of the U-boats and his desire to fight to the end for Hitler. Dönitz's inability to delegate control of the U-boat service has been construed as a weakness in the U-boat arm, contributing to the perception that Dönitz was an \"impatient warrior\", preoccupied with fighting battles and tactics rather than a strategist or organiser.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Dönitz's promotion earned Hitler his undying loyalty. For Dönitz, Hitler had given him a \"true home-coming at last, to a country in which unemployment appeared to have been abolished, the class war no longer tore the nation apart, and the shame of defeat in 1918 was being expunged.\" When war came, Dönitz became more firmly wedded to his Nazi faith. Hitler recognised his patriotism, professionalism but above all, his loyalty. Dönitz remained so, long after the war was lost. In so doing, he wilfully ignored the genocidal nature of the regime and claimed ignorance of the Holocaust.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "In the last quarter of 1942, 69 submarines had been commissioned taking the total number to 393, with 212 operational. Dönitz was not satisfied and immediately began a naval construction programme which in contrast to Raeder's, laid all its emphasis on torpedo boats and submarines. Dönitz's proposed expansion ran into difficulties experienced by all of his predecessors; the lack of steel. The navy had no representation on Albert Speer's armaments ministry, for naval production was the only sphere not under his control. Dönitz understood this worked against the navy because it lacked the elasticity to cope with breakdowns of production at any point, whereas the other services could make good production by compensating one sector at the expense of another. Without any representatives the battle of priorities was left to Speer and Göring. Dönitz had the sense to place U-boat production under Speer on the provision 40 per month were completed. Dönitz persuaded Hitler not to scrap the surface fleet capital ships, though they played no role in the Atlantic during his time in command. Dönitz reasoned the destruction of the surface fleet would provide the British with a victory and heap pressure on the U-boats, for these warships were tying down British air and naval forces that would otherwise be sent into the Atlantic.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "New construction procedures, dispensing with prototypes and the abandonment of modifications reduced construction times from 460,000-man hours to 260–300,000 to meet Speer's quota. In the spring 1944, the Type XXI submarine was scheduled to reach frontline units. In 1943 the Combined Bomber Offensive undid German plans. Dönitz and Speer were appalled by the destruction of Hamburg, a major construction site. The battles of 1943 and 1944 were fought with the existing Type VII and Type IX submarines. The Type VII remained the backbone of the fleet in 1943.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "At the end of 1942, Dönitz was faced with the appearance of escort carriers, and long-range aircraft working with convoy escorts. To protect his boats against the latter, he ordered his boats to restrict their operations to the Mid-Atlantic Gap, a stretch of ocean out of the range of land‐based aircraft. Allied air forces had few aircraft equipped with ASV radar for U-boat detection into April and May 1943, and such units would not exist in Newfoundland until June. Convoys relied on RAF Coastal Command aircraft operating from Northern Ireland and Iceland. The aircraft imposed restraints on U-boat captains, who feared them for their ability to sink a submarine or alert surface warships to their position. In 1942 Coastal Command began forming units combined with ASV and Leigh Light to attack U-boats at night in transit to the Atlantic via the Bay of Biscay, which continued into 1943. The Command was moderately successful after mid-1942.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "1943 began with continued tactical success for Dönitz in battle. In January Convoy TM 1 was nearly destroyed. The loss of 100,000 tons of fuel in one convoy represented the most devastating loss percentage of the war—only two of nine tankers reached port. The Eighth Army were forced to ration their fuel for a time, earning Dönitz the gratitude of the Afrika Korps. The Casablanca Conference, held that month, identified the Atlantic as the priority. It was agreed that until the defeat of Dönitz and his men, there could be no amphibious landings in continental Europe. Unknown to Dönitz, Bletchley Park had broken the Shark cypher and restored the flow of Enigma information; the Admiralty was able to route convoys around wolfpacks. During January and February 1943 information was decrypted within 24 hours proving operationally useful, although this slipped at the end of the second month contributing to German interceptions. Even so, in appalling weather, the Germans sank only 44 ships during the month, even with 100 U-boats at sea, the majority stationed in the mid-Atlantic gap.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "In February 1943 the strength of Allied defences were ominous for Dönitz. The battle of convoy HX 224 was ended upon the intervention of air power from Iceland. Dönitz sent 20 boats to attack SC 118 and both sides suffered heavy losses—11 merchant ships for three U-boats plus four damaged. It was \"what both sides considered one of the hardest fought battles of the Atlantic war\". Despite sending 20 crews into action, Dönitz was concerned that most captains did not press home attacks. The majority of the ships sunk were by one crew, commanded by Siegfried von Forstner—he sank seven.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "In March, Convoy SC 121 was attacked by 31 U-boats in two patrol lines. It was the most successful battle of the war for Dönitz. The battle of Convoys HX 229/SC 122 was the largest convoy battle, with 40 U-boats involved. Each operation was successful but all were fought in the mid-Atlantic. Allied losses reached a peak in March 1943. The Admiralty later issued a report on the matter; \"The Germans never came so near [to] disrupting communications between the new world and the old as in the first twenty days of March 1943.\" Dönitz later conceded the March battles were to be the U-boats' last victories. New Allied techniques, tactics and technology began to turn the tide. By April 1943 U-boat morale was reaching a crisis point. Ninety-eight new boats were sent into the Atlantic that month and although the training was thorough the crews were inexperienced and it showed. Fifteen U-boats were destroyed in March 1943 and another 15 in April. Werner Hartenstein and Johann Mohr were notable casualties over the course of these eight weeks; the former's decision to rescue survivors of a sunken ship led to Dönitz's Laconia Order, which later formed part of the criminal case against Dönitz.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Ominous for BdU was the sudden growth of Allied air power. The Allied command accepted that air cover over the mid-Atlantic was inadequate and had drawn attention to the fact that not one VLR (Very Long Range) aircraft was to be found at any Allied air base west of Iceland. The Americans released 255 Liberators for the North Atlantic. At the end of March 1943 20 VLR aircraft were operational rising to 41 by mid-April, all of them flown by British crews. Twenty-eight anti-submarine and 11 anti-shipping squadrons were available to RAF Coastal Command, 619 aircraft in all—a striking change since September 1939. The influx of radar equipped aircraft into mid-Atlantic was matched by air patrols over the Bay of Biscay. Dönitz detected a drop in morale among his captains, as did the British. Dönitz encouraged his commanders to show a \"hunter's instinct\" and \"warrior spirit\" in the face of the air–surface support group threat.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Along with air power, the BdU was forced to contend with a large increase in Allied convoy escorts which fuelled from tankers in the convoys allowing escort across the ocean. The escort carrier support groups, protected by destroyers, which, in the words of the official naval historian of the Second World War, proved decisive; \"it was the advent of the Support Groups, the Escort Carriers and the Very Long Range Aircraft which turned the tables on the U-boats-and did so with astonishing rapidity\".",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "A hundred and eight ships were sunk in the first 20 days of March, and just 15 in the last 10. The official naval historian wrote, \"The collapse of the enemy's offensive, when it came, was so sudden that it took him completely by surprise. We now know that, in fact, a downward trend in the U-boats' recent accomplishments could have forewarned him, but was concealed from him by the exaggerated claims made by their commanders.\" In April Dönitz lost five crews to the Coastal Command ASV Biscay offensive. Encouraged by the isolated successes of anti-aircraft artillery installed on submarines, he ordered crews to stay on the surface and fight it out with the aircraft. The decision caused casualties—four boats were lost in the first week of May alone, and three more by the end.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "For the month of April Allied losses fell to 56 ships of 327,943 tons. In May 1943 the battle reached a climax with the battles of Convoy ONS 5, Convoy SC 129, Convoy SC 130. Throughout the battles only two ships were sunk in convoy in the Atlantic while an air anti-submarine escort was present. Dönitz depended on the surface manoeuvrability of his U-boats to locate targets, assemble wolfpacks and the complicated business of positioning his forces ahead of a convoy for an attack. Allied air power determined where and when U-boats could move freely on the surface. It was the combination of convoy escorts and air power that made the Atlantic unsuitable for pack operations. The US Navy introduced the K-class blimp. They forced a commander to dive to prevent the aircraft marking his position or attacking. From 10 to 24 May 1943, ten convoys passed through the mid-Atlantic. Six of the 370 ships were sunk; three were stragglers. Thirteen U-boats were sunk; four by warships, seven by aircraft, and two shared.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "By 24 May, when Dönitz conceded defeat and withdrew the surviving crews from the field of battle, they had already lost 33 U-boats. At the end of May it had risen to 41. Dönitz tried to limit the damage to morale by declaring that the withdrawal was only temporary \"to avoid unnecessary losses in a period when our weapons are shown to be at a disadvantage\" and that \"the battle in the north Atlantic—the decisive area—will be resumed\". Dönitz did make a further attempt to regain the initiative, but the battle never reached the same pitch of intensity or hung in the balance, as during the spring of 1943. The Allied success won the Battle of the Atlantic. On 24 May Dönitz ordered the suspension of Atlantic operations, bringing an end to Black May.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Defeat in the mid-Atlantic left Dönitz in a dilemma. The U-boats had proven unable to elude convoy escorts and attack convoys with success. He was concerned about crew morale suffering from idleness and a loss of experience with the latest Allied developments in anti-submarine warfare. Aside from problems of seaworthiness among machines and crew, there were not enough Submarine pens to store idle boats and they were a target for aircraft in port. Dönitz would not withdraw his submarines from combat operations, for he felt the ships, men and aircraft engaged in suppressing the U-boats could then be turned on Germany directly; the U-boat war was to continue.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "From mid-June 1943 the technological and industrial superiority of the Allied navies allowed the Americans, Canadians, and British to form hunter-killer groups consisting of fast anti-submarine escorts and aircraft carriers. The purpose of naval operations changed from avoiding U-boats and safeguarding convoys to seeking them out and destroying them wherever they operated. USN hunter-killer groups operated throughout the Atlantic. Argentia had been an important base for the naval taskforces until superseded by the Royal Canadian Navy in early 1943. U-boat operations were \"crushed\" by these task forces: 14 were sunk and only two of seven crews operating in Brazilian waters returned to Germany.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Dönitz reacted by deploying his U-boats near the Azores where land-based aircraft still had difficulty reaching them. In this region he hoped to threaten the Gibraltar–Britain convoy route. Dönitz intended to concentrate his power in a rough arc from West Africa to South America and the Caribbean. He hoped to maintain a presence in the western and central Atlantic, reduce losses and await new weapons and anti-detection devices. In this, he failed to \"stem the tide of U-boat losses.\" A large portion of the 39 U-boats deployed on these operations were intercepted. From May 1943, one historian wrote \"U-boats rash enough to close with an Atlantic convoy...were simply inviting destruction.\"",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Dönitz's crews faced danger from the outset. The transit routes through the Bay of Biscay were heavily patrolled by aircraft. From May to December 1943, 25 U-boats were sunk by Coastal Command, more were sunk by the USAAF and Royal Navy—five and four respectively; with one shared by the navy and Coastal Command. To counter radar aircraft, Dönitz ordered his submarines to group together and merge their powerful anti-aircraft armament together while surfaced and recharging their batteries, after initially ordering the groups to remain surfaced throughout the journey and fight off aerial attackers with gunfire. The decision was to cost BdU heavy casualties. A group of U-boats were more likely to attract a radar contact, and Allied pilots soon learned to swarm their targets. Dönitz ordered his captains to traverse the Bay under the lee of the neutral Spanish coast, with a sharply rising coast which shielded U-boats from radar. After 4 August 1943, the number of destroyed U-boats fell from one every four days, to one every 27 until June 1944.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "US hunter–killer groups extended their patrols to the central Atlantic in the summer. They sank 15 U-boats from June through to August 1943. A number of supply submarines were destroyed crippling the Germans' ability to conduct long range operations. At the end of the summer, practically all supply U-boats had been destroyed. In September 1943, Dönitz ordered his submarines back to the North Atlantic. U-boats were equipped with the G7es torpedo, an acoustic torpedo, which the grand admiral hoped would wrest the technological initiative back. The torpedo was the centrepiece to Dönitz's plan. Great faith was also placed in the installation of Wanze radar to detect aircraft. It was intended as a successor to the Metox radar detector. A number of his boats were later retrofitted with the submarine snorkel, permitting the submarine to stay submerged. Dönitz placed much faith in the Type XXI submarine. He accepted that the older submarines were obsolete now that Allied defences in the air were complete. He required a \"true submarine\", equipped with a snorkel to allow his crews to stay submerged, at least to snorkel-depth, and evade radar-equipped aircraft. Dönitz was pleased with the promised top speed of 18 knots.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "That month, 21 boats fought a battle with two formations; Convoys ONS 18/ON 202. The battle was a failure. In October an attack on Convoy SC 143 failed, even with limited air support from the Luftwaffe. The battle with Convoys ONS 20/ON 206 in the same month was a comprehensive defeat. A fourth major battle, Convoy SL 138/MKS 28, developed in the last days of October and ended in another failure for Dönitz. The November battle around Convoy SL 139/MKS 30 ended in the repulse of 29 U-boats with the loss of only a single ship. Intelligence proved its worth. During the battles of convoys ONS 18/ON 202, Dönitz's admonitions to his commanders allowed the Allied intelligence services to uncover German tactical intentions. Dönitz had tried and failed to push his forces through lethal convoy defences. The hunter-killer groups were called in to hunt the remaining members of the wolfpacks, with predictable results. In mid-December 1943, Dönitz finally conceded not only the Atlantic, but the Gibraltar routes as well.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "The hunter-killer and convoy escorts brought the wolfpack era to an end at the close of 1943. Dönitz resorted to sending out single submarines to the far reaches of the oceans in a bid to escape Allied naval power. In November 1943 he sent the last U-boat into the Gulf of Mexico just after the blackout restrictions were lifted. U-193 achieved one final success. The end of 1943 ended the attempt of the U-boat arm to achieve a strategic victory in the Atlantic. That left only the Arctic convoys to the Soviet Union. On Christmas Eve, this became the sole preserve of the U-boats after the dispatch of Scharnhorst at the Battle of the North Cape.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Dönitz's plan for 1944 was simply to survive and await the XXI and Type XXIII submarines. New radars were on the horizon and a direction finding antenna for Naxos was scheduled for use. Dönitz established a naval operations scientific staff to focus on more powerful centimetric radars. Production of submarines was streamlined. Parts for eight major sections were fabricated across 60 plants in Europe and assembled at Hamburg, Danzig and Bremen to ease the pressure of bombing and congestion at shipyards. The first of the new generation boats were expected by April 1944. Dönitz hoped for 33 per month by September. In early 1944, Dönitz opted to concentrate west of Ireland, at 15 and 17° west, in the hope convoys would come to them. Single boats were still sent to the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean. With 66 vessels at sea at any one time, and with 200 boats operational, the BdU was still a viable threat and he believed the force could achieve modest success. The U-boats were painfully slow, strategically, operationally and tactically. Crossing the Atlantic took up to a month compared to a week in 1942. Positioning west of Ireland could take several weeks submerged. In the first quarter of 1944, U-boats sank only three of the 3,360 ships that passed south of Ireland. In return 29 crews were lost.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "A major concern to Dönitz was Operation Overlord, the long predicted landing in France, and what role the U-boat arm and surface forces could play in the defence. He was sensitive to a landing on the Bay of Biscay but retained boats there only for operational readiness. Dönitz ended reconnaissance operations in the region. In the BdU war diary he wrote of ending operations since \"otherwise the strong enemy air activity will lead to high losses which would only be acceptable if an immediate landing on the Biscay coast were expected. As this is no longer considered an acute danger the boats will remain at readiness in the concrete shelters.\"",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "When the D-day landings took place on 6 June 1944, the U-boats were ordered into action with the awareness that the western flank of the invasion would be well protected at sea. Operational experience with the snorkel was too scant to devise instructions for its use. The narrow, shallow, waters of the English Channel provided few opportunities for charging the batteries. Dönitz feared the task was impossible. The Holzbein group based at Brest, sent 15 submarines into action against the Cherbourg peninsula landings part of a 36-strong flotilla. Only eight had snorkels. The seven non-snorkel boats were ordered to attack on the surface. The BdU war diary entry on 6 June 1944 states that \"for those boats without schnorchel this means the last operation.\" Of the 15, only five got near to the invasion fleet. Five of the snorkel boats survived. In exchange for 10 U-boats with the survivors damaged, two frigates, four freighters, and one tank landing ship were sunk. 22 U-boats were sunk from 6 to 30 June 1944. On 5 July 1944, the Allied Operation Dredger permitted hunter-killer groups to roam the Western Approaches and Biscay making it a \"no-go area\" for U-boats. U-boat operations against Normandy landings were a fiasco. Dönitz and the high command had been ignorant of the true scale of the naval D-day effort. Dönitz claimed his men sank five escorts, 12 merchant ships and four landing craft for 20 submarines and 1,000 men, of whom 238 were rescued. Dönitz's claims underplayed German losses, which were, in fact, 41 submarines from 82 in France, a 50 per cent loss rate.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "The collapse of the German front in Normandy left only the bases in German-occupied Norway nearest to the Atlantic. The newer boats were not forthcoming either. Ninety Type XXI and 31 Type XIII boats were built by the end of 1944. Sixty of the former and 23 of the latter were in service but none were operational. Dönitz was left with the old VIIs to carry the war into 1945. A large number had snorkels, which enabled them to surface only upon reaching port. Submerged, this meant no radio or Enigma communications and far fewer sightings for the Allied intelligence network to exploit. Dönitz ordered his submarines to British coastal waters with some success in November and December 1944, achieving 85,639 tons. Admiral Andrew Cunningham remarked of the strategy, \"We are having a difficult time with the U-boats....the air are about 90 percent out of business and Asdic is failing us.\" The inshore waters impeded the use of Asdic, which became confused with wrecks, rocks, and tidal swirls. The new types could conceivably have capitalised on these developments but the war was nearly over. On 1 January 1945, Dönitz had 425 submarines; 144 operational. On 1 April 1945, it was 166 from 429. He threw into battle every available weapon as the German Reich collapsed. Dönitz supported the use of Human torpedoes; the Neger, Marder, Seehund and Biber were all used in suicide missions on his orders, perhaps inspired by the Japanese Kamikaze.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "On 30 April 1945 Adolf Hitler committed suicide. Dönitz succeeded him as head of state. Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg succeeded Dönitz as commander-in-chief of the Kriegsmarine. On 4 May 1945 the German surrender at Lüneburg Heath took place. Dönitz issued an order to all U-boats to cease combat operations and return to port or surrender to Allied naval vessels. The order was obeyed with a handful of notable exceptions—the Actions of 5–6 May 1945, and Actions of 7–8 May 1945 occurred after the surrender. The surrendered U-boats numbered into the hundreds and were destroyed in the postwar Operation Deadlight. The U-boat war finally came to an end on 9 May 1945, the date of the German Instrument of Surrender.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Dönitz admired Hitler and was vocal about the qualities he perceived in Hitler's leadership. In August 1943, he praised his foresightedness and confidence; \"anyone who thinks he can do better than the Führer is stupid.\" Dönitz's relationship with Hitler strengthened through to the end of the war, particularly after the 20 July plot, for the naval staff officers were not involved; when news of it came there was indignation in the OKM. Even after the war, Dönitz said he could never have joined the conspirators. Dönitz tried to imbue Nazi ideas among his officers, though the indoctrination of the naval officer corps was not the brainchild of Dönitz, but rather a continuation of the Nazification of the navy begun under his predecessor Raeder. Naval officers were required to attend a five-day education course in Nazi ideology. Dönitz's loyalty to him and the cause was rewarded by Hitler, who, owing to Dönitz's leadership, never felt abandoned by the navy. In gratitude, Hitler appointed the navy's commander as his successor before he committed suicide.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Dönitz's influence on military matters was also evident. Hitler acted on Dönitz's advice in September 1944 to block the Gulf of Finland after Finland abandoned the Axis powers. Operation Tanne Ost was a poorly executed disaster. Dönitz shared Hitler's senseless strategic judgement—with the Courland Pocket on the verge of collapse, and the air and army forces requesting a withdrawal, the two men were preoccupied in planning an attack on an isolated island in the far north. Hitler's willingness to listen to the naval commander was based on his high opinion of the navy's usefulness at this time. It reinforced isolated coastal garrisons along the Baltic and evacuated thousands of German soldiers and civilians in order that they might continue to participate in the war effort into the spring of 1945.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Through 1944 and 1945, the Dönitz-initiated Operation Hannibal had the distinction of being the largest naval evacuation in history. The Baltic Fleet was presented with a mass of targets, the subsequent Soviet submarine Baltic Sea campaign in 1944 and Soviet naval Baltic Sea campaign in 1945 inflicted grievous losses during Hannibal. The most notable was the sinking of the MV Wilhelm Gustloff by a Soviet submarine. The liner had nearly 10,000 people on board. The evacuations continued after the surrender. From 3 to 9 May 1945, 81,000 of the 150,000 persons waiting on the Hel Peninsula were evacuated without loss. Albrecht Brandi, commander of the eastern Baltic, initiated a counter operation, the Gulf of Finland campaign, but failed to have an impact.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "In the final days of the war, after Hitler had taken refuge in the Führerbunker beneath the Reich Chancellery garden in Berlin, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring was considered the obvious successor to Hitler, followed by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. Göring, however, infuriated Hitler by radioing him in Berlin asking for permission to assume leadership of the Reich. Himmler also tried to seize power by entering into negotiations with Count Bernadotte. On 28 April 1945, the BBC reported Himmler had offered surrender to the western Allies and that the offer had been declined.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "From mid-April 1945, Dönitz and elements of what remained of the Reich government moved into the buildings of the Stadtheide Barracks in Plön. In his last will and testament, dated 29 April 1945, Hitler named Dönitz his successor as Staatsoberhaupt (Head of State), with the titles of Reichspräsident (President) and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. The same document named Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels as Head of Government with the title of Reichskanzler (Chancellor). Hitler would not name any successors to hold his titles of Führer or leader of the Nazi Party. Furthermore, Hitler declared both Göring and Himmler traitors and expelled them from the party. He committed suicide on 30 April.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "On 1 May, the day after Hitler's own suicide, Goebbels committed suicide. Dönitz thus became the sole representative of the collapsing German Reich. On 2 May, the new government of the Reich fled to Flensburg-Mürwik; Dönitz remained there until his arrest on 23 May 1945. That night, 2 May, Dönitz made a nationwide radio address in which he announced Hitler's death and said the war would continue in the East \"to save Germany from destruction by the advancing Bolshevik enemy.\"",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Dönitz knew that Germany's position was untenable and the Wehrmacht was no longer capable of offering meaningful resistance. During his brief period in office, he devoted most of his effort to ensuring the loyalty of the German armed forces and trying to ensure German personnel would surrender to the British or Americans and not the Soviets. He feared vengeful Soviet reprisals, and hoped to strike a deal with the Western Allies. In the end, Dönitz's tactics were moderately successful, enabling about 1.8 million German soldiers to escape Soviet capture. As many as 2.2 million may have been evacuated.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "On 4 May, Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg, representing Dönitz, surrendered all German forces in the Netherlands, Denmark, and northwestern Germany to Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery at Lüneburg Heath southeast of Hamburg, signaling the end of World War II in northwestern Europe.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "A day later, Dönitz sent Friedeburg to US General Dwight D. Eisenhower's headquarters in Rheims, France, to negotiate a surrender to the Allies. The Chief of Staff of OKW, Generaloberst (Colonel-General) Alfred Jodl, arrived a day later. Dönitz had instructed them to draw out the negotiations for as long as possible so that German troops and refugees could surrender to the Western powers, but when Eisenhower let it be known he would not tolerate their stalling, Dönitz authorized Jodl to sign the instrument of unconditional surrender at 1:30 on the morning of 7 May. Just over an hour later, Jodl signed the documents. The surrender documents included the phrase, \"All forces under German control to cease active operations at 23:01 hours Central European Time on 8 May 1945.\" At Stalin's insistence, on 8 May, shortly before midnight, (Generalfeldmarschall) Wilhelm Keitel repeated the signing in Berlin at Marshal Georgy Zhukov's headquarters, with General Carl Spaatz of the USAAF present as Eisenhower's representative. At the time specified, World War II in Europe ended.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "On 23 May, the Dönitz government was dissolved when Dönitz was arrested by an RAF Regiment task force. The Großadmiral's Kriegsmarine flag, which was removed from his headquarters, can be seen at the RAF Regiment Heritage Centre at RAF Honington. Generaloberst Jodl, Reichsminister Speer and other members were also handed over to troops of the Herefordshire Regiment at Flensburg. His ceremonial baton, awarded to him by Hitler, can be seen in the regimental museum of the Kings Shropshire Light Infantry in Shrewsbury Castle and his car pennant in the regimental museum of the Herefordshire Light Infantry.",
"title": "World War II"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Dönitz was a dedicated Nazi and a passionate supporter of Hitler, something he attempted to obscure after the war. Raeder described him as \"a picture-book Nazi and confirmed anti-Semite\". Several naval officers described him as \"closely tied to Hitler and Nazi ideology.\" On occasion, he spoke of Hitler's humanity. His fervent pro-Hitler attitude led to him being known ironically as \"Hitler Youth Quex\", after the fictional hero of a Nazi novel and feature film. He refused to help Albert Speer stop the scorched earth policy dictated by Hitler and is also noted to have declared, \"In comparison to Hitler we are all pipsqueaks. Anyone who believes he can do better than the Führer is stupid.\"",
"title": "Nazism and antisemitism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Dönitz contributed to the spread of Nazism within the Kriegsmarine. He insisted that officers share his political views and, as head of the Kriegsmarine, formally joined the Nazi Party on 1 February 1944, as member 9,664,999. He was awarded the Golden Party Badge for his loyalty to the party later that year. Dönitz's influence over naval officers contributed to none joining the attempts to kill Hitler.",
"title": "Nazism and antisemitism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "From an ideological standpoint, Dönitz was anti-Marxist and antisemitic and believed that Germany needed to fight the \"poison of Jewry\". Several anti-Semitic statements by Dönitz are known. When Sweden closed its international waters to Germany, he blamed this action on their fear and dependence on \"international Jewish capital.\" In August 1944, he declared, \"I would rather eat dirt than see my grandchildren grow up in the filthy, poisonous atmosphere of Jewry.\"",
"title": "Nazism and antisemitism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "His fellow officers noted he was under Hitler's influence, and closely wedded to Nazi ideology. On German Heroes' Day (12 March) of 1944, Dönitz declared that, without Adolf Hitler, Germany would be beset by \"the poison of Jewry,\" and the country destroyed for lack of the \"uncompromising ideology\" of National Socialism:",
"title": "Nazism and antisemitism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "What would have become of our country today, if the Führer had not united us under National Socialism? Divided along party lines, beset with the spreading poison of Jewry and vulnerable to it, because we lacked the defense of our present uncompromising ideology, we would have long since succumbed under the burden of this war and delivered ourselves to the enemy who would have mercilessly destroyed us.",
"title": "Nazism and antisemitism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "At the Nuremberg trials, Dönitz claimed the statement about the \"poison of Jewry\" was regarding \"the endurance, the power to endure, of the people, as it was composed, could be better preserved than if there were Jewish elements in the nation.\" Later, during the Nuremberg trials, Dönitz claimed to know nothing about the extermination of Jews and declared that nobody among \"my men thought about violence against Jews.\" Dönitz told Leon Goldensohn, an American psychiatrist at Nuremberg, \"I never had any idea of the goings-on as far as Jews were concerned. Hitler said each man should take care of his business and mine was U-boats and the Navy.\" After the war, Dönitz tried to hide his knowledge of the Holocaust. He was present at the October 1943 Posen Conference where Himmler described the mass murder of Jews with the intent of making the audience complicit in this crime. It cannot be proven beyond doubt that he was present during Himmler's segment of the conference, which openly discussed the mass murder of European Jews.",
"title": "Nazism and antisemitism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Even after the Nuremberg Trials, with the crimes of the Nazi state well-known, Dönitz remained an antisemite. In April 1953, he told Speer that if it was the choice of the Americans and not the Jews, he would have been released.",
"title": "Nazism and antisemitism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Following the war, Dönitz was held as a prisoner of war by the Allies. He was indicted as a major war criminal at the Nuremberg Trials on three counts. One: conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Two: planning, initiating, and waging wars of aggression. Three: crimes against the laws of war. Dönitz was found not guilty on count one of the indictment, but guilty on counts two and three.",
"title": "Nuremberg war crimes trials"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "During the trial, army psychologist Gustave Gilbert was allowed to examine Nazi leaders on trial for war crimes. Among other tests, a German version of the Wechsler–Bellevue IQ test was administered. Dönitz and Hermann Göring scored 138, which made them equally the third-highest among the Nazi leaders tested.",
"title": "Nuremberg war crimes trials"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "At the trial, Dönitz was charged with waging unrestricted submarine warfare against neutral shipping, permitting Hitler's Commando Order of 18 October 1942 to remain in full force when he became commander-in-chief of the Navy, and to that extent responsibility for that crime. His defence was that the order excluded men captured in naval warfare, and that the order had not been acted upon by any men under his command. Added to that was his knowledge of 12,000 involuntary foreign workers working in the shipyards, and doing nothing to stop it. Dönitz was unable to defend himself on this charge convincingly when cross-examined by prosecutor Sir David Maxwell Fyfe.",
"title": "Nuremberg war crimes trials"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "On 25 February 1945, Hitler asked Dönitz whether the Geneva Convention should be denounced. Hitler's motives were twofold. The first was that reprisals could be taken against Western Allied prisoners of war; second, it would deter German forces from surrendering to the Western Allies, as was happening on the Eastern Front where the convention was in abeyance. Instead of arguing the conventions should never be denounced, Dönitz suggested it was not expedient to do so, so the court found against him on this issue; but as the convention was not denounced by Germany, and British prisoners in camps under Dönitz's jurisdiction were treated strictly according to the Convention, the Court considered these mitigating circumstances.",
"title": "Nuremberg war crimes trials"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Among the war-crimes charges, Dönitz was accused of waging unrestricted submarine warfare for issuing War Order No. 154 in 1939, and another similar order after the Laconia incident in 1942, not to rescue survivors from ships attacked by submarine. By issuing these two orders, he was found guilty of causing Germany to be in breach of the Second London Naval Treaty of 1936. However, as evidence of similar conduct by the Allies was presented at his trial, his sentence was not assessed on the grounds of this breach of international law.",
"title": "Nuremberg war crimes trials"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "On the specific war crimes charge of ordering unrestricted submarine warfare, Dönitz was found \"[not] guilty for his conduct of submarine warfare against British armed merchant ships\", because they were often armed and equipped with radios which they used to notify the admiralty of attack. As stated by the judges:",
"title": "Nuremberg war crimes trials"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "Dönitz is charged with waging unrestricted submarine warfare contrary to the Naval Protocol of 1936 to which Germany acceded, and which reaffirmed the rules of submarine warfare laid down in the London Naval Agreement of 1930 ... The order of Dönitz to sink neutral ships without warning when found within these zones was, therefore, in the opinion of the Tribunal, violation of the Protocol ... The orders, then, prove Dönitz is guilty of a violation of the Protocol ... The sentence of Dönitz is not assessed on the ground of his breaches of the international law of submarine warfare.",
"title": "Nuremberg war crimes trials"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "His sentence on unrestricted submarine warfare was not assessed because of similar actions by the Allies. In particular, the British Admiralty, on 8 May 1940, had ordered all vessels in the Skagerrak sunk on sight, and Admiral Chester Nimitz, wartime commander-in-chief of the US Pacific Fleet, stated the US Navy had waged unrestricted submarine warfare in the Pacific from the day the US officially entered the war. Thus, Dönitz was not charged of waging unrestricted submarine warfare against unarmed neutral shipping by ordering all ships in designated areas in international waters to be sunk without warning.",
"title": "Nuremberg war crimes trials"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "Dönitz was imprisoned for 10 years in Spandau Prison in what was then West Berlin. During his period in prison he was unrepentant, and maintained that he had done nothing wrong. He also rejected Speer's attempts to persuade him to end his devotion to Hitler and accept responsibility for the wrongs the German Government had committed. Conversely, over 100 senior Allied officers sent letters to Dönitz conveying their disappointment over the unfairness and verdict of his trial.",
"title": "Nuremberg war crimes trials"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Dönitz was released on 1 October 1956 and retired to the small village of Aumühle in Schleswig-Holstein in northern West Germany. There, he worked on two books. His memoirs, Zehn Jahre, Zwanzig Tage (Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days), were released in Germany in 1958 and became available in an English translation the following year. This book recounted Dönitz's experiences as U-boat commander (10 years) and President of Germany (20 days). In it, Dönitz explains the Nazi regime as a product of its time, but argues he was not a politician and thus not morally responsible for many of the regime's crimes. He likewise criticizes dictatorship as a fundamentally flawed form of government and blames it for many of the Nazi era's failings. Historian Alan P. Rems has written that Dönitz's memoirs are unconvincing and that \"unimpeded by a meaningful Nuremberg verdict, Dönitz fashioned a legend that could be embraced by the most unregenerate Nazis as well as credulous Allied officers who accepted his sanitized version of history and showered Dönitz with letters of support as a wronged brother-in-arms\".",
"title": "Later years and death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Dönitz's second book, Mein wechselvolles Leben (My Ever-Changing Life) is less known, perhaps because it deals with the events of his life before 1934. This book was first published in 1968, and a new edition was released in 1998 with the revised title Mein soldatisches Leben (My Martial Life). In 1973, he appeared in the Thames Television production The World at War, in one of his few television appearances.",
"title": "Later years and death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "Dönitz was unrepentant regarding his role in World War II, saying that he had acted at all times out of duty to his nation. In 1976, Dönitz appeared in The Memory of Justice. In the documentary, Dönitz explains about the Nuremberg Trials and his experience during the trials in 1946 along with Albert Speer. He lived out the rest of his life in relative obscurity in Aumühle, occasionally corresponding with collectors of German naval history, and died there of a heart attack on Christmas Eve 1980 at the age of 89. As the last German officer with the rank of Großadmiral (grand admiral), he was honoured by many former servicemen and foreign naval officers who came to pay their respects at his funeral on 6 January 1981. He was buried in Waldfriedhof Cemetery in Aumühle without military honours, and service members were not allowed to wear uniforms to the funeral. Also in attendance were over 100 holders of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross.",
"title": "Later years and death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "Attribution:",
"title": "Bibliography"
}
] |
Karl Dönitz was a German admiral who briefly succeeded Adolf Hitler as head of state in May 1945, holding the position until the dissolution of the Flensburg Government following Germany's unconditional surrender to the Allies days later. As Supreme Commander of the Navy beginning in 1943, he played a major role in the naval history of World War II. He began his career in the Imperial German Navy before World War I. In 1918, he was commanding UB-68, and was taken prisoner of war by British forces. While in a POW camp, he formulated what he later called Rudeltaktik. By the start of the Second World War, Dönitz was supreme commander of the Kriegsmarine's U-boat arm. In January 1943, Dönitz achieved the rank of Großadmiral and replaced Grand Admiral Erich Raeder as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy. Dönitz was the main enemy of Allied naval forces in the Battle of the Atlantic. From 1939 to 1943 the U-boats fought effectively but lost the initiative from May 1943. Dönitz ordered his submarines into battle until 1945 to relieve the pressure on other branches of the Wehrmacht. 648 U-boats were lost—429 with no survivors. Furthermore, of these, 215 were lost on their first patrol. Around 30,000 of the 40,000 men who served in U-boats perished. On 30 April 1945, after the suicide of Adolf Hitler and in accordance with his last will and testament, Dönitz was named Hitler's successor as head of state in what became known as the Goebbels cabinet after his second-in-command, Joseph Goebbels, until Goebbels' suicide led to Dönitz's cabinet being reformed into the Flensburg Government instead. On 7 May 1945, he ordered Alfred Jodl, Chief of Operations Staff of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), to sign the German instruments of surrender in Reims, France, formally ending the War in Europe. Dönitz remained as head of state with the titles of President of Germany and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces until his cabinet was dissolved by the Allied powers on 23 May de facto and on 5 June de jure. By his own admission, Dönitz was a dedicated Nazi and supporter of Hitler. Following the war, he was indicted as a major war criminal at the Nuremberg trials on three counts: conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity; planning, initiating, and waging wars of aggression; and crimes against the laws of war. He was found not guilty of committing crimes against humanity, but guilty of committing crimes against peace and war crimes against the laws of war. He was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment; after his release, he lived in a village near Hamburg until his death in 1980.
|
2001-07-25T18:06:05Z
|
2023-12-31T23:09:00Z
|
[
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Refend",
"Template:GFMofWWII",
"Template:Page needed",
"Template:Clarify",
"Template:Citation needed",
"Template:Portal",
"Template:Notelist",
"Template:Refbegin",
"Template:'s",
"Template:Lang",
"Template:SMU",
"Template:Blockquote",
"Template:Source-attribution",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Use shortened footnotes",
"Template:More footnotes needed",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:PM20",
"Template:Subject bar",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Ship",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Major defendants at the Nuremberg trials",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Citation",
"Template:Sfn",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Infobox officeholder",
"Template:GS",
"Template:GRT",
"Template:Spoken Wikipedia",
"Template:Internet Archive author",
"Template:IPA-de",
"Template:SMS",
"Template:Snd",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Cite magazine",
"Template:German presidents",
"Template:Redirect",
"Template:Use British English"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_D%C3%B6nitz
|
16,775 |
Kyoto Protocol
|
The Kyoto Protocol (Japanese: 京都議定書, Hepburn: Kyōto Giteisho) was an international treaty which extended the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, based on the scientific consensus that global warming is occurring and that human-made CO2 emissions are driving it. The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, on 11 December 1997 and entered into force on 16 February 2005. There were 192 parties (Canada withdrew from the protocol, effective December 2012) to the Protocol in 2020.
The Kyoto Protocol implemented the objective of the UNFCCC to reduce the onset of global warming by reducing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere to "a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system" (Article 2). The Kyoto Protocol applied to the seven greenhouse gases listed in Annex A: carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), nitrogen trifluoride (NF3). Nitrogen trifluoride was added for the second compliance period during the Doha Round.
The Protocol was based on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities: it acknowledged that individual countries have different capabilities in combating climate change, owing to economic development, and therefore placed the obligation to reduce current emissions on developed countries on the basis that they are historically responsible for the current levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
The Protocol's first commitment period started in 2008 and ended in 2012. All 36 countries that fully participated in the first commitment period complied with the Protocol. However, nine countries had to resort to the flexibility mechanisms by funding emission reductions in other countries because their national emissions were slightly greater than their targets. The financial crisis of 2007–08 reduced emissions. The greatest emission reductions were seen in the former Eastern Bloc countries because the dissolution of the Soviet Union reduced their emissions in the early 1990s. Even though the 36 developed countries reduced their emissions, the global emissions increased by 32% from 1990 to 2010.
A second commitment period was agreed to in 2012 to extend the agreement to 2020, known as the Doha Amendment to the Kyoto Protocol, in which 37 countries had binding targets: Australia, the European Union (and its then 28 member states, now 27), Belarus, Iceland, Kazakhstan, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland, and Ukraine. Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine stated that they may withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol or not put into legal force the Amendment with second round targets. Japan, New Zealand, and Russia had participated in Kyoto's first-round but did not take on new targets in the second commitment period. Other developed countries without second-round targets were Canada (which withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol in 2012) and the United States (which did not ratify). Canada's decision to withdraw was to the dismay of Environment minister, Peter Kent. If they were to remain as a part of the protocol, Canada would be hit with a $14 billion fine, which would be devastating to their economy, hence the reluctant decision to exit. As of October 2020, 147 states had accepted the Doha Amendment. It entered into force on 31 December 2020, following its acceptance by the mandated minimum of at least 144 states, although the second commitment period ended on the same day. Of the 37 parties with binding commitments, 34 had ratified.
Negotiations were held in the framework of the yearly UNFCCC Climate Change Conferences on measures to be taken after the second commitment period ended in 2020. This resulted in the 2015 adoption of the Paris Agreement, which is a separate instrument under the UNFCCC rather than an amendment of the Kyoto Protocol.
The view that human activities are likely responsible for most of the observed increase in global mean temperature ("global warming") since the mid-20th century is an accurate reflection of current scientific thinking. Human-induced warming of the climate is expected to continue throughout the 21st century and beyond.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) have produced a range of projections of what the future increase in global mean temperature might be. The IPCC's projections are "baseline" projections, meaning that they assume no future efforts are made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The IPCC projections cover the time period from the beginning of the 21st century to the end of the 21st century. The "likely" range (as assessed to have a greater than 66% probability of being correct, based on the IPCC's expert judgment) is a projected increase in global mean temperature over the 21st century of between 1.1 and 6.4 °C.
The range in temperature projections partly reflects different projections of future greenhouse gas emissions. Different projections contain different assumptions of future social and economic development (economic growth, population level, energy policies), which in turn affects projections of future greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The range also reflects uncertainty in the response of the climate system to past and future GHG emissions (measured by the climate sensitivity).
1992 – The UN Conference on the Environment and Development is held in Rio de Janeiro. It results in the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) among other agreements.
1995 – Parties to the UNFCCC meet in Berlin (the 1st Conference of Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC) to outline specific targets on emissions.
1997 – In December the parties conclude the Kyoto Protocol in Kyoto, Japan, in which they agree to the broad outlines of emissions targets.
2004 – Russia and Canada ratify the Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC bringing the treaty into effect on 16 February 2005.
2011 – Canada became the first signatory to announce its withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol.
2012 – On 31 December 2012, the first commitment period under the Protocol expired.
Most countries are Parties to the UNFCCC. Article 2 of the Convention states its ultimate objective, which is to stabilize the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere "at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic (human) interference with the climate system."
The natural, technical and social sciences can provide information on decisions relating to this objective including the possible magnitude and rate of future climate changes. However, the IPCC has also concluded that the decision of what constitutes "dangerous" interference requires value judgements, which will vary between different regions of the world. Factors that might affect this decision include the local consequences of climate change impacts, the ability of a particular region to adapt to climate change (adaptive capacity), and the ability of a region to reduce its GHG emissions (mitigative capacity).
The main goal of the Kyoto Protocol was to control emissions of the main anthropogenic (human-emitted) greenhouse gases (GHGs) in ways that reflect underlying national differences in GHG emissions, wealth, and capacity to make the reductions. The treaty follows the main principles agreed in the original 1992 UN Framework Convention. According to the treaty, in 2012, Annex I Parties who have ratified the treaty must have fulfilled their obligations of greenhouse gas emissions limitations established for the Kyoto Protocol's first commitment period (2008–2012). These emissions limitation commitments are listed in Annex B of the Protocol.
The Kyoto Protocol's first round commitments are the first detailed step taken within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The Protocol establishes a structure of rolling emission reduction commitment periods. It set a timetable starting in 2006 for negotiations to establish emission reduction commitments for a second commitment period. The first period emission reduction commitments expired on 31 December 2012.
The ultimate objective of the UNFCCC is the "stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would stop dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system." Even if Annex I Parties succeed in meeting their first-round commitments, much greater emission reductions will be required in future to stabilize atmospheric GHG concentrations.
For each of the different anthropogenic GHGs, different levels of emissions reductions would be required to meet the objective of stabilizing atmospheric concentrations. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most important anthropogenic GHG. Stabilizing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere would ultimately require the effective elimination of anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
Some of the principal concepts of the Kyoto Protocol are:
Under the Kyoto Protocol, 37 industrialized countries and the European Community (the European Union-15, made up of 15 states at the time of the Kyoto negotiations) commit themselves to binding targets for GHG emissions. The targets apply to the four greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), sulphur hexafluoride (SF6), and two groups of gases, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and perfluorocarbons (PFCs). The six GHG are translated into CO2 equivalents in determining reductions in emissions. These reduction targets are in addition to the industrial gases, chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, which are dealt with under the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.
Under the Protocol, only the Annex I Parties have committed themselves to national or joint reduction targets (formally called "quantified emission limitation and reduction objectives" (QELRO) – Article 4.1). Parties to the Kyoto Protocol not listed in Annex I of the convention (the non-Annex I Parties) are mostly low-income developing countries, and may participate in the Kyoto Protocol through the Clean Development Mechanism (explained below).
The emissions limitations of Annex I Parties varies between different Parties. Some Parties have emissions limitations reduce below the base year level, some have limitations at the base year level (no permitted increase above the base year level), while others have limitations above the base year level.
Emission limits do not include emissions by international aviation and shipping. Although Belarus and Turkey are listed in the convention's Annex I, they do not have emissions targets as they were not Annex I Parties when the Protocol was adopted. Kazakhstan does not have a target, but has declared that it wishes to become an Annex I Party to the convention.
For most state parties, 1990 is the base year for the national GHG inventory and the calculation of the assigned amount. However, five state parties have an alternative base year:
Annex I Parties can use a range of sophisticated "flexibility" mechanisms (see below) to meet their targets. Annex I Parties can achieve their targets by allocating reduced annual allowances to major operators within their borders, or by allowing these operators to exceed their allocations by offsetting any excess through a mechanism that is agreed by all the parties to the UNFCCC, such as by buying emission allowances from other operators which have excess emissions credits.
The Protocol defines three "flexibility mechanisms" that can be used by Annex I Parties in meeting their emission limitation commitments. The flexibility mechanisms are International Emissions Trading (IET), the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), and Joint Implementation (JI). IET allows Annex I Parties to "trade" their emissions (Assigned Amount Units, AAUs, or "allowances" for short).
The economic basis for providing this flexibility is that the marginal cost of reducing (or abating) emissions differs among countries. "Marginal cost" is the cost of abating the last tonne of CO2-eq for an Annex I/non-Annex I Party. At the time of the original Kyoto targets, studies suggested that the flexibility mechanisms could reduce the overall (aggregate) cost of meeting the targets. Studies also showed that national losses in Annex I gross domestic product (GDP) could be reduced by the use of the flexibility mechanisms.
The CDM and JI are called "project-based mechanisms", in that they generate emission reductions from projects. The difference between IET and the project-based mechanisms is that IET is based on the setting of a quantitative restriction of emissions, while the CDM and JI are based on the idea of "production" of emission reductions. The CDM is designed to encourage production of emission reductions in non-Annex I Parties, while JI encourages production of emission reductions in Annex I Parties.
The production of emission reductions generated by the CDM and JI can be used by Annex I Parties in meeting their emission limitation commitments. The emission reductions produced by the CDM and JI are both measured against a hypothetical baseline of emissions that would have occurred in the absence of a particular emission reduction project. The emission reductions produced by the CDM are called Certified Emission Reductions (CERs); reductions produced by JI are called Emission Reduction Units (ERUs). The reductions are called "credits" because they are emission reductions credited against a hypothetical baseline of emissions.
Only emission reduction projects that do not involve using nuclear energy are eligible for accreditation under the CDM, in order to prevent nuclear technology exports from becoming the default route for obtaining credits under the CDM.
Each Annex I country is required to submit an annual report of inventories of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions from sources and removals from sinks under UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol. These countries nominate a person (called a "designated national authority") to create and manage its greenhouse gas inventory. Virtually all of the non-Annex I countries have also established a designated national authority to manage their Kyoto obligations, specifically the "CDM process". This determines which GHG projects they wish to propose for accreditation by the CDM Executive Board.
A number of emissions trading schemes (ETS) have been, or are planned to be, implemented.
The design of the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) implicitly allows for trade of national Kyoto obligations to occur between participating countries. The Carbon Trust found that other than the trading that occurs as part of the EU ETS, no intergovernmental emissions trading had taken place.
One of the environmental problems with IET is the large surplus of allowances that are available. Russia, Ukraine, and the new EU-12 member states (the Kyoto Parties Annex I Economies-in-Transition, abbreviated "EIT": Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine) have a surplus of allowances, while many OECD countries have a deficit. Some of the EITs with a surplus regard it as potential compensation for the trauma of their economic restructuring. When the Kyoto treaty was negotiated, it was recognized that emissions targets for the EITs might lead to them having an excess number of allowances. This excess of allowances were viewed by the EITs as "headroom" to grow their economies. The surplus has, however, also been referred to by some as "hot air", a term which Russia (a country with an estimated surplus of 3.1 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent allowances) views as "quite offensive".
OECD countries with a deficit could meet their Kyoto commitments by buying allowances from transition countries with a surplus. Unless other commitments were made to reduce the total surplus in allowances, such trade would not actually result in emissions being reduced (see also the section below on the Green Investment Scheme).
The "Green Investment Scheme" (GIS) is a plan for achieving environmental benefits from trading surplus allowances (AAUs) under the Kyoto Protocol. The Green Investment Scheme (GIS), a mechanism in the framework of International Emissions Trading (IET), is designed to achieve greater flexibility in reaching the targets of the Kyoto Protocol while preserving environmental integrity of IET. However, using the GIS is not required under the Kyoto Protocol, and there is no official definition of the term.
Under the GIS a party to the protocol expecting that the development of its economy will not exhaust its Kyoto quota, can sell the excess of its Kyoto quota units (AAUs) to another party. The proceeds from the AAU sales should be "greened", i.e. channelled to the development and implementation of the projects either acquiring the greenhouse gases emission reductions (hard greening) or building up the necessary framework for this process (soft greening).
Latvia was one of the front-runners of GISs. World Bank (2011) reported that Latvia has stopped offering AAU sales because of low AAU prices. In 2010, Estonia was the preferred source for AAU buyers, followed by the Czech Republic and Poland.
Japan's national policy to meet their Kyoto target includes the purchase of AAUs sold under GISs. In 2010, Japan and Japanese firms were the main buyers of AAUs. In terms of the international carbon market, trade in AAUs are a small proportion of overall market value. In 2010, 97% of trade in the international carbon market was driven by the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS).
Between 2001, which was the first year Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects could be registered, and 2012, the end of the first Kyoto commitment period, the CDM is expected to produce some 1.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) in emission reductions. Most of these reductions are through renewable energy commercialisation, energy efficiency, and fuel switching (World Bank, 2010, p. 262). By 2012, the largest potential for production of CERs are estimated in China (52% of total CERs) and India (16%). CERs produced in Latin America and the Caribbean make up 15% of the potential total, with Brazil as the largest producer in the region (7%).
The formal crediting period for Joint Implementation (JI) was aligned with the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, and did not start until January 2008 (Carbon Trust, 2009, p. 20). In November 2008, only 22 JI projects had been officially approved and registered. The total projected emission savings from JI by 2012 are about one tenth that of the CDM. Russia accounts for about two-thirds of these savings, with the remainder divided up roughly equally between Ukraine and the EU's New Member States. Emission savings include cuts in methane, HFC, and N2O emissions.
As noted earlier on, the first-round Kyoto emissions limitation commitments are not sufficient to stabilize the atmospheric concentration of GHGs. Stabilization of atmospheric GHG concentrations will require further emissions reductions after the end of the first-round Kyoto commitment period in 2012.
Analysts have developed scenarios of future changes in GHG emissions that lead to a stabilization in the atmospheric concentrations of GHGs. Climate models suggest that lower stabilization levels are associated with lower magnitudes of future global warming, while higher stabilization levels are associated with higher magnitudes of future global warming (see figure opposite).
To achieve stabilization, global GHG emissions must peak, then decline. The lower the desired stabilization level, the sooner this peak and decline must occur (see figure opposite). For a given stabilization level, larger emissions reductions in the near term allow for less stringent emissions reductions later. On the other hand, less stringent near term emissions reductions would, for a given stabilization level, require more stringent emissions reductions later on.
The first period Kyoto emissions limitations can be viewed as a first-step towards achieving atmospheric stabilization of GHGs. In this sense, the first period Kyoto commitments may affect what future atmospheric stabilization level can be achieved.
At the 16th Conference of the Parties held in 2010, Parties to the UNFCCC agreed that future global warming should be limited below 2°C relative to the pre-industrial temperature level. One of the stabilization levels discussed in relation to this temperature target is to hold atmospheric concentrations of GHGs at 450 parts per million (ppm) CO2- eq. Stabilization at 450 ppm could be associated with a 26 to 78% risk of exceeding the 2 °C target.
Scenarios assessed by Gupta et al. (2007) suggest that Annex I emissions would need to be 25% to 40% below 1990 levels by 2020, and 80% to 95% below 1990 levels by 2050. The only Annex I Parties to have made voluntary pledges in line with this are Japan (25% below 1990 levels by 2020) and Norway (30–40% below 1990 levels by 2020).
Gupta et al. (2007) also looked at what 450 ppm scenarios projected for non-Annex I Parties. Projections indicated that by 2020, non-Annex I emissions in several regions (Latin America, the Middle East, East Asia, and centrally planned Asia) would need to be substantially reduced below "business-as-usual". "Business-as-usual" are projected non-Annex I emissions in the absence of any new policies to control emissions. Projections indicated that by 2050, emissions in all non-Annex I regions would need to be substantially reduced below "business-as-usual".
The agreement is a protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) adopted at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, which did not set any legally binding limitations on emissions or enforcement mechanisms. Only Parties to the UNFCCC can become Parties to the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol was adopted at the third session of the Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan.
National emission targets specified in the Kyoto Protocol exclude international aviation and shipping. Kyoto Parties can use land use, land use change, and forestry (LULUCF) in meeting their targets. LULUCF activities are also called "sink" activities. Changes in sinks and land use can have an effect on the climate, and indeed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Special Report on Land use, land-use change, and forestry estimates that since 1750 a third of global warming has been caused by land use change. Particular criteria apply to the definition of forestry under the Kyoto Protocol.
Forest management, cropland management, grazing land management, and revegetation are all eligible LULUCF activities under the Protocol. Annex I Parties use of forest management in meeting their targets is capped.
Article 4.2 of the UNFCCC commits industrialized countries to "[take] the lead" in reducing emissions. The initial aim was for industrialized countries to stabilize their emissions at 1990 levels by 2000. The failure of key industrialized countries to move in this direction was a principal reason why Kyoto moved to binding commitments.
At the first UNFCCC Conference of the Parties in Berlin, the G77 was able to push for a mandate (the "Berlin mandate") where it was recognized that:
During negotiations, the G-77 represented 133 developing countries. China was not a member of the group but an associate. It has since become a member.
The Berlin mandate was recognized in the Kyoto Protocol in that developing countries were not subject to emission reduction commitments in the first Kyoto commitment period. However, the large potential for growth in developing country emissions made negotiations on this issue tense. In the final agreement, the Clean Development Mechanism was designed to limit emissions in developing countries, but in such a way that developing countries do not bear the costs for limiting emissions. The general assumption was that developing countries would face quantitative commitments in later commitment periods, and at the same time, developed countries would meet their first round commitments.
There were multiple emissions cuts proposed by UNFCCC parties during negotiations. The G77 and China were in favour of strong uniform emission cuts across the developed world. The US originally proposed for the second round of negotiations on Kyoto commitments to follow the negotiations of the first. In the end, negotiations on the second period were set to open no later than 2005. Countries over-achieving in their first period commitments can "bank" their unused allowances for use in the subsequent period.
The EU initially argued for only three GHGs to be included – CO2, CH4, and N2O – with other gases such as HFCs regulated separately. The EU also wanted to have a "bubble" commitment, whereby it could make a collective commitment that allowed some EU members to increase their emissions, while others cut theirs.
The most vulnerable nations – the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) – pushed for deep uniform cuts by developed nations, with the goal of having emissions reduced to the greatest possible extent. Countries that had supported differentiation of targets had different ideas as to how it should be calculated, and many different indicators were proposed. Two examples include differentiation of targets based on gross domestic product (GDP), and differentiation based on energy intensity (energy use per unit of economic output).
The final targets negotiated in the Protocol are the result of last minute political compromises. The targets closely match those decided by Argentinian Raul Estrada, the diplomat who chaired the negotiations. The numbers given to each Party by Chairman Estrada were based on targets already pledged by Parties, information received on latest negotiating positions, and the goal of achieving the strongest possible environmental outcome. The final targets are weaker than those proposed by some Parties, e.g., the Alliance of Small Island States and the G-77 and China, but stronger than the targets proposed by others, e.g., Canada and the United States.
The Protocol also reaffirms the principle that developed countries have to pay billions of dollars, and supply technology to other countries for climate-related studies and projects. The principle was originally agreed in UNFCCC. One such project is The Adaptation Fund, which has been established by the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to finance concrete adaptation projects and programmes in developing countries that are Parties to the Kyoto Protocol.
The protocol left several issues open to be decided later by the sixth Conference of Parties COP6 of the UNFCCC, which attempted to resolve these issues at its meeting in the Hague in late 2000, but it was unable to reach an agreement due to disputes between the European Union (who favoured a tougher implementation) and the United States, Canada, Japan and Australia (who wanted the agreement to be less demanding and more flexible).
In 2001, a continuation of the previous meeting (COP6-bis) was held in Bonn, where the required decisions were adopted. After some concessions, the supporters of the protocol (led by the European Union) managed to secure the agreement of Japan and Russia by allowing more use of carbon dioxide sinks.
COP7 was held from 29 October 2001 through 9 November 2001 in Marrakech to establish the final details of the protocol.
The first Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (MOP1) was held in Montreal from 28 November to 9 December 2005, along with the 11th conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP11). See United Nations Climate Change Conference.
During COP13 in Bali, 36 developed Contact Group countries (plus the EU as a party in the European Union) agreed to a 10% emissions increase for Iceland; but, since the EU's member states each have individual obligations, much larger increases (up to 27%) are allowed for some of the less developed EU countries (see below § Increase in greenhouse gas emission since 1990). Reduction limitations expired in 2013.
The protocol defines a mechanism of "compliance" as a "monitoring compliance with the commitments and penalties for non-compliance." According to Grubb (2003), the explicit consequences of non-compliance of the treaty are weak compared to domestic law. Yet, the compliance section of the treaty was highly contested in the Marrakesh Accords.
Monitoring emissions in international agreements is tough as in international law, there is no police power, creating the incentive for states to find 'ways around' monitoring. The Kyoto Protocol regulated 6 sinks and sources of Gases. Carbon dioxide, Methane, Nirous oxide, Hydroflurocarbons, Sulfur hexafluouride and Perfluorocarbons. Monitoring these gases can become quite a challenge. Methane can be monitored and measured from irrigated rice fields and can be measured by the seedling growing up to harvest. Future implications state that this can be affected by more cost effective ways to control emissions as changes in types of fertilizer can reduce emissions by 50%. In addition to this, many countries are unable to monitor certain ways of carbon absorption through trees and soils to an accurate level.
If the enforcement branch determines that an Annex I country is not in compliance with its emissions limitation, then that country is required to make up the difference during the second commitment period plus an additional 30%. In addition, that country will be suspended from making transfers under an emissions trading program.
The Protocol was adopted by COP 3 of UNFCCC on 11 December 1997 in Kyoto, Japan. It was opened on 16 March 1998 for signature during one year by parties to UNFCCC, when it was signed Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, the Maldives, Samoa, St. Lucia and Switzerland. At the end of the signature period, 82 countries and the European Community had signed. Ratification (which is required to become a party to the Protocol) started on 17 September with ratification by Fiji. Countries that did not sign acceded to the convention, which has the same legal effect.
Article 25 of the Protocol specifies that the Protocol enters into force "on the ninetieth day after the date on which not less than 55 Parties to the Convention, incorporating Parties included in Annex I which accounted in total for at least 55% of the total carbon dioxide emissions for 1990 of the Annex I countries, have deposited their instruments of ratification, acceptance, approval or accession."
The EU and its Member States ratified the Protocol in May 2002. Of the two conditions, the "55 parties" clause was reached on 23 May 2002 when Iceland ratified the Protocol. The ratification by Russia on 18 November 2004 satisfied the "55%" clause and brought the treaty into force, effective 16 February 2005, after the required lapse of 90 days.
As of May 2013, 191 countries and one regional economic organization (the EC) have ratified the agreement, representing over 61.6% of the 1990 emissions from Annex I countries. One of the 191 ratifying states—Canada—has renounced the protocol.
The US signed the Protocol on 12 November 1998, during the Clinton presidency. To become binding in the US, however, the treaty had to be ratified by the Senate, which had already passed the 1997 non-binding Byrd-Hagel Resolution, expressing disapproval of any international agreement that did not require developing countries to make emission reductions and "would seriously harm the economy of the United States". The resolution passed 95–0. Therefore, even though the Clinton administration signed the treaty, it was never submitted to the Senate for ratification.
At the outset of the Bush administration, Senators Chuck Hagel, Jesse Helms, Larry Craig, and Pat Roberts wrote a letter to President George W. Bush seeking to identify his position on the Kyoto Protocol and climate change policy. In a letter dated March 13, 2001, President Bush responded that his "Administration takes the issue of global climate change very seriously", but that "I oppose the Kyoto Protocol because it exempts 80 percent of the world, including major population centers such as China and India, from compliance, and would cause serious harm to the U.S. economy. The Senate's vote, 95-0, shows that there is a clear consensus that the Kyoto Protocol is an unfair and ineffective means of addressing global climate change concerns." The administration also questioned the scientific certainty around climate change and cited potential harms of emissions reduction to the US economy.
The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research reported in 2001:
This policy reversal received a massive wave of criticism that was quickly picked up by the international media. Environmental groups blasted the White House, while Europeans and Japanese alike expressed deep concern and regret. ... Almost all world leaders (e.g. China, Japan, South Africa, Pacific Islands, etc.) expressed their disappointment at Bush's decision.
In response to this criticism, Bush stated: "I was responding to reality, and reality is the nation has got a real problem when it comes to energy". The Tyndall Centre called this "an overstatement used to cover up the big benefactors of this policy reversal, i.e., the US oil and coal industry, which has a powerful lobby with the administration and conservative Republican congressmen."
As of 2023, the US is the only signatory that has not ratified the Protocol. The US accounted for 36.1% of emissions in 1990. As such, for the treaty to go into legal effect without US ratification, it would require a coalition including the EU, Russia, Japan, and small parties. A deal, without the US Administration, was reached in the Bonn climate talks (COP-6.5), held in 2001.
In 2011, Canada, Japan and Russia stated that they would not take on further Kyoto targets. The Canadian government announced its withdrawal—possible at any time three years after ratification—from the Kyoto Protocol on 12 December 2011, effective 15 December 2012. Canada was committed to cutting its greenhouse emissions to 6% below 1990 levels by 2012, but in 2009 emissions were 17% higher than in 1990. The Harper government prioritized oil sands development in Alberta, and deprioritized the reduction of greenhouse emissions. Environment minister Peter Kent cited Canada's liability to "enormous financial penalties" under the treaty unless it withdrew. He also suggested that the recently signed Durban agreement may provide an alternative way forward. The Harper government claimed it would find a "Made in Canada" solution. Canada's decision received a generally negative response from representatives of other ratifying countries.
Andorra, Palestine, South Sudan, the United States and, following their withdrawal on 15 December 2012, Canada are the only UNFCCC Parties that are not party to the Protocol. Furthermore, the Protocol is not applied to UNFCCC observer the Holy See. Although the Kingdom of the Netherlands approved the protocol for the whole Kingdom, it did not deposit an instrument of ratification for Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten or the Caribbean Netherlands.
Total aggregate GHG emissions excluding emissions/removals from land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF, i.e., carbon storage in forests and soils) for all Annex I Parties (see list below) including the United States taken together decreased from 19.0 to 17.8 thousand teragrams (Tg, which is equal to 10 kg) CO2 equivalent, a decline of 6.0% during the 1990–2008 period. Several factors have contributed to this decline. The first is due to the economic restructuring in the Annex I Economies in Transition (the EITs – see Intergovernmental Emissions Trading for the list of EITs). Over the period 1990–1999, emissions fell by 40% in the EITs following the collapse of central planning in the former Soviet Union and east European countries. This led to a massive contraction of their heavy industry-based economies, with associated reductions in their fossil fuel consumption and emissions.
Emissions growth in Annex I Parties have also been limited due to policies and measures (PaMs). In particular, PaMs were strengthened after 2000, helping to enhance energy efficiency and develop renewable energy sources. Energy use also decreased during the economic crisis in 2007–2008.
Collectively the group of industrialized countries committed to a Kyoto target, i.e., the Annex I countries excluding the US, had a target of reducing their GHG emissions by 4.2% on average for the period 2008–2012 relative to the base year, which in most cases is 1990.
As noted in the preceding section, between 1990 and 1999, there was a large reduction in the emissions of the EITs. The reduction in the EITs is largely responsible for the total (aggregate) reduction (excluding LULUCF) in emissions of the Annex I countries, excluding the US. Emissions of the Annex II countries (Annex I minus the EIT countries) have experienced a limited increase in emissions from 1990 to 2006, followed by stabilization and a more marked decrease from 2007 onwards. The emissions reductions in the early nineties by the 12 EIT countries who have since joined the EU, assist the present EU-27 in meeting its collective Kyoto target.
In December 2011, Canada's environment minister, Peter Kent, formally announced that Canada would withdraw from the Kyoto accord a day after the end of the 2011 United Nations Climate Change Conference (see the section on the withdrawal of Canada).
Belarus, Malta, and Turkey are Annex I Parties but did not have first-round Kyoto targets. The US had a Kyoto target of a 7% reduction relative to the 1990 level, but has not ratified the treaty. If the US had ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the average percentage reduction in total GHG emissions for the Annex I group would have been a 5.2% reduction relative to the base year.
38 developed countries committed to limiting their greenhouse gas emissions. Because the United States did not ratify and Canada withdrew, the emission limits remained in force for 36 countries. All of them complied with the Protocol. However, nine countries (Austria, Denmark, Iceland, Japan, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Norway, Spain and Switzerland) had to resort to the flexibility mechanisms because their national emissions were slightly greater than their targets.
In total, the 36 countries that fully participated in the Protocol were committed to reducing their aggregate emissions by 4% from the 1990 base year. Their average annual emissions in 2008–2012 were 24.2% below the 1990 level. Hence, they surpassed their aggregate commitment by a large margin. If the United States and Canada are included, the emissions decreased by 11.8%. The large reductions were mainly thanks to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which reduced the emissions of the Eastern Bloc by tens of percents in the early 1990s. In addition, the financial crisis of 2007–08 significantly reduced emissions during the first Kyoto commitment period.
The 36 countries that were committed to emission reductions only accounted for 24% of the global greenhouse gas emissions in 2010. Even though these countries significantly reduced their emissions during the Kyoto commitment period, other countries increased their emissions so much that the global emissions increased by 32% from 1990 to 2010.
UNFCCC (2005) compiled and synthesized information reported to it by non-Annex I Parties. Most non-Annex I Parties belonged in the low-income group, with very few classified as middle-income. Most Parties included information on policies relating to sustainable development. Sustainable development priorities mentioned by non-Annex I Parties included poverty alleviation and access to basic education and health care. Many non-Annex I Parties are making efforts to amend and update their environmental legislation to include global concerns such as climate change.
A few Parties, e.g., South Africa and Iran, stated their concern over how efforts to reduce emissions by Annex I Parties could adversely affect their economies. The economies of these countries are highly dependent on income generated from the production, processing, and export of fossil fuels.
Emissions
GHG emissions, excluding land use change and forestry (LUCF), reported by 122 non-Annex I Parties for the year 1994 or the closest year reported, totalled 11.7 billion tonnes (billion = 1,000,000,000) of CO2-eq. CO2 was the largest proportion of emissions (63%), followed by methane (26%) and nitrous oxide (N2O) (11%).
The energy sector was the largest source of emissions for 70 Parties, whereas for 45 Parties the agriculture sector was the largest. Per capita emissions (in tonnes of CO2-eq, excluding LUCF) averaged 2.8 tonnes for the 122 non-Annex I Parties.
Parties reported a high level of uncertainty in LUCF emissions, but in aggregate, there appeared to only be a small difference of 1.7% with and without LUCF. With LUCF, emissions were 11.9 billion tonnes, without LUCF, total aggregate emissions were 11.7 billion tonnes.
Trends
In several large developing countries and fast growing economies (China, India, Thailand, Indonesia, Egypt, and Iran) GHG emissions have increased rapidly (PBL, 2009). For example, emissions in China have risen strongly over the 1990–2005 period, often by more than 10% year. Emissions per-capita in non-Annex I countries are still, for the most part, much lower than in industrialized countries. Non-Annex I countries do not have quantitative emission reduction commitments, but they are committed to mitigation actions. China, for example, has had a national policy programme to reduce emissions growth, which included the closure of old, less efficient coal-fired power plants.
Barker et al. (2007, p. 79) assessed the literature on cost estimates for the Kyoto Protocol. Due to US non-participation in the Kyoto treaty, costs estimates were found to be much lower than those estimated in the previous IPCC Third Assessment Report. Without the US participation, and with full use of the Kyoto flexible mechanisms, costs were estimated at less than 0.05% of Annex B GDP. This compared to earlier estimates of 0.1–1.1%. Without use of the flexible mechanisms, costs without the US participation were estimated at less than 0.1%. This compared to earlier estimates of 0.2–2%. These cost estimates were viewed as being based on much evidence and high agreement in the literature.
Gupta et al. (2007) assessed the literature on climate change policy. They found that no authoritative assessments of the UNFCCC or its Protocol asserted that these agreements had, or will, succeed in solving the climate problem. In these assessments, it was assumed that the UNFCCC or its Protocol would not be changed. The Framework Convention and its Protocol include provisions for future policy actions to be taken.
Gupta et al. (2007) described the Kyoto first-round commitments as "modest", stating that they acted as a constraint on the treaty's effectiveness. It was suggested that subsequent Kyoto commitments could be made more effective with measures aimed at achieving deeper cuts in emissions, as well as having policies applied to a larger share of global emissions. In 2008, countries with a Kyoto cap made up less than one-third of annual global carbon dioxide emissions from fuel combustion.
World Bank (2010) commented on how the Kyoto Protocol had only had a slight effect on curbing global emissions growth. The treaty was negotiated in 1997, but in 2006, energy-related carbon dioxide emissions had grown by 24%. World Bank (2010) also stated that the treaty had provided only limited financial support to developing countries to assist them in reducing their emissions and adapting to climate change.
Some of the criticism of the Protocol has been based on the idea of climate justice (Liverman, 2008, p. 14).
This has particularly centered on the balance between the low emissions and high vulnerability of the developing world to climate change, compared to high emissions in the developed world. Another criticism of the Kyoto Protocol and other international conventions, is the right of indigenous peoples right to participate. Quoted here from The Declaration of the First International Forum of Indigenous Peoples on Climate Change, it says "Despite the recognition of our role in preventing global warming, when it comes time to sign international conventions like the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, once again, our right to participate in national and international discussions that directly affect our Peoples and territories is denied." Additionally, later in the declaration, it reads:
We denounce the fact that neither the [United Nations] nor the Kyoto Protocol recognizes the existence or the contributions of Indigenous Peoples. Furthermore, the debates under these instruments have not considered the suggestions and proposals of the Indigenous Peoples nor have the appropriate mechanisms to guarantee our participation in all the debates that directly concern the Indigenous Peoples has been established.
Some environmentalists have supported the Kyoto Protocol because it is "the only game in town", and possibly because they expect that future emission reduction commitments may demand more stringent emission reductions (Aldy et al.., 2003, p. 9). In 2001, seventeen national science academies stated that ratification of the Protocol represented a "small but essential first step towards stabilising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases." Some environmentalists and scientists have criticized the existing commitments for being too weak (Grubb, 2000, p. 5).
The United States (under former President George W. Bush) and Australia (initially, under former Prime Minister John Howard) did not ratify the Kyoto treaty. According to Stern (2006), their decision was based on the lack of quantitative emission commitments for emerging economies (see also the 2000 onwards section). Australia, under former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, has since ratified the treaty, which took effect in March 2008.
Another area which has been commented on is the role of the Kyoto flexibility mechanisms – carbon emission trading, Joint Implementation, and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The flexibility mechanisms have attracted both positive and negative comments.
One of the arguments made in favour of the flexibility mechanisms is that they can reduce the costs incurred by Annex I Parties in meeting their Kyoto commitments. Criticisms of flexibility have, for example, included the ineffectiveness of emissions trading in promoting investment in non-fossil energy sources, and adverse impacts of CDM projects on local communities in developing countries.
As the Kyoto Protocol seeks to reduce environmental pollutants while at the same time altering the freedoms of some citizens.
As discussed by Milton Friedman, one can achieve both economic and political freedom through capitalism; nonetheless, it is never guaranteed that one is going to have equality of wealth of those on top of the "food chain" of this capitalistic world. All these alterations come to what the leaders of the citizens choose to impose in means of improving ones lifestyle. In the case of the Kyoto Protocol, it seeks to impose regulations that will reduce production of pollutants towards the environment. Furthermore, seeking to compromise the freedoms of both private and public citizens. In one side it imposes bigger regulations towards companies and reducing their profits as they need to fulfil such regulations with, which are oftentimes more expensive, alternatives for production. On the other hand, it seeks to reduce the emissions that cause the rapid environmental change called climate change.
The conditions of the Kyoto Protocol consist of mandatory targets on greenhouse gas emissions for the world's leading economies. As provided by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, "These targets range from −8 per cent to +10 per cent of the countries' individual 1990 emissions levels with a view to reducing their overall emissions of such gases by at least 5 per cent below existing 1990 levels in the commitment period 2008 to 2012."
China, India, Indonesia and Brazil were not required to reduce their CO2 emissions. The remaining signatory countries were not obliged to implement a common framework nor specific measures, but to reach an emission reduction target for which they can benefit of a secondary market for carbon credits multilaterally exchanged from each other. The Emissions-trading Scheme (ETS) allowed countries to host polluting industries and to buy from other countries the property of their environmental merits and virtuous patterns.
The Kyoto Protocol's goals are challenged, however, by climate change deniers, who condemn strong scientific evidence of the human impact on climate change. One prominent scholar opines that these climate change deniers "arguably" breach Rousseau's notion of the social contract, which is an implicit agreement among the members of a society to coordinate efforts in the name of overall social benefit. The climate change denial movement hinders efforts at coming to agreements as a collective global society on climate change.
A 2021 review considers both the institutional design and the political strategies that have affected the adoption of the Kyoto protocol. It concludes that the Kyoto protocol's relatively small impact on global carbon dioxide emissions reflects a number of factors, including "deliberate political strategy, unequal power, and the absence of leadership" among and within nations. The efforts of fossil fuel interests and conservative think tanks to spread disinformation and climate change denial have influenced public opinion and political action both within the United States and beyond it. The direct lobbying of fossil fuel companies and their funding of political actors have slowed political action to address climate change at regional, national, and international levels.
The official meeting of all states party to the Kyoto Protocol is the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It is held every year; it serves as the formal meeting of UNFCCC. Parties to the Convention may participate in Protocol-related meetings either as parties to the Protocol or as observers.
The first conference was held in 1995 in Berlin. The first Meeting of Parties of the Kyoto Protocol (CMP) was held in 2005 in conjunction with COP 11. The 2013 conference was held in Warsaw. Later COPs were held in Lima, Peru, in 2014 and in Paris, France, in 2015. The 2015 event, COP 21, aimed to hold the global average rise in temperature below 2 degrees Celsius. COP 22 was planned for Marrakesh, Morocco and COP 23 for Bonn, Germany.
In the non-binding "Washington Declaration" agreed on 16 February 2007, heads of governments from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa agreed in principle on the outline of a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. They envisaged a global cap-and-trade system that would apply to both industrialized nations and developing countries, and initially hoped that it would be in place by 2009.
The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009 was one of the annual series of UN meetings that followed the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio. In 1997 the talks led to the Kyoto Protocol, and the conference in Copenhagen was considered to be the opportunity to agree a successor to Kyoto that would bring about meaningful carbon cuts.
The 2010 Cancún agreements include voluntary pledges made by 76 developed and developing countries to control their emissions of greenhouse gases. In 2010, these 76 countries were collectively responsible for 85% of annual global emissions.
By May 2012, the US, Japan, Russia, and Canada had indicated they would not sign up to a second Kyoto commitment period. In November 2012, Australia confirmed it would participate in a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol and New Zealand confirmed that it would not.
New Zealand's climate minister Tim Groser said the 15-year-old Kyoto Protocol was outdated, and that New Zealand was "ahead of the curve" in looking for a replacement that would include developing nations. Non-profit environmental organisations such as the World Wildlife Fund criticised New Zealand's decision to pull out.
On 8 December 2012, at the end of the 2012 United Nations Climate Change Conference, an agreement was reached to extend the Protocol to 2020 and to set a date of 2015 for the development of a successor document, to be implemented from 2020 (see lede for more information). The outcome of the Doha talks has received a mixed response, with small island states critical of the overall package. The Kyoto second commitment period applies to about 11% of annual global emissions of greenhouse gases. Other results of the conference include a timetable for a global agreement to be adopted by 2015 which includes all countries. At the Doha meeting of the parties to the UNFCCC on 8 December 2012, the European Union chief climate negotiator, Artur Runge-Metzger, pledged to extend the treaty, binding on the 27 European Member States, up to the year 2020 pending an internal ratification procedure.
Ban Ki Moon, Secretary General of the United Nations, called on world leaders to come to an agreement on halting global warming during the 69th Session of the UN General Assembly on 23 September 2014 in New York. The next climate summit was held in Paris in 2015, out of which emerged the Paris Agreement, the successor to the Kyoto Protocol.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Kyoto Protocol (Japanese: 京都議定書, Hepburn: Kyōto Giteisho) was an international treaty which extended the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, based on the scientific consensus that global warming is occurring and that human-made CO2 emissions are driving it. The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, on 11 December 1997 and entered into force on 16 February 2005. There were 192 parties (Canada withdrew from the protocol, effective December 2012) to the Protocol in 2020.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The Kyoto Protocol implemented the objective of the UNFCCC to reduce the onset of global warming by reducing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere to \"a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system\" (Article 2). The Kyoto Protocol applied to the seven greenhouse gases listed in Annex A: carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), nitrogen trifluoride (NF3). Nitrogen trifluoride was added for the second compliance period during the Doha Round.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The Protocol was based on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities: it acknowledged that individual countries have different capabilities in combating climate change, owing to economic development, and therefore placed the obligation to reduce current emissions on developed countries on the basis that they are historically responsible for the current levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The Protocol's first commitment period started in 2008 and ended in 2012. All 36 countries that fully participated in the first commitment period complied with the Protocol. However, nine countries had to resort to the flexibility mechanisms by funding emission reductions in other countries because their national emissions were slightly greater than their targets. The financial crisis of 2007–08 reduced emissions. The greatest emission reductions were seen in the former Eastern Bloc countries because the dissolution of the Soviet Union reduced their emissions in the early 1990s. Even though the 36 developed countries reduced their emissions, the global emissions increased by 32% from 1990 to 2010.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "A second commitment period was agreed to in 2012 to extend the agreement to 2020, known as the Doha Amendment to the Kyoto Protocol, in which 37 countries had binding targets: Australia, the European Union (and its then 28 member states, now 27), Belarus, Iceland, Kazakhstan, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland, and Ukraine. Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine stated that they may withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol or not put into legal force the Amendment with second round targets. Japan, New Zealand, and Russia had participated in Kyoto's first-round but did not take on new targets in the second commitment period. Other developed countries without second-round targets were Canada (which withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol in 2012) and the United States (which did not ratify). Canada's decision to withdraw was to the dismay of Environment minister, Peter Kent. If they were to remain as a part of the protocol, Canada would be hit with a $14 billion fine, which would be devastating to their economy, hence the reluctant decision to exit. As of October 2020, 147 states had accepted the Doha Amendment. It entered into force on 31 December 2020, following its acceptance by the mandated minimum of at least 144 states, although the second commitment period ended on the same day. Of the 37 parties with binding commitments, 34 had ratified.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Negotiations were held in the framework of the yearly UNFCCC Climate Change Conferences on measures to be taken after the second commitment period ended in 2020. This resulted in the 2015 adoption of the Paris Agreement, which is a separate instrument under the UNFCCC rather than an amendment of the Kyoto Protocol.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The view that human activities are likely responsible for most of the observed increase in global mean temperature (\"global warming\") since the mid-20th century is an accurate reflection of current scientific thinking. Human-induced warming of the climate is expected to continue throughout the 21st century and beyond.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) have produced a range of projections of what the future increase in global mean temperature might be. The IPCC's projections are \"baseline\" projections, meaning that they assume no future efforts are made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The IPCC projections cover the time period from the beginning of the 21st century to the end of the 21st century. The \"likely\" range (as assessed to have a greater than 66% probability of being correct, based on the IPCC's expert judgment) is a projected increase in global mean temperature over the 21st century of between 1.1 and 6.4 °C.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The range in temperature projections partly reflects different projections of future greenhouse gas emissions. Different projections contain different assumptions of future social and economic development (economic growth, population level, energy policies), which in turn affects projections of future greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The range also reflects uncertainty in the response of the climate system to past and future GHG emissions (measured by the climate sensitivity).",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "1992 – The UN Conference on the Environment and Development is held in Rio de Janeiro. It results in the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) among other agreements.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "1995 – Parties to the UNFCCC meet in Berlin (the 1st Conference of Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC) to outline specific targets on emissions.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "1997 – In December the parties conclude the Kyoto Protocol in Kyoto, Japan, in which they agree to the broad outlines of emissions targets.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "2004 – Russia and Canada ratify the Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC bringing the treaty into effect on 16 February 2005.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "2011 – Canada became the first signatory to announce its withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "2012 – On 31 December 2012, the first commitment period under the Protocol expired.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Most countries are Parties to the UNFCCC. Article 2 of the Convention states its ultimate objective, which is to stabilize the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere \"at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic (human) interference with the climate system.\"",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The natural, technical and social sciences can provide information on decisions relating to this objective including the possible magnitude and rate of future climate changes. However, the IPCC has also concluded that the decision of what constitutes \"dangerous\" interference requires value judgements, which will vary between different regions of the world. Factors that might affect this decision include the local consequences of climate change impacts, the ability of a particular region to adapt to climate change (adaptive capacity), and the ability of a region to reduce its GHG emissions (mitigative capacity).",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The main goal of the Kyoto Protocol was to control emissions of the main anthropogenic (human-emitted) greenhouse gases (GHGs) in ways that reflect underlying national differences in GHG emissions, wealth, and capacity to make the reductions. The treaty follows the main principles agreed in the original 1992 UN Framework Convention. According to the treaty, in 2012, Annex I Parties who have ratified the treaty must have fulfilled their obligations of greenhouse gas emissions limitations established for the Kyoto Protocol's first commitment period (2008–2012). These emissions limitation commitments are listed in Annex B of the Protocol.",
"title": "Objectives"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The Kyoto Protocol's first round commitments are the first detailed step taken within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The Protocol establishes a structure of rolling emission reduction commitment periods. It set a timetable starting in 2006 for negotiations to establish emission reduction commitments for a second commitment period. The first period emission reduction commitments expired on 31 December 2012.",
"title": "Objectives"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The ultimate objective of the UNFCCC is the \"stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would stop dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.\" Even if Annex I Parties succeed in meeting their first-round commitments, much greater emission reductions will be required in future to stabilize atmospheric GHG concentrations.",
"title": "Objectives"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "For each of the different anthropogenic GHGs, different levels of emissions reductions would be required to meet the objective of stabilizing atmospheric concentrations. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most important anthropogenic GHG. Stabilizing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere would ultimately require the effective elimination of anthropogenic CO2 emissions.",
"title": "Objectives"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Some of the principal concepts of the Kyoto Protocol are:",
"title": "Objectives"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Under the Kyoto Protocol, 37 industrialized countries and the European Community (the European Union-15, made up of 15 states at the time of the Kyoto negotiations) commit themselves to binding targets for GHG emissions. The targets apply to the four greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), sulphur hexafluoride (SF6), and two groups of gases, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and perfluorocarbons (PFCs). The six GHG are translated into CO2 equivalents in determining reductions in emissions. These reduction targets are in addition to the industrial gases, chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, which are dealt with under the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.",
"title": "First commitment period: 2008–2012"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Under the Protocol, only the Annex I Parties have committed themselves to national or joint reduction targets (formally called \"quantified emission limitation and reduction objectives\" (QELRO) – Article 4.1). Parties to the Kyoto Protocol not listed in Annex I of the convention (the non-Annex I Parties) are mostly low-income developing countries, and may participate in the Kyoto Protocol through the Clean Development Mechanism (explained below).",
"title": "First commitment period: 2008–2012"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The emissions limitations of Annex I Parties varies between different Parties. Some Parties have emissions limitations reduce below the base year level, some have limitations at the base year level (no permitted increase above the base year level), while others have limitations above the base year level.",
"title": "First commitment period: 2008–2012"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Emission limits do not include emissions by international aviation and shipping. Although Belarus and Turkey are listed in the convention's Annex I, they do not have emissions targets as they were not Annex I Parties when the Protocol was adopted. Kazakhstan does not have a target, but has declared that it wishes to become an Annex I Party to the convention.",
"title": "First commitment period: 2008–2012"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "For most state parties, 1990 is the base year for the national GHG inventory and the calculation of the assigned amount. However, five state parties have an alternative base year:",
"title": "First commitment period: 2008–2012"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Annex I Parties can use a range of sophisticated \"flexibility\" mechanisms (see below) to meet their targets. Annex I Parties can achieve their targets by allocating reduced annual allowances to major operators within their borders, or by allowing these operators to exceed their allocations by offsetting any excess through a mechanism that is agreed by all the parties to the UNFCCC, such as by buying emission allowances from other operators which have excess emissions credits.",
"title": "First commitment period: 2008–2012"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The Protocol defines three \"flexibility mechanisms\" that can be used by Annex I Parties in meeting their emission limitation commitments. The flexibility mechanisms are International Emissions Trading (IET), the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), and Joint Implementation (JI). IET allows Annex I Parties to \"trade\" their emissions (Assigned Amount Units, AAUs, or \"allowances\" for short).",
"title": "Flexibility mechanisms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The economic basis for providing this flexibility is that the marginal cost of reducing (or abating) emissions differs among countries. \"Marginal cost\" is the cost of abating the last tonne of CO2-eq for an Annex I/non-Annex I Party. At the time of the original Kyoto targets, studies suggested that the flexibility mechanisms could reduce the overall (aggregate) cost of meeting the targets. Studies also showed that national losses in Annex I gross domestic product (GDP) could be reduced by the use of the flexibility mechanisms.",
"title": "Flexibility mechanisms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The CDM and JI are called \"project-based mechanisms\", in that they generate emission reductions from projects. The difference between IET and the project-based mechanisms is that IET is based on the setting of a quantitative restriction of emissions, while the CDM and JI are based on the idea of \"production\" of emission reductions. The CDM is designed to encourage production of emission reductions in non-Annex I Parties, while JI encourages production of emission reductions in Annex I Parties.",
"title": "Flexibility mechanisms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The production of emission reductions generated by the CDM and JI can be used by Annex I Parties in meeting their emission limitation commitments. The emission reductions produced by the CDM and JI are both measured against a hypothetical baseline of emissions that would have occurred in the absence of a particular emission reduction project. The emission reductions produced by the CDM are called Certified Emission Reductions (CERs); reductions produced by JI are called Emission Reduction Units (ERUs). The reductions are called \"credits\" because they are emission reductions credited against a hypothetical baseline of emissions.",
"title": "Flexibility mechanisms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Only emission reduction projects that do not involve using nuclear energy are eligible for accreditation under the CDM, in order to prevent nuclear technology exports from becoming the default route for obtaining credits under the CDM.",
"title": "Flexibility mechanisms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Each Annex I country is required to submit an annual report of inventories of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions from sources and removals from sinks under UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol. These countries nominate a person (called a \"designated national authority\") to create and manage its greenhouse gas inventory. Virtually all of the non-Annex I countries have also established a designated national authority to manage their Kyoto obligations, specifically the \"CDM process\". This determines which GHG projects they wish to propose for accreditation by the CDM Executive Board.",
"title": "Flexibility mechanisms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "A number of emissions trading schemes (ETS) have been, or are planned to be, implemented.",
"title": "Flexibility mechanisms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The design of the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) implicitly allows for trade of national Kyoto obligations to occur between participating countries. The Carbon Trust found that other than the trading that occurs as part of the EU ETS, no intergovernmental emissions trading had taken place.",
"title": "Flexibility mechanisms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "One of the environmental problems with IET is the large surplus of allowances that are available. Russia, Ukraine, and the new EU-12 member states (the Kyoto Parties Annex I Economies-in-Transition, abbreviated \"EIT\": Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine) have a surplus of allowances, while many OECD countries have a deficit. Some of the EITs with a surplus regard it as potential compensation for the trauma of their economic restructuring. When the Kyoto treaty was negotiated, it was recognized that emissions targets for the EITs might lead to them having an excess number of allowances. This excess of allowances were viewed by the EITs as \"headroom\" to grow their economies. The surplus has, however, also been referred to by some as \"hot air\", a term which Russia (a country with an estimated surplus of 3.1 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent allowances) views as \"quite offensive\".",
"title": "Flexibility mechanisms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "OECD countries with a deficit could meet their Kyoto commitments by buying allowances from transition countries with a surplus. Unless other commitments were made to reduce the total surplus in allowances, such trade would not actually result in emissions being reduced (see also the section below on the Green Investment Scheme).",
"title": "Flexibility mechanisms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "The \"Green Investment Scheme\" (GIS) is a plan for achieving environmental benefits from trading surplus allowances (AAUs) under the Kyoto Protocol. The Green Investment Scheme (GIS), a mechanism in the framework of International Emissions Trading (IET), is designed to achieve greater flexibility in reaching the targets of the Kyoto Protocol while preserving environmental integrity of IET. However, using the GIS is not required under the Kyoto Protocol, and there is no official definition of the term.",
"title": "Flexibility mechanisms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Under the GIS a party to the protocol expecting that the development of its economy will not exhaust its Kyoto quota, can sell the excess of its Kyoto quota units (AAUs) to another party. The proceeds from the AAU sales should be \"greened\", i.e. channelled to the development and implementation of the projects either acquiring the greenhouse gases emission reductions (hard greening) or building up the necessary framework for this process (soft greening).",
"title": "Flexibility mechanisms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Latvia was one of the front-runners of GISs. World Bank (2011) reported that Latvia has stopped offering AAU sales because of low AAU prices. In 2010, Estonia was the preferred source for AAU buyers, followed by the Czech Republic and Poland.",
"title": "Flexibility mechanisms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Japan's national policy to meet their Kyoto target includes the purchase of AAUs sold under GISs. In 2010, Japan and Japanese firms were the main buyers of AAUs. In terms of the international carbon market, trade in AAUs are a small proportion of overall market value. In 2010, 97% of trade in the international carbon market was driven by the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS).",
"title": "Flexibility mechanisms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Between 2001, which was the first year Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects could be registered, and 2012, the end of the first Kyoto commitment period, the CDM is expected to produce some 1.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) in emission reductions. Most of these reductions are through renewable energy commercialisation, energy efficiency, and fuel switching (World Bank, 2010, p. 262). By 2012, the largest potential for production of CERs are estimated in China (52% of total CERs) and India (16%). CERs produced in Latin America and the Caribbean make up 15% of the potential total, with Brazil as the largest producer in the region (7%).",
"title": "Flexibility mechanisms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The formal crediting period for Joint Implementation (JI) was aligned with the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, and did not start until January 2008 (Carbon Trust, 2009, p. 20). In November 2008, only 22 JI projects had been officially approved and registered. The total projected emission savings from JI by 2012 are about one tenth that of the CDM. Russia accounts for about two-thirds of these savings, with the remainder divided up roughly equally between Ukraine and the EU's New Member States. Emission savings include cuts in methane, HFC, and N2O emissions.",
"title": "Flexibility mechanisms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "As noted earlier on, the first-round Kyoto emissions limitation commitments are not sufficient to stabilize the atmospheric concentration of GHGs. Stabilization of atmospheric GHG concentrations will require further emissions reductions after the end of the first-round Kyoto commitment period in 2012.",
"title": "Stabilization of GHG concentrations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Analysts have developed scenarios of future changes in GHG emissions that lead to a stabilization in the atmospheric concentrations of GHGs. Climate models suggest that lower stabilization levels are associated with lower magnitudes of future global warming, while higher stabilization levels are associated with higher magnitudes of future global warming (see figure opposite).",
"title": "Stabilization of GHG concentrations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "To achieve stabilization, global GHG emissions must peak, then decline. The lower the desired stabilization level, the sooner this peak and decline must occur (see figure opposite). For a given stabilization level, larger emissions reductions in the near term allow for less stringent emissions reductions later. On the other hand, less stringent near term emissions reductions would, for a given stabilization level, require more stringent emissions reductions later on.",
"title": "Stabilization of GHG concentrations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The first period Kyoto emissions limitations can be viewed as a first-step towards achieving atmospheric stabilization of GHGs. In this sense, the first period Kyoto commitments may affect what future atmospheric stabilization level can be achieved.",
"title": "Stabilization of GHG concentrations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "At the 16th Conference of the Parties held in 2010, Parties to the UNFCCC agreed that future global warming should be limited below 2°C relative to the pre-industrial temperature level. One of the stabilization levels discussed in relation to this temperature target is to hold atmospheric concentrations of GHGs at 450 parts per million (ppm) CO2- eq. Stabilization at 450 ppm could be associated with a 26 to 78% risk of exceeding the 2 °C target.",
"title": "Stabilization of GHG concentrations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Scenarios assessed by Gupta et al. (2007) suggest that Annex I emissions would need to be 25% to 40% below 1990 levels by 2020, and 80% to 95% below 1990 levels by 2050. The only Annex I Parties to have made voluntary pledges in line with this are Japan (25% below 1990 levels by 2020) and Norway (30–40% below 1990 levels by 2020).",
"title": "Stabilization of GHG concentrations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Gupta et al. (2007) also looked at what 450 ppm scenarios projected for non-Annex I Parties. Projections indicated that by 2020, non-Annex I emissions in several regions (Latin America, the Middle East, East Asia, and centrally planned Asia) would need to be substantially reduced below \"business-as-usual\". \"Business-as-usual\" are projected non-Annex I emissions in the absence of any new policies to control emissions. Projections indicated that by 2050, emissions in all non-Annex I regions would need to be substantially reduced below \"business-as-usual\".",
"title": "Stabilization of GHG concentrations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The agreement is a protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) adopted at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, which did not set any legally binding limitations on emissions or enforcement mechanisms. Only Parties to the UNFCCC can become Parties to the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol was adopted at the third session of the Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan.",
"title": "Details of the agreement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "National emission targets specified in the Kyoto Protocol exclude international aviation and shipping. Kyoto Parties can use land use, land use change, and forestry (LULUCF) in meeting their targets. LULUCF activities are also called \"sink\" activities. Changes in sinks and land use can have an effect on the climate, and indeed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Special Report on Land use, land-use change, and forestry estimates that since 1750 a third of global warming has been caused by land use change. Particular criteria apply to the definition of forestry under the Kyoto Protocol.",
"title": "Details of the agreement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Forest management, cropland management, grazing land management, and revegetation are all eligible LULUCF activities under the Protocol. Annex I Parties use of forest management in meeting their targets is capped.",
"title": "Details of the agreement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Article 4.2 of the UNFCCC commits industrialized countries to \"[take] the lead\" in reducing emissions. The initial aim was for industrialized countries to stabilize their emissions at 1990 levels by 2000. The failure of key industrialized countries to move in this direction was a principal reason why Kyoto moved to binding commitments.",
"title": "Details of the agreement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "At the first UNFCCC Conference of the Parties in Berlin, the G77 was able to push for a mandate (the \"Berlin mandate\") where it was recognized that:",
"title": "Details of the agreement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "During negotiations, the G-77 represented 133 developing countries. China was not a member of the group but an associate. It has since become a member.",
"title": "Details of the agreement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "The Berlin mandate was recognized in the Kyoto Protocol in that developing countries were not subject to emission reduction commitments in the first Kyoto commitment period. However, the large potential for growth in developing country emissions made negotiations on this issue tense. In the final agreement, the Clean Development Mechanism was designed to limit emissions in developing countries, but in such a way that developing countries do not bear the costs for limiting emissions. The general assumption was that developing countries would face quantitative commitments in later commitment periods, and at the same time, developed countries would meet their first round commitments.",
"title": "Details of the agreement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "There were multiple emissions cuts proposed by UNFCCC parties during negotiations. The G77 and China were in favour of strong uniform emission cuts across the developed world. The US originally proposed for the second round of negotiations on Kyoto commitments to follow the negotiations of the first. In the end, negotiations on the second period were set to open no later than 2005. Countries over-achieving in their first period commitments can \"bank\" their unused allowances for use in the subsequent period.",
"title": "Details of the agreement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The EU initially argued for only three GHGs to be included – CO2, CH4, and N2O – with other gases such as HFCs regulated separately. The EU also wanted to have a \"bubble\" commitment, whereby it could make a collective commitment that allowed some EU members to increase their emissions, while others cut theirs.",
"title": "Details of the agreement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "The most vulnerable nations – the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) – pushed for deep uniform cuts by developed nations, with the goal of having emissions reduced to the greatest possible extent. Countries that had supported differentiation of targets had different ideas as to how it should be calculated, and many different indicators were proposed. Two examples include differentiation of targets based on gross domestic product (GDP), and differentiation based on energy intensity (energy use per unit of economic output).",
"title": "Details of the agreement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "The final targets negotiated in the Protocol are the result of last minute political compromises. The targets closely match those decided by Argentinian Raul Estrada, the diplomat who chaired the negotiations. The numbers given to each Party by Chairman Estrada were based on targets already pledged by Parties, information received on latest negotiating positions, and the goal of achieving the strongest possible environmental outcome. The final targets are weaker than those proposed by some Parties, e.g., the Alliance of Small Island States and the G-77 and China, but stronger than the targets proposed by others, e.g., Canada and the United States.",
"title": "Details of the agreement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "The Protocol also reaffirms the principle that developed countries have to pay billions of dollars, and supply technology to other countries for climate-related studies and projects. The principle was originally agreed in UNFCCC. One such project is The Adaptation Fund, which has been established by the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to finance concrete adaptation projects and programmes in developing countries that are Parties to the Kyoto Protocol.",
"title": "Details of the agreement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "The protocol left several issues open to be decided later by the sixth Conference of Parties COP6 of the UNFCCC, which attempted to resolve these issues at its meeting in the Hague in late 2000, but it was unable to reach an agreement due to disputes between the European Union (who favoured a tougher implementation) and the United States, Canada, Japan and Australia (who wanted the agreement to be less demanding and more flexible).",
"title": "Details of the agreement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "In 2001, a continuation of the previous meeting (COP6-bis) was held in Bonn, where the required decisions were adopted. After some concessions, the supporters of the protocol (led by the European Union) managed to secure the agreement of Japan and Russia by allowing more use of carbon dioxide sinks.",
"title": "Details of the agreement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "COP7 was held from 29 October 2001 through 9 November 2001 in Marrakech to establish the final details of the protocol.",
"title": "Details of the agreement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "The first Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (MOP1) was held in Montreal from 28 November to 9 December 2005, along with the 11th conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP11). See United Nations Climate Change Conference.",
"title": "Details of the agreement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "During COP13 in Bali, 36 developed Contact Group countries (plus the EU as a party in the European Union) agreed to a 10% emissions increase for Iceland; but, since the EU's member states each have individual obligations, much larger increases (up to 27%) are allowed for some of the less developed EU countries (see below § Increase in greenhouse gas emission since 1990). Reduction limitations expired in 2013.",
"title": "Details of the agreement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "The protocol defines a mechanism of \"compliance\" as a \"monitoring compliance with the commitments and penalties for non-compliance.\" According to Grubb (2003), the explicit consequences of non-compliance of the treaty are weak compared to domestic law. Yet, the compliance section of the treaty was highly contested in the Marrakesh Accords.",
"title": "Details of the agreement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Monitoring emissions in international agreements is tough as in international law, there is no police power, creating the incentive for states to find 'ways around' monitoring. The Kyoto Protocol regulated 6 sinks and sources of Gases. Carbon dioxide, Methane, Nirous oxide, Hydroflurocarbons, Sulfur hexafluouride and Perfluorocarbons. Monitoring these gases can become quite a challenge. Methane can be monitored and measured from irrigated rice fields and can be measured by the seedling growing up to harvest. Future implications state that this can be affected by more cost effective ways to control emissions as changes in types of fertilizer can reduce emissions by 50%. In addition to this, many countries are unable to monitor certain ways of carbon absorption through trees and soils to an accurate level.",
"title": "Details of the agreement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "If the enforcement branch determines that an Annex I country is not in compliance with its emissions limitation, then that country is required to make up the difference during the second commitment period plus an additional 30%. In addition, that country will be suspended from making transfers under an emissions trading program.",
"title": "Details of the agreement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "The Protocol was adopted by COP 3 of UNFCCC on 11 December 1997 in Kyoto, Japan. It was opened on 16 March 1998 for signature during one year by parties to UNFCCC, when it was signed Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, the Maldives, Samoa, St. Lucia and Switzerland. At the end of the signature period, 82 countries and the European Community had signed. Ratification (which is required to become a party to the Protocol) started on 17 September with ratification by Fiji. Countries that did not sign acceded to the convention, which has the same legal effect.",
"title": "Ratification process"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Article 25 of the Protocol specifies that the Protocol enters into force \"on the ninetieth day after the date on which not less than 55 Parties to the Convention, incorporating Parties included in Annex I which accounted in total for at least 55% of the total carbon dioxide emissions for 1990 of the Annex I countries, have deposited their instruments of ratification, acceptance, approval or accession.\"",
"title": "Ratification process"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "The EU and its Member States ratified the Protocol in May 2002. Of the two conditions, the \"55 parties\" clause was reached on 23 May 2002 when Iceland ratified the Protocol. The ratification by Russia on 18 November 2004 satisfied the \"55%\" clause and brought the treaty into force, effective 16 February 2005, after the required lapse of 90 days.",
"title": "Ratification process"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "As of May 2013, 191 countries and one regional economic organization (the EC) have ratified the agreement, representing over 61.6% of the 1990 emissions from Annex I countries. One of the 191 ratifying states—Canada—has renounced the protocol.",
"title": "Ratification process"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "The US signed the Protocol on 12 November 1998, during the Clinton presidency. To become binding in the US, however, the treaty had to be ratified by the Senate, which had already passed the 1997 non-binding Byrd-Hagel Resolution, expressing disapproval of any international agreement that did not require developing countries to make emission reductions and \"would seriously harm the economy of the United States\". The resolution passed 95–0. Therefore, even though the Clinton administration signed the treaty, it was never submitted to the Senate for ratification.",
"title": "Ratification process"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "At the outset of the Bush administration, Senators Chuck Hagel, Jesse Helms, Larry Craig, and Pat Roberts wrote a letter to President George W. Bush seeking to identify his position on the Kyoto Protocol and climate change policy. In a letter dated March 13, 2001, President Bush responded that his \"Administration takes the issue of global climate change very seriously\", but that \"I oppose the Kyoto Protocol because it exempts 80 percent of the world, including major population centers such as China and India, from compliance, and would cause serious harm to the U.S. economy. The Senate's vote, 95-0, shows that there is a clear consensus that the Kyoto Protocol is an unfair and ineffective means of addressing global climate change concerns.\" The administration also questioned the scientific certainty around climate change and cited potential harms of emissions reduction to the US economy.",
"title": "Ratification process"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research reported in 2001:",
"title": "Ratification process"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "This policy reversal received a massive wave of criticism that was quickly picked up by the international media. Environmental groups blasted the White House, while Europeans and Japanese alike expressed deep concern and regret. ... Almost all world leaders (e.g. China, Japan, South Africa, Pacific Islands, etc.) expressed their disappointment at Bush's decision.",
"title": "Ratification process"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "In response to this criticism, Bush stated: \"I was responding to reality, and reality is the nation has got a real problem when it comes to energy\". The Tyndall Centre called this \"an overstatement used to cover up the big benefactors of this policy reversal, i.e., the US oil and coal industry, which has a powerful lobby with the administration and conservative Republican congressmen.\"",
"title": "Ratification process"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "As of 2023, the US is the only signatory that has not ratified the Protocol. The US accounted for 36.1% of emissions in 1990. As such, for the treaty to go into legal effect without US ratification, it would require a coalition including the EU, Russia, Japan, and small parties. A deal, without the US Administration, was reached in the Bonn climate talks (COP-6.5), held in 2001.",
"title": "Ratification process"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "In 2011, Canada, Japan and Russia stated that they would not take on further Kyoto targets. The Canadian government announced its withdrawal—possible at any time three years after ratification—from the Kyoto Protocol on 12 December 2011, effective 15 December 2012. Canada was committed to cutting its greenhouse emissions to 6% below 1990 levels by 2012, but in 2009 emissions were 17% higher than in 1990. The Harper government prioritized oil sands development in Alberta, and deprioritized the reduction of greenhouse emissions. Environment minister Peter Kent cited Canada's liability to \"enormous financial penalties\" under the treaty unless it withdrew. He also suggested that the recently signed Durban agreement may provide an alternative way forward. The Harper government claimed it would find a \"Made in Canada\" solution. Canada's decision received a generally negative response from representatives of other ratifying countries.",
"title": "Ratification process"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Andorra, Palestine, South Sudan, the United States and, following their withdrawal on 15 December 2012, Canada are the only UNFCCC Parties that are not party to the Protocol. Furthermore, the Protocol is not applied to UNFCCC observer the Holy See. Although the Kingdom of the Netherlands approved the protocol for the whole Kingdom, it did not deposit an instrument of ratification for Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten or the Caribbean Netherlands.",
"title": "Ratification process"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Total aggregate GHG emissions excluding emissions/removals from land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF, i.e., carbon storage in forests and soils) for all Annex I Parties (see list below) including the United States taken together decreased from 19.0 to 17.8 thousand teragrams (Tg, which is equal to 10 kg) CO2 equivalent, a decline of 6.0% during the 1990–2008 period. Several factors have contributed to this decline. The first is due to the economic restructuring in the Annex I Economies in Transition (the EITs – see Intergovernmental Emissions Trading for the list of EITs). Over the period 1990–1999, emissions fell by 40% in the EITs following the collapse of central planning in the former Soviet Union and east European countries. This led to a massive contraction of their heavy industry-based economies, with associated reductions in their fossil fuel consumption and emissions.",
"title": "Government action and emissions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Emissions growth in Annex I Parties have also been limited due to policies and measures (PaMs). In particular, PaMs were strengthened after 2000, helping to enhance energy efficiency and develop renewable energy sources. Energy use also decreased during the economic crisis in 2007–2008.",
"title": "Government action and emissions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Collectively the group of industrialized countries committed to a Kyoto target, i.e., the Annex I countries excluding the US, had a target of reducing their GHG emissions by 4.2% on average for the period 2008–2012 relative to the base year, which in most cases is 1990.",
"title": "Government action and emissions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "As noted in the preceding section, between 1990 and 1999, there was a large reduction in the emissions of the EITs. The reduction in the EITs is largely responsible for the total (aggregate) reduction (excluding LULUCF) in emissions of the Annex I countries, excluding the US. Emissions of the Annex II countries (Annex I minus the EIT countries) have experienced a limited increase in emissions from 1990 to 2006, followed by stabilization and a more marked decrease from 2007 onwards. The emissions reductions in the early nineties by the 12 EIT countries who have since joined the EU, assist the present EU-27 in meeting its collective Kyoto target.",
"title": "Government action and emissions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "In December 2011, Canada's environment minister, Peter Kent, formally announced that Canada would withdraw from the Kyoto accord a day after the end of the 2011 United Nations Climate Change Conference (see the section on the withdrawal of Canada).",
"title": "Government action and emissions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Belarus, Malta, and Turkey are Annex I Parties but did not have first-round Kyoto targets. The US had a Kyoto target of a 7% reduction relative to the 1990 level, but has not ratified the treaty. If the US had ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the average percentage reduction in total GHG emissions for the Annex I group would have been a 5.2% reduction relative to the base year.",
"title": "Government action and emissions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "38 developed countries committed to limiting their greenhouse gas emissions. Because the United States did not ratify and Canada withdrew, the emission limits remained in force for 36 countries. All of them complied with the Protocol. However, nine countries (Austria, Denmark, Iceland, Japan, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Norway, Spain and Switzerland) had to resort to the flexibility mechanisms because their national emissions were slightly greater than their targets.",
"title": "Government action and emissions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "In total, the 36 countries that fully participated in the Protocol were committed to reducing their aggregate emissions by 4% from the 1990 base year. Their average annual emissions in 2008–2012 were 24.2% below the 1990 level. Hence, they surpassed their aggregate commitment by a large margin. If the United States and Canada are included, the emissions decreased by 11.8%. The large reductions were mainly thanks to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which reduced the emissions of the Eastern Bloc by tens of percents in the early 1990s. In addition, the financial crisis of 2007–08 significantly reduced emissions during the first Kyoto commitment period.",
"title": "Government action and emissions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "The 36 countries that were committed to emission reductions only accounted for 24% of the global greenhouse gas emissions in 2010. Even though these countries significantly reduced their emissions during the Kyoto commitment period, other countries increased their emissions so much that the global emissions increased by 32% from 1990 to 2010.",
"title": "Government action and emissions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "UNFCCC (2005) compiled and synthesized information reported to it by non-Annex I Parties. Most non-Annex I Parties belonged in the low-income group, with very few classified as middle-income. Most Parties included information on policies relating to sustainable development. Sustainable development priorities mentioned by non-Annex I Parties included poverty alleviation and access to basic education and health care. Many non-Annex I Parties are making efforts to amend and update their environmental legislation to include global concerns such as climate change.",
"title": "Government action and emissions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "A few Parties, e.g., South Africa and Iran, stated their concern over how efforts to reduce emissions by Annex I Parties could adversely affect their economies. The economies of these countries are highly dependent on income generated from the production, processing, and export of fossil fuels.",
"title": "Government action and emissions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Emissions",
"title": "Government action and emissions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "GHG emissions, excluding land use change and forestry (LUCF), reported by 122 non-Annex I Parties for the year 1994 or the closest year reported, totalled 11.7 billion tonnes (billion = 1,000,000,000) of CO2-eq. CO2 was the largest proportion of emissions (63%), followed by methane (26%) and nitrous oxide (N2O) (11%).",
"title": "Government action and emissions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "The energy sector was the largest source of emissions for 70 Parties, whereas for 45 Parties the agriculture sector was the largest. Per capita emissions (in tonnes of CO2-eq, excluding LUCF) averaged 2.8 tonnes for the 122 non-Annex I Parties.",
"title": "Government action and emissions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "Parties reported a high level of uncertainty in LUCF emissions, but in aggregate, there appeared to only be a small difference of 1.7% with and without LUCF. With LUCF, emissions were 11.9 billion tonnes, without LUCF, total aggregate emissions were 11.7 billion tonnes.",
"title": "Government action and emissions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "Trends",
"title": "Government action and emissions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "In several large developing countries and fast growing economies (China, India, Thailand, Indonesia, Egypt, and Iran) GHG emissions have increased rapidly (PBL, 2009). For example, emissions in China have risen strongly over the 1990–2005 period, often by more than 10% year. Emissions per-capita in non-Annex I countries are still, for the most part, much lower than in industrialized countries. Non-Annex I countries do not have quantitative emission reduction commitments, but they are committed to mitigation actions. China, for example, has had a national policy programme to reduce emissions growth, which included the closure of old, less efficient coal-fired power plants.",
"title": "Government action and emissions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "Barker et al. (2007, p. 79) assessed the literature on cost estimates for the Kyoto Protocol. Due to US non-participation in the Kyoto treaty, costs estimates were found to be much lower than those estimated in the previous IPCC Third Assessment Report. Without the US participation, and with full use of the Kyoto flexible mechanisms, costs were estimated at less than 0.05% of Annex B GDP. This compared to earlier estimates of 0.1–1.1%. Without use of the flexible mechanisms, costs without the US participation were estimated at less than 0.1%. This compared to earlier estimates of 0.2–2%. These cost estimates were viewed as being based on much evidence and high agreement in the literature.",
"title": "Cost estimates"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "Gupta et al. (2007) assessed the literature on climate change policy. They found that no authoritative assessments of the UNFCCC or its Protocol asserted that these agreements had, or will, succeed in solving the climate problem. In these assessments, it was assumed that the UNFCCC or its Protocol would not be changed. The Framework Convention and its Protocol include provisions for future policy actions to be taken.",
"title": "Views on the Protocol"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "Gupta et al. (2007) described the Kyoto first-round commitments as \"modest\", stating that they acted as a constraint on the treaty's effectiveness. It was suggested that subsequent Kyoto commitments could be made more effective with measures aimed at achieving deeper cuts in emissions, as well as having policies applied to a larger share of global emissions. In 2008, countries with a Kyoto cap made up less than one-third of annual global carbon dioxide emissions from fuel combustion.",
"title": "Views on the Protocol"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "World Bank (2010) commented on how the Kyoto Protocol had only had a slight effect on curbing global emissions growth. The treaty was negotiated in 1997, but in 2006, energy-related carbon dioxide emissions had grown by 24%. World Bank (2010) also stated that the treaty had provided only limited financial support to developing countries to assist them in reducing their emissions and adapting to climate change.",
"title": "Views on the Protocol"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "Some of the criticism of the Protocol has been based on the idea of climate justice (Liverman, 2008, p. 14).",
"title": "Views on the Protocol"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "This has particularly centered on the balance between the low emissions and high vulnerability of the developing world to climate change, compared to high emissions in the developed world. Another criticism of the Kyoto Protocol and other international conventions, is the right of indigenous peoples right to participate. Quoted here from The Declaration of the First International Forum of Indigenous Peoples on Climate Change, it says \"Despite the recognition of our role in preventing global warming, when it comes time to sign international conventions like the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, once again, our right to participate in national and international discussions that directly affect our Peoples and territories is denied.\" Additionally, later in the declaration, it reads:",
"title": "Views on the Protocol"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "We denounce the fact that neither the [United Nations] nor the Kyoto Protocol recognizes the existence or the contributions of Indigenous Peoples. Furthermore, the debates under these instruments have not considered the suggestions and proposals of the Indigenous Peoples nor have the appropriate mechanisms to guarantee our participation in all the debates that directly concern the Indigenous Peoples has been established.",
"title": "Views on the Protocol"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "Some environmentalists have supported the Kyoto Protocol because it is \"the only game in town\", and possibly because they expect that future emission reduction commitments may demand more stringent emission reductions (Aldy et al.., 2003, p. 9). In 2001, seventeen national science academies stated that ratification of the Protocol represented a \"small but essential first step towards stabilising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.\" Some environmentalists and scientists have criticized the existing commitments for being too weak (Grubb, 2000, p. 5).",
"title": "Views on the Protocol"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "The United States (under former President George W. Bush) and Australia (initially, under former Prime Minister John Howard) did not ratify the Kyoto treaty. According to Stern (2006), their decision was based on the lack of quantitative emission commitments for emerging economies (see also the 2000 onwards section). Australia, under former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, has since ratified the treaty, which took effect in March 2008.",
"title": "Views on the Protocol"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "Another area which has been commented on is the role of the Kyoto flexibility mechanisms – carbon emission trading, Joint Implementation, and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The flexibility mechanisms have attracted both positive and negative comments.",
"title": "Views on the Protocol"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "One of the arguments made in favour of the flexibility mechanisms is that they can reduce the costs incurred by Annex I Parties in meeting their Kyoto commitments. Criticisms of flexibility have, for example, included the ineffectiveness of emissions trading in promoting investment in non-fossil energy sources, and adverse impacts of CDM projects on local communities in developing countries.",
"title": "Views on the Protocol"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "As the Kyoto Protocol seeks to reduce environmental pollutants while at the same time altering the freedoms of some citizens.",
"title": "Views on the Protocol"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "As discussed by Milton Friedman, one can achieve both economic and political freedom through capitalism; nonetheless, it is never guaranteed that one is going to have equality of wealth of those on top of the \"food chain\" of this capitalistic world. All these alterations come to what the leaders of the citizens choose to impose in means of improving ones lifestyle. In the case of the Kyoto Protocol, it seeks to impose regulations that will reduce production of pollutants towards the environment. Furthermore, seeking to compromise the freedoms of both private and public citizens. In one side it imposes bigger regulations towards companies and reducing their profits as they need to fulfil such regulations with, which are oftentimes more expensive, alternatives for production. On the other hand, it seeks to reduce the emissions that cause the rapid environmental change called climate change.",
"title": "Views on the Protocol"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "The conditions of the Kyoto Protocol consist of mandatory targets on greenhouse gas emissions for the world's leading economies. As provided by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, \"These targets range from −8 per cent to +10 per cent of the countries' individual 1990 emissions levels with a view to reducing their overall emissions of such gases by at least 5 per cent below existing 1990 levels in the commitment period 2008 to 2012.\"",
"title": "Views on the Protocol"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "China, India, Indonesia and Brazil were not required to reduce their CO2 emissions. The remaining signatory countries were not obliged to implement a common framework nor specific measures, but to reach an emission reduction target for which they can benefit of a secondary market for carbon credits multilaterally exchanged from each other. The Emissions-trading Scheme (ETS) allowed countries to host polluting industries and to buy from other countries the property of their environmental merits and virtuous patterns.",
"title": "Views on the Protocol"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "The Kyoto Protocol's goals are challenged, however, by climate change deniers, who condemn strong scientific evidence of the human impact on climate change. One prominent scholar opines that these climate change deniers \"arguably\" breach Rousseau's notion of the social contract, which is an implicit agreement among the members of a society to coordinate efforts in the name of overall social benefit. The climate change denial movement hinders efforts at coming to agreements as a collective global society on climate change.",
"title": "Views on the Protocol"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "A 2021 review considers both the institutional design and the political strategies that have affected the adoption of the Kyoto protocol. It concludes that the Kyoto protocol's relatively small impact on global carbon dioxide emissions reflects a number of factors, including \"deliberate political strategy, unequal power, and the absence of leadership\" among and within nations. The efforts of fossil fuel interests and conservative think tanks to spread disinformation and climate change denial have influenced public opinion and political action both within the United States and beyond it. The direct lobbying of fossil fuel companies and their funding of political actors have slowed political action to address climate change at regional, national, and international levels.",
"title": "Views on the Protocol"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "The official meeting of all states party to the Kyoto Protocol is the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It is held every year; it serves as the formal meeting of UNFCCC. Parties to the Convention may participate in Protocol-related meetings either as parties to the Protocol or as observers.",
"title": "Conference of the Parties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "The first conference was held in 1995 in Berlin. The first Meeting of Parties of the Kyoto Protocol (CMP) was held in 2005 in conjunction with COP 11. The 2013 conference was held in Warsaw. Later COPs were held in Lima, Peru, in 2014 and in Paris, France, in 2015. The 2015 event, COP 21, aimed to hold the global average rise in temperature below 2 degrees Celsius. COP 22 was planned for Marrakesh, Morocco and COP 23 for Bonn, Germany.",
"title": "Conference of the Parties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "In the non-binding \"Washington Declaration\" agreed on 16 February 2007, heads of governments from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa agreed in principle on the outline of a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. They envisaged a global cap-and-trade system that would apply to both industrialized nations and developing countries, and initially hoped that it would be in place by 2009.",
"title": "Amendment and successor"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009 was one of the annual series of UN meetings that followed the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio. In 1997 the talks led to the Kyoto Protocol, and the conference in Copenhagen was considered to be the opportunity to agree a successor to Kyoto that would bring about meaningful carbon cuts.",
"title": "Amendment and successor"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "The 2010 Cancún agreements include voluntary pledges made by 76 developed and developing countries to control their emissions of greenhouse gases. In 2010, these 76 countries were collectively responsible for 85% of annual global emissions.",
"title": "Amendment and successor"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "By May 2012, the US, Japan, Russia, and Canada had indicated they would not sign up to a second Kyoto commitment period. In November 2012, Australia confirmed it would participate in a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol and New Zealand confirmed that it would not.",
"title": "Amendment and successor"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "New Zealand's climate minister Tim Groser said the 15-year-old Kyoto Protocol was outdated, and that New Zealand was \"ahead of the curve\" in looking for a replacement that would include developing nations. Non-profit environmental organisations such as the World Wildlife Fund criticised New Zealand's decision to pull out.",
"title": "Amendment and successor"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "On 8 December 2012, at the end of the 2012 United Nations Climate Change Conference, an agreement was reached to extend the Protocol to 2020 and to set a date of 2015 for the development of a successor document, to be implemented from 2020 (see lede for more information). The outcome of the Doha talks has received a mixed response, with small island states critical of the overall package. The Kyoto second commitment period applies to about 11% of annual global emissions of greenhouse gases. Other results of the conference include a timetable for a global agreement to be adopted by 2015 which includes all countries. At the Doha meeting of the parties to the UNFCCC on 8 December 2012, the European Union chief climate negotiator, Artur Runge-Metzger, pledged to extend the treaty, binding on the 27 European Member States, up to the year 2020 pending an internal ratification procedure.",
"title": "Amendment and successor"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 125,
"text": "Ban Ki Moon, Secretary General of the United Nations, called on world leaders to come to an agreement on halting global warming during the 69th Session of the UN General Assembly on 23 September 2014 in New York. The next climate summit was held in Paris in 2015, out of which emerged the Paris Agreement, the successor to the Kyoto Protocol.",
"title": "Amendment and successor"
}
] |
The Kyoto Protocol was an international treaty which extended the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, based on the scientific consensus that global warming is occurring and that human-made CO2 emissions are driving it. The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, on 11 December 1997 and entered into force on 16 February 2005. There were 192 parties to the Protocol in 2020. The Kyoto Protocol implemented the objective of the UNFCCC to reduce the onset of global warming by reducing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere to "a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system". The Kyoto Protocol applied to the seven greenhouse gases listed in Annex A: carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), nitrogen trifluoride (NF3). Nitrogen trifluoride was added for the second compliance period during the Doha Round. The Protocol was based on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities: it acknowledged that individual countries have different capabilities in combating climate change, owing to economic development, and therefore placed the obligation to reduce current emissions on developed countries on the basis that they are historically responsible for the current levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The Protocol's first commitment period started in 2008 and ended in 2012. All 36 countries that fully participated in the first commitment period complied with the Protocol. However, nine countries had to resort to the flexibility mechanisms by funding emission reductions in other countries because their national emissions were slightly greater than their targets. The financial crisis of 2007–08 reduced emissions. The greatest emission reductions were seen in the former Eastern Bloc countries because the dissolution of the Soviet Union reduced their emissions in the early 1990s. Even though the 36 developed countries reduced their emissions, the global emissions increased by 32% from 1990 to 2010. A second commitment period was agreed to in 2012 to extend the agreement to 2020, known as the Doha Amendment to the Kyoto Protocol, in which 37 countries had binding targets: Australia, the European Union, Belarus, Iceland, Kazakhstan, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland, and Ukraine. Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine stated that they may withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol or not put into legal force the Amendment with second round targets. Japan, New Zealand, and Russia had participated in Kyoto's first-round but did not take on new targets in the second commitment period. Other developed countries without second-round targets were Canada and the United States. Canada's decision to withdraw was to the dismay of Environment minister, Peter Kent. If they were to remain as a part of the protocol, Canada would be hit with a $14 billion fine, which would be devastating to their economy, hence the reluctant decision to exit. As of October 2020, 147 states had accepted the Doha Amendment. It entered into force on 31 December 2020, following its acceptance by the mandated minimum of at least 144 states, although the second commitment period ended on the same day. Of the 37 parties with binding commitments, 34 had ratified. Negotiations were held in the framework of the yearly UNFCCC Climate Change Conferences on measures to be taken after the second commitment period ended in 2020. This resulted in the 2015 adoption of the Paris Agreement, which is a separate instrument under the UNFCCC rather than an amendment of the Kyoto Protocol.
|
2001-11-11T14:47:46Z
|
2023-12-28T13:45:20Z
|
[
"Template:Pollution sidebar",
"Template:Nihongo",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:ISBNT",
"Template:See also",
"Template:Multiple image",
"Template:CO2",
"Template:Failed verification",
"Template:Section link",
"Template:Portal",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Legend",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Cite press release",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Climate change and society",
"Template:Chem2",
"Template:Update section",
"Template:Citation",
"Template:Global warming",
"Template:Pollution",
"Template:About",
"Template:Further",
"Template:Col div",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Commons category",
"Template:Refbegin",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Infobox Treaty",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Rp",
"Template:Hidden begin",
"Template:Colend",
"Template:Sfn",
"Template:Hidden end",
"Template:Harvnb",
"Template:Dead link",
"Template:Refend",
"Template:Wikisource"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol
|
16,776 |
Kaddish
|
The Kaddish (Hebrew: קדיש, 'holy' or 'sanctification'), also transliterated as Qaddish or Qadish, is a hymn praising God that is recited during Jewish prayer services. The central theme of the Kaddish is the magnification and sanctification of God's name. In the liturgy, different versions of the Kaddish are functionally chanted or sung as separators of the different sections of the service.
The term Kaddish is often used to refer specifically to "The Mourner's Kaddish," which is chanted as part of the mourning rituals in Judaism in all prayer services, as well as at funerals (other than at the gravesite; see Kaddish acher kevurah "Qaddish after Burial") and memorials; for 11 Hebrew months after the death of a parent; and in some communities for 30 days after the death of a spouse, sibling, or child. When mention is made of "saying Kaddish", this often refers to the rituals of mourning. Mourners recite Kaddish to show that despite the loss they still praise God.
Along with the Shema Yisrael and the Amidah, the Kaddish is one of the most important and central elements in the Jewish liturgy. Kaddish is not, traditionally, recited alone. Along with some other prayers, it traditionally can only be recited with a minyan of ten Jews (a minimum quorum of ten adult Jews).
The various versions of the Kaddish are:
All versions of the Kaddish begin with the Hatzi Kaddish (there are some extra passages in the Kaddish after a burial or a siyum). The longer versions contain additional paragraphs, and are often named after distinctive words in those paragraphs.
Historically there existed another type of Kaddish, called Qaddish Yahid ("Individual's Kaddish"). This is included in the Siddur of Amram Gaon, but is a meditation taking the place of Kaddish rather than a Kaddish in the normal sense. It had not been recited in modern times until the COVID-19 pandemic, which made coming together to form a minyan difficult. Some communities began reciting the Qaddish Yahid, or a portion thereof, in lieu of Qaddish Yatom.
The Half Kaddish is used to punctuate divisions within the service: for example, before Barechu, after the Amidah, and following readings from the Torah.
The Kaddish d'Rabbanan is used after any part of the service that includes extracts from the Mishnah or the Talmud, as its original purpose was to close a study session.
Kaddish Titkabbal originally marked the end of a prayer service, though in later times extra passages and hymns were added to follow it.
The following includes the half, complete, mourner's and rabbi's kaddish. The variant lines of the kaddish after a burial or a siyum are given below.
In the burial kaddish, and that after a siyum according to Ashkenazim,, lines 2-3 are replaced by:
In some recent non-Orthodox prayerbooks, for example, the American Reform Machzor, line 36 is replaced with:
This effort to extend the reach of Oseh Shalom to non-Jews is said to have been started by the British Liberal Jewish movement in 1967, with the introduction of v'al kol bnai Adam ("and upon all humans"); these words continue to be used by some in the UK.
The opening words of the Kaddish are inspired by Ezekiel 38:23's vision of God becoming great in the eyes of all the nations.
The central line of the Kaddish is the congregation's response: יְהֵא שְׁמֵהּ רַבָּא מְבָרַךְ לְעָלַם וּלְעָלְמֵי עָלְמַיָּא (Yǝhē šmēh rabbā mǝvārakh lǝʿālam u-lʿalmē ʿālmayyā, "May His great name be blessed for ever, and to all eternity"), a public declaration of God's greatness and eternality. This response is similar to the wording of Daniel 2:20. It is also parallel to the Hebrew "ברוך שם כבוד מלכותו לעולם ועד" (commonly recited after the first verse of the Shema); Aramaic versions of both יה שמה רבה and ברוך שם כבוד appear in the various versions of Targum Pseudo-Jonathan to Genesis 49:2 and Deuteronomy 6:4.
The Mourners, Rabbis and Complete Kaddish end with a supplication for peace ("Oseh Shalom..."), which is in Hebrew, and is somewhat similar to the Tanakh Job 25:2.
Kaddish does not contain God's name. It is said that this is because Kaddish has 26 words, equalling the gematria of the Lord's name itself (יהוה), and the Kaddish text proves that from the very beginning with words "May His great name be exalted and sanctified".
Kaddish may be spoken or chanted. In services on certain special occasions, it may be sung to special melodies. There are different melodies in different Jewish traditions, and within each tradition the melody can change according to the version, the day it is said and even the position in the service. Many mourners recite Kaddish slowly and contemplatively.
In Sephardi synagogues the whole congregation sits for Kaddish, except:
In Ashkenazi synagogues, the custom varies. Very commonly, in both Orthodox and Reform congregations, everyone stands for the mourner's kaddish; but in some (especially many Conservative and Sephardic) synagogues, most of the congregants sit. Sometimes, a distinction is made between the different forms of Kaddish, or each congregant stands or sits according to his or her own custom. The Mourner's Kaddish is often treated differently from the other variations of Kaddish in the service, as is the Half Kaddish before the maftir.
Those standing to recite Kaddish bow, by widespread tradition, at various places. Generally: At the first word of the prayer, at each Amen, at Yitbarakh, at Brikh hu, and for the last verse (Oseh shalom). For Oseh shalom it is customary to take three steps back (if possible) then bow to one's left, then to one's right, and finally bow forward, as if taking leave of the presence of a king, in the same way as when the same words are used as the concluding line of the Amidah.
According to the original Ashkenazic custom, as well as the Yemenite custom, one mourner recites each Kaddish, and the Halachic authorities set down extensive rules to determine who has priority for each kaddish. In most (but not all) Ashkenazic communities, they have adopted the Sephardic custom to allow multiple mourners to recite Kaddish together.
Masekhet Soferim, an eighth-century compilation of Jewish laws regarding the preparation of holy books and public reading, states (Chapter 10:7) that Kaddish may be recited only in the presence of a minyan (a quorum of at least 10 men in Orthodox Judaism or 10 adults in Reform and Conservative Judaism). While the traditional view is that "If kaddish is said in private, then by definition it is not kaddish," some alternatives have been suggested, including the Kaddish L'yachid ("Kaddish for an individual"), attributed to ninth-century Gaon Amram bar Sheshna, and the use of kavanah prayer, asking heavenly beings to join with the individual "to make a minyan of both Earth and heaven". In some Reform congregations, a minyan is not required for recitation of the Kaddish, but other Reform congregations disagree and believe that the Kaddish should be said publicly.
"The Kaddish is in origin a closing doxology to an Aggadic discourse." Most of it is written in Aramaic, which, at the time of its original composition, was the lingua franca of the Jewish people. It is not composed in the vernacular Aramaic, however, but rather in a "literary, jargon Aramaic" that was used in the academies, and is identical to the dialect of the Targumim.
Professor Yoel Elitzur, however, argues that the Kaddish was originally written in Hebrew, and later translated to Aramaic to be better understood by the masses. He notes that quotations from the Kaddish in the Talmud and Sifrei are in Hebrew, and that even today some of the words are Hebrew rather than Aramaic.
The oldest version of the Kaddish is found in the Siddur of Rab Amram Gaon, c. 900. "The first mention of mourners reciting Kaddish at the end of the service is in a thirteenth century halakhic writing called the Or Zarua. The Kaddish at the end of the service became designated as Kaddish Yatom or Mourner's Kaddish (literally, "Orphan's Kaddish")."
The Kaddish was not always recited by mourners and instead became a prayer for mourners sometime between the 12th and 13th centuries when it started to be associated with a medieval legend about Rabbi Akiva who meets a dead man seeking redemption in the afterlife.
Elitzur made an attempt at reconstructing the theorized original Hebrew version of Kaddish:
Rabbi David Bar-Hayim also attempted a reconstruction:
Mourner's Kaddish is said in most communities at all prayer services and certain other occasions. It is written in Aramaic. It takes the form of Kaddish Yehe Shelama Rabba, and is traditionally recited several times, most prominently at or towards the end of the service, after the Aleinu and/or closing Psalms and/or (on the Sabbath) Ani'im Zemirot. In most communities, Kaddish is recited during the eleven months after the death of a parent, and then at every anniversary of the death (the Yahrzeit). Technically, there is no obligation to recite Kaddish for other relatives, even though there is an obligation to mourn for them.
Customs for reciting the Mourner's Kaddish vary markedly among various communities. In Sephardi synagogues, the custom is that all the mourners stand and chant the Kaddish together. In Ashkenazi synagogues before the 19th century, one mourner was chosen to lead the prayer on behalf of the rest, but gradually over the last two centuries, most (but certainly not all) communities have adopted the Sephardi custom. In many Reform synagogues, the entire congregation recites the Mourner's Kaddish together. This is sometimes said to be for those victims of the Holocaust who have no one left to recite the Mourner's Kaddish on their behalf and in support of the mourners. In some congregations (especially Reform and Conservative ones), the Rabbi reads a list of the deceased who have a Yahrzeit on that day (or who have died within the past month), and then ask the congregants to name any people they are mourning for. Some synagogues, especially Orthodox and Conservative ones, multiply the number of times that the Mourner's Kaddish is recited, for example by reciting a separate Mourner's Kaddish after both Aleinu and then each closing Psalm. Other synagogues limit themselves to one Mourner's Kaddish at the end of the service.
Notably, the Mourner's Kaddish does not mention death at all, but instead praises God. Though the Kaddish is often popularly referred to as the "Jewish Prayer for the Dead," that designation more accurately belongs to the prayer called "El Malei Rachamim", which specifically prays for the soul of the deceased. The Mourner's Kaddish can be more accurately represented as an expression of "justification for judgment" by the mourners on their loved ones' behalf. It is believed that mourners adopted this version of the Kaddish around the 13th century during harsh persecution of Jews by crusaders in Germany because of the opening messianic line about God bringing the dead back to life (though this line is not in many modern versions).
There is evidence of some women saying the Mourner's Kaddish for their parents at the grave, during shiva, and in daily prayers since the 17th century. Rabbi Yair Bacharach concluded that technically a woman can recite the Mourner's Kaddish, but since this is not the common practice, it should be discouraged. As such, women reciting kaddish is controversial in some Orthodox communities, and it is almost unheard of in Haredi communities. Nevertheless, Rabbi Aharon Soloveichik ruled that in our time, we should permit women to say Kaddish, and this is a common (but not universal) practice in Modern Orthodox circles. In 2013, the Israeli Orthodox rabbinical organization Beit Hillel issued a halachic ruling that women may say the Kaddish in memory of their deceased parents (in presence of a male minyan). In Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist Judaism, the Mourner's Kaddish is traditionally said by women who are there also counted in the minyan.
The Kaddish has been a particularly common theme and reference point in the arts, including the following:
(Alphabetical by author)
(Alphabetical by creator)
(Alphabetical by creator)
(Alphabetical by creator)
(Chronological)
(Alphabetical by program title)
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Kaddish (Hebrew: קדיש, 'holy' or 'sanctification'), also transliterated as Qaddish or Qadish, is a hymn praising God that is recited during Jewish prayer services. The central theme of the Kaddish is the magnification and sanctification of God's name. In the liturgy, different versions of the Kaddish are functionally chanted or sung as separators of the different sections of the service.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The term Kaddish is often used to refer specifically to \"The Mourner's Kaddish,\" which is chanted as part of the mourning rituals in Judaism in all prayer services, as well as at funerals (other than at the gravesite; see Kaddish acher kevurah \"Qaddish after Burial\") and memorials; for 11 Hebrew months after the death of a parent; and in some communities for 30 days after the death of a spouse, sibling, or child. When mention is made of \"saying Kaddish\", this often refers to the rituals of mourning. Mourners recite Kaddish to show that despite the loss they still praise God.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Along with the Shema Yisrael and the Amidah, the Kaddish is one of the most important and central elements in the Jewish liturgy. Kaddish is not, traditionally, recited alone. Along with some other prayers, it traditionally can only be recited with a minyan of ten Jews (a minimum quorum of ten adult Jews).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The various versions of the Kaddish are:",
"title": "Variant forms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "All versions of the Kaddish begin with the Hatzi Kaddish (there are some extra passages in the Kaddish after a burial or a siyum). The longer versions contain additional paragraphs, and are often named after distinctive words in those paragraphs.",
"title": "Variant forms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Historically there existed another type of Kaddish, called Qaddish Yahid (\"Individual's Kaddish\"). This is included in the Siddur of Amram Gaon, but is a meditation taking the place of Kaddish rather than a Kaddish in the normal sense. It had not been recited in modern times until the COVID-19 pandemic, which made coming together to form a minyan difficult. Some communities began reciting the Qaddish Yahid, or a portion thereof, in lieu of Qaddish Yatom.",
"title": "Variant forms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The Half Kaddish is used to punctuate divisions within the service: for example, before Barechu, after the Amidah, and following readings from the Torah.",
"title": "Variant forms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The Kaddish d'Rabbanan is used after any part of the service that includes extracts from the Mishnah or the Talmud, as its original purpose was to close a study session.",
"title": "Variant forms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Kaddish Titkabbal originally marked the end of a prayer service, though in later times extra passages and hymns were added to follow it.",
"title": "Variant forms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The following includes the half, complete, mourner's and rabbi's kaddish. The variant lines of the kaddish after a burial or a siyum are given below.",
"title": "Text of the Kaddish"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In the burial kaddish, and that after a siyum according to Ashkenazim,, lines 2-3 are replaced by:",
"title": "Text of the Kaddish"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In some recent non-Orthodox prayerbooks, for example, the American Reform Machzor, line 36 is replaced with:",
"title": "Text of the Kaddish"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "This effort to extend the reach of Oseh Shalom to non-Jews is said to have been started by the British Liberal Jewish movement in 1967, with the introduction of v'al kol bnai Adam (\"and upon all humans\"); these words continue to be used by some in the UK.",
"title": "Text of the Kaddish"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The opening words of the Kaddish are inspired by Ezekiel 38:23's vision of God becoming great in the eyes of all the nations.",
"title": "Analysis of the text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The central line of the Kaddish is the congregation's response: יְהֵא שְׁמֵהּ רַבָּא מְבָרַךְ לְעָלַם וּלְעָלְמֵי עָלְמַיָּא (Yǝhē šmēh rabbā mǝvārakh lǝʿālam u-lʿalmē ʿālmayyā, \"May His great name be blessed for ever, and to all eternity\"), a public declaration of God's greatness and eternality. This response is similar to the wording of Daniel 2:20. It is also parallel to the Hebrew \"ברוך שם כבוד מלכותו לעולם ועד\" (commonly recited after the first verse of the Shema); Aramaic versions of both יה שמה רבה and ברוך שם כבוד appear in the various versions of Targum Pseudo-Jonathan to Genesis 49:2 and Deuteronomy 6:4.",
"title": "Analysis of the text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The Mourners, Rabbis and Complete Kaddish end with a supplication for peace (\"Oseh Shalom...\"), which is in Hebrew, and is somewhat similar to the Tanakh Job 25:2.",
"title": "Analysis of the text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Kaddish does not contain God's name. It is said that this is because Kaddish has 26 words, equalling the gematria of the Lord's name itself (יהוה), and the Kaddish text proves that from the very beginning with words \"May His great name be exalted and sanctified\".",
"title": "Analysis of the text"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Kaddish may be spoken or chanted. In services on certain special occasions, it may be sung to special melodies. There are different melodies in different Jewish traditions, and within each tradition the melody can change according to the version, the day it is said and even the position in the service. Many mourners recite Kaddish slowly and contemplatively.",
"title": "Customs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In Sephardi synagogues the whole congregation sits for Kaddish, except:",
"title": "Customs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In Ashkenazi synagogues, the custom varies. Very commonly, in both Orthodox and Reform congregations, everyone stands for the mourner's kaddish; but in some (especially many Conservative and Sephardic) synagogues, most of the congregants sit. Sometimes, a distinction is made between the different forms of Kaddish, or each congregant stands or sits according to his or her own custom. The Mourner's Kaddish is often treated differently from the other variations of Kaddish in the service, as is the Half Kaddish before the maftir.",
"title": "Customs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Those standing to recite Kaddish bow, by widespread tradition, at various places. Generally: At the first word of the prayer, at each Amen, at Yitbarakh, at Brikh hu, and for the last verse (Oseh shalom). For Oseh shalom it is customary to take three steps back (if possible) then bow to one's left, then to one's right, and finally bow forward, as if taking leave of the presence of a king, in the same way as when the same words are used as the concluding line of the Amidah.",
"title": "Customs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "According to the original Ashkenazic custom, as well as the Yemenite custom, one mourner recites each Kaddish, and the Halachic authorities set down extensive rules to determine who has priority for each kaddish. In most (but not all) Ashkenazic communities, they have adopted the Sephardic custom to allow multiple mourners to recite Kaddish together.",
"title": "Customs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Masekhet Soferim, an eighth-century compilation of Jewish laws regarding the preparation of holy books and public reading, states (Chapter 10:7) that Kaddish may be recited only in the presence of a minyan (a quorum of at least 10 men in Orthodox Judaism or 10 adults in Reform and Conservative Judaism). While the traditional view is that \"If kaddish is said in private, then by definition it is not kaddish,\" some alternatives have been suggested, including the Kaddish L'yachid (\"Kaddish for an individual\"), attributed to ninth-century Gaon Amram bar Sheshna, and the use of kavanah prayer, asking heavenly beings to join with the individual \"to make a minyan of both Earth and heaven\". In some Reform congregations, a minyan is not required for recitation of the Kaddish, but other Reform congregations disagree and believe that the Kaddish should be said publicly.",
"title": "Customs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "\"The Kaddish is in origin a closing doxology to an Aggadic discourse.\" Most of it is written in Aramaic, which, at the time of its original composition, was the lingua franca of the Jewish people. It is not composed in the vernacular Aramaic, however, but rather in a \"literary, jargon Aramaic\" that was used in the academies, and is identical to the dialect of the Targumim.",
"title": "History and background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Professor Yoel Elitzur, however, argues that the Kaddish was originally written in Hebrew, and later translated to Aramaic to be better understood by the masses. He notes that quotations from the Kaddish in the Talmud and Sifrei are in Hebrew, and that even today some of the words are Hebrew rather than Aramaic.",
"title": "History and background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The oldest version of the Kaddish is found in the Siddur of Rab Amram Gaon, c. 900. \"The first mention of mourners reciting Kaddish at the end of the service is in a thirteenth century halakhic writing called the Or Zarua. The Kaddish at the end of the service became designated as Kaddish Yatom or Mourner's Kaddish (literally, \"Orphan's Kaddish\").\"",
"title": "History and background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The Kaddish was not always recited by mourners and instead became a prayer for mourners sometime between the 12th and 13th centuries when it started to be associated with a medieval legend about Rabbi Akiva who meets a dead man seeking redemption in the afterlife.",
"title": "History and background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Elitzur made an attempt at reconstructing the theorized original Hebrew version of Kaddish:",
"title": "History and background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Rabbi David Bar-Hayim also attempted a reconstruction:",
"title": "History and background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Mourner's Kaddish is said in most communities at all prayer services and certain other occasions. It is written in Aramaic. It takes the form of Kaddish Yehe Shelama Rabba, and is traditionally recited several times, most prominently at or towards the end of the service, after the Aleinu and/or closing Psalms and/or (on the Sabbath) Ani'im Zemirot. In most communities, Kaddish is recited during the eleven months after the death of a parent, and then at every anniversary of the death (the Yahrzeit). Technically, there is no obligation to recite Kaddish for other relatives, even though there is an obligation to mourn for them.",
"title": "Mourner's Kaddish"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Customs for reciting the Mourner's Kaddish vary markedly among various communities. In Sephardi synagogues, the custom is that all the mourners stand and chant the Kaddish together. In Ashkenazi synagogues before the 19th century, one mourner was chosen to lead the prayer on behalf of the rest, but gradually over the last two centuries, most (but certainly not all) communities have adopted the Sephardi custom. In many Reform synagogues, the entire congregation recites the Mourner's Kaddish together. This is sometimes said to be for those victims of the Holocaust who have no one left to recite the Mourner's Kaddish on their behalf and in support of the mourners. In some congregations (especially Reform and Conservative ones), the Rabbi reads a list of the deceased who have a Yahrzeit on that day (or who have died within the past month), and then ask the congregants to name any people they are mourning for. Some synagogues, especially Orthodox and Conservative ones, multiply the number of times that the Mourner's Kaddish is recited, for example by reciting a separate Mourner's Kaddish after both Aleinu and then each closing Psalm. Other synagogues limit themselves to one Mourner's Kaddish at the end of the service.",
"title": "Mourner's Kaddish"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Notably, the Mourner's Kaddish does not mention death at all, but instead praises God. Though the Kaddish is often popularly referred to as the \"Jewish Prayer for the Dead,\" that designation more accurately belongs to the prayer called \"El Malei Rachamim\", which specifically prays for the soul of the deceased. The Mourner's Kaddish can be more accurately represented as an expression of \"justification for judgment\" by the mourners on their loved ones' behalf. It is believed that mourners adopted this version of the Kaddish around the 13th century during harsh persecution of Jews by crusaders in Germany because of the opening messianic line about God bringing the dead back to life (though this line is not in many modern versions).",
"title": "Mourner's Kaddish"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "There is evidence of some women saying the Mourner's Kaddish for their parents at the grave, during shiva, and in daily prayers since the 17th century. Rabbi Yair Bacharach concluded that technically a woman can recite the Mourner's Kaddish, but since this is not the common practice, it should be discouraged. As such, women reciting kaddish is controversial in some Orthodox communities, and it is almost unheard of in Haredi communities. Nevertheless, Rabbi Aharon Soloveichik ruled that in our time, we should permit women to say Kaddish, and this is a common (but not universal) practice in Modern Orthodox circles. In 2013, the Israeli Orthodox rabbinical organization Beit Hillel issued a halachic ruling that women may say the Kaddish in memory of their deceased parents (in presence of a male minyan). In Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist Judaism, the Mourner's Kaddish is traditionally said by women who are there also counted in the minyan.",
"title": "Mourner's Kaddish"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The Kaddish has been a particularly common theme and reference point in the arts, including the following:",
"title": "Use of the Kaddish in the arts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "(Alphabetical by author)",
"title": "Use of the Kaddish in the arts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "(Alphabetical by creator)",
"title": "Use of the Kaddish in the arts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "(Alphabetical by creator)",
"title": "Use of the Kaddish in the arts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "(Alphabetical by creator)",
"title": "Use of the Kaddish in the arts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "(Chronological)",
"title": "Use of the Kaddish in the arts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "(Alphabetical by program title)",
"title": "Use of the Kaddish in the arts"
}
] |
The Kaddish, also transliterated as Qaddish or Qadish, is a hymn praising God that is recited during Jewish prayer services. The central theme of the Kaddish is the magnification and sanctification of God's name. In the liturgy, different versions of the Kaddish are functionally chanted or sung as separators of the different sections of the service. The term Kaddish is often used to refer specifically to "The Mourner's Kaddish," which is chanted as part of the mourning rituals in Judaism in all prayer services, as well as at funerals and memorials; for 11 Hebrew months after the death of a parent; and in some communities for 30 days after the death of a spouse, sibling, or child. When mention is made of "saying Kaddish", this often refers to the rituals of mourning. Mourners recite Kaddish to show that despite the loss they still praise God. Along with the Shema Yisrael and the Amidah, the Kaddish is one of the most important and central elements in the Jewish liturgy. Kaddish is not, traditionally, recited alone. Along with some other prayers, it traditionally can only be recited with a minyan of ten Jews.
|
2001-10-19T01:40:07Z
|
2023-12-13T07:43:00Z
|
[
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Jewish prayers",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Otheruses",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Citation needed",
"Template:JewishEncyclopedia",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Bibleverse",
"Template:Distinguish",
"Template:Script/Hebrew",
"Template:Spaced ndash",
"Template:See also",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Dead link",
"Template:Wiktionary",
"Template:Jews and Judaism sidebar",
"Template:Lang-he",
"Template:Jewish life",
"Template:The Jazz Singer"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaddish
|
16,777 |
Kalevala
|
The Kalevala (Finnish: Kalevala, IPA: [ˈkɑleʋɑlɑ]) is a 19th-century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Karelian and Finnish oral folklore and mythology, telling an epic story about the Creation of the Earth, describing the controversies and retaliatory voyages between the peoples of the land of Kalevala called Väinölä and the land of Pohjola and their various protagonists and antagonists, as well as the construction and robbery of the epic mythical wealth-making machine Sampo.
The Kalevala is regarded as the national epic of Karelia and Finland and is one of the most significant works of Finnish literature with J. L. Runeberg's The Tales of Ensign Stål and Aleksis Kivi's The Seven Brothers. The Kalevala was instrumental in the development of the Finnish national identity and the intensification of Finland's language strife that ultimately led to Finland's independence from Russia in 1917. The work is also well known internationally and has partly influenced, for example, J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium (i.e. Middle-earth mythology).
The first version of the Kalevala, called the Old Kalevala, was published in 1835, consisting of 12,078 verses. The version most commonly known today was first published in 1849 and consists of 22,795 verses, divided into fifty folk stories (Finnish: runot). An abridged version, containing all fifty poems but just 9732 verses, was published in 1862. In connection with the Kalevala, there is another much more lyrical collection of poems, also compiled by Lönnrot, called Kanteletar from 1840, which is mostly seen as a "sister collection" of the Kalevala.
Elias Lönnrot (9 April 1802 – 19 March 1884) was a physician, botanist, linguist, and poet. During the time he was compiling the Kalevala he was the district health officer based in Kajaani responsible for the whole Kainuu region in the eastern part of what was then the Grand Duchy of Finland. He was the son of Fredrik Johan Lönnrot, a tailor and Ulrika Lönnrot; he was born in the village of Sammatti, Uusimaa.
At the age of 21, he entered the Imperial Academy of Turku and obtained a master's degree in 1826. His thesis was entitled De Vainamoine priscorum fennorum numine (Väinämöinen, a Divinity of the Ancient Finns). The monograph's second volume was destroyed in the Great Fire of Turku the same year.
In the spring of 1828, he set out with the aim of collecting folk songs and poetry. Rather than continue this work, though, he decided to complete his studies and entered Imperial Alexander University in Helsinki to study medicine. He earned a master's degree in 1832. In January 1833, he started as the district health officer of Kainuu and began his work on collecting poetry and compiling the Kalevala. Throughout his career Lönnrot made a total of eleven field trips within a period of fifteen years.
Prior to the publication of the Kalevala, Elias Lönnrot compiled several related works, including the three-part Kantele (1829–1831), the Old Kalevala (1835) and the Kanteletar (1840).
Lönnrot's field trips and endeavours helped him to compile the Kalevala, and brought considerable enjoyment to the people he visited; he would spend much time retelling what he had collected as well as learning new poems.
Before the 18th century, Kalevala poetry, also known as runic song was common throughout Finland and Karelia, but in the 18th century it began to disappear in Finland, first in western Finland, because European rhymed poetry became more common in Finland. Finnish folk poetry was first written down in the 17th century and collected by hobbyists and scholars through the following centuries. Despite this, the majority of Finnish poetry remained only in the oral tradition.
Finnish born nationalist and linguist Carl Axel Gottlund (1796–1875) expressed his desire for a Finnish epic in a similar vein to the Iliad, Ossian and the Nibelungenlied compiled from the various poems and songs spread over most of Finland. He hoped that such an endeavour would incite a sense of nationality and independence in the native Finnish people. In 1820, Reinhold von Becker [fi] founded the journal Turun Wiikko-Sanomat (Turku Weekly News) and published three articles entitled Väinämöisestä (Concerning Väinämöinen). These works were an inspiration for Elias Lönnrot in creating his masters thesis at Turku University.
In the 19th century, collecting became more extensive, systematic and organised. Altogether, almost half a million pages of verse have been collected and archived by the Finnish Literature Society and other collectors in what are now Estonia and the Republic of Karelia. The publication Suomen Kansan Vanhat Runot (Ancient Poems of the Finns) published 33 volumes containing 85,000 items of poetry over a period of 40 years. They have archived 65,000 items of poetry that remain unpublished. By the end of the 19th century this pastime of collecting material relating to Karelia and the developing orientation towards eastern lands had become a fashion called Karelianism, a form of national romanticism.
The chronology of this oral tradition is uncertain. The oldest themes, the origin of Earth, have been interpreted to have their roots in distant, unrecorded history and could be as old as 3,000 years. The newest events, e.g. the arrival of Christianity, seem to be from the Iron Age, which in Finland lasted until c. 1300 CE. Finnish folklorist Kaarle Krohn proposes that 20 of the 45 poems of the Kalevala are of possible Ancient Estonian origin or at least deal with a motif of Estonian origin (of the remainder, two are Ingrian and 23 are Western Finnish).
It is understood that during the Finnish reformation in the 16th century the clergy forbade all telling and singing of pagan rites and stories. In conjunction with the arrival of European poetry and music this caused a significant reduction in the number of traditional folk songs and their singers. Thus the tradition faded somewhat but was never totally eradicated.
In total, Lönnrot made eleven field trips in search of poetry. His first trip was made in 1828 after his graduation from Turku University, but it was not until 1831 and his second field trip that the real work began. By that time he had already published three articles entitled Kantele and had significant notes to build upon. This second trip was not very successful and he was called back to Helsinki to attend to victims of the Second cholera pandemic.
The third field trip was much more successful and led Elias Lönnrot to Viena in east Karelia where he visited the town of Akonlahti, which proved most successful. This trip yielded over 3,000 verses and copious notes. In 1833, Lönnrot moved to Kajaani where he was to spend the next 20 years as the district health officer for the region, living in the Hövelö croft located near the Lake Oulujärvi in the Paltaniemi village, spending his spare time searching for poems. His fourth field trip was undertaken in conjunction with his work as a doctor; a 10-day jaunt into Viena. This trip resulted in 49 poems and almost 3,000 new lines of verse. It was during this trip that Lönnrot formulated the idea that the poems might represent a wider continuity, when poem entities were performed to him along with comments in normal speech connecting them.
On the fifth field trip, Lönnrot met Arhippa Perttunen who, over two days of continuous recitation, provided him with some 4,000 verses for the Kalevala. He also met a singer called Matiska in the hamlet of Lonkka on the Russian side of the border. Although this singer had a somewhat poor memory, he did help to fill in many gaps in the work Lönnrot had already catalogued. This trip resulted in the discovery of almost 300 poems at just over 13,000 verses.
In autumn of 1834, Lönnrot had written the vast majority of the work needed for what was to become the Old Kalevala; all that was required was to tie up some narrative loose ends and complete the work. His sixth field trip took him into Kuhmo, a municipality in Kainuu to the south of Viena. There he collected over 4,000 verses and completed the first draft of his work. He wrote the foreword and published in February of the following year.
With the Old Kalevala well into its first publication run, Lönnrot decided to continue collecting poems to supplement his existing work and to understand the culture more completely. The seventh field trip took him on a long winding path through the southern and eastern parts of the Viena poem singing region. He was delayed significantly in Kuhmo because of bad skiing conditions. By the end of that trip, Lönnrot had collected another 100 poems consisting of over 4,000 verses. Lönnrot made his eighth field trip to the Russian border town of Lapukka where the great singer Arhippa Perttunen had learned his trade. In correspondence he notes that he has written down many new poems but is unclear on the quantity.
Elias Lönnrot departed on the first part of his ninth field trip on 16 September 1836. He was granted a 14-month leave of absence and a sum of travelling expenses from the Finnish Literary Society. His funds came with some stipulations: he must travel around the Kainuu border regions and then on to the north and finally from Kainuu to the south-east along the border. For the expedition into the north he was accompanied by Juhana Fredrik Cajan. The first part of the trip took Lönnrot all the way to Inari in northern Lapland. The second, southern part of the journey was more successful than the northern part, taking Lönnrot to the town of Sortavala on Lake Ladoga then back up through Savo and eventually back to Kajaani. Although these trips were long and arduous, they resulted in very little Kalevala material; only 1,000 verses were recovered from the southern half and an unknown quantity from the northern half.
The tenth field trip is a relative unknown. What is known however, is that Lönnrot intended to gather poems and songs to compile into the upcoming work Kanteletar. He was accompanied by his friend C. H. Ståhlberg for the majority of the trip. During that journey the pair met Mateli Magdalena Kuivalatar in the small border town of Ilomantsi. Kuivalatar was very important to the development of the Kanteletar. The eleventh documented field trip was another undertaken in conjunction with his medical work. During the first part of the trip, Lönnrot returned to Akonlahti in Russian Karelia, where he gathered 80 poems and a total of 800 verses. The rest of the trip suffers from poor documentation.
Lönnrot and his contemporaries, e.g. Matthias Castrén, Anders Johan Sjögren, and David Emmanuel Daniel Europaeus collected most of the poem variants; one poem could easily have countless variants, scattered across rural areas of Karelia and Ingria. Lönnrot was not really interested in, and rarely wrote down the name of the singer except for some of the more prolific cases. His primary purpose in the region was that of a physician and of an editor, not of a biographer or counsellor. He rarely knew anything in-depth about the singer himself and primarily only catalogued verse that could be relevant or of some use in his work.
The student David Emmanuel Daniel Europaeus is credited with discovering and cataloguing the majority of the Kullervo story.
Of the dozens of poem singers who contributed to the Kalevala, significant ones are:
The poetry was often sung to music built on a pentachord, sometimes assisted by a kantele player. The rhythm could vary but the music was arranged in either two or four lines in 4 metre. The poems were often performed by a duo, each person singing alternative verses or groups of verses. This method of performance is called an antiphonic performance, it is a kind of "singing match".
Despite the vast geographical distance and customary spheres separating individual singers, the folk poetry the Kalevala is based on was always sung in the same metre.
The Kalevala's metre is a form of trochaic tetrameter that is now known as the Kalevala metre. The metre is thought to have originated during the Proto-Finnic period. Its syllables fall into three types: strong, weak, and neutral. Its main rules are as follows:
There are two main types of line:
Traditional poetry in the Kalevala metre uses both types with approximately the same frequency. The alternating normal and broken tetrameters is a characteristic difference between the Kalevala metre and other forms of trochaic tetrameter.
There are four additional rules:
There are two main schemes featured in the Kalevala:
The verses are sometimes inverted into chiasmus.
Verses 221 to 232 of song forty.
Very little is actually known about Elias Lönnrot's personal contributions to the Kalevala. Scholars to this day still argue about how much of the Kalevala is genuine folk poetry and how much is Lönnrot's own work – and the degree to which the text is 'authentic' to the oral tradition. During the compilation process it is known that he merged poem variants and characters together, left out verses that did not fit and composed lines of his own to connect certain passages into a logical plot. Similarly, as was normal in the preliterate conventions of oral poetry—according to the testimony of Arhippa Perttunen—traditional bards in his father's days would always vary the language of songs from performance to performance when reciting from their repertoire.
The Finnish historian Väinö Kaukonen suggests that 3% of the Kalevala's lines are Lönnrot's own composition, 14% are Lönnrot compositions from variants, 50% are verses which Lönnrot kept mostly unchanged except for some minor alterations, and 33% are original unedited oral poetry.
The first version of Lönnrot's compilation was entitled Kalewala, taikka Wanhoja Karjalan Runoja Suomen Kansan muinoisista ajoista ("The Kalevala, or old Karelian poems about ancient times of the Finnish people"), also known as the Old Kalevala. It was published in two volumes in 1835–1836. The Old Kalevala consisted of 12,078 verses making up a total of thirty-two poems.
Even after the publication of the Old Kalevala Lönnrot continued to collect new material for several years. He later integrated this additional material, with significantly edited existing material, into a second version, the Kalevala. This New Kalevala, published in 1849, contains fifty poems, with a number of plot differences compared with the first version, and is the standard text of the Kalevala read and translated to this day. (Published as: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seuran Toimituksia. 14 Osa. KALEVALA.)
The word Kalevala rarely appears in the original folk songs. The first appearance of the word in folk songs was recorded in April 1836. Lönnrot chose it as the title for his project sometime at the end of 1834, but his choice was not random. The name "Kalev" appears in Finnic and Baltic folklore in many locations, and the Sons of Kalev are known throughout Finnish and Estonian folklore.
Lönnrot produced Lyhennetty laitos, an abridged version of the Kalevala, in 1862. It was intended for use in schools. It retains all 50 poems from the 1849 version, but omits more than half of the verses.
Of the few complete translations into English, it is only the older translations by John Martin Crawford (1888) and William Forsell Kirby (1907) which attempt to strictly follow the original (Kalevala metre) of the poems.
A notable partial translation of Franz Anton Schiefner's German translation was made by Prof. John Addison Porter in 1868 and published by Leypoldt & Holt.
Edward Taylor Fletcher, a British-born Canadian literature enthusiast, translated selections of the Kalevala in 1869. He read them before the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec on 17 March 1869.
Francis Peabody Magoun published a scholarly translation of the Kalevala in 1963 written entirely in prose. The appendices of this version contain notes on the history of the poem, comparisons between the original Old Kalevala and the current version, and a detailed glossary of terms and names used in the poem. Magoun translated the Old Kalevala, which was published six years later entitled The Old Kalevala and Certain Antecedents.
Eino Friberg's 1988 translation uses the original metre selectively but in general is more attuned to pleasing the ear than being an exact metrical translation; it also often reduces the length of songs for aesthetic reasons. In the introduction to his 1989 translation, Keith Bosley stated: "The only way I could devise of reflecting the vitality of Kalevala metre was to invent my own, based on syllables rather than feet. While translating over 17,000 lines of Finnish folk poetry before I started on the epic, I found that a line settled usually into seven syllables of English, often less, occasionally more. I eventually arrived at seven, five and nine syllables respectively, using the impair (odd number) as a formal device and letting the stresses fall where they would."
Most recently, Finnish/Canadian author and translator Kaarina Brooks translated into English the complete runic versions of Old Kalevala 1835 (Wisteria Publications 2020) and Kalevala (Wisteria Publications 2021). These works, unlike some previous versions, faithfully follow the Kalevala meter (Trochaic tetrameter) throughout and can be sung or chanted as Elias Lönnrot had intended. Brooks says, "It is essential that the translation of Kalevala into any language follows the Kalevala metre, for that was how these runes were sung in times immemorial. So that readers get the full impact of these ancient runes, it is imperative that they be presented in the same chanting style." Kaarina Brooks is also the translator of, An Illustrated Kalevala Myths and Legends from Finland, published by Floris Books UK.
Modern translations were published in the Karelian and Urdu languages between 2009 and 2015. Thus, the Kalevala was published in its originating Karelian language only after 168 years since its first translation into Swedish.
As of 2010, the Kalevala had been translated into sixty-one languages and is Finland's most translated work of literature.
The Kalevala begins with the traditional Finnish creation myth, leading into stories of the creation of the earth, plants, creatures, and the sky. Creation, healing, combat and internal story telling are often accomplished by the character(s) involved singing of their exploits or desires. Many parts of the stories involve a character hunting or requesting lyrics (spells) to acquire some skill, such as boat-building or the mastery of iron making. As well as magical spell casting and singing, there are many stories of lust, romance, kidnapping and seduction. The protagonists of the stories often have to accomplish feats that are unreasonable or impossible which they often fail to achieve, leading to tragedy and humiliation.
The Sampo is a pivotal element of the whole work. Many actions and their consequences are caused by the Sampo itself or a character's interaction with the Sampo. It is described as a magical talisman or device that brings its possessor great fortune and prosperity, but its precise nature has been the subject of debate to the present day.
Cantos 1 to 2: The poem begins with an introduction by the singers. The Earth is created from the shards of the egg of a goldeneye and the first man Väinämöinen is born to the goddess Ilmatar. Väinämöinen brings trees and life to the barren world.
Cantos 3–5: Väinämöinen encounters the jealous Joukahainen and they engage in a battle of song. Joukahainen loses and pledges his sister's hand in return for his life; the sister Aino soon drowns herself in the sea.
Cantos 6–10: Väinämöinen heads to Pohjola to propose to a maiden of the north, a daughter of the mistress of the north Louhi. Joukahainen attacks Väinämöinen again, and Väinämöinen floats for days on the sea until he is carried by an eagle to Pohjola. He makes a deal with Louhi to get Ilmarinen the smith to create the Sampo. Ilmarinen refuses to go to Pohjola so Väinämöinen forces him against his will. The Sampo is forged. Ilmarinen returns without a bride.
Cantos 11–15: Lemminkäinen sets out in search of a bride. He and the maid Kyllikki make vows but the happiness doesn't last long and Lemminkäinen sets off to woo a maiden of the north. His mother tries to stop him, but he disregards her warnings and instead gives her his hairbrush, telling her that if it starts to bleed he has met his doom. At Pohjola Louhi assigns dangerous tasks to him in exchange for her daughter's hand. While hunting for the swan of Tuonela, Lemminkäinen is killed and falls into the river of death. The brush he gave to his mother begins to bleed. Remembering her son's words, she goes in search of him. With a rake given to her by Ilmarinen, she collects the pieces of Lemminkäinen scattered in the river and pieces him back together.
Cantos 16–18: Väinämöinen builds a boat to travel to Pohjola once again in search of a bride. He visits Tuonela and is held prisoner, but he manages to escape and sets out to gain knowledge of the necessary spells from the giant Antero Vipunen. Väinämöinen is swallowed and has to torture Antero Vipunen for the spells and his escape. With his boat completed, Väinämöinen sets sail for Pohjola. Ilmarinen learns of this and resolves to go to Pohjola himself to woo the maiden. The maiden of the north chooses Ilmarinen.
Cantos 19–25: Ilmarinen is assigned dangerous unreasonable tasks to win the hand of the maiden. He accomplishes these tasks with some help from the maiden herself. In preparation for the wedding, beer is brewed, a giant steer is slaughtered, and invitations are sent out. Lemminkäinen is uninvited. The wedding party begins and all are happy. Väinämöinen sings and lauds the people of Pohjola. The bride and bridegroom are prepared for their roles in matrimony. The couple arrive home and are greeted with drink and viands.
Cantos 26–30: Lemminkäinen is resentful for not having been invited to the wedding and sets out immediately for Pohjola. On his arrival he is challenged to and wins a duel with Sariola, the Master of the North. Louhi is enraged and an army is conjured to enact revenge upon Lemminkäinen. He flees to his mother, who advises him to head to Saari, the Island of Refuge. On his return he finds his house burned to the ground. He goes to Pohjola with his companion Tiera to exact his revenge, but Louhi freezes the seas and Lemminkäinen has to return home. When he arrives home he is reunited with his mother and vows to build larger better houses to replace the ones burned down.
Cantos 31–36: Untamo kills his brother Kalervo's people, but spares his wife who later conceives Kullervo. Untamo sees the boy as a threat, and after trying to have him killed several times without success, sells Kullervo as a slave to Ilmarinen. Ilmarinen's wife torments and bullies Kullervo, so he tricks her into being torn apart by a pack of wolves and bears. Kullervo escapes from Ilmarinen's homestead and learns from an old lady in the forest that his family is still alive, and is soon reunited with them. While returning home from paying taxes, he meets and seduces a young maiden, only to find out that she is his sister. Upon realizing this, she kills herself and Kullervo returns home distressed. He decides to wreak revenge upon Untamo and sets out to find him. Kullervo wages war on Untamo and his people, laying all to waste, and then returns home, where he finds his farm deserted. Filled with remorse and regret, he kills himself in the place where he seduced his sister.
Cantos 37–38: Grieving for his lost love, Ilmarinen forges himself a wife out of gold and silver, but finds her to be cold and discards her. He heads for Pohjola and kidnaps the youngest daughter of Louhi. The daughter insults him so badly that he instead sings a spell to turn her into a bird and returns to Kalevala without her. He tells Väinämöinen about the prosperity and wealth that has met Pohjola's people thanks to the Sampo.
Cantos 39–44: Väinämöinen, Ilmarinen and Lemminkäinen sail to Pohjola to recover the Sampo. While on their journey they kill a monstrous pike and from its jaw bone the first kantele is made, with which Väinämöinen sings so beautifully even deities gather to listen. The heroes arrive in Pohjola and demand a share of the Sampo's wealth or they will take the whole Sampo by force. Louhi musters her army however Väinämöinen lulls everyone in Pohjola to sleep with his music. The Sampo is taken from its vault of stone and the heroes set out for home. Louhi conjures a great army, turns herself into a massive eagle and fights for the Sampo. In the battle the Sampo is lost to the sea and destroyed.
Cantos 45–49: Enraged at the loss of the Sampo, Louhi sends the people of Kalevala diseases and a great bear to kill their cattle. She hides the sun and the moon and steals fire from Kalevala. Väinämöinen heals all of the ailments and, with Ilmarinen, restores the fire. Väinämöinen forces Louhi to return the Sun and the Moon to the skies.
Canto 50: The shy young virgin Marjatta becomes impregnated from a lingonberry she ate while tending to her flock. She conceives a son. Väinämöinen orders the killing of the boy, but the boy begins to speak and reproaches Väinämöinen for ill judgement. The child is then baptised King of Karelia. Väinämöinen sails away leaving only his songs and kantele as legacy but vowing to return when there's no moon or sun and happiness isn't free anymore.
The poem ends and the singers sing a farewell and thank their audience.
Väinämöinen, the central character of The Kalevala, is a shamanistic hero with a magical power of song and music similar to that of Orpheus. He is born of Ilmatar and contributes to the creation of Earth as it is today. Many of his travels resemble shamanistic journeys, most notably one where he visits the belly of a ground-giant, Antero Vipunen, to find the songs of boat building. Väinämöinen's search for a wife is a central element in many stories, but he never finds one.
Väinämöinen is associated with playing a kantele, a Finnish stringed instrument that resembles and is played like a zither.
Seppo Ilmarinen is a heroic artificer (comparable to the Germanic Weyland and the Greek Daedalus). He crafted the dome of the sky, the Sampo and various other magical devices featured in The Kalevala. Ilmarinen, like Väinämöinen, also has many stories told of his search for a wife, reaching the point where he forges one of gold.
Lemminkäinen, a handsome, arrogant and reckless seducer, is the son of Lempi (Finnish for 'lust' / 'favourite'). He has a close relationship with his mother, who revives him after he has been drowned in the river of Tuonela while pursuing the object of his romantic desires.
Ukko (Finnish for 'Old man') is the god of sky and thunder, and the leading deity mentioned within The Kalevala. He corresponds to Thor and Zeus.
Joukahainen is a base young man who arrogantly challenges Väinämöinen to a singing contest, which he loses. In exchange for his life Joukahainen promises his young sister Aino to Väinämöinen. Joukahainen attempts to gain his revenge on Väinämöinen by killing him with a crossbow, but only succeeds in killing Väinämöinen's horse. Joukahainen's actions lead to Väinämöinen promising to build a Sampo in return for Louhi rescuing him.
Louhi, the Mistress of the North, is the shamanistic matriarch of the people of Pohjola, a people rivalling those of Kalevala. She is the cause of much trouble for Kalevala and its people.
Louhi at one point saves Väinämöinen's life. She has many daughters whom the heroes of Kalevala make many attempts, some successful, to seduce. Louhi plays a major part in the battle to prevent the heroes of Kalevala from stealing back the Sampo, which as a result is ultimately destroyed. She is a powerful witch with a skill almost on a par with that of Väinämöinen.
Kullervo is the vengeful, mentally ill, tragic son of Kalervo. He was abused as a child and sold into slavery to Ilmarinen. He is put to work and treated badly by Ilmarinen's wife, whom he later kills. Kullervo is a misguided and troubled youth, at odds with himself and his situation. He often goes into berserk rage, and in the end commits suicide.
Marjatta is a young virgin of Kalevala. She becomes pregnant from eating a lingonberry. When her labour begins she is expelled from her parents' home and leaves to find a place where she can sauna and give birth. She is turned away from numerous places but finally finds a place in the forest and gives birth to a son. Marjatta's nature, impregnation and searching for a place to give birth are in allegory to the Virgin Mary and the Christianisation of Finland. Marjatta's son is later condemned to death by Väinämöinen for being born out of wedlock. The boy in turn chastises Väinämöinen and is later crowned King of Karelia. This angers Väinämöinen, who leaves Kalevala after bequeathing his songs and kantele to the people as his legacy.
The Kalevala is a major part of Finnish culture and history. It has influenced the arts in Finland and in other cultures around the world.
The influence of the Kalevala in daily life and business in Finland is tangible. Names and places associated with the Kalevala have been adopted as company and brand names and as place names.
There are several places within Finland with Kalevala-related names, for example: the district of Tapiola in the city of Espoo; the district of Pohjola in the city of Turku, the district of Metsola in the city of Vantaa, and the districts of Kaleva and Sampo in the city of Tampere; the historic provinces of Savo and Karjala and the Russian town of Hiitola are all mentioned within the songs of the Kalevala. In addition, the Russian town of Ukhta was in 1963 renamed Kalevala. In the United States a small community founded in 1900 by Finnish immigrants is named Kaleva, Michigan; many of the street names are taken from the Kalevala.
The banking sector of Finland has had at least three Kalevala-related brands: Sampo Bank (name changed to Danske Bank in late 2012), OP-Pohjola Group and Tapiola Bank.
The jewellery company Kalevala Koru was founded in 1935 on the 100th anniversary of the publication of the Old Kalevala. It specialises in the production of unique and culturally important items of jewellery. It is co-owned by the Kalevala Women's League and offers artistic scholarships to a certain number of organisations and individuals every year.
The Finnish dairy company Valio has a brand of ice-cream named Aino, specialising in more exotic flavours than their normal brand.
The construction group Lemminkäinen was formed in 1910 as a roofing and asphalt company. The name was chosen specifically to emphasise that they were a wholly Finnish company. They now operate internationally.
Kalevala Day is celebrated in Finland on 28 February, to celebrate the publication date of Elias Lönnrot's first version of the Kalevala in 1835. By its other official name, the day is known as the Finnish Culture Day.
Several of the names in the Kalevala are celebrated as Finnish name days. The name days themselves and the dates they fall upon have no direct relationship with the Kalevala itself; however, the adoption of the names became commonplace after the release of the Kalevala.
Several artists have been influenced by the Kalevala, most notably Akseli Gallen-Kallela.
Iittala group's Arabia brand kilned a series of Kalevala commemorative plates, designed by Raija Uosikkinen (1923–2004). The series ran from 1976 to 1999, and the plates are highly sought-after collectibles.
One of the earliest artists to depict the Kalevala was Robert Wilhelm Ekman.
In 1989, the fourth full translation of the Kalevala into English was published, illustrated by Björn Landström.
The Kalevala has been translated over 150 times, into over 60 different languages. (See § translations.)
Finnish cartoonist Kristian Huitula illustrated a comic book adaptation of the Kalevala. The Kalevala Graphic Novel contains the storyline of all the 50 chapters in original text form.
Finnish cartoonist and children's writer Mauri Kunnas wrote and illustrated Koirien Kalevala (Finnish for 'The Canine Kalevala'). The story is that of the Kalevala, with the characters presented as anthropomorphised dogs, wolves and cats. The story deviates from the full Kalevala to make the story more appropriate for children.
In the late 1950s students from the Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama performed excerpts from the Kalevala in a presentation to the poet laureate John Masefield at Oxford. Some images from this presentation can be viewed online
The Kalevala inspired the American Disney cartoonist Don Rosa to draw a Donald Duck (who is himself a popular character in Finland) story based on the Kalevala, called The Quest for Kalevala. The comic was released on the 150th anniversary of the Kalevala.
Franz Anton Schiefner's translation of the Kalevala was one inspiration for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1855 poem The Song of Hiawatha, which is written in a similar trochaic tetrameter.
Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald's Estonian national epic Kalevipoeg was inspired by the Kalevala. Both Väinämöinen and Ilmarinen are mentioned in the work, and the overall story of Kalevipoeg, Kalev's son, bears similarities to the Kullervo story.
J. R. R. Tolkien claimed the Kalevala as one of his sources for The Silmarillion. For example, the tale of Kullervo is the basis of Túrin Turambar in Narn i Chîn Húrin, including the sword that speaks when the anti-hero uses it to commit suicide. Aulë, the Lord of Matter and the Master of All Crafts, was influenced by Ilmarinen, the Eternal Hammerer. Echoes of the Kalevala's characters, Väinämöinen in particular, can be found in Tom Bombadil of The Lord of the Rings.
Poet and playwright Paavo Haavikko took influence from the Kalevala, including in his poem Kaksikymmentä ja yksi (1974), and the TV drama Rauta-aika (1982).
American science fiction and fantasy authors L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt used the Kalevala as source materials for their 1953 fantasy novella "The Wall of Serpents". This is the fourth story in the authors' Harold Shea series, in which the hero and his companions visit various mythic and fictional worlds. In this story, the characters visit the world of the Kalevala, where they encounter characters from the epic, drawn with a skeptical eye.
Emil Petaja was an American science fiction and fantasy author of Finnish descent. His best known works, known as the Otava Series, were a series of novels based on the Kalevala. The series brought Petaja readers from around the world, while his mythological approach to science fiction was discussed in scholarly papers presented at academic conferences. He has a further Kalevala based work which is not part of the series, entitled The Time Twister.
British fantasy author Michael Moorcock's sword and sorcery anti-hero, Elric of Melniboné was influenced by the character Kullervo.
British fantasy author Michael Scott Rohan's Winter of the World series feature Louhi as a major antagonist and include many narrative threads from the Kalevela.
The web comic "A Redtail's Dream", written and illustrated by Minna Sundberg, cites the Kalevala as an influence. (Physical edition 2014.)
The British science fiction writer Ian Watson's Books of Mana duology, Lucky's Harvest and The Fallen Moon, both contain references to places and names from the Kalevala.
In 2008, Vietnamese author and translator Bùi Viêt Hoa published a piece of epic poetry The Children of Mon and Man (Vietnamese: Con cháu Mon Mân),, which delves into Vietnamese folk poetry and mythology, but was partially influenced by the Kalevala. The work was written mainly in Finland and the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs co-financed it.
Finnish music has been greatly influenced by the Kalevala, following in the tradition of the original song-poems.
The first recorded example of a musician influenced by the Kalevala is Filip von Schantz. In 1860, he composed the Kullervo Overture. The piece premièred at the opening of a new theatre in Helsinki on November of the same year. Von Schantz's work was followed by Robert Kajanus' Kullervo's Funeral March and the symphonic poem Aino in 1880 and 1885, respectively. Aino is credited with inspiring Jean Sibelius to investigate the richness of the Kalevala. Die Kalewainen in Pochjola, the first opera freely based upon the Kalevala, was composed by Karl Müller-Berghaus in 1890, but the work has never been performed.
Jean Sibelius is the best-known Kalevala-influenced classical composer. Twelve of Sibelius' best-known works are based upon or influenced by the Kalevala, including his Kullervo, a tone poem for soprano, baritone, chorus and orchestra composed in 1892. Sibelius also composed the music of Jääkärimarssi (Finnish for 'The Jäger March') to words written by Finnish soldier and writer Heikki Nurmio. The march features the line Me nousemme kostona Kullervon (Finnish for 'We shall rise in vengeance like that of Kullervo's').
Other classical composers influenced by the Kalevala:
A number of folk metal bands have drawn on the Kalevala heavily for inspiration. In 1993 the Finnish bands Amorphis and Sentenced released two concept albums, Tales from the Thousand Lakes and North from Here respectively, which were the first of many Kalevala-inspired albums that have followed since. Amorphis's 2009 album Skyforger also draws heavily on the Kalevala. The Finnish folk metal band Ensiferum have released songs such as "Old Man" and "Little Dreamer", which are influenced by the Kalevala. The third track of their Dragonheads EP is entitled "Kalevala Melody". It is an instrumental piece following the rhythm of the Kalevala metre. Another Finnish folk metal band, Turisas, have adapted several verses from song nine of the Kalevala, "The Origin of Iron", for the lyrics of their song "Cursed Be Iron", which is the third track of the album The Varangian Way. Finnish metal band Amberian Dawn use lyrics inspired by the Kalevala on their album River of Tuoni, as well as on its successor, The Clouds of Northland Thunder. On 3 August 2012, Finnish folk metal band Korpiklaani released a new album entitled Manala. Jonne Järvelä from the band said, "Manala is the realm of the dead – the underworld in Finnish mythology. Tuonela, Tuoni, Manala and Mana are used synonymously. This place is best known for its appearance in the Finnish national epic Kalevala, on which many of our new songs are based."
In the mid-1960s, the progressive rock band Kalevala was active within Finland and in 1974, the now prolific singer-songwriter Jukka Kuoppamäki released the song "Väinämöinen". These were some of the first pieces of modern popular music inspired by the Kalevala.
In 1998, Ruth MacKenzie recorded the album Kalevala: Dream of the Salmon Maiden, a song cycle covering the story of Aino and her choice to refuse the hand of the sorcerer Väinämöinen, instead transforming herself into a salmon. MacKenzie has continued to perform the piece live.
The Karelian Finnish folk music group Värttinä has based some of its lyrics on motifs from the Kalevala. The Vantaa Chamber Choir have songs influenced by the Kalevala. Their Kalevala-themed third album, Marian virsi (2005), combines contemporary folk with traditionally performed folk poetry.
In 2003, the Finnish progressive rock quarterly Colossus and French Musea Records commissioned 30 progressive rock groups from around the world to compose songs based on parts of the Kalevala. The publication assigned each band with a particular song from the Kalevala, which the band was free to interpret as they saw fit. The result, titled Kalevala, is a three-disc, multilingual, four-hour epic telling.
In the beginning of 2009, in celebration of the 160th anniversary of the Kalevala's first published edition, the Finnish Literature Society, the Kalevala Society, premièred ten new and original works inspired by the Kalevala. The works included poems, classical and contemporary music and artwork. A book was published by the Finnish Literature Society in conjunction with the event and a large exhibition of Kalevala-themed artwork and cultural artefacts was put on display at the Ateneum museum in Helsinki.
In 2017 a New York-based production Kalevala the Musical premiered in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Republic of Finland. The production featured original pop, folk and world music score written by Johanna Telander. The concert version was performed across the United States and Finland.
In 1959, a joint Finnish-Soviet production entitled Sampo, also known as The Day the Earth Froze, was released, inspired by the story of the Sampo from the Kalevala, which is also featured in a 1993 episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
In 1982, the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) produced a television mini-series called Rauta-aika (Finnish for 'The Age of Iron'), with music composed by Aulis Sallinen and book by Paavo Haavikko. The series was set "during the Kalevala times" and based upon events which take place in the Kalevala. The series' part 3/4 won Prix Italia in 1983.
The martial arts film Jadesoturi, also known as Jade Warrior, released in Finland on 13 October 2006, was based upon the Kalevala and set in Finland and China. Also, the 2013 film Kalevala: The New Era, directed by Jari Halonen, takes place both in the ancient land of the Kalevala and also in modern Finland. The film, made with a budget of €250,000, turned out to be a box-office bomb and received a mostly negative reception from critics.
In "Chapter 17: The Apostate", the first episode of the third season of The Mandalorian series, Din Djarin meets with Bo-Katan in an old Mandalorian castle, which is located in the Mandalore system planet called Kalevala. The same planet has also previously been mentioned in The Clone Wars series.
The Kalevala has attracted many scholars and enthusiasts to interpret its contents in a historical context. Many interpretations of the themes have been tabled. Some parts of the epic have been perceived as ancient conflicts between the early Finns and the Sami. In this context, the country of "Kalevala" could be understood as Southern Finland and Pohjola as Lapland.
However, the place names in Kalevala seem to transfer the Kalevala further south, which has been interpreted as reflecting the Finnic expansion from the South that came to push the Sami further to the north. Some scholars locate the lands of Kalevala in East Karelia, where most of the Kalevala stories were written down. In 1961, the small town of Uhtua in the then Soviet Republic of Karelia was renamed Kalevala, perhaps to promote that theory.
Finnish politician and linguist Eemil Nestor Setälä rejected the idea that the heroes of Kalevala are historical in nature and suggested they are personifications of natural phenomena. He interprets Pohjola as the northern heavens and the Sampo as the pillar of the world. Setälä suggests that the journey to regain the Sampo is a purely imaginary one with the heroes riding a mythological boat or magical steed to the heavens.
The practice of bear worship was once very common in Finland and there are strong echoes of this in the Kalevala.
The old Finnish word väinä (a strait of deep water with a slow current) appears to be the origin of the name Väinämöinen; one of Väinämöinen's other names is Suvantolainen, suvanto being the modern word for väinä. Consequently, it is possible that the Saari (Finnish for 'island') might be the island of Saaremaa in Estonia and Kalevala the Estonian mainland.
Finnish folklorists Matti Kuusi and Pertti Anttonen state that terms such as the people of Kalevala or the tribe of Kalevala were fabricated by Elias Lönnrot. Moreover, they contend that the word Kalevala is very rare in traditional poetry and that by emphasizing dualism (Kalevala vs. Pohjola) Elias Lönnrot created the required tension that made the Kalevala dramatically successful and thus fit for a national epic of the time.
There are similarities with mythology and folklore from other cultures, for example the Kullervo character and his story bearing some likeness to the Greek Oedipus. The similarity of the virginal maiden Marjatta to the Christian Virgin Mary is striking. The arrival of Marjatta's son in the final song spelling the end of Väinämöinen's reign over Kalevala is similar to the arrival of Christianity bringing about the end of Paganism in Finland and Europe at large.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Kalevala (Finnish: Kalevala, IPA: [ˈkɑleʋɑlɑ]) is a 19th-century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Karelian and Finnish oral folklore and mythology, telling an epic story about the Creation of the Earth, describing the controversies and retaliatory voyages between the peoples of the land of Kalevala called Väinölä and the land of Pohjola and their various protagonists and antagonists, as well as the construction and robbery of the epic mythical wealth-making machine Sampo.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The Kalevala is regarded as the national epic of Karelia and Finland and is one of the most significant works of Finnish literature with J. L. Runeberg's The Tales of Ensign Stål and Aleksis Kivi's The Seven Brothers. The Kalevala was instrumental in the development of the Finnish national identity and the intensification of Finland's language strife that ultimately led to Finland's independence from Russia in 1917. The work is also well known internationally and has partly influenced, for example, J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium (i.e. Middle-earth mythology).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The first version of the Kalevala, called the Old Kalevala, was published in 1835, consisting of 12,078 verses. The version most commonly known today was first published in 1849 and consists of 22,795 verses, divided into fifty folk stories (Finnish: runot). An abridged version, containing all fifty poems but just 9732 verses, was published in 1862. In connection with the Kalevala, there is another much more lyrical collection of poems, also compiled by Lönnrot, called Kanteletar from 1840, which is mostly seen as a \"sister collection\" of the Kalevala.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Elias Lönnrot (9 April 1802 – 19 March 1884) was a physician, botanist, linguist, and poet. During the time he was compiling the Kalevala he was the district health officer based in Kajaani responsible for the whole Kainuu region in the eastern part of what was then the Grand Duchy of Finland. He was the son of Fredrik Johan Lönnrot, a tailor and Ulrika Lönnrot; he was born in the village of Sammatti, Uusimaa.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "At the age of 21, he entered the Imperial Academy of Turku and obtained a master's degree in 1826. His thesis was entitled De Vainamoine priscorum fennorum numine (Väinämöinen, a Divinity of the Ancient Finns). The monograph's second volume was destroyed in the Great Fire of Turku the same year.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In the spring of 1828, he set out with the aim of collecting folk songs and poetry. Rather than continue this work, though, he decided to complete his studies and entered Imperial Alexander University in Helsinki to study medicine. He earned a master's degree in 1832. In January 1833, he started as the district health officer of Kainuu and began his work on collecting poetry and compiling the Kalevala. Throughout his career Lönnrot made a total of eleven field trips within a period of fifteen years.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Prior to the publication of the Kalevala, Elias Lönnrot compiled several related works, including the three-part Kantele (1829–1831), the Old Kalevala (1835) and the Kanteletar (1840).",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Lönnrot's field trips and endeavours helped him to compile the Kalevala, and brought considerable enjoyment to the people he visited; he would spend much time retelling what he had collected as well as learning new poems.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Before the 18th century, Kalevala poetry, also known as runic song was common throughout Finland and Karelia, but in the 18th century it began to disappear in Finland, first in western Finland, because European rhymed poetry became more common in Finland. Finnish folk poetry was first written down in the 17th century and collected by hobbyists and scholars through the following centuries. Despite this, the majority of Finnish poetry remained only in the oral tradition.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Finnish born nationalist and linguist Carl Axel Gottlund (1796–1875) expressed his desire for a Finnish epic in a similar vein to the Iliad, Ossian and the Nibelungenlied compiled from the various poems and songs spread over most of Finland. He hoped that such an endeavour would incite a sense of nationality and independence in the native Finnish people. In 1820, Reinhold von Becker [fi] founded the journal Turun Wiikko-Sanomat (Turku Weekly News) and published three articles entitled Väinämöisestä (Concerning Väinämöinen). These works were an inspiration for Elias Lönnrot in creating his masters thesis at Turku University.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In the 19th century, collecting became more extensive, systematic and organised. Altogether, almost half a million pages of verse have been collected and archived by the Finnish Literature Society and other collectors in what are now Estonia and the Republic of Karelia. The publication Suomen Kansan Vanhat Runot (Ancient Poems of the Finns) published 33 volumes containing 85,000 items of poetry over a period of 40 years. They have archived 65,000 items of poetry that remain unpublished. By the end of the 19th century this pastime of collecting material relating to Karelia and the developing orientation towards eastern lands had become a fashion called Karelianism, a form of national romanticism.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The chronology of this oral tradition is uncertain. The oldest themes, the origin of Earth, have been interpreted to have their roots in distant, unrecorded history and could be as old as 3,000 years. The newest events, e.g. the arrival of Christianity, seem to be from the Iron Age, which in Finland lasted until c. 1300 CE. Finnish folklorist Kaarle Krohn proposes that 20 of the 45 poems of the Kalevala are of possible Ancient Estonian origin or at least deal with a motif of Estonian origin (of the remainder, two are Ingrian and 23 are Western Finnish).",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "It is understood that during the Finnish reformation in the 16th century the clergy forbade all telling and singing of pagan rites and stories. In conjunction with the arrival of European poetry and music this caused a significant reduction in the number of traditional folk songs and their singers. Thus the tradition faded somewhat but was never totally eradicated.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In total, Lönnrot made eleven field trips in search of poetry. His first trip was made in 1828 after his graduation from Turku University, but it was not until 1831 and his second field trip that the real work began. By that time he had already published three articles entitled Kantele and had significant notes to build upon. This second trip was not very successful and he was called back to Helsinki to attend to victims of the Second cholera pandemic.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The third field trip was much more successful and led Elias Lönnrot to Viena in east Karelia where he visited the town of Akonlahti, which proved most successful. This trip yielded over 3,000 verses and copious notes. In 1833, Lönnrot moved to Kajaani where he was to spend the next 20 years as the district health officer for the region, living in the Hövelö croft located near the Lake Oulujärvi in the Paltaniemi village, spending his spare time searching for poems. His fourth field trip was undertaken in conjunction with his work as a doctor; a 10-day jaunt into Viena. This trip resulted in 49 poems and almost 3,000 new lines of verse. It was during this trip that Lönnrot formulated the idea that the poems might represent a wider continuity, when poem entities were performed to him along with comments in normal speech connecting them.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "On the fifth field trip, Lönnrot met Arhippa Perttunen who, over two days of continuous recitation, provided him with some 4,000 verses for the Kalevala. He also met a singer called Matiska in the hamlet of Lonkka on the Russian side of the border. Although this singer had a somewhat poor memory, he did help to fill in many gaps in the work Lönnrot had already catalogued. This trip resulted in the discovery of almost 300 poems at just over 13,000 verses.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In autumn of 1834, Lönnrot had written the vast majority of the work needed for what was to become the Old Kalevala; all that was required was to tie up some narrative loose ends and complete the work. His sixth field trip took him into Kuhmo, a municipality in Kainuu to the south of Viena. There he collected over 4,000 verses and completed the first draft of his work. He wrote the foreword and published in February of the following year.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "With the Old Kalevala well into its first publication run, Lönnrot decided to continue collecting poems to supplement his existing work and to understand the culture more completely. The seventh field trip took him on a long winding path through the southern and eastern parts of the Viena poem singing region. He was delayed significantly in Kuhmo because of bad skiing conditions. By the end of that trip, Lönnrot had collected another 100 poems consisting of over 4,000 verses. Lönnrot made his eighth field trip to the Russian border town of Lapukka where the great singer Arhippa Perttunen had learned his trade. In correspondence he notes that he has written down many new poems but is unclear on the quantity.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Elias Lönnrot departed on the first part of his ninth field trip on 16 September 1836. He was granted a 14-month leave of absence and a sum of travelling expenses from the Finnish Literary Society. His funds came with some stipulations: he must travel around the Kainuu border regions and then on to the north and finally from Kainuu to the south-east along the border. For the expedition into the north he was accompanied by Juhana Fredrik Cajan. The first part of the trip took Lönnrot all the way to Inari in northern Lapland. The second, southern part of the journey was more successful than the northern part, taking Lönnrot to the town of Sortavala on Lake Ladoga then back up through Savo and eventually back to Kajaani. Although these trips were long and arduous, they resulted in very little Kalevala material; only 1,000 verses were recovered from the southern half and an unknown quantity from the northern half.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The tenth field trip is a relative unknown. What is known however, is that Lönnrot intended to gather poems and songs to compile into the upcoming work Kanteletar. He was accompanied by his friend C. H. Ståhlberg for the majority of the trip. During that journey the pair met Mateli Magdalena Kuivalatar in the small border town of Ilomantsi. Kuivalatar was very important to the development of the Kanteletar. The eleventh documented field trip was another undertaken in conjunction with his medical work. During the first part of the trip, Lönnrot returned to Akonlahti in Russian Karelia, where he gathered 80 poems and a total of 800 verses. The rest of the trip suffers from poor documentation.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Lönnrot and his contemporaries, e.g. Matthias Castrén, Anders Johan Sjögren, and David Emmanuel Daniel Europaeus collected most of the poem variants; one poem could easily have countless variants, scattered across rural areas of Karelia and Ingria. Lönnrot was not really interested in, and rarely wrote down the name of the singer except for some of the more prolific cases. His primary purpose in the region was that of a physician and of an editor, not of a biographer or counsellor. He rarely knew anything in-depth about the singer himself and primarily only catalogued verse that could be relevant or of some use in his work.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The student David Emmanuel Daniel Europaeus is credited with discovering and cataloguing the majority of the Kullervo story.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Of the dozens of poem singers who contributed to the Kalevala, significant ones are:",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The poetry was often sung to music built on a pentachord, sometimes assisted by a kantele player. The rhythm could vary but the music was arranged in either two or four lines in 4 metre. The poems were often performed by a duo, each person singing alternative verses or groups of verses. This method of performance is called an antiphonic performance, it is a kind of \"singing match\".",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Despite the vast geographical distance and customary spheres separating individual singers, the folk poetry the Kalevala is based on was always sung in the same metre.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The Kalevala's metre is a form of trochaic tetrameter that is now known as the Kalevala metre. The metre is thought to have originated during the Proto-Finnic period. Its syllables fall into three types: strong, weak, and neutral. Its main rules are as follows:",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "There are two main types of line:",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Traditional poetry in the Kalevala metre uses both types with approximately the same frequency. The alternating normal and broken tetrameters is a characteristic difference between the Kalevala metre and other forms of trochaic tetrameter.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "There are four additional rules:",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "There are two main schemes featured in the Kalevala:",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The verses are sometimes inverted into chiasmus.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Verses 221 to 232 of song forty.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Very little is actually known about Elias Lönnrot's personal contributions to the Kalevala. Scholars to this day still argue about how much of the Kalevala is genuine folk poetry and how much is Lönnrot's own work – and the degree to which the text is 'authentic' to the oral tradition. During the compilation process it is known that he merged poem variants and characters together, left out verses that did not fit and composed lines of his own to connect certain passages into a logical plot. Similarly, as was normal in the preliterate conventions of oral poetry—according to the testimony of Arhippa Perttunen—traditional bards in his father's days would always vary the language of songs from performance to performance when reciting from their repertoire.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The Finnish historian Väinö Kaukonen suggests that 3% of the Kalevala's lines are Lönnrot's own composition, 14% are Lönnrot compositions from variants, 50% are verses which Lönnrot kept mostly unchanged except for some minor alterations, and 33% are original unedited oral poetry.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The first version of Lönnrot's compilation was entitled Kalewala, taikka Wanhoja Karjalan Runoja Suomen Kansan muinoisista ajoista (\"The Kalevala, or old Karelian poems about ancient times of the Finnish people\"), also known as the Old Kalevala. It was published in two volumes in 1835–1836. The Old Kalevala consisted of 12,078 verses making up a total of thirty-two poems.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Even after the publication of the Old Kalevala Lönnrot continued to collect new material for several years. He later integrated this additional material, with significantly edited existing material, into a second version, the Kalevala. This New Kalevala, published in 1849, contains fifty poems, with a number of plot differences compared with the first version, and is the standard text of the Kalevala read and translated to this day. (Published as: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seuran Toimituksia. 14 Osa. KALEVALA.)",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The word Kalevala rarely appears in the original folk songs. The first appearance of the word in folk songs was recorded in April 1836. Lönnrot chose it as the title for his project sometime at the end of 1834, but his choice was not random. The name \"Kalev\" appears in Finnic and Baltic folklore in many locations, and the Sons of Kalev are known throughout Finnish and Estonian folklore.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Lönnrot produced Lyhennetty laitos, an abridged version of the Kalevala, in 1862. It was intended for use in schools. It retains all 50 poems from the 1849 version, but omits more than half of the verses.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Of the few complete translations into English, it is only the older translations by John Martin Crawford (1888) and William Forsell Kirby (1907) which attempt to strictly follow the original (Kalevala metre) of the poems.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "A notable partial translation of Franz Anton Schiefner's German translation was made by Prof. John Addison Porter in 1868 and published by Leypoldt & Holt.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Edward Taylor Fletcher, a British-born Canadian literature enthusiast, translated selections of the Kalevala in 1869. He read them before the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec on 17 March 1869.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Francis Peabody Magoun published a scholarly translation of the Kalevala in 1963 written entirely in prose. The appendices of this version contain notes on the history of the poem, comparisons between the original Old Kalevala and the current version, and a detailed glossary of terms and names used in the poem. Magoun translated the Old Kalevala, which was published six years later entitled The Old Kalevala and Certain Antecedents.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Eino Friberg's 1988 translation uses the original metre selectively but in general is more attuned to pleasing the ear than being an exact metrical translation; it also often reduces the length of songs for aesthetic reasons. In the introduction to his 1989 translation, Keith Bosley stated: \"The only way I could devise of reflecting the vitality of Kalevala metre was to invent my own, based on syllables rather than feet. While translating over 17,000 lines of Finnish folk poetry before I started on the epic, I found that a line settled usually into seven syllables of English, often less, occasionally more. I eventually arrived at seven, five and nine syllables respectively, using the impair (odd number) as a formal device and letting the stresses fall where they would.\"",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Most recently, Finnish/Canadian author and translator Kaarina Brooks translated into English the complete runic versions of Old Kalevala 1835 (Wisteria Publications 2020) and Kalevala (Wisteria Publications 2021). These works, unlike some previous versions, faithfully follow the Kalevala meter (Trochaic tetrameter) throughout and can be sung or chanted as Elias Lönnrot had intended. Brooks says, \"It is essential that the translation of Kalevala into any language follows the Kalevala metre, for that was how these runes were sung in times immemorial. So that readers get the full impact of these ancient runes, it is imperative that they be presented in the same chanting style.\" Kaarina Brooks is also the translator of, An Illustrated Kalevala Myths and Legends from Finland, published by Floris Books UK.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Modern translations were published in the Karelian and Urdu languages between 2009 and 2015. Thus, the Kalevala was published in its originating Karelian language only after 168 years since its first translation into Swedish.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "As of 2010, the Kalevala had been translated into sixty-one languages and is Finland's most translated work of literature.",
"title": "Collection and compilation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The Kalevala begins with the traditional Finnish creation myth, leading into stories of the creation of the earth, plants, creatures, and the sky. Creation, healing, combat and internal story telling are often accomplished by the character(s) involved singing of their exploits or desires. Many parts of the stories involve a character hunting or requesting lyrics (spells) to acquire some skill, such as boat-building or the mastery of iron making. As well as magical spell casting and singing, there are many stories of lust, romance, kidnapping and seduction. The protagonists of the stories often have to accomplish feats that are unreasonable or impossible which they often fail to achieve, leading to tragedy and humiliation.",
"title": "The story"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The Sampo is a pivotal element of the whole work. Many actions and their consequences are caused by the Sampo itself or a character's interaction with the Sampo. It is described as a magical talisman or device that brings its possessor great fortune and prosperity, but its precise nature has been the subject of debate to the present day.",
"title": "The story"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Cantos 1 to 2: The poem begins with an introduction by the singers. The Earth is created from the shards of the egg of a goldeneye and the first man Väinämöinen is born to the goddess Ilmatar. Väinämöinen brings trees and life to the barren world.",
"title": "The story"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Cantos 3–5: Väinämöinen encounters the jealous Joukahainen and they engage in a battle of song. Joukahainen loses and pledges his sister's hand in return for his life; the sister Aino soon drowns herself in the sea.",
"title": "The story"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Cantos 6–10: Väinämöinen heads to Pohjola to propose to a maiden of the north, a daughter of the mistress of the north Louhi. Joukahainen attacks Väinämöinen again, and Väinämöinen floats for days on the sea until he is carried by an eagle to Pohjola. He makes a deal with Louhi to get Ilmarinen the smith to create the Sampo. Ilmarinen refuses to go to Pohjola so Väinämöinen forces him against his will. The Sampo is forged. Ilmarinen returns without a bride.",
"title": "The story"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Cantos 11–15: Lemminkäinen sets out in search of a bride. He and the maid Kyllikki make vows but the happiness doesn't last long and Lemminkäinen sets off to woo a maiden of the north. His mother tries to stop him, but he disregards her warnings and instead gives her his hairbrush, telling her that if it starts to bleed he has met his doom. At Pohjola Louhi assigns dangerous tasks to him in exchange for her daughter's hand. While hunting for the swan of Tuonela, Lemminkäinen is killed and falls into the river of death. The brush he gave to his mother begins to bleed. Remembering her son's words, she goes in search of him. With a rake given to her by Ilmarinen, she collects the pieces of Lemminkäinen scattered in the river and pieces him back together.",
"title": "The story"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Cantos 16–18: Väinämöinen builds a boat to travel to Pohjola once again in search of a bride. He visits Tuonela and is held prisoner, but he manages to escape and sets out to gain knowledge of the necessary spells from the giant Antero Vipunen. Väinämöinen is swallowed and has to torture Antero Vipunen for the spells and his escape. With his boat completed, Väinämöinen sets sail for Pohjola. Ilmarinen learns of this and resolves to go to Pohjola himself to woo the maiden. The maiden of the north chooses Ilmarinen.",
"title": "The story"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Cantos 19–25: Ilmarinen is assigned dangerous unreasonable tasks to win the hand of the maiden. He accomplishes these tasks with some help from the maiden herself. In preparation for the wedding, beer is brewed, a giant steer is slaughtered, and invitations are sent out. Lemminkäinen is uninvited. The wedding party begins and all are happy. Väinämöinen sings and lauds the people of Pohjola. The bride and bridegroom are prepared for their roles in matrimony. The couple arrive home and are greeted with drink and viands.",
"title": "The story"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Cantos 26–30: Lemminkäinen is resentful for not having been invited to the wedding and sets out immediately for Pohjola. On his arrival he is challenged to and wins a duel with Sariola, the Master of the North. Louhi is enraged and an army is conjured to enact revenge upon Lemminkäinen. He flees to his mother, who advises him to head to Saari, the Island of Refuge. On his return he finds his house burned to the ground. He goes to Pohjola with his companion Tiera to exact his revenge, but Louhi freezes the seas and Lemminkäinen has to return home. When he arrives home he is reunited with his mother and vows to build larger better houses to replace the ones burned down.",
"title": "The story"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Cantos 31–36: Untamo kills his brother Kalervo's people, but spares his wife who later conceives Kullervo. Untamo sees the boy as a threat, and after trying to have him killed several times without success, sells Kullervo as a slave to Ilmarinen. Ilmarinen's wife torments and bullies Kullervo, so he tricks her into being torn apart by a pack of wolves and bears. Kullervo escapes from Ilmarinen's homestead and learns from an old lady in the forest that his family is still alive, and is soon reunited with them. While returning home from paying taxes, he meets and seduces a young maiden, only to find out that she is his sister. Upon realizing this, she kills herself and Kullervo returns home distressed. He decides to wreak revenge upon Untamo and sets out to find him. Kullervo wages war on Untamo and his people, laying all to waste, and then returns home, where he finds his farm deserted. Filled with remorse and regret, he kills himself in the place where he seduced his sister.",
"title": "The story"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Cantos 37–38: Grieving for his lost love, Ilmarinen forges himself a wife out of gold and silver, but finds her to be cold and discards her. He heads for Pohjola and kidnaps the youngest daughter of Louhi. The daughter insults him so badly that he instead sings a spell to turn her into a bird and returns to Kalevala without her. He tells Väinämöinen about the prosperity and wealth that has met Pohjola's people thanks to the Sampo.",
"title": "The story"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Cantos 39–44: Väinämöinen, Ilmarinen and Lemminkäinen sail to Pohjola to recover the Sampo. While on their journey they kill a monstrous pike and from its jaw bone the first kantele is made, with which Väinämöinen sings so beautifully even deities gather to listen. The heroes arrive in Pohjola and demand a share of the Sampo's wealth or they will take the whole Sampo by force. Louhi musters her army however Väinämöinen lulls everyone in Pohjola to sleep with his music. The Sampo is taken from its vault of stone and the heroes set out for home. Louhi conjures a great army, turns herself into a massive eagle and fights for the Sampo. In the battle the Sampo is lost to the sea and destroyed.",
"title": "The story"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Cantos 45–49: Enraged at the loss of the Sampo, Louhi sends the people of Kalevala diseases and a great bear to kill their cattle. She hides the sun and the moon and steals fire from Kalevala. Väinämöinen heals all of the ailments and, with Ilmarinen, restores the fire. Väinämöinen forces Louhi to return the Sun and the Moon to the skies.",
"title": "The story"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Canto 50: The shy young virgin Marjatta becomes impregnated from a lingonberry she ate while tending to her flock. She conceives a son. Väinämöinen orders the killing of the boy, but the boy begins to speak and reproaches Väinämöinen for ill judgement. The child is then baptised King of Karelia. Väinämöinen sails away leaving only his songs and kantele as legacy but vowing to return when there's no moon or sun and happiness isn't free anymore.",
"title": "The story"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "The poem ends and the singers sing a farewell and thank their audience.",
"title": "The story"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Väinämöinen, the central character of The Kalevala, is a shamanistic hero with a magical power of song and music similar to that of Orpheus. He is born of Ilmatar and contributes to the creation of Earth as it is today. Many of his travels resemble shamanistic journeys, most notably one where he visits the belly of a ground-giant, Antero Vipunen, to find the songs of boat building. Väinämöinen's search for a wife is a central element in many stories, but he never finds one.",
"title": "The story"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Väinämöinen is associated with playing a kantele, a Finnish stringed instrument that resembles and is played like a zither.",
"title": "The story"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Seppo Ilmarinen is a heroic artificer (comparable to the Germanic Weyland and the Greek Daedalus). He crafted the dome of the sky, the Sampo and various other magical devices featured in The Kalevala. Ilmarinen, like Väinämöinen, also has many stories told of his search for a wife, reaching the point where he forges one of gold.",
"title": "The story"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Lemminkäinen, a handsome, arrogant and reckless seducer, is the son of Lempi (Finnish for 'lust' / 'favourite'). He has a close relationship with his mother, who revives him after he has been drowned in the river of Tuonela while pursuing the object of his romantic desires.",
"title": "The story"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Ukko (Finnish for 'Old man') is the god of sky and thunder, and the leading deity mentioned within The Kalevala. He corresponds to Thor and Zeus.",
"title": "The story"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Joukahainen is a base young man who arrogantly challenges Väinämöinen to a singing contest, which he loses. In exchange for his life Joukahainen promises his young sister Aino to Väinämöinen. Joukahainen attempts to gain his revenge on Väinämöinen by killing him with a crossbow, but only succeeds in killing Väinämöinen's horse. Joukahainen's actions lead to Väinämöinen promising to build a Sampo in return for Louhi rescuing him.",
"title": "The story"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Louhi, the Mistress of the North, is the shamanistic matriarch of the people of Pohjola, a people rivalling those of Kalevala. She is the cause of much trouble for Kalevala and its people.",
"title": "The story"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Louhi at one point saves Väinämöinen's life. She has many daughters whom the heroes of Kalevala make many attempts, some successful, to seduce. Louhi plays a major part in the battle to prevent the heroes of Kalevala from stealing back the Sampo, which as a result is ultimately destroyed. She is a powerful witch with a skill almost on a par with that of Väinämöinen.",
"title": "The story"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Kullervo is the vengeful, mentally ill, tragic son of Kalervo. He was abused as a child and sold into slavery to Ilmarinen. He is put to work and treated badly by Ilmarinen's wife, whom he later kills. Kullervo is a misguided and troubled youth, at odds with himself and his situation. He often goes into berserk rage, and in the end commits suicide.",
"title": "The story"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Marjatta is a young virgin of Kalevala. She becomes pregnant from eating a lingonberry. When her labour begins she is expelled from her parents' home and leaves to find a place where she can sauna and give birth. She is turned away from numerous places but finally finds a place in the forest and gives birth to a son. Marjatta's nature, impregnation and searching for a place to give birth are in allegory to the Virgin Mary and the Christianisation of Finland. Marjatta's son is later condemned to death by Väinämöinen for being born out of wedlock. The boy in turn chastises Väinämöinen and is later crowned King of Karelia. This angers Väinämöinen, who leaves Kalevala after bequeathing his songs and kantele to the people as his legacy.",
"title": "The story"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "The Kalevala is a major part of Finnish culture and history. It has influenced the arts in Finland and in other cultures around the world.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "The influence of the Kalevala in daily life and business in Finland is tangible. Names and places associated with the Kalevala have been adopted as company and brand names and as place names.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "There are several places within Finland with Kalevala-related names, for example: the district of Tapiola in the city of Espoo; the district of Pohjola in the city of Turku, the district of Metsola in the city of Vantaa, and the districts of Kaleva and Sampo in the city of Tampere; the historic provinces of Savo and Karjala and the Russian town of Hiitola are all mentioned within the songs of the Kalevala. In addition, the Russian town of Ukhta was in 1963 renamed Kalevala. In the United States a small community founded in 1900 by Finnish immigrants is named Kaleva, Michigan; many of the street names are taken from the Kalevala.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "The banking sector of Finland has had at least three Kalevala-related brands: Sampo Bank (name changed to Danske Bank in late 2012), OP-Pohjola Group and Tapiola Bank.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "The jewellery company Kalevala Koru was founded in 1935 on the 100th anniversary of the publication of the Old Kalevala. It specialises in the production of unique and culturally important items of jewellery. It is co-owned by the Kalevala Women's League and offers artistic scholarships to a certain number of organisations and individuals every year.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "The Finnish dairy company Valio has a brand of ice-cream named Aino, specialising in more exotic flavours than their normal brand.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "The construction group Lemminkäinen was formed in 1910 as a roofing and asphalt company. The name was chosen specifically to emphasise that they were a wholly Finnish company. They now operate internationally.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Kalevala Day is celebrated in Finland on 28 February, to celebrate the publication date of Elias Lönnrot's first version of the Kalevala in 1835. By its other official name, the day is known as the Finnish Culture Day.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Several of the names in the Kalevala are celebrated as Finnish name days. The name days themselves and the dates they fall upon have no direct relationship with the Kalevala itself; however, the adoption of the names became commonplace after the release of the Kalevala.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Several artists have been influenced by the Kalevala, most notably Akseli Gallen-Kallela.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Iittala group's Arabia brand kilned a series of Kalevala commemorative plates, designed by Raija Uosikkinen (1923–2004). The series ran from 1976 to 1999, and the plates are highly sought-after collectibles.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "One of the earliest artists to depict the Kalevala was Robert Wilhelm Ekman.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "In 1989, the fourth full translation of the Kalevala into English was published, illustrated by Björn Landström.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "The Kalevala has been translated over 150 times, into over 60 different languages. (See § translations.)",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Finnish cartoonist Kristian Huitula illustrated a comic book adaptation of the Kalevala. The Kalevala Graphic Novel contains the storyline of all the 50 chapters in original text form.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Finnish cartoonist and children's writer Mauri Kunnas wrote and illustrated Koirien Kalevala (Finnish for 'The Canine Kalevala'). The story is that of the Kalevala, with the characters presented as anthropomorphised dogs, wolves and cats. The story deviates from the full Kalevala to make the story more appropriate for children.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "In the late 1950s students from the Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama performed excerpts from the Kalevala in a presentation to the poet laureate John Masefield at Oxford. Some images from this presentation can be viewed online",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "The Kalevala inspired the American Disney cartoonist Don Rosa to draw a Donald Duck (who is himself a popular character in Finland) story based on the Kalevala, called The Quest for Kalevala. The comic was released on the 150th anniversary of the Kalevala.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Franz Anton Schiefner's translation of the Kalevala was one inspiration for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1855 poem The Song of Hiawatha, which is written in a similar trochaic tetrameter.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald's Estonian national epic Kalevipoeg was inspired by the Kalevala. Both Väinämöinen and Ilmarinen are mentioned in the work, and the overall story of Kalevipoeg, Kalev's son, bears similarities to the Kullervo story.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "J. R. R. Tolkien claimed the Kalevala as one of his sources for The Silmarillion. For example, the tale of Kullervo is the basis of Túrin Turambar in Narn i Chîn Húrin, including the sword that speaks when the anti-hero uses it to commit suicide. Aulë, the Lord of Matter and the Master of All Crafts, was influenced by Ilmarinen, the Eternal Hammerer. Echoes of the Kalevala's characters, Väinämöinen in particular, can be found in Tom Bombadil of The Lord of the Rings.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "Poet and playwright Paavo Haavikko took influence from the Kalevala, including in his poem Kaksikymmentä ja yksi (1974), and the TV drama Rauta-aika (1982).",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "American science fiction and fantasy authors L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt used the Kalevala as source materials for their 1953 fantasy novella \"The Wall of Serpents\". This is the fourth story in the authors' Harold Shea series, in which the hero and his companions visit various mythic and fictional worlds. In this story, the characters visit the world of the Kalevala, where they encounter characters from the epic, drawn with a skeptical eye.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Emil Petaja was an American science fiction and fantasy author of Finnish descent. His best known works, known as the Otava Series, were a series of novels based on the Kalevala. The series brought Petaja readers from around the world, while his mythological approach to science fiction was discussed in scholarly papers presented at academic conferences. He has a further Kalevala based work which is not part of the series, entitled The Time Twister.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "British fantasy author Michael Moorcock's sword and sorcery anti-hero, Elric of Melniboné was influenced by the character Kullervo.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "British fantasy author Michael Scott Rohan's Winter of the World series feature Louhi as a major antagonist and include many narrative threads from the Kalevela.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "The web comic \"A Redtail's Dream\", written and illustrated by Minna Sundberg, cites the Kalevala as an influence. (Physical edition 2014.)",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "The British science fiction writer Ian Watson's Books of Mana duology, Lucky's Harvest and The Fallen Moon, both contain references to places and names from the Kalevala.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "In 2008, Vietnamese author and translator Bùi Viêt Hoa published a piece of epic poetry The Children of Mon and Man (Vietnamese: Con cháu Mon Mân),, which delves into Vietnamese folk poetry and mythology, but was partially influenced by the Kalevala. The work was written mainly in Finland and the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs co-financed it.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "Finnish music has been greatly influenced by the Kalevala, following in the tradition of the original song-poems.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "The first recorded example of a musician influenced by the Kalevala is Filip von Schantz. In 1860, he composed the Kullervo Overture. The piece premièred at the opening of a new theatre in Helsinki on November of the same year. Von Schantz's work was followed by Robert Kajanus' Kullervo's Funeral March and the symphonic poem Aino in 1880 and 1885, respectively. Aino is credited with inspiring Jean Sibelius to investigate the richness of the Kalevala. Die Kalewainen in Pochjola, the first opera freely based upon the Kalevala, was composed by Karl Müller-Berghaus in 1890, but the work has never been performed.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "Jean Sibelius is the best-known Kalevala-influenced classical composer. Twelve of Sibelius' best-known works are based upon or influenced by the Kalevala, including his Kullervo, a tone poem for soprano, baritone, chorus and orchestra composed in 1892. Sibelius also composed the music of Jääkärimarssi (Finnish for 'The Jäger March') to words written by Finnish soldier and writer Heikki Nurmio. The march features the line Me nousemme kostona Kullervon (Finnish for 'We shall rise in vengeance like that of Kullervo's').",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "Other classical composers influenced by the Kalevala:",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "A number of folk metal bands have drawn on the Kalevala heavily for inspiration. In 1993 the Finnish bands Amorphis and Sentenced released two concept albums, Tales from the Thousand Lakes and North from Here respectively, which were the first of many Kalevala-inspired albums that have followed since. Amorphis's 2009 album Skyforger also draws heavily on the Kalevala. The Finnish folk metal band Ensiferum have released songs such as \"Old Man\" and \"Little Dreamer\", which are influenced by the Kalevala. The third track of their Dragonheads EP is entitled \"Kalevala Melody\". It is an instrumental piece following the rhythm of the Kalevala metre. Another Finnish folk metal band, Turisas, have adapted several verses from song nine of the Kalevala, \"The Origin of Iron\", for the lyrics of their song \"Cursed Be Iron\", which is the third track of the album The Varangian Way. Finnish metal band Amberian Dawn use lyrics inspired by the Kalevala on their album River of Tuoni, as well as on its successor, The Clouds of Northland Thunder. On 3 August 2012, Finnish folk metal band Korpiklaani released a new album entitled Manala. Jonne Järvelä from the band said, \"Manala is the realm of the dead – the underworld in Finnish mythology. Tuonela, Tuoni, Manala and Mana are used synonymously. This place is best known for its appearance in the Finnish national epic Kalevala, on which many of our new songs are based.\"",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "In the mid-1960s, the progressive rock band Kalevala was active within Finland and in 1974, the now prolific singer-songwriter Jukka Kuoppamäki released the song \"Väinämöinen\". These were some of the first pieces of modern popular music inspired by the Kalevala.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "In 1998, Ruth MacKenzie recorded the album Kalevala: Dream of the Salmon Maiden, a song cycle covering the story of Aino and her choice to refuse the hand of the sorcerer Väinämöinen, instead transforming herself into a salmon. MacKenzie has continued to perform the piece live.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "The Karelian Finnish folk music group Värttinä has based some of its lyrics on motifs from the Kalevala. The Vantaa Chamber Choir have songs influenced by the Kalevala. Their Kalevala-themed third album, Marian virsi (2005), combines contemporary folk with traditionally performed folk poetry.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "In 2003, the Finnish progressive rock quarterly Colossus and French Musea Records commissioned 30 progressive rock groups from around the world to compose songs based on parts of the Kalevala. The publication assigned each band with a particular song from the Kalevala, which the band was free to interpret as they saw fit. The result, titled Kalevala, is a three-disc, multilingual, four-hour epic telling.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "In the beginning of 2009, in celebration of the 160th anniversary of the Kalevala's first published edition, the Finnish Literature Society, the Kalevala Society, premièred ten new and original works inspired by the Kalevala. The works included poems, classical and contemporary music and artwork. A book was published by the Finnish Literature Society in conjunction with the event and a large exhibition of Kalevala-themed artwork and cultural artefacts was put on display at the Ateneum museum in Helsinki.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "In 2017 a New York-based production Kalevala the Musical premiered in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Republic of Finland. The production featured original pop, folk and world music score written by Johanna Telander. The concert version was performed across the United States and Finland.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "In 1959, a joint Finnish-Soviet production entitled Sampo, also known as The Day the Earth Froze, was released, inspired by the story of the Sampo from the Kalevala, which is also featured in a 1993 episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "In 1982, the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) produced a television mini-series called Rauta-aika (Finnish for 'The Age of Iron'), with music composed by Aulis Sallinen and book by Paavo Haavikko. The series was set \"during the Kalevala times\" and based upon events which take place in the Kalevala. The series' part 3/4 won Prix Italia in 1983.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "The martial arts film Jadesoturi, also known as Jade Warrior, released in Finland on 13 October 2006, was based upon the Kalevala and set in Finland and China. Also, the 2013 film Kalevala: The New Era, directed by Jari Halonen, takes place both in the ancient land of the Kalevala and also in modern Finland. The film, made with a budget of €250,000, turned out to be a box-office bomb and received a mostly negative reception from critics.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "In \"Chapter 17: The Apostate\", the first episode of the third season of The Mandalorian series, Din Djarin meets with Bo-Katan in an old Mandalorian castle, which is located in the Mandalore system planet called Kalevala. The same planet has also previously been mentioned in The Clone Wars series.",
"title": "Influence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "The Kalevala has attracted many scholars and enthusiasts to interpret its contents in a historical context. Many interpretations of the themes have been tabled. Some parts of the epic have been perceived as ancient conflicts between the early Finns and the Sami. In this context, the country of \"Kalevala\" could be understood as Southern Finland and Pohjola as Lapland.",
"title": "Interpretations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "However, the place names in Kalevala seem to transfer the Kalevala further south, which has been interpreted as reflecting the Finnic expansion from the South that came to push the Sami further to the north. Some scholars locate the lands of Kalevala in East Karelia, where most of the Kalevala stories were written down. In 1961, the small town of Uhtua in the then Soviet Republic of Karelia was renamed Kalevala, perhaps to promote that theory.",
"title": "Interpretations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "Finnish politician and linguist Eemil Nestor Setälä rejected the idea that the heroes of Kalevala are historical in nature and suggested they are personifications of natural phenomena. He interprets Pohjola as the northern heavens and the Sampo as the pillar of the world. Setälä suggests that the journey to regain the Sampo is a purely imaginary one with the heroes riding a mythological boat or magical steed to the heavens.",
"title": "Interpretations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "The practice of bear worship was once very common in Finland and there are strong echoes of this in the Kalevala.",
"title": "Interpretations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "The old Finnish word väinä (a strait of deep water with a slow current) appears to be the origin of the name Väinämöinen; one of Väinämöinen's other names is Suvantolainen, suvanto being the modern word for väinä. Consequently, it is possible that the Saari (Finnish for 'island') might be the island of Saaremaa in Estonia and Kalevala the Estonian mainland.",
"title": "Interpretations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "Finnish folklorists Matti Kuusi and Pertti Anttonen state that terms such as the people of Kalevala or the tribe of Kalevala were fabricated by Elias Lönnrot. Moreover, they contend that the word Kalevala is very rare in traditional poetry and that by emphasizing dualism (Kalevala vs. Pohjola) Elias Lönnrot created the required tension that made the Kalevala dramatically successful and thus fit for a national epic of the time.",
"title": "Interpretations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "There are similarities with mythology and folklore from other cultures, for example the Kullervo character and his story bearing some likeness to the Greek Oedipus. The similarity of the virginal maiden Marjatta to the Christian Virgin Mary is striking. The arrival of Marjatta's son in the final song spelling the end of Väinämöinen's reign over Kalevala is similar to the arrival of Christianity bringing about the end of Paganism in Finland and Europe at large.",
"title": "Interpretations"
}
] |
The Kalevala is a 19th-century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Karelian and Finnish oral folklore and mythology, telling an epic story about the Creation of the Earth, describing the controversies and retaliatory voyages between the peoples of the land of Kalevala called Väinölä and the land of Pohjola and their various protagonists and antagonists, as well as the construction and robbery of the epic mythical wealth-making machine Sampo. The Kalevala is regarded as the national epic of Karelia and Finland and is one of the most significant works of Finnish literature with J. L. Runeberg's The Tales of Ensign Stål and Aleksis Kivi's The Seven Brothers. The Kalevala was instrumental in the development of the Finnish national identity and the intensification of Finland's language strife that ultimately led to Finland's independence from Russia in 1917. The work is also well known internationally and has partly influenced, for example, J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. The first version of the Kalevala, called the Old Kalevala, was published in 1835, consisting of 12,078 verses. The version most commonly known today was first published in 1849 and consists of 22,795 verses, divided into fifty folk stories. An abridged version, containing all fifty poems but just 9732 verses, was published in 1862. In connection with the Kalevala, there is another much more lyrical collection of poems, also compiled by Lönnrot, called Kanteletar from 1840, which is mostly seen as a "sister collection" of the Kalevala.
|
2001-10-19T00:28:34Z
|
2023-12-29T11:35:08Z
|
[
"Template:ISBN",
"Template:Refend",
"Template:Commons",
"Template:StandardEbooks",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Rp",
"Template:Cite Americana",
"Template:Lang",
"Template:Verse translation",
"Template:Lang-vi",
"Template:Portal",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Dead link",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Refbegin",
"Template:'",
"Template:Langnf",
"Template:Librivox book",
"Template:Refn",
"Template:Citation needed",
"Template:Citation",
"Template:Cite EB1911",
"Template:Kalevala",
"Template:Finland topics",
"Template:Other uses",
"Template:IPA-fi",
"Template:`s",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Gutenberg",
"Template:TOClimit",
"Template:Ill",
"Template:In lang",
"Template:Wikiquote",
"Template:National epic poems",
"Template:Listen",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Music",
"Template:Contradictory inline",
"Template:Wikisource",
"Template:Lang-fi",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Infobox book",
"Template:See also"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalevala
|
16,779 |
Ku Klux Klan
|
The Ku Klux Klan (/ˌkuː klʌks ˈklæn, ˌkjuː-/), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is the name of several historical and current American white supremacist, far-right terrorist organizations and hate groups. The Klan was "the first organized terror movement in American history." Their primary targets are African Americans, Hispanics, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Italian Americans, Irish Americans, and Catholics, as well as immigrants, leftists, homosexuals, Muslims, atheists, and abortion providers.
Three separate Klans have existed in three non-overlapping time periods. Each comprised local chapters with little or no central direction. Each has advocated extremist reactionary positions such as white nationalism, anti-immigration and—especially in later iterations—Nordicism, antisemitism, anti-Catholicism, Prohibition, right-wing populism, anti-communism, homophobia, anti-atheism, and Islamophobia. The first Klan, founded by Confederate veterans in the late 1860s, would assault and murder politically active Black people and their allies in the South. The second iteration of the Klan originated in the late 1910s, and was the first to use cross burnings and white hooded robes. The KKK of the 1920s had a nationwide membership in the millions and reflected a cross-section of the native-born white population. The third Klan formed in the mid 20th century, largely as a reaction to the growing civil rights movement. It committed murders and bombings to achieve its aims. All three movements have called for the "purification" of American society, and are all considered far-right extremist organizations. In each era, membership was secret and estimates of the total were highly exaggerated by both friends and enemies.
The first Klan, established in the wake of the Civil War, was a defining organization of the Reconstruction era. According to historian Bordewich, the Klan was "the first organized terror movement in American history." Federal law enforcement began taking action against it around 1871. The Klan sought to overthrow Republican state governments in the South, especially by using voter intimidation and targeted violence against African-American leaders. The Klan was organized into numerous independent chapters across the Southern United States. Each chapter was autonomous and highly secretive about membership and plans. Members made their own, often colorful, costumes: robes, masks and pointed hats, designed to be terrifying and to hide their identities.
The second Klan started in 1915 as a small group in Georgia. It suddenly started to grow after 1920 and flourished nationwide in the early and mid-1920s, including urban areas of the Midwest and West. Taking inspiration from D. W. Griffith's 1915 silent film The Birth of a Nation, which mythologized the founding of the first Klan, it employed marketing techniques and a popular fraternal organization structure. Rooted in local Protestant communities, it sought to maintain white supremacy, often took a pro-Prohibition stance, and it opposed Jews, while also stressing its opposition to the alleged political power of the pope and the Catholic Church. This second Klan flourished both in the south and northern states; it was funded by initiation fees and selling its members a standard white costume. The chapters did not have dues. It used K-words which were similar to those used by the first Klan, while adding cross burnings and mass parades to intimidate others. It rapidly declined in the latter half of the 1920s.
The third and current manifestation of the KKK emerged after 1950, in the form of localized and isolated groups that use the KKK name. They have focused on opposition to the civil rights movement, often using violence and murder to suppress activists. This manifestation is classified as a hate group by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center. As of 2016, the Anti-Defamation League puts total KKK membership nationwide at around 3,000, while the Southern Poverty Law Center puts it at 6,000 members total.
The second and third incarnations of the Ku Klux Klan made frequent references to a false mythologized perception of America's "Anglo-Saxon" blood, hearkening back to 19th-century nativism. Although members of the KKK swear to uphold "Christian morality", Christian denominations widely denounce them.
The first Klan was founded in Pulaski, Tennessee, on December 24, 1865, by six former officers of the Confederate army: Frank McCord, Richard Reed, John Lester, John Kennedy, J. Calvin Jones, and James Crowe. It started as a fraternal social club inspired at least in part by the then largely defunct Sons of Malta. It borrowed parts of the initiation ceremony from that group, with the same purpose: "ludicrous initiations, the baffling of public curiosity, and the amusement for members were the only objects of the Klan", according to Albert Stevens in 1907. The manual of rituals was printed by Laps D. McCord of Pulaski. The origins of the hood are uncertain; it may have been appropriated from the Spanish capirote hood, or it may be traced to the uniform of Southern Mardi Gras celebrations.
According to The Cyclopædia of Fraternities (1907), "Beginning in April, 1867, there was a gradual transformation. ... The members had conjured up a veritable Frankenstein. They had played with an engine of power and mystery, though organized on entirely innocent lines, and found themselves overcome by a belief that something must lie behind it all—that there was, after all, a serious purpose, a work for the Klan to do."
The KKK had no organizational structure above the chapter level. However, there were similar groups across the South that adopted similar goals. Klan chapters promoted white supremacy and spread throughout the South as an insurgent movement in resistance to Reconstruction. Confederate veteran John W. Morton founded a KKK chapter in Nashville, Tennessee. As a secret vigilante group, the Klan targeted freedmen and their allies; it sought to restore white supremacy by threats and violence, including murder. "They targeted white Northern leaders, Southern sympathizers and politically active Blacks." In 1870 and 1871, the federal government passed the Enforcement Acts, which were intended to prosecute and suppress Klan crimes.
The first Klan had mixed results in terms of achieving its objectives. It seriously weakened the Black political leadership through its use of assassinations and threats of violence, and it drove some people out of politics. On the other hand, it caused a sharp backlash, with passage of federal laws that historian Eric Foner says were a success in terms of "restoring order, reinvigorating the morale of Southern Republicans, and enabling Blacks to exercise their rights as citizens". Historian George C. Rable argues that the Klan was a political failure and therefore was discarded by the Democratic Party leaders of the South. He says:
The Klan declined in strength in part because of internal weaknesses; its lack of central organization and the failure of its leaders to control criminal elements and sadists. More fundamentally, it declined because it failed to achieve its central objective – the overthrow of Republican state governments in the South.
After the Klan was suppressed, similar insurgent paramilitary groups arose that were explicitly directed at suppressing Republican voting and turning Republicans out of office: the White League, which started in Louisiana in 1874; and the Red Shirts, which started in Mississippi and developed chapters in the Carolinas. For instance, the Red Shirts are credited with helping elect Wade Hampton as governor in South Carolina. They were described as acting as the military arm of the Democratic Party and are attributed with helping white Democrats regain control of state legislatures throughout the South.
In 1915, the second Klan was founded atop Stone Mountain, Georgia, by William Joseph Simmons. While Simmons relied on documents from the original Klan and memories of some surviving elders, the revived Klan was based significantly on the wildly popular film The Birth of a Nation. The earlier Klan had not worn the white costumes and had not burned crosses; these aspects were introduced in Thomas Dixon's book The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, on which the film was based. When the film was shown in Atlanta in December of that year, Simmons and his new klansmen paraded to the theater in robes and pointed hoods – many on robed horses – just like in the film. These mass parades became another hallmark of the new Klan that had not existed in the original Reconstruction-era organization.
Beginning in 1921, it adopted a modern business system of using full-time, paid recruiters and it appealed to new members as a fraternal organization, of which many examples were flourishing at the time. The national headquarters made its profit through a monopoly on costume sales, while the organizers were paid through initiation fees. It grew rapidly nationwide at a time of prosperity. Reflecting the social tensions pitting urban versus rural America, it spread to every state and was prominent in many cities.
Writer W. J. Cash, in his 1941 book The Mind of the South characterized the second Klan as "anti-Negro, anti-Alien, anti-Red, anti-Catholic, anti-Jew, anti-Darwin, anti-Modern, anti-Liberal, Fundamentalist, vastly Moral, [and] militantly Protestant. And summing up these fears, it brought them into focus with the tradition of the past, and above all with the ancient Southern pattern of high romantic histrionics, violence and mass coercion of the scapegoat and the heretic." It preached "One Hundred Percent Americanism" and demanded the purification of politics, calling for strict morality and better enforcement of Prohibition. Its official rhetoric focused on the threat of the Catholic Church, using anti-Catholicism and nativism. Its appeal was directed exclusively toward white Protestants; it opposed Jews, Black people, Catholics, and newly arriving Southern and Eastern European immigrants such as Italians, Russians, and Lithuanians, many of whom were Jewish or Catholic.
Some local groups threatened violence against rum runners and those they deemed "notorious sinners"; the violent episodes generally took place in the South. The Red Knights were a militant group organized in opposition to the Klan and responded violently to Klan provocations on several occasions.
The second Klan was a formal fraternal organization, with a national and state structure. During the resurgence of the second Klan in the 1920s, its publicity was handled by the Southern Publicity Association. Within the first six months of the Association's national recruitment campaign, Klan membership had increased by 85,000. At its peak in the mid-1920s, the organization's membership ranged from three to eight million members.
In 1923, Simmons was ousted as leader of the KKK by Hiram Wesley Evans. From September 1923 there were two Ku Klux Klan organizations: the one founded by Simmons and led by Evans with its strength primarily in the southern United States, and a breakaway group led by Grand Dragon D. C. Stephenson based in Evansville, Indiana with its membership primarily in the midwestern United States.
Internal divisions, criminal behavior by leaders – especially Stephenson's conviction for the abduction, rape, and murder of Madge Oberholtzer – and external opposition brought about a collapse in the membership of both groups. The main group's membership had dropped to about 30,000 by 1930. It finally faded away in the 1940s. Klan organizers also operated in Canada, especially in Saskatchewan in 1926–1928, where Klansmen denounced immigrants from Eastern Europe as a threat to Canada's "Anglo-Saxon" heritage.
The "Ku Klux Klan" name was used by numerous independent local groups opposing the civil rights movement and desegregation, especially in the 1950s and 1960s. During this period, they often forged alliances with Southern police departments, as in Birmingham, Alabama; or with governor's offices, as with George Wallace of Alabama. Several members of Klan groups were convicted of murder in the deaths of civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964 and of children in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963.
The United States government still considers the Klan to be a "subversive terrorist organization". In April 1997, FBI agents arrested four members of the True Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Dallas for conspiracy to commit robbery and for conspiring to blow up a natural gas processing plant. In 1999, the city council of Charleston, South Carolina, passed a resolution declaring the Klan a terrorist organization.
The existence of modern Klan groups has been in a state of consistent decline, due to a variety of factors: from the American public's negative distaste of the group's image, platform, and history, infiltration and prosecution by law enforcement, civil lawsuit forfeitures, and the radical right-wing's perception of the Klan as outdated and unfashionable. The Southern Poverty Law Center reported that between 2016 and 2019, the number of Klan groups in America dropped from 130 to just 51. A 2016 report by the Anti-Defamation League claims an estimate of just over 30 active Klan groups existing in the United States. Estimates of total collective membership range from about 3,000 to 8,000. In addition to its active membership, the Klan has an "unknown number of associates and supporters".
The name was probably formed by combining the Greek kyklos (κύκλος, which means circle) with clan. The word had previously been used for other fraternal organizations in the South such as Kuklos Adelphon.
Six Confederate veterans from Pulaski, Tennessee, created the original Ku Klux Klan on December 24, 1865, shortly after the Civil War, during the Reconstruction of the South. The group was known for a short time as the "Kuklux Clan". The Ku Klux Klan was one of a number of secret, oath-bound organizations using violence, which included the Southern Cross in New Orleans (1865) and the Knights of the White Camelia (1867) in Louisiana.
Historians generally classify the KKK as part of the post-Civil War insurgent violence related not only to the high number of veterans in the population, but also to their effort to control the dramatically changed social situation by using extrajudicial means to restore white supremacy. In 1866, Mississippi governor William L. Sharkey reported that disorder, lack of control, and lawlessness were widespread; in some states armed bands of Confederate soldiers roamed at will. The Klan used public violence against Black people and their allies as intimidation. They burned houses and attacked and killed Black people, leaving their bodies on the roads. While racism was a core belief of the Klan, antisemitism was not. Many prominent Southern Jews identified wholly with southern culture, resulting in examples of Jewish participation in the Klan.
At an 1867 meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, Klan members gathered to try to create a hierarchical organization with local chapters eventually reporting to a national headquarters. Since most of the Klan's members were veterans, they were used to such military hierarchy, but the Klan never operated under this centralized structure. Local chapters and bands were highly independent.
Former Confederate brigadier general George Gordon developed the Prescript, which espoused white supremacist belief. For instance, an applicant should be asked if he was in favor of "a white man's government", "the reenfranchisement and emancipation of the white men of the South, and the restitution of the Southern people to all their rights". The latter is a reference to the Ironclad Oath, which stripped the vote from white persons who refused to swear that they had not borne arms against the Union.
Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest was elected the first grand wizard, and claimed to be the Klan's national leader. In an 1868 newspaper interview, Forrest stated that the Klan's primary opposition was to the Loyal Leagues, Republican state governments, people such as Tennessee governor William Gannaway Brownlow, and other "carpetbaggers" and "scalawags". He argued that many Southerners believed that Black people were voting for the Republican Party because they were being hoodwinked by the Loyal Leagues. One Alabama newspaper editor declared "The League is nothing more than a nigger Ku Klux Klan."
Despite Gordon's and Forrest's work, local Klan units never accepted the Prescript and continued to operate autonomously. There were never hierarchical levels or state headquarters. Klan members used violence to settle old personal feuds and local grudges, as they worked to restore general white dominance in the disrupted postwar society. The historian Elaine Frantz Parsons describes the membership:
Lifting the Klan mask revealed a chaotic multitude of anti-Black vigilante groups, disgruntled poor white farmers, wartime guerrilla bands, displaced Democratic politicians, illegal whiskey distillers, coercive moral reformers, sadists, rapists, white workmen fearful of Black competition, employers trying to enforce labor discipline, common thieves, neighbors with decades-old grudges, and even a few freedmen and white Republicans who allied with Democratic whites or had criminal agendas of their own. Indeed, all they had in common, besides being overwhelmingly white, southern, and Democratic, was that they called themselves, or were called, Klansmen.
Historian Eric Foner observed: "In effect, the Klan was a military force serving the interests of the Democratic party, the planter class, and all those who desired restoration of white supremacy. Its purposes were political, but political in the broadest sense, for it sought to affect power relations, both public and private, throughout Southern society. It aimed to reverse the interlocking changes sweeping over the South during Reconstruction: to destroy the Republican party's infrastructure, undermine the Reconstruction state, reestablish control of the Black labor force, and restore racial subordination in every aspect of Southern life. To that end they worked to curb the education, economic advancement, voting rights, and right to keep and bear arms of Black people. The Klan soon spread into nearly every Southern state, launching a reign of terror against Republican leaders both Black and white. Those political leaders assassinated during the campaign included Arkansas Congressman James M. Hinds, three members of the South Carolina legislature, and several men who served in constitutional conventions."
In a 1933 interview, William Sellers, born enslaved in Virginia, recalled the post-war "raids of the Ku Klux, young white men of Rockingham County who would go into the huts of the recently freed negroes or catch some negro who had been working for thirty cents a day on his way home from work...and cruelly whip him, leaving him to live or die." Seemingly random whipping attacks, meant to be suggestive of previous condition of servitude, were a widespread aspect of the early Klan; for example in 1870–71 in Limestone Township (now Cherokee County), South Carolina, of 77 documented attacks, "four were shot, sixty-seven whipped and six had had their ears cropped."
Klan members adopted masks and robes that hid their identities and added to the drama of their night rides, their chosen time for attacks. Many of them operated in small towns and rural areas where people otherwise knew each other's faces, and sometimes still recognized the attackers by voice and mannerisms. "The kind of thing that men are afraid or ashamed to do openly, and by day, they accomplish secretly, masked, and at night." The KKK night riders "sometimes claimed to be ghosts of Confederate soldiers so, as they claimed, to frighten superstitious Blacks. Few freedmen took such nonsense seriously."
The Klan attacked Black members of the Loyal Leagues and intimidated Southern Republicans and Freedmen's Bureau workers. When they killed Black political leaders, they also took heads of families, along with the leaders of churches and community groups, because these people had many roles in society. Agents of the Freedmen's Bureau reported weekly assaults and murders of Black people.
"Armed guerrilla warfare killed thousands of Negroes; political riots were staged; their causes or occasions were always obscure, their results always certain: ten to one hundred times as many Negroes were killed as whites." Masked men shot into houses and burned them, sometimes with the occupants still inside. They drove successful Black farmers off their land. "Generally, it can be reported that in North and South Carolina, in 18 months ending in June 1867, there were 197 murders and 548 cases of aggravated assault."
Klan violence worked to suppress Black voting, and campaign seasons were deadly. More than 2,000 people were killed, wounded, or otherwise injured in Louisiana within a few weeks prior to the Presidential election of November 1868. Although St. Landry Parish had a registered Republican majority of 1,071, after the murders, no Republicans voted in the fall elections. White Democrats cast the full vote of the parish for President Grant's opponent. The KKK killed and wounded more than 200 Black Republicans, hunting and chasing them through the woods. Thirteen captives were taken from jail and shot; a half-buried pile of 25 bodies was found in the woods. The KKK made people vote Democratic and gave them certificates of the fact.
In the April 1868 Georgia gubernatorial election, Columbia County cast 1,222 votes for Republican Rufus Bullock. By the November presidential election, Klan intimidation led to suppression of the Republican vote and only one person voted for Ulysses S. Grant.
Klansmen killed more than 150 African Americans in Jackson County, Florida, and hundreds more in other counties including Madison, Alachua, Columbia, and Hamilton. Florida Freedmen's Bureau records provided a detailed recounting of Klansmen's beatings and murders of freedmen and their white allies.
Milder encounters, including some against white teachers, also occurred. In Mississippi, according to the Congressional inquiry:
One of these teachers (Miss Allen of Illinois), whose school was at Cotton Gin Port in Monroe County, was visited ... between one and two o'clock in the morning in March 1871, by about fifty men mounted and disguised. Each man wore a long white robe and his face was covered by a loose mask with scarlet stripes. She was ordered to get up and dress which she did at once and then admitted to her room the captain and lieutenant who in addition to the usual disguise had long horns on their heads and a sort of device in front. The lieutenant had a pistol in his hand and he and the captain sat down while eight or ten men stood inside the door and the porch was full. They treated her "gentlemanly and quietly" but complained of the heavy school-tax, said she must stop teaching and go away and warned her that they never gave a second notice. She heeded the warning and left the county.
By 1868, two years after the Klan's creation, its activity was beginning to decrease. Members were hiding behind Klan masks and robes as a way to avoid prosecution for freelance violence. Many influential Southern Democrats feared that Klan lawlessness provided an excuse for the federal government to retain its power over the South, and they began to turn against it. There were outlandish claims made, such as Georgian B. H. Hill stating "that some of these outrages were actually perpetrated by the political friends of the parties slain."
Union Army veterans in mountainous Blount County, Alabama, organized "the anti-Ku Klux". They put an end to violence by threatening Klansmen with reprisals unless they stopped whipping Unionists and burning Black churches and schools. Armed Black people formed their own defense in Bennettsville, South Carolina, and patrolled the streets to protect their homes.
National sentiment gathered to crack down on the Klan, even though some Democrats at the national level questioned whether the Klan really existed, or believed that it was a creation of nervous Southern Republican governors. Many southern states began to pass anti-Klan legislation.
In January 1871, Pennsylvania Republican senator John Scott convened a congressional committee which took testimony from 52 witnesses about Klan atrocities, accumulating 12 volumes. In February, former Union general and congressman Benjamin Franklin Butler of Massachusetts introduced the Civil Rights Act of 1871 (Ku Klux Klan Act). This added to the enmity that Southern white Democrats bore toward him. While the bill was being considered, further violence in the South swung support for its passage. The governor of South Carolina appealed for federal troops to assist his efforts in keeping control of the state. A riot and massacre occurred in a Meridian, Mississippi, courthouse, from which a Black state representative escaped by fleeing to the woods. The 1871 Civil Rights Act allowed the president to suspend habeas corpus.
In 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant signed Butler's legislation. The Ku Klux Klan Act and the Enforcement Act of 1870 were used by the federal government to enforce the civil rights provisions for individuals under the constitution. The Klan refused to voluntarily dissolve after the 1871 Klan Act, so President Grant issued a suspension of habeas corpus and stationed federal troops in nine South Carolina counties by invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807. The Klansmen were apprehended and prosecuted in federal court. Judges Hugh Lennox Bond and George S. Bryan presided over South Carolina Ku Klux Klan Trials in Columbia, S.C., during December 1871. The defendants were given from three months to five years of incarceration with fines. More Black people served on juries in federal court than on local or state juries, so they had a chance to participate in the process. Hundreds of Klan members were fined or imprisoned during the crackdown, "once the national government became set upon a policy of military intervention whole populations which had scouted the authority of the weak 'Radical' government of the State became meek."
Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest boasted that the Klan was a nationwide organization of 550,000 men and that he could muster 40,000 Klansmen within five days' notice. However, the Klan had no membership rosters, no chapters, and no local officers, so it was difficult for observers to judge its membership. It had created a sensation by the dramatic nature of its masked forays and because of its many murders.
In 1870, a federal grand jury determined that the Klan was a "terrorist organization" and issued hundreds of indictments for crimes of violence and terrorism. Klan members were prosecuted, and many fled from areas that were under federal government jurisdiction, particularly in South Carolina. Many people not formally inducted into the Klan had used the Klan's costume to hide their identities when carrying out independent acts of violence. Forrest called for the Klan to disband in 1869, arguing that it was "being perverted from its original honorable and patriotic purposes, becoming injurious instead of subservient to the public peace". Historian Stanley Horn argues that "generally speaking, the Klan's end was more in the form of spotty, slow, and gradual disintegration than a formal and decisive disbandment". A Georgia-based reporter wrote in 1870: "A true statement of the case is not that the Ku Klux are an organized band of licensed criminals, but that men who commit crimes call themselves Ku Klux".
In many states, officials were reluctant to use Black militia against the Klan out of fear that racial tensions would be raised. Republican governor of North Carolina William Woods Holden called out the militia against the Klan in 1870, adding to his unpopularity. This and extensive violence and fraud at the polls caused the Republicans to lose their majority in the state legislature. Disaffection with Holden's actions contributed to white Democratic legislators impeaching him and removing him from office, but their reasons for doing so were numerous.
Klan operations ended in South Carolina and gradually withered away throughout the rest of the South. Attorney General Amos Tappan Ackerman led the prosecutions.
Foner argues that:
By 1872, the federal government's evident willingness to bring its legal and coercive authority to bear had broken the Klan's back and produced a dramatic decline in violence throughout the South. So ended the Reconstruction career of the Ku Klux Klan.
New groups of insurgents emerged in the mid-1870s, local paramilitary organizations such as the White League, Red Shirts, saber clubs, and rifle clubs, that intimidated and murdered Black political leaders. The White League and Red Shirts were distinguished by their willingness to cultivate publicity, working directly to overturn Republican officeholders and regain control of politics.
In 1882, the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Harris that the Klan Act was partially unconstitutional. It ruled that Congress's power under the Fourteenth Amendment did not include the right to regulate against private conspiracies. It recommended that persons who had been victimized should seek relief in state courts, which were entirely unsympathetic to such appeals.
Klan costumes, also called "regalia", disappeared from use by the early 1870s, after Grand Wizard Forrest called for their destruction as part of disbanding the Klan. The Klan was broken as an organization by 1872. In 1915, William Joseph Simmons held a meeting to revive the Klan in Georgia; he attracted two aging former members, and all other members were new.
In 1915, the film The Birth of a Nation was released, mythologizing and glorifying the first Klan and its endeavors. The second Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1915 by William Joseph Simmons at Stone Mountain, near Atlanta, with fifteen "charter members". Its growth was based on a new anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, Prohibitionist and anti-Semitic agenda, which reflected contemporary social tensions, particularly recent immigration. The new organization and chapters adopted regalia featured in The Birth of a Nation; membership was kept secret by wearing masks in public.
Director D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation glorified the original Klan. The film was based on the book and play The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, as well as the book The Leopard's Spots, both by Thomas Dixon Jr. Much of the modern Klan's iconography is derived from it, including the standardized white costume and the burning cross. Its imagery was based on Dixon's romanticized concept of old England and Scotland, as portrayed in the novels and poetry of Sir Walter Scott. The film's influence was enhanced by a false claim of endorsement by President Woodrow Wilson. Dixon was an old friend of Wilson's and, before its release, there was a private showing of the film at the White House. A publicist claimed that Wilson said, "It is like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." Wilson strongly disliked the film and felt he had been tricked by Dixon. The White House issued a denial of the "lightning" quote, saying that he was entirely unaware of the nature of the film and at no time had expressed his approbation of it.
The first and third Klans were primarily Southeastern groups aimed against Black people. The second Klan, in contrast, broadened the scope of the organization to appeal to people in the Midwestern and Western states who considered Catholics, Jews, and foreign-born minorities to be anti-American.
The Second Klan saw threats from every direction. According to historian Brian R. Farmer, "two-thirds of the national Klan lecturers were Protestant ministers". Much of the Klan's energy went into guarding the home, and historian Kathleen Blee says that its members wanted to protect "the interests of white womanhood". Joseph Simmons published the pamphlet ABC of the Invisible Empire in Atlanta in 1917; in it, he identified the Klan's goals as "to shield the sanctity of the home and the chastity of womanhood; to maintain white supremacy; to teach and faithfully inculcate a high spiritual philosophy through an exalted ritualism; and by a practical devotedness to conserve, protect and maintain the distinctive institutions, rights, privileges, principles and ideals of a pure Americanism". Such moral-sounding purpose underlay its appeal as a fraternal organization, recruiting members with a promise of aid for settling into the new urban societies of rapidly growing cities such as Dallas and Detroit. During the 1930s, particularly after James A. Colescott of Indiana took over as imperial wizard, opposition to Communism became another primary aim of the Klan.
New Klan founder William J. Simmons joined 12 different fraternal organizations and recruited for the Klan with his chest covered with fraternal badges, consciously modeling the Klan after fraternal organizations. Klan organizers called "Kleagles" signed up hundreds of new members, who paid initiation fees and received KKK costumes in return. The organizer kept half the money and sent the rest to state or national officials. When the organizer was done with an area, he organized a rally, often with burning crosses, and perhaps presented a Bible to a local Protestant preacher. He left town with the money collected. The local units operated like many fraternal organizations and occasionally brought in speakers.
Simmons initially met with little success in either recruiting members or in raising money, and the Klan remained a small operation in the Atlanta area until 1920. The group produced publications for national circulation from its headquarters in Atlanta: Searchlight (1919–1924), Imperial Night-Hawk (1923–1924), and The Kourier.
The second Klan was a response to the growing power of Catholics and American Jews and the accompanying proliferation of non-Protestant cultural values, as well as some high-profile instances of violence against whites. The Klan had a nationwide reach by the mid-1920s, with its densest per capita membership in Indiana. It became most prominent in cities with high growth rates between 1910 and 1930, as rural Protestants flocked to jobs in Detroit and Dayton in the Midwest, and Atlanta, Dallas, Memphis, and Houston in the South. Close to half of Michigan's 80,000 Klansmen lived in Detroit.
Members of the KKK swore to uphold American values and Christian morality, and some Protestant ministers became involved at the local level. However, no Protestant denomination officially endorsed the KKK; indeed, the Klan was repeatedly denounced by the major Protestant magazines, as well as by all major secular newspapers. Historian Robert Moats Miller reports that "not a single endorsement of the Klan was found by the present writer in the Methodist press, while many of the attacks on the Klan were quite savage. ...The Southern Baptist press condoned the aims but condemned the methods of the Klan." National denominational organizations never endorsed the Klan, but they rarely condemned it by name. Many nationally and regionally prominent churchmen did condemn it by name, and none endorsed it.
The second Klan was less violent than either the first or third Klan were. However, the second Klan, especially in the Southeast, was not an entirely non-violent organization. The most violent Klan was in Dallas, Texas. In April 1921, shortly after they began gaining popularity in the area, the Klan kidnapped Alex Johnson, a Black man who had been accused of having sex with a white woman. They burned the letters "KKK" into his forehead and gave him a severe beating by a riverbed. The police chief and district attorney refused to prosecute, explicitly and publicly stating they believed that Johnson deserved this treatment. Encouraged by the approval of this whipping, the Dallas KKK whipped 68 people by the riverbed in 1922 alone. Although Johnson had been Black, most of the Dallas KKK's whipping victims were white men who were accused of offenses against their wives such as adultery, wife beating, abandoning their wives, refusing to pay child support or gambling. Far from trying to hide its vigilante activity, the Dallas KKK loved to publicize it. The Dallas KKK often invited local newspaper reporters to attend their whippings so they could write a story about it in the next day's newspaper.
The Alabama KKK was less chivalrous than the Dallas KKK was and whipped both white and Black women who were accused of fornication or adultery. Although many people in Alabama were outraged by the whippings of white women, no Klansmen were ever convicted for the violence.
In 1920, Simmons handed the day-to-day activities of the national office over to two professional publicists, Elizabeth Tyler and Edward Young Clarke. The new leadership invigorated the Klan and it grew rapidly. It appealed to new members based on current social tensions, and stressed responses to fears raised by defiance of Prohibition and new sexual freedoms. It emphasized anti-Jewish, anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant and later anti-Communist positions. It presented itself as a fraternal, nativist and strenuously patriotic organization; and its leaders emphasized support for vigorous enforcement of Prohibition laws. It expanded membership dramatically to a 1924 peak of 1.5 million to 4 million, which was between 4–15% of the eligible population.
By the 1920s, most of its members lived in the Midwest and West. Nearly one in five of the eligible Indiana population were members. It had a national base by 1925. In the South, where the great majority of whites were Democrats, the Klansmen were Democrats. In the rest of the country, the membership comprised both Republicans and Democrats, as well as independents. Klan leaders tried to infiltrate political parties; as Cummings notes, "it was non-partisan in the sense that it pressed its nativist issues to both parties". Sociologist Rory McVeigh has explained the Klan's strategy in appealing to members of both parties:
Klan leaders hope to have all major candidates competing to win the movement's endorsement. ... The Klan's leadership wanted to keep their options open and repeatedly announced that the movement was not aligned with any political party. This non-alliance strategy was also valuable as a recruiting tool. The Klan drew its members from Democratic as well as Republican voters. If the movement had aligned itself with a single political party, it would have substantially narrowed its pool of potential recruits.
Religion was a major selling point. Kelly J. Baker argues that Klansmen seriously embraced Protestantism as an essential component of their white supremacist, anti-Catholic, and paternalistic formulation of American democracy and national culture. Their cross was a religious symbol, and their ritual honored Bibles and local ministers. But no nationally prominent religious leader said he was a Klan member.
Economists Fryer and Levitt argue that the rapid growth of the Klan in the 1920s was partly the result of an innovative, multi-level marketing campaign. They also argue that the Klan leadership focused more intently on monetizing the organization during this period than fulfilling the political goals of the organization. Local leaders profited from expanding their membership.
Historians agree that the Klan's resurgence in the 1920s was aided by the national debate over Prohibition. The historian Prendergast says that the KKK's "support for Prohibition represented the single most important bond between Klansmen throughout the nation". The Klan opposed bootleggers, sometimes with violence. In 1922, two hundred Klan members set fire to saloons in Union County, Arkansas. Membership in the Klan and in other Prohibition groups overlapped, and they sometimes coordinated activities.
A significant characteristic of the second Klan was that it was an organization based in urban areas, reflecting the major shifts of population to cities in the North, West, and the South. In Michigan, for instance, 40,000 members lived in Detroit, where they made up more than half of the state's membership. Most Klansmen were lower- to middle-class whites who feared the waves of newcomers to the industrial cities: immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, who were mostly Catholic or Jewish; and Black and white migrants from the South. As new populations poured into cities, rapidly changing neighborhoods created social tensions. Because of the rapid pace of population growth in industrializing cities such as Detroit and Chicago, the Klan grew rapidly in the Midwest. The Klan also grew in booming Southern cities such as Dallas and Houston.
In the medium-size industrial city of Worcester, Massachusetts, in the 1920s, the Klan ascended to power quickly but declined as a result of opposition from the Catholic Church. There was no violence and the local newspaper ridiculed Klansmen as "night-shirt knights". Half of the members were Swedish Americans, including some first-generation immigrants. The ethnic and religious conflicts among more recent immigrants contributed to the rise of the Klan in the city. Swedish Protestants were struggling against Irish Catholics, who had been entrenched longer, for political and ideological control of the city.
In some states, historians have obtained membership rosters of some local units and matched the names against city directory and local records to create statistical profiles of the membership. Big city newspapers were often hostile and ridiculed Klansmen as ignorant farmers. Detailed analysis from Indiana showed that the rural stereotype was false for that state:
Indiana's Klansmen represented a wide cross section of society: they were not disproportionately urban or rural, nor were they significantly more or less likely than other members of society to be from the working class, middle class, or professional ranks. Klansmen were Protestants, of course, but they cannot be described exclusively or even predominantly as fundamentalists. In reality, their religious affiliations mirrored the whole of white Protestant society, including those who did not belong to any church.
The Klan attracted people but most of them did not remain in the organization for long. Membership in the Klan turned over rapidly as people found out that it was not the group which they had wanted. Millions joined and at its peak in the 1920s the organization claimed numbers that amounted to 15% of the nation's eligible population. The lessening of social tensions contributed to the Klan's decline.
The distinctive white costume permitted large-scale public activities, especially parades and cross-burning ceremonies, while keeping the membership roles a secret. Sales of the costumes provided the main financing for the national organization, while initiation fees funded local and state organizers.
The second Klan embraced the burning Latin cross as a dramatic display of symbolism, with a tone of intimidation. No crosses had been used as a symbol by the first Klan, but it became a symbol of the Klan's quasi-Christian message. Its lighting during meetings was often accompanied by prayer, the singing of hymns, and other overtly religious symbolism. In his novel The Clansman, Thomas Dixon Jr. borrows the idea that the first Klan had used fiery crosses from 'the call to arms' of the Scottish Clans, and film director D.W. Griffith used this image in The Birth of a Nation; Simmons adopted the symbol wholesale from the movie, and the symbol and action have been associated with the Klan ever since.
By the 1920s, the KKK developed a women's auxiliary, with chapters in many areas. Its activities included participation in parades, cross lightings, lectures, rallies, and boycotts of local businesses owned by Catholics and Jews. The Women's Klan was active in promoting Prohibition, stressing liquor's negative impact on wives and children. Its efforts in public schools included distributing Bibles and petitioning for the dismissal of Catholic teachers. As a result of the Women's Klan's efforts, Texas would not hire Catholic teachers to work in its public schools. As sexual and financial scandals rocked the Klan leadership late in the 1920s, the organization's popularity among both men and women dropped off sharply.
The second Klan expanded with new chapters in cities in the Midwest and West, and reached both Republicans and Democrats, as well as men without a party affiliation. The goal of Prohibition in particular helped the Klan and some Republicans to make common cause in the North.
The Klan had numerous members in every part of the United States, but was particularly strong in the South and Midwest. At its peak, claimed Klan membership exceeded four million and comprised 20% of the adult white male population in many broad geographic regions, and 40% in some areas. The Klan also moved north into Canada, especially Saskatchewan, where it opposed Catholics.
In Indiana, members were American-born, white Protestants and covered a wide range of incomes and social levels. The Indiana Klan was perhaps the most prominent Ku Klux Klan in the nation. It claimed more than 30% of white male Hoosiers as members. In 1924 it supported Republican Edward Jackson in his successful campaign for governor.
Catholic and liberal Democrats—who were strongest in northeastern cities—decided to make the Klan an issue at the 1924 Democratic National Convention in New York City. Their delegates proposed a resolution indirectly attacking the Klan; it was defeated by one vote out of 1,100. The leading presidential candidates were William Gibbs McAdoo, a Protestant with a base in the South and West where the Klan was strong, and New York governor Al Smith, a Catholic with a base in the large cities. After weeks of stalemate and bitter argumentation, both candidates withdrew in favor of a compromise candidate.
In some states, such as Alabama and California, KKK chapters had worked for political reform. In 1924, Klan members were elected to the city council in Anaheim, California. The city had been controlled by an entrenched commercial-civic elite that was mostly German American. Given their tradition of moderate social drinking, the German Americans did not strongly support Prohibition laws – the mayor had been a saloon keeper. Led by the minister of the First Christian Church, the Klan represented a rising group of politically oriented non-ethnic Germans who denounced the elite as corrupt, undemocratic and self-serving. The historian Christopher Cocoltchos says the Klansmen tried to create a model, orderly community. The Klan had about 1,200 members in Orange County, California. The economic and occupational profile of the pro- and anti-Klan groups shows the two were similar and about equally prosperous. Klan members were Protestants, as were most of their opponents, but the latter also included many Catholic Germans. Individuals who joined the Klan had earlier demonstrated a much higher rate of voting and civic activism than did their opponents. Cocoltchos suggests that many of the individuals in Orange County joined the Klan out of that sense of civic activism. The Klan representatives easily won the local election in Anaheim in April 1924. They fired city employees who were known to be Catholic, and replaced them with Klan appointees. The new city council tried to enforce Prohibition. After its victory, the Klan chapter held large rallies and initiation ceremonies over the summer. The opposition organized, bribed a Klansman for the secret membership list, and exposed the Klansmen running in the state primaries; they defeated most of the candidates. Klan opponents in 1925 took back local government, and succeeded in a special election in recalling the Klansmen who had been elected in April 1924. The Klan in Anaheim quickly collapsed, its newspaper closed after losing a libel suit, and the minister who led the local Klavern moved to Kansas.
In the South, Klan members were still Democratic, as it was essentially a one-party region for whites. Klan chapters were closely allied with Democratic police, sheriffs, and other functionaries of local government. Due to disenfranchisement of most African Americans and many poor whites around the start of the 20th century, the only political activity for whites took place within the Democratic Party.
In Alabama, Klan members advocated better public schools, effective Prohibition enforcement, expanded road construction, and other political measures to benefit lower-class white people. By 1925, the Klan was a political force in the state, as leaders such as J. Thomas Heflin, David Bibb Graves, and Hugo Black tried to build political power against the Black Belt wealthy planters, who had long dominated the state. In 1926, with Klan support, Bibb Graves won the Alabama governor's office. He was a former Klan chapter head. He pushed for increased education funding, better public health, new highway construction, and pro-labor legislation. Because the Alabama state legislature refused to redistrict until 1972, and then under court order, the Klan was unable to break the planters' and rural areas' hold on legislative power.
Scholars and biographers have recently examined Hugo Black's Klan role. Ball finds regarding the KKK that Black "sympathized with the group's economic, nativist, and anti-Catholic beliefs". Newman says Black "disliked the Catholic Church as an institution" and gave over 100 anti-Catholic speeches to KKK meetings across Alabama in his 1926 election campaign. Black was elected US senator in 1926 as a Democrat. In 1937 President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Black to the Supreme Court without knowing how active in the Klan he had been in the 1920s. He was confirmed by his fellow Senators before the full KKK connection was known; Justice Black said he left the Klan when he became a senator.
Many groups and leaders, including prominent Protestant ministers such as Reinhold Niebuhr in Detroit, spoke out against the Klan, gaining national attention. The Jewish Anti-Defamation League was formed in the early 20th century in response to attacks on Jewish Americans, including the lynching of Leo Frank in Atlanta, and to the Klan's campaign to prohibit private schools (which was chiefly aimed at Catholic parochial schools). Opposing groups worked to penetrate the Klan's secrecy. After one civic group in Indiana began to publish Klan membership lists, there was a rapid decline in the number of Klan members. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) launched public education campaigns in order to inform people about Klan activities and lobbied in Congress against Klan abuses. After its peak in 1925, Klan membership in most areas began to decline rapidly. Specific events contributed to the Klan's decline as well. In Indiana, the scandal surrounding the 1925 murder trial of Grand Dragon D. C. Stephenson destroyed the image of the KKK as upholders of law and order. By 1926 the Klan was "crippled and discredited". D. C. Stephenson was the grand dragon of Indiana and 22 northern states. In 1923 he had led the states under his control in order to break away from the national KKK organization. At his 1925 trial, he was convicted of second-degree murder for his part in the rape, and subsequent death, of Madge Oberholtzer. After Stephenson's conviction, the Klan declined dramatically in Indiana.
The historian Leonard Moore says that a failure in leadership caused the Klan's collapse:
Stephenson and the other salesmen and office seekers who maneuvered for control of Indiana's Invisible Empire lacked both the ability and the desire to use the political system to carry out the Klan's stated goals. They were uninterested in, or perhaps even unaware of, grass roots concerns within the movement. For them, the Klan had been nothing more than a means for gaining wealth and power. These marginal men had risen to the top of the hooded order because, until it became a political force, the Klan had never required strong, dedicated leadership. More established and experienced politicians who endorsed the Klan, or who pursued some of the interests of their Klan constituents, also accomplished little. Factionalism created one barrier, but many politicians had supported the Klan simply out of expedience. When charges of crime and corruption began to taint the movement, those concerned about their political futures had even less reason to work on the Klan's behalf.
In Alabama, KKK vigilantes launched a wave of physical terror in 1927. They targeted both Black and white people for violations of racial norms and for perceived moral lapses. This led to a strong backlash, beginning in the media. Grover C. Hall Sr., editor of the Montgomery Advertiser from 1926, wrote a series of editorials and articles that attacked the Klan. (Today the paper says it "waged war on the resurgent [KKK]".) Hall won a Pulitzer Prize for the crusade, the 1928 Editorial Writing Pulitzer, citing "his editorials against gangsterism, floggings and racial and religious intolerance". Other newspapers kept up a steady, loud attack on the Klan, referring to the organization as violent and "un-American". Sheriffs cracked down on activities. In the 1928 presidential election, the state voters overcame their initial opposition to the Catholic candidate Al Smith, and voted the Democratic Party line as usual.
Although in decline, a measure of the Klan's influence was still evident when it staged its march along Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., in 1928. By 1930, Klan membership in Alabama dropped to less than 6,000. Small independent units continued to be active in the industrial city of Birmingham.
KKK units were active through the 1930s in parts of Georgia, with a group of "night riders" in Atlanta enforcing their moral views by flogging people who violated them, whites as well as Black people. In March 1940, they were implicated in the beating murders of a young white couple taken from their car on a lovers lane, and flogged a white barber to death for drinking, both in East Point, a suburb of Atlanta. More than 20 others were "brutally flogged". As the police began to investigate, they found the records of the KKK had disappeared from their East Point office. The cases were reported by the Chicago Tribune and the NAACP in its Crisis magazine, as well as local papers.
In 1940, three lynchings of Black men by whites (no KKK affiliation is known) took place in the South: Elbert Williams was the first NAACP member known to be killed for civil rights activities: he was murdered in Brownsville, Tennessee, for working to register Black people to vote, and several other activists were run out of town; Jesse Thornton was lynched in Luverne, Alabama, for a minor social infraction; and 16-year-old Austin Callaway, a suspect in the assault of a white woman, was taken from jail in the middle of the night and killed by six white men in LaGrange, Georgia. In January 2017, the police chief and mayor of LaGrange apologized for their offices' failures to protect Callaway, at a reconciliation service marking his death.
In major Southern cities such as Birmingham, Alabama, Klan members kept control of access to the better-paying industrial jobs and opposed unions. During the 1930s and 1940s, Klan leaders urged members to disrupt the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which advocated industrial unions and accepted African-American members, unlike earlier unions. With access to dynamite and using the skills from their jobs in mining and steel, in the late 1940s some Klan members in Birmingham used bombings to destroy houses in order to intimidate upwardly mobile Black people who moved into middle-class neighborhoods. It has been said that "By mid-1949, there were so many charred house carcasses that the area [College Hills] was informally named Dynamite Hill."
Activism by these independent KKK groups in Birmingham increased as a reaction to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Independent Klan groups violently opposed the civil rights movement. KKK members were implicated in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing on a Sunday in September 1963, which killed four African-American girls and injured 22 other people. Members of the Communist Workers' Party came to North Carolina to organize textile workers and pushed back against racial discrimination there, taunting the KKK, resulting in the 1979 Greensboro massacre.
According to Professor Jon Schamber, Rev. Philip E. J. Monson branched off from the teachings of British Israelism and began to develop Christian Identity Theology in the 1910s. During the 1920s, Monson published Satan's Seat: The Enemy of Our Race in which he adopted Russel Kelso Carter's theory that Jews and non-whites were descended from the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Monson connected the work of the corrupt race to the activities of the Catholic Church and the Pope. Monson's ideas were popular among some KKK members in the 1950s.
In 1939, after experiencing several years of decline due to the Great Depression, the Imperial Wizard Hiram Wesley Evans sold the national organization to James A. Colescott, an Indiana veterinary physician, and Samuel Green, an Atlanta obstetrician. They could not revive the Klan's declining membership. In 1944, the Internal Revenue Service filed a lien for $685,000 in back taxes against the Klan, and Colescott dissolved the organization by decree on April 23 of that year. Local Klan groups closed down over the following years.
After World War II, the folklorist and author Stetson Kennedy infiltrated the Klan; he provided internal data to media and law enforcement agencies. He also provided secret code words to the writers of the Superman radio program, resulting in episodes in which Superman took on a thinly disguised version of the KKK. Kennedy stripped away the Klan's mystique and trivialized its rituals and code words, which may have contributed to the decline in Klan recruiting and membership. In the 1950s Kennedy wrote a bestselling book about his experiences, which further damaged the Klan.
The historiography of the second Klan of the 1920s has changed over time. Early histories were based on mainstream sources of the time, but since the late 20th century, other histories have been written drawing from records and analysis of members of the chapters in social histories.
The KKK was a secret organization; apart from a few top leaders, most members never identified as such and wore masks in public. Investigators in the 1920s used KKK publicity, court cases, exposés by disgruntled Klansmen, newspaper reports, and speculation to write stories about what the Klan was doing. Almost all the major national newspapers and magazines were hostile to its activities. The historian Thomas R. Pegram says that published accounts exaggerated the official viewpoint of the Klan leadership, and repeated the interpretations of hostile newspapers and the Klan's enemies. There was almost no evidence in that time regarding the behavior or beliefs of individual Klansmen. According to Pegram, the resulting popular and scholarly interpretation of the Klan from the 1920s into the mid-20th century emphasized its Southern roots and the violent vigilante-style actions of the Klan in its efforts to turn back the clock of modernity. Scholars compared it to fascism in Europe. Amann states that, "Undeniably, the Klan had some traits in common with European fascism—chauvinism, racism, a mystique of violence, an affirmation of a certain kind of archaic traditionalism—yet their differences were fundamental. ...[The KKK] never envisioned a change of political or economic system."
Pegram says this original interpretation
depicted the Klan movement as an irrational rebuke of modernity by undereducated, economically marginal bigots, religious zealots, and dupes willing to be manipulated by the Klan's cynical, mendacious leaders. It was, in this view, a movement of country parsons and small-town malcontents who were out of step with the dynamism of twentieth-century urban America.
The "social history" revolution in historiography from the 1960s explored history from the bottom up. In terms of the Klan, it developed evidence based on the characteristics, beliefs, and behavior of the typical membership, and downplayed accounts by elite sources. Historians discovered membership lists and the minutes of local meetings from KKK chapters scattered around the country. They discovered that the original interpretation was largely mistaken about the membership and activities of the Klan; the membership was not anti-modern, rural or rustic and consisted of fairly well educated middle-class joiners and community activists. Half the members lived in the fast-growing industrial cities of the period: Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Denver, and Portland, Oregon, were Klan strongholds during the 1920s.
Studies find that in general, the KKK membership in these cities was from the stable, successful middle classes, with few members drawn from the elite or the working classes. Pegram, reviewing the studies, concludes, "the popular Klan of the 1920s, while diverse, was more of a civic exponent of white Protestant social values than a repressive hate group."
Kelly J. Baker argues that religion was critical—the KKK based its hatred on a particular brand of Protestantism that resonated with mainstream Americans: "Members embraced Protestant Christianity and a crusade to save America from domestic as well as foreign threats." Member were primarily Baptists, Methodists, and members of the Disciples of Christ, while men of "more elite or liberal" Protestant denominations such as Unitarians, Episcopalians, Congregationalists and Lutherans, were less likely to join.
In Indiana, traditional political historians focused on notorious leaders, especially D. C. Stephenson, the Grand Dragon of the Indiana Klan, whose conviction for the 1925 kidnap, rape, and murder of Madge Oberholtzer helped destroy the Ku Klux Klan movement nationwide. In his history of 1967, Kenneth T. Jackson described the Klan of the 1920s as associated with cities and urbanization, with chapters often acting as a kind of fraternal organization to aid people coming from other areas.
Social historian Leonard Moore titled his monograph Citizen Klansmen (1997) and contrasted the intolerant rhetoric of the group's leaders with the actions of most of the membership. The Klan was white Protestant, established Americans who were fearful of change represented by new immigrants and Black migrants to the North. They were highly suspicious of Catholics, Jews and Black people, who they believed subverted ideal, Protestant moral standards. Violence was uncommon in most chapters. In Indiana, KKK members directed more threats and economic blacklisting primarily against fellow white Protestants for transgressions of community moral standards, such as adultery, wife-beating, gambling and heavy drinking. Up to one third of Indiana's Protestant men joined the order making it, Moore argued, "a kind of interest group for average white Protestants who believed that their values should be dominant in their community and state."
Northern Indiana's industrial cities had attracted a large Catholic population of European immigrants and their descendants. They established the University of Notre Dame, a major Catholic college near South Bend. In May 1924, when the KKK scheduled a regional meeting in the city, Notre Dame students blocked the Klansmen and stole some KKK regalia. On the next day, the Klansmen counterattacked. Finally, the college president and the football coach Knute Rockne kept the students on campus to avert further violence.
In Alabama, some young, white, urban activists joined the KKK to fight the old guard establishment. Hugo Black was a member before becoming nationally famous; he focused on anti-Catholicism. However, in rural Alabama the Klan continued to operate to enforce Jim Crow laws; its members resorted more often to violence against Black people for infringements of the social order of white supremacy.
Racial terrorism was used in smaller towns to suppress Black political activity. Elbert Williams of Brownsville, Tennessee, was lynched in 1940 for trying to organize Black residents to register and vote; also that year, Jesse Thornton of Luverne, Alabama, was lynched for failing to address a police officer as "Mister".
In 1944, the second KKK was disbanded by Imperial Wizard James A. Colescott after the IRS levied a large tax liability against the organization. In 1946, Samuel Green reestablished the KKK at a ceremony on Stone Mountain. His group primarily operated in Georgia. Green was succeeded by Samuel Roper as Imperial Wizard in 1949, and Roper was succeeded by Eldon Edwards in 1950. Based in Atlanta, Edwards worked to rebuild the organization by uniting the different factions of the KKK from other parts of the United States, but the strength of the organization was short-lived and the group fractured as it competed with other klan organizations. In 1959, Roy Davis was elected to follow Edwards as national leader. Edwards had previously appointed Davis Grand Dragon of Texas in an effort to unite their two klan organizations. Davis was already leading the Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Davis held rallies Florida and other southern states during 1961 and 1962 recruiting members. Davis had been a close associate of William J. Simmons and been active in the KKK since it first reformed in 1915.
Congress launched an investigation into the KKK in early 1964, following the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas. Davis, based in Dallas, resigned as Imperial Wizard of the Original Knights shortly after the Original Knights received a Congressional subpoena. The Original Knights became increasingly fractured in the immediate aftermath as many members were forced to testify before Congress. The White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan formed in 1964 after splitting from the Original Knights. According to an FBI report published in May 1965, the KKK was divided into 14 different organizations at the time with a total membership of approximately 9,000. The FBI reported that Roy Davis's Original Knights was the largest faction and had about 1,500 members. Robert Shelton of Alabama was leading a faction of 400–600 members. Congressional investigators found that by the end of 1965 most members of Original Knights organization joined Shelton's United Klans and the Original Knights of the KKK disbanded. Shelton's United Klan continued to absorb members from the competing factions and remained the largest Klan group unto the 1970s, peaking with an estimated 30,000 members and another 250,000 non-member supporters during the late 1960s.
After the decline of the national organization, small independent groups adopted the name "Ku Klux Klan", along with variations. They had no formal relationships with each other, and most had no connection to the second KKK, except for the fact that they copied its terminology and costumes. Beginning in the 1950s, for instance, individual Klan groups in Birmingham, Alabama, began to resist social change and Black people's efforts to improve their lives by bombing houses in transitional neighborhoods. The white men worked in mining and steel industries, with access to these materials. There were so many bombings of Black people's homes in Birmingham by Klan groups in the 1950s that the city was nicknamed "Bombingham".
During the tenure of Bull Connor as police commissioner in Birmingham, Klan groups were closely allied with the police and operated with impunity. When the Freedom Riders arrived in Birmingham in 1961, Connor gave Klan members fifteen minutes to attack the riders before sending in the police to quell the attack. When local and state authorities failed to protect the Freedom Riders and activists, the federal government began to establish intervention and protection. In states such as Alabama and Mississippi, Klan members forged alliances with governors' administrations. In Birmingham and elsewhere, the KKK groups bombed the houses of civil rights activists. In some cases they used physical violence, intimidation, and assassination directly against individuals. Continuing disfranchisement of Black people across the South meant that most could not serve on juries, which were all-white and demonstrably biased verdicts and sentences.
According to a report from the Southern Regional Council in Atlanta, the homes of 40 Black Southern families were bombed during 1951 and 1952. Some of the bombing victims were social activists whose work exposed them to danger, but most were either people who refused to bow to racist convention or were innocent bystanders, unsuspecting victims of random violence.
Among the more notorious murders by Klan members in the 1950s and 1960s were:
There was considerable resistance among African Americans and white allies to the Klan. In 1953, newspaper publishers W. Horace Carter (Tabor City, North Carolina), who had campaigned for three years, and Willard Cole (Whiteville, North Carolina) shared the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service citing "their successful campaign against the Ku Klux Klan, waged on their own doorstep at the risk of economic loss and personal danger, culminating in the conviction of over one hundred Klansmen and an end to terrorism in their communities". In a 1958 incident in North Carolina, the Klan burned crosses at the homes of two Lumbee Native Americans for associating with white people, and threatened more actions. When the KKK held a nighttime rally nearby, they were quickly surrounded by hundreds of armed Lumbee. Gunfire was exchanged, and the Klan was routed at what became known as the Battle of Hayes Pond.
While the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had paid informants in the Klan (for instance, in Birmingham in the early 1960s), its relations with local law enforcement agencies and the Klan were often ambiguous. The head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, appeared more concerned about Communist links to civil rights activists than about controlling Klan excesses against citizens. In 1964, the FBI's COINTELPRO program began attempts to infiltrate and disrupt civil rights groups.
As 20th-century Supreme Court rulings extended federal enforcement of citizens' civil rights, the government revived the Enforcement Acts and the Klan Act from Reconstruction days. Federal prosecutors used these laws as the basis for investigations and indictments in the 1964 murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner; and the 1965 murder of Viola Liuzzo. They were also the basis for prosecution in 1991 in Bray v. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic.
In 1965, the House Un-American Activities Committee started an investigation on the Klan, putting in the public spotlight its front organizations, finances, methods and divisions.
After federal legislation was passed prohibiting legal segregation and authorizing enforcement of protection of voting rights, KKK groups began to oppose court-ordered busing to desegregate schools, affirmative action, and the more open immigration authorized in the 1960s. In 1971, KKK members used bombs to destroy 10 school buses in Pontiac, Michigan. By 1975, there were known KKK groups on most college campuses in Louisiana as well as at Vanderbilt University, the University of Georgia, the University of Mississippi, the University of Akron, and the University of Southern California.
On November 3, 1979, five communist protesters were killed by KKK and American Nazi Party members in Greensboro, North Carolina, in what is known as the Greensboro massacre. The Communist Workers' Party had sponsored a rally against the Klan in an effort to organize predominantly Black industrial workers in the area. Klan members drove up with arms in their car trunks, and attacked marchers.
Jerry Thompson, a newspaper reporter who infiltrated the KKK in 1979, reported that the FBI's COINTELPRO efforts were highly successful. Rival KKK factions accused each other's leaders of being FBI informants. William Wilkinson of the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, was revealed to have been working for the FBI.
Thompson also related that KKK leaders showed great concern about a series of civil lawsuits filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, claiming damages amounting to millions of dollars. These were filed after KKK members shot into a group of African Americans. Klansmen curtailed their activities in order to conserve money for defense against the lawsuits. The KKK also used lawsuits as tools; they filed a libel suit in order to prevent the publication of a paperback edition of Thompson's book, but were unsuccessful.
In 1980, three KKK members shot four elderly Black women (Viola Ellison, Lela Evans, Opal Jackson, and Katherine Johnson) in Chattanooga, Tennessee, following a KKK initiation rally. A fifth woman, Fannie Crumsey, was injured by flying glass in the incident. Attempted murder charges were filed against the three KKK members, two of whom—Bill Church and Larry Payne—were acquitted by an all-white jury. The third defendant, Marshall Thrash, was sentenced by the same jury to nine months on lesser charges. He was released after three months. In 1982, a jury awarded the five women $535,000 in a civil trial.
After Michael Donald was lynched in 1981 in Alabama, the FBI investigated his death. The US attorney prosecuted the case. Two local KKK members were convicted for his murder, including Henry Francis Hays who was sentenced to death. After exhausting the appeals process, Hays was executed by electric chair for Donald's death in Alabama on June 6, 1997. It was the first time since 1913 that a white man had been executed in Alabama for a crime against an African American.
With the support of attorneys Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and state senator Michael A. Figures, Donald's mother Beulah Mae Donald sued the KKK in civil court in Alabama. Her lawsuit against the United Klans of America was tried in February 1987. The all-white jury found the Klan responsible for the lynching of Donald, and ordered the Klan to pay US$7 million, but the KKK did not have sufficient funds to pay the fine. They had to sell off their national headquarters building in Tuscaloosa.
In 1995, Don Black and Chloê Hardin, the ex-wife of the KKK grand wizard David Duke, began a small bulletin board system (BBS) called Stormfront, which has become a prominent online forum for white nationalism, Neo-Nazism, hate speech, racism, and antisemitism in the early 21st century.
In a 2007 article by the ADL, it was reported that many KKK groups had formed strong alliances with other white supremacist groups, such as neo-Nazis. Some KKK groups have become increasingly "nazified", adopting the look and emblems of white power skinheads.
The modern KKK is not one organization; rather, it is composed of small independent chapters across the United States. According to a 1999 ADL report, the KKK's estimated size then was "No more than a few thousand, organized into slightly more than 100 units". In 2017, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which monitors extremist groups, estimated that there were "at least 29 separate, rival Klan groups currently active in the United States, and they compete with one another for members, dues, news media attention and the title of being the true heir to the Ku Klux Klan". The formation of independent chapters has made KKK groups more difficult to infiltrate, and researchers find it hard to estimate their numbers. Analysts believe that about two-thirds of KKK members are concentrated in the Southern United States, with another third situated primarily in the lower Midwest.
For some time, the Klan's numbers have been steadily dropping. This decline has been attributed to the Klan's lack of competence in the use of the Internet, their history of violence, a proliferation of competing hate groups, and a decline in the number of young racist activists who are willing to join groups at all.
In 2015, the number of KKK chapters nationwide grew from 72 to 190. The SPLC released a similar report stating that "there were significant increases in Klan as well as Black separatist groups".
A 2016 analysis by the SPLC found that hate groups in general were on the rise in the United States. The ADL published a report in 2016 that concluded: "Despite a persistent ability to attract media attention, organized Ku Klux Klan groups are actually continuing a long-term trend of decline. They remain a collection of mostly small, disjointed groups that continually change in name and leadership."
Recent KKK membership campaigns have stimulated people's anxieties about illegal immigration, urban crime, civil unions, and same-sex marriage. In 2006, J. Keith Akins argued that "Klan literature and propaganda is rabidly homophobic and encourages violence against gays and lesbians. ...Since the late 1970s, the Klan has increasingly focused its ire on this previously ignored population." The Klan has produced Islamophobic propaganda and distributed anti-Islamic flyers.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has provided legal support to various factions of the KKK in defense of their First Amendment rights to hold public rallies, parades, and marches, as well as their right to field political candidates.
The February 14, 2019, edition of the Linden, Alabama, weekly newspaper The Democrat-Reporter carried an editorial titled "Klan needs to ride again" written by Goodloe Sutton—the newspaper's owner, publisher and editor—which urged the Klan to return to staging their night rides, because proposals were being made to raise taxes in the state. In an interview, Sutton suggested that Washington, D.C., could be "clean[ed] out" by way of lynchings. "We'll get the hemp ropes out, loop them over a tall limb and hang all of them," Sutton said. He also specified that he was only referring to hanging "socialist-communists", and compared the Klan to the NAACP. The editorial and Sutton's subsequent comments provoked calls for his resignation from Alabama politicians and the Alabama Press Association, which later censured Sutton and suspended the newspaper's membership. In addition, the University of Southern Mississippi's School of Communication removed Sutton—who is an alumnus of that school from its Mass Communication and Journalism Hall of Fame, and "strongly condemned" his remarks. Sutton was also stripped of a distinguished community journalism award he had been presented in 2009 by Auburn University's Journalism Advisory Council. Sutton expressed no regret and said that the editorial was intended to be "ironic", but that "not many people understand irony today."
A list is maintained by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL):
Aside from the Ku Klux Klan in Canada, there have been various attempts to organize KKK chapters outside the United States in places in Asia, Europe and Oceania, although most of them ultimately came to naught.
In apartheid South Africa in the 1960s, some far-right activists copied KKK actions, for example by writing "Ku Klux Klan Africa" on the ANC Cape Town offices or by wearing their costumes. In response, American Klan leader Terry Venable attempted to establish a branch at Rhodes University.
In the 1970s, Rhodesia had a Ku Klux Klan, led by Len Idensohn, attacking Ian Smith for his perceived moderation.
In Mexico, the KKK endorsed and funded the Calles government during the 1920s Cristero War with the intention of destroying Catholicism there. On 1924 vigilantes claimed to have organized themselves into a Klan against "criminals", publishing a program of "social epuration".
In São Paulo, Brazil, the website of a group called Imperial Klans of Brazil was shut down in 2003, and the group's leader was arrested.
The Klan has also been established in the Canal Zone.
Klan was present in Cuba, under the name of Ku Klux Klan Kubano, directed against both West Indian migrant workers and Afro-Cuban and using the fear of the 1912 Negro Rebellion.
During the Vietnam War, klaverns were established on some US military bases, often tolerated by military authorities.
In the 1920s, the Klan briefly existed in Shanghai.
Recruitment activity has also been reported in the United Kingdom. In the 1960s, "klaverns" were established in the Midlands, the following decade saw visits by leading Klansmen, and the 1990s saw recruitment drives in London, Scotland and the Midlands and huge internal turmoil and splintering: for example a leader, Allan Beshella, had to resign after 1972 conviction for child sex abuse was revealed. In 2018, Klan-clad far-right activists marched in front of a Northern Irish mosque.
In Germany, a KKK-related group, Ritter des Feurigen Kreuzes ("Knights of the Fiery Cross"), was established in 1925 by returning naturalized German-born US citizens in Berlin who managed to gather around 300 persons of middle-class occupations such as merchants and clerks. It soon saw the original founders being removed by internal conflicts, and mocking newspapers about the affair. After the Nazis took over Germany, the group disbanded and its members joined the Nazis. On 1991, Dennis Mahon, then of Oklahoma's White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, reportedly helped to organize Klan groups. Another German KKK-related group, the European White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, has organized and it gained notoriety in 2012 when the German media reported that two police officers who held membership in the organization would be allowed to keep their jobs. In 2019, the German authorities conducted raids against a possibly dangerous group called National Socialist Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Deutschland.
In 2001, David Duke came to Moscow to network with local anti-Semitic Russian nationalists. Duke said that Russia was "the key to white survival" and blamed most of the events of the 20th century Russian history on the Jews.
In the 1920s, the Klan was rumoured to exist in Lithuania and Czechoslovakia.
In Australia in the late 1990s, former One Nation member Peter Coleman established branches throughout the country, and circa 2012 the KKK has attempted to infiltrate other political parties such as Australia First. Branches of the Klan have previously existed in New South Wales and Victoria, as well as allegedly in Queensland. Unlike in the United States, the Australian branches did not require members to be Christian, but did require them to be white.
A Ku Klux Klan group was established in Fiji in 1874 by white American and British settlers wanting to enact White supremacy, although its operations were quickly put to an end by the British who, although not officially yet established as the major authority of Fiji, had played a leading role in establishing a new constitutional monarchy, the Kingdom of Fiji, that was being threatened by the activities of the Fijian Klan, which owned fortresses and artillery. By March, it had become the "British Subjects' Mutual Protection Society", which included Francis Herbert Dufty.
In the 1920s, the Klan had been rumoured to exist in New Zealand.
Membership in the Klan is secret. Like many fraternal organizations, the Klan has signs that members can use to recognize one another. In conversation, a member may use the acronym AYAK (Are you a Klansman?) to surreptitiously identify themselves to another potential member. The response AKIA (A Klansman I am) completes the greeting.
Throughout its varied history, the Klan has coined many words beginning with "Kl", including:
All of the above terminology was created by William Joseph Simmons, as part of his 1915 revival of the Klan. The Reconstruction-era Klan used different titles; the only titles to carry over were "Wizard" for the overall leader of the Klan and "Night Hawk" for the official in charge of security.
The imperial kludd was the chaplain of the Imperial Klonvokation and he performed "such other duties as may be required by the imperial wizard".
The imperial kaliff was the second-highest position, after the imperial wizard.
The Ku Klux Klan has utilized a variety of symbols over its history.
The Primary symbol used by the clan for the past century has been the Mystic Insignia of a Klansman, commonly known as the Blood Drop Cross, a white cross on a red disk with what appears to be a blood drop in the middle. It was first used in the early 1900s, with the symbol in the center originally appearing as a red and white yin-yang which in the subsequent years, lost the white part and was reinterpreted as a "blood drop".
The Triangular Ku Klux Klan symbol is made of what looks like a triangle inside a triangle, similar to a Sierpiński triangle, but in fact represents three letter Ks interlocked and facing inward, referencing the name of the group. A variation on this symbol has the K's facing outwards instead of inwards. It is an old Klan symbol that has also been resurrected as a modern-day hate symbol.
Although predating the Klan, in modern times the symbol of the burning cross has become almost solely associated with the Ku Klux Klan and has become one of the most potent hate symbols in the United States. Burning crosses did not become associated with the clan until Thomas Dixon's The Clansman, and its film adaptation, D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation inspired members of the second Klan to take up the practice. In the modern day the symbol of the burning cross is so associated with racial intimidation that it is used by many non-Klan racist elements and has spread to locations outside the United States.
Because there are multiple Ku Klux Klan organizations, there are multiple official websites. Following are third-party lists of such organizations:
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Ku Klux Klan (/ˌkuː klʌks ˈklæn, ˌkjuː-/), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is the name of several historical and current American white supremacist, far-right terrorist organizations and hate groups. The Klan was \"the first organized terror movement in American history.\" Their primary targets are African Americans, Hispanics, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Italian Americans, Irish Americans, and Catholics, as well as immigrants, leftists, homosexuals, Muslims, atheists, and abortion providers.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Three separate Klans have existed in three non-overlapping time periods. Each comprised local chapters with little or no central direction. Each has advocated extremist reactionary positions such as white nationalism, anti-immigration and—especially in later iterations—Nordicism, antisemitism, anti-Catholicism, Prohibition, right-wing populism, anti-communism, homophobia, anti-atheism, and Islamophobia. The first Klan, founded by Confederate veterans in the late 1860s, would assault and murder politically active Black people and their allies in the South. The second iteration of the Klan originated in the late 1910s, and was the first to use cross burnings and white hooded robes. The KKK of the 1920s had a nationwide membership in the millions and reflected a cross-section of the native-born white population. The third Klan formed in the mid 20th century, largely as a reaction to the growing civil rights movement. It committed murders and bombings to achieve its aims. All three movements have called for the \"purification\" of American society, and are all considered far-right extremist organizations. In each era, membership was secret and estimates of the total were highly exaggerated by both friends and enemies.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The first Klan, established in the wake of the Civil War, was a defining organization of the Reconstruction era. According to historian Bordewich, the Klan was \"the first organized terror movement in American history.\" Federal law enforcement began taking action against it around 1871. The Klan sought to overthrow Republican state governments in the South, especially by using voter intimidation and targeted violence against African-American leaders. The Klan was organized into numerous independent chapters across the Southern United States. Each chapter was autonomous and highly secretive about membership and plans. Members made their own, often colorful, costumes: robes, masks and pointed hats, designed to be terrifying and to hide their identities.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The second Klan started in 1915 as a small group in Georgia. It suddenly started to grow after 1920 and flourished nationwide in the early and mid-1920s, including urban areas of the Midwest and West. Taking inspiration from D. W. Griffith's 1915 silent film The Birth of a Nation, which mythologized the founding of the first Klan, it employed marketing techniques and a popular fraternal organization structure. Rooted in local Protestant communities, it sought to maintain white supremacy, often took a pro-Prohibition stance, and it opposed Jews, while also stressing its opposition to the alleged political power of the pope and the Catholic Church. This second Klan flourished both in the south and northern states; it was funded by initiation fees and selling its members a standard white costume. The chapters did not have dues. It used K-words which were similar to those used by the first Klan, while adding cross burnings and mass parades to intimidate others. It rapidly declined in the latter half of the 1920s.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The third and current manifestation of the KKK emerged after 1950, in the form of localized and isolated groups that use the KKK name. They have focused on opposition to the civil rights movement, often using violence and murder to suppress activists. This manifestation is classified as a hate group by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center. As of 2016, the Anti-Defamation League puts total KKK membership nationwide at around 3,000, while the Southern Poverty Law Center puts it at 6,000 members total.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The second and third incarnations of the Ku Klux Klan made frequent references to a false mythologized perception of America's \"Anglo-Saxon\" blood, hearkening back to 19th-century nativism. Although members of the KKK swear to uphold \"Christian morality\", Christian denominations widely denounce them.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The first Klan was founded in Pulaski, Tennessee, on December 24, 1865, by six former officers of the Confederate army: Frank McCord, Richard Reed, John Lester, John Kennedy, J. Calvin Jones, and James Crowe. It started as a fraternal social club inspired at least in part by the then largely defunct Sons of Malta. It borrowed parts of the initiation ceremony from that group, with the same purpose: \"ludicrous initiations, the baffling of public curiosity, and the amusement for members were the only objects of the Klan\", according to Albert Stevens in 1907. The manual of rituals was printed by Laps D. McCord of Pulaski. The origins of the hood are uncertain; it may have been appropriated from the Spanish capirote hood, or it may be traced to the uniform of Southern Mardi Gras celebrations.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "According to The Cyclopædia of Fraternities (1907), \"Beginning in April, 1867, there was a gradual transformation. ... The members had conjured up a veritable Frankenstein. They had played with an engine of power and mystery, though organized on entirely innocent lines, and found themselves overcome by a belief that something must lie behind it all—that there was, after all, a serious purpose, a work for the Klan to do.\"",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The KKK had no organizational structure above the chapter level. However, there were similar groups across the South that adopted similar goals. Klan chapters promoted white supremacy and spread throughout the South as an insurgent movement in resistance to Reconstruction. Confederate veteran John W. Morton founded a KKK chapter in Nashville, Tennessee. As a secret vigilante group, the Klan targeted freedmen and their allies; it sought to restore white supremacy by threats and violence, including murder. \"They targeted white Northern leaders, Southern sympathizers and politically active Blacks.\" In 1870 and 1871, the federal government passed the Enforcement Acts, which were intended to prosecute and suppress Klan crimes.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The first Klan had mixed results in terms of achieving its objectives. It seriously weakened the Black political leadership through its use of assassinations and threats of violence, and it drove some people out of politics. On the other hand, it caused a sharp backlash, with passage of federal laws that historian Eric Foner says were a success in terms of \"restoring order, reinvigorating the morale of Southern Republicans, and enabling Blacks to exercise their rights as citizens\". Historian George C. Rable argues that the Klan was a political failure and therefore was discarded by the Democratic Party leaders of the South. He says:",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The Klan declined in strength in part because of internal weaknesses; its lack of central organization and the failure of its leaders to control criminal elements and sadists. More fundamentally, it declined because it failed to achieve its central objective – the overthrow of Republican state governments in the South.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "After the Klan was suppressed, similar insurgent paramilitary groups arose that were explicitly directed at suppressing Republican voting and turning Republicans out of office: the White League, which started in Louisiana in 1874; and the Red Shirts, which started in Mississippi and developed chapters in the Carolinas. For instance, the Red Shirts are credited with helping elect Wade Hampton as governor in South Carolina. They were described as acting as the military arm of the Democratic Party and are attributed with helping white Democrats regain control of state legislatures throughout the South.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In 1915, the second Klan was founded atop Stone Mountain, Georgia, by William Joseph Simmons. While Simmons relied on documents from the original Klan and memories of some surviving elders, the revived Klan was based significantly on the wildly popular film The Birth of a Nation. The earlier Klan had not worn the white costumes and had not burned crosses; these aspects were introduced in Thomas Dixon's book The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, on which the film was based. When the film was shown in Atlanta in December of that year, Simmons and his new klansmen paraded to the theater in robes and pointed hoods – many on robed horses – just like in the film. These mass parades became another hallmark of the new Klan that had not existed in the original Reconstruction-era organization.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Beginning in 1921, it adopted a modern business system of using full-time, paid recruiters and it appealed to new members as a fraternal organization, of which many examples were flourishing at the time. The national headquarters made its profit through a monopoly on costume sales, while the organizers were paid through initiation fees. It grew rapidly nationwide at a time of prosperity. Reflecting the social tensions pitting urban versus rural America, it spread to every state and was prominent in many cities.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Writer W. J. Cash, in his 1941 book The Mind of the South characterized the second Klan as \"anti-Negro, anti-Alien, anti-Red, anti-Catholic, anti-Jew, anti-Darwin, anti-Modern, anti-Liberal, Fundamentalist, vastly Moral, [and] militantly Protestant. And summing up these fears, it brought them into focus with the tradition of the past, and above all with the ancient Southern pattern of high romantic histrionics, violence and mass coercion of the scapegoat and the heretic.\" It preached \"One Hundred Percent Americanism\" and demanded the purification of politics, calling for strict morality and better enforcement of Prohibition. Its official rhetoric focused on the threat of the Catholic Church, using anti-Catholicism and nativism. Its appeal was directed exclusively toward white Protestants; it opposed Jews, Black people, Catholics, and newly arriving Southern and Eastern European immigrants such as Italians, Russians, and Lithuanians, many of whom were Jewish or Catholic.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Some local groups threatened violence against rum runners and those they deemed \"notorious sinners\"; the violent episodes generally took place in the South. The Red Knights were a militant group organized in opposition to the Klan and responded violently to Klan provocations on several occasions.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The second Klan was a formal fraternal organization, with a national and state structure. During the resurgence of the second Klan in the 1920s, its publicity was handled by the Southern Publicity Association. Within the first six months of the Association's national recruitment campaign, Klan membership had increased by 85,000. At its peak in the mid-1920s, the organization's membership ranged from three to eight million members.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In 1923, Simmons was ousted as leader of the KKK by Hiram Wesley Evans. From September 1923 there were two Ku Klux Klan organizations: the one founded by Simmons and led by Evans with its strength primarily in the southern United States, and a breakaway group led by Grand Dragon D. C. Stephenson based in Evansville, Indiana with its membership primarily in the midwestern United States.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Internal divisions, criminal behavior by leaders – especially Stephenson's conviction for the abduction, rape, and murder of Madge Oberholtzer – and external opposition brought about a collapse in the membership of both groups. The main group's membership had dropped to about 30,000 by 1930. It finally faded away in the 1940s. Klan organizers also operated in Canada, especially in Saskatchewan in 1926–1928, where Klansmen denounced immigrants from Eastern Europe as a threat to Canada's \"Anglo-Saxon\" heritage.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The \"Ku Klux Klan\" name was used by numerous independent local groups opposing the civil rights movement and desegregation, especially in the 1950s and 1960s. During this period, they often forged alliances with Southern police departments, as in Birmingham, Alabama; or with governor's offices, as with George Wallace of Alabama. Several members of Klan groups were convicted of murder in the deaths of civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964 and of children in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The United States government still considers the Klan to be a \"subversive terrorist organization\". In April 1997, FBI agents arrested four members of the True Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Dallas for conspiracy to commit robbery and for conspiring to blow up a natural gas processing plant. In 1999, the city council of Charleston, South Carolina, passed a resolution declaring the Klan a terrorist organization.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The existence of modern Klan groups has been in a state of consistent decline, due to a variety of factors: from the American public's negative distaste of the group's image, platform, and history, infiltration and prosecution by law enforcement, civil lawsuit forfeitures, and the radical right-wing's perception of the Klan as outdated and unfashionable. The Southern Poverty Law Center reported that between 2016 and 2019, the number of Klan groups in America dropped from 130 to just 51. A 2016 report by the Anti-Defamation League claims an estimate of just over 30 active Klan groups existing in the United States. Estimates of total collective membership range from about 3,000 to 8,000. In addition to its active membership, the Klan has an \"unknown number of associates and supporters\".",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The name was probably formed by combining the Greek kyklos (κύκλος, which means circle) with clan. The word had previously been used for other fraternal organizations in the South such as Kuklos Adelphon.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Six Confederate veterans from Pulaski, Tennessee, created the original Ku Klux Klan on December 24, 1865, shortly after the Civil War, during the Reconstruction of the South. The group was known for a short time as the \"Kuklux Clan\". The Ku Klux Klan was one of a number of secret, oath-bound organizations using violence, which included the Southern Cross in New Orleans (1865) and the Knights of the White Camelia (1867) in Louisiana.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Historians generally classify the KKK as part of the post-Civil War insurgent violence related not only to the high number of veterans in the population, but also to their effort to control the dramatically changed social situation by using extrajudicial means to restore white supremacy. In 1866, Mississippi governor William L. Sharkey reported that disorder, lack of control, and lawlessness were widespread; in some states armed bands of Confederate soldiers roamed at will. The Klan used public violence against Black people and their allies as intimidation. They burned houses and attacked and killed Black people, leaving their bodies on the roads. While racism was a core belief of the Klan, antisemitism was not. Many prominent Southern Jews identified wholly with southern culture, resulting in examples of Jewish participation in the Klan.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "At an 1867 meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, Klan members gathered to try to create a hierarchical organization with local chapters eventually reporting to a national headquarters. Since most of the Klan's members were veterans, they were used to such military hierarchy, but the Klan never operated under this centralized structure. Local chapters and bands were highly independent.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Former Confederate brigadier general George Gordon developed the Prescript, which espoused white supremacist belief. For instance, an applicant should be asked if he was in favor of \"a white man's government\", \"the reenfranchisement and emancipation of the white men of the South, and the restitution of the Southern people to all their rights\". The latter is a reference to the Ironclad Oath, which stripped the vote from white persons who refused to swear that they had not borne arms against the Union.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest was elected the first grand wizard, and claimed to be the Klan's national leader. In an 1868 newspaper interview, Forrest stated that the Klan's primary opposition was to the Loyal Leagues, Republican state governments, people such as Tennessee governor William Gannaway Brownlow, and other \"carpetbaggers\" and \"scalawags\". He argued that many Southerners believed that Black people were voting for the Republican Party because they were being hoodwinked by the Loyal Leagues. One Alabama newspaper editor declared \"The League is nothing more than a nigger Ku Klux Klan.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Despite Gordon's and Forrest's work, local Klan units never accepted the Prescript and continued to operate autonomously. There were never hierarchical levels or state headquarters. Klan members used violence to settle old personal feuds and local grudges, as they worked to restore general white dominance in the disrupted postwar society. The historian Elaine Frantz Parsons describes the membership:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Lifting the Klan mask revealed a chaotic multitude of anti-Black vigilante groups, disgruntled poor white farmers, wartime guerrilla bands, displaced Democratic politicians, illegal whiskey distillers, coercive moral reformers, sadists, rapists, white workmen fearful of Black competition, employers trying to enforce labor discipline, common thieves, neighbors with decades-old grudges, and even a few freedmen and white Republicans who allied with Democratic whites or had criminal agendas of their own. Indeed, all they had in common, besides being overwhelmingly white, southern, and Democratic, was that they called themselves, or were called, Klansmen.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Historian Eric Foner observed: \"In effect, the Klan was a military force serving the interests of the Democratic party, the planter class, and all those who desired restoration of white supremacy. Its purposes were political, but political in the broadest sense, for it sought to affect power relations, both public and private, throughout Southern society. It aimed to reverse the interlocking changes sweeping over the South during Reconstruction: to destroy the Republican party's infrastructure, undermine the Reconstruction state, reestablish control of the Black labor force, and restore racial subordination in every aspect of Southern life. To that end they worked to curb the education, economic advancement, voting rights, and right to keep and bear arms of Black people. The Klan soon spread into nearly every Southern state, launching a reign of terror against Republican leaders both Black and white. Those political leaders assassinated during the campaign included Arkansas Congressman James M. Hinds, three members of the South Carolina legislature, and several men who served in constitutional conventions.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In a 1933 interview, William Sellers, born enslaved in Virginia, recalled the post-war \"raids of the Ku Klux, young white men of Rockingham County who would go into the huts of the recently freed negroes or catch some negro who had been working for thirty cents a day on his way home from work...and cruelly whip him, leaving him to live or die.\" Seemingly random whipping attacks, meant to be suggestive of previous condition of servitude, were a widespread aspect of the early Klan; for example in 1870–71 in Limestone Township (now Cherokee County), South Carolina, of 77 documented attacks, \"four were shot, sixty-seven whipped and six had had their ears cropped.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Klan members adopted masks and robes that hid their identities and added to the drama of their night rides, their chosen time for attacks. Many of them operated in small towns and rural areas where people otherwise knew each other's faces, and sometimes still recognized the attackers by voice and mannerisms. \"The kind of thing that men are afraid or ashamed to do openly, and by day, they accomplish secretly, masked, and at night.\" The KKK night riders \"sometimes claimed to be ghosts of Confederate soldiers so, as they claimed, to frighten superstitious Blacks. Few freedmen took such nonsense seriously.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The Klan attacked Black members of the Loyal Leagues and intimidated Southern Republicans and Freedmen's Bureau workers. When they killed Black political leaders, they also took heads of families, along with the leaders of churches and community groups, because these people had many roles in society. Agents of the Freedmen's Bureau reported weekly assaults and murders of Black people.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "\"Armed guerrilla warfare killed thousands of Negroes; political riots were staged; their causes or occasions were always obscure, their results always certain: ten to one hundred times as many Negroes were killed as whites.\" Masked men shot into houses and burned them, sometimes with the occupants still inside. They drove successful Black farmers off their land. \"Generally, it can be reported that in North and South Carolina, in 18 months ending in June 1867, there were 197 murders and 548 cases of aggravated assault.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Klan violence worked to suppress Black voting, and campaign seasons were deadly. More than 2,000 people were killed, wounded, or otherwise injured in Louisiana within a few weeks prior to the Presidential election of November 1868. Although St. Landry Parish had a registered Republican majority of 1,071, after the murders, no Republicans voted in the fall elections. White Democrats cast the full vote of the parish for President Grant's opponent. The KKK killed and wounded more than 200 Black Republicans, hunting and chasing them through the woods. Thirteen captives were taken from jail and shot; a half-buried pile of 25 bodies was found in the woods. The KKK made people vote Democratic and gave them certificates of the fact.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "In the April 1868 Georgia gubernatorial election, Columbia County cast 1,222 votes for Republican Rufus Bullock. By the November presidential election, Klan intimidation led to suppression of the Republican vote and only one person voted for Ulysses S. Grant.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Klansmen killed more than 150 African Americans in Jackson County, Florida, and hundreds more in other counties including Madison, Alachua, Columbia, and Hamilton. Florida Freedmen's Bureau records provided a detailed recounting of Klansmen's beatings and murders of freedmen and their white allies.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Milder encounters, including some against white teachers, also occurred. In Mississippi, according to the Congressional inquiry:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "One of these teachers (Miss Allen of Illinois), whose school was at Cotton Gin Port in Monroe County, was visited ... between one and two o'clock in the morning in March 1871, by about fifty men mounted and disguised. Each man wore a long white robe and his face was covered by a loose mask with scarlet stripes. She was ordered to get up and dress which she did at once and then admitted to her room the captain and lieutenant who in addition to the usual disguise had long horns on their heads and a sort of device in front. The lieutenant had a pistol in his hand and he and the captain sat down while eight or ten men stood inside the door and the porch was full. They treated her \"gentlemanly and quietly\" but complained of the heavy school-tax, said she must stop teaching and go away and warned her that they never gave a second notice. She heeded the warning and left the county.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "By 1868, two years after the Klan's creation, its activity was beginning to decrease. Members were hiding behind Klan masks and robes as a way to avoid prosecution for freelance violence. Many influential Southern Democrats feared that Klan lawlessness provided an excuse for the federal government to retain its power over the South, and they began to turn against it. There were outlandish claims made, such as Georgian B. H. Hill stating \"that some of these outrages were actually perpetrated by the political friends of the parties slain.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Union Army veterans in mountainous Blount County, Alabama, organized \"the anti-Ku Klux\". They put an end to violence by threatening Klansmen with reprisals unless they stopped whipping Unionists and burning Black churches and schools. Armed Black people formed their own defense in Bennettsville, South Carolina, and patrolled the streets to protect their homes.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "National sentiment gathered to crack down on the Klan, even though some Democrats at the national level questioned whether the Klan really existed, or believed that it was a creation of nervous Southern Republican governors. Many southern states began to pass anti-Klan legislation.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "In January 1871, Pennsylvania Republican senator John Scott convened a congressional committee which took testimony from 52 witnesses about Klan atrocities, accumulating 12 volumes. In February, former Union general and congressman Benjamin Franklin Butler of Massachusetts introduced the Civil Rights Act of 1871 (Ku Klux Klan Act). This added to the enmity that Southern white Democrats bore toward him. While the bill was being considered, further violence in the South swung support for its passage. The governor of South Carolina appealed for federal troops to assist his efforts in keeping control of the state. A riot and massacre occurred in a Meridian, Mississippi, courthouse, from which a Black state representative escaped by fleeing to the woods. The 1871 Civil Rights Act allowed the president to suspend habeas corpus.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "In 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant signed Butler's legislation. The Ku Klux Klan Act and the Enforcement Act of 1870 were used by the federal government to enforce the civil rights provisions for individuals under the constitution. The Klan refused to voluntarily dissolve after the 1871 Klan Act, so President Grant issued a suspension of habeas corpus and stationed federal troops in nine South Carolina counties by invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807. The Klansmen were apprehended and prosecuted in federal court. Judges Hugh Lennox Bond and George S. Bryan presided over South Carolina Ku Klux Klan Trials in Columbia, S.C., during December 1871. The defendants were given from three months to five years of incarceration with fines. More Black people served on juries in federal court than on local or state juries, so they had a chance to participate in the process. Hundreds of Klan members were fined or imprisoned during the crackdown, \"once the national government became set upon a policy of military intervention whole populations which had scouted the authority of the weak 'Radical' government of the State became meek.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest boasted that the Klan was a nationwide organization of 550,000 men and that he could muster 40,000 Klansmen within five days' notice. However, the Klan had no membership rosters, no chapters, and no local officers, so it was difficult for observers to judge its membership. It had created a sensation by the dramatic nature of its masked forays and because of its many murders.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "In 1870, a federal grand jury determined that the Klan was a \"terrorist organization\" and issued hundreds of indictments for crimes of violence and terrorism. Klan members were prosecuted, and many fled from areas that were under federal government jurisdiction, particularly in South Carolina. Many people not formally inducted into the Klan had used the Klan's costume to hide their identities when carrying out independent acts of violence. Forrest called for the Klan to disband in 1869, arguing that it was \"being perverted from its original honorable and patriotic purposes, becoming injurious instead of subservient to the public peace\". Historian Stanley Horn argues that \"generally speaking, the Klan's end was more in the form of spotty, slow, and gradual disintegration than a formal and decisive disbandment\". A Georgia-based reporter wrote in 1870: \"A true statement of the case is not that the Ku Klux are an organized band of licensed criminals, but that men who commit crimes call themselves Ku Klux\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "In many states, officials were reluctant to use Black militia against the Klan out of fear that racial tensions would be raised. Republican governor of North Carolina William Woods Holden called out the militia against the Klan in 1870, adding to his unpopularity. This and extensive violence and fraud at the polls caused the Republicans to lose their majority in the state legislature. Disaffection with Holden's actions contributed to white Democratic legislators impeaching him and removing him from office, but their reasons for doing so were numerous.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Klan operations ended in South Carolina and gradually withered away throughout the rest of the South. Attorney General Amos Tappan Ackerman led the prosecutions.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Foner argues that:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "By 1872, the federal government's evident willingness to bring its legal and coercive authority to bear had broken the Klan's back and produced a dramatic decline in violence throughout the South. So ended the Reconstruction career of the Ku Klux Klan.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "New groups of insurgents emerged in the mid-1870s, local paramilitary organizations such as the White League, Red Shirts, saber clubs, and rifle clubs, that intimidated and murdered Black political leaders. The White League and Red Shirts were distinguished by their willingness to cultivate publicity, working directly to overturn Republican officeholders and regain control of politics.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "In 1882, the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Harris that the Klan Act was partially unconstitutional. It ruled that Congress's power under the Fourteenth Amendment did not include the right to regulate against private conspiracies. It recommended that persons who had been victimized should seek relief in state courts, which were entirely unsympathetic to such appeals.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Klan costumes, also called \"regalia\", disappeared from use by the early 1870s, after Grand Wizard Forrest called for their destruction as part of disbanding the Klan. The Klan was broken as an organization by 1872. In 1915, William Joseph Simmons held a meeting to revive the Klan in Georgia; he attracted two aging former members, and all other members were new.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "In 1915, the film The Birth of a Nation was released, mythologizing and glorifying the first Klan and its endeavors. The second Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1915 by William Joseph Simmons at Stone Mountain, near Atlanta, with fifteen \"charter members\". Its growth was based on a new anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, Prohibitionist and anti-Semitic agenda, which reflected contemporary social tensions, particularly recent immigration. The new organization and chapters adopted regalia featured in The Birth of a Nation; membership was kept secret by wearing masks in public.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Director D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation glorified the original Klan. The film was based on the book and play The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, as well as the book The Leopard's Spots, both by Thomas Dixon Jr. Much of the modern Klan's iconography is derived from it, including the standardized white costume and the burning cross. Its imagery was based on Dixon's romanticized concept of old England and Scotland, as portrayed in the novels and poetry of Sir Walter Scott. The film's influence was enhanced by a false claim of endorsement by President Woodrow Wilson. Dixon was an old friend of Wilson's and, before its release, there was a private showing of the film at the White House. A publicist claimed that Wilson said, \"It is like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.\" Wilson strongly disliked the film and felt he had been tricked by Dixon. The White House issued a denial of the \"lightning\" quote, saying that he was entirely unaware of the nature of the film and at no time had expressed his approbation of it.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The first and third Klans were primarily Southeastern groups aimed against Black people. The second Klan, in contrast, broadened the scope of the organization to appeal to people in the Midwestern and Western states who considered Catholics, Jews, and foreign-born minorities to be anti-American.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "The Second Klan saw threats from every direction. According to historian Brian R. Farmer, \"two-thirds of the national Klan lecturers were Protestant ministers\". Much of the Klan's energy went into guarding the home, and historian Kathleen Blee says that its members wanted to protect \"the interests of white womanhood\". Joseph Simmons published the pamphlet ABC of the Invisible Empire in Atlanta in 1917; in it, he identified the Klan's goals as \"to shield the sanctity of the home and the chastity of womanhood; to maintain white supremacy; to teach and faithfully inculcate a high spiritual philosophy through an exalted ritualism; and by a practical devotedness to conserve, protect and maintain the distinctive institutions, rights, privileges, principles and ideals of a pure Americanism\". Such moral-sounding purpose underlay its appeal as a fraternal organization, recruiting members with a promise of aid for settling into the new urban societies of rapidly growing cities such as Dallas and Detroit. During the 1930s, particularly after James A. Colescott of Indiana took over as imperial wizard, opposition to Communism became another primary aim of the Klan.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "New Klan founder William J. Simmons joined 12 different fraternal organizations and recruited for the Klan with his chest covered with fraternal badges, consciously modeling the Klan after fraternal organizations. Klan organizers called \"Kleagles\" signed up hundreds of new members, who paid initiation fees and received KKK costumes in return. The organizer kept half the money and sent the rest to state or national officials. When the organizer was done with an area, he organized a rally, often with burning crosses, and perhaps presented a Bible to a local Protestant preacher. He left town with the money collected. The local units operated like many fraternal organizations and occasionally brought in speakers.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Simmons initially met with little success in either recruiting members or in raising money, and the Klan remained a small operation in the Atlanta area until 1920. The group produced publications for national circulation from its headquarters in Atlanta: Searchlight (1919–1924), Imperial Night-Hawk (1923–1924), and The Kourier.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "The second Klan was a response to the growing power of Catholics and American Jews and the accompanying proliferation of non-Protestant cultural values, as well as some high-profile instances of violence against whites. The Klan had a nationwide reach by the mid-1920s, with its densest per capita membership in Indiana. It became most prominent in cities with high growth rates between 1910 and 1930, as rural Protestants flocked to jobs in Detroit and Dayton in the Midwest, and Atlanta, Dallas, Memphis, and Houston in the South. Close to half of Michigan's 80,000 Klansmen lived in Detroit.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Members of the KKK swore to uphold American values and Christian morality, and some Protestant ministers became involved at the local level. However, no Protestant denomination officially endorsed the KKK; indeed, the Klan was repeatedly denounced by the major Protestant magazines, as well as by all major secular newspapers. Historian Robert Moats Miller reports that \"not a single endorsement of the Klan was found by the present writer in the Methodist press, while many of the attacks on the Klan were quite savage. ...The Southern Baptist press condoned the aims but condemned the methods of the Klan.\" National denominational organizations never endorsed the Klan, but they rarely condemned it by name. Many nationally and regionally prominent churchmen did condemn it by name, and none endorsed it.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "The second Klan was less violent than either the first or third Klan were. However, the second Klan, especially in the Southeast, was not an entirely non-violent organization. The most violent Klan was in Dallas, Texas. In April 1921, shortly after they began gaining popularity in the area, the Klan kidnapped Alex Johnson, a Black man who had been accused of having sex with a white woman. They burned the letters \"KKK\" into his forehead and gave him a severe beating by a riverbed. The police chief and district attorney refused to prosecute, explicitly and publicly stating they believed that Johnson deserved this treatment. Encouraged by the approval of this whipping, the Dallas KKK whipped 68 people by the riverbed in 1922 alone. Although Johnson had been Black, most of the Dallas KKK's whipping victims were white men who were accused of offenses against their wives such as adultery, wife beating, abandoning their wives, refusing to pay child support or gambling. Far from trying to hide its vigilante activity, the Dallas KKK loved to publicize it. The Dallas KKK often invited local newspaper reporters to attend their whippings so they could write a story about it in the next day's newspaper.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "The Alabama KKK was less chivalrous than the Dallas KKK was and whipped both white and Black women who were accused of fornication or adultery. Although many people in Alabama were outraged by the whippings of white women, no Klansmen were ever convicted for the violence.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "In 1920, Simmons handed the day-to-day activities of the national office over to two professional publicists, Elizabeth Tyler and Edward Young Clarke. The new leadership invigorated the Klan and it grew rapidly. It appealed to new members based on current social tensions, and stressed responses to fears raised by defiance of Prohibition and new sexual freedoms. It emphasized anti-Jewish, anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant and later anti-Communist positions. It presented itself as a fraternal, nativist and strenuously patriotic organization; and its leaders emphasized support for vigorous enforcement of Prohibition laws. It expanded membership dramatically to a 1924 peak of 1.5 million to 4 million, which was between 4–15% of the eligible population.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "By the 1920s, most of its members lived in the Midwest and West. Nearly one in five of the eligible Indiana population were members. It had a national base by 1925. In the South, where the great majority of whites were Democrats, the Klansmen were Democrats. In the rest of the country, the membership comprised both Republicans and Democrats, as well as independents. Klan leaders tried to infiltrate political parties; as Cummings notes, \"it was non-partisan in the sense that it pressed its nativist issues to both parties\". Sociologist Rory McVeigh has explained the Klan's strategy in appealing to members of both parties:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Klan leaders hope to have all major candidates competing to win the movement's endorsement. ... The Klan's leadership wanted to keep their options open and repeatedly announced that the movement was not aligned with any political party. This non-alliance strategy was also valuable as a recruiting tool. The Klan drew its members from Democratic as well as Republican voters. If the movement had aligned itself with a single political party, it would have substantially narrowed its pool of potential recruits.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Religion was a major selling point. Kelly J. Baker argues that Klansmen seriously embraced Protestantism as an essential component of their white supremacist, anti-Catholic, and paternalistic formulation of American democracy and national culture. Their cross was a religious symbol, and their ritual honored Bibles and local ministers. But no nationally prominent religious leader said he was a Klan member.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Economists Fryer and Levitt argue that the rapid growth of the Klan in the 1920s was partly the result of an innovative, multi-level marketing campaign. They also argue that the Klan leadership focused more intently on monetizing the organization during this period than fulfilling the political goals of the organization. Local leaders profited from expanding their membership.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Historians agree that the Klan's resurgence in the 1920s was aided by the national debate over Prohibition. The historian Prendergast says that the KKK's \"support for Prohibition represented the single most important bond between Klansmen throughout the nation\". The Klan opposed bootleggers, sometimes with violence. In 1922, two hundred Klan members set fire to saloons in Union County, Arkansas. Membership in the Klan and in other Prohibition groups overlapped, and they sometimes coordinated activities.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "A significant characteristic of the second Klan was that it was an organization based in urban areas, reflecting the major shifts of population to cities in the North, West, and the South. In Michigan, for instance, 40,000 members lived in Detroit, where they made up more than half of the state's membership. Most Klansmen were lower- to middle-class whites who feared the waves of newcomers to the industrial cities: immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, who were mostly Catholic or Jewish; and Black and white migrants from the South. As new populations poured into cities, rapidly changing neighborhoods created social tensions. Because of the rapid pace of population growth in industrializing cities such as Detroit and Chicago, the Klan grew rapidly in the Midwest. The Klan also grew in booming Southern cities such as Dallas and Houston.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "In the medium-size industrial city of Worcester, Massachusetts, in the 1920s, the Klan ascended to power quickly but declined as a result of opposition from the Catholic Church. There was no violence and the local newspaper ridiculed Klansmen as \"night-shirt knights\". Half of the members were Swedish Americans, including some first-generation immigrants. The ethnic and religious conflicts among more recent immigrants contributed to the rise of the Klan in the city. Swedish Protestants were struggling against Irish Catholics, who had been entrenched longer, for political and ideological control of the city.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "In some states, historians have obtained membership rosters of some local units and matched the names against city directory and local records to create statistical profiles of the membership. Big city newspapers were often hostile and ridiculed Klansmen as ignorant farmers. Detailed analysis from Indiana showed that the rural stereotype was false for that state:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Indiana's Klansmen represented a wide cross section of society: they were not disproportionately urban or rural, nor were they significantly more or less likely than other members of society to be from the working class, middle class, or professional ranks. Klansmen were Protestants, of course, but they cannot be described exclusively or even predominantly as fundamentalists. In reality, their religious affiliations mirrored the whole of white Protestant society, including those who did not belong to any church.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "The Klan attracted people but most of them did not remain in the organization for long. Membership in the Klan turned over rapidly as people found out that it was not the group which they had wanted. Millions joined and at its peak in the 1920s the organization claimed numbers that amounted to 15% of the nation's eligible population. The lessening of social tensions contributed to the Klan's decline.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "The distinctive white costume permitted large-scale public activities, especially parades and cross-burning ceremonies, while keeping the membership roles a secret. Sales of the costumes provided the main financing for the national organization, while initiation fees funded local and state organizers.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "The second Klan embraced the burning Latin cross as a dramatic display of symbolism, with a tone of intimidation. No crosses had been used as a symbol by the first Klan, but it became a symbol of the Klan's quasi-Christian message. Its lighting during meetings was often accompanied by prayer, the singing of hymns, and other overtly religious symbolism. In his novel The Clansman, Thomas Dixon Jr. borrows the idea that the first Klan had used fiery crosses from 'the call to arms' of the Scottish Clans, and film director D.W. Griffith used this image in The Birth of a Nation; Simmons adopted the symbol wholesale from the movie, and the symbol and action have been associated with the Klan ever since.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "By the 1920s, the KKK developed a women's auxiliary, with chapters in many areas. Its activities included participation in parades, cross lightings, lectures, rallies, and boycotts of local businesses owned by Catholics and Jews. The Women's Klan was active in promoting Prohibition, stressing liquor's negative impact on wives and children. Its efforts in public schools included distributing Bibles and petitioning for the dismissal of Catholic teachers. As a result of the Women's Klan's efforts, Texas would not hire Catholic teachers to work in its public schools. As sexual and financial scandals rocked the Klan leadership late in the 1920s, the organization's popularity among both men and women dropped off sharply.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "The second Klan expanded with new chapters in cities in the Midwest and West, and reached both Republicans and Democrats, as well as men without a party affiliation. The goal of Prohibition in particular helped the Klan and some Republicans to make common cause in the North.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "The Klan had numerous members in every part of the United States, but was particularly strong in the South and Midwest. At its peak, claimed Klan membership exceeded four million and comprised 20% of the adult white male population in many broad geographic regions, and 40% in some areas. The Klan also moved north into Canada, especially Saskatchewan, where it opposed Catholics.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "In Indiana, members were American-born, white Protestants and covered a wide range of incomes and social levels. The Indiana Klan was perhaps the most prominent Ku Klux Klan in the nation. It claimed more than 30% of white male Hoosiers as members. In 1924 it supported Republican Edward Jackson in his successful campaign for governor.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Catholic and liberal Democrats—who were strongest in northeastern cities—decided to make the Klan an issue at the 1924 Democratic National Convention in New York City. Their delegates proposed a resolution indirectly attacking the Klan; it was defeated by one vote out of 1,100. The leading presidential candidates were William Gibbs McAdoo, a Protestant with a base in the South and West where the Klan was strong, and New York governor Al Smith, a Catholic with a base in the large cities. After weeks of stalemate and bitter argumentation, both candidates withdrew in favor of a compromise candidate.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "In some states, such as Alabama and California, KKK chapters had worked for political reform. In 1924, Klan members were elected to the city council in Anaheim, California. The city had been controlled by an entrenched commercial-civic elite that was mostly German American. Given their tradition of moderate social drinking, the German Americans did not strongly support Prohibition laws – the mayor had been a saloon keeper. Led by the minister of the First Christian Church, the Klan represented a rising group of politically oriented non-ethnic Germans who denounced the elite as corrupt, undemocratic and self-serving. The historian Christopher Cocoltchos says the Klansmen tried to create a model, orderly community. The Klan had about 1,200 members in Orange County, California. The economic and occupational profile of the pro- and anti-Klan groups shows the two were similar and about equally prosperous. Klan members were Protestants, as were most of their opponents, but the latter also included many Catholic Germans. Individuals who joined the Klan had earlier demonstrated a much higher rate of voting and civic activism than did their opponents. Cocoltchos suggests that many of the individuals in Orange County joined the Klan out of that sense of civic activism. The Klan representatives easily won the local election in Anaheim in April 1924. They fired city employees who were known to be Catholic, and replaced them with Klan appointees. The new city council tried to enforce Prohibition. After its victory, the Klan chapter held large rallies and initiation ceremonies over the summer. The opposition organized, bribed a Klansman for the secret membership list, and exposed the Klansmen running in the state primaries; they defeated most of the candidates. Klan opponents in 1925 took back local government, and succeeded in a special election in recalling the Klansmen who had been elected in April 1924. The Klan in Anaheim quickly collapsed, its newspaper closed after losing a libel suit, and the minister who led the local Klavern moved to Kansas.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "In the South, Klan members were still Democratic, as it was essentially a one-party region for whites. Klan chapters were closely allied with Democratic police, sheriffs, and other functionaries of local government. Due to disenfranchisement of most African Americans and many poor whites around the start of the 20th century, the only political activity for whites took place within the Democratic Party.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "In Alabama, Klan members advocated better public schools, effective Prohibition enforcement, expanded road construction, and other political measures to benefit lower-class white people. By 1925, the Klan was a political force in the state, as leaders such as J. Thomas Heflin, David Bibb Graves, and Hugo Black tried to build political power against the Black Belt wealthy planters, who had long dominated the state. In 1926, with Klan support, Bibb Graves won the Alabama governor's office. He was a former Klan chapter head. He pushed for increased education funding, better public health, new highway construction, and pro-labor legislation. Because the Alabama state legislature refused to redistrict until 1972, and then under court order, the Klan was unable to break the planters' and rural areas' hold on legislative power.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Scholars and biographers have recently examined Hugo Black's Klan role. Ball finds regarding the KKK that Black \"sympathized with the group's economic, nativist, and anti-Catholic beliefs\". Newman says Black \"disliked the Catholic Church as an institution\" and gave over 100 anti-Catholic speeches to KKK meetings across Alabama in his 1926 election campaign. Black was elected US senator in 1926 as a Democrat. In 1937 President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Black to the Supreme Court without knowing how active in the Klan he had been in the 1920s. He was confirmed by his fellow Senators before the full KKK connection was known; Justice Black said he left the Klan when he became a senator.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Many groups and leaders, including prominent Protestant ministers such as Reinhold Niebuhr in Detroit, spoke out against the Klan, gaining national attention. The Jewish Anti-Defamation League was formed in the early 20th century in response to attacks on Jewish Americans, including the lynching of Leo Frank in Atlanta, and to the Klan's campaign to prohibit private schools (which was chiefly aimed at Catholic parochial schools). Opposing groups worked to penetrate the Klan's secrecy. After one civic group in Indiana began to publish Klan membership lists, there was a rapid decline in the number of Klan members. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) launched public education campaigns in order to inform people about Klan activities and lobbied in Congress against Klan abuses. After its peak in 1925, Klan membership in most areas began to decline rapidly. Specific events contributed to the Klan's decline as well. In Indiana, the scandal surrounding the 1925 murder trial of Grand Dragon D. C. Stephenson destroyed the image of the KKK as upholders of law and order. By 1926 the Klan was \"crippled and discredited\". D. C. Stephenson was the grand dragon of Indiana and 22 northern states. In 1923 he had led the states under his control in order to break away from the national KKK organization. At his 1925 trial, he was convicted of second-degree murder for his part in the rape, and subsequent death, of Madge Oberholtzer. After Stephenson's conviction, the Klan declined dramatically in Indiana.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "The historian Leonard Moore says that a failure in leadership caused the Klan's collapse:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Stephenson and the other salesmen and office seekers who maneuvered for control of Indiana's Invisible Empire lacked both the ability and the desire to use the political system to carry out the Klan's stated goals. They were uninterested in, or perhaps even unaware of, grass roots concerns within the movement. For them, the Klan had been nothing more than a means for gaining wealth and power. These marginal men had risen to the top of the hooded order because, until it became a political force, the Klan had never required strong, dedicated leadership. More established and experienced politicians who endorsed the Klan, or who pursued some of the interests of their Klan constituents, also accomplished little. Factionalism created one barrier, but many politicians had supported the Klan simply out of expedience. When charges of crime and corruption began to taint the movement, those concerned about their political futures had even less reason to work on the Klan's behalf.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "In Alabama, KKK vigilantes launched a wave of physical terror in 1927. They targeted both Black and white people for violations of racial norms and for perceived moral lapses. This led to a strong backlash, beginning in the media. Grover C. Hall Sr., editor of the Montgomery Advertiser from 1926, wrote a series of editorials and articles that attacked the Klan. (Today the paper says it \"waged war on the resurgent [KKK]\".) Hall won a Pulitzer Prize for the crusade, the 1928 Editorial Writing Pulitzer, citing \"his editorials against gangsterism, floggings and racial and religious intolerance\". Other newspapers kept up a steady, loud attack on the Klan, referring to the organization as violent and \"un-American\". Sheriffs cracked down on activities. In the 1928 presidential election, the state voters overcame their initial opposition to the Catholic candidate Al Smith, and voted the Democratic Party line as usual.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "Although in decline, a measure of the Klan's influence was still evident when it staged its march along Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., in 1928. By 1930, Klan membership in Alabama dropped to less than 6,000. Small independent units continued to be active in the industrial city of Birmingham.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "KKK units were active through the 1930s in parts of Georgia, with a group of \"night riders\" in Atlanta enforcing their moral views by flogging people who violated them, whites as well as Black people. In March 1940, they were implicated in the beating murders of a young white couple taken from their car on a lovers lane, and flogged a white barber to death for drinking, both in East Point, a suburb of Atlanta. More than 20 others were \"brutally flogged\". As the police began to investigate, they found the records of the KKK had disappeared from their East Point office. The cases were reported by the Chicago Tribune and the NAACP in its Crisis magazine, as well as local papers.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "In 1940, three lynchings of Black men by whites (no KKK affiliation is known) took place in the South: Elbert Williams was the first NAACP member known to be killed for civil rights activities: he was murdered in Brownsville, Tennessee, for working to register Black people to vote, and several other activists were run out of town; Jesse Thornton was lynched in Luverne, Alabama, for a minor social infraction; and 16-year-old Austin Callaway, a suspect in the assault of a white woman, was taken from jail in the middle of the night and killed by six white men in LaGrange, Georgia. In January 2017, the police chief and mayor of LaGrange apologized for their offices' failures to protect Callaway, at a reconciliation service marking his death.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "In major Southern cities such as Birmingham, Alabama, Klan members kept control of access to the better-paying industrial jobs and opposed unions. During the 1930s and 1940s, Klan leaders urged members to disrupt the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which advocated industrial unions and accepted African-American members, unlike earlier unions. With access to dynamite and using the skills from their jobs in mining and steel, in the late 1940s some Klan members in Birmingham used bombings to destroy houses in order to intimidate upwardly mobile Black people who moved into middle-class neighborhoods. It has been said that \"By mid-1949, there were so many charred house carcasses that the area [College Hills] was informally named Dynamite Hill.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Activism by these independent KKK groups in Birmingham increased as a reaction to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Independent Klan groups violently opposed the civil rights movement. KKK members were implicated in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing on a Sunday in September 1963, which killed four African-American girls and injured 22 other people. Members of the Communist Workers' Party came to North Carolina to organize textile workers and pushed back against racial discrimination there, taunting the KKK, resulting in the 1979 Greensboro massacre.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "According to Professor Jon Schamber, Rev. Philip E. J. Monson branched off from the teachings of British Israelism and began to develop Christian Identity Theology in the 1910s. During the 1920s, Monson published Satan's Seat: The Enemy of Our Race in which he adopted Russel Kelso Carter's theory that Jews and non-whites were descended from the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Monson connected the work of the corrupt race to the activities of the Catholic Church and the Pope. Monson's ideas were popular among some KKK members in the 1950s.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "In 1939, after experiencing several years of decline due to the Great Depression, the Imperial Wizard Hiram Wesley Evans sold the national organization to James A. Colescott, an Indiana veterinary physician, and Samuel Green, an Atlanta obstetrician. They could not revive the Klan's declining membership. In 1944, the Internal Revenue Service filed a lien for $685,000 in back taxes against the Klan, and Colescott dissolved the organization by decree on April 23 of that year. Local Klan groups closed down over the following years.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "After World War II, the folklorist and author Stetson Kennedy infiltrated the Klan; he provided internal data to media and law enforcement agencies. He also provided secret code words to the writers of the Superman radio program, resulting in episodes in which Superman took on a thinly disguised version of the KKK. Kennedy stripped away the Klan's mystique and trivialized its rituals and code words, which may have contributed to the decline in Klan recruiting and membership. In the 1950s Kennedy wrote a bestselling book about his experiences, which further damaged the Klan.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "The historiography of the second Klan of the 1920s has changed over time. Early histories were based on mainstream sources of the time, but since the late 20th century, other histories have been written drawing from records and analysis of members of the chapters in social histories.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "The KKK was a secret organization; apart from a few top leaders, most members never identified as such and wore masks in public. Investigators in the 1920s used KKK publicity, court cases, exposés by disgruntled Klansmen, newspaper reports, and speculation to write stories about what the Klan was doing. Almost all the major national newspapers and magazines were hostile to its activities. The historian Thomas R. Pegram says that published accounts exaggerated the official viewpoint of the Klan leadership, and repeated the interpretations of hostile newspapers and the Klan's enemies. There was almost no evidence in that time regarding the behavior or beliefs of individual Klansmen. According to Pegram, the resulting popular and scholarly interpretation of the Klan from the 1920s into the mid-20th century emphasized its Southern roots and the violent vigilante-style actions of the Klan in its efforts to turn back the clock of modernity. Scholars compared it to fascism in Europe. Amann states that, \"Undeniably, the Klan had some traits in common with European fascism—chauvinism, racism, a mystique of violence, an affirmation of a certain kind of archaic traditionalism—yet their differences were fundamental. ...[The KKK] never envisioned a change of political or economic system.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "Pegram says this original interpretation",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "depicted the Klan movement as an irrational rebuke of modernity by undereducated, economically marginal bigots, religious zealots, and dupes willing to be manipulated by the Klan's cynical, mendacious leaders. It was, in this view, a movement of country parsons and small-town malcontents who were out of step with the dynamism of twentieth-century urban America.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "The \"social history\" revolution in historiography from the 1960s explored history from the bottom up. In terms of the Klan, it developed evidence based on the characteristics, beliefs, and behavior of the typical membership, and downplayed accounts by elite sources. Historians discovered membership lists and the minutes of local meetings from KKK chapters scattered around the country. They discovered that the original interpretation was largely mistaken about the membership and activities of the Klan; the membership was not anti-modern, rural or rustic and consisted of fairly well educated middle-class joiners and community activists. Half the members lived in the fast-growing industrial cities of the period: Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Denver, and Portland, Oregon, were Klan strongholds during the 1920s.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "Studies find that in general, the KKK membership in these cities was from the stable, successful middle classes, with few members drawn from the elite or the working classes. Pegram, reviewing the studies, concludes, \"the popular Klan of the 1920s, while diverse, was more of a civic exponent of white Protestant social values than a repressive hate group.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "Kelly J. Baker argues that religion was critical—the KKK based its hatred on a particular brand of Protestantism that resonated with mainstream Americans: \"Members embraced Protestant Christianity and a crusade to save America from domestic as well as foreign threats.\" Member were primarily Baptists, Methodists, and members of the Disciples of Christ, while men of \"more elite or liberal\" Protestant denominations such as Unitarians, Episcopalians, Congregationalists and Lutherans, were less likely to join.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "In Indiana, traditional political historians focused on notorious leaders, especially D. C. Stephenson, the Grand Dragon of the Indiana Klan, whose conviction for the 1925 kidnap, rape, and murder of Madge Oberholtzer helped destroy the Ku Klux Klan movement nationwide. In his history of 1967, Kenneth T. Jackson described the Klan of the 1920s as associated with cities and urbanization, with chapters often acting as a kind of fraternal organization to aid people coming from other areas.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "Social historian Leonard Moore titled his monograph Citizen Klansmen (1997) and contrasted the intolerant rhetoric of the group's leaders with the actions of most of the membership. The Klan was white Protestant, established Americans who were fearful of change represented by new immigrants and Black migrants to the North. They were highly suspicious of Catholics, Jews and Black people, who they believed subverted ideal, Protestant moral standards. Violence was uncommon in most chapters. In Indiana, KKK members directed more threats and economic blacklisting primarily against fellow white Protestants for transgressions of community moral standards, such as adultery, wife-beating, gambling and heavy drinking. Up to one third of Indiana's Protestant men joined the order making it, Moore argued, \"a kind of interest group for average white Protestants who believed that their values should be dominant in their community and state.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "Northern Indiana's industrial cities had attracted a large Catholic population of European immigrants and their descendants. They established the University of Notre Dame, a major Catholic college near South Bend. In May 1924, when the KKK scheduled a regional meeting in the city, Notre Dame students blocked the Klansmen and stole some KKK regalia. On the next day, the Klansmen counterattacked. Finally, the college president and the football coach Knute Rockne kept the students on campus to avert further violence.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "In Alabama, some young, white, urban activists joined the KKK to fight the old guard establishment. Hugo Black was a member before becoming nationally famous; he focused on anti-Catholicism. However, in rural Alabama the Klan continued to operate to enforce Jim Crow laws; its members resorted more often to violence against Black people for infringements of the social order of white supremacy.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "Racial terrorism was used in smaller towns to suppress Black political activity. Elbert Williams of Brownsville, Tennessee, was lynched in 1940 for trying to organize Black residents to register and vote; also that year, Jesse Thornton of Luverne, Alabama, was lynched for failing to address a police officer as \"Mister\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "In 1944, the second KKK was disbanded by Imperial Wizard James A. Colescott after the IRS levied a large tax liability against the organization. In 1946, Samuel Green reestablished the KKK at a ceremony on Stone Mountain. His group primarily operated in Georgia. Green was succeeded by Samuel Roper as Imperial Wizard in 1949, and Roper was succeeded by Eldon Edwards in 1950. Based in Atlanta, Edwards worked to rebuild the organization by uniting the different factions of the KKK from other parts of the United States, but the strength of the organization was short-lived and the group fractured as it competed with other klan organizations. In 1959, Roy Davis was elected to follow Edwards as national leader. Edwards had previously appointed Davis Grand Dragon of Texas in an effort to unite their two klan organizations. Davis was already leading the Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Davis held rallies Florida and other southern states during 1961 and 1962 recruiting members. Davis had been a close associate of William J. Simmons and been active in the KKK since it first reformed in 1915.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "Congress launched an investigation into the KKK in early 1964, following the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas. Davis, based in Dallas, resigned as Imperial Wizard of the Original Knights shortly after the Original Knights received a Congressional subpoena. The Original Knights became increasingly fractured in the immediate aftermath as many members were forced to testify before Congress. The White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan formed in 1964 after splitting from the Original Knights. According to an FBI report published in May 1965, the KKK was divided into 14 different organizations at the time with a total membership of approximately 9,000. The FBI reported that Roy Davis's Original Knights was the largest faction and had about 1,500 members. Robert Shelton of Alabama was leading a faction of 400–600 members. Congressional investigators found that by the end of 1965 most members of Original Knights organization joined Shelton's United Klans and the Original Knights of the KKK disbanded. Shelton's United Klan continued to absorb members from the competing factions and remained the largest Klan group unto the 1970s, peaking with an estimated 30,000 members and another 250,000 non-member supporters during the late 1960s.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "After the decline of the national organization, small independent groups adopted the name \"Ku Klux Klan\", along with variations. They had no formal relationships with each other, and most had no connection to the second KKK, except for the fact that they copied its terminology and costumes. Beginning in the 1950s, for instance, individual Klan groups in Birmingham, Alabama, began to resist social change and Black people's efforts to improve their lives by bombing houses in transitional neighborhoods. The white men worked in mining and steel industries, with access to these materials. There were so many bombings of Black people's homes in Birmingham by Klan groups in the 1950s that the city was nicknamed \"Bombingham\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "During the tenure of Bull Connor as police commissioner in Birmingham, Klan groups were closely allied with the police and operated with impunity. When the Freedom Riders arrived in Birmingham in 1961, Connor gave Klan members fifteen minutes to attack the riders before sending in the police to quell the attack. When local and state authorities failed to protect the Freedom Riders and activists, the federal government began to establish intervention and protection. In states such as Alabama and Mississippi, Klan members forged alliances with governors' administrations. In Birmingham and elsewhere, the KKK groups bombed the houses of civil rights activists. In some cases they used physical violence, intimidation, and assassination directly against individuals. Continuing disfranchisement of Black people across the South meant that most could not serve on juries, which were all-white and demonstrably biased verdicts and sentences.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "According to a report from the Southern Regional Council in Atlanta, the homes of 40 Black Southern families were bombed during 1951 and 1952. Some of the bombing victims were social activists whose work exposed them to danger, but most were either people who refused to bow to racist convention or were innocent bystanders, unsuspecting victims of random violence.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "Among the more notorious murders by Klan members in the 1950s and 1960s were:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "There was considerable resistance among African Americans and white allies to the Klan. In 1953, newspaper publishers W. Horace Carter (Tabor City, North Carolina), who had campaigned for three years, and Willard Cole (Whiteville, North Carolina) shared the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service citing \"their successful campaign against the Ku Klux Klan, waged on their own doorstep at the risk of economic loss and personal danger, culminating in the conviction of over one hundred Klansmen and an end to terrorism in their communities\". In a 1958 incident in North Carolina, the Klan burned crosses at the homes of two Lumbee Native Americans for associating with white people, and threatened more actions. When the KKK held a nighttime rally nearby, they were quickly surrounded by hundreds of armed Lumbee. Gunfire was exchanged, and the Klan was routed at what became known as the Battle of Hayes Pond.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "While the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had paid informants in the Klan (for instance, in Birmingham in the early 1960s), its relations with local law enforcement agencies and the Klan were often ambiguous. The head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, appeared more concerned about Communist links to civil rights activists than about controlling Klan excesses against citizens. In 1964, the FBI's COINTELPRO program began attempts to infiltrate and disrupt civil rights groups.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "As 20th-century Supreme Court rulings extended federal enforcement of citizens' civil rights, the government revived the Enforcement Acts and the Klan Act from Reconstruction days. Federal prosecutors used these laws as the basis for investigations and indictments in the 1964 murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner; and the 1965 murder of Viola Liuzzo. They were also the basis for prosecution in 1991 in Bray v. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "In 1965, the House Un-American Activities Committee started an investigation on the Klan, putting in the public spotlight its front organizations, finances, methods and divisions.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "After federal legislation was passed prohibiting legal segregation and authorizing enforcement of protection of voting rights, KKK groups began to oppose court-ordered busing to desegregate schools, affirmative action, and the more open immigration authorized in the 1960s. In 1971, KKK members used bombs to destroy 10 school buses in Pontiac, Michigan. By 1975, there were known KKK groups on most college campuses in Louisiana as well as at Vanderbilt University, the University of Georgia, the University of Mississippi, the University of Akron, and the University of Southern California.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "On November 3, 1979, five communist protesters were killed by KKK and American Nazi Party members in Greensboro, North Carolina, in what is known as the Greensboro massacre. The Communist Workers' Party had sponsored a rally against the Klan in an effort to organize predominantly Black industrial workers in the area. Klan members drove up with arms in their car trunks, and attacked marchers.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "Jerry Thompson, a newspaper reporter who infiltrated the KKK in 1979, reported that the FBI's COINTELPRO efforts were highly successful. Rival KKK factions accused each other's leaders of being FBI informants. William Wilkinson of the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, was revealed to have been working for the FBI.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "Thompson also related that KKK leaders showed great concern about a series of civil lawsuits filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, claiming damages amounting to millions of dollars. These were filed after KKK members shot into a group of African Americans. Klansmen curtailed their activities in order to conserve money for defense against the lawsuits. The KKK also used lawsuits as tools; they filed a libel suit in order to prevent the publication of a paperback edition of Thompson's book, but were unsuccessful.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "In 1980, three KKK members shot four elderly Black women (Viola Ellison, Lela Evans, Opal Jackson, and Katherine Johnson) in Chattanooga, Tennessee, following a KKK initiation rally. A fifth woman, Fannie Crumsey, was injured by flying glass in the incident. Attempted murder charges were filed against the three KKK members, two of whom—Bill Church and Larry Payne—were acquitted by an all-white jury. The third defendant, Marshall Thrash, was sentenced by the same jury to nine months on lesser charges. He was released after three months. In 1982, a jury awarded the five women $535,000 in a civil trial.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 125,
"text": "After Michael Donald was lynched in 1981 in Alabama, the FBI investigated his death. The US attorney prosecuted the case. Two local KKK members were convicted for his murder, including Henry Francis Hays who was sentenced to death. After exhausting the appeals process, Hays was executed by electric chair for Donald's death in Alabama on June 6, 1997. It was the first time since 1913 that a white man had been executed in Alabama for a crime against an African American.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 126,
"text": "With the support of attorneys Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and state senator Michael A. Figures, Donald's mother Beulah Mae Donald sued the KKK in civil court in Alabama. Her lawsuit against the United Klans of America was tried in February 1987. The all-white jury found the Klan responsible for the lynching of Donald, and ordered the Klan to pay US$7 million, but the KKK did not have sufficient funds to pay the fine. They had to sell off their national headquarters building in Tuscaloosa.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 127,
"text": "In 1995, Don Black and Chloê Hardin, the ex-wife of the KKK grand wizard David Duke, began a small bulletin board system (BBS) called Stormfront, which has become a prominent online forum for white nationalism, Neo-Nazism, hate speech, racism, and antisemitism in the early 21st century.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 128,
"text": "In a 2007 article by the ADL, it was reported that many KKK groups had formed strong alliances with other white supremacist groups, such as neo-Nazis. Some KKK groups have become increasingly \"nazified\", adopting the look and emblems of white power skinheads.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 129,
"text": "The modern KKK is not one organization; rather, it is composed of small independent chapters across the United States. According to a 1999 ADL report, the KKK's estimated size then was \"No more than a few thousand, organized into slightly more than 100 units\". In 2017, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which monitors extremist groups, estimated that there were \"at least 29 separate, rival Klan groups currently active in the United States, and they compete with one another for members, dues, news media attention and the title of being the true heir to the Ku Klux Klan\". The formation of independent chapters has made KKK groups more difficult to infiltrate, and researchers find it hard to estimate their numbers. Analysts believe that about two-thirds of KKK members are concentrated in the Southern United States, with another third situated primarily in the lower Midwest.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 130,
"text": "For some time, the Klan's numbers have been steadily dropping. This decline has been attributed to the Klan's lack of competence in the use of the Internet, their history of violence, a proliferation of competing hate groups, and a decline in the number of young racist activists who are willing to join groups at all.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 131,
"text": "In 2015, the number of KKK chapters nationwide grew from 72 to 190. The SPLC released a similar report stating that \"there were significant increases in Klan as well as Black separatist groups\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 132,
"text": "A 2016 analysis by the SPLC found that hate groups in general were on the rise in the United States. The ADL published a report in 2016 that concluded: \"Despite a persistent ability to attract media attention, organized Ku Klux Klan groups are actually continuing a long-term trend of decline. They remain a collection of mostly small, disjointed groups that continually change in name and leadership.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 133,
"text": "Recent KKK membership campaigns have stimulated people's anxieties about illegal immigration, urban crime, civil unions, and same-sex marriage. In 2006, J. Keith Akins argued that \"Klan literature and propaganda is rabidly homophobic and encourages violence against gays and lesbians. ...Since the late 1970s, the Klan has increasingly focused its ire on this previously ignored population.\" The Klan has produced Islamophobic propaganda and distributed anti-Islamic flyers.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 134,
"text": "The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has provided legal support to various factions of the KKK in defense of their First Amendment rights to hold public rallies, parades, and marches, as well as their right to field political candidates.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 135,
"text": "The February 14, 2019, edition of the Linden, Alabama, weekly newspaper The Democrat-Reporter carried an editorial titled \"Klan needs to ride again\" written by Goodloe Sutton—the newspaper's owner, publisher and editor—which urged the Klan to return to staging their night rides, because proposals were being made to raise taxes in the state. In an interview, Sutton suggested that Washington, D.C., could be \"clean[ed] out\" by way of lynchings. \"We'll get the hemp ropes out, loop them over a tall limb and hang all of them,\" Sutton said. He also specified that he was only referring to hanging \"socialist-communists\", and compared the Klan to the NAACP. The editorial and Sutton's subsequent comments provoked calls for his resignation from Alabama politicians and the Alabama Press Association, which later censured Sutton and suspended the newspaper's membership. In addition, the University of Southern Mississippi's School of Communication removed Sutton—who is an alumnus of that school from its Mass Communication and Journalism Hall of Fame, and \"strongly condemned\" his remarks. Sutton was also stripped of a distinguished community journalism award he had been presented in 2009 by Auburn University's Journalism Advisory Council. Sutton expressed no regret and said that the editorial was intended to be \"ironic\", but that \"not many people understand irony today.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 136,
"text": "A list is maintained by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL):",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 137,
"text": "Aside from the Ku Klux Klan in Canada, there have been various attempts to organize KKK chapters outside the United States in places in Asia, Europe and Oceania, although most of them ultimately came to naught.",
"title": "Outside the United States and Canada"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 138,
"text": "In apartheid South Africa in the 1960s, some far-right activists copied KKK actions, for example by writing \"Ku Klux Klan Africa\" on the ANC Cape Town offices or by wearing their costumes. In response, American Klan leader Terry Venable attempted to establish a branch at Rhodes University.",
"title": "Outside the United States and Canada"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 139,
"text": "In the 1970s, Rhodesia had a Ku Klux Klan, led by Len Idensohn, attacking Ian Smith for his perceived moderation.",
"title": "Outside the United States and Canada"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 140,
"text": "In Mexico, the KKK endorsed and funded the Calles government during the 1920s Cristero War with the intention of destroying Catholicism there. On 1924 vigilantes claimed to have organized themselves into a Klan against \"criminals\", publishing a program of \"social epuration\".",
"title": "Outside the United States and Canada"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 141,
"text": "In São Paulo, Brazil, the website of a group called Imperial Klans of Brazil was shut down in 2003, and the group's leader was arrested.",
"title": "Outside the United States and Canada"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 142,
"text": "The Klan has also been established in the Canal Zone.",
"title": "Outside the United States and Canada"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 143,
"text": "Klan was present in Cuba, under the name of Ku Klux Klan Kubano, directed against both West Indian migrant workers and Afro-Cuban and using the fear of the 1912 Negro Rebellion.",
"title": "Outside the United States and Canada"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 144,
"text": "During the Vietnam War, klaverns were established on some US military bases, often tolerated by military authorities.",
"title": "Outside the United States and Canada"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 145,
"text": "In the 1920s, the Klan briefly existed in Shanghai.",
"title": "Outside the United States and Canada"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 146,
"text": "Recruitment activity has also been reported in the United Kingdom. In the 1960s, \"klaverns\" were established in the Midlands, the following decade saw visits by leading Klansmen, and the 1990s saw recruitment drives in London, Scotland and the Midlands and huge internal turmoil and splintering: for example a leader, Allan Beshella, had to resign after 1972 conviction for child sex abuse was revealed. In 2018, Klan-clad far-right activists marched in front of a Northern Irish mosque.",
"title": "Outside the United States and Canada"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 147,
"text": "In Germany, a KKK-related group, Ritter des Feurigen Kreuzes (\"Knights of the Fiery Cross\"), was established in 1925 by returning naturalized German-born US citizens in Berlin who managed to gather around 300 persons of middle-class occupations such as merchants and clerks. It soon saw the original founders being removed by internal conflicts, and mocking newspapers about the affair. After the Nazis took over Germany, the group disbanded and its members joined the Nazis. On 1991, Dennis Mahon, then of Oklahoma's White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, reportedly helped to organize Klan groups. Another German KKK-related group, the European White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, has organized and it gained notoriety in 2012 when the German media reported that two police officers who held membership in the organization would be allowed to keep their jobs. In 2019, the German authorities conducted raids against a possibly dangerous group called National Socialist Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Deutschland.",
"title": "Outside the United States and Canada"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 148,
"text": "In 2001, David Duke came to Moscow to network with local anti-Semitic Russian nationalists. Duke said that Russia was \"the key to white survival\" and blamed most of the events of the 20th century Russian history on the Jews.",
"title": "Outside the United States and Canada"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 149,
"text": "In the 1920s, the Klan was rumoured to exist in Lithuania and Czechoslovakia.",
"title": "Outside the United States and Canada"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 150,
"text": "In Australia in the late 1990s, former One Nation member Peter Coleman established branches throughout the country, and circa 2012 the KKK has attempted to infiltrate other political parties such as Australia First. Branches of the Klan have previously existed in New South Wales and Victoria, as well as allegedly in Queensland. Unlike in the United States, the Australian branches did not require members to be Christian, but did require them to be white.",
"title": "Outside the United States and Canada"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 151,
"text": "A Ku Klux Klan group was established in Fiji in 1874 by white American and British settlers wanting to enact White supremacy, although its operations were quickly put to an end by the British who, although not officially yet established as the major authority of Fiji, had played a leading role in establishing a new constitutional monarchy, the Kingdom of Fiji, that was being threatened by the activities of the Fijian Klan, which owned fortresses and artillery. By March, it had become the \"British Subjects' Mutual Protection Society\", which included Francis Herbert Dufty.",
"title": "Outside the United States and Canada"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 152,
"text": "In the 1920s, the Klan had been rumoured to exist in New Zealand.",
"title": "Outside the United States and Canada"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 153,
"text": "Membership in the Klan is secret. Like many fraternal organizations, the Klan has signs that members can use to recognize one another. In conversation, a member may use the acronym AYAK (Are you a Klansman?) to surreptitiously identify themselves to another potential member. The response AKIA (A Klansman I am) completes the greeting.",
"title": "Titles and vocabulary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 154,
"text": "Throughout its varied history, the Klan has coined many words beginning with \"Kl\", including:",
"title": "Titles and vocabulary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 155,
"text": "All of the above terminology was created by William Joseph Simmons, as part of his 1915 revival of the Klan. The Reconstruction-era Klan used different titles; the only titles to carry over were \"Wizard\" for the overall leader of the Klan and \"Night Hawk\" for the official in charge of security.",
"title": "Titles and vocabulary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 156,
"text": "The imperial kludd was the chaplain of the Imperial Klonvokation and he performed \"such other duties as may be required by the imperial wizard\".",
"title": "Titles and vocabulary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 157,
"text": "The imperial kaliff was the second-highest position, after the imperial wizard.",
"title": "Titles and vocabulary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 158,
"text": "The Ku Klux Klan has utilized a variety of symbols over its history.",
"title": "Symbols"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 159,
"text": "The Primary symbol used by the clan for the past century has been the Mystic Insignia of a Klansman, commonly known as the Blood Drop Cross, a white cross on a red disk with what appears to be a blood drop in the middle. It was first used in the early 1900s, with the symbol in the center originally appearing as a red and white yin-yang which in the subsequent years, lost the white part and was reinterpreted as a \"blood drop\".",
"title": "Symbols"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 160,
"text": "The Triangular Ku Klux Klan symbol is made of what looks like a triangle inside a triangle, similar to a Sierpiński triangle, but in fact represents three letter Ks interlocked and facing inward, referencing the name of the group. A variation on this symbol has the K's facing outwards instead of inwards. It is an old Klan symbol that has also been resurrected as a modern-day hate symbol.",
"title": "Symbols"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 161,
"text": "Although predating the Klan, in modern times the symbol of the burning cross has become almost solely associated with the Ku Klux Klan and has become one of the most potent hate symbols in the United States. Burning crosses did not become associated with the clan until Thomas Dixon's The Clansman, and its film adaptation, D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation inspired members of the second Klan to take up the practice. In the modern day the symbol of the burning cross is so associated with racial intimidation that it is used by many non-Klan racist elements and has spread to locations outside the United States.",
"title": "Symbols"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 162,
"text": "Because there are multiple Ku Klux Klan organizations, there are multiple official websites. Following are third-party lists of such organizations:",
"title": "External links"
}
] |
The Ku Klux Klan, commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is the name of several historical and current American white supremacist, far-right terrorist organizations and hate groups. The Klan was "the first organized terror movement in American history." Their primary targets are African Americans, Hispanics, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Italian Americans, Irish Americans, and Catholics, as well as immigrants, leftists, homosexuals, Muslims, atheists, and abortion providers. Three separate Klans have existed in three non-overlapping time periods. Each comprised local chapters with little or no central direction. Each has advocated extremist reactionary positions such as white nationalism, anti-immigration and—especially in later iterations—Nordicism, antisemitism, anti-Catholicism, Prohibition, right-wing populism, anti-communism, homophobia, anti-atheism, and Islamophobia. The first Klan, founded by Confederate veterans in the late 1860s, would assault and murder politically active Black people and their allies in the South. The second iteration of the Klan originated in the late 1910s, and was the first to use cross burnings and white hooded robes. The KKK of the 1920s had a nationwide membership in the millions and reflected a cross-section of the native-born white population. The third Klan formed in the mid 20th century, largely as a reaction to the growing civil rights movement. It committed murders and bombings to achieve its aims. All three movements have called for the "purification" of American society, and are all considered far-right extremist organizations. In each era, membership was secret and estimates of the total were highly exaggerated by both friends and enemies. The first Klan, established in the wake of the Civil War, was a defining organization of the Reconstruction era. According to historian Bordewich, the Klan was "the first organized terror movement in American history." Federal law enforcement began taking action against it around 1871. The Klan sought to overthrow Republican state governments in the South, especially by using voter intimidation and targeted violence against African-American leaders. The Klan was organized into numerous independent chapters across the Southern United States. Each chapter was autonomous and highly secretive about membership and plans. Members made their own, often colorful, costumes: robes, masks and pointed hats, designed to be terrifying and to hide their identities. The second Klan started in 1915 as a small group in Georgia. It suddenly started to grow after 1920 and flourished nationwide in the early and mid-1920s, including urban areas of the Midwest and West. Taking inspiration from D. W. Griffith's 1915 silent film The Birth of a Nation, which mythologized the founding of the first Klan, it employed marketing techniques and a popular fraternal organization structure. Rooted in local Protestant communities, it sought to maintain white supremacy, often took a pro-Prohibition stance, and it opposed Jews, while also stressing its opposition to the alleged political power of the pope and the Catholic Church. This second Klan flourished both in the south and northern states; it was funded by initiation fees and selling its members a standard white costume. The chapters did not have dues. It used K-words which were similar to those used by the first Klan, while adding cross burnings and mass parades to intimidate others. It rapidly declined in the latter half of the 1920s. The third and current manifestation of the KKK emerged after 1950, in the form of localized and isolated groups that use the KKK name. They have focused on opposition to the civil rights movement, often using violence and murder to suppress activists. This manifestation is classified as a hate group by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center. As of 2016, the Anti-Defamation League puts total KKK membership nationwide at around 3,000, while the Southern Poverty Law Center puts it at 6,000 members total. The second and third incarnations of the Ku Klux Klan made frequent references to a false mythologized perception of America's "Anglo-Saxon" blood, hearkening back to 19th-century nativism. Although members of the KKK swear to uphold "Christian morality", Christian denominations widely denounce them.
|
2001-10-28T16:28:23Z
|
2023-12-31T22:40:19Z
|
[
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Cite encyclopedia",
"Template:Infobox",
"Template:See also",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Div col",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Refbegin",
"Template:Lynching in the United States",
"Template:Pp-move",
"Template:Pp-semi-indef",
"Template:Blockquote",
"Template:Notelist",
"Template:Commons category",
"Template:Wikinews",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:\"'",
"Template:Refend",
"Template:Racism topics",
"Template:Use mdy dates",
"Template:Discrimination sidebar",
"Template:Anchor",
"Template:Div col end",
"Template:Harvnb",
"Template:ISBN?",
"Template:Lang",
"Template:Wikisource",
"Template:Cite magazine",
"Template:Dead link",
"Template:Ku Klux Klan",
"Template:Redirect-multi",
"Template:IPAc-en",
"Template:OCLC",
"Template:Sfn",
"Template:As of",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Efn",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:ISBN",
"Template:Open access",
"Template:Cite conference",
"Template:Portal bar"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan
|
16,781 |
Kylix (disambiguation)
|
A kylix or cylix is a type of drinking cup used in ancient Greece
Kylix may also refer to:
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "A kylix or cylix is a type of drinking cup used in ancient Greece",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Kylix may also refer to:",
"title": ""
}
] |
A kylix or cylix is a type of drinking cup used in ancient Greece Kylix may also refer to: Kylix (gastropod), a genus of snails in the family Drilliidae
Cylix (fish), a genus of pipefish
Borland Kylix, a programming tool
|
2022-09-06T21:45:04Z
|
[
"Template:Wiktionary",
"Template:Disambiguation"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kylix_(disambiguation)
|
|
16,782 |
King Kong (1933 film)
|
King Kong is a 1933 American pre-Code adventure horror monster film directed and produced by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, with special effects by Willis H. O'Brien. Produced and distributed by RKO Radio Pictures, it is the first film in the King Kong franchise. The film stars Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong and Bruce Cabot. In the film, a giant ape dubbed Kong captured from Skull Island attempts to possess a beautiful young woman.
King Kong opened in New York City on March 2, 1933, to rave reviews. It is ranked by Rotten Tomatoes as the greatest horror film of all time and the fifty-sixth greatest film of all time. In 1991, it was deemed "culturally, historically and aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. A sequel, titled Son of Kong, was fast-tracked and released the same year, with several more films made in the following decades, including two remakes that were made in 1976 and 2005 respectively, and a reboot in 2017.
In New York Harbor, filmmaker Carl Denham, known for wildlife films in remote and exotic locations, charters Captain Englehorn's ship, the Venture, for his new project. However, he is unable to secure an actress for a female role he has been reluctant to disclose. Searching in the streets of New York City, he finds Ann Darrow and promises her the adventure of a lifetime. The crew boards the Venture and sets off, during which the ship's first mate, Jack Driscoll, falls in love with Ann. Denham reveals to the crew that their destination is in fact Skull Island, an uncharted territory. He alludes to a mysterious entity named Kong, rumored to dwell on the island. The crew arrives and anchor offshore. They encounter a native village, separated from the rest of the island by an enormous stone wall with a large wooden gate. They witness a group of natives preparing to sacrifice a young woman termed the "bride of Kong". The intruders are spotted and the native chief stops the ceremony. When he sees Ann, he offers to trade six of his tribal women for the "golden woman" (Ann has blonde hair). They refuse him and return to the ship.
That night, the natives kidnap Ann from the ship and take her through the gate and onto an altar, where she is offered to King Kong, a giant gorilla-like beast. Kong carries a terrified Ann away as Denham, Jack and some volunteers enter the jungle in hopes of rescuing her. They encounter a living dinosaur, a charging Stegosaurus, which they manage to kill. Soon after, the crew runs into an aggressive Brontosaurus and eventually Kong himself, leaving Jack and Denham as the only survivors. After Kong slays a Tyrannosaurus rex that tried to eat Ann, Jack continues to follow them while Denham returns to the village for more men. Upon arriving in Kong's mountain lair, Ann is menaced by a snake-like Elasmosaurus, which Kong also kills. While Kong is distracted killing a Pteranodon that tried to fly away with Ann, Jack reaches her and they climb down a vine dangling from a cliff ledge. When Kong notices and starts pulling them back up, the two drop into the water below. They run through the jungle and back to the village, where Denham, Englehorn, and the surviving crewmen are waiting. Kong, following, breaks open the gate and relentlessly rampages through the village. Onshore, Denham, now determined to bring Kong back alive, renders him unconscious with a gas bomb.
Shackled in chains, Kong is taken to New York City and presented to a Broadway theatre audience as "Kong, Eighth Wonder of the World!" Ann and Jack are brought on stage to join him, surrounded by a group of press photographers. Kong, believing that the ensuing flash photography is an attack, breaks loose as the audience flees in horror. Ann is whisked away to a hotel room on a high floor, but Kong, scaling the building, soon finds her. He rampages through the city as Ann screams in his grasp; wrecking a crowded elevated train and eventually climbing the Empire State Building. At its top, he is attacked by four biplanes. Kong destroys one, but finally succumbs to their gunfire. He gazes at Ann one last time before falling to his death. Jack takes an elevator to the top of the building and reunites with Ann. Denham arrives and pushes through a crowd surrounding Kong's corpse in the street. When a policeman remarks that the planes got him, Denham tells him, "No, it wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty that killed the Beast."
Personnel taken from King Kong: The History of a Movie Icon From Fay Wray to Peter Jackson.
King Kong producer Ernest B. Schoedsack had earlier monkey experience directing Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness (1927), also with Merian C. Cooper, and Rango (1931), both of which prominently featured monkeys in authentic jungle settings. Capitalizing on this trend, Congo Pictures released the hoax documentary Ingagi (1930), advertising the film as "an authentic incontestable celluloid document showing the sacrifice of a living woman to mammoth gorillas." Ingagi is now often recognized as a racial exploitation film as it implicitly depicted black women having sex with gorillas, and baby offspring that looked more ape than human. The film was an immediate hit, and by some estimates, it was one of the highest-grossing films of the 1930s at over $4 million. Although Cooper never listed Ingagi among his influences for King Kong, it has long been held that RKO greenlighted Kong because of the bottom-line example of Ingagi and the formula that "gorillas plus sexy women in peril equals enormous profits."
King Kong is well known for its groundbreaking use of special effects, such as stop-motion animation, matte painting, rear projection and miniatures, all of which were conceived decades before the digital age.
The numerous prehistoric creatures inhabiting Skull Island were brought to life through the use of stop-motion animation by Willis H. O'Brien and his assistant animator, Buzz Gibson. The stop-motion animation scenes were painstaking and difficult to achieve and complete after the special effects crew realized that they could not stop because it would make the movements of the creatures seem inconsistent and the lighting would not have the same intensity over the many days it took to fully animate a finished sequence. A device called the surface gauge was used in order to keep track of the stop-motion animation performance. The iconic fight between Kong and the Tyrannosaurus took seven weeks to be completed. O'Brien's protégé, Ray Harryhausen, later worked with him on several films.
The backdrop of the island seen when the Venture crew first arrives was painted on glass by matte painters Henry Hillinck, Mario Larrinaga, and Byron C. Crabbé. The scene was then composited with separate bird elements and rear-projected behind the ship and the actors. The background of the scenes in the jungle (a miniature set) was also painted on several layers of glass to convey the illusion of deep and dense jungle foliage.
The most difficult task for the special effects crew to achieve was to make live-action footage interact with separately filmed stop-motion animation – to make the interaction between the humans and the creatures of the island seem believable. The most simple of these effects were accomplished by exposing part of the frame, then running the same piece of the film through the camera again by exposing the other part of the frame with a different image. The most complex shots, where the live-action actors interacted with the stop-motion animation, were achieved via two different techniques, the Dunning process and the Williams process, in order to produce the effect of a traveling matte. The Dunning process, invented by cinematographer Carroll H. Dunning, employed the use of blue and yellow lights that were filtered and photographed into the black-and-white film. Bi-packing of the camera was used for these types of effects. With it, the special effects crew could combine two strips of different films at the same time, creating the final composite shot in the camera. It was used in the climactic scene where one of the Curtiss Helldiver planes attacking Kong crashes from the top of the Empire State Building, and in the scene where natives are running through the foreground, while Kong is fighting other natives at the wall.
On the other hand, the Williams process, invented by cinematographer Frank D. Williams, did not require a system of colored lights and could be used for wider shots. It was used in the scene where Kong is shaking the sailors off the log, as well as the scene where Kong pushes the gates open. The Williams process did not use bipacking, but rather an optical printer, the first such device that synchronized a projector with a camera, so that several strips of film could be combined into a single composited image. Through the use of the optical printer, the special effects crew could film the foreground, the stop-motion animation, the live-action footage, and the background, and combine all of those elements into one single shot, eliminating the need to create the effects in the camera.
Another technique that was used in combining live actors and stop-motion animation was rear-screen projection. The actor would have a translucent screen behind him where a projector would project footage onto the back of the translucent screen. The translucent screen was developed by Sidney Saunders and Fred Jackman, who received a Special Achievement Oscar. It was used in the famous scene where Kong and the Tyrannosaurus fight while Ann watches from the branches of a nearby tree. The stop-motion animation was filmed first. Fay Wray then spent a twenty-two-hour period sitting in a fake tree acting out her observation of the battle, which was projected onto the translucent screen while the camera filmed her witnessing the projected stop-motion battle. She was sore for days after the shoot. The same process was also used for the scene where sailors from the Venture kill a Stegosaurus.
O'Brien and his special effects crew also devised a way to use rear projection in miniature sets. A tiny screen was built into the miniature onto which live-action footage would then be projected. A fan was used to prevent the footage that was projected from melting or catching fire. This miniature rear projection was used in the scene where Kong is trying to grab Driscoll, who is hiding in a cave. The scene where Kong puts Ann at the top of a tree switched from a puppet in Kong's hand to projected footage of Ann sitting.
The scene where Kong fights the Tanystropheus in his lair was likely the most significant special effects achievement of the film, due to the way in which all of the elements in the sequence work together at the same time. The scene was accomplished through the use of a miniature set, stop-motion animation for Kong, background matte paintings, real water, foreground rocks with bubbling mud, smoke, and two miniature rear screen projections of Driscoll and Ann.
Over the years, some media reports have alleged that in certain scenes Kong was played by an actor wearing a gorilla suit. However, film historians have generally agreed that all scenes involving Kong were achieved with animated models, except for the "closeups" of Kong's face and upper body which are dispersed throughout the film. These shots were accomplished by filming a "full size" mechanical model of Kong's head and shoulders. Operators could manipulate the eyes and mouth to simulate a living monster. These shots can be identified immediately in two ways: the action is very smooth (not stop-motion jittery) and the footage is extremely sharp and clear because of the size of the subject being photographed.
Murray Spivack provided the sound effects for the film. Kong's roar was created by mixing the recorded vocals of captive lions and tigers, subsequently played backward slowly. Spivak himself provided Kong's "love grunts" by grunting into a megaphone and playing it at a slow speed. For the huge ape's footsteps, Spivak stomped across a gravel-filled box with plungers wrapped in foam attached to his own feet, while the sounds of his chest beats were recorded by Spivak hitting his assistant (who had a microphone held to his back) on the chest with a drumstick. Spivak created the hisses and croaks of the dinosaurs with an air compressor for the former and his own vocals for the latter. The vocalizations of the Tyrannosaurus were additionally mixed in with puma screams while bird squawks were used for the Pteranodon. Spivak also provided the numerous screams of the various sailors. Fay Wray herself provided all of her character's screams in a single recording session.
The score was unlike any that came before and marked a significant change in the history of film music. King Kong's score was the first feature-length musical score written for an American "talkie" film, the first major Hollywood film to have a thematic score rather than background music, the first to mark the use of a 46-piece orchestra and the first to be recorded on three separate tracks (sound effects, dialogue, and music). Steiner used a number of new film scoring techniques, such as drawing upon opera conventions for his use of leitmotifs. Over the years, Steiner's score was recorded by multiple record labels and the original motion picture soundtrack has been issued on a compact disc.
The Production Code's stricter decency rules were put into effect in Hollywood after the film's 1933 premiere and it was progressively censored further, with several scenes being either trimmed or excised altogether. These scenes were as follows:
RKO did not preserve copies of the film's negative or release prints with the excised footage, and the cut scenes were considered lost for many years. In 1969, a 16mm print, including the censored footage, was found in Philadelphia. The cut scenes were added to the film, restoring it to its original theatrical running time of 100 minutes. This version was re-released to art houses by Janus Films in 1970. Over the next two decades, Universal Studios undertook further photochemical restoration of King Kong. This was based on a 1942 release print with missing censor cuts taken from a 1937 print, which "contained heavy vertical scratches from projection." An original release print located in the UK in the 1980s was found to contain the cut scenes in better quality. After a 6-year worldwide search for the best surviving materials, a further, fully digital restoration utilizing 4K resolution scanning was completed by Warner Bros. in 2005. This restoration also had a 4-minute overture added, bringing the overall running time to 104 minutes.
Somewhat controversially, King Kong was colorized for a 1989 Turner Home Entertainment video release. The following year, this colorized version was shown on Turner's TNT channel.
After the 1956 re-release, the film was sold to television (first being broadcast March 5, 1956).
In 1984, King Kong was one of the first films to be released on LaserDisc by the Criterion Collection, and was the first movie to have an audio commentary track included. Criterion's audio commentary was by film historian Ron Haver in 1985 Image Entertainment released another LaserDisc, this time with a commentary by film historian and soundtrack producer Paul Mandell. The Haver commentary was preserved in full on the FilmStruck streaming service. King Kong had numerous VHS and LaserDisc releases of varying quality prior to receiving an official studio release on DVD. Those included a Turner 60th-anniversary edition in 1993 featuring a front cover that had the sound effect of Kong roaring when his chest was pressed. It also included a 25-minute documentary, It Was Beauty Killed the Beast (1992). The documentary is also available on two different UK King Kong DVDs, while the colorized version is available on DVD in the UK and Italy. Warner Home Video re-released the black and white version on VHS in 1998 and again in 1999 under the Warner Bros. Classics label, with this release including the 25-minute 1992 documentary.
In 2005, Warner Bros. released its digital restoration of King Kong in a US 2-disc Special Edition DVD, coinciding with the theatrical release of Peter Jackson's remake. It had numerous extra features, including a new, third audio commentary by visual effects artists Ray Harryhausen and Ken Ralston, with archival excerpts from actress Fay Wray and producer/director Merian C. Cooper. Warners issued identical DVDs in 2006 in Australia and New Zealand, followed by a US digibook-packaged Blu-ray in 2010. In 2014, the Blu-ray was repackaged with three unrelated films in a 4 Film Favorites: Colossal Monster Collection. At present, Universal holds worldwide rights to Kong's home video releases outside of North America, Latin America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. All of Universal's releases only contain the earlier, 100-minute, pre-2005 restoration.
The film was a box-office success, earning about $5 million in worldwide rentals on its initial release, and an opening weekend estimated at $90,000. Receipts fell by up to 50% during the second week of the film's release because of the national "bank holiday" declared by President Franklin D. Roosevelt's during his first days in office. During the film's first run it made a profit of $650,000. Prior to the 1952 re-release, the film is reported to have worldwide rentals of $2,847,000 including $1,070,000 from the United States and Canada and profits of $1,310,000. After the 1952 re-release, Variety estimated the film had earned an additional $1.6 million in the United States and Canada, bringing its total to $3.9 million in cumulative domestic (United States and Canada) rentals. Profits from the 1952 re-release were estimated by the studio at $2.5 million.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 97% based on 112 reviews, with an average rating of 9/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "King Kong explores the soul of a monster – making audiences scream and cry throughout the film – in large part due to Kong's breakthrough special effects." On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 90 out of 100, based on 12 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".
Variety thought the film was a powerful adventure. The New York Times gave readers an enthusiastic account of the plot and thought the film a fascinating adventure. John Mosher of The New Yorker called it "ridiculous", but wrote that there were "many scenes in this picture that are certainly diverting." The New York World-Telegram said it was "one of the very best of all the screen thrillers, done with all the cinema's slickest camera tricks." The Chicago Tribune called it "one of the most original, thrilling and mammoth novelties to emerge from a movie studio."
On February 3, 2002, Roger Ebert included King Kong in his "Great Movies" list, writing that "In modern times the movie has aged, as critic James Berardinelli observes, and 'advances in technology and acting have dated aspects of the production.' Yes, but in the very artificiality of some of the special effects, there is a creepiness that isn't there in today's slick, flawless, computer-aided images... Even allowing for its slow start, wooden acting, and wall-to-wall screaming, there is something ageless and primeval about King Kong that still somehow works."
In the 19th and early 20th century, people of African descent were commonly represented visually as ape-like, a metaphor that fit racist stereotypes further bolstered by the emergence of scientific racism. Early films frequently mirrored racial tensions. While King Kong is often compared to the story of Beauty and the Beast, many film scholars have argued that the film was a cautionary tale about interracial romance, in which the film's "carrier of blackness is not a human being, but an ape."
Cooper and Schoedsack rejected any allegorical interpretations, insisting in interviews that the film's story contained no hidden meanings. In an interview, which was published posthumously, Cooper actually explained the deeper meaning of the film. The inspiration for the climactic scene came when, "as he was leaving his office in Manhattan, he heard the sound of an airplane motor. He reflexively looked up as the sun glinted off the wings of a plane flying extremely close to the tallest building in the city... he realized if he placed the giant gorilla on top of the tallest building in the world and had him shot down by the most modern of weapons, the armed airplane, he would have a story of the primitive doomed by modern civilization."
The film was initially banned in Nazi Germany, with the censors describing it as an "attack against the nerves of the German people" and a "violation of German race feeling". However, according to confidant Ernst Hanfstaengl, Adolf Hitler was "fascinated" by the film and saw it several times.
The film has since received some significant honors. In 1975, Kong was named one of the 50 best American films by the American Film Institute. In 1981, a video game titled Donkey Kong, starring a character with similarities to Kong, was released. In 1991, the film was deemed "culturally, historically and aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. In 1998, the AFI ranked the film #43 on its list of the 100 greatest movies of all time.
The film's stop motion effects by Willis H. O'Brien revolutionized special effects, leaving a lasting impact on the film industry worldwide and inspired other genre films such as Mighty Joe Young, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Mothra, and Jurassic Park. The film was also one of the biggest inspirations for Godzilla, with Tomoyuki Tanaka (the creator of Godzilla) stating, "I felt like doing something big. That was my motivation. I thought of different ideas. I like monster movies, and I was influenced by King Kong."
It has been suggested by author Daniel Loxton that King Kong inspired the modern day legend of the Loch Ness Monster.
American Film Institute Lists
The 1933 King Kong film and characters inspired imitations and installments. The Son of Kong, a direct sequel to the 1933 film was released nine months after the first film's release. In the early 1960s, RKO had licensed the King Kong character to Japanese studio Toho and produced two King Kong films, King Kong vs. Godzilla which was also the third film in Toho's long-running Godzilla series, and King Kong Escapes, both directed by Ishirō Honda. These films are mostly unrelated to the original and follow a very different style.
In 1976, Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis released his version of King Kong, a modern remake of the 1933 film, following the same basic plot, but moving the setting to the present day and changing many details. The remake was followed by a sequel in 1986 titled King Kong Lives.
In 1998, the film also saw a loosely-adapted direct-to-video animated remake, The Mighty Kong, directed by Art Scott, scored by the Sherman Brothers and distributed by Warner Bros.
In 2005, Universal Pictures released another remake of King Kong, co-written and directed by Peter Jackson, which is set in 1933, as in the original film.
Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. released a Kong reboot film titled Kong: Skull Island in 2017 which was directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts and is the second installment of Legendary's MonsterVerse, with a sequel Godzilla vs. Kong directed by Adam Wingard released in 2021, marking the second time Kong fights Godzilla.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "King Kong is a 1933 American pre-Code adventure horror monster film directed and produced by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, with special effects by Willis H. O'Brien. Produced and distributed by RKO Radio Pictures, it is the first film in the King Kong franchise. The film stars Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong and Bruce Cabot. In the film, a giant ape dubbed Kong captured from Skull Island attempts to possess a beautiful young woman.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "King Kong opened in New York City on March 2, 1933, to rave reviews. It is ranked by Rotten Tomatoes as the greatest horror film of all time and the fifty-sixth greatest film of all time. In 1991, it was deemed \"culturally, historically and aesthetically significant\" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. A sequel, titled Son of Kong, was fast-tracked and released the same year, with several more films made in the following decades, including two remakes that were made in 1976 and 2005 respectively, and a reboot in 2017.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In New York Harbor, filmmaker Carl Denham, known for wildlife films in remote and exotic locations, charters Captain Englehorn's ship, the Venture, for his new project. However, he is unable to secure an actress for a female role he has been reluctant to disclose. Searching in the streets of New York City, he finds Ann Darrow and promises her the adventure of a lifetime. The crew boards the Venture and sets off, during which the ship's first mate, Jack Driscoll, falls in love with Ann. Denham reveals to the crew that their destination is in fact Skull Island, an uncharted territory. He alludes to a mysterious entity named Kong, rumored to dwell on the island. The crew arrives and anchor offshore. They encounter a native village, separated from the rest of the island by an enormous stone wall with a large wooden gate. They witness a group of natives preparing to sacrifice a young woman termed the \"bride of Kong\". The intruders are spotted and the native chief stops the ceremony. When he sees Ann, he offers to trade six of his tribal women for the \"golden woman\" (Ann has blonde hair). They refuse him and return to the ship.",
"title": "Plot"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "That night, the natives kidnap Ann from the ship and take her through the gate and onto an altar, where she is offered to King Kong, a giant gorilla-like beast. Kong carries a terrified Ann away as Denham, Jack and some volunteers enter the jungle in hopes of rescuing her. They encounter a living dinosaur, a charging Stegosaurus, which they manage to kill. Soon after, the crew runs into an aggressive Brontosaurus and eventually Kong himself, leaving Jack and Denham as the only survivors. After Kong slays a Tyrannosaurus rex that tried to eat Ann, Jack continues to follow them while Denham returns to the village for more men. Upon arriving in Kong's mountain lair, Ann is menaced by a snake-like Elasmosaurus, which Kong also kills. While Kong is distracted killing a Pteranodon that tried to fly away with Ann, Jack reaches her and they climb down a vine dangling from a cliff ledge. When Kong notices and starts pulling them back up, the two drop into the water below. They run through the jungle and back to the village, where Denham, Englehorn, and the surviving crewmen are waiting. Kong, following, breaks open the gate and relentlessly rampages through the village. Onshore, Denham, now determined to bring Kong back alive, renders him unconscious with a gas bomb.",
"title": "Plot"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Shackled in chains, Kong is taken to New York City and presented to a Broadway theatre audience as \"Kong, Eighth Wonder of the World!\" Ann and Jack are brought on stage to join him, surrounded by a group of press photographers. Kong, believing that the ensuing flash photography is an attack, breaks loose as the audience flees in horror. Ann is whisked away to a hotel room on a high floor, but Kong, scaling the building, soon finds her. He rampages through the city as Ann screams in his grasp; wrecking a crowded elevated train and eventually climbing the Empire State Building. At its top, he is attacked by four biplanes. Kong destroys one, but finally succumbs to their gunfire. He gazes at Ann one last time before falling to his death. Jack takes an elevator to the top of the building and reunites with Ann. Denham arrives and pushes through a crowd surrounding Kong's corpse in the street. When a policeman remarks that the planes got him, Denham tells him, \"No, it wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty that killed the Beast.\"",
"title": "Plot"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Personnel taken from King Kong: The History of a Movie Icon From Fay Wray to Peter Jackson.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "King Kong producer Ernest B. Schoedsack had earlier monkey experience directing Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness (1927), also with Merian C. Cooper, and Rango (1931), both of which prominently featured monkeys in authentic jungle settings. Capitalizing on this trend, Congo Pictures released the hoax documentary Ingagi (1930), advertising the film as \"an authentic incontestable celluloid document showing the sacrifice of a living woman to mammoth gorillas.\" Ingagi is now often recognized as a racial exploitation film as it implicitly depicted black women having sex with gorillas, and baby offspring that looked more ape than human. The film was an immediate hit, and by some estimates, it was one of the highest-grossing films of the 1930s at over $4 million. Although Cooper never listed Ingagi among his influences for King Kong, it has long been held that RKO greenlighted Kong because of the bottom-line example of Ingagi and the formula that \"gorillas plus sexy women in peril equals enormous profits.\"",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "King Kong is well known for its groundbreaking use of special effects, such as stop-motion animation, matte painting, rear projection and miniatures, all of which were conceived decades before the digital age.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The numerous prehistoric creatures inhabiting Skull Island were brought to life through the use of stop-motion animation by Willis H. O'Brien and his assistant animator, Buzz Gibson. The stop-motion animation scenes were painstaking and difficult to achieve and complete after the special effects crew realized that they could not stop because it would make the movements of the creatures seem inconsistent and the lighting would not have the same intensity over the many days it took to fully animate a finished sequence. A device called the surface gauge was used in order to keep track of the stop-motion animation performance. The iconic fight between Kong and the Tyrannosaurus took seven weeks to be completed. O'Brien's protégé, Ray Harryhausen, later worked with him on several films.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The backdrop of the island seen when the Venture crew first arrives was painted on glass by matte painters Henry Hillinck, Mario Larrinaga, and Byron C. Crabbé. The scene was then composited with separate bird elements and rear-projected behind the ship and the actors. The background of the scenes in the jungle (a miniature set) was also painted on several layers of glass to convey the illusion of deep and dense jungle foliage.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The most difficult task for the special effects crew to achieve was to make live-action footage interact with separately filmed stop-motion animation – to make the interaction between the humans and the creatures of the island seem believable. The most simple of these effects were accomplished by exposing part of the frame, then running the same piece of the film through the camera again by exposing the other part of the frame with a different image. The most complex shots, where the live-action actors interacted with the stop-motion animation, were achieved via two different techniques, the Dunning process and the Williams process, in order to produce the effect of a traveling matte. The Dunning process, invented by cinematographer Carroll H. Dunning, employed the use of blue and yellow lights that were filtered and photographed into the black-and-white film. Bi-packing of the camera was used for these types of effects. With it, the special effects crew could combine two strips of different films at the same time, creating the final composite shot in the camera. It was used in the climactic scene where one of the Curtiss Helldiver planes attacking Kong crashes from the top of the Empire State Building, and in the scene where natives are running through the foreground, while Kong is fighting other natives at the wall.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "On the other hand, the Williams process, invented by cinematographer Frank D. Williams, did not require a system of colored lights and could be used for wider shots. It was used in the scene where Kong is shaking the sailors off the log, as well as the scene where Kong pushes the gates open. The Williams process did not use bipacking, but rather an optical printer, the first such device that synchronized a projector with a camera, so that several strips of film could be combined into a single composited image. Through the use of the optical printer, the special effects crew could film the foreground, the stop-motion animation, the live-action footage, and the background, and combine all of those elements into one single shot, eliminating the need to create the effects in the camera.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Another technique that was used in combining live actors and stop-motion animation was rear-screen projection. The actor would have a translucent screen behind him where a projector would project footage onto the back of the translucent screen. The translucent screen was developed by Sidney Saunders and Fred Jackman, who received a Special Achievement Oscar. It was used in the famous scene where Kong and the Tyrannosaurus fight while Ann watches from the branches of a nearby tree. The stop-motion animation was filmed first. Fay Wray then spent a twenty-two-hour period sitting in a fake tree acting out her observation of the battle, which was projected onto the translucent screen while the camera filmed her witnessing the projected stop-motion battle. She was sore for days after the shoot. The same process was also used for the scene where sailors from the Venture kill a Stegosaurus.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "O'Brien and his special effects crew also devised a way to use rear projection in miniature sets. A tiny screen was built into the miniature onto which live-action footage would then be projected. A fan was used to prevent the footage that was projected from melting or catching fire. This miniature rear projection was used in the scene where Kong is trying to grab Driscoll, who is hiding in a cave. The scene where Kong puts Ann at the top of a tree switched from a puppet in Kong's hand to projected footage of Ann sitting.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The scene where Kong fights the Tanystropheus in his lair was likely the most significant special effects achievement of the film, due to the way in which all of the elements in the sequence work together at the same time. The scene was accomplished through the use of a miniature set, stop-motion animation for Kong, background matte paintings, real water, foreground rocks with bubbling mud, smoke, and two miniature rear screen projections of Driscoll and Ann.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Over the years, some media reports have alleged that in certain scenes Kong was played by an actor wearing a gorilla suit. However, film historians have generally agreed that all scenes involving Kong were achieved with animated models, except for the \"closeups\" of Kong's face and upper body which are dispersed throughout the film. These shots were accomplished by filming a \"full size\" mechanical model of Kong's head and shoulders. Operators could manipulate the eyes and mouth to simulate a living monster. These shots can be identified immediately in two ways: the action is very smooth (not stop-motion jittery) and the footage is extremely sharp and clear because of the size of the subject being photographed.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Murray Spivack provided the sound effects for the film. Kong's roar was created by mixing the recorded vocals of captive lions and tigers, subsequently played backward slowly. Spivak himself provided Kong's \"love grunts\" by grunting into a megaphone and playing it at a slow speed. For the huge ape's footsteps, Spivak stomped across a gravel-filled box with plungers wrapped in foam attached to his own feet, while the sounds of his chest beats were recorded by Spivak hitting his assistant (who had a microphone held to his back) on the chest with a drumstick. Spivak created the hisses and croaks of the dinosaurs with an air compressor for the former and his own vocals for the latter. The vocalizations of the Tyrannosaurus were additionally mixed in with puma screams while bird squawks were used for the Pteranodon. Spivak also provided the numerous screams of the various sailors. Fay Wray herself provided all of her character's screams in a single recording session.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The score was unlike any that came before and marked a significant change in the history of film music. King Kong's score was the first feature-length musical score written for an American \"talkie\" film, the first major Hollywood film to have a thematic score rather than background music, the first to mark the use of a 46-piece orchestra and the first to be recorded on three separate tracks (sound effects, dialogue, and music). Steiner used a number of new film scoring techniques, such as drawing upon opera conventions for his use of leitmotifs. Over the years, Steiner's score was recorded by multiple record labels and the original motion picture soundtrack has been issued on a compact disc.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The Production Code's stricter decency rules were put into effect in Hollywood after the film's 1933 premiere and it was progressively censored further, with several scenes being either trimmed or excised altogether. These scenes were as follows:",
"title": "Release"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "RKO did not preserve copies of the film's negative or release prints with the excised footage, and the cut scenes were considered lost for many years. In 1969, a 16mm print, including the censored footage, was found in Philadelphia. The cut scenes were added to the film, restoring it to its original theatrical running time of 100 minutes. This version was re-released to art houses by Janus Films in 1970. Over the next two decades, Universal Studios undertook further photochemical restoration of King Kong. This was based on a 1942 release print with missing censor cuts taken from a 1937 print, which \"contained heavy vertical scratches from projection.\" An original release print located in the UK in the 1980s was found to contain the cut scenes in better quality. After a 6-year worldwide search for the best surviving materials, a further, fully digital restoration utilizing 4K resolution scanning was completed by Warner Bros. in 2005. This restoration also had a 4-minute overture added, bringing the overall running time to 104 minutes.",
"title": "Release"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Somewhat controversially, King Kong was colorized for a 1989 Turner Home Entertainment video release. The following year, this colorized version was shown on Turner's TNT channel.",
"title": "Release"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "After the 1956 re-release, the film was sold to television (first being broadcast March 5, 1956).",
"title": "Release"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In 1984, King Kong was one of the first films to be released on LaserDisc by the Criterion Collection, and was the first movie to have an audio commentary track included. Criterion's audio commentary was by film historian Ron Haver in 1985 Image Entertainment released another LaserDisc, this time with a commentary by film historian and soundtrack producer Paul Mandell. The Haver commentary was preserved in full on the FilmStruck streaming service. King Kong had numerous VHS and LaserDisc releases of varying quality prior to receiving an official studio release on DVD. Those included a Turner 60th-anniversary edition in 1993 featuring a front cover that had the sound effect of Kong roaring when his chest was pressed. It also included a 25-minute documentary, It Was Beauty Killed the Beast (1992). The documentary is also available on two different UK King Kong DVDs, while the colorized version is available on DVD in the UK and Italy. Warner Home Video re-released the black and white version on VHS in 1998 and again in 1999 under the Warner Bros. Classics label, with this release including the 25-minute 1992 documentary.",
"title": "Release"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In 2005, Warner Bros. released its digital restoration of King Kong in a US 2-disc Special Edition DVD, coinciding with the theatrical release of Peter Jackson's remake. It had numerous extra features, including a new, third audio commentary by visual effects artists Ray Harryhausen and Ken Ralston, with archival excerpts from actress Fay Wray and producer/director Merian C. Cooper. Warners issued identical DVDs in 2006 in Australia and New Zealand, followed by a US digibook-packaged Blu-ray in 2010. In 2014, the Blu-ray was repackaged with three unrelated films in a 4 Film Favorites: Colossal Monster Collection. At present, Universal holds worldwide rights to Kong's home video releases outside of North America, Latin America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. All of Universal's releases only contain the earlier, 100-minute, pre-2005 restoration.",
"title": "Release"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The film was a box-office success, earning about $5 million in worldwide rentals on its initial release, and an opening weekend estimated at $90,000. Receipts fell by up to 50% during the second week of the film's release because of the national \"bank holiday\" declared by President Franklin D. Roosevelt's during his first days in office. During the film's first run it made a profit of $650,000. Prior to the 1952 re-release, the film is reported to have worldwide rentals of $2,847,000 including $1,070,000 from the United States and Canada and profits of $1,310,000. After the 1952 re-release, Variety estimated the film had earned an additional $1.6 million in the United States and Canada, bringing its total to $3.9 million in cumulative domestic (United States and Canada) rentals. Profits from the 1952 re-release were estimated by the studio at $2.5 million.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 97% based on 112 reviews, with an average rating of 9/10. The site's critical consensus reads, \"King Kong explores the soul of a monster – making audiences scream and cry throughout the film – in large part due to Kong's breakthrough special effects.\" On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 90 out of 100, based on 12 critics, indicating \"universal acclaim\".",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Variety thought the film was a powerful adventure. The New York Times gave readers an enthusiastic account of the plot and thought the film a fascinating adventure. John Mosher of The New Yorker called it \"ridiculous\", but wrote that there were \"many scenes in this picture that are certainly diverting.\" The New York World-Telegram said it was \"one of the very best of all the screen thrillers, done with all the cinema's slickest camera tricks.\" The Chicago Tribune called it \"one of the most original, thrilling and mammoth novelties to emerge from a movie studio.\"",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "On February 3, 2002, Roger Ebert included King Kong in his \"Great Movies\" list, writing that \"In modern times the movie has aged, as critic James Berardinelli observes, and 'advances in technology and acting have dated aspects of the production.' Yes, but in the very artificiality of some of the special effects, there is a creepiness that isn't there in today's slick, flawless, computer-aided images... Even allowing for its slow start, wooden acting, and wall-to-wall screaming, there is something ageless and primeval about King Kong that still somehow works.\"",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In the 19th and early 20th century, people of African descent were commonly represented visually as ape-like, a metaphor that fit racist stereotypes further bolstered by the emergence of scientific racism. Early films frequently mirrored racial tensions. While King Kong is often compared to the story of Beauty and the Beast, many film scholars have argued that the film was a cautionary tale about interracial romance, in which the film's \"carrier of blackness is not a human being, but an ape.\"",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Cooper and Schoedsack rejected any allegorical interpretations, insisting in interviews that the film's story contained no hidden meanings. In an interview, which was published posthumously, Cooper actually explained the deeper meaning of the film. The inspiration for the climactic scene came when, \"as he was leaving his office in Manhattan, he heard the sound of an airplane motor. He reflexively looked up as the sun glinted off the wings of a plane flying extremely close to the tallest building in the city... he realized if he placed the giant gorilla on top of the tallest building in the world and had him shot down by the most modern of weapons, the armed airplane, he would have a story of the primitive doomed by modern civilization.\"",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The film was initially banned in Nazi Germany, with the censors describing it as an \"attack against the nerves of the German people\" and a \"violation of German race feeling\". However, according to confidant Ernst Hanfstaengl, Adolf Hitler was \"fascinated\" by the film and saw it several times.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The film has since received some significant honors. In 1975, Kong was named one of the 50 best American films by the American Film Institute. In 1981, a video game titled Donkey Kong, starring a character with similarities to Kong, was released. In 1991, the film was deemed \"culturally, historically and aesthetically significant\" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. In 1998, the AFI ranked the film #43 on its list of the 100 greatest movies of all time.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The film's stop motion effects by Willis H. O'Brien revolutionized special effects, leaving a lasting impact on the film industry worldwide and inspired other genre films such as Mighty Joe Young, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Mothra, and Jurassic Park. The film was also one of the biggest inspirations for Godzilla, with Tomoyuki Tanaka (the creator of Godzilla) stating, \"I felt like doing something big. That was my motivation. I thought of different ideas. I like monster movies, and I was influenced by King Kong.\"",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "It has been suggested by author Daniel Loxton that King Kong inspired the modern day legend of the Loch Ness Monster.",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "American Film Institute Lists",
"title": "Reception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The 1933 King Kong film and characters inspired imitations and installments. The Son of Kong, a direct sequel to the 1933 film was released nine months after the first film's release. In the early 1960s, RKO had licensed the King Kong character to Japanese studio Toho and produced two King Kong films, King Kong vs. Godzilla which was also the third film in Toho's long-running Godzilla series, and King Kong Escapes, both directed by Ishirō Honda. These films are mostly unrelated to the original and follow a very different style.",
"title": "Sequel and franchise"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "In 1976, Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis released his version of King Kong, a modern remake of the 1933 film, following the same basic plot, but moving the setting to the present day and changing many details. The remake was followed by a sequel in 1986 titled King Kong Lives.",
"title": "Sequel and franchise"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In 1998, the film also saw a loosely-adapted direct-to-video animated remake, The Mighty Kong, directed by Art Scott, scored by the Sherman Brothers and distributed by Warner Bros.",
"title": "Sequel and franchise"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "In 2005, Universal Pictures released another remake of King Kong, co-written and directed by Peter Jackson, which is set in 1933, as in the original film.",
"title": "Sequel and franchise"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. released a Kong reboot film titled Kong: Skull Island in 2017 which was directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts and is the second installment of Legendary's MonsterVerse, with a sequel Godzilla vs. Kong directed by Adam Wingard released in 2021, marking the second time Kong fights Godzilla.",
"title": "Sequel and franchise"
}
] |
King Kong is a 1933 American pre-Code adventure horror monster film directed and produced by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, with special effects by Willis H. O'Brien. Produced and distributed by RKO Radio Pictures, it is the first film in the King Kong franchise. The film stars Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong and Bruce Cabot. In the film, a giant ape dubbed Kong captured from Skull Island attempts to possess a beautiful young woman. King Kong opened in New York City on March 2, 1933, to rave reviews. It is ranked by Rotten Tomatoes as the greatest horror film of all time and the fifty-sixth greatest film of all time. In 1991, it was deemed "culturally, historically and aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. A sequel, titled Son of Kong, was fast-tracked and released the same year, with several more films made in the following decades, including two remakes that were made in 1976 and 2005 respectively, and a reboot in 2017.
|
2001-08-09T23:55:42Z
|
2023-12-29T23:25:59Z
|
[
"Template:Expand section",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:KingKong",
"Template:Further",
"Template:Commons category",
"Template:Mojo title",
"Template:Infobox film",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:ISBN",
"Template:Subscription required",
"Template:Ernest B. Schoedsack",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Refend",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Cite video",
"Template:Wikiquote",
"Template:IMDb title",
"Template:Sfn",
"Template:Cite magazine",
"Template:Rotten Tomatoes",
"Template:Edgar Wallace",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Use mdy dates",
"Template:Cast listing",
"Template:More citations needed section",
"Template:Nowrap",
"Template:Refbegin",
"Template:AllMovie title",
"Template:TCMDb title",
"Template:Citation needed",
"Template:Portal",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:AFI film"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Kong_(1933_film)
|
16,788 |
Kenning
|
A kenning (Icelandic: [cʰɛnːiŋk]) is a figure of speech in the type of circumlocution, a compound that employs figurative language in place of a more concrete single-word noun. Kennings are strongly associated with Old Norse-Icelandic and Old English poetry. They continued to be a feature of Icelandic poetry (including rímur) for centuries, together with the closely related heiti.
A kenning has two parts: a base-word (also known as a head-word) and a determinant. For example, the base-word of the kenning "íss rauðra randa" ('icicle of red shields' [SWORD], Einarr Skúlason: Øxarflokkr 9) is íss ('ice, icicle') and the determinant is rǫnd ('rim, shield-rim, shield'). The thing, person, place or being to which the kenning refers is known as its referent (in this case a sword). Although kennings are sometimes hyphenated in English translation, Old Norse poetry did not require kennings to be in normal word order, nor do the parts of the kenning need to be side-by-side. The lack of grammatical cases in modern English makes this aspect of kennings difficult to translate.
The corresponding modern verb to ken survives in Scots and English dialects and in general English through the derivative existing in the standard language in the set expression beyond one's ken, "beyond the scope of one's knowledge" and in the phonologically altered forms uncanny, "surreal" or "supernatural", and canny, "shrewd", "prudent". Modern Scots retains (with slight differences between dialects) tae ken "to know", kent "knew" or "known", Afrikaans ken "be acquainted with" and "to know" and kennis "knowledge". Old Norse kenna (Modern Icelandic kenna, Swedish känna, Danish kende, Norwegian kjenne or kjenna) is cognate with Old English cennan, Old Frisian kenna, kanna, Old Saxon (ant)kennian (Middle Dutch and Dutch kennen), Old High German (ir-, in-, pi-) chennan (Middle High German and German kennen), Gothic kannjan < Proto-Germanic *kannjanan, originally causative of *kunnanan "to know (how to)", whence Modern English can 'to be able'. The word ultimately derives from *ǵneh₃, the same Proto-Indo-European root that yields Modern English know, Latin-derived terms such as cognition and ignorant, and Greek gnosis.
Old Norse kennings take the form of a genitive phrase (báru fákr "wave's horse" = "ship" (Þorbjörn Hornklofi: Glymdrápa 3)) or a compound word (gjálfr-marr "sea-steed" = "ship" (Anon.: Hervararkviða 27)). The simplest kennings consist of a base-word (Icelandic stofnorð, German Grundwort) and a determinant (Icelandic kenniorð, German Bestimmung) which qualifies, or modifies, the meaning of the base-word. The determinant may be a noun used uninflected as the first element in a compound word, with the base-word constituting the second element of the compound word. Alternatively the determinant may be a noun in the genitive case placed before or after the base-word, either directly or separated from the base-word by intervening words.
Thus the base-words in these examples are fákr "horse" and marr "steed", the determinants báru "waves" and gjálfr "sea". The unstated noun which the kenning refers to is called its referent, in this case: skip "ship".
In Old Norse poetry, either component of a kenning (base-word, determinant or both) could consist of an ordinary noun or a heiti "poetic synonym". In the above examples, fákr and marr are distinctively poetic lexemes; the normal word for "horse" in Old Norse prose is hestr.
The skalds also employed complex kennings in which the determinant, or sometimes the base-word, is itself made up of a further kenning: grennir gunn-más "feeder of war-gull" = "feeder of raven" = "warrior" (Þorbjörn Hornklofi: Glymdrápa 6); eyðendr arnar hungrs "destroyers of eagle's hunger" = "feeders of eagle" = "warrior" (Þorbjörn Þakkaskáld: Erlingsdrápa 1) (referring to carrion birds scavenging after a battle). Where one kenning is embedded in another like this, the whole figure is said to be tvíkent "doubly determined, twice modified".
Frequently, where the determinant is itself a kenning, the base-word of the kenning that makes up the determinant is attached uninflected to the front of the base-word of the whole kenning to form a compound word: mög-fellandi mellu "son-slayer of giantess" = "slayer of sons of giantess" = "slayer of giants" = "the god Thor" (Steinunn Refsdóttir: Lausavísa 2).
If the figure comprises more than three elements, it is said to be rekit "extended". Kennings of up to seven elements are recorded in skaldic verse. Snorri himself characterises five-element kennings as an acceptable license but cautions against more extreme constructions: Níunda er þat at reka til hinnar fimtu kenningar, er ór ættum er ef lengra er rekit; en þótt þat finnisk í fornskálda verka, þá látum vér þat nú ónýtt. "The ninth [license] is extending a kenning to the fifth determinant, but it is out of proportion if it is extended further. Even if it can be found in the works of ancient poets, we no longer tolerate it." The longest kenning found in skaldic poetry occurs in Hafgerðingadrápa by Þórðr Sjáreksson and reads nausta blakks hlé-mána gífrs drífu gim-slöngvir "fire-brandisher of blizzard of ogress of protection-moon of steed of boat-shed", which simply means "warrior".
Word order in Old Norse was generally much freer than in Modern English because Old Norse and Old English are synthetic languages, where added prefixes and suffixes to the root word (the core noun, verb, adjective or adverb) carry grammatical meanings, whereas Middle English and Modern English use word order to carry grammatical information, as analytic languages. This freedom is exploited to the full in skaldic verse and taken to extremes far beyond what would be natural in prose. Other words can intervene between a base-word and its genitive determinant, and occasionally between the elements of a compound word (tmesis). Kennings, and even whole clauses, can be interwoven. Ambiguity is usually less than it would be if an English text were subjected to the same contortions, thanks to the more elaborate morphology of Old Norse.
Another factor aiding comprehension is that Old Norse kennings tend to be highly conventional. Most refer to the same small set of topics, and do so using a relatively small set of traditional metaphors. Thus a leader or important man will be characterised as generous, according to one common convention, and called an "enemy of gold", "attacker of treasure", "destroyer of arm-rings", etc. and a friend of his people. Nevertheless, there are many instances of ambiguity in the corpus, some of which may be intentional, and some evidence that, rather than merely accepting it from expediency, skalds favoured contorted word order for its own sake.
Kennings could be developed into extended, and sometimes vivid, metaphors: tröddusk törgur fyr [...] hjalta harðfótum "shields were trodden under the hard feet of the hilt (sword blades)" (Eyvindr Skáldaspillir: Hákonarmál 6); svarraði sárgymir á sverða nesi "wound-sea (=blood) sprayed on headland of swords (=shield)" (Eyvindr Skáldaspillir: Hákonarmál 7). Snorri calls such examples nýgervingar and exemplifies them in verse 6 of his Háttatal. The effect here seems to depend on an interplay of more or less naturalistic imagery and jarring artifice. But the skalds weren't averse either to arbitrary, purely decorative, use of kennings: "That is, a ruler will be a distributor of gold even when he is fighting a battle and gold will be called the fire of the sea even when it is in the form of a man's arm-ring on his arm. If the man wearing a gold ring is fighting a battle on land the mention of the sea will have no relevance to his situation at all and does not contribute to the picture of the battle being described" (Faulkes (1997), pp. 8–9).
Snorri draws the line at mixed metaphor, which he terms nykrat "made monstrous" (Snorri Sturluson: Háttatal 6), and his nephew called the practice löstr "a fault" (Óláfr hvítaskáld: Third Grammatical Treatise 80). In spite of this, it seems that "many poets did not object to and some must have preferred baroque juxtapositions of unlike kennings and neutral or incongruous verbs in their verses" (Foote & Wilson (1970), p. 332). E.g. heyr jarl Kvasis dreyra "listen, earl, to Kvasir's blood (=poetry)" (Einarr skálaglamm: Vellekla 1).
Sometimes there is a kind of redundancy whereby the referent of the whole kenning, or a kenning for it, is embedded: barmi dólg-svölu "brother of hostility-swallow" = "brother of raven" = "raven" (Oddr breiðfirðingr: Illugadrápa 1); blik-meiðendr bauga láðs "gleam-harmers of the land of rings" = "harmers of gleam of arm" = "harmers of ring" = "leaders, nobles, men of social standing (conceived of as generously destroying gold, i.e. giving it away freely)" (Anon.: Líknarbraut 42).
While some Old Norse kennings are relatively transparent, many depend on a knowledge of specific myths or legends. Thus the sky might be called naturalistically él-ker "squall-vat" (Markús Skeggjason: Eiríksdrápa 3) or described in mythical terms as Ymis haus "Ymir's skull" (Arnórr jarlaskáld: Magnúsdrápa 19), referring to the idea that the sky was made out of the skull of the primeval giant Ymir. Still others name mythical entities according to certain conventions without reference to a specific story: rimmu Yggr "Odin of battle" = "warrior" (Arnórr jarlaskáld: Magnúsdrápa 5).
Poets in medieval Iceland even treated Christian themes using the traditional repertoire of kennings complete with allusions to heathen myths and aristocratic epithets for saints: Þrúðr falda "goddess of headdresses" = "Saint Catherine" (Kálfr Hallsson: Kátrínardrápa 4).
Kennings of the type AB, where B routinely has the characteristic A and thus this AB is tautological, tend to mean "like B in that it has the characteristic A", e.g. "shield-Njörðr", tautological because the god Njörðr by nature has his own shield, means "like Njörðr in that he has a shield", i.e. "warrior". A modern English example is "painted Jezebel" as a disapproving expression for a woman too fond of using cosmetics.
Kennings may include proper names. A modern example of this is an ad hoc usage by a helicopter ambulance pilot: "the Heathrow of hang gliders" for the hills behind Hawes in Yorkshire in England, when he found the air over the emergency site crowded with hang-gliders.
Sometimes a name given to one well-known member of a species, is used to mean any member of that species. For example, Old Norse valr means "falcon", but Old Norse mythology mentions a horse named Valr, and thus in Old Norse poetry valr is sometimes used to mean "horse".
A term may be omitted from a well-known kenning: val-teigs Hildr "hawk-ground's valkyrie/goddess" (Haraldr Harðráði: Lausavísa 19). The full expression implied here is "goddess of gleam/fire/adornment of ground/land/seat/perch of hawk" = "goddess of gleam of arm" = "goddess of gold" = "lady" (characterised according to convention as wearing golden jewellery, the arm-kenning being a reference to falconry). The poet relies on listeners' familiarity with such conventions to carry the meaning.
Some scholars take the term kenning broadly to include any noun-substitute consisting of two or more elements, including merely descriptive epithets (such as Old Norse grand viðar "bane of wood" = "fire" (Snorri Sturluson: Skáldskaparmál 36)), while others would restrict it to metaphorical instances (such as Old Norse sól húsanna "sun of the houses" = "fire" (Snorri Sturluson: Skáldskaparmál 36)), specifically those where "[t]he base-word identifies the referent with something which it is not, except in a specially conceived relation which the poet imagines between it and the sense of the limiting element'" (Brodeur (1959) pp. 248–253). Some even exclude naturalistic metaphors such as Old English forstes bend "bond of frost" = "ice" or winter-ġewǣde "winter-raiment" = "snow": "A metaphor is a kenning only if it contains an incongruity between the referent and the meaning of the base-word; in the kenning the limiting word is essential to the figure because without it the incongruity would make any identification impossible" (Brodeur (1959) pp. 248–253). Descriptive epithets are a common literary device in many parts of the world, whereas kennings in this restricted sense are a distinctive feature of Old Norse and, to a lesser extent, Old English poetry.
Snorri's own usage, however, seems to fit the looser sense: "Snorri uses the term 'kenning' to refer to a structural device, whereby a person or object is indicated by a periphrastic description containing two or more terms (which can be a noun with one or more dependent genitives or a compound noun or a combination of these two structures)" (Faulkes (1998 a), p. xxxiv). The term is certainly applied to non-metaphorical phrases in Skáldskaparmál: En sú kenning er áðr var ritat, at kalla Krist konung manna, þá kenning má eiga hverr konungr. "And that kenning which was written before, calling Christ the king of men, any king can have that kenning. Likewise in Háttatal: Þat er kenning at kalla fleinbrak orrostu [...] "It is a kenning to call battle 'spear-crash' [...]".
Snorri's expression kend heiti "qualified terms" appears to be synonymous with kenningar, although Brodeur applies this more specifically to those periphrastic epithets which do not come under his strict definition of kenning.
Sverdlov approaches the question from a morphological standpoint. Noting that the modifying component in Germanic compound words can take the form of a genitive or a bare root, he points to behavioural similarities between genitive determinants and the modifying element in regular Old Norse compound words, such as the fact that neither can be modified by a free-standing (declined) adjective. According to this view, all kennings are formally compounds, notwithstanding widespread tmesis.
In the following dróttkvætt stanza, the Norwegian skald Eyvindr skáldaspillir (d. ca 990) compares the greed of King Harald Greycloak (Old Norse: Haraldr) to the generosity of his predecessor, Haakon the Good (Hákon):
Bárum, Ullr, of alla, ímunlauks, á hauka fjöllum Fýrisvalla fræ Hákonar ævi; nú hefr fólkstríðir Fróða fáglýjaðra þýja meldr í móður holdi mellu dolgs of folginn —Eyvindr skáldaspillir, Lausavísa
A literal translation reveals several kennings: "Ullr of the war-leek! We carried the seed of Fýrisvellir on our hawk-mountains during all of Haakon's life; now the enemy of the people has hidden the flour of Fróði's hapless slaves in the flesh of the mother of the enemy of the giantess."
This could be paraphrased as "O warrior, we carried gold on our arms during all of King Haakon's life; now the enemy of the people has hidden gold in the earth." The kennings are:
Ullr ... ímunlauks, "warrior", from Ullr, the name of a god, and ímun-laukr, "sword" (literally "war-leek"). By convention, the name of any god can be associated with another word to produce a kenning for a certain type of man; here "Ullr of the sword" means "warrior." "War-leek" is a kenning for "sword" that likens the shape of the sword to that of a leek. The warrior referred to may be King Harald.
Hauka fjöllum, "arms", from hauka "hawk" and fjöll mountain. This is a reference to the sport of falconry, where a bird of prey is perched on the arm of the falconer. By convention, "hawk" combined with a term for a geographic feature forms a kenning for "arm."
Fýrisvalla fræ, "gold", from "Fýrisvellir", the plains of the river Fýri, and fræ, "seed." This is an allusion to a legend retold in Skáldskaparmál and Hrólfs saga kraka in which King Hrolf and his men scattered gold on the plains (vellir) of the river Fýri south of Gamla Uppsala to delay their pursuers.
Fróða fáglýjaðra þýja meldr, "flour of Fróði's hapless slaves", is another kenning for "gold." It alludes to the Grottasöngr legend.
Móður hold mellu dolgs, "flesh of the mother of the enemy of the giantess." "earth." Here the earth is personified as the goddess Jörð, mother of Thor, enemy of the jǫtnar.
The practice of forming kennings has traditionally been seen as a common Germanic inheritance, but this has been disputed since, among the early Germanic languages, their use is largely restricted to Old Norse and Old English poetry. A possible early kenning for "gold" (walha-kurna "Roman/Gallic grain") is attested in the Proto-Norse runic inscription on the Tjurkö (I)-C bracteate. Kennings are virtually absent from the surviving corpus of continental West Germanic verse; the Old Saxon Heliand contains only one example: lîk-hamo "body-raiment" = "body" (Heliand 3453 b), a compound which, in any case, is normal in West Germanic and North Germanic prose (Old English līchama, Old High German lîchamo, lîchinamo, Dutch lichaam, Old Icelandic líkamr, líkami, Old Swedish līkhamber, Swedish lekamen, Danish and Norwegian Bokmål legeme, Norwegian Nynorsk lekam).
Old English kennings are all of the simple type, possessing just two elements. Examples for "sea": seġl-rād "sail-road" (Beowulf 1429 b), swan-rād "swan-road" (Beowulf 200 a), bæð-weġ "bath-way" (Andreas 513 a), hron-rād "whale-road" (Beowulf 10), hwæl-weġ "whale-way" (The Seafarer 63 a). Most Old English examples take the form of compound words in which the first element is uninflected: "heofon-candel" "sky-candle" = "the sun" (Exodus 115 b). Kennings consisting of a genitive phrase occur too, but rarely: heofones ġim "heaven's gem" = "the sun" (The Phoenix 183).
Old English poets often place a series of synonyms in apposition, and these may include kennings (loosely or strictly defined) as well as the literal referent: Hrōðgar maþelode, helm Scyldinga ... "Hrothgar, helm (=protector, lord) of the Scyldings, said ..." (Beowulf 456).
Although the word "kenning" is not often used for non-Germanic languages, a similar form can be found in Biblical poetry in its use of parallelism. Some examples include Genesis 49:11, in which "blood of grapes" is used as a kenning for "wine", and Job 15:14, where "born of woman" is a parallel for "man".
Figures of speech similar to kennings occur in Modern English (both in literature and in regular speech), and are often found in combination with other poetic devices. For example, the Madness song "The Sun and the Rain" contains the line "standing up in the falling-down", where "the falling-down" refers to rain and is used in juxtaposition to "standing up". Some recent English writers have attempted to use approximations of kennings in their work. John Steinbeck used kenning-like figures of speech in his 1950 novella Burning Bright, which was adapted into a Broadway play that same year. According to Steinbeck biographer Jay Parini, "The experiment is well-intentioned, but it remains idiosyncratic to the point of absurdity. Steinbeck invented compound phrases (similar to the Old English use of kennings), such as 'wife-loss' and 'friend-right' and 'laughter-starving,' that simply seem eccentric."
Kennings remain somewhat common in German (Drahtesel "wire-donkey" for bicycle, Feuerstuhl "fire-chair" for motorcycle, Stubentiger "parlour-tiger" for cat, and so on). Kennings are also found in Mandarin Chinese (火鸡 "fire-chicken" for turkey, 猫头鹰 "cat-headed eagle" for owl).
The poet Seamus Heaney regularly employed kennings in his work; for example, 'bone-house' for "skeleton".
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "A kenning (Icelandic: [cʰɛnːiŋk]) is a figure of speech in the type of circumlocution, a compound that employs figurative language in place of a more concrete single-word noun. Kennings are strongly associated with Old Norse-Icelandic and Old English poetry. They continued to be a feature of Icelandic poetry (including rímur) for centuries, together with the closely related heiti.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "A kenning has two parts: a base-word (also known as a head-word) and a determinant. For example, the base-word of the kenning \"íss rauðra randa\" ('icicle of red shields' [SWORD], Einarr Skúlason: Øxarflokkr 9) is íss ('ice, icicle') and the determinant is rǫnd ('rim, shield-rim, shield'). The thing, person, place or being to which the kenning refers is known as its referent (in this case a sword). Although kennings are sometimes hyphenated in English translation, Old Norse poetry did not require kennings to be in normal word order, nor do the parts of the kenning need to be side-by-side. The lack of grammatical cases in modern English makes this aspect of kennings difficult to translate.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The corresponding modern verb to ken survives in Scots and English dialects and in general English through the derivative existing in the standard language in the set expression beyond one's ken, \"beyond the scope of one's knowledge\" and in the phonologically altered forms uncanny, \"surreal\" or \"supernatural\", and canny, \"shrewd\", \"prudent\". Modern Scots retains (with slight differences between dialects) tae ken \"to know\", kent \"knew\" or \"known\", Afrikaans ken \"be acquainted with\" and \"to know\" and kennis \"knowledge\". Old Norse kenna (Modern Icelandic kenna, Swedish känna, Danish kende, Norwegian kjenne or kjenna) is cognate with Old English cennan, Old Frisian kenna, kanna, Old Saxon (ant)kennian (Middle Dutch and Dutch kennen), Old High German (ir-, in-, pi-) chennan (Middle High German and German kennen), Gothic kannjan < Proto-Germanic *kannjanan, originally causative of *kunnanan \"to know (how to)\", whence Modern English can 'to be able'. The word ultimately derives from *ǵneh₃, the same Proto-Indo-European root that yields Modern English know, Latin-derived terms such as cognition and ignorant, and Greek gnosis.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Old Norse kennings take the form of a genitive phrase (báru fákr \"wave's horse\" = \"ship\" (Þorbjörn Hornklofi: Glymdrápa 3)) or a compound word (gjálfr-marr \"sea-steed\" = \"ship\" (Anon.: Hervararkviða 27)). The simplest kennings consist of a base-word (Icelandic stofnorð, German Grundwort) and a determinant (Icelandic kenniorð, German Bestimmung) which qualifies, or modifies, the meaning of the base-word. The determinant may be a noun used uninflected as the first element in a compound word, with the base-word constituting the second element of the compound word. Alternatively the determinant may be a noun in the genitive case placed before or after the base-word, either directly or separated from the base-word by intervening words.",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Thus the base-words in these examples are fákr \"horse\" and marr \"steed\", the determinants báru \"waves\" and gjálfr \"sea\". The unstated noun which the kenning refers to is called its referent, in this case: skip \"ship\".",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In Old Norse poetry, either component of a kenning (base-word, determinant or both) could consist of an ordinary noun or a heiti \"poetic synonym\". In the above examples, fákr and marr are distinctively poetic lexemes; the normal word for \"horse\" in Old Norse prose is hestr.",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The skalds also employed complex kennings in which the determinant, or sometimes the base-word, is itself made up of a further kenning: grennir gunn-más \"feeder of war-gull\" = \"feeder of raven\" = \"warrior\" (Þorbjörn Hornklofi: Glymdrápa 6); eyðendr arnar hungrs \"destroyers of eagle's hunger\" = \"feeders of eagle\" = \"warrior\" (Þorbjörn Þakkaskáld: Erlingsdrápa 1) (referring to carrion birds scavenging after a battle). Where one kenning is embedded in another like this, the whole figure is said to be tvíkent \"doubly determined, twice modified\".",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Frequently, where the determinant is itself a kenning, the base-word of the kenning that makes up the determinant is attached uninflected to the front of the base-word of the whole kenning to form a compound word: mög-fellandi mellu \"son-slayer of giantess\" = \"slayer of sons of giantess\" = \"slayer of giants\" = \"the god Thor\" (Steinunn Refsdóttir: Lausavísa 2).",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "If the figure comprises more than three elements, it is said to be rekit \"extended\". Kennings of up to seven elements are recorded in skaldic verse. Snorri himself characterises five-element kennings as an acceptable license but cautions against more extreme constructions: Níunda er þat at reka til hinnar fimtu kenningar, er ór ættum er ef lengra er rekit; en þótt þat finnisk í fornskálda verka, þá látum vér þat nú ónýtt. \"The ninth [license] is extending a kenning to the fifth determinant, but it is out of proportion if it is extended further. Even if it can be found in the works of ancient poets, we no longer tolerate it.\" The longest kenning found in skaldic poetry occurs in Hafgerðingadrápa by Þórðr Sjáreksson and reads nausta blakks hlé-mána gífrs drífu gim-slöngvir \"fire-brandisher of blizzard of ogress of protection-moon of steed of boat-shed\", which simply means \"warrior\".",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Word order in Old Norse was generally much freer than in Modern English because Old Norse and Old English are synthetic languages, where added prefixes and suffixes to the root word (the core noun, verb, adjective or adverb) carry grammatical meanings, whereas Middle English and Modern English use word order to carry grammatical information, as analytic languages. This freedom is exploited to the full in skaldic verse and taken to extremes far beyond what would be natural in prose. Other words can intervene between a base-word and its genitive determinant, and occasionally between the elements of a compound word (tmesis). Kennings, and even whole clauses, can be interwoven. Ambiguity is usually less than it would be if an English text were subjected to the same contortions, thanks to the more elaborate morphology of Old Norse.",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Another factor aiding comprehension is that Old Norse kennings tend to be highly conventional. Most refer to the same small set of topics, and do so using a relatively small set of traditional metaphors. Thus a leader or important man will be characterised as generous, according to one common convention, and called an \"enemy of gold\", \"attacker of treasure\", \"destroyer of arm-rings\", etc. and a friend of his people. Nevertheless, there are many instances of ambiguity in the corpus, some of which may be intentional, and some evidence that, rather than merely accepting it from expediency, skalds favoured contorted word order for its own sake.",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Kennings could be developed into extended, and sometimes vivid, metaphors: tröddusk törgur fyr [...] hjalta harðfótum \"shields were trodden under the hard feet of the hilt (sword blades)\" (Eyvindr Skáldaspillir: Hákonarmál 6); svarraði sárgymir á sverða nesi \"wound-sea (=blood) sprayed on headland of swords (=shield)\" (Eyvindr Skáldaspillir: Hákonarmál 7). Snorri calls such examples nýgervingar and exemplifies them in verse 6 of his Háttatal. The effect here seems to depend on an interplay of more or less naturalistic imagery and jarring artifice. But the skalds weren't averse either to arbitrary, purely decorative, use of kennings: \"That is, a ruler will be a distributor of gold even when he is fighting a battle and gold will be called the fire of the sea even when it is in the form of a man's arm-ring on his arm. If the man wearing a gold ring is fighting a battle on land the mention of the sea will have no relevance to his situation at all and does not contribute to the picture of the battle being described\" (Faulkes (1997), pp. 8–9).",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Snorri draws the line at mixed metaphor, which he terms nykrat \"made monstrous\" (Snorri Sturluson: Háttatal 6), and his nephew called the practice löstr \"a fault\" (Óláfr hvítaskáld: Third Grammatical Treatise 80). In spite of this, it seems that \"many poets did not object to and some must have preferred baroque juxtapositions of unlike kennings and neutral or incongruous verbs in their verses\" (Foote & Wilson (1970), p. 332). E.g. heyr jarl Kvasis dreyra \"listen, earl, to Kvasir's blood (=poetry)\" (Einarr skálaglamm: Vellekla 1).",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Sometimes there is a kind of redundancy whereby the referent of the whole kenning, or a kenning for it, is embedded: barmi dólg-svölu \"brother of hostility-swallow\" = \"brother of raven\" = \"raven\" (Oddr breiðfirðingr: Illugadrápa 1); blik-meiðendr bauga láðs \"gleam-harmers of the land of rings\" = \"harmers of gleam of arm\" = \"harmers of ring\" = \"leaders, nobles, men of social standing (conceived of as generously destroying gold, i.e. giving it away freely)\" (Anon.: Líknarbraut 42).",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "While some Old Norse kennings are relatively transparent, many depend on a knowledge of specific myths or legends. Thus the sky might be called naturalistically él-ker \"squall-vat\" (Markús Skeggjason: Eiríksdrápa 3) or described in mythical terms as Ymis haus \"Ymir's skull\" (Arnórr jarlaskáld: Magnúsdrápa 19), referring to the idea that the sky was made out of the skull of the primeval giant Ymir. Still others name mythical entities according to certain conventions without reference to a specific story: rimmu Yggr \"Odin of battle\" = \"warrior\" (Arnórr jarlaskáld: Magnúsdrápa 5).",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Poets in medieval Iceland even treated Christian themes using the traditional repertoire of kennings complete with allusions to heathen myths and aristocratic epithets for saints: Þrúðr falda \"goddess of headdresses\" = \"Saint Catherine\" (Kálfr Hallsson: Kátrínardrápa 4).",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Kennings of the type AB, where B routinely has the characteristic A and thus this AB is tautological, tend to mean \"like B in that it has the characteristic A\", e.g. \"shield-Njörðr\", tautological because the god Njörðr by nature has his own shield, means \"like Njörðr in that he has a shield\", i.e. \"warrior\". A modern English example is \"painted Jezebel\" as a disapproving expression for a woman too fond of using cosmetics.",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Kennings may include proper names. A modern example of this is an ad hoc usage by a helicopter ambulance pilot: \"the Heathrow of hang gliders\" for the hills behind Hawes in Yorkshire in England, when he found the air over the emergency site crowded with hang-gliders.",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Sometimes a name given to one well-known member of a species, is used to mean any member of that species. For example, Old Norse valr means \"falcon\", but Old Norse mythology mentions a horse named Valr, and thus in Old Norse poetry valr is sometimes used to mean \"horse\".",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "A term may be omitted from a well-known kenning: val-teigs Hildr \"hawk-ground's valkyrie/goddess\" (Haraldr Harðráði: Lausavísa 19). The full expression implied here is \"goddess of gleam/fire/adornment of ground/land/seat/perch of hawk\" = \"goddess of gleam of arm\" = \"goddess of gold\" = \"lady\" (characterised according to convention as wearing golden jewellery, the arm-kenning being a reference to falconry). The poet relies on listeners' familiarity with such conventions to carry the meaning.",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Some scholars take the term kenning broadly to include any noun-substitute consisting of two or more elements, including merely descriptive epithets (such as Old Norse grand viðar \"bane of wood\" = \"fire\" (Snorri Sturluson: Skáldskaparmál 36)), while others would restrict it to metaphorical instances (such as Old Norse sól húsanna \"sun of the houses\" = \"fire\" (Snorri Sturluson: Skáldskaparmál 36)), specifically those where \"[t]he base-word identifies the referent with something which it is not, except in a specially conceived relation which the poet imagines between it and the sense of the limiting element'\" (Brodeur (1959) pp. 248–253). Some even exclude naturalistic metaphors such as Old English forstes bend \"bond of frost\" = \"ice\" or winter-ġewǣde \"winter-raiment\" = \"snow\": \"A metaphor is a kenning only if it contains an incongruity between the referent and the meaning of the base-word; in the kenning the limiting word is essential to the figure because without it the incongruity would make any identification impossible\" (Brodeur (1959) pp. 248–253). Descriptive epithets are a common literary device in many parts of the world, whereas kennings in this restricted sense are a distinctive feature of Old Norse and, to a lesser extent, Old English poetry.",
"title": "Definitions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Snorri's own usage, however, seems to fit the looser sense: \"Snorri uses the term 'kenning' to refer to a structural device, whereby a person or object is indicated by a periphrastic description containing two or more terms (which can be a noun with one or more dependent genitives or a compound noun or a combination of these two structures)\" (Faulkes (1998 a), p. xxxiv). The term is certainly applied to non-metaphorical phrases in Skáldskaparmál: En sú kenning er áðr var ritat, at kalla Krist konung manna, þá kenning má eiga hverr konungr. \"And that kenning which was written before, calling Christ the king of men, any king can have that kenning. Likewise in Háttatal: Þat er kenning at kalla fleinbrak orrostu [...] \"It is a kenning to call battle 'spear-crash' [...]\".",
"title": "Definitions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Snorri's expression kend heiti \"qualified terms\" appears to be synonymous with kenningar, although Brodeur applies this more specifically to those periphrastic epithets which do not come under his strict definition of kenning.",
"title": "Definitions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Sverdlov approaches the question from a morphological standpoint. Noting that the modifying component in Germanic compound words can take the form of a genitive or a bare root, he points to behavioural similarities between genitive determinants and the modifying element in regular Old Norse compound words, such as the fact that neither can be modified by a free-standing (declined) adjective. According to this view, all kennings are formally compounds, notwithstanding widespread tmesis.",
"title": "Definitions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In the following dróttkvætt stanza, the Norwegian skald Eyvindr skáldaspillir (d. ca 990) compares the greed of King Harald Greycloak (Old Norse: Haraldr) to the generosity of his predecessor, Haakon the Good (Hákon):",
"title": "Old Norse kennings in context"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Bárum, Ullr, of alla, ímunlauks, á hauka fjöllum Fýrisvalla fræ Hákonar ævi; nú hefr fólkstríðir Fróða fáglýjaðra þýja meldr í móður holdi mellu dolgs of folginn —Eyvindr skáldaspillir, Lausavísa",
"title": "Old Norse kennings in context"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "A literal translation reveals several kennings: \"Ullr of the war-leek! We carried the seed of Fýrisvellir on our hawk-mountains during all of Haakon's life; now the enemy of the people has hidden the flour of Fróði's hapless slaves in the flesh of the mother of the enemy of the giantess.\"",
"title": "Old Norse kennings in context"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "This could be paraphrased as \"O warrior, we carried gold on our arms during all of King Haakon's life; now the enemy of the people has hidden gold in the earth.\" The kennings are:",
"title": "Old Norse kennings in context"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Ullr ... ímunlauks, \"warrior\", from Ullr, the name of a god, and ímun-laukr, \"sword\" (literally \"war-leek\"). By convention, the name of any god can be associated with another word to produce a kenning for a certain type of man; here \"Ullr of the sword\" means \"warrior.\" \"War-leek\" is a kenning for \"sword\" that likens the shape of the sword to that of a leek. The warrior referred to may be King Harald.",
"title": "Old Norse kennings in context"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Hauka fjöllum, \"arms\", from hauka \"hawk\" and fjöll mountain. This is a reference to the sport of falconry, where a bird of prey is perched on the arm of the falconer. By convention, \"hawk\" combined with a term for a geographic feature forms a kenning for \"arm.\"",
"title": "Old Norse kennings in context"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Fýrisvalla fræ, \"gold\", from \"Fýrisvellir\", the plains of the river Fýri, and fræ, \"seed.\" This is an allusion to a legend retold in Skáldskaparmál and Hrólfs saga kraka in which King Hrolf and his men scattered gold on the plains (vellir) of the river Fýri south of Gamla Uppsala to delay their pursuers.",
"title": "Old Norse kennings in context"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Fróða fáglýjaðra þýja meldr, \"flour of Fróði's hapless slaves\", is another kenning for \"gold.\" It alludes to the Grottasöngr legend.",
"title": "Old Norse kennings in context"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Móður hold mellu dolgs, \"flesh of the mother of the enemy of the giantess.\" \"earth.\" Here the earth is personified as the goddess Jörð, mother of Thor, enemy of the jǫtnar.",
"title": "Old Norse kennings in context"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The practice of forming kennings has traditionally been seen as a common Germanic inheritance, but this has been disputed since, among the early Germanic languages, their use is largely restricted to Old Norse and Old English poetry. A possible early kenning for \"gold\" (walha-kurna \"Roman/Gallic grain\") is attested in the Proto-Norse runic inscription on the Tjurkö (I)-C bracteate. Kennings are virtually absent from the surviving corpus of continental West Germanic verse; the Old Saxon Heliand contains only one example: lîk-hamo \"body-raiment\" = \"body\" (Heliand 3453 b), a compound which, in any case, is normal in West Germanic and North Germanic prose (Old English līchama, Old High German lîchamo, lîchinamo, Dutch lichaam, Old Icelandic líkamr, líkami, Old Swedish līkhamber, Swedish lekamen, Danish and Norwegian Bokmål legeme, Norwegian Nynorsk lekam).",
"title": "Old English and other kennings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Old English kennings are all of the simple type, possessing just two elements. Examples for \"sea\": seġl-rād \"sail-road\" (Beowulf 1429 b), swan-rād \"swan-road\" (Beowulf 200 a), bæð-weġ \"bath-way\" (Andreas 513 a), hron-rād \"whale-road\" (Beowulf 10), hwæl-weġ \"whale-way\" (The Seafarer 63 a). Most Old English examples take the form of compound words in which the first element is uninflected: \"heofon-candel\" \"sky-candle\" = \"the sun\" (Exodus 115 b). Kennings consisting of a genitive phrase occur too, but rarely: heofones ġim \"heaven's gem\" = \"the sun\" (The Phoenix 183).",
"title": "Old English and other kennings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Old English poets often place a series of synonyms in apposition, and these may include kennings (loosely or strictly defined) as well as the literal referent: Hrōðgar maþelode, helm Scyldinga ... \"Hrothgar, helm (=protector, lord) of the Scyldings, said ...\" (Beowulf 456).",
"title": "Old English and other kennings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Although the word \"kenning\" is not often used for non-Germanic languages, a similar form can be found in Biblical poetry in its use of parallelism. Some examples include Genesis 49:11, in which \"blood of grapes\" is used as a kenning for \"wine\", and Job 15:14, where \"born of woman\" is a parallel for \"man\".",
"title": "Old English and other kennings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Figures of speech similar to kennings occur in Modern English (both in literature and in regular speech), and are often found in combination with other poetic devices. For example, the Madness song \"The Sun and the Rain\" contains the line \"standing up in the falling-down\", where \"the falling-down\" refers to rain and is used in juxtaposition to \"standing up\". Some recent English writers have attempted to use approximations of kennings in their work. John Steinbeck used kenning-like figures of speech in his 1950 novella Burning Bright, which was adapted into a Broadway play that same year. According to Steinbeck biographer Jay Parini, \"The experiment is well-intentioned, but it remains idiosyncratic to the point of absurdity. Steinbeck invented compound phrases (similar to the Old English use of kennings), such as 'wife-loss' and 'friend-right' and 'laughter-starving,' that simply seem eccentric.\"",
"title": "Modern usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Kennings remain somewhat common in German (Drahtesel \"wire-donkey\" for bicycle, Feuerstuhl \"fire-chair\" for motorcycle, Stubentiger \"parlour-tiger\" for cat, and so on). Kennings are also found in Mandarin Chinese (火鸡 \"fire-chicken\" for turkey, 猫头鹰 \"cat-headed eagle\" for owl).",
"title": "Modern usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The poet Seamus Heaney regularly employed kennings in his work; for example, 'bone-house' for \"skeleton\".",
"title": "Modern usage"
}
] |
A kenning is a figure of speech in the type of circumlocution, a compound that employs figurative language in place of a more concrete single-word noun. Kennings are strongly associated with Old Norse-Icelandic and Old English poetry. They continued to be a feature of Icelandic poetry for centuries, together with the closely related heiti. A kenning has two parts: a base-word and a determinant. For example, the base-word of the kenning "íss rauðra randa" is íss and the determinant is rǫnd. The thing, person, place or being to which the kenning refers is known as its referent. Although kennings are sometimes hyphenated in English translation, Old Norse poetry did not require kennings to be in normal word order, nor do the parts of the kenning need to be side-by-side. The lack of grammatical cases in modern English makes this aspect of kennings difficult to translate.
|
2001-08-16T12:02:34Z
|
2023-12-12T22:02:16Z
|
[
"Template:Other uses",
"Template:IPA-is",
"Template:Citation style",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Norse mythology",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Distinguish",
"Template:Lang",
"Template:Citation",
"Template:Bibleverse",
"Template:Webarchive"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenning
|
16,789 |
Kult (role-playing game)
|
Kult (Swedish for "Cult", stylized as KULT) is a contemporary horror role-playing game originally created by Gunilla Jonsson and Michael Petersén with illustrations by Nils Gulliksson, first published in Sweden by Äventyrsspel (later Target Games) in 1991. Kult is notable for its philosophical and religious depth as well as for its mature and controversial content.
The first English edition was published in 1993 by Metropolis Ltd. In 1995, 7ème Cercle translated the second Swedish edition into French.
In 2018 current licensor Helmgast released the fourth edition called Kult: Divinity Lost created by Robin Liljenberg and Petter Nallo. This edition moved the setting from the then-current 1990s to the now-current 2010s and was completely rewritten with new art, layout and a ruleset based on Powered by the Apocalypse. The new edition was well received by critics and fans and won two Ennies for Best Writing and Best Cover 2019, and was also nominated for Best Interior Art.
The default backdrop is that of present larger cities; players taking the roles of contemporary multi-genre protagonists, such as private investigators and femme fatales, vigilantes and drug dealers, artists and journalists, or secret agents and mad scientists. In the game, however, all of this and the entire visible world is an illusion held together by a monotheistic belief which is unravelling to reveal a darker backdrop where nightmarish monsters lurk, called "reality" in the game. This illusion was created by the Demiurge to hold humanity prisoner and to prevent mankind from regaining the divinity it once had. In the absence of this Demiurge, sinister forces plot to keep humanity from realizing the truth, or even to plunge the world into an apocalyptic war to restore humanity's ignorance and blind faith in the divine order.
Some symbols and creatures appearing in Kult can also be seen in other Swedish games to which the Kult authors and production team also have contributed. The Mutant Chronicles' universe (created by Nils Gulliksson and Michael Stenmark) its spin-offs share creatures such as Nepharites and Razides which appear in the game.
The notion of an originally divine mankind being held captive by sinister forces is borrowed from gnosticism. The cosmological backdrop of Kult is largely based on the Tree of life, the Sephirot and the Qliphoth. It is balanced with the Demiurge and his Archons on one side and Astaroth and his Death Angels on the other. Each Archon or Death Angel represents a value, group or an action (aid organisations, child abuse, mafia, apathy, judicial systems, etc.) over which they have great influence. The Archons and Death Angels have various creatures and cults (thereby the name of the game) to do their bidding and promote their values. Many of these creatures are also the jailers who work to maintain the Illusion. Many of the adventures revolve around how these entities' conflicts affect the player characters and the world around them.
One of the more central elements of the game is that the Demiurge has disappeared since just before the 20th century, and since then Astaroth, the Archons and the Death Angels have been disputing for power. Many entities have vanished since, and the Illusion has been weakened. The game leaves a lot to the imagination of interpretive game masters regarding reasons for the Demiurge's disappearance as well as the earlier mentioned divinity of mankind.
The game concept relies on there being several realities that may appear when the Illusion shatters: Metropolis, the original city which interconnects with all great cities; Inferno and its purgatories, where humans are held captive and tortured after death; Gaia, which connects to nature and nature's destructive forces; The Underworld where strange people from lost worlds live in the depths close to infinity; and Limbo, the Dream World where Dream Princes create their kingdoms and dream wanderers explore tattered dreams close to Vortex (a place of chaos and creation).
The original system is a skill-based system utilizing 20-sided dice (related to Chaosium's BRP system, which had already been used by Äventyrsspel for their Drakar och Demoner rpgs), with point-based characters. In the game, a natural 1 usually is great success with added bonuses and a natural 20 means a complete failure. Normal characters usually have skill ranges of 3 to 20; to succeed in a skill roll, the player needs to roll equal or below his character's skill. The lower the player rolls below the skill number, the greater the success. Extraordinary characters and inhuman entities can have skill values far above the normal range.
The recent edition KULT: Divinity Lost uses rules that are based on the Apocalypse World rules engine. You roll two ten-sided dice, add possible modifications, and try to reach at least 10 to avoid failure or 15 to gain a complete success. KULT: Divinity Lost also has a system where the Gamemaster builds the campaign around the Player Characters and aims to reach true personal horror.
There are several different official rulesets for combat. The second and third English edition rules use a system based on Damage Effect Factors (DEF). The fourth edition, KULT: Divinity Lost, has less focus on combat than previous editions.
Sorcerers can cast spells from one (or rarely more) of five different Lores; Death, Dream, Madness, Passion and Time & Space. Because these spells have (very) long casting times (up to several days), highly specific and exacting verbal, material and somatic requirements, and can only be cast inside the sorcerer's consecrated temple, these spells are actually more like quasi-religious rituals. These rules evoke a superficial similarity to Hermetical traditions, possibly to heighten the modern real-world aspect of the game setting.
Early editions of the game use "mental balance" as a gauge of player characters' sanity. Both a high or low (+25/-25) mental balance affects how normal people and animals react to the character. Characters with an extremely high or low mental balance can transcend the Illusion and regain their lost divine status through Awakening. This occurs if mental balance reaches +500 or -500.
A character's mental balance can move in a positive or negative direction due to trauma, influence from creatures or places, or by advantages and disadvantages from talents or traits, such as (on the positive side) animal friendship, artistic talent, body awareness, a code of honor, or (on the negative side) social ineptitude, addiction, paranoia, or a mystic curse. The further the character strays away from the zero point, the more sociopathic, strange or eccentric they become. Characters with a very high or very low mental balance start to involuntarily manifest outward physical signs.
In the fourth edition of Kult, the mental balance system was removed, as the developers found it impractical during gameplay. Instead, characters take on different archetypes in the path toward Awakening: The Sleeper, The Aware, and The Enlightened.
Kult was originally published by the company Target Games in 1991 as a Swedish role-playing game, and has later been translated into several other languages. Kult has been published in Swedish, German, English, Italian, Spanish, Polish and French.
American game company Metropolis Ltd. published the English-language game through three editions and new supplements, with a new US background and a revised page design and editing led by Terry K. Amthor. After leaving Iron Crown Enterprises full-time in 1992, Amthor co-founded Metropolis Ltd. to produce the English-language version of Kult. In 1992–1994, Amthor edited, co-authored and art-directed several books for the line.
The third English edition of Kult had two English books released in print form: a player's handbook named "Kult Rumours" in 2001 and the core rulebook, subtitled Beyond The Veil, printed in 2004. Both are out of print, though copies can be purchased through secondary and specialized markets.
The former publishers were 7ème Cercle (French) and Raven Distribution (Italian).
The license has been the property of first Target Games, then Paradox Entertainment, and, in 2015, Cabinet Holdings.
Currently, Kult is licensed by Helmgast.
A 2016 Kickstarter campaign funded a new edition of the game, entitled 'Kult: Divinity Lost'. This edition uses a different rules engine than previous editions, one based on Apocalypse World and its Powered by the Apocalypse rules engine. It updates the setting to answer the question “What would Kult had been like if it was released in 2016 instead of 1991?” The game was released in 2018.
In 2017 Free League Publishing published Anders Fager's novel "För Gudinnan" (for the love of the goddess) set in the Kult universe. Fager has also written an audiolouge called "Faraday" set in the Kult adventure Tarroticum.
In 2018 and 2020 Free League Publishing published two novels written by the original creators of Kult, Gunilla Jonsson and Michael Petersén. They are both set in the Kult universe called "Döden är bara början" (Death is only the beginning, 2018) and "De levande döda" (The living dead, 2020)
Similar to the moral panic of Dungeons & Dragons in the United States in the 1980s, Kult figured in Swedish controversies of the 1990s. At the time of the game's initial publication, role-playing games in Sweden were still sold primarily through toy stores rather than bookstores or specialized hobby shops. Kult was noted by the general press several times during the decade after its initial publication, and in 1997 the Kult core rules were quoted in a motion in the Parliament of Sweden. The motion was to stop taxpayer funding of youth groups that were active with role-playing. It refers to the Bjuv Murder where a 15-year-old in a small town in southern Sweden called Bjuv was killed by two 16- and 17-year-old friends who (according to the legal motion) were influenced by Kult.
Writer Didi Örnstedt and painter Björn Sjöstedt wrote a book, De Övergivnas Armé (Army of the Abandoned), where they warn against the role-playing game hobby, with a particular focus on the game Kult. The title refers to children supposedly ignored by their parents and therefore susceptible to a projected radicalization of RPGs.
Critics of role-playing games have attempted to tie Kult to a 16-year-old Swedish boy who committed suicide by shotgun in November 1996.
The local newspaper Tønsbergs Blad in Tønsberg, Norway similarly used Kult in relation to the disappearance of a boy called Andreas Hammer on July 1, 1994. Andreas Hammer allegedly played Kult the week prior to his disappearance. He is still missing.
Jeff Koke reviewed Kult for Pyramid #3 (Sept./Oct., 1993), and stated that "All in all, Kult is a very good system and background for roleplayers who are mature enough to delve into truly dark roleplaying. Even for those players who dislike being immersed in depressing, hopeless worlds, the background has enough tidbits of bleak imagery and morsels of horrific scenery that it's worth the cover price just to browse through the Metropolis."
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Kult (Swedish for \"Cult\", stylized as KULT) is a contemporary horror role-playing game originally created by Gunilla Jonsson and Michael Petersén with illustrations by Nils Gulliksson, first published in Sweden by Äventyrsspel (later Target Games) in 1991. Kult is notable for its philosophical and religious depth as well as for its mature and controversial content.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The first English edition was published in 1993 by Metropolis Ltd. In 1995, 7ème Cercle translated the second Swedish edition into French.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In 2018 current licensor Helmgast released the fourth edition called Kult: Divinity Lost created by Robin Liljenberg and Petter Nallo. This edition moved the setting from the then-current 1990s to the now-current 2010s and was completely rewritten with new art, layout and a ruleset based on Powered by the Apocalypse. The new edition was well received by critics and fans and won two Ennies for Best Writing and Best Cover 2019, and was also nominated for Best Interior Art.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The default backdrop is that of present larger cities; players taking the roles of contemporary multi-genre protagonists, such as private investigators and femme fatales, vigilantes and drug dealers, artists and journalists, or secret agents and mad scientists. In the game, however, all of this and the entire visible world is an illusion held together by a monotheistic belief which is unravelling to reveal a darker backdrop where nightmarish monsters lurk, called \"reality\" in the game. This illusion was created by the Demiurge to hold humanity prisoner and to prevent mankind from regaining the divinity it once had. In the absence of this Demiurge, sinister forces plot to keep humanity from realizing the truth, or even to plunge the world into an apocalyptic war to restore humanity's ignorance and blind faith in the divine order.",
"title": "Setting"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Some symbols and creatures appearing in Kult can also be seen in other Swedish games to which the Kult authors and production team also have contributed. The Mutant Chronicles' universe (created by Nils Gulliksson and Michael Stenmark) its spin-offs share creatures such as Nepharites and Razides which appear in the game.",
"title": "Setting"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The notion of an originally divine mankind being held captive by sinister forces is borrowed from gnosticism. The cosmological backdrop of Kult is largely based on the Tree of life, the Sephirot and the Qliphoth. It is balanced with the Demiurge and his Archons on one side and Astaroth and his Death Angels on the other. Each Archon or Death Angel represents a value, group or an action (aid organisations, child abuse, mafia, apathy, judicial systems, etc.) over which they have great influence. The Archons and Death Angels have various creatures and cults (thereby the name of the game) to do their bidding and promote their values. Many of these creatures are also the jailers who work to maintain the Illusion. Many of the adventures revolve around how these entities' conflicts affect the player characters and the world around them.",
"title": "Setting"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "One of the more central elements of the game is that the Demiurge has disappeared since just before the 20th century, and since then Astaroth, the Archons and the Death Angels have been disputing for power. Many entities have vanished since, and the Illusion has been weakened. The game leaves a lot to the imagination of interpretive game masters regarding reasons for the Demiurge's disappearance as well as the earlier mentioned divinity of mankind.",
"title": "Setting"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The game concept relies on there being several realities that may appear when the Illusion shatters: Metropolis, the original city which interconnects with all great cities; Inferno and its purgatories, where humans are held captive and tortured after death; Gaia, which connects to nature and nature's destructive forces; The Underworld where strange people from lost worlds live in the depths close to infinity; and Limbo, the Dream World where Dream Princes create their kingdoms and dream wanderers explore tattered dreams close to Vortex (a place of chaos and creation).",
"title": "Realities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The original system is a skill-based system utilizing 20-sided dice (related to Chaosium's BRP system, which had already been used by Äventyrsspel for their Drakar och Demoner rpgs), with point-based characters. In the game, a natural 1 usually is great success with added bonuses and a natural 20 means a complete failure. Normal characters usually have skill ranges of 3 to 20; to succeed in a skill roll, the player needs to roll equal or below his character's skill. The lower the player rolls below the skill number, the greater the success. Extraordinary characters and inhuman entities can have skill values far above the normal range.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The recent edition KULT: Divinity Lost uses rules that are based on the Apocalypse World rules engine. You roll two ten-sided dice, add possible modifications, and try to reach at least 10 to avoid failure or 15 to gain a complete success. KULT: Divinity Lost also has a system where the Gamemaster builds the campaign around the Player Characters and aims to reach true personal horror.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "There are several different official rulesets for combat. The second and third English edition rules use a system based on Damage Effect Factors (DEF). The fourth edition, KULT: Divinity Lost, has less focus on combat than previous editions.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Sorcerers can cast spells from one (or rarely more) of five different Lores; Death, Dream, Madness, Passion and Time & Space. Because these spells have (very) long casting times (up to several days), highly specific and exacting verbal, material and somatic requirements, and can only be cast inside the sorcerer's consecrated temple, these spells are actually more like quasi-religious rituals. These rules evoke a superficial similarity to Hermetical traditions, possibly to heighten the modern real-world aspect of the game setting.",
"title": "Rules"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Early editions of the game use \"mental balance\" as a gauge of player characters' sanity. Both a high or low (+25/-25) mental balance affects how normal people and animals react to the character. Characters with an extremely high or low mental balance can transcend the Illusion and regain their lost divine status through Awakening. This occurs if mental balance reaches +500 or -500.",
"title": "Mental Balance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "A character's mental balance can move in a positive or negative direction due to trauma, influence from creatures or places, or by advantages and disadvantages from talents or traits, such as (on the positive side) animal friendship, artistic talent, body awareness, a code of honor, or (on the negative side) social ineptitude, addiction, paranoia, or a mystic curse. The further the character strays away from the zero point, the more sociopathic, strange or eccentric they become. Characters with a very high or very low mental balance start to involuntarily manifest outward physical signs.",
"title": "Mental Balance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In the fourth edition of Kult, the mental balance system was removed, as the developers found it impractical during gameplay. Instead, characters take on different archetypes in the path toward Awakening: The Sleeper, The Aware, and The Enlightened.",
"title": "Mental Balance"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Kult was originally published by the company Target Games in 1991 as a Swedish role-playing game, and has later been translated into several other languages. Kult has been published in Swedish, German, English, Italian, Spanish, Polish and French.",
"title": "Publication history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "American game company Metropolis Ltd. published the English-language game through three editions and new supplements, with a new US background and a revised page design and editing led by Terry K. Amthor. After leaving Iron Crown Enterprises full-time in 1992, Amthor co-founded Metropolis Ltd. to produce the English-language version of Kult. In 1992–1994, Amthor edited, co-authored and art-directed several books for the line.",
"title": "Publication history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The third English edition of Kult had two English books released in print form: a player's handbook named \"Kult Rumours\" in 2001 and the core rulebook, subtitled Beyond The Veil, printed in 2004. Both are out of print, though copies can be purchased through secondary and specialized markets.",
"title": "Publication history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The former publishers were 7ème Cercle (French) and Raven Distribution (Italian).",
"title": "Publication history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The license has been the property of first Target Games, then Paradox Entertainment, and, in 2015, Cabinet Holdings.",
"title": "Publication history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Currently, Kult is licensed by Helmgast.",
"title": "Current publishers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "A 2016 Kickstarter campaign funded a new edition of the game, entitled 'Kult: Divinity Lost'. This edition uses a different rules engine than previous editions, one based on Apocalypse World and its Powered by the Apocalypse rules engine. It updates the setting to answer the question “What would Kult had been like if it was released in 2016 instead of 1991?” The game was released in 2018.",
"title": "Current publishers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In 2017 Free League Publishing published Anders Fager's novel \"För Gudinnan\" (for the love of the goddess) set in the Kult universe. Fager has also written an audiolouge called \"Faraday\" set in the Kult adventure Tarroticum.",
"title": "Current publishers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In 2018 and 2020 Free League Publishing published two novels written by the original creators of Kult, Gunilla Jonsson and Michael Petersén. They are both set in the Kult universe called \"Döden är bara början\" (Death is only the beginning, 2018) and \"De levande döda\" (The living dead, 2020)",
"title": "Current publishers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Similar to the moral panic of Dungeons & Dragons in the United States in the 1980s, Kult figured in Swedish controversies of the 1990s. At the time of the game's initial publication, role-playing games in Sweden were still sold primarily through toy stores rather than bookstores or specialized hobby shops. Kult was noted by the general press several times during the decade after its initial publication, and in 1997 the Kult core rules were quoted in a motion in the Parliament of Sweden. The motion was to stop taxpayer funding of youth groups that were active with role-playing. It refers to the Bjuv Murder where a 15-year-old in a small town in southern Sweden called Bjuv was killed by two 16- and 17-year-old friends who (according to the legal motion) were influenced by Kult.",
"title": "Controversy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Writer Didi Örnstedt and painter Björn Sjöstedt wrote a book, De Övergivnas Armé (Army of the Abandoned), where they warn against the role-playing game hobby, with a particular focus on the game Kult. The title refers to children supposedly ignored by their parents and therefore susceptible to a projected radicalization of RPGs.",
"title": "Controversy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Critics of role-playing games have attempted to tie Kult to a 16-year-old Swedish boy who committed suicide by shotgun in November 1996.",
"title": "Controversy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The local newspaper Tønsbergs Blad in Tønsberg, Norway similarly used Kult in relation to the disappearance of a boy called Andreas Hammer on July 1, 1994. Andreas Hammer allegedly played Kult the week prior to his disappearance. He is still missing.",
"title": "Controversy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Jeff Koke reviewed Kult for Pyramid #3 (Sept./Oct., 1993), and stated that \"All in all, Kult is a very good system and background for roleplayers who are mature enough to delve into truly dark roleplaying. Even for those players who dislike being immersed in depressing, hopeless worlds, the background has enough tidbits of bleak imagery and morsels of horrific scenery that it's worth the cover price just to browse through the Metropolis.\"",
"title": "Reception"
}
] |
Kult is a contemporary horror role-playing game originally created by Gunilla Jonsson and Michael Petersén with illustrations by Nils Gulliksson, first published in Sweden by Äventyrsspel in 1991. Kult is notable for its philosophical and religious depth as well as for its mature and controversial content. The first English edition was published in 1993 by Metropolis Ltd. In 1995, 7ème Cercle translated the second Swedish edition into French. In 2018 current licensor Helmgast released the fourth edition called Kult: Divinity Lost created by Robin Liljenberg and Petter Nallo. This edition moved the setting from the then-current 1990s to the now-current 2010s and was completely rewritten with new art, layout and a ruleset based on Powered by the Apocalypse. The new edition was well received by critics and fans and won two Ennies for Best Writing and Best Cover 2019, and was also nominated for Best Interior Art.
|
2001-10-19T04:27:58Z
|
2023-12-05T13:51:47Z
|
[
"Template:In lang",
"Template:Infobox RPG",
"Template:Unreferenced section",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Citation",
"Template:Cbignore",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Italic title",
"Template:Expand section",
"Template:ISBN",
"Template:Powered by the Apocalypse games"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kult_(role-playing_game)
|
16,790 |
Carl Friedrich Abel
|
Carl Friedrich Abel (22 December 1723 – 20 June 1787) was a German composer of the pre-Classical era. He was a renowned player of the viola da gamba, and produced significant compositions for that instrument. He was director of music at the Dresden court from 1743, and moved to London in 1759, becoming chamber-musician to Queen Charlotte in 1764. He founded a subscription concert series there with Johann Christian Bach. According to the Catalogue of Works of Carl Friedrich Abel (AbelWV), he left 420 compositions, with a focus on chamber music.
Abel was born in Köthen, where his father, Christian Ferdinand Abel, had worked for years as the principal viola da gamba and cello player in the court orchestra of the prince of Anhalt-Köthen. In 1723 Abel senior became director of the orchestra, when the previous director, Johann Sebastian Bach, moved to Leipzig. The young Abel later boarded at St. Thomas School, Leipzig, where he was taught by Bach.
On Bach's recommendation in 1743 he was able to join Johann Adolph Hasse's orchestra at the Dresden court, where he remained for fifteen years. In 1759 (or 1758 according to Chambers), he went to England and became chamber-musician to Queen Charlotte, in 1764. He gave a concert of his own compositions in London, performing on various instruments, one of which was a five-string cello known as a pentachord, which had been recently invented by John Joseph Merlin.
In 1762, Johann Christian Bach, a son of J. S. Bach, joined him in London, and the friendship between him and Abel led, in 1764 or 1765, to the establishment of the famous Bach-Abel concerts, England's first subscription concerts. In those concerts, many celebrated guest artists appeared, and many works of Haydn received their first English performance.
For ten years the concerts were organized by Teresa Cornelys, a retired Venetian opera singer who owned a concert hall at Carlisle House in Soho Square, then the height of fashionable events. In 1775 the concerts became independent of her, to be continued by Abel and Bach until Bach's death in 1782. Abel still remained in great demand as a player on various instruments new and old. He traveled to Germany and France between 1782 and 1785, and upon his return to London, became a leading member of the Grand Professional Concerts at the Hanover Square Rooms in Soho. Throughout his life he had enjoyed excessive living, and his drinking probably hastened his death.
Abel died in London on 20 June 1787. He was buried in the churchyard of St Pancras Old Church.
One of Abel's works became famous due to a misattribution: in the 19th century, a manuscript symphony in the hand of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was catalogued as his Symphony No. 3 in E flat, K. 18, and was published as such in the first complete edition of Mozart's works by Breitkopf & Härtel. Later, it was discovered that this symphony was actually the work of Abel, copied by the boy Mozart, evidently for study purposes, while he was visiting London in 1764. That symphony was originally published as the concluding work in Abel's Six Symphonies, Op. 7.
A first catalogue of Abel's works was published in 1971 by Walter Knape [de], Abel-Werkverzeichnis, with 233 work numbers.
In 2015 new manuscripts of Abel's viola da gamba music were found in the library of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, in a collection from the Maltzahn family palace in the town of Milicz in Poland, originally brought back from London by Count Joachim Carl of Maltzan [de]. Many of them were published by Edition Güntersberg.
A new catalogue, of now 420 works, was published by Ortus Musikverlag in 2023, Catalogue of Works of Carl Friedrich Abel or AbelWV, edited by Günter von Zadow. It takes into account many newly discovered works, and additional sources for known works.
As Abel was born in 1723, the city of Köthen announced an international festival around his music on four days in June 2023, held at historic locations including the palace and its gardens. It was initiated by gambist and musicologist Thomas Fritzsch. The city also created a biennial Abel Prize. The first recipients in 2023 were Leonore von Zadow-Reichling and Günter von Zadow of Edition Güntersberg, for their efforts to retrieve and publish Abel's works. They published more than 150 of the composer's works, many of them as first publications.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Carl Friedrich Abel (22 December 1723 – 20 June 1787) was a German composer of the pre-Classical era. He was a renowned player of the viola da gamba, and produced significant compositions for that instrument. He was director of music at the Dresden court from 1743, and moved to London in 1759, becoming chamber-musician to Queen Charlotte in 1764. He founded a subscription concert series there with Johann Christian Bach. According to the Catalogue of Works of Carl Friedrich Abel (AbelWV), he left 420 compositions, with a focus on chamber music.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Abel was born in Köthen, where his father, Christian Ferdinand Abel, had worked for years as the principal viola da gamba and cello player in the court orchestra of the prince of Anhalt-Köthen. In 1723 Abel senior became director of the orchestra, when the previous director, Johann Sebastian Bach, moved to Leipzig. The young Abel later boarded at St. Thomas School, Leipzig, where he was taught by Bach.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "On Bach's recommendation in 1743 he was able to join Johann Adolph Hasse's orchestra at the Dresden court, where he remained for fifteen years. In 1759 (or 1758 according to Chambers), he went to England and became chamber-musician to Queen Charlotte, in 1764. He gave a concert of his own compositions in London, performing on various instruments, one of which was a five-string cello known as a pentachord, which had been recently invented by John Joseph Merlin.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In 1762, Johann Christian Bach, a son of J. S. Bach, joined him in London, and the friendship between him and Abel led, in 1764 or 1765, to the establishment of the famous Bach-Abel concerts, England's first subscription concerts. In those concerts, many celebrated guest artists appeared, and many works of Haydn received their first English performance.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "For ten years the concerts were organized by Teresa Cornelys, a retired Venetian opera singer who owned a concert hall at Carlisle House in Soho Square, then the height of fashionable events. In 1775 the concerts became independent of her, to be continued by Abel and Bach until Bach's death in 1782. Abel still remained in great demand as a player on various instruments new and old. He traveled to Germany and France between 1782 and 1785, and upon his return to London, became a leading member of the Grand Professional Concerts at the Hanover Square Rooms in Soho. Throughout his life he had enjoyed excessive living, and his drinking probably hastened his death.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Abel died in London on 20 June 1787. He was buried in the churchyard of St Pancras Old Church.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "One of Abel's works became famous due to a misattribution: in the 19th century, a manuscript symphony in the hand of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was catalogued as his Symphony No. 3 in E flat, K. 18, and was published as such in the first complete edition of Mozart's works by Breitkopf & Härtel. Later, it was discovered that this symphony was actually the work of Abel, copied by the boy Mozart, evidently for study purposes, while he was visiting London in 1764. That symphony was originally published as the concluding work in Abel's Six Symphonies, Op. 7.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "A first catalogue of Abel's works was published in 1971 by Walter Knape [de], Abel-Werkverzeichnis, with 233 work numbers.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In 2015 new manuscripts of Abel's viola da gamba music were found in the library of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, in a collection from the Maltzahn family palace in the town of Milicz in Poland, originally brought back from London by Count Joachim Carl of Maltzan [de]. Many of them were published by Edition Güntersberg.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "A new catalogue, of now 420 works, was published by Ortus Musikverlag in 2023, Catalogue of Works of Carl Friedrich Abel or AbelWV, edited by Günter von Zadow. It takes into account many newly discovered works, and additional sources for known works.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "As Abel was born in 1723, the city of Köthen announced an international festival around his music on four days in June 2023, held at historic locations including the palace and its gardens. It was initiated by gambist and musicologist Thomas Fritzsch. The city also created a biennial Abel Prize. The first recipients in 2023 were Leonore von Zadow-Reichling and Günter von Zadow of Edition Güntersberg, for their efforts to retrieve and publish Abel's works. They published more than 150 of the composer's works, many of them as first publications.",
"title": "Abel Fest"
}
] |
Carl Friedrich Abel was a German composer of the pre-Classical era. He was a renowned player of the viola da gamba, and produced significant compositions for that instrument. He was director of music at the Dresden court from 1743, and moved to London in 1759, becoming chamber-musician to Queen Charlotte in 1764. He founded a subscription concert series there with Johann Christian Bach. According to the Catalogue of Works of Carl Friedrich Abel (AbelWV), he left 420 compositions, with a focus on chamber music.
|
2001-10-19T01:41:50Z
|
2023-12-23T00:01:51Z
|
[
"Template:Notelist",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite encyclopedia",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Cite EB1911",
"Template:IMSLP",
"Template:Efn",
"Template:Circa",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Commons category",
"Template:Classical period (music)",
"Template:Portal bar",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Infobox person",
"Template:Rp",
"Template:ISBN",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Listen",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:NPG name",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Ill"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Abel
|
16,791 |
Kista
|
Kista (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈɕǐːsta]) is a district in the borough of Rinkeby-Kista, Stockholm, Sweden. It has a strategic position located in between Sweden's main airport, the Stockholm-Arlanda International Airport and central Stockholm, and alongside the main national highway E4 economic artery. Kista comprises residential and commercial areas, the latter in the highly technological telecommunication and information technology industry. There are large research efforts in this entire area, which therefore is dubbed Kista Science City. It is the research park of KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
Kista is the largest Information and Communications Technology (ICT) cluster in Europe, and was ranked the world's second largest cluster after Silicon Valley in California during the internet boom of 2000. It is the largest corporate area in Sweden, important to the national economy due to the presence of, among others, Ericsson, one of the largest corporations in Sweden.
Kista Science City is the location where a large portion of the research and development of the world's 4G LTE mobile telephony infrastructure is being developed, a European ETSI standard used worldwide and Kista Science City has been the largest such cluster in Europe for decades. A majority is done at Ericsson corporation, with 100,000 employees worldwide, but with its research and worldwide headquarters in the Kista Science City.
Kista was named after an old farm "Kista Gård", still located in the area. The construction of the modern parts were started in the 1970s. Most of the streets in Kista are named after towns and places in Denmark, Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands. Before the opening of the Mall of Scandinavia, Kista Galleria was the biggest shopping center in the Stockholm region. Because of its ICT industries, it became in the 1980s referred to as "Chipsta" and, after Sweden joined the EU in 1995, also as Europe's "Silicon Valley".
Kista is the largest corporate area in Sweden and important to the national economy. The construction of the industrial section of Kista began in the 1970s with companies such as SRA (Svenska Radioaktiebolaget, now a part of Ericsson), RIFA AB (later Ericsson Components AB, and later still Ericsson Microelectronics AB, and now Infineon Technologies), and IBM Svenska AB (the Swedish branch of IBM). Ericsson has had its headquarters in Kista since 2003.
Kista hosts entire departments of both KTH Royal Institute of Technology, such as Wireless@KTH, and Stockholm University (formerly jointly known as "the IT University").
There are also Swedish national research institutes (pure research, no students) such as the Swedish Institute of Computer Science and Swedish Defence Research Agency, FOI who has its headquarters there, just as Ericsson, Swedish IBM and Tele 2, among others has.
Also the Swedish Co-location Centre of EU innovation and entrepreneurial education organisation EIT Digital is located in Kista and offers a 2-year Master program in collaboration with KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
59°24′05″N 17°56′40″E / 59.40139°N 17.94444°E / 59.40139; 17.94444
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Kista (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈɕǐːsta]) is a district in the borough of Rinkeby-Kista, Stockholm, Sweden. It has a strategic position located in between Sweden's main airport, the Stockholm-Arlanda International Airport and central Stockholm, and alongside the main national highway E4 economic artery. Kista comprises residential and commercial areas, the latter in the highly technological telecommunication and information technology industry. There are large research efforts in this entire area, which therefore is dubbed Kista Science City. It is the research park of KTH Royal Institute of Technology.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Kista is the largest Information and Communications Technology (ICT) cluster in Europe, and was ranked the world's second largest cluster after Silicon Valley in California during the internet boom of 2000. It is the largest corporate area in Sweden, important to the national economy due to the presence of, among others, Ericsson, one of the largest corporations in Sweden.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Kista Science City is the location where a large portion of the research and development of the world's 4G LTE mobile telephony infrastructure is being developed, a European ETSI standard used worldwide and Kista Science City has been the largest such cluster in Europe for decades. A majority is done at Ericsson corporation, with 100,000 employees worldwide, but with its research and worldwide headquarters in the Kista Science City.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Kista was named after an old farm \"Kista Gård\", still located in the area. The construction of the modern parts were started in the 1970s. Most of the streets in Kista are named after towns and places in Denmark, Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands. Before the opening of the Mall of Scandinavia, Kista Galleria was the biggest shopping center in the Stockholm region. Because of its ICT industries, it became in the 1980s referred to as \"Chipsta\" and, after Sweden joined the EU in 1995, also as Europe's \"Silicon Valley\".",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Kista is the largest corporate area in Sweden and important to the national economy. The construction of the industrial section of Kista began in the 1970s with companies such as SRA (Svenska Radioaktiebolaget, now a part of Ericsson), RIFA AB (later Ericsson Components AB, and later still Ericsson Microelectronics AB, and now Infineon Technologies), and IBM Svenska AB (the Swedish branch of IBM). Ericsson has had its headquarters in Kista since 2003.",
"title": "Economy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Kista hosts entire departments of both KTH Royal Institute of Technology, such as Wireless@KTH, and Stockholm University (formerly jointly known as \"the IT University\").",
"title": "Research and higher learning"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "There are also Swedish national research institutes (pure research, no students) such as the Swedish Institute of Computer Science and Swedish Defence Research Agency, FOI who has its headquarters there, just as Ericsson, Swedish IBM and Tele 2, among others has.",
"title": "Research and higher learning"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Also the Swedish Co-location Centre of EU innovation and entrepreneurial education organisation EIT Digital is located in Kista and offers a 2-year Master program in collaboration with KTH Royal Institute of Technology.",
"title": "Research and higher learning"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "59°24′05″N 17°56′40″E / 59.40139°N 17.94444°E / 59.40139; 17.94444",
"title": "External links"
}
] |
Kista is a district in the borough of Rinkeby-Kista, Stockholm, Sweden. It has a strategic position located in between Sweden's main airport, the Stockholm-Arlanda International Airport and central Stockholm, and alongside the main national highway E4 economic artery. Kista comprises residential and commercial areas, the latter in the highly technological telecommunication and information technology industry. There are large research efforts in this entire area, which therefore is dubbed Kista Science City. It is the research park of KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Kista is the largest Information and Communications Technology (ICT) cluster in Europe, and was ranked the world's second largest cluster after Silicon Valley in California during the internet boom of 2000. It is the largest corporate area in Sweden, important to the national economy due to the presence of, among others, Ericsson, one of the largest corporations in Sweden. Kista Science City is the location where a large portion of the research and development of the world's 4G LTE mobile telephony infrastructure is being developed, a European ETSI standard used worldwide and Kista Science City has been the largest such cluster in Europe for decades. A majority is done at Ericsson corporation, with 100,000 employees worldwide, but with its research and worldwide headquarters in the Kista Science City. Kista was named after an old farm "Kista Gård", still located in the area. The construction of the modern parts were started in the 1970s. Most of the streets in Kista are named after towns and places in Denmark, Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands. Before the opening of the Mall of Scandinavia, Kista Galleria was the biggest shopping center in the Stockholm region. Because of its ICT industries, it became in the 1980s referred to as "Chipsta" and, after Sweden joined the EU in 1995, also as Europe's "Silicon Valley".
|
2001-08-19T20:06:39Z
|
2023-10-29T04:17:39Z
|
[
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Coord",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:About",
"Template:IPA-sv",
"Template:When",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Gallery",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Commons category",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Attached KML"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kista
|
16,792 |
Klondike, Yukon
|
The Klondike (/ˈklɒndaɪk/; from Hän Tr'ondëk 'hammerstone water') is a region of the territory of Yukon, in northwestern Canada. It lies around the Klondike River, a small river that enters the Yukon River from the east at Dawson City.
The area is merely an informal geographic region, and has no function to the territory as any kind of administrative region. It is located in the traditional territory of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation.
The Klondike is famed due to the Klondike Gold Rush, which started in 1896 and lasted until 1899. Gold has been mined continuously in that area, except for a pause in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The climate is warm in the short summer, and very cold during the long winter. By late October, ice forms over the rivers. For the majority of the year, the ground is frozen to a depth of 1 to 3 metres (3 to 10 ft).
Klondike is a district of the Legislative Assembly of Yukon. The former Premier of the Yukon, Liberal Sandy Silver, represents the electoral district of Klondike.
In mid-1901 an expedition left California hoping to prove that the Klondike was the site of the Biblical Garden of Eden. It was sponsored ($50,000) by Mr Morris K. Jessup; with an American naturalist (Norman Buxton) and two Russian scientists (Waldemar Bogaras and Waldemar Jochelson).
In 2023, the cultural landscape of the Tr’ondëk-Klondike was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, described as follows:
Located along the Yukon River in the sub-arctic region of Northwest Canada, Tr’ondëk-Klondike lies within the homeland of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation. It contains archaeological and historic sources that reflect Indigenous people’s adaptation to unprecedented changes caused by the Klondike Gold Rush at the end of the 19th century. The series illustrates different aspects of the colonization of this area, including sites of exchange between the Indigenous population and the colonists, and sites demonstrating the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in’s adaptations to colonial presence.
The site contains eight subsites:
64°3′45″N 139°25′50″W / 64.06250°N 139.43056°W / 64.06250; -139.43056
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Klondike (/ˈklɒndaɪk/; from Hän Tr'ondëk 'hammerstone water') is a region of the territory of Yukon, in northwestern Canada. It lies around the Klondike River, a small river that enters the Yukon River from the east at Dawson City.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The area is merely an informal geographic region, and has no function to the territory as any kind of administrative region. It is located in the traditional territory of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The Klondike is famed due to the Klondike Gold Rush, which started in 1896 and lasted until 1899. Gold has been mined continuously in that area, except for a pause in the late 1960s and early 1970s.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The climate is warm in the short summer, and very cold during the long winter. By late October, ice forms over the rivers. For the majority of the year, the ground is frozen to a depth of 1 to 3 metres (3 to 10 ft).",
"title": "Climate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Klondike is a district of the Legislative Assembly of Yukon. The former Premier of the Yukon, Liberal Sandy Silver, represents the electoral district of Klondike.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In mid-1901 an expedition left California hoping to prove that the Klondike was the site of the Biblical Garden of Eden. It was sponsored ($50,000) by Mr Morris K. Jessup; with an American naturalist (Norman Buxton) and two Russian scientists (Waldemar Bogaras and Waldemar Jochelson).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In 2023, the cultural landscape of the Tr’ondëk-Klondike was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, described as follows:",
"title": "Tr’ondëk-Klondike World Heritage Site"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Located along the Yukon River in the sub-arctic region of Northwest Canada, Tr’ondëk-Klondike lies within the homeland of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation. It contains archaeological and historic sources that reflect Indigenous people’s adaptation to unprecedented changes caused by the Klondike Gold Rush at the end of the 19th century. The series illustrates different aspects of the colonization of this area, including sites of exchange between the Indigenous population and the colonists, and sites demonstrating the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in’s adaptations to colonial presence.",
"title": "Tr’ondëk-Klondike World Heritage Site"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The site contains eight subsites:",
"title": "Tr’ondëk-Klondike World Heritage Site"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "64°3′45″N 139°25′50″W / 64.06250°N 139.43056°W / 64.06250; -139.43056",
"title": "References"
}
] |
The Klondike is a region of the territory of Yukon, in northwestern Canada. It lies around the Klondike River, a small river that enters the Yukon River from the east at Dawson City. The area is merely an informal geographic region, and has no function to the territory as any kind of administrative region. It is located in the traditional territory of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation. The Klondike is famed due to the Klondike Gold Rush, which started in 1896 and lasted until 1899. Gold has been mined continuously in that area, except for a pause in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
|
2001-08-20T19:50:14Z
|
2023-12-31T05:09:22Z
|
[
"Template:Subdivisions of Yukon",
"Template:IPAc-en",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Blockquote",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Coord",
"Template:Convert",
"Template:Expand section",
"Template:Cite Collier's",
"Template:Infobox UNESCO World Heritage Site",
"Template:Yukon-geo-stub",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Etymology",
"Template:See also"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klondike,_Yukon
|
16,793 |
Korean cuisine
|
Korean cuisine has evolved through centuries of social and political change. Originating from ancient agricultural and nomadic traditions in Korea and southern Manchuria, Korean cuisine reflects a complex interaction of the natural environment and different cultural trends.
Korean cuisine is largely based on rice, vegetables, seafood and (at least in South Korea) meats. Dairy is largely absent from the traditional Korean diet. Traditional Korean meals are named for the number of side dishes (반찬; 飯饌; banchan) that accompany steam-cooked short-grain rice. Kimchi is served at nearly every meal. Commonly used ingredients include sesame oil, doenjang (fermented bean paste), soy sauce, salt, garlic, ginger, gochugaru (pepper flakes), gochujang (fermented red chili paste) and napa cabbage.
Ingredients and dishes vary by province. Many regional dishes have become national. Korean royal court cuisine once brought all of the unique regional specialties together for the royal family. Foods are regulated by Korean cultural etiquette.
In the Jeulmun pottery period (approximately 8000 to 1500 BCE), hunter-gatherer societies engaged in fishing and hunting, and incipient agriculture in the later stages. Since the beginning of the Mumun pottery period (1500 BCE), agricultural traditions began to develop with new migrant groups from the Liao River basin of Manchuria. During the Mumun period, people grew millet, barley, wheat, legumes and rice, and continued to hunt and fish. Archaeological remains point to development of fermented beans during this period, and cultural contact with nomadic cultures to the north facilitated domestication of animals.
The Three Kingdoms period (57 BCE – 668 CE) was one of rapid cultural evolution. The kingdom of Goguryeo (37 BCE – 668 CE) was located in the northern part of the peninsula along much of modern-day Manchuria. The second kingdom, Baekje (18 BCE – 660 CE), was in the southwestern portion of the peninsula, and the third, Silla (57 BCE – 935 CE), was located at the southeastern portion of the peninsula. Each region had its own distinct set of cultural practices and foods. For example, Baekje was known for cold foods and fermented foods like kimchi. The spread of Buddhism and Confucianism through cultural exchanges with China during the fourth century CE began to change the distinct cultures of Korea.
Attributed with the earliest kimchi, the Goguryeo people were skilled at fermenting and widely consumed fermented food.
During the latter Goryeo period, the Mongols invaded Goryeo in the 13th century. Some traditional foods found today in Korea have their origins during this period. The dumpling dish, mandu, grilled meat dishes, noodle dishes, and the use of seasonings such as black pepper, all have their roots in this period.
Agricultural innovations were significant and widespread during this period, such as the invention of the rain gauge during the 15th century. During 1429, the government began publishing books on agriculture and farming techniques, which included Nongsa jikseol (literally "Straight Talk on Farming"), an agricultural book compiled under King Sejong.
A series of invasions in the earlier half of the Joseon caused a dynamic shift in the culture during the second half of the period. Groups of silhak ("practical learning") scholars began to emphasize the importance of looking outside the country for innovation and technology to help improve the agricultural systems. Crops traded by Europeans from the New World began to appear, acquired through trade with China, Japan, Europe, and the Philippines; these crops included maize, sweet potatoes, chili peppers, tomatoes, peanuts, and squash. Potatoes and sweet potatoes were particularly favored as they grew in soils and on terrains that were previously unused.
Government further developed agriculture through technology and lower taxation. Complex irrigation systems built by government allowed peasant farmers to produce larger crop volumes and produce crops not only for sustenance but also as cash crops. Reduced taxation of the peasantry also furthered the expanded commerce through increasing periodic markets, usually held every five days. One thousand such markets existed in the 19th century, and were communal centers for economic trade and entertainment.
The end of the Joseon period was marked by consistent encouragement to trade with the Western world, China and Japan. In the 1860s, trade agreements pushed by the Japanese government led the Joseon dynasty to open its trade ports with the west, and to numerous treaties with the United States, Britain, France, and other Western countries.
The opening of Korea to the Western world brought further exchange of culture and food. Western missionaries introduced new ingredients and dishes to Korea. Joseon elites were introduced to these new foods by way of foreigners who attended the royal court as advisers or physicians. This period also saw the introduction of various seasonings imported from Japan via western traders and alcoholic drinks from China.
Japan occupied the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945. Many of its agricultural systems were taken over by the Japanese to support Japan's food supply. Land changes resulting from the Japanese occupation included combining small farms into large-scale farms, which led to larger yields. Rice production increased during this period to support the Japanese Empire's war efforts. Many Koreans, in turn, increased the production of other grains for their own consumption.
Meals during the Japanese occupation were quite varied. Koreans usually ate two meals a day during the cold seasons, and three during the warm seasons. For the lower classes, satiety, rather than quality, was most important. Those in even lower economic levels were likely to enjoy only a single bowl of white rice each year, while the remainder of the year was filled with cheaper grains, such as millet and barley. For the Korean middle and upper classes during the occupation, things were quite different. Western foods began emerging in the Korean diet, such as white bread and commercially produced staples such as precooked noodles. The Japanese occupational period ended after the defeat of Japan during World War II.
The country remained in a state of turmoil through the Korean War (1950–1953) and the Cold War, which separated the country into North Korea and South Korea. Both of these periods continued the limited food provisions for Koreans, and the stew called budae jjigae, which makes use of inexpensive meats such as sausage and Spam, originated during this period.
At this point, the history of North and South Korea sharply diverged. In the 1960s under President Park Chung Hee, industrialization began to give South Korea the economic and cultural power it holds in the global economy today. Agriculture was increased through use of commercial fertilizers and modern farming equipment. In the 1970s, food shortages began to lessen. Consumption of instant and processed foods increased, as did the overall quality of foods. Livestock and dairy production was increased during the 1970s through the increase of commercial dairies and mechanized farms. The consumption of pork and beef increased vastly in the 1970s. Per-capita consumption of meat was 3.6 kg in 1961 and 11 kg by 1979. The result of this increased meat consumption brought about the rise of bulgogi restaurants, which gave the middle class of South Korea the ability to enjoy meat regularly. Meat eating continued to rise, reaching 40 kg in 1997, with fish consumption at 49.5 kg in 1998. Rice consumption continually decreased through these years, from 128 kg consumed per person in 1985 to 106 kg in 1995 and 83 kg in 2003. The decrease in rice consumption has been accompanied by an increase in the consumption of bread and noodles. In 2009, the South Korean government launched a $77-million culinary diplomacy program called "Korean Cuisine to the World" to promote its cuisine and subsequently pivoted into the markets in the United States and Muslim countries.
Grains have been one of the most important staples of the Korean diet. Early myths of the foundations of various kingdoms in Korea center on grains. One foundation myth relates to Jumong, who received barley seeds from two doves sent by his mother after establishing the kingdom of Goguryeo. Yet another myth speaks of the three founding deities of Jeju Island, who were to be wed to the three princesses of Tamna; the deities brought seeds of five grains which were the first seeds planted, which in turn became the first instance of farming.
During the pre-modern era, grains such as barley and millet were the main staples. They were supplemented by wheat, sorghum, and buckwheat. Rice is not an indigenous crop to Korea and millet was likely the preferred grain before rice was cultivated. Rice became the grain of choice during the Three Kingdoms period, particularly in the Silla and Baekje Kingdoms in the southern regions of the peninsula. Rice was such an important commodity in Silla that it was used to pay taxes. The Sino-Korean word for "tax" is a compound character that uses the character for the rice plant. The preference for rice escalated into the Joseon period, when new methods of cultivation and new varieties emerged that would help increase production.
As rice was prohibitively expensive when it first came to Korea, the grain was likely mixed with other grains to "stretch" the rice; this is still done in dishes such as boribap (rice with barley) and kongbap (rice with beans). White rice, which is rice with the bran removed, has been the preferred form of rice since its introduction into the cuisine. The most traditional method of cooking the rice has been to cook it in an iron pot called a sot (솥) or musoe sot (무쇠솥). This method of rice cookery dates back to at least the Goryeo period, and these pots have even been found in tombs from the Silla period. The sot is still used today, much in the same manner as it was in the past centuries.
Rice is used to make a number of items, outside of the traditional bowl of plain white rice. It is commonly ground into a flour and used to make rice cakes called tteok in over two hundred varieties. It is also cooked down into a congee (juk) or gruel (mieum) and mixed with other grains, meat, or seafood. Koreans also produce a number of rice wines, both in filtered and unfiltered versions. Grains have also been used for centuries to make misu and misu-garu, drinks made from grain powder that are sometimes used as meal supplements.
Encompassing a wide range of temperate climates, the Korean peninsula supports the growth of many cultivated and wild fruit species. Asian pears of numerous varieties, apples, melons and berries and more are typical of summer and fall produce.
Legumes have been significant crops in Korean history and cuisine, according to the earliest preserved legumes found in archaeological sites in Korea. The excavation at Okbang site, Jinju, South Gyeongsang province indicates soybeans were cultivated as a food crop circa 1000–900 BCE. They are still made into dubu (tofu), while soybean sprouts are sauteed as a vegetable (kongnamul) and whole soybeans are seasoned and served as a side dish. They are also made into soy milk, which is used as the base for the noodle dish called kongguksu. A byproduct of soy milk production is biji or kong-biji, which is used to thicken stews and porridges. Soybeans may also be one of the beans in kongbap, boiled together with several types of beans and other grains, and they are also the primary ingredient in the production of fermented condiments collectively referred to as jang, such as soybean pastes, doenjang and cheonggukjang, a soy sauce called ganjang, chili pepper paste or gochujang and others.
Nokdu (Mung bean) is commonly used in Korean cuisine. Sukju namuls (Mung bean sprouts) are often served as a side dish, blanched and sautéed with sesame oil, garlic, and salt. Ground Nokdu is used to make a porridge called nokdujuk, which is eaten as a nutritional supplement and digestive aid, especially for ill patients. A popular snack, bindaetteok (mung bean pancake), is made with ground nokdu and fresh sukju namul. Starch extracted from ground nokdu is used to make transparent dangmyeon ( cellophane noodles). The dangmyeons are the main ingredients for japchae (a salad-like dish) and sundae (a blood sausage), and are a subsidiary ingredient for soups and stews. The starch can be also used to make jelly-like foods, such as nokdumuk and hwangpomuk. The muk have a bland flavor, so are served seasoned with soy sauce, sesame oil and crumbled seaweed or other seasonings such as tangpyeongchae.
Cultivation of azuki beans dates back to ancient times according to an excavation from Odong-ri, Hoeryong, North Hamgyong Province, which is assumed to be that of Mumun period (approximately 1500–300 BCE). Azuki beans are generally eaten as patbap, which is a bowl of rice mixed with the beans, or as a filling and covering for tteok (rice cake) and breads. A porridge made with azuki beans, called patjuk, is commonly eaten during the winter season. On Dongjinal, a Korean traditional holiday which falls on December 22, Korean people eat donji patjuk, which contains saealsim (새알심), a ball made from glutinous rice flour. In old Korean tradition, patjuk is believed to have the power to drive evil spirits away.
Condiments are divided into fermented and nonfermented variants. Fermented condiments include ganjang, doenjang, gochujang and vinegars. Nonfermented condiments or spices include red pepper, black pepper, cordifolia, mustard, chinensis, garlic, onion, ginger, leek, and scallion (spring onion).
Gochujang can be found in many writings. Some of the writings are the Mangi Yoram, The Three States, the Nonggawolryeongga, the Gijaejapgi, and the Hyangyak-jipsongbang. The Hyangyak-jipseongbang, which dates back to around 1433 during the Chosun dynasty, is one of the oldest writings mentioning gochujang.
Gochujang is a fermented bean paste that has red pepper powder, soybean powder and rice flour added to it to create a spicy paste. It typically can be added to most dishes. Gochujang can be used as a seasoning and sometimes as a dipping sauce.
Many variations come from jang, fermented bean paste. Some variations can include doenjang (soybean and brine), kanjang (soybeans, water, and salt), chogochujang (gochujang and vinegar), and jeotgal (mixture of other jangs and seafoods).
Vegetables such as cucumbers, carrots, and cabbage use gochujang as a dip. Gochujang is a common seasoning for foods such as Korean barbecue including pork and beef. One popular snack food that is very commonly eaten with gochujang is bibimbap. Bibimbap includes rice, spinach, radish, bean sprouts. Sometimes beef is added to bibimbap. Another popular dish including gochujang is tteokbokki.
Gochujang was believed to revitalize people who were sick with colds or exhaustion during the Gio period. There have been some studies that show that red peppers fight obesity and diabetes. Gochujang is also added to many foods so that there can be additional nutritional value with each meal.
In antiquity, most meat in Korea was likely obtained through hunting and fishing. Ancient records indicate rearing of livestock began on a small scale during the Three Kingdoms period. Meat was consumed roasted or in soups or stews during this period. Those who lived closer to the oceans were able to complement their diet with more fish, while those who lived in the interior had a diet containing more meat.
Beef is the most prized of all, with the cattle holding an important cultural role in the Korean home. Beef is prepared in numerous ways today, including roasting, grilling (gui) or boiling in soups. Beef can also be dried into yukpo, a type of po, as with seafood, called eopo.
The cattle were valuable draught animals, often seen as equal to human servants, or in some cases, members of the family. Cattle were also given their own holiday during the first 'cow' day of the lunar New Year. The importance of cattle does not suggest Koreans ate an abundance of beef, however, as the cattle were valued as beasts of burden and slaughtering one would create dire issues in farming the land. Pork and seafood were consumed more regularly for this reason. The Buddhist ruling class of the Goryeo period forbade the consumption of beef. The Mongols dispensed with the ban of beef during the 13th century, and they promoted the production of beef cattle. This increased production continued into the Joseon period, when the government encouraged both increased quantities and quality of beef. Only in the latter part of the 20th century has beef become regular table fare.
Chicken has played an important role as a protein in Korean history, evidenced by a number of myths. One myth tells of the birth of Kim Alji, founder of the Kim family of Gyeongju being announced by the cry of a white chicken. As the birth of a clan's founder is always announced by an animal with preternatural qualities, this myth speaks to the importance of chicken in Korean culture. Chicken is often served roasted or braised with vegetables or in soups. All parts of the chicken are used in Korean cuisine, including the gizzard, liver, and feet. Young chickens are braised with ginseng and other ingredients in medicinal soups eaten during the summer months to combat heat called samgyetang. The feet of the chicken, called dakbal (닭발), are often roasted and covered with hot and spicy gochujang-based sauce and served as an anju, or side dish, to accompany alcoholic beverages, especially soju.
Pork has also been another important land-based protein for Korea. Records indicate pork has been a part of the Korean diet back to antiquity, similar to beef.
A number of foods have been avoided while eating pork, including Chinese bellflower (doraji, 도라지) and lotus root (yeonn ppuri, 연뿌리), as the combinations have been thought to cause diarrhea. All parts of the pig are used in Korean cuisine, including the head, intestines, liver, kidney and other internal organs. Koreans utilize these parts in a variety of cooking methods including steaming, stewing, boiling and smoking. Koreans especially like to eat grilled pork belly, which is called samgyeopsal (삼겹살, 三--).
Fish and shellfish have been a major part of Korean cuisine because of the oceans bordering the peninsula. Evidence from the 12th century illustrates commoners consumed a diet mostly of fish and shellfish, such as shrimp, clams, oysters, abalone, and loach, while sheep and hogs were reserved for the upper class.
Both fresh and saltwater fish are popular, and are served raw, grilled, broiled, dried or served in soups and stews. Common grilled fish include mackerel, hairtail, croaker and Pacific herring. Smaller fish, shrimp, squid, mollusks and countless other seafood can be salted and fermented as jeotgal. Fish can also be grilled either whole or in fillets as banchan. Fish is often dried naturally to prolong storing periods and enable shipping over long distances. Fish commonly dried include yellow corvina, anchovies (myeolchi) and croaker. Dried anchovies, along with kelp, form the basis of common soup stocks.
Shellfish is widely eaten in all different types of preparation. They can be used to prepare broth, eaten raw with chogochujang, which is a mixture of gochujang and vinegar, or used as a popular ingredient in countless dishes. Raw oysters and other seafood can be used in making kimchi to improve and vary the flavor. Salted baby shrimp are used as a seasoning agent, known as saeujeot, for the preparation of some types of kimchi. Large shrimp are often grilled as daeha gui (대하구이) or dried, mixed with vegetables and served with rice. Mollusks eaten in Korean cuisine include octopus, cuttlefish, and squid.
Korean cuisine uses a wide variety of vegetables, which are often served uncooked, either in salads or pickles, as well as cooked in various stews, stir-fried dishes, and other hot dishes. Commonly used vegetables include Korean radish, napa cabbage, cucumber, potato, sweet potato, spinach, bean sprouts, scallions, garlic, chili peppers, seaweed, zucchini, mushrooms, lotus root. Several types of wild greens, known collectively as chwinamul (such as Aster scaber), are a popular dish, and other wild vegetables such as bracken fern shoots (gosari) or Korean bellflower root (doraji) are also harvested and eaten in season. Traditional medicinal herbs in Korean cuisine, such as ginseng, lingzhi mushroom, wolfberry, Codonopsis pilosula, and Angelica sinensis, are often used as ingredients in cooking, as in samgyetang.
Medicinal food (boyangshik) is a wide variety of specialty foods prepared and eaten for their purported medicinal purposes, especially during the hottest 30-day period in the lunar calendar, called sambok. Hot foods consumed are believed to restore ki, as well as sexual and physical stamina lost in the summer heat. Commonly eaten boyangshik include ginseng, chicken, black goat, abalone, eel, carp, beef bone soups, pig kidneys and dog.
Dog meat is less popular today in South Korea than in the past, being viewed largely as a kind of health tonic rather than as a diet staple, especially amongst the younger generations who view dogs as pets and service animals. That said, historically the consumption of dog meat can be traced back to antiquity. Dog bones were excavated in a neolithic settlement in Changnyeong, South Gyeongsang Province. A wall painting in the Goguryeo tombs complex in South Hwanghae Province, a UNESCO World Heritage site which dates from 4th century AD, depicts a slaughtered dog in a storehouse.
The Balhae people enjoyed dog meat, and the Koreans' appetite for canine cuisine seems to have come from that era.
Koreans have distinguished Chinese terms for dog ("견; 犬", which refers to pet dogs, feral dogs, and wolves) from the Chinese term ("구; 狗") which is used specifically to indicate dog meat. "Hwangu" has been considered better for consumption than "Baekgu" (White dog) and "Heukgu" (Black dog).
Around 1816, Jeong Hak-yu, the second son of Jeong Yak-yong, a prominent politician and scholar of the Joseon dynasty, wrote a poem called Nongga Wollyeongga (농가월령가). This poem, which is an important source of Korean folk history, describes what ordinary Korean farming families did in each month of the year. In the description of the month of August the poem tells of a married woman visiting her birth parents with boiled dog meat, rice cake, and rice wine, thus showing the popularity of dog meat at the time (Ahn, 2000; Seo, 2002). Dongguk Sesigi (동국세시기), a book written by Korean scholar Hong Seok-mo in 1849, contains a recipe for Bosintang including a boiled dog, green onion, and red chili pepper powder.
According to a 2006 survey, dog meat was the fourth most commonly consumed meat in South Korea. In 2019, a majority (71.9%) of Koreans reported that they do not eat dog meat.
Samgyetang is a chicken ginseng soup traditionally consumed during Boknal (복날) days: the hottest days of summer. It is a Korean custom to eat hot food in hot weather called Iyeolchiyeol (이열치열), which means “controlling heat with heat”. Consequently, Samgyetang is Koreans' favorite energizing food and it is common to have it on sambok (삼복) days — Chobok (초복), Jungbok (중복) and Malbok (말복) — which are believed to be the hottest days in Korea.
As the “Dongui Bogam” says, (Kor. 동의보감, Chin. 東醫寶鑑, Exemplar of Korean Medicine, 1613), “eating the meat from a female chicken with yellow feathers helps to control excessive thirst and urination, vitalizes the five viscera, increases yang energy, and warms the small intestines…. Ginseng complements the five viscera, stabilizes the spirit and soul, and fills what is lacking and weak in our body.”↵It is served with radish kimchi, cabbage kimchi, chicken gizzard, fresh green peppers and ginseng wine (insamju -인삼주). Commonly, it uses a chicken before the age of six months before it start to lay eggs. Stew made from a young chicken served with yukgaejang (Kor. 육개장, spicy beef stew), were introduced as part of the (복날) ‘Canicular Days’ cuisine only in the early 20th century.
Originally, samgyetang was called gyesamtang then it changed because of the increasingly popularity of ginseng in Korea and overseas. That is also because as ginseng is the main ingredient of the soup Korean decided to reverse the first two syllables of the name putting ginseng first.
Traditional Korean diet or Hansik is often associated with spiritual and physical health. While the diet of modern Korean people has become increasingly westernized and consists of numerous non-traditional foods, many believe in the healing power of Hansik. Vegetables and fermented foods are part of a healthy diet around the world, and Hansik includes many vegetable dishes and fermented foods. Three dishes, soup, Kimchi and multigrain rice make up the basic meal pattern of Hansik called three Cheopbansang. Fermented soybean paste Doenjang used in soups and fermented red chili paste Gochujang used in kimchi add health benefits to these foods.
Certain foods are typically consumed to combat the heat of the summer or the cold months, regain strength during and after an illness, or for general health. Cool noodle Naengmyeon originally from the northern part of the Korean peninsula is now enjoyed in South Korea as well as many parts of the world especially during the hot summer months. Likewise, ginseng chicken soup Samgyetang is often eaten during summer to reduce heat exhaustion and regain stamina.
Following a traditional Korean diet may lower the risk of some health issues including obesity and metabolic syndrome with a decrease in body mass index (BMI), body fat percent, and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol. Fermented foods like kimchi and doenjang contain probiotics which may boost immunity and reduce the incidence or severity of allergic conditions such as asthma and atopic dermatitis. It may also lower the risk of cardiovascular and chronic metabolic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes.
Probiotics typically found in kimchi include species of genera Lactobacillus, Leuconostoc, and Weissella, and they have been linked to anti-inflammatory effects and health benefits such as improved gut health. Napa cabbage is prepared with much salt and approximately 20% of sodium intake comes from kimchi. An increased risk of gastric cancer among subjects with frequent or high consumption of kimchi was found in some case-control studies. As with other salted foods, moderate consumption may maximize health benefits of kimchi.
Koreans commonly believe in the idea of Yak Sik Dong Won (약식동원, 藥食同源) as seen in Chinese traditions. Food is the first step to good health, and medical treatment should be sought only if food does not improve health. The diet of younger Koreans has become more westernized, yet hansik has been an integral part of the Korean culture since the ancient times. Collaboration of modern science and traditional Korean diet will further strengthen the concept of Yak Sik Dong Won.
Korean foods can be largely categorized into groups of "main staple foods" (주식), "subsidiary dishes" (부식), and "dessert" (후식). The main dishes are made from grains such as bap (a bowl of rice), juk (porridge), and guksu (noodles).
Many Korean banchan rely on fermentation for flavor and preservation, resulting in a tangy, salty, and spicy taste. Certain regions are especially associated with some dishes (for example, the city of Jeonju with bibimbap) either as a place of origin or for a famous regional variety. Restaurants will often use these famous names on their signs or menus (e.g. "Suwon galbi").
Soups are a common part of any Korean meal. Unlike other cultures, in Korean culture, soup is served as part of the main course rather than at the beginning or the end of the meal, as an accompaniment to rice along with other banchan. Soups known as guk are often made with meats, shellfish and vegetables. Soups can be made into more formal soups known as tang, often served as the main dish of the meal. Jjigae are a thicker, heavier seasoned soups or stews.
Some popular types of soups are:
Stews are referred to as jjigae, and are often a shared side dish. Jjigae is often both cooked and served in the glazed earthenware pot (ttukbaegi) in which it is cooked. The most common version of this stew is doenjang jjigae, which is a stew of soybean paste, with many variations; common ingredients include vegetables, saltwater or freshwater fish, and tofu. The stew often changes with the seasons and which ingredients are available. Other common varieties of jjigae contain kimchi (kimchi jjigae) or tofu (sundubu jjigae).
Kimchi refers to often fermented vegetable dishes usually made with napa cabbage, Korean radish, or sometimes cucumber. There are 4 types of raw materials which are major ones: spices, seasonings, and other additional materials. Red and black pepper, cinnamon, garlic, ginger, onion, and mustard are the example of spices. There are endless varieties with regional variations, and it is served as a side dish or cooked into soups and rice dishes. In the late 15th century, it depicted Korean's custom that Korean ancestors buried kimchi jars in the ground for storage for the entire winter season, as fermented foods can keep for several years. These were stored in traditional Korean mud pots known as jangdokdae, although with the advent of refrigerators, special kimchi freezers and commercially produced kimchi, this practice has become less common. Kimchi is a vegetable-based food which includes low calorie, low fat, and no cholesterol. Also, it is a rich source of various vitamins and minerals. It contains vitamins such as vitamin A, vitamin B, vitamin C, and vitamin K and minerals which are calcium, iron, phosphorus, and selenium.The same lactobacilli bacteria found in yogurt and other fermented dairy products are also found in kimchi. In 2021, Koreans collectively consumed 1,965,000 tons of Kimchi, with average Korean consuming 88.3 grams of Kimchi daily.
Noodles or noodle dishes in Korean cuisine are collectively referred to as guksu in native Korean or myeon in hanja. While noodles were eaten in Korea from ancient times, productions of wheat was less than other crops, so wheat noodles did not become a daily food until 1945. Wheat noodles (milguksu) were specialty foods for birthdays, weddings or auspicious occasions because the long and continued shape were thought to be associated with the bliss for longevity and long-lasting marriage.
In Korean traditional noodle dishes are onmyeon or guksu jangguk (noodles with a hot clear broth), naengmyeon (cold buckwheat noodles), bibim guksu (cold noodle dish mixed with vegetables), kalguksu (knife-cut noodles), kongguksu (noodles with a cold soybean broth), japchae (cellophane noodles made from sweet potato with various vegetables) and others. In royal court, baekmyeon (literally "white noodles") consisting of buckwheat noodles and pheasant broth, was regarded as the top quality noodle dish. Naengmyeon with a cold soup mixed with dongchimi (watery radish kimchi) and beef brisket broth was eaten in court during summer.
Banchan is a term referring collectively to side dishes in Korean cuisine. Soups and stews are not considered banchan.
Gui are grilled dishes, which most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetable ingredients. At traditional restaurants, meats are cooked at the center of the table over a charcoal grill, surrounded by various banchan and individual rice bowls. The cooked meat is then cut into small pieces and wrapped with fresh lettuce leaves, with rice, thinly sliced garlic, ssamjang (a mixture of gochujang and dwenjang), and other seasonings. The suffix gui is often omitted in the names of meat-based gui such as galbi, the name of which was originally galbi gui.
Jjim and seon (steamed dishes) are generic terms referring to steamed or boiled dishes in Korean cuisine. However, the former is made with meat or seafood-based ingredients marinated in gochujang or ganjang while seon is made with vegetable stuffed with fillings.
Hoe (raw dishes): although the term originally referred to any kind of raw dish, it is generally used to refer to saengseonhweh (생선회, raw fish dishes). It is dipped in gochujang, or soy sauce with wasabi, and served with lettuce or perilla leaves.
Jeon (전, 煎) (or buchimgae) is a Korean savory pancake made from various ingredients. Chopped kimchi or seafood is mixed into a wheat flour-based batter, and then pan fried. This dish is typically dipped in a mixture of soy sauce, vinegar, and red pepper powder. It can be served as an appetizer, side dish (banchan - 반찬) or accompanied by alcohol (anju - 안주).
There are some sweet varieties called Hwajeon (화전) which means flower pancakes.
There are different types of jeon: jeon-yu [전유어(煎油魚)] and jeon-hwa [ 전유화(煎油花)], the former has recently developed to only refer to fish pancakes. The previous ingredients can be used in various ways, such as meat, fish, and vegetables. The meat used can be quail, beef and pork. Seafood is mainly white sea fish such as croaker, cod, and Pollack. Vegetables used are: pumpkins, pepper,sesame leaves etc. In the summer potatoes are harvested, and the mung beans are made in the winter. According to the regional cases many buckwheat production are in Pyeongchang and Bongpyeong area, first set the small green onions or cabbage leaves and turn the thin buckwheat dough on it. There is no special taste, but the hands are still in the hand of buckwheat.
Cooking oils such as soy and corn are used today, though technology required for producing these oils was not available during the Joseon dynasty.
Namul may refer to either saengchae (생채, literally "fresh vegetables") or sukchae (숙채, literally "heated vegetables"), although the term generally indicates the latter. Saengchae is mostly seasoned with vinegar, chili pepper powder and salt to give a tangy and refreshing taste. On the other hand, sukchae (숙채) is blanched and seasoned with soy sauce, sesame oil, chopped garlic, or sometimes chili pepper powder.
Anju is a general term for a Korean side dish consumed with alcohol. It matches well with Korean traditional alcohol such as Soju or Makgeolli and helps people to enjoy their drinking more. Some examples of anju include steamed squid with gochujang, assorted fruit, dubu kimchi (tofu with kimchi), peanuts, odeng/ohmuk, sora (소라) (a kind of shellfish popular in street food tents), and nakji (small octopus) and Jokbal (pig's leg served with salted shrimp sauce). Samgyupsal (pork belly) is also considered as Anju with Soju. Most Korean foods can be considered as 'anju', as the food consumed alongside the alcohol depends on the diner's taste and preferences.
Songpyeon (송편, 松䭏) is a Korean dish made of rice powder mostly eaten during Chuseok/ Korean thanksgiving (추석) to express gratitude towards ancestors. Songpyeon recordings appear from the 17th century. It is said in 『Yorok 要 錄』, "Make rice cakes with white rice flour, steam them with pine and pine needles and wash them off with water." At the beginning of Songpyeon, rice cakes were made simply with white rice powder, pine needles were steamed and then washed in water. It is said that "red beans, pine nuts, walnuts, ginger and cinnamon" were added in the "Buyin Pilji 婦人 必 知". In 『Korean Rice Cakes, Hangwa, Eumcheongryu』, “In mountainous regions such as Gangwon-do and Chungcheong-do, potato songpyeon, acorn songpyeon and songgisongpyeon have been prepared and eaten. In the coastal areas of Hamgyeong-do, Pyeongan-do and Gyeonggi-do, shellfish songpyeon as produced and eaten, and in the southern regions of Jeolla-do and Gyeongsang-do, songpyeon with moss leaves was produced and eaten.
Songpyeon represents the moon and hope, which is why while eating this Koreans make wishes.
There is a proverb that says, "When virgins make a nice songpyeon, they will meet a good spouse, and when a pregnant woman makes a nice songpyeon, they have beautiful daughters." Songpyeon served on the Baekilsang and the stone table is described in Yorok, "I cooked it so that the convex shaped part of songpyeon came out without adding any filling, but it looks like it is full. It has the meaning of wishing good luck.
In the Seoul region, the floral songpyeon and five-color songpyeon were made small and beautiful, and in Hwanghae-do and Gangwon-do they fingerprinted and ate them coarsely.
The method of making five-color songpyeon is achieved by adding natural ingredients such as mugwort, gardenia water, omija water and cinnamon powder to the rice flour, kneading the rice cake with the five colors and adding the filling. However, in the past, pine endodermis were used in place of cinnamon powder to make the dough brown.
Ogok-bap means five rice dish, which consists of rice mixed with glutinous rice, cornstarch, red bean, perilla, and soybean. By consuming grains with the energy of blue, red, yellow, white, and black, we pray for good health as well as a good year for our body with the energy of the five elements, and to chase away bad luck and happiness and well-being.
In addition, there is a custom of sharing five grains of rice between neighbors because it is said that three or more families of different surnames share rice with each other.
It is consumed on the day of the first full moon of the year when people make rituals for guardian spirits against disasters and misfortune. Koreans also celebrate the upcoming spring.
All Korean traditional nonalcoholic beverages are referred to as eumcheong or eumcheongnyu (음청류 飮淸類) which literally means "clear beverages". According to historical documents regarding Korean cuisine, 193 items of eumcheongnyu are recorded. Eumcheongnyu can be divided into the following categories: tea, hwachae (fruit punch), sikhye (sweet rice drink), sujeonggwa (persimmon punch), tang (탕, boiled water), jang (장, fermented grain juice with a sour taste), suksu (숙수, beverage made of herbs), galsu (갈수, drink made of fruit extract, and Oriental medicine), honeyed water, juice and milk by their ingredient materials and preparation methods. Among the varieties, tea, hwachae, sikhye, and sujeonggwa are still widely favored and consumed; however, the others almost disappeared by the end of the 20th century.
In Korean cuisine, tea, or cha, refers to various types of herbal tea that can be served hot or cold. Not necessarily related to the leaves, leaf buds, and internodes of the Camellia sinensis plant, they are made from diverse substances, including fruits (e.g. yuja-cha), flowers (e.g. gukhwa-cha), leaves, roots, and grains (e.g. bori-cha, hyeonmi-cha) or herbs and substances used in traditional Korean medicine, such as ginseng (e.g. insam-cha) and ginger (e.g. saenggang-cha).
While soju is the best known liquor, there are well over 100 different alcoholic beverages, such as beers, rice and fruit wines, and liquors produced in South Korea as well as a sweet rice drink. The top-selling domestic beers (maekju in Korean) are lagers, which differ from Western beers in that they are brewed from rice, rather than barley. Consequently, Korean beers are lighter, sweeter and have less head than their Western counterparts. The South Korean beer market is dominated by the two major breweries: Hite and OB. Taedonggang is a North Korean beer produced at a brewery based in Pyongyang since 2002. Microbrewery beers and bars are growing in popularity after 2002.
Soju is a clear spirit which was originally made from grain, especially rice, and is now also made from sweet potatoes or barley. Soju made from grain is considered superior (as is also the case with grain vs. potato vodka). Soju is around 22% ABV, and is a favorite beverage of hard-up college students, hard-drinking businessmen, and blue-collar workers.
Yakju is a refined pure liquor fermented from rice, with the best known being cheongju. Takju is a thick unrefined liquor made with grains, with the best known being makgeolli, a white, milky rice wine traditionally drunk by farmers.
In addition to the rice wine, various fruit wines and herbal wines exist in Korean cuisine. Acacia, maesil plum, Chinese quince, cherry, pine cone, and pomegranate are most popular. Majuang wine (a blended wine of Korean grapes with French or American wines) and ginseng-based wines are also available.
Traditional rice cakes, tteok and Korean confectionery hangwa are eaten as treats during holidays and festivals. Tteok refers to all kinds of rice cakes made from either pounded rice (메떡, metteok), pounded glutinous rice (찰떡, chaltteok), or glutinous rice left whole, without pounding. It is served either filled or covered with sweetened mung bean paste, red bean paste, mashed red beans, raisins, a sweetened filling made with sesame seeds, sweet pumpkin, beans, jujubes, pine nuts or honey). Tteok is usually served as dessert or as a snack. Among varieties, songpyeon is a chewy stuffed tteok served at Chuseok. Honey or another soft sweet material such as sweetened sesame or black beans are used as fillings. Pine needles can be used for imparting flavor during the steaming process. Yaksik is a sweet rice cake made with glutinous rice, chestnuts, pine nuts, jujubes, and other ingredients, while chapssaltteok is a tteok filled with sweet bean paste.
On the other hand, hangwa is a general term referring to all types of Korean traditional confectionery. The ingredients of hahngwa mainly consist of grain flour, honey, yeot, and sugar, or of fruit and edible roots. Hangwa is largely divided into yumilgwa (fried confectionery), suksilgwa, jeonggwa, gwapyeon, dasik (tea food) and yeot. Yumilgwa is made by stir frying or frying pieces of dough, such as maejakgwa and yakgwa. Maejakgwa is a ring-shaped confection made of wheat flour, vegetable oil, cinnamon, ginger juice, jocheong, and pine nuts, while yakgwa, literally "medicinal confectionery", is a flower-shaped biscuit made of honey, sesame oil and wheat flour.
Suksilgwa is made by boiling fruits, ginger, or nuts in water, and then forming the mix into the original fruit's shape, or other shapes. Gwapyeon is a jelly-like confection made by boiling sour fruits, starch, and sugar. Dasik, literally "eatery for tea", is made by kneading rice flour, honey, and various types of flour from nuts, herbs, sesame, or jujubes. Jeonggwa, or jeongwa, is made by boiling fruits, plant roots and seeds in honey, mullyeot (물엿, liquid candy) or sugar. It is similar to marmalade or jam/jelly. Yeot is a Korean traditional candy in liquid or solid form made from steamed rice, glutinous rice, glutinous kaoliang, corn, sweet potatoes or mixed grains. The steamed ingredients are lightly fermented and boiled in a large pot called sot (솥) for a long time.
Yugwa(유과) and Yak-gwa(약과).They are traditional desserts enjoyed during Chuseok, marriage or the sixtieth birthday (Hwangap - 환갑).
Yugwa is a generic name for 산자, 강정 and 빈사과. They are classified as: square shaped 산자, finger shaped 강정, drop shaped and square shaped 빈사과 . Furthermore, many different names have been given based on coatings, toppings and fillings. Plum blossoms obtained by frying sesame seeds and nutmeg, steamed dried and fried glutinous rice, sebann with finely chopped sesame seeds, seunggeomcho and pine nut powder are used. In addition, they are dyed pink, yellow, etc. Depending on the region, it is also called Gwajul or Sanja. First, soak some good glutinous rice in water and let it ferment so that the glutinous rice sticks. The fermentation period varies from one week to ten days depending on the season, and after having fermented until crushed by hand, knead and steam it for a long time, then beat until cherries form.
Sanja is a large square shape, gangjeong is the thickness of a finger and bell gangjeong is the size of a thumb. 빈사과 is one the size of a red bean, which is lumped together with the syrup or sugar syrup and cut into squares. Once the excess oil has been removed, honey or syrup is applied and the ginger juice is added at this time. Ginger juice has the effect of preventing rancidity of fats. It is completed by covering with various types of gluten wheat.
Yugwa, which is difficult to make, is best prepared in the winter. Honey or syrup is an important ingredient in making Yugwa, which crumbles and melts when you put it in your mouth.↵During the Joseon dynasty, Yugwa was used during the rite of passage and in the royal family various types of Yugwa were placed high on the banquet table. In the aristocratic family, it is customary to send gangjeong to accompany the groom or to business guests returning from a wedding party to the bride's house, full of dongguri intertwined with stones or willows.↵Furthermore, Yugwa was chosen as the ancestral food par excellence for the ancestors, and is a food not to be missed during the Lunar New Year holiday.
Yakgwa (약과; 藥菓) is a dessert made of wheat flour, honey, ginger juice and rice wine. In premodern Korea they were enjoyed by upper classes as a rare dish, today is common to serve it with tea.
Yakgwa is a traditional and good quality dish with a sweet and savory taste. In Korean, the Yak character is used to name foods that commonly contain honey and sesame oil. From ancient times, instead of fruit, honey and sesame oil were used to medicate and it has become a sweet. Even today the yakgwa among the bourgeois class is a dish that can never be missing. However, they are not prepared with difficulty as in ancient times and are easily found on the market. You can buy them anywhere easily and enjoy them comfortably for a snack. The Yakgwa was developed as a Buddhist banquet and was a very important ancestral food, it was food that was given as a gift for weddings.
Also this reputation spread nationwide from China, Koryeo's oil and honey pastry was generally known for festivities.
Korean regional cuisines (Korean: hyangto eumsik, literally "native local foods") are characterized by local specialties and distinctive styles within Korean cuisine. The divisions reflected historical boundaries of the provinces where these food and culinary traditions were preserved until modern times.
Although Korea has been divided into two nation-states since 1948 (North Korea and South Korea), it was once divided into eight provinces (paldo) according to the administrative districts of the Joseon dynasty. The northern region consisted of Hamgyeong Province, Pyeongan Province and Hwanghae Province. The central region comprised Gyeonggi Province, Chungcheong Province, and Gangwon Province. Gyeongsang Province and Jeolla Province made up the southern region.
Until the late 19th century, transportation networks were not well developed, and each provincial region preserved its own characteristic tastes and cooking methods. Geographic differences are also reflected by the local specialty foodstuffs depending on the climate and types of agriculture, as well as the natural foods available. With the modern development of transportation and the introduction of foreign foods, Korean regional cuisines have tended to overlap and integrate. However, many unique traditional dishes in Korean regional cuisine have been handed down through the generations.
Korean temple cuisine originated in Buddhist temples of Korea. Since Buddhism was introduced into Korea, Buddhist traditions have strongly influenced Korean cuisine, as well. During the Silla period (57 BCE – 935 CE), chalbap (찰밥, a bowl of cooked glutinous rice) yakgwa (a fried dessert) and yumilgwa (a fried and puffed rice snack) were served for Buddhist altars and have been developed into types of hangwa, Korean traditional confectionery. During the Goryeo dynasty, sangchu ssam (wraps made with lettuce), yaksik, and yakgwa were developed, and since spread to China and other countries. Since the Joseon dynasty, Buddhist cuisine has been established in Korea according to regions and temples.
On the other hand, royal court cuisine is closely related to Korean temple cuisine. In the past, when the royal court maids, sanggung, who were assigned to Suragan (hangul: 수라간; hanja: 水剌間; the name of the royal kitchen), where they prepared the king's meals, became old, they had to leave the royal palace. Therefore, many of them entered Buddhist temples to become nuns. As a result, culinary techniques and recipes of the royal cuisine were integrated into Buddhist cuisine.
Vegetarian cookery in Korea may be linked to the Buddhist traditions that influenced Korean culture from the Goryeo dynasty onwards. There are hundreds of vegetarian restaurants in Korea, although historically they have been local restaurants that are unknown to tourists. Most have buffets, with cold food, and vegetarian kimchi and tofu being the main features. Bibimbap is a common vegan dish. Menus change with seasons. Wine with the alcohol removed and fine teas are also served. The Korean tea ceremony is suitable for all vegetarians and vegans, and began with Buddhist influences. All food is eaten with a combination of stainless steel oval chopsticks and a long-handled shallow spoon called together sujeo.
Food is an important part of traditions of Korean family ceremonies, which are mainly based on the Confucian culture. Gwan Hon Sang Je (관혼상제; 冠婚喪祭), the four family ceremonies (coming-of-age ceremony, wedding, funeral, and ancestral rite) have been considered especially important and elaborately developed, continuing to influence Korean life to these days. Ceremonial food in Korea has developed with variation across different regions and cultures.
For example, ancestral rites called jesa are mainly held on the anniversary of an ancestor's death. Ritual food includes rice, alcohol (clear alcohol), soup, vinegar, and soy sauce (first line). Various meats, various rice cakes, and fish (row 2). When placing meat and fish, make sure your head faces east (right). Also, meat is placed on the left and fish is placed on the right; three types of hot soup prepared. Meat stew, beef stew, fish stew (3rd row); dried snackskimchiNo red pepper powder used, glutinous rice drink (line 4); and various fruits. Red fruits are to the east, white fruits are to the west. (Line 5)
In South Korea, inexpensive food may be purchased from pojangmacha, street carts during the day, where customers may eat standing beside the cart or have their food wrapped up to take home. At night, pojangmacha (포장마차) become small tents that sell food, drinks, and alcoholic beverages.
Seasonal street foods include hotteok, and bungeoppang, which are enjoyed in autumn and winter. Gimbap (김밥) and tteokbokki (떡볶이)are also very popular street food.
People also enjoy to eat Sundae (순대), Twigim (튀김), and Eomuk (오뎅/어묵) which are popular with tteokbokki. Also, Gyeran-ppang (계란빵) which is Egg Bread and Hoppang (호빵) are also enjoyed in winter. Dak-kkochi (닭꼬치) is a popular food in Korea with various sauces on chicken. Beondegi (번데기) and dalgona/ppopgi (뽑기) are two examples of original street foods many people have enjoyed since childhood.
Dining etiquette in Korea can be traced back to the Confucian philosophies of the Joseon period. Guidebooks, such as Sasojeol (士小節, Elementary Etiquette for Scholar Families), written in 1775 by Yi Deokmu (이덕무; 李德懋), comment on the dining etiquette for the period. Suggestions include items such as "when you see a fat cow, goat, pig, or chicken, do not immediately speak of slaughtering, cooking or eating it", "when you are having a meal with others, do not speak of smelly or dirty things, such as boils or diarrhea," "when eating a meal, neither eat so slowly as to appear to be eating against your will nor so fast as if to be taking someone else's food. Do not throw chopsticks on the table. Spoons should not touch plates, making a clashing sound", among many other recommendations which emphasized proper table etiquette.
Other than the etiquette mentioned above, blowing one's nose when having a meal is considered an inappropriate act as well.
The eldest male at the table was always served first, and was commonly served in the men's quarters by the women of the house. Women usually dined in a separate portion of the house after the men were served. The eldest men or women always ate before the younger family members. The meal was usually quiet, as conversation was discouraged during meals. In modern times, these rules have become lax, as families usually dine together now and use the time to converse. Of the remaining elements of this decorum, one is that the younger members of the table should not pick up their chopsticks or start eating before the elders of the table or guests and should not finish eating before the elders or guests finish eating.
In Korea, unlike in other East Asian cuisines such as Chinese and Japanese, the rice or soup bowl is not lifted from the table when eating from it. This is due to the fact that each diner is given a metal spoon along with the chopsticks known collectively as sujeo. The use of the spoon for eating rice and soups is expected. There are rules which reflect the decorum of sharing communal side dishes; rules include not picking through the dishes for certain items while leaving others, and the spoon used should be clean, because usually diners put their spoons in the same serving bowl on the table. Diners should also cover their mouths when using a toothpick after the meal.
The table setup is important as well, and individual place settings, moving from the diner's left should be as follows: rice bowl, spoon, then chopsticks. Hot foods are set to the right side of the table, with the cold foods to the left. Soup must remain on the right side of the diner along with stews. Vegetables remain on the left along with the rice, and kimchi is set to the back while sauces remain in the front.
The manner of drinking alcoholic drinks while dining is significant in Korean dining etiquette. Each diner is expected to face away from the eldest male and cover his mouth when drinking alcohol. According to Hyang Eum Ju Rye (향음주례; 鄕飮酒禮), the drinking etiquette established in Choseon dynasty, it is impolite for a king and his vassal, a father and his son, or a teacher and his student to drink face to face. Also, a guest should not refuse the first drink offered by host, and in the most formal situations, the diner should politely twice refuse a drink offered by the eldest male or a host. When the host offers for the third time, then finally the guest can receive it. If the guest refuses three times, drink is not to be offered any more.
Collectively known as gungjung eumsik during the pre-modern era, the foods of the royal palace were reflective of the opulent nature of the past rulers of the Korean peninsula. This nature is evidenced in examples as far back as the Silla kingdom, where a man-made lake (Anapji Lake, located in Gyeongju), was created with multiple pavilions and halls for the sole purpose of opulent banquets, and a spring fed channel, Poseokjeong, was created for the singular purpose of setting wine cups afloat while they wrote poems.
Reflecting the regionalism of the kingdoms and bordering countries of the peninsula, the cuisine borrowed portions from each of these areas to exist as a showcase. The royalty would have the finest regional specialties and delicacies sent to them at the palace. Although there are records of banquets predating the Joseon period, the majority of these records mostly reflect the vast variety of foods, but do not mention the specific foods presented. The meals cooked for the royal family did not reflect the seasons, as the commoner's meals would have. Instead, their meals varied significantly day-to-day. Each of the eight provinces was represented each month in the royal palace by ingredients presented by their governors, which gave the cooks a wide assortment of ingredients to use for royal meals.
Food was considered significant in the Joseon period. Official positions were created within the Six Ministries (Yukjo, 육조) that were charged with all matters related to procurement and consumption of food and drink for the royal court. The Board of Personnel (Ijo, 이조) contained positions specific for attaining rice for the royal family. The Board of Rights (Yejo) were responsible for foods prepared for ancestor rites, attaining wines and other beverages, and medicinal foods. There were also hundreds of slaves and women who worked in the palace that had tasks such as making tofu, liquor, tea, and tteok (rice cakes). The women were the cooks to the royal palace and were of commoner or low-born families. These women would be split into specific skill sets or "bureau" such as the bureau of special foods (Saenggwa-bang, 생과방) or the bureau of cooking foods (Soju-bang, 소주방). These female cooks may have been assisted by male cooks from outside the palace during larger banquets when necessary.
Five meals were generally served in the royal palace each day during the Joseon period, and records suggest this pattern had existed from antiquity. Three of these meals would be full meals, while the afternoon and after dinner meals would be lighter. The first meal, mieumsang (미음상), was served at sunrise and was served only on days when the king and queen were not taking herbal medicines. The meal consisted of rice porridge (juk, 죽) made with ingredients such as abalone (jeonbokjuk), white rice (huinjuk), mushrooms (beoseotjuk), pine nuts (jatjuk), and sesame (kkaejuk). The side dishes could consist of kimchi, nabak kimchi, oysters, soy sauce, and other items. The porridge was thought to give vitality to the king and queen throughout the day.
The sura (수라) were the main meals of the day. Breakfast was served at ten in the morning, and the evening meals were served between six and seven at night. The set of three tables (surasang, 수라상), were usually set with two types of rice, two types of soup, two types of stew (jjigae), one dish of jjim (meat stew), one dish of jeongol (a casserole of meat and vegetables), three types of kimchi, three types of jang (장) and twelve side dishes, called 12 cheop (12첩). The meals were set in the suragan (수라간), a room specifically used for taking meals, with the king seated to the east and the queen to the west. Each had their own set of tables and were attended by three palace servant women known as sura sanggung (수라상궁). These women would remove bowl covers and offer the foods to the king and queen after ensuring the dishes were not poisoned.
Banquets (궁중 연회 음식) were held on special occasions in the Korean Royal Palace. These included birthdays of the royal family members, marriages, and national festivals, including Daeborum, Dano, Chuseok, and Dongji. Banquet food was served on individual tables which varied according to the rank of the person. Usually banquet food consisted of ten different types of dishes. Main dishes were prepared based on the seasonal foods. Main dishes of the banquet included sinseollo, jeon, hwayang jeok, honghapcho, nengmyun and mulgimchi. A typical banquet ingredient was chogyetang (chicken broth with vinegar), which was prepared with five different chickens, five abalones, ten sea cucumbers, twenty eggs, half a bellflower root, mushrooms, two cups of black pepper, two peeled pine nuts, starch, soy sauce and vinegar. Yaksik was a favorite banquet dessert.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Korean cuisine has evolved through centuries of social and political change. Originating from ancient agricultural and nomadic traditions in Korea and southern Manchuria, Korean cuisine reflects a complex interaction of the natural environment and different cultural trends.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Korean cuisine is largely based on rice, vegetables, seafood and (at least in South Korea) meats. Dairy is largely absent from the traditional Korean diet. Traditional Korean meals are named for the number of side dishes (반찬; 飯饌; banchan) that accompany steam-cooked short-grain rice. Kimchi is served at nearly every meal. Commonly used ingredients include sesame oil, doenjang (fermented bean paste), soy sauce, salt, garlic, ginger, gochugaru (pepper flakes), gochujang (fermented red chili paste) and napa cabbage.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Ingredients and dishes vary by province. Many regional dishes have become national. Korean royal court cuisine once brought all of the unique regional specialties together for the royal family. Foods are regulated by Korean cultural etiquette.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In the Jeulmun pottery period (approximately 8000 to 1500 BCE), hunter-gatherer societies engaged in fishing and hunting, and incipient agriculture in the later stages. Since the beginning of the Mumun pottery period (1500 BCE), agricultural traditions began to develop with new migrant groups from the Liao River basin of Manchuria. During the Mumun period, people grew millet, barley, wheat, legumes and rice, and continued to hunt and fish. Archaeological remains point to development of fermented beans during this period, and cultural contact with nomadic cultures to the north facilitated domestication of animals.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The Three Kingdoms period (57 BCE – 668 CE) was one of rapid cultural evolution. The kingdom of Goguryeo (37 BCE – 668 CE) was located in the northern part of the peninsula along much of modern-day Manchuria. The second kingdom, Baekje (18 BCE – 660 CE), was in the southwestern portion of the peninsula, and the third, Silla (57 BCE – 935 CE), was located at the southeastern portion of the peninsula. Each region had its own distinct set of cultural practices and foods. For example, Baekje was known for cold foods and fermented foods like kimchi. The spread of Buddhism and Confucianism through cultural exchanges with China during the fourth century CE began to change the distinct cultures of Korea.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Attributed with the earliest kimchi, the Goguryeo people were skilled at fermenting and widely consumed fermented food.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "During the latter Goryeo period, the Mongols invaded Goryeo in the 13th century. Some traditional foods found today in Korea have their origins during this period. The dumpling dish, mandu, grilled meat dishes, noodle dishes, and the use of seasonings such as black pepper, all have their roots in this period.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Agricultural innovations were significant and widespread during this period, such as the invention of the rain gauge during the 15th century. During 1429, the government began publishing books on agriculture and farming techniques, which included Nongsa jikseol (literally \"Straight Talk on Farming\"), an agricultural book compiled under King Sejong.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "A series of invasions in the earlier half of the Joseon caused a dynamic shift in the culture during the second half of the period. Groups of silhak (\"practical learning\") scholars began to emphasize the importance of looking outside the country for innovation and technology to help improve the agricultural systems. Crops traded by Europeans from the New World began to appear, acquired through trade with China, Japan, Europe, and the Philippines; these crops included maize, sweet potatoes, chili peppers, tomatoes, peanuts, and squash. Potatoes and sweet potatoes were particularly favored as they grew in soils and on terrains that were previously unused.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Government further developed agriculture through technology and lower taxation. Complex irrigation systems built by government allowed peasant farmers to produce larger crop volumes and produce crops not only for sustenance but also as cash crops. Reduced taxation of the peasantry also furthered the expanded commerce through increasing periodic markets, usually held every five days. One thousand such markets existed in the 19th century, and were communal centers for economic trade and entertainment.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The end of the Joseon period was marked by consistent encouragement to trade with the Western world, China and Japan. In the 1860s, trade agreements pushed by the Japanese government led the Joseon dynasty to open its trade ports with the west, and to numerous treaties with the United States, Britain, France, and other Western countries.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The opening of Korea to the Western world brought further exchange of culture and food. Western missionaries introduced new ingredients and dishes to Korea. Joseon elites were introduced to these new foods by way of foreigners who attended the royal court as advisers or physicians. This period also saw the introduction of various seasonings imported from Japan via western traders and alcoholic drinks from China.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Japan occupied the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945. Many of its agricultural systems were taken over by the Japanese to support Japan's food supply. Land changes resulting from the Japanese occupation included combining small farms into large-scale farms, which led to larger yields. Rice production increased during this period to support the Japanese Empire's war efforts. Many Koreans, in turn, increased the production of other grains for their own consumption.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Meals during the Japanese occupation were quite varied. Koreans usually ate two meals a day during the cold seasons, and three during the warm seasons. For the lower classes, satiety, rather than quality, was most important. Those in even lower economic levels were likely to enjoy only a single bowl of white rice each year, while the remainder of the year was filled with cheaper grains, such as millet and barley. For the Korean middle and upper classes during the occupation, things were quite different. Western foods began emerging in the Korean diet, such as white bread and commercially produced staples such as precooked noodles. The Japanese occupational period ended after the defeat of Japan during World War II.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The country remained in a state of turmoil through the Korean War (1950–1953) and the Cold War, which separated the country into North Korea and South Korea. Both of these periods continued the limited food provisions for Koreans, and the stew called budae jjigae, which makes use of inexpensive meats such as sausage and Spam, originated during this period.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "At this point, the history of North and South Korea sharply diverged. In the 1960s under President Park Chung Hee, industrialization began to give South Korea the economic and cultural power it holds in the global economy today. Agriculture was increased through use of commercial fertilizers and modern farming equipment. In the 1970s, food shortages began to lessen. Consumption of instant and processed foods increased, as did the overall quality of foods. Livestock and dairy production was increased during the 1970s through the increase of commercial dairies and mechanized farms. The consumption of pork and beef increased vastly in the 1970s. Per-capita consumption of meat was 3.6 kg in 1961 and 11 kg by 1979. The result of this increased meat consumption brought about the rise of bulgogi restaurants, which gave the middle class of South Korea the ability to enjoy meat regularly. Meat eating continued to rise, reaching 40 kg in 1997, with fish consumption at 49.5 kg in 1998. Rice consumption continually decreased through these years, from 128 kg consumed per person in 1985 to 106 kg in 1995 and 83 kg in 2003. The decrease in rice consumption has been accompanied by an increase in the consumption of bread and noodles. In 2009, the South Korean government launched a $77-million culinary diplomacy program called \"Korean Cuisine to the World\" to promote its cuisine and subsequently pivoted into the markets in the United States and Muslim countries.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Grains have been one of the most important staples of the Korean diet. Early myths of the foundations of various kingdoms in Korea center on grains. One foundation myth relates to Jumong, who received barley seeds from two doves sent by his mother after establishing the kingdom of Goguryeo. Yet another myth speaks of the three founding deities of Jeju Island, who were to be wed to the three princesses of Tamna; the deities brought seeds of five grains which were the first seeds planted, which in turn became the first instance of farming.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "During the pre-modern era, grains such as barley and millet were the main staples. They were supplemented by wheat, sorghum, and buckwheat. Rice is not an indigenous crop to Korea and millet was likely the preferred grain before rice was cultivated. Rice became the grain of choice during the Three Kingdoms period, particularly in the Silla and Baekje Kingdoms in the southern regions of the peninsula. Rice was such an important commodity in Silla that it was used to pay taxes. The Sino-Korean word for \"tax\" is a compound character that uses the character for the rice plant. The preference for rice escalated into the Joseon period, when new methods of cultivation and new varieties emerged that would help increase production.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "As rice was prohibitively expensive when it first came to Korea, the grain was likely mixed with other grains to \"stretch\" the rice; this is still done in dishes such as boribap (rice with barley) and kongbap (rice with beans). White rice, which is rice with the bran removed, has been the preferred form of rice since its introduction into the cuisine. The most traditional method of cooking the rice has been to cook it in an iron pot called a sot (솥) or musoe sot (무쇠솥). This method of rice cookery dates back to at least the Goryeo period, and these pots have even been found in tombs from the Silla period. The sot is still used today, much in the same manner as it was in the past centuries.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Rice is used to make a number of items, outside of the traditional bowl of plain white rice. It is commonly ground into a flour and used to make rice cakes called tteok in over two hundred varieties. It is also cooked down into a congee (juk) or gruel (mieum) and mixed with other grains, meat, or seafood. Koreans also produce a number of rice wines, both in filtered and unfiltered versions. Grains have also been used for centuries to make misu and misu-garu, drinks made from grain powder that are sometimes used as meal supplements.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Encompassing a wide range of temperate climates, the Korean peninsula supports the growth of many cultivated and wild fruit species. Asian pears of numerous varieties, apples, melons and berries and more are typical of summer and fall produce.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Legumes have been significant crops in Korean history and cuisine, according to the earliest preserved legumes found in archaeological sites in Korea. The excavation at Okbang site, Jinju, South Gyeongsang province indicates soybeans were cultivated as a food crop circa 1000–900 BCE. They are still made into dubu (tofu), while soybean sprouts are sauteed as a vegetable (kongnamul) and whole soybeans are seasoned and served as a side dish. They are also made into soy milk, which is used as the base for the noodle dish called kongguksu. A byproduct of soy milk production is biji or kong-biji, which is used to thicken stews and porridges. Soybeans may also be one of the beans in kongbap, boiled together with several types of beans and other grains, and they are also the primary ingredient in the production of fermented condiments collectively referred to as jang, such as soybean pastes, doenjang and cheonggukjang, a soy sauce called ganjang, chili pepper paste or gochujang and others.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Nokdu (Mung bean) is commonly used in Korean cuisine. Sukju namuls (Mung bean sprouts) are often served as a side dish, blanched and sautéed with sesame oil, garlic, and salt. Ground Nokdu is used to make a porridge called nokdujuk, which is eaten as a nutritional supplement and digestive aid, especially for ill patients. A popular snack, bindaetteok (mung bean pancake), is made with ground nokdu and fresh sukju namul. Starch extracted from ground nokdu is used to make transparent dangmyeon ( cellophane noodles). The dangmyeons are the main ingredients for japchae (a salad-like dish) and sundae (a blood sausage), and are a subsidiary ingredient for soups and stews. The starch can be also used to make jelly-like foods, such as nokdumuk and hwangpomuk. The muk have a bland flavor, so are served seasoned with soy sauce, sesame oil and crumbled seaweed or other seasonings such as tangpyeongchae.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Cultivation of azuki beans dates back to ancient times according to an excavation from Odong-ri, Hoeryong, North Hamgyong Province, which is assumed to be that of Mumun period (approximately 1500–300 BCE). Azuki beans are generally eaten as patbap, which is a bowl of rice mixed with the beans, or as a filling and covering for tteok (rice cake) and breads. A porridge made with azuki beans, called patjuk, is commonly eaten during the winter season. On Dongjinal, a Korean traditional holiday which falls on December 22, Korean people eat donji patjuk, which contains saealsim (새알심), a ball made from glutinous rice flour. In old Korean tradition, patjuk is believed to have the power to drive evil spirits away.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Condiments are divided into fermented and nonfermented variants. Fermented condiments include ganjang, doenjang, gochujang and vinegars. Nonfermented condiments or spices include red pepper, black pepper, cordifolia, mustard, chinensis, garlic, onion, ginger, leek, and scallion (spring onion).",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Gochujang can be found in many writings. Some of the writings are the Mangi Yoram, The Three States, the Nonggawolryeongga, the Gijaejapgi, and the Hyangyak-jipsongbang. The Hyangyak-jipseongbang, which dates back to around 1433 during the Chosun dynasty, is one of the oldest writings mentioning gochujang.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Gochujang is a fermented bean paste that has red pepper powder, soybean powder and rice flour added to it to create a spicy paste. It typically can be added to most dishes. Gochujang can be used as a seasoning and sometimes as a dipping sauce.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Many variations come from jang, fermented bean paste. Some variations can include doenjang (soybean and brine), kanjang (soybeans, water, and salt), chogochujang (gochujang and vinegar), and jeotgal (mixture of other jangs and seafoods).",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Vegetables such as cucumbers, carrots, and cabbage use gochujang as a dip. Gochujang is a common seasoning for foods such as Korean barbecue including pork and beef. One popular snack food that is very commonly eaten with gochujang is bibimbap. Bibimbap includes rice, spinach, radish, bean sprouts. Sometimes beef is added to bibimbap. Another popular dish including gochujang is tteokbokki.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Gochujang was believed to revitalize people who were sick with colds or exhaustion during the Gio period. There have been some studies that show that red peppers fight obesity and diabetes. Gochujang is also added to many foods so that there can be additional nutritional value with each meal.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In antiquity, most meat in Korea was likely obtained through hunting and fishing. Ancient records indicate rearing of livestock began on a small scale during the Three Kingdoms period. Meat was consumed roasted or in soups or stews during this period. Those who lived closer to the oceans were able to complement their diet with more fish, while those who lived in the interior had a diet containing more meat.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Beef is the most prized of all, with the cattle holding an important cultural role in the Korean home. Beef is prepared in numerous ways today, including roasting, grilling (gui) or boiling in soups. Beef can also be dried into yukpo, a type of po, as with seafood, called eopo.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The cattle were valuable draught animals, often seen as equal to human servants, or in some cases, members of the family. Cattle were also given their own holiday during the first 'cow' day of the lunar New Year. The importance of cattle does not suggest Koreans ate an abundance of beef, however, as the cattle were valued as beasts of burden and slaughtering one would create dire issues in farming the land. Pork and seafood were consumed more regularly for this reason. The Buddhist ruling class of the Goryeo period forbade the consumption of beef. The Mongols dispensed with the ban of beef during the 13th century, and they promoted the production of beef cattle. This increased production continued into the Joseon period, when the government encouraged both increased quantities and quality of beef. Only in the latter part of the 20th century has beef become regular table fare.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Chicken has played an important role as a protein in Korean history, evidenced by a number of myths. One myth tells of the birth of Kim Alji, founder of the Kim family of Gyeongju being announced by the cry of a white chicken. As the birth of a clan's founder is always announced by an animal with preternatural qualities, this myth speaks to the importance of chicken in Korean culture. Chicken is often served roasted or braised with vegetables or in soups. All parts of the chicken are used in Korean cuisine, including the gizzard, liver, and feet. Young chickens are braised with ginseng and other ingredients in medicinal soups eaten during the summer months to combat heat called samgyetang. The feet of the chicken, called dakbal (닭발), are often roasted and covered with hot and spicy gochujang-based sauce and served as an anju, or side dish, to accompany alcoholic beverages, especially soju.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Pork has also been another important land-based protein for Korea. Records indicate pork has been a part of the Korean diet back to antiquity, similar to beef.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "A number of foods have been avoided while eating pork, including Chinese bellflower (doraji, 도라지) and lotus root (yeonn ppuri, 연뿌리), as the combinations have been thought to cause diarrhea. All parts of the pig are used in Korean cuisine, including the head, intestines, liver, kidney and other internal organs. Koreans utilize these parts in a variety of cooking methods including steaming, stewing, boiling and smoking. Koreans especially like to eat grilled pork belly, which is called samgyeopsal (삼겹살, 三--).",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Fish and shellfish have been a major part of Korean cuisine because of the oceans bordering the peninsula. Evidence from the 12th century illustrates commoners consumed a diet mostly of fish and shellfish, such as shrimp, clams, oysters, abalone, and loach, while sheep and hogs were reserved for the upper class.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Both fresh and saltwater fish are popular, and are served raw, grilled, broiled, dried or served in soups and stews. Common grilled fish include mackerel, hairtail, croaker and Pacific herring. Smaller fish, shrimp, squid, mollusks and countless other seafood can be salted and fermented as jeotgal. Fish can also be grilled either whole or in fillets as banchan. Fish is often dried naturally to prolong storing periods and enable shipping over long distances. Fish commonly dried include yellow corvina, anchovies (myeolchi) and croaker. Dried anchovies, along with kelp, form the basis of common soup stocks.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Shellfish is widely eaten in all different types of preparation. They can be used to prepare broth, eaten raw with chogochujang, which is a mixture of gochujang and vinegar, or used as a popular ingredient in countless dishes. Raw oysters and other seafood can be used in making kimchi to improve and vary the flavor. Salted baby shrimp are used as a seasoning agent, known as saeujeot, for the preparation of some types of kimchi. Large shrimp are often grilled as daeha gui (대하구이) or dried, mixed with vegetables and served with rice. Mollusks eaten in Korean cuisine include octopus, cuttlefish, and squid.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Korean cuisine uses a wide variety of vegetables, which are often served uncooked, either in salads or pickles, as well as cooked in various stews, stir-fried dishes, and other hot dishes. Commonly used vegetables include Korean radish, napa cabbage, cucumber, potato, sweet potato, spinach, bean sprouts, scallions, garlic, chili peppers, seaweed, zucchini, mushrooms, lotus root. Several types of wild greens, known collectively as chwinamul (such as Aster scaber), are a popular dish, and other wild vegetables such as bracken fern shoots (gosari) or Korean bellflower root (doraji) are also harvested and eaten in season. Traditional medicinal herbs in Korean cuisine, such as ginseng, lingzhi mushroom, wolfberry, Codonopsis pilosula, and Angelica sinensis, are often used as ingredients in cooking, as in samgyetang.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Medicinal food (boyangshik) is a wide variety of specialty foods prepared and eaten for their purported medicinal purposes, especially during the hottest 30-day period in the lunar calendar, called sambok. Hot foods consumed are believed to restore ki, as well as sexual and physical stamina lost in the summer heat. Commonly eaten boyangshik include ginseng, chicken, black goat, abalone, eel, carp, beef bone soups, pig kidneys and dog.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Dog meat is less popular today in South Korea than in the past, being viewed largely as a kind of health tonic rather than as a diet staple, especially amongst the younger generations who view dogs as pets and service animals. That said, historically the consumption of dog meat can be traced back to antiquity. Dog bones were excavated in a neolithic settlement in Changnyeong, South Gyeongsang Province. A wall painting in the Goguryeo tombs complex in South Hwanghae Province, a UNESCO World Heritage site which dates from 4th century AD, depicts a slaughtered dog in a storehouse.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The Balhae people enjoyed dog meat, and the Koreans' appetite for canine cuisine seems to have come from that era.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Koreans have distinguished Chinese terms for dog (\"견; 犬\", which refers to pet dogs, feral dogs, and wolves) from the Chinese term (\"구; 狗\") which is used specifically to indicate dog meat. \"Hwangu\" has been considered better for consumption than \"Baekgu\" (White dog) and \"Heukgu\" (Black dog).",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Around 1816, Jeong Hak-yu, the second son of Jeong Yak-yong, a prominent politician and scholar of the Joseon dynasty, wrote a poem called Nongga Wollyeongga (농가월령가). This poem, which is an important source of Korean folk history, describes what ordinary Korean farming families did in each month of the year. In the description of the month of August the poem tells of a married woman visiting her birth parents with boiled dog meat, rice cake, and rice wine, thus showing the popularity of dog meat at the time (Ahn, 2000; Seo, 2002). Dongguk Sesigi (동국세시기), a book written by Korean scholar Hong Seok-mo in 1849, contains a recipe for Bosintang including a boiled dog, green onion, and red chili pepper powder.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "According to a 2006 survey, dog meat was the fourth most commonly consumed meat in South Korea. In 2019, a majority (71.9%) of Koreans reported that they do not eat dog meat.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Samgyetang is a chicken ginseng soup traditionally consumed during Boknal (복날) days: the hottest days of summer. It is a Korean custom to eat hot food in hot weather called Iyeolchiyeol (이열치열), which means “controlling heat with heat”. Consequently, Samgyetang is Koreans' favorite energizing food and it is common to have it on sambok (삼복) days — Chobok (초복), Jungbok (중복) and Malbok (말복) — which are believed to be the hottest days in Korea.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "As the “Dongui Bogam” says, (Kor. 동의보감, Chin. 東醫寶鑑, Exemplar of Korean Medicine, 1613), “eating the meat from a female chicken with yellow feathers helps to control excessive thirst and urination, vitalizes the five viscera, increases yang energy, and warms the small intestines…. Ginseng complements the five viscera, stabilizes the spirit and soul, and fills what is lacking and weak in our body.”↵It is served with radish kimchi, cabbage kimchi, chicken gizzard, fresh green peppers and ginseng wine (insamju -인삼주). Commonly, it uses a chicken before the age of six months before it start to lay eggs. Stew made from a young chicken served with yukgaejang (Kor. 육개장, spicy beef stew), were introduced as part of the (복날) ‘Canicular Days’ cuisine only in the early 20th century.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Originally, samgyetang was called gyesamtang then it changed because of the increasingly popularity of ginseng in Korea and overseas. That is also because as ginseng is the main ingredient of the soup Korean decided to reverse the first two syllables of the name putting ginseng first.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Traditional Korean diet or Hansik is often associated with spiritual and physical health. While the diet of modern Korean people has become increasingly westernized and consists of numerous non-traditional foods, many believe in the healing power of Hansik. Vegetables and fermented foods are part of a healthy diet around the world, and Hansik includes many vegetable dishes and fermented foods. Three dishes, soup, Kimchi and multigrain rice make up the basic meal pattern of Hansik called three Cheopbansang. Fermented soybean paste Doenjang used in soups and fermented red chili paste Gochujang used in kimchi add health benefits to these foods.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Certain foods are typically consumed to combat the heat of the summer or the cold months, regain strength during and after an illness, or for general health. Cool noodle Naengmyeon originally from the northern part of the Korean peninsula is now enjoyed in South Korea as well as many parts of the world especially during the hot summer months. Likewise, ginseng chicken soup Samgyetang is often eaten during summer to reduce heat exhaustion and regain stamina.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Following a traditional Korean diet may lower the risk of some health issues including obesity and metabolic syndrome with a decrease in body mass index (BMI), body fat percent, and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol. Fermented foods like kimchi and doenjang contain probiotics which may boost immunity and reduce the incidence or severity of allergic conditions such as asthma and atopic dermatitis. It may also lower the risk of cardiovascular and chronic metabolic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Probiotics typically found in kimchi include species of genera Lactobacillus, Leuconostoc, and Weissella, and they have been linked to anti-inflammatory effects and health benefits such as improved gut health. Napa cabbage is prepared with much salt and approximately 20% of sodium intake comes from kimchi. An increased risk of gastric cancer among subjects with frequent or high consumption of kimchi was found in some case-control studies. As with other salted foods, moderate consumption may maximize health benefits of kimchi.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Koreans commonly believe in the idea of Yak Sik Dong Won (약식동원, 藥食同源) as seen in Chinese traditions. Food is the first step to good health, and medical treatment should be sought only if food does not improve health. The diet of younger Koreans has become more westernized, yet hansik has been an integral part of the Korean culture since the ancient times. Collaboration of modern science and traditional Korean diet will further strengthen the concept of Yak Sik Dong Won.",
"title": "Food crops"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Korean foods can be largely categorized into groups of \"main staple foods\" (주식), \"subsidiary dishes\" (부식), and \"dessert\" (후식). The main dishes are made from grains such as bap (a bowl of rice), juk (porridge), and guksu (noodles).",
"title": "Dishes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Many Korean banchan rely on fermentation for flavor and preservation, resulting in a tangy, salty, and spicy taste. Certain regions are especially associated with some dishes (for example, the city of Jeonju with bibimbap) either as a place of origin or for a famous regional variety. Restaurants will often use these famous names on their signs or menus (e.g. \"Suwon galbi\").",
"title": "Dishes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Soups are a common part of any Korean meal. Unlike other cultures, in Korean culture, soup is served as part of the main course rather than at the beginning or the end of the meal, as an accompaniment to rice along with other banchan. Soups known as guk are often made with meats, shellfish and vegetables. Soups can be made into more formal soups known as tang, often served as the main dish of the meal. Jjigae are a thicker, heavier seasoned soups or stews.",
"title": "Dishes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Some popular types of soups are:",
"title": "Dishes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Stews are referred to as jjigae, and are often a shared side dish. Jjigae is often both cooked and served in the glazed earthenware pot (ttukbaegi) in which it is cooked. The most common version of this stew is doenjang jjigae, which is a stew of soybean paste, with many variations; common ingredients include vegetables, saltwater or freshwater fish, and tofu. The stew often changes with the seasons and which ingredients are available. Other common varieties of jjigae contain kimchi (kimchi jjigae) or tofu (sundubu jjigae).",
"title": "Dishes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Kimchi refers to often fermented vegetable dishes usually made with napa cabbage, Korean radish, or sometimes cucumber. There are 4 types of raw materials which are major ones: spices, seasonings, and other additional materials. Red and black pepper, cinnamon, garlic, ginger, onion, and mustard are the example of spices. There are endless varieties with regional variations, and it is served as a side dish or cooked into soups and rice dishes. In the late 15th century, it depicted Korean's custom that Korean ancestors buried kimchi jars in the ground for storage for the entire winter season, as fermented foods can keep for several years. These were stored in traditional Korean mud pots known as jangdokdae, although with the advent of refrigerators, special kimchi freezers and commercially produced kimchi, this practice has become less common. Kimchi is a vegetable-based food which includes low calorie, low fat, and no cholesterol. Also, it is a rich source of various vitamins and minerals. It contains vitamins such as vitamin A, vitamin B, vitamin C, and vitamin K and minerals which are calcium, iron, phosphorus, and selenium.The same lactobacilli bacteria found in yogurt and other fermented dairy products are also found in kimchi. In 2021, Koreans collectively consumed 1,965,000 tons of Kimchi, with average Korean consuming 88.3 grams of Kimchi daily.",
"title": "Dishes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Noodles or noodle dishes in Korean cuisine are collectively referred to as guksu in native Korean or myeon in hanja. While noodles were eaten in Korea from ancient times, productions of wheat was less than other crops, so wheat noodles did not become a daily food until 1945. Wheat noodles (milguksu) were specialty foods for birthdays, weddings or auspicious occasions because the long and continued shape were thought to be associated with the bliss for longevity and long-lasting marriage.",
"title": "Dishes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "In Korean traditional noodle dishes are onmyeon or guksu jangguk (noodles with a hot clear broth), naengmyeon (cold buckwheat noodles), bibim guksu (cold noodle dish mixed with vegetables), kalguksu (knife-cut noodles), kongguksu (noodles with a cold soybean broth), japchae (cellophane noodles made from sweet potato with various vegetables) and others. In royal court, baekmyeon (literally \"white noodles\") consisting of buckwheat noodles and pheasant broth, was regarded as the top quality noodle dish. Naengmyeon with a cold soup mixed with dongchimi (watery radish kimchi) and beef brisket broth was eaten in court during summer.",
"title": "Dishes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Banchan is a term referring collectively to side dishes in Korean cuisine. Soups and stews are not considered banchan.",
"title": "Dishes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Gui are grilled dishes, which most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetable ingredients. At traditional restaurants, meats are cooked at the center of the table over a charcoal grill, surrounded by various banchan and individual rice bowls. The cooked meat is then cut into small pieces and wrapped with fresh lettuce leaves, with rice, thinly sliced garlic, ssamjang (a mixture of gochujang and dwenjang), and other seasonings. The suffix gui is often omitted in the names of meat-based gui such as galbi, the name of which was originally galbi gui.",
"title": "Dishes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Jjim and seon (steamed dishes) are generic terms referring to steamed or boiled dishes in Korean cuisine. However, the former is made with meat or seafood-based ingredients marinated in gochujang or ganjang while seon is made with vegetable stuffed with fillings.",
"title": "Dishes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Hoe (raw dishes): although the term originally referred to any kind of raw dish, it is generally used to refer to saengseonhweh (생선회, raw fish dishes). It is dipped in gochujang, or soy sauce with wasabi, and served with lettuce or perilla leaves.",
"title": "Dishes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Jeon (전, 煎) (or buchimgae) is a Korean savory pancake made from various ingredients. Chopped kimchi or seafood is mixed into a wheat flour-based batter, and then pan fried. This dish is typically dipped in a mixture of soy sauce, vinegar, and red pepper powder. It can be served as an appetizer, side dish (banchan - 반찬) or accompanied by alcohol (anju - 안주).",
"title": "Dishes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "There are some sweet varieties called Hwajeon (화전) which means flower pancakes.",
"title": "Dishes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "There are different types of jeon: jeon-yu [전유어(煎油魚)] and jeon-hwa [ 전유화(煎油花)], the former has recently developed to only refer to fish pancakes. The previous ingredients can be used in various ways, such as meat, fish, and vegetables. The meat used can be quail, beef and pork. Seafood is mainly white sea fish such as croaker, cod, and Pollack. Vegetables used are: pumpkins, pepper,sesame leaves etc. In the summer potatoes are harvested, and the mung beans are made in the winter. According to the regional cases many buckwheat production are in Pyeongchang and Bongpyeong area, first set the small green onions or cabbage leaves and turn the thin buckwheat dough on it. There is no special taste, but the hands are still in the hand of buckwheat.",
"title": "Dishes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Cooking oils such as soy and corn are used today, though technology required for producing these oils was not available during the Joseon dynasty.",
"title": "Dishes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Namul may refer to either saengchae (생채, literally \"fresh vegetables\") or sukchae (숙채, literally \"heated vegetables\"), although the term generally indicates the latter. Saengchae is mostly seasoned with vinegar, chili pepper powder and salt to give a tangy and refreshing taste. On the other hand, sukchae (숙채) is blanched and seasoned with soy sauce, sesame oil, chopped garlic, or sometimes chili pepper powder.",
"title": "Dishes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Anju is a general term for a Korean side dish consumed with alcohol. It matches well with Korean traditional alcohol such as Soju or Makgeolli and helps people to enjoy their drinking more. Some examples of anju include steamed squid with gochujang, assorted fruit, dubu kimchi (tofu with kimchi), peanuts, odeng/ohmuk, sora (소라) (a kind of shellfish popular in street food tents), and nakji (small octopus) and Jokbal (pig's leg served with salted shrimp sauce). Samgyupsal (pork belly) is also considered as Anju with Soju. Most Korean foods can be considered as 'anju', as the food consumed alongside the alcohol depends on the diner's taste and preferences.",
"title": "Dishes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Songpyeon (송편, 松䭏) is a Korean dish made of rice powder mostly eaten during Chuseok/ Korean thanksgiving (추석) to express gratitude towards ancestors. Songpyeon recordings appear from the 17th century. It is said in 『Yorok 要 錄』, \"Make rice cakes with white rice flour, steam them with pine and pine needles and wash them off with water.\" At the beginning of Songpyeon, rice cakes were made simply with white rice powder, pine needles were steamed and then washed in water. It is said that \"red beans, pine nuts, walnuts, ginger and cinnamon\" were added in the \"Buyin Pilji 婦人 必 知\". In 『Korean Rice Cakes, Hangwa, Eumcheongryu』, “In mountainous regions such as Gangwon-do and Chungcheong-do, potato songpyeon, acorn songpyeon and songgisongpyeon have been prepared and eaten. In the coastal areas of Hamgyeong-do, Pyeongan-do and Gyeonggi-do, shellfish songpyeon as produced and eaten, and in the southern regions of Jeolla-do and Gyeongsang-do, songpyeon with moss leaves was produced and eaten.",
"title": "Holiday food"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Songpyeon represents the moon and hope, which is why while eating this Koreans make wishes.",
"title": "Holiday food"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "There is a proverb that says, \"When virgins make a nice songpyeon, they will meet a good spouse, and when a pregnant woman makes a nice songpyeon, they have beautiful daughters.\" Songpyeon served on the Baekilsang and the stone table is described in Yorok, \"I cooked it so that the convex shaped part of songpyeon came out without adding any filling, but it looks like it is full. It has the meaning of wishing good luck.",
"title": "Holiday food"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "In the Seoul region, the floral songpyeon and five-color songpyeon were made small and beautiful, and in Hwanghae-do and Gangwon-do they fingerprinted and ate them coarsely.",
"title": "Holiday food"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "The method of making five-color songpyeon is achieved by adding natural ingredients such as mugwort, gardenia water, omija water and cinnamon powder to the rice flour, kneading the rice cake with the five colors and adding the filling. However, in the past, pine endodermis were used in place of cinnamon powder to make the dough brown.",
"title": "Holiday food"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Ogok-bap means five rice dish, which consists of rice mixed with glutinous rice, cornstarch, red bean, perilla, and soybean. By consuming grains with the energy of blue, red, yellow, white, and black, we pray for good health as well as a good year for our body with the energy of the five elements, and to chase away bad luck and happiness and well-being.",
"title": "Holiday food"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "In addition, there is a custom of sharing five grains of rice between neighbors because it is said that three or more families of different surnames share rice with each other.",
"title": "Holiday food"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "It is consumed on the day of the first full moon of the year when people make rituals for guardian spirits against disasters and misfortune. Koreans also celebrate the upcoming spring.",
"title": "Holiday food"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "All Korean traditional nonalcoholic beverages are referred to as eumcheong or eumcheongnyu (음청류 飮淸類) which literally means \"clear beverages\". According to historical documents regarding Korean cuisine, 193 items of eumcheongnyu are recorded. Eumcheongnyu can be divided into the following categories: tea, hwachae (fruit punch), sikhye (sweet rice drink), sujeonggwa (persimmon punch), tang (탕, boiled water), jang (장, fermented grain juice with a sour taste), suksu (숙수, beverage made of herbs), galsu (갈수, drink made of fruit extract, and Oriental medicine), honeyed water, juice and milk by their ingredient materials and preparation methods. Among the varieties, tea, hwachae, sikhye, and sujeonggwa are still widely favored and consumed; however, the others almost disappeared by the end of the 20th century.",
"title": "Beverages"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "In Korean cuisine, tea, or cha, refers to various types of herbal tea that can be served hot or cold. Not necessarily related to the leaves, leaf buds, and internodes of the Camellia sinensis plant, they are made from diverse substances, including fruits (e.g. yuja-cha), flowers (e.g. gukhwa-cha), leaves, roots, and grains (e.g. bori-cha, hyeonmi-cha) or herbs and substances used in traditional Korean medicine, such as ginseng (e.g. insam-cha) and ginger (e.g. saenggang-cha).",
"title": "Beverages"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "While soju is the best known liquor, there are well over 100 different alcoholic beverages, such as beers, rice and fruit wines, and liquors produced in South Korea as well as a sweet rice drink. The top-selling domestic beers (maekju in Korean) are lagers, which differ from Western beers in that they are brewed from rice, rather than barley. Consequently, Korean beers are lighter, sweeter and have less head than their Western counterparts. The South Korean beer market is dominated by the two major breweries: Hite and OB. Taedonggang is a North Korean beer produced at a brewery based in Pyongyang since 2002. Microbrewery beers and bars are growing in popularity after 2002.",
"title": "Beverages"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Soju is a clear spirit which was originally made from grain, especially rice, and is now also made from sweet potatoes or barley. Soju made from grain is considered superior (as is also the case with grain vs. potato vodka). Soju is around 22% ABV, and is a favorite beverage of hard-up college students, hard-drinking businessmen, and blue-collar workers.",
"title": "Beverages"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Yakju is a refined pure liquor fermented from rice, with the best known being cheongju. Takju is a thick unrefined liquor made with grains, with the best known being makgeolli, a white, milky rice wine traditionally drunk by farmers.",
"title": "Beverages"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "In addition to the rice wine, various fruit wines and herbal wines exist in Korean cuisine. Acacia, maesil plum, Chinese quince, cherry, pine cone, and pomegranate are most popular. Majuang wine (a blended wine of Korean grapes with French or American wines) and ginseng-based wines are also available.",
"title": "Beverages"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Traditional rice cakes, tteok and Korean confectionery hangwa are eaten as treats during holidays and festivals. Tteok refers to all kinds of rice cakes made from either pounded rice (메떡, metteok), pounded glutinous rice (찰떡, chaltteok), or glutinous rice left whole, without pounding. It is served either filled or covered with sweetened mung bean paste, red bean paste, mashed red beans, raisins, a sweetened filling made with sesame seeds, sweet pumpkin, beans, jujubes, pine nuts or honey). Tteok is usually served as dessert or as a snack. Among varieties, songpyeon is a chewy stuffed tteok served at Chuseok. Honey or another soft sweet material such as sweetened sesame or black beans are used as fillings. Pine needles can be used for imparting flavor during the steaming process. Yaksik is a sweet rice cake made with glutinous rice, chestnuts, pine nuts, jujubes, and other ingredients, while chapssaltteok is a tteok filled with sweet bean paste.",
"title": "Sweets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "On the other hand, hangwa is a general term referring to all types of Korean traditional confectionery. The ingredients of hahngwa mainly consist of grain flour, honey, yeot, and sugar, or of fruit and edible roots. Hangwa is largely divided into yumilgwa (fried confectionery), suksilgwa, jeonggwa, gwapyeon, dasik (tea food) and yeot. Yumilgwa is made by stir frying or frying pieces of dough, such as maejakgwa and yakgwa. Maejakgwa is a ring-shaped confection made of wheat flour, vegetable oil, cinnamon, ginger juice, jocheong, and pine nuts, while yakgwa, literally \"medicinal confectionery\", is a flower-shaped biscuit made of honey, sesame oil and wheat flour.",
"title": "Sweets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Suksilgwa is made by boiling fruits, ginger, or nuts in water, and then forming the mix into the original fruit's shape, or other shapes. Gwapyeon is a jelly-like confection made by boiling sour fruits, starch, and sugar. Dasik, literally \"eatery for tea\", is made by kneading rice flour, honey, and various types of flour from nuts, herbs, sesame, or jujubes. Jeonggwa, or jeongwa, is made by boiling fruits, plant roots and seeds in honey, mullyeot (물엿, liquid candy) or sugar. It is similar to marmalade or jam/jelly. Yeot is a Korean traditional candy in liquid or solid form made from steamed rice, glutinous rice, glutinous kaoliang, corn, sweet potatoes or mixed grains. The steamed ingredients are lightly fermented and boiled in a large pot called sot (솥) for a long time.",
"title": "Sweets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Yugwa(유과) and Yak-gwa(약과).They are traditional desserts enjoyed during Chuseok, marriage or the sixtieth birthday (Hwangap - 환갑).",
"title": "Sweets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "Yugwa is a generic name for 산자, 강정 and 빈사과. They are classified as: square shaped 산자, finger shaped 강정, drop shaped and square shaped 빈사과 . Furthermore, many different names have been given based on coatings, toppings and fillings. Plum blossoms obtained by frying sesame seeds and nutmeg, steamed dried and fried glutinous rice, sebann with finely chopped sesame seeds, seunggeomcho and pine nut powder are used. In addition, they are dyed pink, yellow, etc. Depending on the region, it is also called Gwajul or Sanja. First, soak some good glutinous rice in water and let it ferment so that the glutinous rice sticks. The fermentation period varies from one week to ten days depending on the season, and after having fermented until crushed by hand, knead and steam it for a long time, then beat until cherries form.",
"title": "Sweets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Sanja is a large square shape, gangjeong is the thickness of a finger and bell gangjeong is the size of a thumb. 빈사과 is one the size of a red bean, which is lumped together with the syrup or sugar syrup and cut into squares. Once the excess oil has been removed, honey or syrup is applied and the ginger juice is added at this time. Ginger juice has the effect of preventing rancidity of fats. It is completed by covering with various types of gluten wheat.",
"title": "Sweets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "Yugwa, which is difficult to make, is best prepared in the winter. Honey or syrup is an important ingredient in making Yugwa, which crumbles and melts when you put it in your mouth.↵During the Joseon dynasty, Yugwa was used during the rite of passage and in the royal family various types of Yugwa were placed high on the banquet table. In the aristocratic family, it is customary to send gangjeong to accompany the groom or to business guests returning from a wedding party to the bride's house, full of dongguri intertwined with stones or willows.↵Furthermore, Yugwa was chosen as the ancestral food par excellence for the ancestors, and is a food not to be missed during the Lunar New Year holiday.",
"title": "Sweets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Yakgwa (약과; 藥菓) is a dessert made of wheat flour, honey, ginger juice and rice wine. In premodern Korea they were enjoyed by upper classes as a rare dish, today is common to serve it with tea.",
"title": "Sweets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Yakgwa is a traditional and good quality dish with a sweet and savory taste. In Korean, the Yak character is used to name foods that commonly contain honey and sesame oil. From ancient times, instead of fruit, honey and sesame oil were used to medicate and it has become a sweet. Even today the yakgwa among the bourgeois class is a dish that can never be missing. However, they are not prepared with difficulty as in ancient times and are easily found on the market. You can buy them anywhere easily and enjoy them comfortably for a snack. The Yakgwa was developed as a Buddhist banquet and was a very important ancestral food, it was food that was given as a gift for weddings.",
"title": "Sweets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "Also this reputation spread nationwide from China, Koryeo's oil and honey pastry was generally known for festivities.",
"title": "Sweets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "Korean regional cuisines (Korean: hyangto eumsik, literally \"native local foods\") are characterized by local specialties and distinctive styles within Korean cuisine. The divisions reflected historical boundaries of the provinces where these food and culinary traditions were preserved until modern times.",
"title": "Regional and variant cuisines"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "Although Korea has been divided into two nation-states since 1948 (North Korea and South Korea), it was once divided into eight provinces (paldo) according to the administrative districts of the Joseon dynasty. The northern region consisted of Hamgyeong Province, Pyeongan Province and Hwanghae Province. The central region comprised Gyeonggi Province, Chungcheong Province, and Gangwon Province. Gyeongsang Province and Jeolla Province made up the southern region.",
"title": "Regional and variant cuisines"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "Until the late 19th century, transportation networks were not well developed, and each provincial region preserved its own characteristic tastes and cooking methods. Geographic differences are also reflected by the local specialty foodstuffs depending on the climate and types of agriculture, as well as the natural foods available. With the modern development of transportation and the introduction of foreign foods, Korean regional cuisines have tended to overlap and integrate. However, many unique traditional dishes in Korean regional cuisine have been handed down through the generations.",
"title": "Regional and variant cuisines"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "Korean temple cuisine originated in Buddhist temples of Korea. Since Buddhism was introduced into Korea, Buddhist traditions have strongly influenced Korean cuisine, as well. During the Silla period (57 BCE – 935 CE), chalbap (찰밥, a bowl of cooked glutinous rice) yakgwa (a fried dessert) and yumilgwa (a fried and puffed rice snack) were served for Buddhist altars and have been developed into types of hangwa, Korean traditional confectionery. During the Goryeo dynasty, sangchu ssam (wraps made with lettuce), yaksik, and yakgwa were developed, and since spread to China and other countries. Since the Joseon dynasty, Buddhist cuisine has been established in Korea according to regions and temples.",
"title": "Regional and variant cuisines"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "On the other hand, royal court cuisine is closely related to Korean temple cuisine. In the past, when the royal court maids, sanggung, who were assigned to Suragan (hangul: 수라간; hanja: 水剌間; the name of the royal kitchen), where they prepared the king's meals, became old, they had to leave the royal palace. Therefore, many of them entered Buddhist temples to become nuns. As a result, culinary techniques and recipes of the royal cuisine were integrated into Buddhist cuisine.",
"title": "Regional and variant cuisines"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "Vegetarian cookery in Korea may be linked to the Buddhist traditions that influenced Korean culture from the Goryeo dynasty onwards. There are hundreds of vegetarian restaurants in Korea, although historically they have been local restaurants that are unknown to tourists. Most have buffets, with cold food, and vegetarian kimchi and tofu being the main features. Bibimbap is a common vegan dish. Menus change with seasons. Wine with the alcohol removed and fine teas are also served. The Korean tea ceremony is suitable for all vegetarians and vegans, and began with Buddhist influences. All food is eaten with a combination of stainless steel oval chopsticks and a long-handled shallow spoon called together sujeo.",
"title": "Regional and variant cuisines"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "Food is an important part of traditions of Korean family ceremonies, which are mainly based on the Confucian culture. Gwan Hon Sang Je (관혼상제; 冠婚喪祭), the four family ceremonies (coming-of-age ceremony, wedding, funeral, and ancestral rite) have been considered especially important and elaborately developed, continuing to influence Korean life to these days. Ceremonial food in Korea has developed with variation across different regions and cultures.",
"title": "Regional and variant cuisines"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "For example, ancestral rites called jesa are mainly held on the anniversary of an ancestor's death. Ritual food includes rice, alcohol (clear alcohol), soup, vinegar, and soy sauce (first line). Various meats, various rice cakes, and fish (row 2). When placing meat and fish, make sure your head faces east (right). Also, meat is placed on the left and fish is placed on the right; three types of hot soup prepared. Meat stew, beef stew, fish stew (3rd row); dried snackskimchiNo red pepper powder used, glutinous rice drink (line 4); and various fruits. Red fruits are to the east, white fruits are to the west. (Line 5)",
"title": "Regional and variant cuisines"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "In South Korea, inexpensive food may be purchased from pojangmacha, street carts during the day, where customers may eat standing beside the cart or have their food wrapped up to take home. At night, pojangmacha (포장마차) become small tents that sell food, drinks, and alcoholic beverages.",
"title": "Regional and variant cuisines"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "Seasonal street foods include hotteok, and bungeoppang, which are enjoyed in autumn and winter. Gimbap (김밥) and tteokbokki (떡볶이)are also very popular street food.",
"title": "Regional and variant cuisines"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "People also enjoy to eat Sundae (순대), Twigim (튀김), and Eomuk (오뎅/어묵) which are popular with tteokbokki. Also, Gyeran-ppang (계란빵) which is Egg Bread and Hoppang (호빵) are also enjoyed in winter. Dak-kkochi (닭꼬치) is a popular food in Korea with various sauces on chicken. Beondegi (번데기) and dalgona/ppopgi (뽑기) are two examples of original street foods many people have enjoyed since childhood.",
"title": "Regional and variant cuisines"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "Dining etiquette in Korea can be traced back to the Confucian philosophies of the Joseon period. Guidebooks, such as Sasojeol (士小節, Elementary Etiquette for Scholar Families), written in 1775 by Yi Deokmu (이덕무; 李德懋), comment on the dining etiquette for the period. Suggestions include items such as \"when you see a fat cow, goat, pig, or chicken, do not immediately speak of slaughtering, cooking or eating it\", \"when you are having a meal with others, do not speak of smelly or dirty things, such as boils or diarrhea,\" \"when eating a meal, neither eat so slowly as to appear to be eating against your will nor so fast as if to be taking someone else's food. Do not throw chopsticks on the table. Spoons should not touch plates, making a clashing sound\", among many other recommendations which emphasized proper table etiquette.",
"title": "Etiquette"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "Other than the etiquette mentioned above, blowing one's nose when having a meal is considered an inappropriate act as well.",
"title": "Etiquette"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "The eldest male at the table was always served first, and was commonly served in the men's quarters by the women of the house. Women usually dined in a separate portion of the house after the men were served. The eldest men or women always ate before the younger family members. The meal was usually quiet, as conversation was discouraged during meals. In modern times, these rules have become lax, as families usually dine together now and use the time to converse. Of the remaining elements of this decorum, one is that the younger members of the table should not pick up their chopsticks or start eating before the elders of the table or guests and should not finish eating before the elders or guests finish eating.",
"title": "Etiquette"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "In Korea, unlike in other East Asian cuisines such as Chinese and Japanese, the rice or soup bowl is not lifted from the table when eating from it. This is due to the fact that each diner is given a metal spoon along with the chopsticks known collectively as sujeo. The use of the spoon for eating rice and soups is expected. There are rules which reflect the decorum of sharing communal side dishes; rules include not picking through the dishes for certain items while leaving others, and the spoon used should be clean, because usually diners put their spoons in the same serving bowl on the table. Diners should also cover their mouths when using a toothpick after the meal.",
"title": "Etiquette"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "The table setup is important as well, and individual place settings, moving from the diner's left should be as follows: rice bowl, spoon, then chopsticks. Hot foods are set to the right side of the table, with the cold foods to the left. Soup must remain on the right side of the diner along with stews. Vegetables remain on the left along with the rice, and kimchi is set to the back while sauces remain in the front.",
"title": "Etiquette"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "The manner of drinking alcoholic drinks while dining is significant in Korean dining etiquette. Each diner is expected to face away from the eldest male and cover his mouth when drinking alcohol. According to Hyang Eum Ju Rye (향음주례; 鄕飮酒禮), the drinking etiquette established in Choseon dynasty, it is impolite for a king and his vassal, a father and his son, or a teacher and his student to drink face to face. Also, a guest should not refuse the first drink offered by host, and in the most formal situations, the diner should politely twice refuse a drink offered by the eldest male or a host. When the host offers for the third time, then finally the guest can receive it. If the guest refuses three times, drink is not to be offered any more.",
"title": "Etiquette"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "Collectively known as gungjung eumsik during the pre-modern era, the foods of the royal palace were reflective of the opulent nature of the past rulers of the Korean peninsula. This nature is evidenced in examples as far back as the Silla kingdom, where a man-made lake (Anapji Lake, located in Gyeongju), was created with multiple pavilions and halls for the sole purpose of opulent banquets, and a spring fed channel, Poseokjeong, was created for the singular purpose of setting wine cups afloat while they wrote poems.",
"title": "Royal court cuisine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "Reflecting the regionalism of the kingdoms and bordering countries of the peninsula, the cuisine borrowed portions from each of these areas to exist as a showcase. The royalty would have the finest regional specialties and delicacies sent to them at the palace. Although there are records of banquets predating the Joseon period, the majority of these records mostly reflect the vast variety of foods, but do not mention the specific foods presented. The meals cooked for the royal family did not reflect the seasons, as the commoner's meals would have. Instead, their meals varied significantly day-to-day. Each of the eight provinces was represented each month in the royal palace by ingredients presented by their governors, which gave the cooks a wide assortment of ingredients to use for royal meals.",
"title": "Royal court cuisine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "Food was considered significant in the Joseon period. Official positions were created within the Six Ministries (Yukjo, 육조) that were charged with all matters related to procurement and consumption of food and drink for the royal court. The Board of Personnel (Ijo, 이조) contained positions specific for attaining rice for the royal family. The Board of Rights (Yejo) were responsible for foods prepared for ancestor rites, attaining wines and other beverages, and medicinal foods. There were also hundreds of slaves and women who worked in the palace that had tasks such as making tofu, liquor, tea, and tteok (rice cakes). The women were the cooks to the royal palace and were of commoner or low-born families. These women would be split into specific skill sets or \"bureau\" such as the bureau of special foods (Saenggwa-bang, 생과방) or the bureau of cooking foods (Soju-bang, 소주방). These female cooks may have been assisted by male cooks from outside the palace during larger banquets when necessary.",
"title": "Royal court cuisine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "Five meals were generally served in the royal palace each day during the Joseon period, and records suggest this pattern had existed from antiquity. Three of these meals would be full meals, while the afternoon and after dinner meals would be lighter. The first meal, mieumsang (미음상), was served at sunrise and was served only on days when the king and queen were not taking herbal medicines. The meal consisted of rice porridge (juk, 죽) made with ingredients such as abalone (jeonbokjuk), white rice (huinjuk), mushrooms (beoseotjuk), pine nuts (jatjuk), and sesame (kkaejuk). The side dishes could consist of kimchi, nabak kimchi, oysters, soy sauce, and other items. The porridge was thought to give vitality to the king and queen throughout the day.",
"title": "Royal court cuisine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "The sura (수라) were the main meals of the day. Breakfast was served at ten in the morning, and the evening meals were served between six and seven at night. The set of three tables (surasang, 수라상), were usually set with two types of rice, two types of soup, two types of stew (jjigae), one dish of jjim (meat stew), one dish of jeongol (a casserole of meat and vegetables), three types of kimchi, three types of jang (장) and twelve side dishes, called 12 cheop (12첩). The meals were set in the suragan (수라간), a room specifically used for taking meals, with the king seated to the east and the queen to the west. Each had their own set of tables and were attended by three palace servant women known as sura sanggung (수라상궁). These women would remove bowl covers and offer the foods to the king and queen after ensuring the dishes were not poisoned.",
"title": "Royal court cuisine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "Banquets (궁중 연회 음식) were held on special occasions in the Korean Royal Palace. These included birthdays of the royal family members, marriages, and national festivals, including Daeborum, Dano, Chuseok, and Dongji. Banquet food was served on individual tables which varied according to the rank of the person. Usually banquet food consisted of ten different types of dishes. Main dishes were prepared based on the seasonal foods. Main dishes of the banquet included sinseollo, jeon, hwayang jeok, honghapcho, nengmyun and mulgimchi. A typical banquet ingredient was chogyetang (chicken broth with vinegar), which was prepared with five different chickens, five abalones, ten sea cucumbers, twenty eggs, half a bellflower root, mushrooms, two cups of black pepper, two peeled pine nuts, starch, soy sauce and vinegar. Yaksik was a favorite banquet dessert.",
"title": "Royal court cuisine"
}
] |
Korean cuisine has evolved through centuries of social and political change. Originating from ancient agricultural and nomadic traditions in Korea and southern Manchuria, Korean cuisine reflects a complex interaction of the natural environment and different cultural trends. Korean cuisine is largely based on rice, vegetables, seafood and meats. Dairy is largely absent from the traditional Korean diet. Traditional Korean meals are named for the number of side dishes that accompany steam-cooked short-grain rice. Kimchi is served at nearly every meal. Commonly used ingredients include sesame oil, doenjang, soy sauce, salt, garlic, ginger, gochugaru, gochujang and napa cabbage. Ingredients and dishes vary by province. Many regional dishes have become national. Korean royal court cuisine once brought all of the unique regional specialties together for the royal family. Foods are regulated by Korean cultural etiquette.
|
2001-08-23T00:52:34Z
|
2023-12-28T21:36:05Z
|
[
"Template:Clear",
"Template:Portal",
"Template:Redirect",
"Template:Korean cuisine",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Sister project links",
"Template:Use British English",
"Template:Culture of Korea",
"Template:Korean",
"Template:Cuisine",
"Template:Linktext",
"Template:In lang",
"Template:Transliteration",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Refend",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Further",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Div col end",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:ISBN",
"Template:Asian topic",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:See also",
"Template:Div col",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Harvnb",
"Template:Dead link",
"Template:Refbegin"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_cuisine
|
16,794 |
Kilobyte
|
The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information.
The International System of Units (SI) defines the prefix kilo as a multiplication factor of 1000 (10); therefore, one kilobyte is 1000 bytes. The internationally recommended unit symbol for the kilobyte is kB.
In some areas of information technology, particularly in reference to solid-state memory capacity, kilobyte instead typically refers to 1024 (2) bytes. This arises from the prevalence of sizes that are powers of two in modern digital memory architectures, coupled with the coincidence that 2 differs from 10 by less than 2.5%. A kibibyte is defined by IEC 80000-13 as 1024 bytes.
In the International System of Units (SI) the prefix kilo means 1000 (10); therefore, one kilobyte is 1000 bytes. The unit symbol is kB.
This is the definition recommended by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). This definition, and the related definitions of the prefixes mega (1000000), giga (1000000000), etc., are most commonly used for data transfer rates in computer networks, internal bus, hard drive and flash media transfer speeds, and for the capacities of most storage media, particularly hard drives, flash-based storage, and DVDs. It is also consistent with the other uses of the SI prefixes in computing, such as CPU clock speeds or measures of performance.
The IEC 80000-13 standard uses the term 'byte' to mean eight bits (1 B = 8 bit). Therefore, 1 kB = 8000 bit. One thousand kilobytes (1000 kB) is equal to one megabyte (1 MB), where 1 MB is one million bytes.
The term 'kilobyte' has traditionally been used to refer to 1024 bytes (2 B). The usage of the metric prefix kilo for binary multiples arose as a convenience, because 1024 is approximately 1000.
The binary interpretation of metric prefixes is still prominently used by the Microsoft Windows operating system. Metric prefixes are also used for random-access memory capacity, such as main memory and CPU cache size, due to the prevalent binary addressing of memory.
The binary meaning of the kilobyte for 1024 bytes typically uses the symbol KB, with an uppercase letter K. The B is often omitted in informal use. For example, a processor with 65,536 bytes of cache memory might be said to have "64 K" of cache. In this convention, one thousand and twenty-four kilobytes (1024 KB) is equal to one megabyte (1 MB), where 1 MB is 1024 bytes.
In December 1998, the IEC addressed such multiple usages and definitions by creating prefixes such as kibi, mebi, gibi, etc., to unambiguously denote powers of 1024. Thus the kibibyte, symbol KiB, represents 2 bytes = 1024 bytes. These prefixes are now part of the IEC 80000-13 standard. The IEC further specified that the kilobyte should only be used to refer to 1000 bytes. The International System of Units restricts the use of the SI prefixes strictly to powers of 10.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The International System of Units (SI) defines the prefix kilo as a multiplication factor of 1000 (10); therefore, one kilobyte is 1000 bytes. The internationally recommended unit symbol for the kilobyte is kB.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In some areas of information technology, particularly in reference to solid-state memory capacity, kilobyte instead typically refers to 1024 (2) bytes. This arises from the prevalence of sizes that are powers of two in modern digital memory architectures, coupled with the coincidence that 2 differs from 10 by less than 2.5%. A kibibyte is defined by IEC 80000-13 as 1024 bytes.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In the International System of Units (SI) the prefix kilo means 1000 (10); therefore, one kilobyte is 1000 bytes. The unit symbol is kB.",
"title": "Definitions and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "This is the definition recommended by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). This definition, and the related definitions of the prefixes mega (1000000), giga (1000000000), etc., are most commonly used for data transfer rates in computer networks, internal bus, hard drive and flash media transfer speeds, and for the capacities of most storage media, particularly hard drives, flash-based storage, and DVDs. It is also consistent with the other uses of the SI prefixes in computing, such as CPU clock speeds or measures of performance.",
"title": "Definitions and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The IEC 80000-13 standard uses the term 'byte' to mean eight bits (1 B = 8 bit). Therefore, 1 kB = 8000 bit. One thousand kilobytes (1000 kB) is equal to one megabyte (1 MB), where 1 MB is one million bytes.",
"title": "Definitions and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The term 'kilobyte' has traditionally been used to refer to 1024 bytes (2 B). The usage of the metric prefix kilo for binary multiples arose as a convenience, because 1024 is approximately 1000.",
"title": "Definitions and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The binary interpretation of metric prefixes is still prominently used by the Microsoft Windows operating system. Metric prefixes are also used for random-access memory capacity, such as main memory and CPU cache size, due to the prevalent binary addressing of memory.",
"title": "Definitions and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The binary meaning of the kilobyte for 1024 bytes typically uses the symbol KB, with an uppercase letter K. The B is often omitted in informal use. For example, a processor with 65,536 bytes of cache memory might be said to have \"64 K\" of cache. In this convention, one thousand and twenty-four kilobytes (1024 KB) is equal to one megabyte (1 MB), where 1 MB is 1024 bytes.",
"title": "Definitions and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In December 1998, the IEC addressed such multiple usages and definitions by creating prefixes such as kibi, mebi, gibi, etc., to unambiguously denote powers of 1024. Thus the kibibyte, symbol KiB, represents 2 bytes = 1024 bytes. These prefixes are now part of the IEC 80000-13 standard. The IEC further specified that the kilobyte should only be used to refer to 1000 bytes. The International System of Units restricts the use of the SI prefixes strictly to powers of 10.",
"title": "Definitions and usage"
}
] |
The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The International System of Units (SI) defines the prefix kilo as a multiplication factor of 1000 (103); therefore, one kilobyte is 1000 bytes. The internationally recommended unit symbol for the kilobyte is kB. In some areas of information technology, particularly in reference to solid-state memory capacity, kilobyte instead typically refers to 1024 (210) bytes. This arises from the prevalence of sizes that are powers of two in modern digital memory architectures, coupled with the coincidence that 210 differs from 103 by less than 2.5%. A kibibyte is defined by IEC 80000-13 as 1024 bytes.
|
2001-09-15T14:46:54Z
|
2023-10-26T17:59:52Z
|
[
"Template:TOC limit",
"Template:As of",
"Template:Section link",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Colend",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Distinguish",
"Template:Quantities of bytes",
"Template:Gaps",
"Template:1/4",
"Template:Redirect",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:SIbrochure9th",
"Template:Dead link",
"Template:Computer Storage Volumes",
"Template:Cols"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilobyte
|
16,795 |
Karl Andree
|
Karl Andree (20 October 1808 – 10 August 1875) was a German geographer.
Andree was born in Braunschweig. He was educated at Jena, Göttingen, and Berlin. After having been implicated in a students' political agitation he became a journalist, and in 1851 founded the newspaper Bremer Handelsblatt. From 1855, however, he devoted himself entirely to geography and ethnography, working successively at Leipzig and at Dresden. During the American Civil War, he advocated the cause of the secessionists. In 1862 he founded the important geographical periodical Globus. He died at Wildungen. His son Richard Andree followed in his father's career.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Karl Andree (20 October 1808 – 10 August 1875) was a German geographer.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Andree was born in Braunschweig. He was educated at Jena, Göttingen, and Berlin. After having been implicated in a students' political agitation he became a journalist, and in 1851 founded the newspaper Bremer Handelsblatt. From 1855, however, he devoted himself entirely to geography and ethnography, working successively at Leipzig and at Dresden. During the American Civil War, he advocated the cause of the secessionists. In 1862 he founded the important geographical periodical Globus. He died at Wildungen. His son Richard Andree followed in his father's career.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "",
"title": "References"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "",
"title": "References"
}
] |
Karl Andree was a German geographer.
|
2001-08-26T16:18:50Z
|
2023-10-24T20:03:20Z
|
[
"Template:EB1911",
"Template:Geographer-stub",
"Template:Expand German",
"Template:Sfn",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite Appletons'",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Germany-scientist-stub",
"Template:Short description"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Andree
|
16,796 |
Kuiper belt
|
The Kuiper belt (/ˈkaɪpər/ KY-pər) is a circumstellar disc in the outer Solar System, extending from the orbit of Neptune at 30 astronomical units (AU) to approximately 50 AU from the Sun. It is similar to the asteroid belt, but is far larger—20 times as wide and 20–200 times as massive. Like the asteroid belt, it consists mainly of small bodies or remnants from when the Solar System formed. While many asteroids are composed primarily of rock and metal, most Kuiper belt objects are composed largely of frozen volatiles (termed "ices"), such as methane, ammonia, and water. The Kuiper belt is home to most of the objects that astronomers generally accept as dwarf planets: Orcus, Pluto, Haumea, Quaoar, and Makemake. Some of the Solar System's moons, such as Neptune's Triton and Saturn's Phoebe, may have originated in the region.
The Kuiper belt is named in honor of the Dutch astronomer Gerard Kuiper, who conjectured the existence of a similar belt in 1951. However, it was not until 1980 that the astronomer Julio Angel Fernandez published a paper suggesting the existence of a comet belt beyond Neptune, which could serve as a source for short-period comets. Although the Kuiper belt is named after Gerard Kuiper, Fernandez was the researcher who first predicted its existence.
In 1992, minor planet (15760) Albion was discovered, the first Kuiper belt object (KBO) since Pluto (in 1930) and Charon (in 1978). Since its discovery, the number of known KBOs has increased to thousands, and more than 100,000 KBOs over 100 km (62 mi) in diameter are thought to exist. The Kuiper belt was initially thought to be the main repository for periodic comets, those with orbits lasting less than 200 years. Studies since the mid-1990s have shown that the belt is dynamically stable and that comets' true place of origin is the scattered disc, a dynamically active zone created by the outward motion of Neptune 4.5 billion years ago; scattered disc objects such as Eris have extremely eccentric orbits that take them as far as 100 AU from the Sun.
The Kuiper belt is distinct from the hypothesized Oort cloud, which is believed to be a thousand times more distant and mostly spherical. The objects within the Kuiper belt, together with the members of the scattered disc and any potential Hills cloud or Oort cloud objects, are collectively referred to as trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). Pluto is the largest and most massive member of the Kuiper belt and the largest and the second-most-massive known TNO, surpassed only by Eris in the scattered disc. Originally considered a planet, Pluto's status as part of the Kuiper belt caused it to be reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006. It is compositionally similar to many other objects of the Kuiper belt, and its orbital period is characteristic of a class of KBOs, known as "plutinos," that share the same 2:3 resonance with Neptune.
The Kuiper belt and Neptune may be treated as a marker of the extent of the Solar System, alternatives being the heliopause and the distance at which the Sun's gravitational influence is matched by that of other stars (estimated to be between 50000 AU and 125000 AU).
After the discovery of Pluto in 1930, many speculated that it might not be alone. The region now called the Kuiper belt was hypothesized in various forms for decades. It was only in 1992 that the first direct evidence for its existence was found. The number and variety of prior speculations on the nature of the Kuiper belt have led to continued uncertainty as to who deserves credit for first proposing it.
The first astronomer to suggest the existence of a trans-Neptunian population was Frederick C. Leonard. Soon after Pluto's discovery by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, Leonard pondered whether it was "not likely that in Pluto there has come to light the first of a series of ultra-Neptunian bodies, the remaining members of which still await discovery but which are destined eventually to be detected". That same year, astronomer Armin O. Leuschner suggested that Pluto "may be one of many long-period planetary objects yet to be discovered."
In 1943, in the Journal of the British Astronomical Association, Kenneth Edgeworth hypothesized that, in the region beyond Neptune, the material within the primordial solar nebula was too widely spaced to condense into planets, and so rather condensed into a myriad smaller bodies. From this he concluded that "the outer region of the solar system, beyond the orbits of the planets, is occupied by a very large number of comparatively small bodies" and that, from time to time, one of their number "wanders from its own sphere and appears as an occasional visitor to the inner solar system", becoming a comet.
In 1951, in a paper in Astrophysics: A Topical Symposium, Gerard Kuiper speculated on a similar disc having formed early in the Solar System's evolution and concluded that the disc consisted of "remnants of original clusterings which have lost many members that became stray asteroids, much as has occurred with open galactic clusters dissolving into stars." In another paper, based upon a lecture Kuiper gave in 1950, also called On the Origin of the Solar System, Kuiper wrote about the "outermost region of the solar nebula, from 38 to 50 astr. units (i.e., just outside proto-Neptune)" where "condensation products (ices of H20, NH3, CH4, etc.) must have formed, and the flakes must have slowly collected and formed larger aggregates, estimated to range up to 1 km. or more in size." He continued to write that "these condensations appear to account for the comets, in size, number and composition." According to Kuiper "the planet Pluto, which sweeps through the whole zone from 30 to 50 astr. units, is held responsible for having started the scattering of the comets throughout the solar system." It is said that Kuiper was operating on the assumption, common in his time, that Pluto was the size of Earth and had therefore scattered these bodies out toward the Oort cloud or out of the Solar System; there would not be a Kuiper belt today if this were correct.
The hypothesis took many other forms in the following decades. In 1962, physicist Al G.W. Cameron postulated the existence of "a tremendous mass of small material on the outskirts of the solar system". In 1964, Fred Whipple, who popularised the famous "dirty snowball" hypothesis for cometary structure, thought that a "comet belt" might be massive enough to cause the purported discrepancies in the orbit of Uranus that had sparked the search for Planet X, or, at the very least, massive enough to affect the orbits of known comets. Observation ruled out this hypothesis.
In 1977, Charles Kowal discovered 2060 Chiron, an icy planetoid with an orbit between Saturn and Uranus. He used a blink comparator, the same device that had allowed Clyde Tombaugh to discover Pluto nearly 50 years before. In 1992, another object, 5145 Pholus, was discovered in a similar orbit. Today, an entire population of comet-like bodies, called the centaurs, is known to exist in the region between Jupiter and Neptune. The centaurs' orbits are unstable and have dynamical lifetimes of a few million years. From the time of Chiron's discovery in 1977, astronomers have speculated that the centaurs therefore must be frequently replenished by some outer reservoir.
Further evidence for the existence of the Kuiper belt later emerged from the study of comets. That comets have finite lifespans has been known for some time. As they approach the Sun, its heat causes their volatile surfaces to sublimate into space, gradually dispersing them. In order for comets to continue to be visible over the age of the Solar System, they must be replenished frequently. A proposal for such an area of replenishment is the Oort cloud, possibly a spherical swarm of comets extending beyond 50,000 AU from the Sun first hypothesised by Dutch astronomer Jan Oort in 1950. The Oort cloud is thought to be the point of origin of long-period comets, which are those, like Hale–Bopp, with orbits lasting thousands of years.
There is another comet population, known as short-period or periodic comets, consisting of those comets that, like Halley's Comet, have orbital periods of less than 200 years. By the 1970s, the rate at which short-period comets were being discovered was becoming increasingly inconsistent with their having emerged solely from the Oort cloud. For an Oort cloud object to become a short-period comet, it would first have to be captured by the giant planets. In a paper published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1980, Uruguayan astronomer Julio Fernández stated that for every short-period comet to be sent into the inner Solar System from the Oort cloud, 600 would have to be ejected into interstellar space. He speculated that a comet belt from between 35 and 50 AU would be required to account for the observed number of comets. Following up on Fernández's work, in 1988 the Canadian team of Martin Duncan, Tom Quinn and Scott Tremaine ran a number of computer simulations to determine if all observed comets could have arrived from the Oort cloud. They found that the Oort cloud could not account for all short-period comets, particularly as short-period comets are clustered near the plane of the Solar System, whereas Oort-cloud comets tend to arrive from any point in the sky. With a "belt", as Fernández described it, added to the formulations, the simulations matched observations. Reportedly because the words "Kuiper" and "comet belt" appeared in the opening sentence of Fernández's paper, Tremaine named this hypothetical region the "Kuiper belt".
In 1987, astronomer David Jewitt, then at MIT, became increasingly puzzled by "the apparent emptiness of the outer Solar System". He encouraged then-graduate student Jane Luu to aid him in his endeavour to locate another object beyond Pluto's orbit, because, as he told her, "If we don't, nobody will." Using telescopes at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona and the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, Jewitt and Luu conducted their search in much the same way as Clyde Tombaugh and Charles Kowal had, with a blink comparator. Initially, examination of each pair of plates took about eight hours, but the process was sped up with the arrival of electronic charge-coupled devices or CCDs, which, though their field of view was narrower, were not only more efficient at collecting light (they retained 90% of the light that hit them, rather than the 10% achieved by photographs) but allowed the blinking process to be done virtually, on a computer screen. Today, CCDs form the basis for most astronomical detectors. In 1988, Jewitt moved to the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Hawaii. Luu later joined him to work at the University of Hawaii's 2.24 m telescope at Mauna Kea. Eventually, the field of view for CCDs had increased to 1024 by 1024 pixels, which allowed searches to be conducted far more rapidly. Finally, after five years of searching, Jewitt and Luu announced on 30 August 1992 the "Discovery of the candidate Kuiper belt object 1992 QB1". This object would later be named 15760 Albion. Six months later, they discovered a second object in the region, (181708) 1993 FW. By 2018, over 2000 Kuiper belts objects had been discovered.
Over one thousand bodies were found in a belt in the twenty years (1992–2012), after finding 1992 QB1 (named in 2018, 15760 Albion), showing a vast belt of bodies more than just Pluto and Albion. By the 2010s the full extent and nature of Kuiper belt bodies is largely unknown. Finally, in the late 2010s, two KBOs were closely flown past by an uncrewed spacecraft, providing much closer observations of the Plutonian system and another KBO.
Studies conducted since the trans-Neptunian region was first charted have shown that the region now called the Kuiper belt is not the point of origin of short-period comets, but that they instead derive from a linked population called the scattered disc. The scattered disc was created when Neptune migrated outward into the proto-Kuiper belt, which at the time was much closer to the Sun, and left in its wake a population of dynamically stable objects that could never be affected by its orbit (the Kuiper belt proper), and a population whose perihelia are close enough that Neptune can still disturb them as it travels around the Sun (the scattered disc). Because the scattered disc is dynamically active and the Kuiper belt relatively dynamically stable, the scattered disc is now seen as the most likely point of origin for periodic comets.
Astronomers sometimes use the alternative name Edgeworth–Kuiper belt to credit Edgeworth, and KBOs are occasionally referred to as EKOs. Brian G. Marsden claims that neither deserves true credit: "Neither Edgeworth nor Kuiper wrote about anything remotely like what we are now seeing, but Fred Whipple did". David Jewitt comments: "If anything ... Fernández most nearly deserves the credit for predicting the Kuiper Belt."
KBOs are sometimes called "kuiperoids", a name suggested by Clyde Tombaugh. The term "trans-Neptunian object" (TNO) is recommended for objects in the belt by several scientific groups because the term is less controversial than all others—it is not an exact synonym though, as TNOs include all objects orbiting the Sun past the orbit of Neptune, not just those in the Kuiper belt.
At its fullest extent (but excluding the scattered disc), including its outlying regions, the Kuiper belt stretches from roughly 30–55 AU. The main body of the belt is generally accepted to extend from the 2:3 mean-motion resonance (see below) at 39.5 AU to the 1:2 resonance at roughly 48 AU. The Kuiper belt is quite thick, with the main concentration extending as much as ten degrees outside the ecliptic plane and a more diffuse distribution of objects extending several times farther. Overall it more resembles a torus or doughnut than a belt. Its mean position is inclined to the ecliptic by 1.86 degrees.
The presence of Neptune has a profound effect on the Kuiper belt's structure due to orbital resonances. Over a timescale comparable to the age of the Solar System, Neptune's gravity destabilises the orbits of any objects that happen to lie in certain regions, and either sends them into the inner Solar System or out into the scattered disc or interstellar space. This causes the Kuiper belt to have pronounced gaps in its current layout, similar to the Kirkwood gaps in the asteroid belt. In the region between 40 and 42 AU, for instance, no objects can retain a stable orbit over such times, and any observed in that region must have migrated there relatively recently.
Between the 2:3 and 1:2 resonances with Neptune, at approximately 42–48 AU, the gravitational interactions with Neptune occur over an extended timescale, and objects can exist with their orbits essentially unaltered. This region is known as the classical Kuiper belt, and its members comprise roughly two thirds of KBOs observed to date. Because the first modern KBO discovered (Albion, but long called (15760) 1992 QB1), is considered the prototype of this group, classical KBOs are often referred to as cubewanos ("Q-B-1-os"). The guidelines established by the IAU demand that classical KBOs be given names of mythological beings associated with creation.
The classical Kuiper belt appears to be a composite of two separate populations. The first, known as the "dynamically cold" population, has orbits much like the planets; nearly circular, with an orbital eccentricity of less than 0.1, and with relatively low inclinations up to about 10° (they lie close to the plane of the Solar System rather than at an angle). The cold population also contains a concentration of objects, referred to as the kernel, with semi-major axes at 44–44.5 AU. The second, the "dynamically hot" population, has orbits much more inclined to the ecliptic, by up to 30°. The two populations have been named this way not because of any major difference in temperature, but from analogy to particles in a gas, which increase their relative velocity as they become heated up. Not only are the two populations in different orbits, the cold population also differs in color and albedo, being redder and brighter, has a larger fraction of binary objects, has a different size distribution, and lacks very large objects. The mass of the dynamically cold population is roughly 30 times less than the mass of the hot. The difference in colors may be a reflection of different compositions, which suggests they formed in different regions. The hot population is proposed to have formed near Neptune's original orbit and to have been scattered out during the migration of the giant planets. The cold population, on the other hand, has been proposed to have formed more or less in its current position because the loose binaries would be unlikely to survive encounters with Neptune. Although the Nice model appears to be able to at least partially explain a compositional difference, it has also been suggested the color difference may reflect differences in surface evolution.
When an object's orbital period is an exact ratio of Neptune's (a situation called a mean-motion resonance), then it can become locked in a synchronised motion with Neptune and avoid being perturbed away if their relative alignments are appropriate. If, for instance, an object orbits the Sun twice for every three Neptune orbits, and if it reaches perihelion with Neptune a quarter of an orbit away from it, then whenever it returns to perihelion, Neptune will always be in about the same relative position as it began, because it will have completed 1+1⁄2 orbits in the same time. This is known as the 2:3 (or 3:2) resonance, and it corresponds to a characteristic semi-major axis of about 39.4 AU. This 2:3 resonance is populated by about 200 known objects, including Pluto together with its moons. In recognition of this, the members of this family are known as plutinos. Many plutinos, including Pluto, have orbits that cross that of Neptune, although their resonance means they can never collide. Plutinos have high orbital eccentricities, suggesting that they are not native to their current positions but were instead thrown haphazardly into their orbits by the migrating Neptune. IAU guidelines dictate that all plutinos must, like Pluto, be named for underworld deities. The 1:2 resonance (whose objects complete half an orbit for each of Neptune's) corresponds to semi-major axes of ~47.7 AU, and is sparsely populated. Its residents are sometimes referred to as twotinos. Other resonances also exist at 3:4, 3:5, 4:7, and 2:5. Neptune has a number of trojan objects, which occupy its Lagrangian points, gravitationally stable regions leading and trailing it in its orbit. Neptune trojans are in a 1:1 mean-motion resonance with Neptune and often have very stable orbits.
Additionally, there is a relative absence of objects with semi-major axes below 39 AU that cannot apparently be explained by the present resonances. The currently accepted hypothesis for the cause of this is that as Neptune migrated outward, unstable orbital resonances moved gradually through this region, and thus any objects within it were swept up, or gravitationally ejected from it.
The 1:2 resonance at 47.8 AU appears to be an edge beyond which few objects are known. It is not clear whether it is actually the outer edge of the classical belt or just the beginning of a broad gap. Objects have been detected at the 2:5 resonance at roughly 55 AU, well outside the classical belt; predictions of a large number of bodies in classical orbits between these resonances have not been verified through observation.
Based on estimations of the primordial mass required to form Uranus and Neptune, as well as bodies as large as Pluto (see § Mass and size distribution), earlier models of the Kuiper belt had suggested that the number of large objects would increase by a factor of two beyond 50 AU, so this sudden drastic falloff, known as the Kuiper cliff, was unexpected, and to date its cause is unknown. Bernstein, Trilling, et al. (2003) found evidence that the rapid decline in objects of 100 km or more in radius beyond 50 AU is real, and not due to observational bias. Possible explanations include that material at that distance was too scarce or too scattered to accrete into large objects, or that subsequent processes removed or destroyed those that did. Patryk Lykawka of Kobe University claimed that the gravitational attraction of an unseen large planetary object, perhaps the size of Earth or Mars, might be responsible. An analysis of the TNO data available prior to September 2023 shows that the distribution of objects at the outer rim of the classical Kuiper belt resembles that of the outer main asteroid belt with a gap at about 72 AU, far from any mean-motion resonances with Neptune; the outer main asteroid belt exhibits a gap induced by the 5:6 mean-motion resonance with Jupiter at 5.875 AU.
The precise origins of the Kuiper belt and its complex structure are still unclear, and astronomers are awaiting the completion of several wide-field survey telescopes such as Pan-STARRS and the future LSST, which should reveal many currently unknown KBOs. These surveys will provide data that will help determine answers to these questions. Pan-STARRS 1 finished its primary science mission in 2014, and the full data from the Pan-STARRS 1 surveys were published in 2019, helping reveal many more KBOs.
The Kuiper belt is thought to consist of planetesimals, fragments from the original protoplanetary disc around the Sun that failed to fully coalesce into planets and instead formed into smaller bodies, the largest less than 3,000 kilometres (1,900 mi) in diameter. Studies of the crater counts on Pluto and Charon revealed a scarcity of small craters suggesting that such objects formed directly as sizeable objects in the range of tens of kilometers in diameter rather than being accreted from much smaller, roughly kilometer scale bodies. Hypothetical mechanisms for the formation of these larger bodies include the gravitational collapse of clouds of pebbles concentrated between eddies in a turbulent protoplanetary disk or in streaming instabilities. These collapsing clouds may fragment, forming binaries.
Modern computer simulations show the Kuiper belt to have been strongly influenced by Jupiter and Neptune, and also suggest that neither Uranus nor Neptune could have formed in their present positions, because too little primordial matter existed at that range to produce objects of such high mass. Instead, these planets are estimated to have formed closer to Jupiter. Scattering of planetesimals early in the Solar System's history would have led to migration of the orbits of the giant planets: Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune drifted outwards, whereas Jupiter drifted inwards. Eventually, the orbits shifted to the point where Jupiter and Saturn reached an exact 1:2 resonance; Jupiter orbited the Sun twice for every one Saturn orbit. The gravitational repercussions of such a resonance ultimately destabilized the orbits of Uranus and Neptune, causing them to be scattered outward onto high-eccentricity orbits that crossed the primordial planetesimal disc.
While Neptune's orbit was highly eccentric, its mean-motion resonances overlapped and the orbits of the planetesimals evolved chaotically, allowing planetesimals to wander outward as far as Neptune's 1:2 resonance to form a dynamically cold belt of low-inclination objects. Later, after its eccentricity decreased, Neptune's orbit expanded outward toward its current position. Many planetesimals were captured into and remain in resonances during this migration, others evolved onto higher-inclination and lower-eccentricity orbits and escaped from the resonances onto stable orbits. Many more planetesimals were scattered inward, with small fractions being captured as Jupiter trojans, as irregular satellites orbiting the giant planets, and as outer belt asteroids. The remainder were scattered outward again by Jupiter and in most cases ejected from the Solar System reducing the primordial Kuiper belt population by 99% or more.
The original version of the currently most popular model, the "Nice model", reproduces many characteristics of the Kuiper belt such as the "cold" and "hot" populations, resonant objects, and a scattered disc, but it still fails to account for some of the characteristics of their distributions. The model predicts a higher average eccentricity in classical KBO orbits than is observed (0.10–0.13 versus 0.07) and its predicted inclination distribution contains too few high inclination objects. In addition, the frequency of binary objects in the cold belt, many of which are far apart and loosely bound, also poses a problem for the model. These are predicted to have been separated during encounters with Neptune, leading some to propose that the cold disc formed at its current location, representing the only truly local population of small bodies in the solar system.
A recent modification of the Nice model has the Solar System begin with five giant planets, including an additional ice giant, in a chain of mean-motion resonances. About 400 million years after the formation of the Solar System the resonance chain is broken. Instead of being scattered into the disc, the ice giants first migrate outward several AU. This divergent migration eventually leads to a resonance crossing, destabilizing the orbits of the planets. The extra ice giant encounters Saturn and is scattered inward onto a Jupiter-crossing orbit and after a series of encounters is ejected from the Solar System. The remaining planets then continue their migration until the planetesimal disc is nearly depleted with small fractions remaining in various locations.
As in the original Nice model, objects are captured into resonances with Neptune during its outward migration. Some remain in the resonances, others evolve onto higher-inclination, lower-eccentricity orbits, and are released onto stable orbits forming the dynamically hot classical belt. The hot belt's inclination distribution can be reproduced if Neptune migrated from 24 AU to 30 AU on a 30 Myr timescale. When Neptune migrates to 28 AU, it has a gravitational encounter with the extra ice giant. Objects captured from the cold belt into the 1:2 mean-motion resonance with Neptune are left behind as a local concentration at 44 AU when this encounter causes Neptune's semi-major axis to jump outward. The objects deposited in the cold belt include some loosely bound 'blue' binaries originating from closer than the cold belt's current location. If Neptune's eccentricity remains small during this encounter, the chaotic evolution of orbits of the original Nice model is avoided and a primordial cold belt is preserved. In the later phases of Neptune's migration, a slow sweeping of mean-motion resonances removes the higher-eccentricity objects from the cold belt, truncating its eccentricity distribution.
Being distant from the Sun and major planets, Kuiper belt objects are thought to be relatively unaffected by the processes that have shaped and altered other Solar System objects; thus, determining their composition would provide substantial information on the makeup of the earliest Solar System. Due to their small size and extreme distance from Earth, the chemical makeup of KBOs is very difficult to determine. The principal method by which astronomers determine the composition of a celestial object is spectroscopy. When an object's light is broken into its component colors, an image akin to a rainbow is formed. This image is called a spectrum. Different substances absorb light at different wavelengths, and when the spectrum for a specific object is unravelled, dark lines (called absorption lines) appear where the substances within it have absorbed that particular wavelength of light. Every element or compound has its own unique spectroscopic signature, and by reading an object's full spectral "fingerprint", astronomers can determine its composition.
Analysis indicates that Kuiper belt objects are composed of a mixture of rock and a variety of ices such as water, methane, and ammonia. The temperature of the belt is only about 50 K, so many compounds that would be gaseous closer to the Sun remain solid. The densities and rock–ice fractions are known for only a small number of objects for which the diameters and the masses have been determined. The diameter can be determined by imaging with a high-resolution telescope such as the Hubble Space Telescope, by the timing of an occultation when an object passes in front of a star or, most commonly, by using the albedo of an object calculated from its infrared emissions. The masses are determined using the semi-major axes and periods of satellites, which are therefore known only for a few binary objects. The densities range from less than 0.4 to 2.6 g/cm. The least dense objects are thought to be largely composed of ice and have significant porosity. The densest objects are likely composed of rock with a thin crust of ice. There is a trend of low densities for small objects and high densities for the largest objects. One possible explanation for this trend is that ice was lost from the surface layers when differentiated objects collided to form the largest objects.
Initially, detailed analysis of KBOs was impossible, and so astronomers were only able to determine the most basic facts about their makeup, primarily their color. These first data showed a broad range of colors among KBOs, ranging from neutral grey to deep red. This suggested that their surfaces were composed of a wide range of compounds, from dirty ices to hydrocarbons. This diversity was startling, as astronomers had expected KBOs to be uniformly dark, having lost most of the volatile ices from their surfaces to the effects of cosmic rays. Various solutions were suggested for this discrepancy, including resurfacing by impacts or outgassing. Jewitt and Luu's spectral analysis of the known Kuiper belt objects in 2001 found that the variation in color was too extreme to be easily explained by random impacts. The radiation from the Sun is thought to have chemically altered methane on the surface of KBOs, producing products such as tholins. Makemake has been shown to possess a number of hydrocarbons derived from the radiation-processing of methane, including ethane, ethylene and acetylene.
Although to date most KBOs still appear spectrally featureless due to their faintness, there have been a number of successes in determining their composition. In 1996, Robert H. Brown et al. acquired spectroscopic data on the KBO 1993 SC, which revealed that its surface composition is markedly similar to that of Pluto, as well as Neptune's moon Triton, with large amounts of methane ice. For the smaller objects, only colors and in some cases the albedos have been determined. These objects largely fall into two classes: gray with low albedos, or very red with higher albedos. The difference in colors and albedos is hypothesized to be due to the retention or the loss of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) on the surface of these objects, with the surfaces of those that formed far enough from the Sun to retain H2S being reddened due to irradiation.
The largest KBOs, such as Pluto and Quaoar, have surfaces rich in volatile compounds such as methane, nitrogen and carbon monoxide; the presence of these molecules is likely due to their moderate vapor pressure in the 30–50 K temperature range of the Kuiper belt. This allows them to occasionally boil off their surfaces and then fall again as snow, whereas compounds with higher boiling points would remain solid. The relative abundances of these three compounds in the largest KBOs is directly related to their surface gravity and ambient temperature, which determines which they can retain. Water ice has been detected in several KBOs, including members of the Haumea family such as 1996 TO66, mid-sized objects such as 38628 Huya and 20000 Varuna, and also on some small objects. The presence of crystalline ice on large and mid-sized objects, including 50000 Quaoar where ammonia hydrate has also been detected, may indicate past tectonic activity aided by melting point lowering due to the presence of ammonia.
Despite its vast extent, the collective mass of the Kuiper belt is relatively low. The total mass of the dynamically hot population is estimated to be 1% the mass of the Earth. The dynamically cold population is estimated to be much smaller with only 0.03% the mass of the Earth. While the dynamically hot population is thought to be the remnant of a much larger population that formed closer to the Sun and was scattered outward during the migration of the giant planets, in contrast, the dynamically cold population is thought to have formed at its current location. The most recent estimate (2018) puts the total mass of the Kuiper belt at (1.97±0.30)×10 Earth masses based on the influence that it exerts on the motion of planets.
The small total mass of the dynamically cold population presents some problems for models of the Solar System's formation because a sizable mass is required for accretion of KBOs larger than 100 km (62 mi) in diameter. If the cold classical Kuiper belt had always had its current low density, these large objects simply could not have formed by the collision and mergers of smaller planetesimals. Moreover, the eccentricity and inclination of current orbits make the encounters quite "violent" resulting in destruction rather than accretion. The removal of a large fraction of the mass of the dynamically cold population is thought to be unlikely. Neptune's current influence is too weak to explain such a massive "vacuuming", and the extent of mass loss by collisional grinding is limited by the presence of loosely bound binaries in the cold disk, which are likely to be disrupted in collisions. Instead of forming from the collisions of smaller planetesimals, the larger object may have formed directly from the collapse of clouds of pebbles.
The size distributions of the Kuiper belt objects follow a number of power laws. A power law describes the relationship between N(D) (the number of objects of diameter greater than D) and D, and is referred to as brightness slope. The number of objects is inversely proportional to some power of the diameter D:
(The constant may be non-zero only if the power law doesn't apply at high values of D.)
Early estimates that were based on measurements of the apparent magnitude distribution found a value of q = 4 ± 0.5, which implied that there are 8 (=2) times more objects in the 100–200 km range than in the 200–400 km range.
Recent research has revealed that the size distributions of the hot classical and cold classical objects have differing slopes. The slope for the hot objects is q = 5.3 at large diameters and q = 2.0 at small diameters with the change in slope at 110 km. The slope for the cold objects is q = 8.2 at large diameters and q = 2.9 at small diameters with a change in slope at 140 km. The size distributions of the scattering objects, the plutinos, and the Neptune trojans have slopes similar to the other dynamically hot populations, but may instead have a divot, a sharp decrease in the number of objects below a specific size. This divot is hypothesized to be due to either the collisional evolution of the population, or to be due to the population having formed with no objects below this size, with the smaller objects being fragments of the original objects.
The smallest known Kuiper belt objects with radii below 1 km have only been detected by stellar occultations, as they are far too dim (magnitude 35) to be seen directly by telescopes such as the Hubble Space Telescope. The first reports of these occultations were from Schlichting et al. in December 2009, who announced the discovery of a small, sub-kilometre-radius Kuiper belt object in archival Hubble photometry from March 2007. With an estimated radius of 520±60 m or a diameter of 1040±120 m, the object was detected by Hubble's star tracking system when it briefly occulted a star for 0.3 seconds. In a subsequent study published in December 2012, Schlichting et al. performed a more thorough analysis of archival Hubble photometry and reported another occultation event by a sub-kilometre-sized Kuiper belt object, estimated to be 530±70 m in radius or 1060±140 m in diameter. From the occultation events detected in 2009 and 2012, Schlichting et al. determined the Kuiper belt object size distribution slope to be q = 3.6 ± 0.2 or q = 3.8 ± 0.2, with the assumptions of a single power law and a uniform ecliptic latitude distribution. Their result implies a strong deficit of sub-kilometer-sized Kuiper belt objects compared to extrapolations from the population of larger Kuiper belt objects with diameters above 90 km.
The scattered disc is a sparsely populated region, overlapping with the Kuiper belt but extending to beyond 100 AU. Scattered disc objects (SDOs) have very elliptical orbits, often also very inclined to the ecliptic. Most models of Solar System formation show both KBOs and SDOs first forming in a primordial belt, with later gravitational interactions, particularly with Neptune, sending the objects outward, some into stable orbits (the KBOs) and some into unstable orbits, the scattered disc. Due to its unstable nature, the scattered disc is suspected to be the point of origin of many of the Solar System's short-period comets. Their dynamic orbits occasionally force them into the inner Solar System, first becoming centaurs, and then short-period comets.
According to the Minor Planet Center, which officially catalogues all trans-Neptunian objects, a KBO is any object that orbits exclusively within the defined Kuiper belt region regardless of origin or composition. Objects found outside the belt are classed as scattered objects. In some scientific circles the term "Kuiper belt object" has become synonymous with any icy minor planet native to the outer Solar System assumed to have been part of that initial class, even if its orbit during the bulk of Solar System history has been beyond the Kuiper belt (e.g. in the scattered-disc region). They often describe scattered disc objects as "scattered Kuiper belt objects". Eris, which is known to be more massive than Pluto, is often referred to as a KBO, but is technically an SDO. A consensus among astronomers as to the precise definition of the Kuiper belt has yet to be reached, and this issue remains unresolved.
The centaurs, which are not normally considered part of the Kuiper belt, are also thought to be scattered objects, the only difference being that they were scattered inward, rather than outward. The Minor Planet Center groups the centaurs and the SDOs together as scattered objects.
During its period of migration, Neptune is thought to have captured a large KBO, Triton, which is the only large moon in the Solar System with a retrograde orbit (that is, it orbits opposite to Neptune's rotation). This suggests that, unlike the large moons of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus, which are thought to have coalesced from rotating discs of material around their young parent planets, Triton was a fully formed body that was captured from surrounding space. Gravitational capture of an object is not easy: it requires some mechanism to slow down the object enough to be caught by the larger object's gravity. A possible explanation is that Triton was part of a binary when it encountered Neptune. (Many KBOs are members of binaries. See below.) Ejection of the other member of the binary by Neptune could then explain Triton's capture. Triton is only 14% larger than Pluto, and spectral analysis of both worlds shows that their surfaces are largely composed of similar materials, such as methane and carbon monoxide. All this points to the conclusion that Triton was once a KBO that was captured by Neptune during its outward migration.
Since 2000, a number of KBOs with diameters of between 500 and 1,500 km (932 mi), more than half that of Pluto (diameter 2370 km), have been discovered. 50000 Quaoar, a classical KBO discovered in 2002, is over 1,200 km across. Makemake and Haumea, both announced on 29 July 2005, are larger still. Other objects, such as 28978 Ixion (discovered in 2001) and 20000 Varuna (discovered in 2000), measure roughly 600–700 km (373–435 mi) across.
The discovery of these large KBOs in orbits similar to Pluto's led many to conclude that, aside from its relative size, Pluto was not particularly different from other members of the Kuiper belt. Not only are these objects similar to Pluto in size, but many also have natural satellites, and are of similar composition (methane and carbon monoxide have been found both on Pluto and on the largest KBOs). Thus, just as Ceres was considered a planet before the discovery of its fellow asteroids, some began to suggest that Pluto might also be reclassified.
The issue was brought to a head by the discovery of Eris, an object in the scattered disc far beyond the Kuiper belt, that is now known to be 27% more massive than Pluto. (Eris was originally thought to be larger than Pluto by volume, but the New Horizons mission found this not to be the case.) In response, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) was forced to define what a planet is for the first time, and in so doing included in their definition that a planet must have "cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit". As Pluto shares its orbit with many other sizable objects, it was deemed not to have cleared its orbit and was thus reclassified from a planet to a dwarf planet, making it a member of the Kuiper belt.
It is not clear how many KBOs are large enough to be dwarf planets. Consideration of the surprisingly low densities of many dwarf-planet candidates suggests that not many are. Orcus, Pluto, Haumea, Quaoar, and Makemake are accepted by most astronomers; some have proposed other bodies, such as Salacia, 2002 MS4, 2002 AW197, and Ixion.
The six largest TNOs (Eris, Pluto, Gonggong, Makemake, Haumea and Quaoar) are all known to have satellites, and two of them have more than one. A higher percentage of the larger KBOs have satellites than the smaller objects in the Kuiper belt, suggesting that a different formation mechanism was responsible. There are also a high number of binaries (two objects close enough in mass to be orbiting "each other") in the Kuiper belt. The most notable example is the Pluto–Charon binary, but it is estimated that around 11% of KBOs exist in binaries.
On 19 January 2006, the first spacecraft to explore the Kuiper belt, New Horizons, was launched, which flew by Pluto on 14 July 2015. Beyond the Pluto flyby, the mission's goal was to locate and investigate other, farther objects in the Kuiper belt.
On 15 October 2014, it was revealed that Hubble had uncovered three potential targets, provisionally designated PT1 ("potential target 1"), PT2 and PT3 by the New Horizons team. The objects' diameters were estimated to be in the 30–55 km range; too small to be seen by ground telescopes, at distances from the Sun of 43–44 AU, which would put the encounters in the 2018–2019 period. The initial estimated probabilities that these objects were reachable within New Horizons' fuel budget were 100%, 7%, and 97%, respectively. All were members of the "cold" (low-inclination, low-eccentricity) classical Kuiper belt, and thus very different from Pluto. PT1 (given the temporary designation "1110113Y" on the HST web site), the most favorably situated object, was magnitude 26.8, 30–45 km in diameter, and was encountered in January 2019. Once sufficient orbital information was provided, the Minor Planet Center gave official designations to the three target KBOs: 2014 MU69 (PT1), 2014 OS393 (PT2), and 2014 PN70 (PT3). By the fall of 2014, a possible fourth target, 2014 MT69, had been eliminated by follow-up observations. PT2 was out of the running before the Pluto flyby.
On 26 August 2015, the first target, 2014 MU69 (nicknamed "Ultima Thule" and later named 486958 Arrokoth), was chosen. Course adjustment took place in late October and early November 2015, leading to a flyby in January 2019. On 1 July 2016, NASA approved additional funding for New Horizons to visit the object.
On 2 December 2015, New Horizons detected what was then called 1994 JR1 (later named 15810 Arawn) from 270 million kilometres (170×10^ mi) away.
On 1 January 2019, New Horizons successfully flew by Arrokoth, returning data showing Arrokoth to be a contact binary 32 km long by 16 km wide. The Ralph instrument aboard New Horizons confirmed Arrokoth's red color. Data from the fly-by will continue to be downloaded over the next 20 months.
No follow-up missions for New Horizons are planned, though at least two concepts for missions that would return to orbit or land on Pluto have been studied. Beyond Pluto, there exist many large KBOs that cannot be visited with New Horizons, such as the dwarf planets Makemake and Haumea. New missions would be tasked to explore and study these objects in detail. Thales Alenia Space has studied the logistics of an orbiter mission to Haumea, a high priority scientific target due to its status as the parent body of a collisional family that includes several other TNOs, as well as Haumea's ring and two moons. The lead author, Joel Poncy, has advocated for new technology that would allow spacecraft to reach and orbit KBOs in 10–20 years or less. New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern has informally suggested missions that would flyby the planets Uranus or Neptune before visiting new KBO targets, thus furthering the exploration of the Kuiper belt while also visiting these ice giant planets for the first time since the Voyager 2 flybys in the 1980s.
Quaoar has been considered as a flyby target for a probe tasked with exploring the interstellar medium, as it currently lies near the heliospheric nose; Pontus Brandt at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and his colleagues have studied a probe that would flyby Quaoar in the 2030s before continuing to the interstellar medium through the heliospheric nose. Among their interests in Quaoar include its likely disappearing methane atmosphere and cryovolcanism. The mission studied by Brandt and his colleagues would launch using SLS and achieve 30 km/s using a Jupiter flyby. Alternatively, for an orbiter mission, a study published in 2012 concluded that Ixion and Huya are among the most feasible targets. For instance, the authors calculated that an orbiter mission could reach Ixion after 17 years cruise time if launched in 2039.
By 2006, astronomers had resolved dust discs thought to be Kuiper belt-like structures around nine stars other than the Sun. They appear to fall into two categories: wide belts, with radii of over 50 AU, and narrow belts (tentatively like that of the Solar System) with radii of between 20 and 30 AU and relatively sharp boundaries. Beyond this, 15–20% of solar-type stars have an observed infrared excess that is suggestive of massive Kuiper-belt-like structures. Most known debris discs around other stars are fairly young, but the two images on the right, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in January 2006, are old enough (roughly 300 million years) to have settled into stable configurations. The left image is a "top view" of a wide belt, and the right image is an "edge view" of a narrow belt. Computer simulations of dust in the Kuiper belt suggest that when it was younger, it may have resembled the narrow rings seen around younger stars.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Kuiper belt (/ˈkaɪpər/ KY-pər) is a circumstellar disc in the outer Solar System, extending from the orbit of Neptune at 30 astronomical units (AU) to approximately 50 AU from the Sun. It is similar to the asteroid belt, but is far larger—20 times as wide and 20–200 times as massive. Like the asteroid belt, it consists mainly of small bodies or remnants from when the Solar System formed. While many asteroids are composed primarily of rock and metal, most Kuiper belt objects are composed largely of frozen volatiles (termed \"ices\"), such as methane, ammonia, and water. The Kuiper belt is home to most of the objects that astronomers generally accept as dwarf planets: Orcus, Pluto, Haumea, Quaoar, and Makemake. Some of the Solar System's moons, such as Neptune's Triton and Saturn's Phoebe, may have originated in the region.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The Kuiper belt is named in honor of the Dutch astronomer Gerard Kuiper, who conjectured the existence of a similar belt in 1951. However, it was not until 1980 that the astronomer Julio Angel Fernandez published a paper suggesting the existence of a comet belt beyond Neptune, which could serve as a source for short-period comets. Although the Kuiper belt is named after Gerard Kuiper, Fernandez was the researcher who first predicted its existence.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In 1992, minor planet (15760) Albion was discovered, the first Kuiper belt object (KBO) since Pluto (in 1930) and Charon (in 1978). Since its discovery, the number of known KBOs has increased to thousands, and more than 100,000 KBOs over 100 km (62 mi) in diameter are thought to exist. The Kuiper belt was initially thought to be the main repository for periodic comets, those with orbits lasting less than 200 years. Studies since the mid-1990s have shown that the belt is dynamically stable and that comets' true place of origin is the scattered disc, a dynamically active zone created by the outward motion of Neptune 4.5 billion years ago; scattered disc objects such as Eris have extremely eccentric orbits that take them as far as 100 AU from the Sun.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The Kuiper belt is distinct from the hypothesized Oort cloud, which is believed to be a thousand times more distant and mostly spherical. The objects within the Kuiper belt, together with the members of the scattered disc and any potential Hills cloud or Oort cloud objects, are collectively referred to as trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). Pluto is the largest and most massive member of the Kuiper belt and the largest and the second-most-massive known TNO, surpassed only by Eris in the scattered disc. Originally considered a planet, Pluto's status as part of the Kuiper belt caused it to be reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006. It is compositionally similar to many other objects of the Kuiper belt, and its orbital period is characteristic of a class of KBOs, known as \"plutinos,\" that share the same 2:3 resonance with Neptune.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The Kuiper belt and Neptune may be treated as a marker of the extent of the Solar System, alternatives being the heliopause and the distance at which the Sun's gravitational influence is matched by that of other stars (estimated to be between 50000 AU and 125000 AU).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "After the discovery of Pluto in 1930, many speculated that it might not be alone. The region now called the Kuiper belt was hypothesized in various forms for decades. It was only in 1992 that the first direct evidence for its existence was found. The number and variety of prior speculations on the nature of the Kuiper belt have led to continued uncertainty as to who deserves credit for first proposing it.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The first astronomer to suggest the existence of a trans-Neptunian population was Frederick C. Leonard. Soon after Pluto's discovery by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, Leonard pondered whether it was \"not likely that in Pluto there has come to light the first of a series of ultra-Neptunian bodies, the remaining members of which still await discovery but which are destined eventually to be detected\". That same year, astronomer Armin O. Leuschner suggested that Pluto \"may be one of many long-period planetary objects yet to be discovered.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In 1943, in the Journal of the British Astronomical Association, Kenneth Edgeworth hypothesized that, in the region beyond Neptune, the material within the primordial solar nebula was too widely spaced to condense into planets, and so rather condensed into a myriad smaller bodies. From this he concluded that \"the outer region of the solar system, beyond the orbits of the planets, is occupied by a very large number of comparatively small bodies\" and that, from time to time, one of their number \"wanders from its own sphere and appears as an occasional visitor to the inner solar system\", becoming a comet.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In 1951, in a paper in Astrophysics: A Topical Symposium, Gerard Kuiper speculated on a similar disc having formed early in the Solar System's evolution and concluded that the disc consisted of \"remnants of original clusterings which have lost many members that became stray asteroids, much as has occurred with open galactic clusters dissolving into stars.\" In another paper, based upon a lecture Kuiper gave in 1950, also called On the Origin of the Solar System, Kuiper wrote about the \"outermost region of the solar nebula, from 38 to 50 astr. units (i.e., just outside proto-Neptune)\" where \"condensation products (ices of H20, NH3, CH4, etc.) must have formed, and the flakes must have slowly collected and formed larger aggregates, estimated to range up to 1 km. or more in size.\" He continued to write that \"these condensations appear to account for the comets, in size, number and composition.\" According to Kuiper \"the planet Pluto, which sweeps through the whole zone from 30 to 50 astr. units, is held responsible for having started the scattering of the comets throughout the solar system.\" It is said that Kuiper was operating on the assumption, common in his time, that Pluto was the size of Earth and had therefore scattered these bodies out toward the Oort cloud or out of the Solar System; there would not be a Kuiper belt today if this were correct.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The hypothesis took many other forms in the following decades. In 1962, physicist Al G.W. Cameron postulated the existence of \"a tremendous mass of small material on the outskirts of the solar system\". In 1964, Fred Whipple, who popularised the famous \"dirty snowball\" hypothesis for cometary structure, thought that a \"comet belt\" might be massive enough to cause the purported discrepancies in the orbit of Uranus that had sparked the search for Planet X, or, at the very least, massive enough to affect the orbits of known comets. Observation ruled out this hypothesis.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In 1977, Charles Kowal discovered 2060 Chiron, an icy planetoid with an orbit between Saturn and Uranus. He used a blink comparator, the same device that had allowed Clyde Tombaugh to discover Pluto nearly 50 years before. In 1992, another object, 5145 Pholus, was discovered in a similar orbit. Today, an entire population of comet-like bodies, called the centaurs, is known to exist in the region between Jupiter and Neptune. The centaurs' orbits are unstable and have dynamical lifetimes of a few million years. From the time of Chiron's discovery in 1977, astronomers have speculated that the centaurs therefore must be frequently replenished by some outer reservoir.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Further evidence for the existence of the Kuiper belt later emerged from the study of comets. That comets have finite lifespans has been known for some time. As they approach the Sun, its heat causes their volatile surfaces to sublimate into space, gradually dispersing them. In order for comets to continue to be visible over the age of the Solar System, they must be replenished frequently. A proposal for such an area of replenishment is the Oort cloud, possibly a spherical swarm of comets extending beyond 50,000 AU from the Sun first hypothesised by Dutch astronomer Jan Oort in 1950. The Oort cloud is thought to be the point of origin of long-period comets, which are those, like Hale–Bopp, with orbits lasting thousands of years.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "There is another comet population, known as short-period or periodic comets, consisting of those comets that, like Halley's Comet, have orbital periods of less than 200 years. By the 1970s, the rate at which short-period comets were being discovered was becoming increasingly inconsistent with their having emerged solely from the Oort cloud. For an Oort cloud object to become a short-period comet, it would first have to be captured by the giant planets. In a paper published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1980, Uruguayan astronomer Julio Fernández stated that for every short-period comet to be sent into the inner Solar System from the Oort cloud, 600 would have to be ejected into interstellar space. He speculated that a comet belt from between 35 and 50 AU would be required to account for the observed number of comets. Following up on Fernández's work, in 1988 the Canadian team of Martin Duncan, Tom Quinn and Scott Tremaine ran a number of computer simulations to determine if all observed comets could have arrived from the Oort cloud. They found that the Oort cloud could not account for all short-period comets, particularly as short-period comets are clustered near the plane of the Solar System, whereas Oort-cloud comets tend to arrive from any point in the sky. With a \"belt\", as Fernández described it, added to the formulations, the simulations matched observations. Reportedly because the words \"Kuiper\" and \"comet belt\" appeared in the opening sentence of Fernández's paper, Tremaine named this hypothetical region the \"Kuiper belt\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In 1987, astronomer David Jewitt, then at MIT, became increasingly puzzled by \"the apparent emptiness of the outer Solar System\". He encouraged then-graduate student Jane Luu to aid him in his endeavour to locate another object beyond Pluto's orbit, because, as he told her, \"If we don't, nobody will.\" Using telescopes at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona and the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, Jewitt and Luu conducted their search in much the same way as Clyde Tombaugh and Charles Kowal had, with a blink comparator. Initially, examination of each pair of plates took about eight hours, but the process was sped up with the arrival of electronic charge-coupled devices or CCDs, which, though their field of view was narrower, were not only more efficient at collecting light (they retained 90% of the light that hit them, rather than the 10% achieved by photographs) but allowed the blinking process to be done virtually, on a computer screen. Today, CCDs form the basis for most astronomical detectors. In 1988, Jewitt moved to the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Hawaii. Luu later joined him to work at the University of Hawaii's 2.24 m telescope at Mauna Kea. Eventually, the field of view for CCDs had increased to 1024 by 1024 pixels, which allowed searches to be conducted far more rapidly. Finally, after five years of searching, Jewitt and Luu announced on 30 August 1992 the \"Discovery of the candidate Kuiper belt object 1992 QB1\". This object would later be named 15760 Albion. Six months later, they discovered a second object in the region, (181708) 1993 FW. By 2018, over 2000 Kuiper belts objects had been discovered.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Over one thousand bodies were found in a belt in the twenty years (1992–2012), after finding 1992 QB1 (named in 2018, 15760 Albion), showing a vast belt of bodies more than just Pluto and Albion. By the 2010s the full extent and nature of Kuiper belt bodies is largely unknown. Finally, in the late 2010s, two KBOs were closely flown past by an uncrewed spacecraft, providing much closer observations of the Plutonian system and another KBO.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Studies conducted since the trans-Neptunian region was first charted have shown that the region now called the Kuiper belt is not the point of origin of short-period comets, but that they instead derive from a linked population called the scattered disc. The scattered disc was created when Neptune migrated outward into the proto-Kuiper belt, which at the time was much closer to the Sun, and left in its wake a population of dynamically stable objects that could never be affected by its orbit (the Kuiper belt proper), and a population whose perihelia are close enough that Neptune can still disturb them as it travels around the Sun (the scattered disc). Because the scattered disc is dynamically active and the Kuiper belt relatively dynamically stable, the scattered disc is now seen as the most likely point of origin for periodic comets.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Astronomers sometimes use the alternative name Edgeworth–Kuiper belt to credit Edgeworth, and KBOs are occasionally referred to as EKOs. Brian G. Marsden claims that neither deserves true credit: \"Neither Edgeworth nor Kuiper wrote about anything remotely like what we are now seeing, but Fred Whipple did\". David Jewitt comments: \"If anything ... Fernández most nearly deserves the credit for predicting the Kuiper Belt.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "KBOs are sometimes called \"kuiperoids\", a name suggested by Clyde Tombaugh. The term \"trans-Neptunian object\" (TNO) is recommended for objects in the belt by several scientific groups because the term is less controversial than all others—it is not an exact synonym though, as TNOs include all objects orbiting the Sun past the orbit of Neptune, not just those in the Kuiper belt.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "At its fullest extent (but excluding the scattered disc), including its outlying regions, the Kuiper belt stretches from roughly 30–55 AU. The main body of the belt is generally accepted to extend from the 2:3 mean-motion resonance (see below) at 39.5 AU to the 1:2 resonance at roughly 48 AU. The Kuiper belt is quite thick, with the main concentration extending as much as ten degrees outside the ecliptic plane and a more diffuse distribution of objects extending several times farther. Overall it more resembles a torus or doughnut than a belt. Its mean position is inclined to the ecliptic by 1.86 degrees.",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The presence of Neptune has a profound effect on the Kuiper belt's structure due to orbital resonances. Over a timescale comparable to the age of the Solar System, Neptune's gravity destabilises the orbits of any objects that happen to lie in certain regions, and either sends them into the inner Solar System or out into the scattered disc or interstellar space. This causes the Kuiper belt to have pronounced gaps in its current layout, similar to the Kirkwood gaps in the asteroid belt. In the region between 40 and 42 AU, for instance, no objects can retain a stable orbit over such times, and any observed in that region must have migrated there relatively recently.",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Between the 2:3 and 1:2 resonances with Neptune, at approximately 42–48 AU, the gravitational interactions with Neptune occur over an extended timescale, and objects can exist with their orbits essentially unaltered. This region is known as the classical Kuiper belt, and its members comprise roughly two thirds of KBOs observed to date. Because the first modern KBO discovered (Albion, but long called (15760) 1992 QB1), is considered the prototype of this group, classical KBOs are often referred to as cubewanos (\"Q-B-1-os\"). The guidelines established by the IAU demand that classical KBOs be given names of mythological beings associated with creation.",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The classical Kuiper belt appears to be a composite of two separate populations. The first, known as the \"dynamically cold\" population, has orbits much like the planets; nearly circular, with an orbital eccentricity of less than 0.1, and with relatively low inclinations up to about 10° (they lie close to the plane of the Solar System rather than at an angle). The cold population also contains a concentration of objects, referred to as the kernel, with semi-major axes at 44–44.5 AU. The second, the \"dynamically hot\" population, has orbits much more inclined to the ecliptic, by up to 30°. The two populations have been named this way not because of any major difference in temperature, but from analogy to particles in a gas, which increase their relative velocity as they become heated up. Not only are the two populations in different orbits, the cold population also differs in color and albedo, being redder and brighter, has a larger fraction of binary objects, has a different size distribution, and lacks very large objects. The mass of the dynamically cold population is roughly 30 times less than the mass of the hot. The difference in colors may be a reflection of different compositions, which suggests they formed in different regions. The hot population is proposed to have formed near Neptune's original orbit and to have been scattered out during the migration of the giant planets. The cold population, on the other hand, has been proposed to have formed more or less in its current position because the loose binaries would be unlikely to survive encounters with Neptune. Although the Nice model appears to be able to at least partially explain a compositional difference, it has also been suggested the color difference may reflect differences in surface evolution.",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "When an object's orbital period is an exact ratio of Neptune's (a situation called a mean-motion resonance), then it can become locked in a synchronised motion with Neptune and avoid being perturbed away if their relative alignments are appropriate. If, for instance, an object orbits the Sun twice for every three Neptune orbits, and if it reaches perihelion with Neptune a quarter of an orbit away from it, then whenever it returns to perihelion, Neptune will always be in about the same relative position as it began, because it will have completed 1+1⁄2 orbits in the same time. This is known as the 2:3 (or 3:2) resonance, and it corresponds to a characteristic semi-major axis of about 39.4 AU. This 2:3 resonance is populated by about 200 known objects, including Pluto together with its moons. In recognition of this, the members of this family are known as plutinos. Many plutinos, including Pluto, have orbits that cross that of Neptune, although their resonance means they can never collide. Plutinos have high orbital eccentricities, suggesting that they are not native to their current positions but were instead thrown haphazardly into their orbits by the migrating Neptune. IAU guidelines dictate that all plutinos must, like Pluto, be named for underworld deities. The 1:2 resonance (whose objects complete half an orbit for each of Neptune's) corresponds to semi-major axes of ~47.7 AU, and is sparsely populated. Its residents are sometimes referred to as twotinos. Other resonances also exist at 3:4, 3:5, 4:7, and 2:5. Neptune has a number of trojan objects, which occupy its Lagrangian points, gravitationally stable regions leading and trailing it in its orbit. Neptune trojans are in a 1:1 mean-motion resonance with Neptune and often have very stable orbits.",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Additionally, there is a relative absence of objects with semi-major axes below 39 AU that cannot apparently be explained by the present resonances. The currently accepted hypothesis for the cause of this is that as Neptune migrated outward, unstable orbital resonances moved gradually through this region, and thus any objects within it were swept up, or gravitationally ejected from it.",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The 1:2 resonance at 47.8 AU appears to be an edge beyond which few objects are known. It is not clear whether it is actually the outer edge of the classical belt or just the beginning of a broad gap. Objects have been detected at the 2:5 resonance at roughly 55 AU, well outside the classical belt; predictions of a large number of bodies in classical orbits between these resonances have not been verified through observation.",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Based on estimations of the primordial mass required to form Uranus and Neptune, as well as bodies as large as Pluto (see § Mass and size distribution), earlier models of the Kuiper belt had suggested that the number of large objects would increase by a factor of two beyond 50 AU, so this sudden drastic falloff, known as the Kuiper cliff, was unexpected, and to date its cause is unknown. Bernstein, Trilling, et al. (2003) found evidence that the rapid decline in objects of 100 km or more in radius beyond 50 AU is real, and not due to observational bias. Possible explanations include that material at that distance was too scarce or too scattered to accrete into large objects, or that subsequent processes removed or destroyed those that did. Patryk Lykawka of Kobe University claimed that the gravitational attraction of an unseen large planetary object, perhaps the size of Earth or Mars, might be responsible. An analysis of the TNO data available prior to September 2023 shows that the distribution of objects at the outer rim of the classical Kuiper belt resembles that of the outer main asteroid belt with a gap at about 72 AU, far from any mean-motion resonances with Neptune; the outer main asteroid belt exhibits a gap induced by the 5:6 mean-motion resonance with Jupiter at 5.875 AU.",
"title": "Structure"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The precise origins of the Kuiper belt and its complex structure are still unclear, and astronomers are awaiting the completion of several wide-field survey telescopes such as Pan-STARRS and the future LSST, which should reveal many currently unknown KBOs. These surveys will provide data that will help determine answers to these questions. Pan-STARRS 1 finished its primary science mission in 2014, and the full data from the Pan-STARRS 1 surveys were published in 2019, helping reveal many more KBOs.",
"title": "Origin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The Kuiper belt is thought to consist of planetesimals, fragments from the original protoplanetary disc around the Sun that failed to fully coalesce into planets and instead formed into smaller bodies, the largest less than 3,000 kilometres (1,900 mi) in diameter. Studies of the crater counts on Pluto and Charon revealed a scarcity of small craters suggesting that such objects formed directly as sizeable objects in the range of tens of kilometers in diameter rather than being accreted from much smaller, roughly kilometer scale bodies. Hypothetical mechanisms for the formation of these larger bodies include the gravitational collapse of clouds of pebbles concentrated between eddies in a turbulent protoplanetary disk or in streaming instabilities. These collapsing clouds may fragment, forming binaries.",
"title": "Origin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Modern computer simulations show the Kuiper belt to have been strongly influenced by Jupiter and Neptune, and also suggest that neither Uranus nor Neptune could have formed in their present positions, because too little primordial matter existed at that range to produce objects of such high mass. Instead, these planets are estimated to have formed closer to Jupiter. Scattering of planetesimals early in the Solar System's history would have led to migration of the orbits of the giant planets: Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune drifted outwards, whereas Jupiter drifted inwards. Eventually, the orbits shifted to the point where Jupiter and Saturn reached an exact 1:2 resonance; Jupiter orbited the Sun twice for every one Saturn orbit. The gravitational repercussions of such a resonance ultimately destabilized the orbits of Uranus and Neptune, causing them to be scattered outward onto high-eccentricity orbits that crossed the primordial planetesimal disc.",
"title": "Origin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "While Neptune's orbit was highly eccentric, its mean-motion resonances overlapped and the orbits of the planetesimals evolved chaotically, allowing planetesimals to wander outward as far as Neptune's 1:2 resonance to form a dynamically cold belt of low-inclination objects. Later, after its eccentricity decreased, Neptune's orbit expanded outward toward its current position. Many planetesimals were captured into and remain in resonances during this migration, others evolved onto higher-inclination and lower-eccentricity orbits and escaped from the resonances onto stable orbits. Many more planetesimals were scattered inward, with small fractions being captured as Jupiter trojans, as irregular satellites orbiting the giant planets, and as outer belt asteroids. The remainder were scattered outward again by Jupiter and in most cases ejected from the Solar System reducing the primordial Kuiper belt population by 99% or more.",
"title": "Origin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The original version of the currently most popular model, the \"Nice model\", reproduces many characteristics of the Kuiper belt such as the \"cold\" and \"hot\" populations, resonant objects, and a scattered disc, but it still fails to account for some of the characteristics of their distributions. The model predicts a higher average eccentricity in classical KBO orbits than is observed (0.10–0.13 versus 0.07) and its predicted inclination distribution contains too few high inclination objects. In addition, the frequency of binary objects in the cold belt, many of which are far apart and loosely bound, also poses a problem for the model. These are predicted to have been separated during encounters with Neptune, leading some to propose that the cold disc formed at its current location, representing the only truly local population of small bodies in the solar system.",
"title": "Origin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "A recent modification of the Nice model has the Solar System begin with five giant planets, including an additional ice giant, in a chain of mean-motion resonances. About 400 million years after the formation of the Solar System the resonance chain is broken. Instead of being scattered into the disc, the ice giants first migrate outward several AU. This divergent migration eventually leads to a resonance crossing, destabilizing the orbits of the planets. The extra ice giant encounters Saturn and is scattered inward onto a Jupiter-crossing orbit and after a series of encounters is ejected from the Solar System. The remaining planets then continue their migration until the planetesimal disc is nearly depleted with small fractions remaining in various locations.",
"title": "Origin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "As in the original Nice model, objects are captured into resonances with Neptune during its outward migration. Some remain in the resonances, others evolve onto higher-inclination, lower-eccentricity orbits, and are released onto stable orbits forming the dynamically hot classical belt. The hot belt's inclination distribution can be reproduced if Neptune migrated from 24 AU to 30 AU on a 30 Myr timescale. When Neptune migrates to 28 AU, it has a gravitational encounter with the extra ice giant. Objects captured from the cold belt into the 1:2 mean-motion resonance with Neptune are left behind as a local concentration at 44 AU when this encounter causes Neptune's semi-major axis to jump outward. The objects deposited in the cold belt include some loosely bound 'blue' binaries originating from closer than the cold belt's current location. If Neptune's eccentricity remains small during this encounter, the chaotic evolution of orbits of the original Nice model is avoided and a primordial cold belt is preserved. In the later phases of Neptune's migration, a slow sweeping of mean-motion resonances removes the higher-eccentricity objects from the cold belt, truncating its eccentricity distribution.",
"title": "Origin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Being distant from the Sun and major planets, Kuiper belt objects are thought to be relatively unaffected by the processes that have shaped and altered other Solar System objects; thus, determining their composition would provide substantial information on the makeup of the earliest Solar System. Due to their small size and extreme distance from Earth, the chemical makeup of KBOs is very difficult to determine. The principal method by which astronomers determine the composition of a celestial object is spectroscopy. When an object's light is broken into its component colors, an image akin to a rainbow is formed. This image is called a spectrum. Different substances absorb light at different wavelengths, and when the spectrum for a specific object is unravelled, dark lines (called absorption lines) appear where the substances within it have absorbed that particular wavelength of light. Every element or compound has its own unique spectroscopic signature, and by reading an object's full spectral \"fingerprint\", astronomers can determine its composition.",
"title": "Composition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Analysis indicates that Kuiper belt objects are composed of a mixture of rock and a variety of ices such as water, methane, and ammonia. The temperature of the belt is only about 50 K, so many compounds that would be gaseous closer to the Sun remain solid. The densities and rock–ice fractions are known for only a small number of objects for which the diameters and the masses have been determined. The diameter can be determined by imaging with a high-resolution telescope such as the Hubble Space Telescope, by the timing of an occultation when an object passes in front of a star or, most commonly, by using the albedo of an object calculated from its infrared emissions. The masses are determined using the semi-major axes and periods of satellites, which are therefore known only for a few binary objects. The densities range from less than 0.4 to 2.6 g/cm. The least dense objects are thought to be largely composed of ice and have significant porosity. The densest objects are likely composed of rock with a thin crust of ice. There is a trend of low densities for small objects and high densities for the largest objects. One possible explanation for this trend is that ice was lost from the surface layers when differentiated objects collided to form the largest objects.",
"title": "Composition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Initially, detailed analysis of KBOs was impossible, and so astronomers were only able to determine the most basic facts about their makeup, primarily their color. These first data showed a broad range of colors among KBOs, ranging from neutral grey to deep red. This suggested that their surfaces were composed of a wide range of compounds, from dirty ices to hydrocarbons. This diversity was startling, as astronomers had expected KBOs to be uniformly dark, having lost most of the volatile ices from their surfaces to the effects of cosmic rays. Various solutions were suggested for this discrepancy, including resurfacing by impacts or outgassing. Jewitt and Luu's spectral analysis of the known Kuiper belt objects in 2001 found that the variation in color was too extreme to be easily explained by random impacts. The radiation from the Sun is thought to have chemically altered methane on the surface of KBOs, producing products such as tholins. Makemake has been shown to possess a number of hydrocarbons derived from the radiation-processing of methane, including ethane, ethylene and acetylene.",
"title": "Composition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Although to date most KBOs still appear spectrally featureless due to their faintness, there have been a number of successes in determining their composition. In 1996, Robert H. Brown et al. acquired spectroscopic data on the KBO 1993 SC, which revealed that its surface composition is markedly similar to that of Pluto, as well as Neptune's moon Triton, with large amounts of methane ice. For the smaller objects, only colors and in some cases the albedos have been determined. These objects largely fall into two classes: gray with low albedos, or very red with higher albedos. The difference in colors and albedos is hypothesized to be due to the retention or the loss of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) on the surface of these objects, with the surfaces of those that formed far enough from the Sun to retain H2S being reddened due to irradiation.",
"title": "Composition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The largest KBOs, such as Pluto and Quaoar, have surfaces rich in volatile compounds such as methane, nitrogen and carbon monoxide; the presence of these molecules is likely due to their moderate vapor pressure in the 30–50 K temperature range of the Kuiper belt. This allows them to occasionally boil off their surfaces and then fall again as snow, whereas compounds with higher boiling points would remain solid. The relative abundances of these three compounds in the largest KBOs is directly related to their surface gravity and ambient temperature, which determines which they can retain. Water ice has been detected in several KBOs, including members of the Haumea family such as 1996 TO66, mid-sized objects such as 38628 Huya and 20000 Varuna, and also on some small objects. The presence of crystalline ice on large and mid-sized objects, including 50000 Quaoar where ammonia hydrate has also been detected, may indicate past tectonic activity aided by melting point lowering due to the presence of ammonia.",
"title": "Composition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Despite its vast extent, the collective mass of the Kuiper belt is relatively low. The total mass of the dynamically hot population is estimated to be 1% the mass of the Earth. The dynamically cold population is estimated to be much smaller with only 0.03% the mass of the Earth. While the dynamically hot population is thought to be the remnant of a much larger population that formed closer to the Sun and was scattered outward during the migration of the giant planets, in contrast, the dynamically cold population is thought to have formed at its current location. The most recent estimate (2018) puts the total mass of the Kuiper belt at (1.97±0.30)×10 Earth masses based on the influence that it exerts on the motion of planets.",
"title": "Mass and size distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The small total mass of the dynamically cold population presents some problems for models of the Solar System's formation because a sizable mass is required for accretion of KBOs larger than 100 km (62 mi) in diameter. If the cold classical Kuiper belt had always had its current low density, these large objects simply could not have formed by the collision and mergers of smaller planetesimals. Moreover, the eccentricity and inclination of current orbits make the encounters quite \"violent\" resulting in destruction rather than accretion. The removal of a large fraction of the mass of the dynamically cold population is thought to be unlikely. Neptune's current influence is too weak to explain such a massive \"vacuuming\", and the extent of mass loss by collisional grinding is limited by the presence of loosely bound binaries in the cold disk, which are likely to be disrupted in collisions. Instead of forming from the collisions of smaller planetesimals, the larger object may have formed directly from the collapse of clouds of pebbles.",
"title": "Mass and size distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The size distributions of the Kuiper belt objects follow a number of power laws. A power law describes the relationship between N(D) (the number of objects of diameter greater than D) and D, and is referred to as brightness slope. The number of objects is inversely proportional to some power of the diameter D:",
"title": "Mass and size distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "(The constant may be non-zero only if the power law doesn't apply at high values of D.)",
"title": "Mass and size distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Early estimates that were based on measurements of the apparent magnitude distribution found a value of q = 4 ± 0.5, which implied that there are 8 (=2) times more objects in the 100–200 km range than in the 200–400 km range.",
"title": "Mass and size distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Recent research has revealed that the size distributions of the hot classical and cold classical objects have differing slopes. The slope for the hot objects is q = 5.3 at large diameters and q = 2.0 at small diameters with the change in slope at 110 km. The slope for the cold objects is q = 8.2 at large diameters and q = 2.9 at small diameters with a change in slope at 140 km. The size distributions of the scattering objects, the plutinos, and the Neptune trojans have slopes similar to the other dynamically hot populations, but may instead have a divot, a sharp decrease in the number of objects below a specific size. This divot is hypothesized to be due to either the collisional evolution of the population, or to be due to the population having formed with no objects below this size, with the smaller objects being fragments of the original objects.",
"title": "Mass and size distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The smallest known Kuiper belt objects with radii below 1 km have only been detected by stellar occultations, as they are far too dim (magnitude 35) to be seen directly by telescopes such as the Hubble Space Telescope. The first reports of these occultations were from Schlichting et al. in December 2009, who announced the discovery of a small, sub-kilometre-radius Kuiper belt object in archival Hubble photometry from March 2007. With an estimated radius of 520±60 m or a diameter of 1040±120 m, the object was detected by Hubble's star tracking system when it briefly occulted a star for 0.3 seconds. In a subsequent study published in December 2012, Schlichting et al. performed a more thorough analysis of archival Hubble photometry and reported another occultation event by a sub-kilometre-sized Kuiper belt object, estimated to be 530±70 m in radius or 1060±140 m in diameter. From the occultation events detected in 2009 and 2012, Schlichting et al. determined the Kuiper belt object size distribution slope to be q = 3.6 ± 0.2 or q = 3.8 ± 0.2, with the assumptions of a single power law and a uniform ecliptic latitude distribution. Their result implies a strong deficit of sub-kilometer-sized Kuiper belt objects compared to extrapolations from the population of larger Kuiper belt objects with diameters above 90 km.",
"title": "Mass and size distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "The scattered disc is a sparsely populated region, overlapping with the Kuiper belt but extending to beyond 100 AU. Scattered disc objects (SDOs) have very elliptical orbits, often also very inclined to the ecliptic. Most models of Solar System formation show both KBOs and SDOs first forming in a primordial belt, with later gravitational interactions, particularly with Neptune, sending the objects outward, some into stable orbits (the KBOs) and some into unstable orbits, the scattered disc. Due to its unstable nature, the scattered disc is suspected to be the point of origin of many of the Solar System's short-period comets. Their dynamic orbits occasionally force them into the inner Solar System, first becoming centaurs, and then short-period comets.",
"title": "Scattered objects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "According to the Minor Planet Center, which officially catalogues all trans-Neptunian objects, a KBO is any object that orbits exclusively within the defined Kuiper belt region regardless of origin or composition. Objects found outside the belt are classed as scattered objects. In some scientific circles the term \"Kuiper belt object\" has become synonymous with any icy minor planet native to the outer Solar System assumed to have been part of that initial class, even if its orbit during the bulk of Solar System history has been beyond the Kuiper belt (e.g. in the scattered-disc region). They often describe scattered disc objects as \"scattered Kuiper belt objects\". Eris, which is known to be more massive than Pluto, is often referred to as a KBO, but is technically an SDO. A consensus among astronomers as to the precise definition of the Kuiper belt has yet to be reached, and this issue remains unresolved.",
"title": "Scattered objects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The centaurs, which are not normally considered part of the Kuiper belt, are also thought to be scattered objects, the only difference being that they were scattered inward, rather than outward. The Minor Planet Center groups the centaurs and the SDOs together as scattered objects.",
"title": "Scattered objects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "During its period of migration, Neptune is thought to have captured a large KBO, Triton, which is the only large moon in the Solar System with a retrograde orbit (that is, it orbits opposite to Neptune's rotation). This suggests that, unlike the large moons of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus, which are thought to have coalesced from rotating discs of material around their young parent planets, Triton was a fully formed body that was captured from surrounding space. Gravitational capture of an object is not easy: it requires some mechanism to slow down the object enough to be caught by the larger object's gravity. A possible explanation is that Triton was part of a binary when it encountered Neptune. (Many KBOs are members of binaries. See below.) Ejection of the other member of the binary by Neptune could then explain Triton's capture. Triton is only 14% larger than Pluto, and spectral analysis of both worlds shows that their surfaces are largely composed of similar materials, such as methane and carbon monoxide. All this points to the conclusion that Triton was once a KBO that was captured by Neptune during its outward migration.",
"title": "Scattered objects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Since 2000, a number of KBOs with diameters of between 500 and 1,500 km (932 mi), more than half that of Pluto (diameter 2370 km), have been discovered. 50000 Quaoar, a classical KBO discovered in 2002, is over 1,200 km across. Makemake and Haumea, both announced on 29 July 2005, are larger still. Other objects, such as 28978 Ixion (discovered in 2001) and 20000 Varuna (discovered in 2000), measure roughly 600–700 km (373–435 mi) across.",
"title": "Largest KBOs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The discovery of these large KBOs in orbits similar to Pluto's led many to conclude that, aside from its relative size, Pluto was not particularly different from other members of the Kuiper belt. Not only are these objects similar to Pluto in size, but many also have natural satellites, and are of similar composition (methane and carbon monoxide have been found both on Pluto and on the largest KBOs). Thus, just as Ceres was considered a planet before the discovery of its fellow asteroids, some began to suggest that Pluto might also be reclassified.",
"title": "Largest KBOs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The issue was brought to a head by the discovery of Eris, an object in the scattered disc far beyond the Kuiper belt, that is now known to be 27% more massive than Pluto. (Eris was originally thought to be larger than Pluto by volume, but the New Horizons mission found this not to be the case.) In response, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) was forced to define what a planet is for the first time, and in so doing included in their definition that a planet must have \"cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit\". As Pluto shares its orbit with many other sizable objects, it was deemed not to have cleared its orbit and was thus reclassified from a planet to a dwarf planet, making it a member of the Kuiper belt.",
"title": "Largest KBOs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "It is not clear how many KBOs are large enough to be dwarf planets. Consideration of the surprisingly low densities of many dwarf-planet candidates suggests that not many are. Orcus, Pluto, Haumea, Quaoar, and Makemake are accepted by most astronomers; some have proposed other bodies, such as Salacia, 2002 MS4, 2002 AW197, and Ixion.",
"title": "Largest KBOs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "The six largest TNOs (Eris, Pluto, Gonggong, Makemake, Haumea and Quaoar) are all known to have satellites, and two of them have more than one. A higher percentage of the larger KBOs have satellites than the smaller objects in the Kuiper belt, suggesting that a different formation mechanism was responsible. There are also a high number of binaries (two objects close enough in mass to be orbiting \"each other\") in the Kuiper belt. The most notable example is the Pluto–Charon binary, but it is estimated that around 11% of KBOs exist in binaries.",
"title": "Largest KBOs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "On 19 January 2006, the first spacecraft to explore the Kuiper belt, New Horizons, was launched, which flew by Pluto on 14 July 2015. Beyond the Pluto flyby, the mission's goal was to locate and investigate other, farther objects in the Kuiper belt.",
"title": "Exploration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "On 15 October 2014, it was revealed that Hubble had uncovered three potential targets, provisionally designated PT1 (\"potential target 1\"), PT2 and PT3 by the New Horizons team. The objects' diameters were estimated to be in the 30–55 km range; too small to be seen by ground telescopes, at distances from the Sun of 43–44 AU, which would put the encounters in the 2018–2019 period. The initial estimated probabilities that these objects were reachable within New Horizons' fuel budget were 100%, 7%, and 97%, respectively. All were members of the \"cold\" (low-inclination, low-eccentricity) classical Kuiper belt, and thus very different from Pluto. PT1 (given the temporary designation \"1110113Y\" on the HST web site), the most favorably situated object, was magnitude 26.8, 30–45 km in diameter, and was encountered in January 2019. Once sufficient orbital information was provided, the Minor Planet Center gave official designations to the three target KBOs: 2014 MU69 (PT1), 2014 OS393 (PT2), and 2014 PN70 (PT3). By the fall of 2014, a possible fourth target, 2014 MT69, had been eliminated by follow-up observations. PT2 was out of the running before the Pluto flyby.",
"title": "Exploration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "On 26 August 2015, the first target, 2014 MU69 (nicknamed \"Ultima Thule\" and later named 486958 Arrokoth), was chosen. Course adjustment took place in late October and early November 2015, leading to a flyby in January 2019. On 1 July 2016, NASA approved additional funding for New Horizons to visit the object.",
"title": "Exploration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "On 2 December 2015, New Horizons detected what was then called 1994 JR1 (later named 15810 Arawn) from 270 million kilometres (170×10^ mi) away.",
"title": "Exploration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "On 1 January 2019, New Horizons successfully flew by Arrokoth, returning data showing Arrokoth to be a contact binary 32 km long by 16 km wide. The Ralph instrument aboard New Horizons confirmed Arrokoth's red color. Data from the fly-by will continue to be downloaded over the next 20 months.",
"title": "Exploration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "No follow-up missions for New Horizons are planned, though at least two concepts for missions that would return to orbit or land on Pluto have been studied. Beyond Pluto, there exist many large KBOs that cannot be visited with New Horizons, such as the dwarf planets Makemake and Haumea. New missions would be tasked to explore and study these objects in detail. Thales Alenia Space has studied the logistics of an orbiter mission to Haumea, a high priority scientific target due to its status as the parent body of a collisional family that includes several other TNOs, as well as Haumea's ring and two moons. The lead author, Joel Poncy, has advocated for new technology that would allow spacecraft to reach and orbit KBOs in 10–20 years or less. New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern has informally suggested missions that would flyby the planets Uranus or Neptune before visiting new KBO targets, thus furthering the exploration of the Kuiper belt while also visiting these ice giant planets for the first time since the Voyager 2 flybys in the 1980s.",
"title": "Exploration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Quaoar has been considered as a flyby target for a probe tasked with exploring the interstellar medium, as it currently lies near the heliospheric nose; Pontus Brandt at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and his colleagues have studied a probe that would flyby Quaoar in the 2030s before continuing to the interstellar medium through the heliospheric nose. Among their interests in Quaoar include its likely disappearing methane atmosphere and cryovolcanism. The mission studied by Brandt and his colleagues would launch using SLS and achieve 30 km/s using a Jupiter flyby. Alternatively, for an orbiter mission, a study published in 2012 concluded that Ixion and Huya are among the most feasible targets. For instance, the authors calculated that an orbiter mission could reach Ixion after 17 years cruise time if launched in 2039.",
"title": "Exploration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "By 2006, astronomers had resolved dust discs thought to be Kuiper belt-like structures around nine stars other than the Sun. They appear to fall into two categories: wide belts, with radii of over 50 AU, and narrow belts (tentatively like that of the Solar System) with radii of between 20 and 30 AU and relatively sharp boundaries. Beyond this, 15–20% of solar-type stars have an observed infrared excess that is suggestive of massive Kuiper-belt-like structures. Most known debris discs around other stars are fairly young, but the two images on the right, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in January 2006, are old enough (roughly 300 million years) to have settled into stable configurations. The left image is a \"top view\" of a wide belt, and the right image is an \"edge view\" of a narrow belt. Computer simulations of dust in the Kuiper belt suggest that when it was younger, it may have resembled the narrow rings seen around younger stars.",
"title": "Extrasolar Kuiper belts"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "",
"title": "External links"
}
] |
The Kuiper belt is a circumstellar disc in the outer Solar System, extending from the orbit of Neptune at 30 astronomical units (AU) to approximately 50 AU from the Sun. It is similar to the asteroid belt, but is far larger—20 times as wide and 20–200 times as massive. Like the asteroid belt, it consists mainly of small bodies or remnants from when the Solar System formed. While many asteroids are composed primarily of rock and metal, most Kuiper belt objects are composed largely of frozen volatiles, such as methane, ammonia, and water. The Kuiper belt is home to most of the objects that astronomers generally accept as dwarf planets: Orcus, Pluto, Haumea, Quaoar, and Makemake. Some of the Solar System's moons, such as Neptune's Triton and Saturn's Phoebe, may have originated in the region. The Kuiper belt is named in honor of the Dutch astronomer Gerard Kuiper, who conjectured the existence of a similar belt in 1951. However, it was not until 1980 that the astronomer Julio Angel Fernandez published a paper suggesting the existence of a comet belt beyond Neptune, which could serve as a source for short-period comets. Although the Kuiper belt is named after Gerard Kuiper, Fernandez was the researcher who first predicted its existence. In 1992, minor planet (15760) Albion was discovered, the first Kuiper belt object (KBO) since Pluto and Charon. Since its discovery, the number of known KBOs has increased to thousands, and more than 100,000 KBOs over 100 km (62 mi) in diameter are thought to exist. The Kuiper belt was initially thought to be the main repository for periodic comets, those with orbits lasting less than 200 years. Studies since the mid-1990s have shown that the belt is dynamically stable and that comets' true place of origin is the scattered disc, a dynamically active zone created by the outward motion of Neptune 4.5 billion years ago; scattered disc objects such as Eris have extremely eccentric orbits that take them as far as 100 AU from the Sun. The Kuiper belt is distinct from the hypothesized Oort cloud, which is believed to be a thousand times more distant and mostly spherical. The objects within the Kuiper belt, together with the members of the scattered disc and any potential Hills cloud or Oort cloud objects, are collectively referred to as trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). Pluto is the largest and most massive member of the Kuiper belt and the largest and the second-most-massive known TNO, surpassed only by Eris in the scattered disc. Originally considered a planet, Pluto's status as part of the Kuiper belt caused it to be reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006. It is compositionally similar to many other objects of the Kuiper belt, and its orbital period is characteristic of a class of KBOs, known as "plutinos," that share the same 2:3 resonance with Neptune. The Kuiper belt and Neptune may be treated as a marker of the extent of the Solar System, alternatives being the heliopause and the distance at which the Sun's gravitational influence is matched by that of other stars.
|
2001-08-31T17:03:41Z
|
2023-12-14T16:35:43Z
|
[
"Template:Portal bar",
"Template:Redirect",
"Template:Legend2",
"Template:TNO",
"Template:Respell",
"Template:Cbignore",
"Template:Small Solar System bodies",
"Template:New Horizons",
"Template:Rp",
"Template:Mp",
"Template:Mpl-",
"Template:TNO imagemap",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Commons category",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite dictionary",
"Template:Dwarf planets",
"Template:Citation",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Convert",
"Template:Efn",
"Template:'s",
"Template:'",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Cite arXiv",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Cite conference",
"Template:Featured article",
"Template:IPAc-en",
"Template:Mpl",
"Template:Val",
"Template:Frac",
"Template:See also",
"Template:Notelist",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Section link",
"Template:Dp",
"Template:Solar System",
"Template:URL",
"Template:Anchor",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Authority control"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_belt
|
16,797 |
Kraftwerk
|
Kraftwerk (German: [ˈkʁaftvɛɐ̯k], lit. "power plant") is a German electronic band formed in Düsseldorf in 1970 by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider. Widely considered innovators and pioneers of electronic music, Kraftwerk were among the first successful acts to popularize the genre. The group began as part of West Germany's experimental krautrock scene in the early 1970s before fully embracing electronic instrumentation, including synthesizers, drum machines, and vocoders. Wolfgang Flür joined the band in 1974 and Karl Bartos in 1975, expanding the band to a quartet.
On commercially successful albums such as Autobahn (1974), Trans-Europe Express (1977), The Man-Machine (1978), and Computer World (1981), Kraftwerk developed a self-described "robot pop" style that combined electronic music with pop melodies, sparse arrangements, and repetitive rhythms, while adopting a stylized image including matching suits. Following the release of Electric Café (1986), Flür left the group in 1987, followed by Bartos in 1990. The band released Tour de France Soundtracks, their latest album of new material, in 2003. Founding member Schneider left in 2008. The band, with new members, has continued to tour under the leadership of Hütter.
The band's work has influenced a diverse range of artists and many genres of modern music, including synth-pop, hip hop, post-punk, techno, house music, ambient, and club music. In 2014, the Recording Academy honoured Kraftwerk with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. They later won the Grammy Award for Best Dance/Electronic Album with their live album 3-D The Catalogue (2017) at the 2018 ceremony. In 2021, Kraftwerk was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in the early influence category. As of 2023, the band continues to tour, with the members' live performances celebrating Kraftwerk's fiftieth anniversary.
Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter met as students at the Robert Schumann Hochschule in Düsseldorf in the late 1960s, participating in the German experimental music and art scene of the time, which Melody Maker jokingly dubbed krautrock.
They joined a quintet known as Organisation, which released one album, Tone Float in 1970, issued on RCA Records in the UK, and split shortly thereafter. Schneider became interested in synthesizers, deciding to acquire one in 1970. While visiting an exhibition in their hometown about visual artists Gilbert and George, they see two men wearing suits and ties, claiming to bring art into everyday life. The same year, Hütter and Schneider started bringing everyday life into art and form Kraftwerk.
Early Kraftwerk line-ups from 1970 to 1974 fluctuated, as Hütter and Schneider worked with around a half-dozen other musicians during the preparations for and the recording of three albums and sporadic live appearances, including guitarist Michael Rother and drummer Klaus Dinger, who left to form Neu. The only constant figure in these line-ups was Schneider, whose main instrument at the time was the flute; at times he also played the violin and guitar, all processed through a varied array of electronic devices. Hütter, who left the band for eight months to focus on completing his university studies, played synthesizer and keyboards.
The band released two free-form experimental rock albums, Kraftwerk and Kraftwerk 2. The albums were mostly exploratory musical improvisations played on a variety of traditional instruments including guitar, bass, drums, organ, flute, and violin. Post-production modifications to these recordings were used to distort the sound of the instruments, particularly audio-tape manipulation and multiple dubbings of one instrument on the same track. Both albums are purely instrumental. Live performances from 1972 to 1973 were mostly made as a duo, using a simple beat-box-type electronic drum machine with preset rhythms taken from an electric organ. Occasionally, they performed with bass players as well. These shows were mainly in Germany, with occasional shows in France. Later in 1973, Wolfgang Flür joined the group for rehearsals, and the unit performed as a trio on the television show Aspekte for German television network ZDF.
With Ralf und Florian, released in 1973, Kraftwerk began to rely more heavily on synthesizers and drum machines. Although almost entirely instrumental, the album marks Kraftwerk's first use of the vocoder in the song Ananas Symphonie which became one of its musical signatures. According to English music journalist Simon Reynolds, Kraftwerk were influenced by what he called the adrenalized insurgency of Detroit artists of the late 60s MC5 and the Stooges.
The input, expertise, and influence of producer and engineer Konrad Conny Plank was highly significant in the early years of Kraftwerk. Plank also worked with many of the other leading German electronic acts of that time, including members of Can, Neu, Cluster, and Harmonia. As a result of his work with Kraftwerk, Plank's studio near Cologne became one of the most sought-after studios in the late 1970s. Plank co-produced the first four Kraftwerk albums.
The release of Autobahn in 1974 saw Kraftwerk moving away from the sound of its first three albums. Hütter and Schneider had invested in newer technology such as the Minimoog and the EMS Synthi AKS, helping give Kraftwerk a newer, "disciplined" sound. Autobahn was also the last album that Conny Plank engineered. After the commercial success of Autobahn in the US, where it peaked at number 5 in the Billboard Top LPs & Tapes, Hütter and Schneider invested in updating their studio, thus lessening their reliance on outside producers. At this time the painter and graphic artist Emil Schult became a regular collaborator, designing artwork, cowriting lyrics, and accompanying the group on tour.
The year 1975 saw a turning point in Kraftwerk's live shows. With financial support from Phonogram Inc., in the US, they were able to undertake a tour to promote the Autobahn album, a tour which took them to the US, Canada and the UK for the first time. The tour also saw a new, stable, live line-up in the form of a quartet. Hütter and Schneider continued playing keyboard synthesizers such as the Minimoog and ARP Odyssey, with Schneider's use of flute diminishing. The two men started singing live for the first time, and Schneider processing his voice with a vocoder live. Wolfgang Flür and new recruit Karl Bartos performed on home-made electronic percussion instruments. Bartos also used a Deagan vibraphone on stage. The Hütter-Schneider-Bartos-Flür formation remained in place until the late 1980s and is now regarded as the classic live line-up of Kraftwerk. Emil Schult generally fulfilled the role of tour manager.
After the 1975 Autobahn tour, Kraftwerk began work on a follow-up album, Radio-Activity (German title: Radio-Aktivität). After further investment in new equipment, the Kling Klang Studio became a fully working recording studio. The group used the central theme in radio communication, which had become enhanced on their last tour of the United States. With Emil Schult working on artwork and lyrics, Kraftwerk began to compose music for the new record. Even though Radio-Activity was less commercially successful than Autobahn in the UK and United States, the album served to open up the European market for Kraftwerk, earning them a gold disc in France. Kraftwerk made videos and performed several European live dates to promote the album. With the release of Autobahn and Radio-Activity, Kraftwerk left behind avant-garde experimentation and moved towards the electronic pop tunes for which they are best known.
In 1976, Kraftwerk toured in support of the Radio-Activity album. David Bowie was among the fans of the record and invited the band to support him on his Station to Station tour, an offer the group declined. Despite some innovations in touring, Kraftwerk took a break from live performances after the Radio-Activity tour of 1976. Also, in this tour, they played some "demo-test" versions for Trans Europe Express songs (Showroom Dummies, Trans Europe Express and Europe Endless) as you could hear on some YouTube videos with show bootlegs.
After having finished the Radio-Activity tour Kraftwerk began recording Trans-Europe Express (German: Trans-Europa Express) at the Kling Klang Studio. Trans-Europe Express was mixed at the Record Plant Studios in Los Angeles. It was around this time that Hütter and Schneider met David Bowie at the Kling Klang Studio. A collaboration was mentioned in an interview (Brian Eno) with Hütter, but it never materialised. The release of Trans-Europe Express in March 1977 was marked with an extravagant train journey used as a press conference by EMI France. The album won a disco award in New York later that year.
In May 1978 Kraftwerk released The Man-Machine (German: Die Mensch-Maschine), recorded at the Kling Klang Studio. Due to the complexity of the recording, the album was mixed at Studio Rudas in Düsseldorf. The band hired sound engineer Leanard Jackson from Detroit to work with Joschko Rudas on the final mix. The Man-Machine was the first Kraftwerk album where Karl Bartos was cocredited as a songwriter. The cover, produced in black, white and red, was inspired by Russian artist El Lissitzky and the Suprematism movement. Gunther Frohling photographed the group for the cover, a now-iconic image which featured the quartet dressed in red shirts and black ties. After it was released Kraftwerk did not release another album for three years.
In May 1981 Kraftwerk released Computer World (German: Computerwelt) on EMI Records. It was recorded at Kling Klang Studio between 1978 and 1981. Much of this time was spent modifying the studio to make it portable so the band could take it on tour. Some of the electronic vocals on Computer World were generated using a Texas Instruments language translator. "Computer Love" was released as a single backed with the Man-Machine track "The Model". Radio DJs were more interested in the B-side so the single was repackaged by EMI and re-released with "The Model" as the A-side. The single reached number one in the UK, making "The Model" Kraftwerk's most successful song in that country. As a result, the Man-Machine album also became a success in the UK, peaking at number 9 in the album chart in February 1982. The band's live set focused increasingly on song-based material, with greater use of vocals and the use of sequencing equipment for both percussion and music. In contrast to their cool and controlled image, the group used sequencers interactively, which allowed for live improvisation. Ironically, Kraftwerk did not own a computer at the time of recording Computer World.
Kraftwerk returned to live performance with the Computer World tour of 1981, where the band effectively packed up its entire Kling Klang studio and took it along on the road. They also made greater use of live visuals including back-projected slides and films synchronized with the music as the technology developed, the use of hand-held miniaturized instruments during the set, and the use of replica mannequins of themselves to perform on stage during the song "The Robots".
In 1982 Kraftwerk began to work on a new album that initially had the working title Technicolor but due to trademark issues was changed to Electric Café for its original release in 1986 (for a remastered re-release in 2009, it was retitled again after its original working title, Techno Pop). One of the songs from these recording sessions was "Tour de France", which EMI released as a single in 1983. This song was a reflection of the band's new-found obsession for cycling. After the physically demanding Computer World tour, Ralf Hütter had been looking for forms of exercise that fitted in with the image of Kraftwerk; subsequently he encouraged the group to become vegetarians and take up cycling. "Tour de France" included sounds that followed this theme including bicycle chains, gear mechanisms and the breathing of the cyclist. At the time of the single's release Ralf Hütter tried to persuade the rest of the band that they should record a whole album based on cycling. The other members of the band were not convinced, and the theme was left to the single alone. "Tour de France" was released in German and French. The vocals of the song were recorded on the Kling Klang Studio stairs to create the right atmosphere. "Tour de France" was featured in the 1984 film Breakin', showing the influence that Kraftwerk had on black American dance music.
In May or June 1982, during the recording of "Tour de France", Ralf Hütter was involved in a serious cycling accident. He suffered head injuries and remained in a coma for several days. During 1983 Wolfgang Flür was beginning to spend less time in the studio. Since the band began using sequencers his role as a drummer was becoming less frequent. He preferred to spend his time travelling with his girlfriend. Flür was also experiencing artistic difficulties with the band. Though he toured the world with Kraftwerk as a drummer in 1981, his playing does not appear on that year's Computer World or on the 1986 album Electric Café. In 1987 he left the band and was replaced by Fritz Hilpert.
After years of withdrawal from live performance Kraftwerk began to tour Europe more frequently. In February 1990 the band played a few secret shows in Italy. Karl Bartos left the band shortly afterwards. The next proper tour was in 1991, for the album The Mix. Hütter and Schneider wished to continue the synth-pop quartet style of presentation, and recruited Fernando Abrantes as a replacement for Bartos. Abrantes left the band shortly after though. In late 1991, long-time Kling Klang Studio sound engineer Henning Schmitz was brought in to finish the remainder of the tour and to complete a new version of the quartet that remained active until 2008.
In 1997 Kraftwerk made a famous appearance at the dance festival Tribal Gathering held in England. In 1998, the group toured the US and Japan for the first time since 1981, along with shows in Brazil and Argentina. Three new songs were performed during this period and a further two tested in soundchecks, which remain unreleased. Following this trek, the group decided to take another break.
In July 1999 the single "Tour de France" was reissued in Europe by EMI after it had been out of print for several years. It was released for the first time on CD in addition to a repressing of the 12-inch vinyl single. Both versions feature slightly altered artwork that removed the faces of Flür and Bartos from the four-man cycling paceline depicted on the original cover. In 1999 ex-member Flür published his autobiography in Germany, Ich war ein Roboter. Later English-language editions of the book were titled Kraftwerk: I Was a Robot.
In 1999, Kraftwerk were commissioned to create an a cappella jingle for the Hannover Expo 2000 world's fair in Germany. The jingle was subsequently developed into the single "Expo 2000", which was released in December 1999, and remixed and re-released as "Expo Remix" in November 2000.
In August 2003 the band released Tour de France Soundtracks, its first album of new material since 1986's Electric Café. In January and February 2003, before the release of the album, the band started the extensive Minimum-Maximum world tour, using four customised Sony VAIO laptop computers, effectively leaving the entire Kling Klang studio at home in Germany. The group also obtained a new set of transparent video panels to replace its four large projection screens. This greatly streamlined the running of all of the group's sequencing, sound-generating, and visual-display software. From this point, the band's equipment increasingly reduced manual playing, replacing it with interactive control of sequencing equipment. Hütter retained the most manual performance, still playing musical lines by hand on a controller keyboard and singing live vocals and having a repeating ostinato. Schneider's live vocoding had been replaced by software-controlled speech-synthesis techniques. In November, the group made a surprising appearance at the MTV European Music Awards in Edinburgh, Scotland, performing "Aerodynamik". The same year a promotional box set entitled 12345678 (subtitled The Catalogue) was issued, with plans for a proper commercial release to follow. The box featured remastered editions of the group's eight core studio albums, from Autobahn to Tour de France Soundtracks. This long-awaited box-set was eventually released in a different set of remasters in November 2009.
In June 2005 the band's first-ever official live album, Minimum-Maximum, which was compiled from the shows during the band's tour of spring 2004, received extremely positive reviews. The album contained reworked tracks from existing studio albums. This included a track titled "Planet of Visions" that was a reworking of "Expo 2000". In support of this release, Kraftwerk made another quick sweep around the Balkans with dates in Serbia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Turkey, and Greece. In December, the Minimum-Maximum DVD was released. During 2006, the band performed at festivals in Norway, Ireland, the Czech Republic, Spain, Belgium, and Germany.
In April 2008 the group played three shows in US cities Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and Denver, and were a coheadliner at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. This was their second appearance at the festival since 2004. Further shows were performed in Ireland, Poland, Ukraine, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore later that year. The touring quartet consisted of Ralf Hütter, Henning Schmitz, Fritz Hilpert, and video technician Stefan Pfaffe, who became an official member in 2008. Original member Florian Schneider was absent from the lineup. Hütter stated that he was working on other projects. On 21 November, Kraftwerk officially confirmed Florian Schneider's departure from the band; The Independent commented: "There is something brilliantly Kraftwerkian about the news that Florian Schneider, a founder member of the German electronic pioneers, is leaving the band to pursue a solo career. Many successful bands break up after just a few years. It has apparently taken Schneider and his musical partner, Ralf Hütter, four decades to discover musical differences." Kraftwerk's headline set at Global Gathering in Melbourne, Australia, on 22 November was cancelled moments before it was scheduled to begin, due to Fritz Hilpert experiencing a medical emergency.
In 2009, Kraftwerk performed concerts with special 3D background graphics in Wolfsburg, Germany; Manchester, UK; and Randers, Denmark. Members of the audience were able to watch this multimedia part of the show with 3D glasses, which were given out. During the Manchester concert (part of the 2009 Manchester International Festival) four members of the GB cycling squad (Jason Kenny, Ed Clancy, Jamie Staff and Geraint Thomas) rode around the Velodrome while the band performed "Tour de France". The group also played several festival dates, the last being at the Bestival 2009 in September, on the Isle of Wight. 2009 also saw the release of The Catalogue box set in November. It is a 12-inch album-sized box set containing all eight remastered CDs in cardboard slipcases, as well as LP-sized booklets of photographs and artwork for each individual album.
Although not officially confirmed, Ralf Hütter suggested that a second boxed set of their first three experimental albums—Kraftwerk, Kraftwerk 2 and Ralf and Florian—could be on its way, possibly seeing commercial release after their next studio album: "We've just never really taken a look at those albums. They've always been available, but as really bad bootlegs. Now we have more artwork. Emil has researched extra contemporary drawings, graphics, and photographs to go with each album, collections of paintings that we worked with, and drawings that Florian and I did. We took a lot of Polaroids in those days." Kraftwerk also released an iOS app called Kraftwerk Kling Klang Machine. The Lenbach House in Munich exhibited some Kraftwerk 3-D pieces in Autumn 2011. Kraftwerk performed three concerts to open the exhibit.
Kraftwerk played at Ultra Music Festival in Miami on 23 March 2012. Initiated by Klaus Biesenbach, the Museum of Modern Art of New York organized an exhibit titled Kraftwerk – Retrospective 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 where the band performed their studio discography from Autobahn to Tour de France over the course of eight days to sell-out crowds. The exhibit later toured to the Tate Gallery as well as to K21 in Düsseldorf. Kraftwerk performed at the No Nukes 2012 Festival in Tokyo, Japan. Kraftwerk were also going to play at the Ultra Music Festival in Warsaw, but the event was cancelled; instead, Kraftwerk performed at Way Out West in Gothenburg. A limited edition version of the Catalogue box set was released during the retrospective, restricted to 2000 sets. Each box was individually numbered and inverted the colour scheme of the standard box. In December, Kraftwerk stated on their website that they would be playing their Catalogue in Düsseldorf and at London's Tate Modern. Kraftwerk tickets were priced at £60 in London, but fans compared that to the $20 ticket price for tickets at New York's MoMA in 2012, which caused consternation. Even so, the demand for the tickets at The Tate was so high that it shut down the website.
In March 2013, the band was not allowed to perform at a music festival in China due to unspecified "political reasons". In an interview in June after performing the eight albums of The Catalogue in Sydney, Ralf Hütter stated: "Now we have finished one to eight, now we can concentrate on number nine." In July, they performed at the 47th Montreux Jazz Festival. The band also played a 3-D concert on 12 July at Scotland's biggest festival – T in the Park – in Balado, Kinross, as well as 20 July at Latitude Festival in Suffolk, and 21 July at the Longitude Festival in Dublin.
In October 2013 the band played four concerts, over two nights, in Eindhoven, Netherlands. The venue, Evoluon (the former technology museum of Philips Electronics, now a conference center) was handpicked by Ralf Hütter, for its retro-futuristic UFO-like architecture. Bespoke visuals of the building, with the saucer section descending from space, were displayed during the rendition of Spacelab.
In 2014, Kraftwerk brought their four-night, 3D Catalogue tour to the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and at NYC's United Palace Theatre. They also played at the Cirkus in Stockholm, Sweden and at the music festival Summer Sonic in Tokyo, Japan. In November 2014 the 3D Catalogue live set was played in Paris, France, at the brand new Fondation Louis-Vuitton from 6 to 14 November. and then in the iconic Paradiso concert hall in Amsterdam, Netherlands, where they played before in 1976. In 2015, Ralf Hütter, being told that the Tour de France would be starting that year in the nearby Dutch city of Utrecht, decided that Kraftwerk would perform during the "Grand Départ". Eventually the band played three concerts 3 and 4 July in TivoliVredenburg performing "Tour de France Soundtracks" and visited the start of the Tour in-between.
In April 2017, Kraftwerk announced 3-D The Catalogue, a live album and video documenting performances of all eight albums in The Catalogue that was released 26 May 2017. It is available in multiple formats, the most extensive of which being a 4-disc Blu-ray set with a 236-page hardback book. The album was nominated for the Grammy Awards for Best Dance/Electronic Album and Best Surround Sound Album at the ceremony that took place on 28 January 2018, winning the former, which became the band's first Grammy win.
On 20 July 2018, at a concert in Stuttgart, German astronaut Alexander Gerst performed "Spacelab" with the band while aboard the International Space Station, joining via a live video link. Gerst played melodies using a tablet as his instrument alongside Hütter as a duet, and delivered a short message to the audience.
On 20 July 2019, Kraftwerk headlined the Saturday night lineup on the Lovell Stage at Bluedot Festival, a music and science festival held annually at Jodrell Bank Observatory, Cheshire, UK. The 2019 festival celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing.
On 21 April 2020, Florian Schneider died at age 73 after a brief battle with cancer. On 3 July 2020, the German-language versions of Trans Europe Express, The Man Machine, Computer World, Techno Pop and The Mix, alongside 3-D The Catalogue, were released worldwide on streaming services for the first time.
On 21 December 2020, Parlophone/WEA released Remixes, a digital compilation album. It includes remixed tracks taken from singles released 1991, 1999, 2000, 2004 and 2007, plus the previously unreleased "Non Stop", a version of "Musique Non-Stop" used as a jingle by MTV Europe beginning in 1993. The cover re-uses the cover from "Expo Remix". The compilation was released on CD and vinyl in 2022.
On 30 October 2021, Kraftwerk were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. In November 2021, the band announced plans for a 2022 North American tour. With the members' live performances celebrating Kraftwerk's fiftieth anniversary, the Remixes compilation album came out on compact disc and vinyl for the first time in addition.
From 27 May to 10 July 2022, the formation undertook a successful North American tour, performing in 24 cities.
Kraftwerk have been recognized as pioneers of electronic music as well as subgenres such as electropop, art pop, house music, synth-pop and electronic rock. In its early incarnation, the band pursued an avant-garde, experimental rock style inspired by the compositions of Karlheinz Stockhausen. Hütter has also listed the Beach Boys as a major influence. The group was also inspired by the funk music of James Brown and, later, punk rock. They were initially connected to the German krautrock scene. In the mid-1970s, they transitioned to an electronic sound which they described as "robot pop". Kraftwerk's lyrics dealt with post-war European urban life and technology—traveling by car on the Autobahn, traveling by train, using home computers, and the like. They were influenced by the modernist Bauhaus aesthetic, seeing art as inseparable from everyday function. Usually, the lyrics are very minimal but reveal both an innocent celebration of, and a knowing caution about, the modern world, as well as playing an integral role in the rhythmic structure of the songs. Many of Kraftwerk's songs express the paradoxical nature of modern urban life: a strong sense of alienation existing side by side with a celebration of the joys of modern technology.
Starting with the release of Autobahn, Kraftwerk began to release a series of concept albums (Radio-Activity, Trans-Europe Express, The Man-Machine, Computer World, Tour de France Soundtracks). All of Kraftwerk's albums from Trans Europe Express onwards, except Tour de France Soundtracks, have been released in separate versions: one with German vocals for sale in Germany, Switzerland and Austria and one with English vocals for the rest of the world, with occasional variations in other languages when conceptually appropriate. Live performance has always played an important part in Kraftwerk's activities. Also, despite its live shows generally being based around formal songs and compositions, live improvisation often plays a noticeable role in its performances. This trait can be traced back to the group's roots in the first experimental Krautrock scene of the late 1960s, but, significantly, it has continued to be a part of its playing even as it makes ever greater use of digital and computer-controlled sequencing in its performances. Some of the band's familiar compositions have been observed to have developed from live improvisations at its concerts or sound-checks.
Throughout their career, Kraftwerk have pushed the limits of music technology with some notable innovations, such as home-made instruments and custom-built devices. The group has always perceived their Kling Klang Studio as a complex music instrument, as well as a sound laboratory; Florian Schneider in particular developed a fascination with music technology, with the result that the technical aspects of sound generation and recording gradually became his main fields of activity within the band. Alexei Monroe called Kraftwerk the "first successful artists to incorporate representations of industrial sounds into non-academic electronic music".
Kraftwerk used a custom-built vocoder on their albums Ralf und Florian and Autobahn; the device was constructed by engineers P. Leunig and K. Obermayer of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt Braunschweig. Hütter and Schneider hold a patent for an electronic drum kit with sensor pads, filed in July 1975 and issued in June 1977. It must be hit with metal sticks, which are connected to the device to complete a circuit that triggers analog synthetic percussion sounds. The band first performed in public with this device in 1973, on the television program Aspekte (on the all-German channel Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen), where it was played by Wolfgang Flür. They created drum machines for Autobahn and Trans-Europe Express.
On the Radio-Activity tour in 1976 Kraftwerk tested out an experimental light-beam-activated drum cage allowing Flür to trigger electronic percussion through arm and hand movements. Unfortunately, the device did not work as planned, and it was quickly abandoned. The same year Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider commissioned Bonn-based "Synthesizerstudio Bonn, Matten & Wiechers" to design and build the Synthanorma Sequenzer with Intervallomat, a 4×8 / 2×16 / 1×32 step-sequencer system with some features that commercial products couldn't provide at that time. The music sequencer was used by the band for the first time to control the electronic sources creating the rhythmic sound of the album Trans-Europe Express.
Since 2002, Kraftwerk's live performances have been conducted with the use of virtual technology (i.e. software replicating and replacing original analogue or digital equipment). According to Fritz Hilpert, "the mobility of music technology and the reliability of the notebooks and software have greatly simplified the realization of complex touring setups: we generate all sounds on the laptops in real time and manipulate them with controller maps. It takes almost no time to get our compact stage system set up for performance. [...] This way, we can bring our Kling-Klang Studio with us on stage. The physical light weight of our equipment also translates into an enormous ease of use when working with software synthesizers and sound processors. Every tool imaginable is within immediate reach or just a few mouse clicks away on the Internet."
The band is also known for being notoriously reclusive, providing rare and enigmatic interviews, using life-size mannequins and robots while conducting official photo shoots, refusing to answer fanmail and barring visitors from the Kling Klang Studio, the precise location of which they used to keep secret.
Another notable example of this eccentric behavior was reported to Johnny Marr of the Smiths by Karl Bartos, who explained that anyone trying to contact the band for collaboration would be told the studio telephone did not have a ringer since, while recording, the band did not like to hear any kind of noise pollution. Instead, callers were instructed to phone the studio precisely at a certain time, whereupon the phone would be answered by Ralf Hütter, despite never hearing the phone ring.
Chris Martin of Coldplay recalled in a 2007 article in Q magazine the process of requesting permission to use the melody from the track "Computer Love" on "Talk" from the album X&Y. He sent a letter through the lawyers of the respective parties and several weeks later received an envelope containing a handwritten reply that simply said "yes".
According to music journalist Neil McCormick, Kraftwerk might be "the most influential group in pop history". NME wrote: "'The Beatles and Kraftwerk' may not have the ring of 'the Beatles and the Stones', but nonetheless, these are the two most important bands in music history". AllMusic wrote that their music "resonates in virtually every new development to impact the contemporary pop scene of the late 20th century".
Kraftwerk's musical style and image can be heard and seen in 1980s synth-pop groups such as Gary Numan, Ultravox, John Foxx, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, The Human League, Depeche Mode, Visage, Soft Cell and Yellow Magic Orchestra. Kraftwerk influenced other forms of music such as hip hop, house, and drum and bass, and they are also regarded as pioneers of the electro genre. Karl Hyde of Underworld has referenced Kraftwerk as a prominent influence. Most notably, "Trans Europe Express" and "Numbers" were interpolated into "Planet Rock" by Afrika Bambaataa & the Soul Sonic Force, one of the earliest hip-hop/electro hits. Kraftwerk helped ignite the New York electro-movement. Techno was created by three musicians from Detroit, often referred to as the 'Belleville three' (Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson & Derrick May), who fused the repetitive melodies of Kraftwerk with funk rhythms. The Belleville three were heavily influenced by Kraftwerk and their sounds because Kraftwerk's sounds appealed to the middle-class black people residing in Detroit at this time.
Depeche Mode's composer Martin Gore said: "For anyone of our generation involved in electronic music, Kraftwerk were the godfathers". Daniel Miller, founder of Mute Records, purchased the vocoder used by Kraftwerk in their early albums, comparing it to owning "the guitar Jimi Hendrix used on 'Purple Haze'". Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys, founding members of OMD, have stated that Kraftwerk was a major reference on their early work, and covered "Neon Lights" on the 1991 album, Sugar Tax. The electronic band Ladytron were inspired by Kraftwerk's song "The Model" when they composed their debut single "He Took Her to a Movie". Aphex Twin noted Kraftwerk as one of his biggest influences and called Computer World as a very influential album towards his music and sound. Björk has cited the band as one of her main musical influences. Electronic musician Kompressor has cited Kraftwerk as an influence. The band was also mentioned in the song "Rappers We Crush" by Kompressor and MC Frontalot ("I hurry away, get in my Chrysler. Oh, the dismay!/Someone's replaced all of my Backstreet Boys with Kraftwerk tapes!"). Dr. Alex Paterson of the Orb listed The Man-Machine as one of his 13 favourite albums of all time. According to NME, Kraftwerk's pioneering "robot pop" also spawned groups like The Prodigy and Daft Punk.
Kraftwerk inspired many acts from other styles and genres. David Bowie's "V-2 Schneider", from the 1977's "Heroes" album, was a tribute to Florian Schneider. Post-punk bands Joy Division and New Order were heavily influenced by the band. Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis was a fan, and showed his colleagues records that would influence their music. New Order also sampled "Uranium" in its biggest hit "Blue Monday". Siouxsie and the Banshees recorded a cover of "Hall of Mirrors" on their 1987 album Through the Looking Glass, which was lauded by Ralf Hütter: "In general, we consider cover versions as an appreciation of our work. The version of 'Hall of Mirrors' by Siouxsie and the Banshees is extraordinary, just like the arrangements of Alexander Bălănescu for his Balanescu Quartet release [of Possessed, 1992]. We also like the album El Baile Alemán of Señor Coconut a lot." Members of Blondie have admitted on several occasions that Kraftwerk were an important reference for their sound by the time they were working on their third album Parallel Lines. The worldwide hit "Heart of Glass" turned radically from an initial reggae-flavoured style to its distinctive electronic sound in order to imitate the technological approach of Kraftwerk's albums and adapt it to a disco concept. Simple Minds and U2 each recorded cover versions of "Neon Lights"; Simple Minds' version was included on their 2001 all-covers album Neon Lights, and U2 included "Neon Lights" as the B-side of their 2004 single "Vertigo". LCD Soundsystem song called "Get Innocuous!" is built on a sample of "The Robots". Rammstein also covered their song "Das Modell", releasing it as a non-album single in 1997. John Frusciante cited the group's ability to experiment of as an inspiration when working in a recording studio.
In 1989, a speeded up version of Kraftwerk's song "Electric Café" began appearing as the theme song for a series of sketches on Saturday Night Live called "Sprockets", a German television spoof by Mike Myers. The 1998 comedy The Big Lebowski features a fictional band called Autobahn, a parody of Kraftwerk and their 1974 record Autobahn.
In January 2018, BBC Radio 4 broadcast the 30-minute documentary Kraftwerk: Computer Love, which examined "how Kraftwerk's classic album Computer World has changed people's lives."
In October 2019, Kraftwerk were nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for 2020. On 12 May 2021, Kraftwerk were announced as an official inductee into the Hall, for the class of 2021.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Kraftwerk (German: [ˈkʁaftvɛɐ̯k], lit. \"power plant\") is a German electronic band formed in Düsseldorf in 1970 by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider. Widely considered innovators and pioneers of electronic music, Kraftwerk were among the first successful acts to popularize the genre. The group began as part of West Germany's experimental krautrock scene in the early 1970s before fully embracing electronic instrumentation, including synthesizers, drum machines, and vocoders. Wolfgang Flür joined the band in 1974 and Karl Bartos in 1975, expanding the band to a quartet.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "On commercially successful albums such as Autobahn (1974), Trans-Europe Express (1977), The Man-Machine (1978), and Computer World (1981), Kraftwerk developed a self-described \"robot pop\" style that combined electronic music with pop melodies, sparse arrangements, and repetitive rhythms, while adopting a stylized image including matching suits. Following the release of Electric Café (1986), Flür left the group in 1987, followed by Bartos in 1990. The band released Tour de France Soundtracks, their latest album of new material, in 2003. Founding member Schneider left in 2008. The band, with new members, has continued to tour under the leadership of Hütter.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The band's work has influenced a diverse range of artists and many genres of modern music, including synth-pop, hip hop, post-punk, techno, house music, ambient, and club music. In 2014, the Recording Academy honoured Kraftwerk with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. They later won the Grammy Award for Best Dance/Electronic Album with their live album 3-D The Catalogue (2017) at the 2018 ceremony. In 2021, Kraftwerk was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in the early influence category. As of 2023, the band continues to tour, with the members' live performances celebrating Kraftwerk's fiftieth anniversary.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter met as students at the Robert Schumann Hochschule in Düsseldorf in the late 1960s, participating in the German experimental music and art scene of the time, which Melody Maker jokingly dubbed krautrock.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "They joined a quintet known as Organisation, which released one album, Tone Float in 1970, issued on RCA Records in the UK, and split shortly thereafter. Schneider became interested in synthesizers, deciding to acquire one in 1970. While visiting an exhibition in their hometown about visual artists Gilbert and George, they see two men wearing suits and ties, claiming to bring art into everyday life. The same year, Hütter and Schneider started bringing everyday life into art and form Kraftwerk.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Early Kraftwerk line-ups from 1970 to 1974 fluctuated, as Hütter and Schneider worked with around a half-dozen other musicians during the preparations for and the recording of three albums and sporadic live appearances, including guitarist Michael Rother and drummer Klaus Dinger, who left to form Neu. The only constant figure in these line-ups was Schneider, whose main instrument at the time was the flute; at times he also played the violin and guitar, all processed through a varied array of electronic devices. Hütter, who left the band for eight months to focus on completing his university studies, played synthesizer and keyboards.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The band released two free-form experimental rock albums, Kraftwerk and Kraftwerk 2. The albums were mostly exploratory musical improvisations played on a variety of traditional instruments including guitar, bass, drums, organ, flute, and violin. Post-production modifications to these recordings were used to distort the sound of the instruments, particularly audio-tape manipulation and multiple dubbings of one instrument on the same track. Both albums are purely instrumental. Live performances from 1972 to 1973 were mostly made as a duo, using a simple beat-box-type electronic drum machine with preset rhythms taken from an electric organ. Occasionally, they performed with bass players as well. These shows were mainly in Germany, with occasional shows in France. Later in 1973, Wolfgang Flür joined the group for rehearsals, and the unit performed as a trio on the television show Aspekte for German television network ZDF.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "With Ralf und Florian, released in 1973, Kraftwerk began to rely more heavily on synthesizers and drum machines. Although almost entirely instrumental, the album marks Kraftwerk's first use of the vocoder in the song Ananas Symphonie which became one of its musical signatures. According to English music journalist Simon Reynolds, Kraftwerk were influenced by what he called the adrenalized insurgency of Detroit artists of the late 60s MC5 and the Stooges.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The input, expertise, and influence of producer and engineer Konrad Conny Plank was highly significant in the early years of Kraftwerk. Plank also worked with many of the other leading German electronic acts of that time, including members of Can, Neu, Cluster, and Harmonia. As a result of his work with Kraftwerk, Plank's studio near Cologne became one of the most sought-after studios in the late 1970s. Plank co-produced the first four Kraftwerk albums.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The release of Autobahn in 1974 saw Kraftwerk moving away from the sound of its first three albums. Hütter and Schneider had invested in newer technology such as the Minimoog and the EMS Synthi AKS, helping give Kraftwerk a newer, \"disciplined\" sound. Autobahn was also the last album that Conny Plank engineered. After the commercial success of Autobahn in the US, where it peaked at number 5 in the Billboard Top LPs & Tapes, Hütter and Schneider invested in updating their studio, thus lessening their reliance on outside producers. At this time the painter and graphic artist Emil Schult became a regular collaborator, designing artwork, cowriting lyrics, and accompanying the group on tour.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The year 1975 saw a turning point in Kraftwerk's live shows. With financial support from Phonogram Inc., in the US, they were able to undertake a tour to promote the Autobahn album, a tour which took them to the US, Canada and the UK for the first time. The tour also saw a new, stable, live line-up in the form of a quartet. Hütter and Schneider continued playing keyboard synthesizers such as the Minimoog and ARP Odyssey, with Schneider's use of flute diminishing. The two men started singing live for the first time, and Schneider processing his voice with a vocoder live. Wolfgang Flür and new recruit Karl Bartos performed on home-made electronic percussion instruments. Bartos also used a Deagan vibraphone on stage. The Hütter-Schneider-Bartos-Flür formation remained in place until the late 1980s and is now regarded as the classic live line-up of Kraftwerk. Emil Schult generally fulfilled the role of tour manager.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "After the 1975 Autobahn tour, Kraftwerk began work on a follow-up album, Radio-Activity (German title: Radio-Aktivität). After further investment in new equipment, the Kling Klang Studio became a fully working recording studio. The group used the central theme in radio communication, which had become enhanced on their last tour of the United States. With Emil Schult working on artwork and lyrics, Kraftwerk began to compose music for the new record. Even though Radio-Activity was less commercially successful than Autobahn in the UK and United States, the album served to open up the European market for Kraftwerk, earning them a gold disc in France. Kraftwerk made videos and performed several European live dates to promote the album. With the release of Autobahn and Radio-Activity, Kraftwerk left behind avant-garde experimentation and moved towards the electronic pop tunes for which they are best known.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In 1976, Kraftwerk toured in support of the Radio-Activity album. David Bowie was among the fans of the record and invited the band to support him on his Station to Station tour, an offer the group declined. Despite some innovations in touring, Kraftwerk took a break from live performances after the Radio-Activity tour of 1976. Also, in this tour, they played some \"demo-test\" versions for Trans Europe Express songs (Showroom Dummies, Trans Europe Express and Europe Endless) as you could hear on some YouTube videos with show bootlegs.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "After having finished the Radio-Activity tour Kraftwerk began recording Trans-Europe Express (German: Trans-Europa Express) at the Kling Klang Studio. Trans-Europe Express was mixed at the Record Plant Studios in Los Angeles. It was around this time that Hütter and Schneider met David Bowie at the Kling Klang Studio. A collaboration was mentioned in an interview (Brian Eno) with Hütter, but it never materialised. The release of Trans-Europe Express in March 1977 was marked with an extravagant train journey used as a press conference by EMI France. The album won a disco award in New York later that year.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In May 1978 Kraftwerk released The Man-Machine (German: Die Mensch-Maschine), recorded at the Kling Klang Studio. Due to the complexity of the recording, the album was mixed at Studio Rudas in Düsseldorf. The band hired sound engineer Leanard Jackson from Detroit to work with Joschko Rudas on the final mix. The Man-Machine was the first Kraftwerk album where Karl Bartos was cocredited as a songwriter. The cover, produced in black, white and red, was inspired by Russian artist El Lissitzky and the Suprematism movement. Gunther Frohling photographed the group for the cover, a now-iconic image which featured the quartet dressed in red shirts and black ties. After it was released Kraftwerk did not release another album for three years.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In May 1981 Kraftwerk released Computer World (German: Computerwelt) on EMI Records. It was recorded at Kling Klang Studio between 1978 and 1981. Much of this time was spent modifying the studio to make it portable so the band could take it on tour. Some of the electronic vocals on Computer World were generated using a Texas Instruments language translator. \"Computer Love\" was released as a single backed with the Man-Machine track \"The Model\". Radio DJs were more interested in the B-side so the single was repackaged by EMI and re-released with \"The Model\" as the A-side. The single reached number one in the UK, making \"The Model\" Kraftwerk's most successful song in that country. As a result, the Man-Machine album also became a success in the UK, peaking at number 9 in the album chart in February 1982. The band's live set focused increasingly on song-based material, with greater use of vocals and the use of sequencing equipment for both percussion and music. In contrast to their cool and controlled image, the group used sequencers interactively, which allowed for live improvisation. Ironically, Kraftwerk did not own a computer at the time of recording Computer World.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Kraftwerk returned to live performance with the Computer World tour of 1981, where the band effectively packed up its entire Kling Klang studio and took it along on the road. They also made greater use of live visuals including back-projected slides and films synchronized with the music as the technology developed, the use of hand-held miniaturized instruments during the set, and the use of replica mannequins of themselves to perform on stage during the song \"The Robots\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In 1982 Kraftwerk began to work on a new album that initially had the working title Technicolor but due to trademark issues was changed to Electric Café for its original release in 1986 (for a remastered re-release in 2009, it was retitled again after its original working title, Techno Pop). One of the songs from these recording sessions was \"Tour de France\", which EMI released as a single in 1983. This song was a reflection of the band's new-found obsession for cycling. After the physically demanding Computer World tour, Ralf Hütter had been looking for forms of exercise that fitted in with the image of Kraftwerk; subsequently he encouraged the group to become vegetarians and take up cycling. \"Tour de France\" included sounds that followed this theme including bicycle chains, gear mechanisms and the breathing of the cyclist. At the time of the single's release Ralf Hütter tried to persuade the rest of the band that they should record a whole album based on cycling. The other members of the band were not convinced, and the theme was left to the single alone. \"Tour de France\" was released in German and French. The vocals of the song were recorded on the Kling Klang Studio stairs to create the right atmosphere. \"Tour de France\" was featured in the 1984 film Breakin', showing the influence that Kraftwerk had on black American dance music.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In May or June 1982, during the recording of \"Tour de France\", Ralf Hütter was involved in a serious cycling accident. He suffered head injuries and remained in a coma for several days. During 1983 Wolfgang Flür was beginning to spend less time in the studio. Since the band began using sequencers his role as a drummer was becoming less frequent. He preferred to spend his time travelling with his girlfriend. Flür was also experiencing artistic difficulties with the band. Though he toured the world with Kraftwerk as a drummer in 1981, his playing does not appear on that year's Computer World or on the 1986 album Electric Café. In 1987 he left the band and was replaced by Fritz Hilpert.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "After years of withdrawal from live performance Kraftwerk began to tour Europe more frequently. In February 1990 the band played a few secret shows in Italy. Karl Bartos left the band shortly afterwards. The next proper tour was in 1991, for the album The Mix. Hütter and Schneider wished to continue the synth-pop quartet style of presentation, and recruited Fernando Abrantes as a replacement for Bartos. Abrantes left the band shortly after though. In late 1991, long-time Kling Klang Studio sound engineer Henning Schmitz was brought in to finish the remainder of the tour and to complete a new version of the quartet that remained active until 2008.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In 1997 Kraftwerk made a famous appearance at the dance festival Tribal Gathering held in England. In 1998, the group toured the US and Japan for the first time since 1981, along with shows in Brazil and Argentina. Three new songs were performed during this period and a further two tested in soundchecks, which remain unreleased. Following this trek, the group decided to take another break.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In July 1999 the single \"Tour de France\" was reissued in Europe by EMI after it had been out of print for several years. It was released for the first time on CD in addition to a repressing of the 12-inch vinyl single. Both versions feature slightly altered artwork that removed the faces of Flür and Bartos from the four-man cycling paceline depicted on the original cover. In 1999 ex-member Flür published his autobiography in Germany, Ich war ein Roboter. Later English-language editions of the book were titled Kraftwerk: I Was a Robot.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In 1999, Kraftwerk were commissioned to create an a cappella jingle for the Hannover Expo 2000 world's fair in Germany. The jingle was subsequently developed into the single \"Expo 2000\", which was released in December 1999, and remixed and re-released as \"Expo Remix\" in November 2000.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In August 2003 the band released Tour de France Soundtracks, its first album of new material since 1986's Electric Café. In January and February 2003, before the release of the album, the band started the extensive Minimum-Maximum world tour, using four customised Sony VAIO laptop computers, effectively leaving the entire Kling Klang studio at home in Germany. The group also obtained a new set of transparent video panels to replace its four large projection screens. This greatly streamlined the running of all of the group's sequencing, sound-generating, and visual-display software. From this point, the band's equipment increasingly reduced manual playing, replacing it with interactive control of sequencing equipment. Hütter retained the most manual performance, still playing musical lines by hand on a controller keyboard and singing live vocals and having a repeating ostinato. Schneider's live vocoding had been replaced by software-controlled speech-synthesis techniques. In November, the group made a surprising appearance at the MTV European Music Awards in Edinburgh, Scotland, performing \"Aerodynamik\". The same year a promotional box set entitled 12345678 (subtitled The Catalogue) was issued, with plans for a proper commercial release to follow. The box featured remastered editions of the group's eight core studio albums, from Autobahn to Tour de France Soundtracks. This long-awaited box-set was eventually released in a different set of remasters in November 2009.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In June 2005 the band's first-ever official live album, Minimum-Maximum, which was compiled from the shows during the band's tour of spring 2004, received extremely positive reviews. The album contained reworked tracks from existing studio albums. This included a track titled \"Planet of Visions\" that was a reworking of \"Expo 2000\". In support of this release, Kraftwerk made another quick sweep around the Balkans with dates in Serbia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Turkey, and Greece. In December, the Minimum-Maximum DVD was released. During 2006, the band performed at festivals in Norway, Ireland, the Czech Republic, Spain, Belgium, and Germany.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In April 2008 the group played three shows in US cities Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and Denver, and were a coheadliner at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. This was their second appearance at the festival since 2004. Further shows were performed in Ireland, Poland, Ukraine, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore later that year. The touring quartet consisted of Ralf Hütter, Henning Schmitz, Fritz Hilpert, and video technician Stefan Pfaffe, who became an official member in 2008. Original member Florian Schneider was absent from the lineup. Hütter stated that he was working on other projects. On 21 November, Kraftwerk officially confirmed Florian Schneider's departure from the band; The Independent commented: \"There is something brilliantly Kraftwerkian about the news that Florian Schneider, a founder member of the German electronic pioneers, is leaving the band to pursue a solo career. Many successful bands break up after just a few years. It has apparently taken Schneider and his musical partner, Ralf Hütter, four decades to discover musical differences.\" Kraftwerk's headline set at Global Gathering in Melbourne, Australia, on 22 November was cancelled moments before it was scheduled to begin, due to Fritz Hilpert experiencing a medical emergency.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In 2009, Kraftwerk performed concerts with special 3D background graphics in Wolfsburg, Germany; Manchester, UK; and Randers, Denmark. Members of the audience were able to watch this multimedia part of the show with 3D glasses, which were given out. During the Manchester concert (part of the 2009 Manchester International Festival) four members of the GB cycling squad (Jason Kenny, Ed Clancy, Jamie Staff and Geraint Thomas) rode around the Velodrome while the band performed \"Tour de France\". The group also played several festival dates, the last being at the Bestival 2009 in September, on the Isle of Wight. 2009 also saw the release of The Catalogue box set in November. It is a 12-inch album-sized box set containing all eight remastered CDs in cardboard slipcases, as well as LP-sized booklets of photographs and artwork for each individual album.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Although not officially confirmed, Ralf Hütter suggested that a second boxed set of their first three experimental albums—Kraftwerk, Kraftwerk 2 and Ralf and Florian—could be on its way, possibly seeing commercial release after their next studio album: \"We've just never really taken a look at those albums. They've always been available, but as really bad bootlegs. Now we have more artwork. Emil has researched extra contemporary drawings, graphics, and photographs to go with each album, collections of paintings that we worked with, and drawings that Florian and I did. We took a lot of Polaroids in those days.\" Kraftwerk also released an iOS app called Kraftwerk Kling Klang Machine. The Lenbach House in Munich exhibited some Kraftwerk 3-D pieces in Autumn 2011. Kraftwerk performed three concerts to open the exhibit.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Kraftwerk played at Ultra Music Festival in Miami on 23 March 2012. Initiated by Klaus Biesenbach, the Museum of Modern Art of New York organized an exhibit titled Kraftwerk – Retrospective 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 where the band performed their studio discography from Autobahn to Tour de France over the course of eight days to sell-out crowds. The exhibit later toured to the Tate Gallery as well as to K21 in Düsseldorf. Kraftwerk performed at the No Nukes 2012 Festival in Tokyo, Japan. Kraftwerk were also going to play at the Ultra Music Festival in Warsaw, but the event was cancelled; instead, Kraftwerk performed at Way Out West in Gothenburg. A limited edition version of the Catalogue box set was released during the retrospective, restricted to 2000 sets. Each box was individually numbered and inverted the colour scheme of the standard box. In December, Kraftwerk stated on their website that they would be playing their Catalogue in Düsseldorf and at London's Tate Modern. Kraftwerk tickets were priced at £60 in London, but fans compared that to the $20 ticket price for tickets at New York's MoMA in 2012, which caused consternation. Even so, the demand for the tickets at The Tate was so high that it shut down the website.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "In March 2013, the band was not allowed to perform at a music festival in China due to unspecified \"political reasons\". In an interview in June after performing the eight albums of The Catalogue in Sydney, Ralf Hütter stated: \"Now we have finished one to eight, now we can concentrate on number nine.\" In July, they performed at the 47th Montreux Jazz Festival. The band also played a 3-D concert on 12 July at Scotland's biggest festival – T in the Park – in Balado, Kinross, as well as 20 July at Latitude Festival in Suffolk, and 21 July at the Longitude Festival in Dublin.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In October 2013 the band played four concerts, over two nights, in Eindhoven, Netherlands. The venue, Evoluon (the former technology museum of Philips Electronics, now a conference center) was handpicked by Ralf Hütter, for its retro-futuristic UFO-like architecture. Bespoke visuals of the building, with the saucer section descending from space, were displayed during the rendition of Spacelab.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In 2014, Kraftwerk brought their four-night, 3D Catalogue tour to the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and at NYC's United Palace Theatre. They also played at the Cirkus in Stockholm, Sweden and at the music festival Summer Sonic in Tokyo, Japan. In November 2014 the 3D Catalogue live set was played in Paris, France, at the brand new Fondation Louis-Vuitton from 6 to 14 November. and then in the iconic Paradiso concert hall in Amsterdam, Netherlands, where they played before in 1976. In 2015, Ralf Hütter, being told that the Tour de France would be starting that year in the nearby Dutch city of Utrecht, decided that Kraftwerk would perform during the \"Grand Départ\". Eventually the band played three concerts 3 and 4 July in TivoliVredenburg performing \"Tour de France Soundtracks\" and visited the start of the Tour in-between.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In April 2017, Kraftwerk announced 3-D The Catalogue, a live album and video documenting performances of all eight albums in The Catalogue that was released 26 May 2017. It is available in multiple formats, the most extensive of which being a 4-disc Blu-ray set with a 236-page hardback book. The album was nominated for the Grammy Awards for Best Dance/Electronic Album and Best Surround Sound Album at the ceremony that took place on 28 January 2018, winning the former, which became the band's first Grammy win.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "On 20 July 2018, at a concert in Stuttgart, German astronaut Alexander Gerst performed \"Spacelab\" with the band while aboard the International Space Station, joining via a live video link. Gerst played melodies using a tablet as his instrument alongside Hütter as a duet, and delivered a short message to the audience.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "On 20 July 2019, Kraftwerk headlined the Saturday night lineup on the Lovell Stage at Bluedot Festival, a music and science festival held annually at Jodrell Bank Observatory, Cheshire, UK. The 2019 festival celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "On 21 April 2020, Florian Schneider died at age 73 after a brief battle with cancer. On 3 July 2020, the German-language versions of Trans Europe Express, The Man Machine, Computer World, Techno Pop and The Mix, alongside 3-D The Catalogue, were released worldwide on streaming services for the first time.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "On 21 December 2020, Parlophone/WEA released Remixes, a digital compilation album. It includes remixed tracks taken from singles released 1991, 1999, 2000, 2004 and 2007, plus the previously unreleased \"Non Stop\", a version of \"Musique Non-Stop\" used as a jingle by MTV Europe beginning in 1993. The cover re-uses the cover from \"Expo Remix\". The compilation was released on CD and vinyl in 2022.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "On 30 October 2021, Kraftwerk were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. In November 2021, the band announced plans for a 2022 North American tour. With the members' live performances celebrating Kraftwerk's fiftieth anniversary, the Remixes compilation album came out on compact disc and vinyl for the first time in addition.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "From 27 May to 10 July 2022, the formation undertook a successful North American tour, performing in 24 cities.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Kraftwerk have been recognized as pioneers of electronic music as well as subgenres such as electropop, art pop, house music, synth-pop and electronic rock. In its early incarnation, the band pursued an avant-garde, experimental rock style inspired by the compositions of Karlheinz Stockhausen. Hütter has also listed the Beach Boys as a major influence. The group was also inspired by the funk music of James Brown and, later, punk rock. They were initially connected to the German krautrock scene. In the mid-1970s, they transitioned to an electronic sound which they described as \"robot pop\". Kraftwerk's lyrics dealt with post-war European urban life and technology—traveling by car on the Autobahn, traveling by train, using home computers, and the like. They were influenced by the modernist Bauhaus aesthetic, seeing art as inseparable from everyday function. Usually, the lyrics are very minimal but reveal both an innocent celebration of, and a knowing caution about, the modern world, as well as playing an integral role in the rhythmic structure of the songs. Many of Kraftwerk's songs express the paradoxical nature of modern urban life: a strong sense of alienation existing side by side with a celebration of the joys of modern technology.",
"title": "Music and artistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Starting with the release of Autobahn, Kraftwerk began to release a series of concept albums (Radio-Activity, Trans-Europe Express, The Man-Machine, Computer World, Tour de France Soundtracks). All of Kraftwerk's albums from Trans Europe Express onwards, except Tour de France Soundtracks, have been released in separate versions: one with German vocals for sale in Germany, Switzerland and Austria and one with English vocals for the rest of the world, with occasional variations in other languages when conceptually appropriate. Live performance has always played an important part in Kraftwerk's activities. Also, despite its live shows generally being based around formal songs and compositions, live improvisation often plays a noticeable role in its performances. This trait can be traced back to the group's roots in the first experimental Krautrock scene of the late 1960s, but, significantly, it has continued to be a part of its playing even as it makes ever greater use of digital and computer-controlled sequencing in its performances. Some of the band's familiar compositions have been observed to have developed from live improvisations at its concerts or sound-checks.",
"title": "Music and artistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Throughout their career, Kraftwerk have pushed the limits of music technology with some notable innovations, such as home-made instruments and custom-built devices. The group has always perceived their Kling Klang Studio as a complex music instrument, as well as a sound laboratory; Florian Schneider in particular developed a fascination with music technology, with the result that the technical aspects of sound generation and recording gradually became his main fields of activity within the band. Alexei Monroe called Kraftwerk the \"first successful artists to incorporate representations of industrial sounds into non-academic electronic music\".",
"title": "Music and artistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Kraftwerk used a custom-built vocoder on their albums Ralf und Florian and Autobahn; the device was constructed by engineers P. Leunig and K. Obermayer of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt Braunschweig. Hütter and Schneider hold a patent for an electronic drum kit with sensor pads, filed in July 1975 and issued in June 1977. It must be hit with metal sticks, which are connected to the device to complete a circuit that triggers analog synthetic percussion sounds. The band first performed in public with this device in 1973, on the television program Aspekte (on the all-German channel Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen), where it was played by Wolfgang Flür. They created drum machines for Autobahn and Trans-Europe Express.",
"title": "Music and artistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "On the Radio-Activity tour in 1976 Kraftwerk tested out an experimental light-beam-activated drum cage allowing Flür to trigger electronic percussion through arm and hand movements. Unfortunately, the device did not work as planned, and it was quickly abandoned. The same year Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider commissioned Bonn-based \"Synthesizerstudio Bonn, Matten & Wiechers\" to design and build the Synthanorma Sequenzer with Intervallomat, a 4×8 / 2×16 / 1×32 step-sequencer system with some features that commercial products couldn't provide at that time. The music sequencer was used by the band for the first time to control the electronic sources creating the rhythmic sound of the album Trans-Europe Express.",
"title": "Music and artistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Since 2002, Kraftwerk's live performances have been conducted with the use of virtual technology (i.e. software replicating and replacing original analogue or digital equipment). According to Fritz Hilpert, \"the mobility of music technology and the reliability of the notebooks and software have greatly simplified the realization of complex touring setups: we generate all sounds on the laptops in real time and manipulate them with controller maps. It takes almost no time to get our compact stage system set up for performance. [...] This way, we can bring our Kling-Klang Studio with us on stage. The physical light weight of our equipment also translates into an enormous ease of use when working with software synthesizers and sound processors. Every tool imaginable is within immediate reach or just a few mouse clicks away on the Internet.\"",
"title": "Music and artistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "The band is also known for being notoriously reclusive, providing rare and enigmatic interviews, using life-size mannequins and robots while conducting official photo shoots, refusing to answer fanmail and barring visitors from the Kling Klang Studio, the precise location of which they used to keep secret.",
"title": "Music and artistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Another notable example of this eccentric behavior was reported to Johnny Marr of the Smiths by Karl Bartos, who explained that anyone trying to contact the band for collaboration would be told the studio telephone did not have a ringer since, while recording, the band did not like to hear any kind of noise pollution. Instead, callers were instructed to phone the studio precisely at a certain time, whereupon the phone would be answered by Ralf Hütter, despite never hearing the phone ring.",
"title": "Music and artistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Chris Martin of Coldplay recalled in a 2007 article in Q magazine the process of requesting permission to use the melody from the track \"Computer Love\" on \"Talk\" from the album X&Y. He sent a letter through the lawyers of the respective parties and several weeks later received an envelope containing a handwritten reply that simply said \"yes\".",
"title": "Music and artistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "According to music journalist Neil McCormick, Kraftwerk might be \"the most influential group in pop history\". NME wrote: \"'The Beatles and Kraftwerk' may not have the ring of 'the Beatles and the Stones', but nonetheless, these are the two most important bands in music history\". AllMusic wrote that their music \"resonates in virtually every new development to impact the contemporary pop scene of the late 20th century\".",
"title": "Influence and legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Kraftwerk's musical style and image can be heard and seen in 1980s synth-pop groups such as Gary Numan, Ultravox, John Foxx, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, The Human League, Depeche Mode, Visage, Soft Cell and Yellow Magic Orchestra. Kraftwerk influenced other forms of music such as hip hop, house, and drum and bass, and they are also regarded as pioneers of the electro genre. Karl Hyde of Underworld has referenced Kraftwerk as a prominent influence. Most notably, \"Trans Europe Express\" and \"Numbers\" were interpolated into \"Planet Rock\" by Afrika Bambaataa & the Soul Sonic Force, one of the earliest hip-hop/electro hits. Kraftwerk helped ignite the New York electro-movement. Techno was created by three musicians from Detroit, often referred to as the 'Belleville three' (Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson & Derrick May), who fused the repetitive melodies of Kraftwerk with funk rhythms. The Belleville three were heavily influenced by Kraftwerk and their sounds because Kraftwerk's sounds appealed to the middle-class black people residing in Detroit at this time.",
"title": "Influence and legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Depeche Mode's composer Martin Gore said: \"For anyone of our generation involved in electronic music, Kraftwerk were the godfathers\". Daniel Miller, founder of Mute Records, purchased the vocoder used by Kraftwerk in their early albums, comparing it to owning \"the guitar Jimi Hendrix used on 'Purple Haze'\". Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys, founding members of OMD, have stated that Kraftwerk was a major reference on their early work, and covered \"Neon Lights\" on the 1991 album, Sugar Tax. The electronic band Ladytron were inspired by Kraftwerk's song \"The Model\" when they composed their debut single \"He Took Her to a Movie\". Aphex Twin noted Kraftwerk as one of his biggest influences and called Computer World as a very influential album towards his music and sound. Björk has cited the band as one of her main musical influences. Electronic musician Kompressor has cited Kraftwerk as an influence. The band was also mentioned in the song \"Rappers We Crush\" by Kompressor and MC Frontalot (\"I hurry away, get in my Chrysler. Oh, the dismay!/Someone's replaced all of my Backstreet Boys with Kraftwerk tapes!\"). Dr. Alex Paterson of the Orb listed The Man-Machine as one of his 13 favourite albums of all time. According to NME, Kraftwerk's pioneering \"robot pop\" also spawned groups like The Prodigy and Daft Punk.",
"title": "Influence and legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Kraftwerk inspired many acts from other styles and genres. David Bowie's \"V-2 Schneider\", from the 1977's \"Heroes\" album, was a tribute to Florian Schneider. Post-punk bands Joy Division and New Order were heavily influenced by the band. Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis was a fan, and showed his colleagues records that would influence their music. New Order also sampled \"Uranium\" in its biggest hit \"Blue Monday\". Siouxsie and the Banshees recorded a cover of \"Hall of Mirrors\" on their 1987 album Through the Looking Glass, which was lauded by Ralf Hütter: \"In general, we consider cover versions as an appreciation of our work. The version of 'Hall of Mirrors' by Siouxsie and the Banshees is extraordinary, just like the arrangements of Alexander Bălănescu for his Balanescu Quartet release [of Possessed, 1992]. We also like the album El Baile Alemán of Señor Coconut a lot.\" Members of Blondie have admitted on several occasions that Kraftwerk were an important reference for their sound by the time they were working on their third album Parallel Lines. The worldwide hit \"Heart of Glass\" turned radically from an initial reggae-flavoured style to its distinctive electronic sound in order to imitate the technological approach of Kraftwerk's albums and adapt it to a disco concept. Simple Minds and U2 each recorded cover versions of \"Neon Lights\"; Simple Minds' version was included on their 2001 all-covers album Neon Lights, and U2 included \"Neon Lights\" as the B-side of their 2004 single \"Vertigo\". LCD Soundsystem song called \"Get Innocuous!\" is built on a sample of \"The Robots\". Rammstein also covered their song \"Das Modell\", releasing it as a non-album single in 1997. John Frusciante cited the group's ability to experiment of as an inspiration when working in a recording studio.",
"title": "Influence and legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "In 1989, a speeded up version of Kraftwerk's song \"Electric Café\" began appearing as the theme song for a series of sketches on Saturday Night Live called \"Sprockets\", a German television spoof by Mike Myers. The 1998 comedy The Big Lebowski features a fictional band called Autobahn, a parody of Kraftwerk and their 1974 record Autobahn.",
"title": "Influence and legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "In January 2018, BBC Radio 4 broadcast the 30-minute documentary Kraftwerk: Computer Love, which examined \"how Kraftwerk's classic album Computer World has changed people's lives.\"",
"title": "Influence and legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "In October 2019, Kraftwerk were nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for 2020. On 12 May 2021, Kraftwerk were announced as an official inductee into the Hall, for the class of 2021.",
"title": "Influence and legacy"
}
] |
Kraftwerk is a German electronic band formed in Düsseldorf in 1970 by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider. Widely considered innovators and pioneers of electronic music, Kraftwerk were among the first successful acts to popularize the genre. The group began as part of West Germany's experimental krautrock scene in the early 1970s before fully embracing electronic instrumentation, including synthesizers, drum machines, and vocoders. Wolfgang Flür joined the band in 1974 and Karl Bartos in 1975, expanding the band to a quartet. On commercially successful albums such as Autobahn (1974), Trans-Europe Express (1977), The Man-Machine (1978), and Computer World (1981), Kraftwerk developed a self-described "robot pop" style that combined electronic music with pop melodies, sparse arrangements, and repetitive rhythms, while adopting a stylized image including matching suits. Following the release of Electric Café (1986), Flür left the group in 1987, followed by Bartos in 1990. The band released Tour de France Soundtracks, their latest album of new material, in 2003. Founding member Schneider left in 2008. The band, with new members, has continued to tour under the leadership of Hütter. The band's work has influenced a diverse range of artists and many genres of modern music, including synth-pop, hip hop, post-punk, techno, house music, ambient, and club music. In 2014, the Recording Academy honoured Kraftwerk with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. They later won the Grammy Award for Best Dance/Electronic Album with their live album 3-D The Catalogue (2017) at the 2018 ceremony. In 2021, Kraftwerk was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in the early influence category. As of 2023, the band continues to tour, with the members' live performances celebrating Kraftwerk's fiftieth anniversary.
|
2001-08-28T19:04:44Z
|
2023-12-31T09:15:07Z
|
[
"Template:About",
"Template:Literally",
"Template:'\"",
"Template:Commons category",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Citation needed",
"Template:Portal",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Div col end",
"Template:YouTube",
"Template:2021 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame",
"Template:ISBN",
"Template:Klaus Dinger",
"Template:Infobox musical artist",
"Template:Div col",
"Template:Awards table",
"Template:Nominated",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:IPA-de",
"Template:Page needed",
"Template:Cbignore",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Cite magazine",
"Template:S-ach",
"Template:Listen",
"Template:\"'",
"Template:AllMusic",
"Template:Electronic music",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Clarify",
"Template:S-start",
"Template:Succession box",
"Template:Kraftwerk",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Primary source inline",
"Template:Won",
"Template:Citation",
"Template:Official website",
"Template:S-end"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraftwerk
|
16,800 |
Kalmar Union
|
The Kalmar Union (Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish: Kalmarunionen; Finnish: Kalmarin unioni; Icelandic: Kalmarsambandið; Latin: Unio Calmariensis) was a personal union in Scandinavia, agreed at Kalmar in Sweden as designed by widowed Queen Margaret of Norway and Sweden. From 1397 to 1523, it joined under a single monarch the three kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden (then including much of present-day Finland), and Norway, together with Norway's overseas colonies (then including Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and the Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland).
The union was not quite continuous; there were several short interruptions. Legally, the countries remained separate sovereign states. However, their domestic and foreign policies were directed by a common monarch. Gustav Vasa's election as King of Sweden on 6 June 1523, and his triumphant entry into Stockholm eleven days later, marked Sweden's final secession from the Kalmar Union. Formally, the Danish king acknowledged Sweden's independence in 1524 at the Treaty of Malmö.
The union was the work of Scandinavian aristocracy who sought to counter the influence of the Hanseatic League, a northern German trade league centered around the Baltic and North Seas. More personally, it was achieved by Queen Margaret I of Denmark (1353–1412). She was a daughter of King Valdemar IV and had married King Haakon VI of Norway and Sweden, who was the son of King Magnus IV of Sweden, Norway and Scania. Margaret succeeded in having her and Haakon's son Olaf recognized as heir to the throne of Denmark. In 1376 Olaf inherited the crown of Denmark from his maternal grandfather as King Olaf II, with his mother as guardian; when Haakon VI died in 1380, Olaf also inherited the crown of Norway.
Margaret became regent of Denmark and Norway when Olaf died in 1387, leaving her without an heir. She adopted her great-nephew Eric of Pomerania the same year. The following year, 1388, Swedish nobles called upon her help against King Albert. After Margaret defeated Albert in 1389, her heir Eric was proclaimed King of Norway. Eric was subsequently elected King of Denmark and Sweden in 1396 under the banner of the House of Griffin. His coronation was held in Kalmar on 17 June 1397.
One main impetus for its formation was to block German expansion northward into the Baltic region. The main reason for its failure to survive was the perpetual struggle between the monarch, who wanted a strong unified state, and the Swedish and Danish nobility, which did not.
The Union lost territory when Orkney and Shetland were pledged by Christian I, in his capacity as King of Norway, as security against the payment of the dowry of his daughter Margaret, betrothed to James III of Scotland in 1468. The money was never paid, so in 1472 the islands were annexed by the Kingdom of Scotland.
Diverging interests (especially the Swedish nobility's dissatisfaction with the dominant role played by Denmark and Holstein) gave rise to a conflict that hampered the union in several intervals starting in the 1430s. The Engelbrekt rebellion, which started in 1434, led to the overthrow of King Erik (in Denmark and Sweden in 1439, as well as Norway in 1442). The aristocracy sided with the rebels.
King Erik's foreign policy, in particular his conflict with the Hanseatic League, necessitated greater taxation and complicated exports of iron, which in turn may have precipitated the rebellion. Discontent with the nature of King Erik's regime has also been cited as a motivating factor for the rebellion. King Erik also lacked a standing army and had limited tax revenues.
The death of Christopher of Bavaria (who had no heirs) in 1448 ended a period in which the three Scandinavian kingdoms were uninterruptedly united for a lengthy period. Karl Knutsson Bonde ruled as king of Sweden (1448–1457, 1464–1465 and 1467–1470) and Norway (1449-1450). Christian of Oldenburg was king of Denmark (1448–1481), Norway (1450–1481) and Sweden (1457–1464). Karl and Christian fought over control of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, leading Christian to seize Sweden from him from 1457 to 1464 before a rebellion led Karl to become king of Sweden again. When Karl died in 1470, Christian tried to become king of Sweden again, but was defeated by Sten Sture the Elder in the 1471 battle of Brunkeberg outside Stockholm.
After the death of Karl, Sweden was mostly ruled by a series of "protectors of the realm" (riksföreståndare), with the Danish kings attempting to assert control. First of these protectors was Sten Sture, who kept Sweden under his control until 1497 when the Swedish nobility deposed him. A peasant rebellion led Sture to become regent of Sweden again in 1501. After his death, Sweden was ruled by Svante Nilsson (1504–1512) and then Svante's son Sten Sture the Younger (1512–1520). Sten Sture the Younger was killed in the 1520 Battle of Bogesund when the Danish king Christian II invaded Sweden with a large army. Subsequently, Christian II was crowned King of Sweden, and supporters of Sten Sture were executed en masse in the Stockholm Bloodbath.
After the Stockholm Bloodbath, Gustav Vasa (whose father, Erik Johansson, was executed) travelled to Dalarna, where he organized a rebellion against Christian II. Vasa made an alliance with Lübeck and successfully conquered most of Sweden. He was elected King of Sweden in 1523, effectively ending the Kalmar Union. After the Northern Seven Years' War, the Treaty of Stettin (1570) saw Frederick II renounce all claims to Sweden.
One of the last structures of the Union remained until 1536/1537 when the Danish Privy Council, in the aftermath of the Count's Feud, unilaterally declared Norway to be a Danish province. This did not happen. Instead, Norway became a hereditary kingdom in a real union with Denmark. Norway continued to remain a part of the realm of Denmark–Norway under the Oldenburg dynasty for nearly three centuries, until it was transferred to Sweden in 1814. The ensuing union between Sweden and Norway lasted until 1905, when prince Carl of Denmark, a grandson of both the incumbent king of Denmark and the late king of Sweden, was elected king of Norway.
According to historian Sverre Bagge, the Kalmar Union was unstable for several reasons:
The Kalmar Union monarchs were:
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Kalmar Union (Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish: Kalmarunionen; Finnish: Kalmarin unioni; Icelandic: Kalmarsambandið; Latin: Unio Calmariensis) was a personal union in Scandinavia, agreed at Kalmar in Sweden as designed by widowed Queen Margaret of Norway and Sweden. From 1397 to 1523, it joined under a single monarch the three kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden (then including much of present-day Finland), and Norway, together with Norway's overseas colonies (then including Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and the Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The union was not quite continuous; there were several short interruptions. Legally, the countries remained separate sovereign states. However, their domestic and foreign policies were directed by a common monarch. Gustav Vasa's election as King of Sweden on 6 June 1523, and his triumphant entry into Stockholm eleven days later, marked Sweden's final secession from the Kalmar Union. Formally, the Danish king acknowledged Sweden's independence in 1524 at the Treaty of Malmö.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The union was the work of Scandinavian aristocracy who sought to counter the influence of the Hanseatic League, a northern German trade league centered around the Baltic and North Seas. More personally, it was achieved by Queen Margaret I of Denmark (1353–1412). She was a daughter of King Valdemar IV and had married King Haakon VI of Norway and Sweden, who was the son of King Magnus IV of Sweden, Norway and Scania. Margaret succeeded in having her and Haakon's son Olaf recognized as heir to the throne of Denmark. In 1376 Olaf inherited the crown of Denmark from his maternal grandfather as King Olaf II, with his mother as guardian; when Haakon VI died in 1380, Olaf also inherited the crown of Norway.",
"title": "Inception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Margaret became regent of Denmark and Norway when Olaf died in 1387, leaving her without an heir. She adopted her great-nephew Eric of Pomerania the same year. The following year, 1388, Swedish nobles called upon her help against King Albert. After Margaret defeated Albert in 1389, her heir Eric was proclaimed King of Norway. Eric was subsequently elected King of Denmark and Sweden in 1396 under the banner of the House of Griffin. His coronation was held in Kalmar on 17 June 1397.",
"title": "Inception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "One main impetus for its formation was to block German expansion northward into the Baltic region. The main reason for its failure to survive was the perpetual struggle between the monarch, who wanted a strong unified state, and the Swedish and Danish nobility, which did not.",
"title": "Inception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The Union lost territory when Orkney and Shetland were pledged by Christian I, in his capacity as King of Norway, as security against the payment of the dowry of his daughter Margaret, betrothed to James III of Scotland in 1468. The money was never paid, so in 1472 the islands were annexed by the Kingdom of Scotland.",
"title": "Inception"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Diverging interests (especially the Swedish nobility's dissatisfaction with the dominant role played by Denmark and Holstein) gave rise to a conflict that hampered the union in several intervals starting in the 1430s. The Engelbrekt rebellion, which started in 1434, led to the overthrow of King Erik (in Denmark and Sweden in 1439, as well as Norway in 1442). The aristocracy sided with the rebels.",
"title": "Internal conflict"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "King Erik's foreign policy, in particular his conflict with the Hanseatic League, necessitated greater taxation and complicated exports of iron, which in turn may have precipitated the rebellion. Discontent with the nature of King Erik's regime has also been cited as a motivating factor for the rebellion. King Erik also lacked a standing army and had limited tax revenues.",
"title": "Internal conflict"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The death of Christopher of Bavaria (who had no heirs) in 1448 ended a period in which the three Scandinavian kingdoms were uninterruptedly united for a lengthy period. Karl Knutsson Bonde ruled as king of Sweden (1448–1457, 1464–1465 and 1467–1470) and Norway (1449-1450). Christian of Oldenburg was king of Denmark (1448–1481), Norway (1450–1481) and Sweden (1457–1464). Karl and Christian fought over control of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, leading Christian to seize Sweden from him from 1457 to 1464 before a rebellion led Karl to become king of Sweden again. When Karl died in 1470, Christian tried to become king of Sweden again, but was defeated by Sten Sture the Elder in the 1471 battle of Brunkeberg outside Stockholm.",
"title": "Internal conflict"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "After the death of Karl, Sweden was mostly ruled by a series of \"protectors of the realm\" (riksföreståndare), with the Danish kings attempting to assert control. First of these protectors was Sten Sture, who kept Sweden under his control until 1497 when the Swedish nobility deposed him. A peasant rebellion led Sture to become regent of Sweden again in 1501. After his death, Sweden was ruled by Svante Nilsson (1504–1512) and then Svante's son Sten Sture the Younger (1512–1520). Sten Sture the Younger was killed in the 1520 Battle of Bogesund when the Danish king Christian II invaded Sweden with a large army. Subsequently, Christian II was crowned King of Sweden, and supporters of Sten Sture were executed en masse in the Stockholm Bloodbath.",
"title": "Internal conflict"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "After the Stockholm Bloodbath, Gustav Vasa (whose father, Erik Johansson, was executed) travelled to Dalarna, where he organized a rebellion against Christian II. Vasa made an alliance with Lübeck and successfully conquered most of Sweden. He was elected King of Sweden in 1523, effectively ending the Kalmar Union. After the Northern Seven Years' War, the Treaty of Stettin (1570) saw Frederick II renounce all claims to Sweden.",
"title": "Internal conflict"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "One of the last structures of the Union remained until 1536/1537 when the Danish Privy Council, in the aftermath of the Count's Feud, unilaterally declared Norway to be a Danish province. This did not happen. Instead, Norway became a hereditary kingdom in a real union with Denmark. Norway continued to remain a part of the realm of Denmark–Norway under the Oldenburg dynasty for nearly three centuries, until it was transferred to Sweden in 1814. The ensuing union between Sweden and Norway lasted until 1905, when prince Carl of Denmark, a grandson of both the incumbent king of Denmark and the late king of Sweden, was elected king of Norway.",
"title": "End and aftermath"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "According to historian Sverre Bagge, the Kalmar Union was unstable for several reasons:",
"title": "End and aftermath"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The Kalmar Union monarchs were:",
"title": "Gallery"
}
] |
The Kalmar Union was a personal union in Scandinavia, agreed at Kalmar in Sweden as designed by widowed Queen Margaret of Norway and Sweden. From 1397 to 1523, it joined under a single monarch the three kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, together with Norway's overseas colonies. The union was not quite continuous; there were several short interruptions. Legally, the countries remained separate sovereign states. However, their domestic and foreign policies were directed by a common monarch. Gustav Vasa's election as King of Sweden on 6 June 1523, and his triumphant entry into Stockholm eleven days later, marked Sweden's final secession from the Kalmar Union. Formally, the Danish king acknowledged Sweden's independence in 1524 at the Treaty of Malmö.
|
2001-08-30T16:42:01Z
|
2023-12-27T01:37:08Z
|
[
"Template:Cite encyclopedia",
"Template:ISBN?",
"Template:Lang-sv",
"Template:Lang-la",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Commons category inline",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Infobox former country",
"Template:Scandinavia",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:ISBN",
"Template:Cite magazine",
"Template:Navboxes",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Lang-fi"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalmar_Union
|
16,801 |
Krav Maga
|
Krav Maga (/ˌkrɑːv məˈɡɑː/ KRAHV mə-GAH; Hebrew: קרב מגע, IPA: [ˈkʁav maˈɡa]; lit. 'contact combat') is an Israeli martial art. Developed for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), it is derived from a combination of techniques used in aikido, judo, karate, boxing, and wrestling. It is known for its focus on real-world situations and its extreme efficiency.
Hungarian-born Israeli martial artist Imi Lichtenfeld, who made use of his training as a boxer and wrestler to defend Jews in Bratislava against fascist groups in the mid-to-late 1930s, developed Krav Maga through his experiences in street fighting. After his immigration to Mandatory Palestine in the late 1940s, he began to provide lessons on combat training to Jewish paramilitary groups that would later form the IDF during the 1948 Palestine war.
From the outset, the original concept of Krav Maga was to take the most effective and practical techniques of other fighting styles (originally European boxing, wrestling, and street fighting) and make them rapidly teachable to conscripted soldiers. It has a philosophy emphasizing aggression and simultaneous defensive and offensive manoeuvres. It has been used by Israeli special forces and regular infantry units alike. Closely related variations have been developed and adopted by Israeli law enforcement and intelligence organizations, and there are several organizations teaching variations of Krav Maga internationally. There are two forms of Krav Maga, with one type adapted for Israeli security forces and the other type adapted for civilian use.
The term krav maga in Hebrew is literally translated as 'contact combat' – the three letter root of the first word is k-r-v (קרב), and the noun derived from this root means either "combat" or "battle"; whereas the second word is a participle form derived from the verb root n-g-'a (נגע), that literally means either "contact" or "touch".
Like most martial arts, Krav Maga encourages students to avoid physical confrontation. If this is impossible or unsafe, it promotes finishing a fight as quickly and aggressively as possible. Attacks are aimed at the most vulnerable parts of the body, and training is not limited to techniques that avoid severe injury; some even permanently injure or cause death to the opponent.
Students learn to defend against all variety of attacks and are taught to counter in the quickest and most efficient way.
Ideas in Krav Maga include:
Training can also cover the study and development of situational awareness to develop an understanding of one's surroundings, learning to understand the psychology of a street confrontation, and identifying potential threats before an attack occurs. It may also cover physical and verbal methods to avoid violence whenever possible. It also teaches mental toughness, using controlled scenarios to strengthen mental fortitude in order for students to control the impulse and not do something rash, but instead attack only when necessary and as a last resort.
Some of the key focuses of techniques in Krav Maga are—as described above—effectiveness and instinctive response under stress. To that end, Krav Maga is an eclectic system that has not sought to replace existing effective techniques, taking what is useful from available systems, for example:
Imre "Imi" Lichtenfeld (also known as Imi S'de-Or) was born in 1910 in Budapest, Austro-Hungary to a Jewish family and grew up in Bratislava (Slovakia). Lichtenfeld became active in a wide range of sports, including gymnastics, wrestling, and boxing. In 1928, Lichtenfeld won the Slovak Youth Wrestling Championship, and in 1929 the adult championship (light and middle weight divisions). That same year, he also won the national boxing championship and an international gymnastics championship. During the ensuing decade, Lichtenfeld's athletic activities focused mainly on wrestling, both as a contestant and a trainer.
In the mid-1930s, anti-Semitic riots began to threaten the Jews of Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. Lichtenfeld became the leader of a group of Jewish boxers and wrestlers who took to the streets to defend Jewish neighborhoods against the growing numbers of anti-Semitic Nazis. Lichtenfeld quickly discovered, however, that actual fighting was very different from competition fighting, and although boxing and wrestling were good sports, they were not always practical for the aggressive and brutal nature of street combat. It was then that he started to re-evaluate his ideas about fighting and started developing the skills and techniques that would eventually become Krav Maga. Having become a thorn in the side of the equally anti-Semitic local authorities, in 1940 Lichtenfeld left his home with his family and friends on the last refugee ship to escape Europe.
After making his way to Mandatory Palestine, Lichtenfeld joined the Haganah paramilitary organization. In 1944 Lichtenfeld began training fighters in his areas of expertise: physical fitness, swimming, wrestling, use of the knife, and defense against knife attacks. During this period, Lichtenfeld trained several elite units of the Haganah, including the Palmach (striking force of the Haganah and forerunner of the special units of the Israel Defense Forces) and the Palyam, as well as groups of police officers.
In 1948, when the State of Israel was founded and the IDF was formed, Lichtenfeld became Chief Instructor for Physical Fitness and Krav Maga at the IDF School of Combat Fitness. He served in the IDF for about 20 years, during which time he developed and refined his unique method for self-defense and hand-to-hand combat. Self-defense was not a new concept, since nearly all martial arts had developed some form of defensive techniques in their quest for tournament or sport dominance. However, self-defense was based strictly upon the scientific and dynamic principles of the human body. In 1965 judo training was added as part of the Krav Maga training. Until 1968 there were no grades in Krav Maga. Then a trainee's grades were determined largely by his knowledge in judo.
In 1968, Eli Avikzar, Lichtenfeld's principal student and first black belt, began learning aikido. In 1971 Eli left for France, where he received a black belt in aikido. Upon his return, Avikzar started working as an instructor alongside Imi to integrate more traditional martial arts into krav maga. Then in 1974 Imre retired and gave Eli Avikzar control over the Krav Maga training center in Netanya. Shortly after, in 1976, Avikzar joined the permanent force of IDF, as head of the Krav Maga section. The role of Krav Maga in the army advanced greatly after Eli's appointment. More courses were given, and every P.E. instructor was obliged to learn Krav Maga. Avikzar continued to develop Krav Maga within the IDF until his retirement in 1987. Up to this date, Eli had trained 80,000 male soldiers and 12,000 female soldiers.
Further pursuing excellence as a student of martial arts, Eli went to Germany in 1977 and received a black belt in aikido from the European Federation. In 1978 the Krav Maga association was established, and in 1989, as an active member of the judo association, Eli Avikzar helped to establish the professional and rank committees by founding the Israeli Krav Maga Association (IKMA or KAMI). Eli retired as the Chief Krav Maga instructor in 1987 and Boaz Aviram became the third person to hold the position, being the last head instructor to have studied directly with both Lichtenfeld and Avikzar.
The IDF offers a five-week Krav Maga instructor course. It has held an annual Krav Maga competition since May 2013.
Upon Imi Lichtenfeld's retirement from the IDF, he decided to open a school and teach Krav Maga to civilians. The first Krav Maga course took place at the Wingate Institute, Netanya, Israel, in 1971, under his direct supervision.
Most of the Krav Maga organizations in Israel use Imi Lichtenfeld's colored belt grading system which is based upon the Judo ranking system. It starts with white belt, and then yellow, orange, green, blue, brown and black belts. Black belt students can move up the ranks from 1st to 9th Dan. The time and requirements for advancing have some differences between the organizations.
Other organizations that teach Krav Maga in and outside of Israel use similar grading systems.
A patch system was developed by Eyal Yanilov in the late 1980s. The grades are divided into three main categories: Practitioner, Graduate and Expert. Each of the categories, which are often abbreviated to their initials, has five ranks. Grades P1 through to P5 are the student levels and make up the majority of the Krav Maga community. After P5 are G1-G5, and in order to achieve Graduate level the student has to demonstrate a proficiency in all of the P level techniques before advancing.
Although there are some subtle differences, the various organizations teach the same core techniques and principles. Some other organizations have less formal grading ranks without belts or patches but do have levels by which students can monitor their progress.
In some organizations sparring is slow and light until the student reaches G2 level. This takes approximately four to six years because rising one level in the Practitioner and Graduate categories takes at minimum half a year of consistent training. It is, however, more common to observe regular trainees grading only once a year from P3 and up.
Once in G2, students also practice simulated "real" fighting with protective gear.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Krav Maga (/ˌkrɑːv məˈɡɑː/ KRAHV mə-GAH; Hebrew: קרב מגע, IPA: [ˈkʁav maˈɡa]; lit. 'contact combat') is an Israeli martial art. Developed for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), it is derived from a combination of techniques used in aikido, judo, karate, boxing, and wrestling. It is known for its focus on real-world situations and its extreme efficiency.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Hungarian-born Israeli martial artist Imi Lichtenfeld, who made use of his training as a boxer and wrestler to defend Jews in Bratislava against fascist groups in the mid-to-late 1930s, developed Krav Maga through his experiences in street fighting. After his immigration to Mandatory Palestine in the late 1940s, he began to provide lessons on combat training to Jewish paramilitary groups that would later form the IDF during the 1948 Palestine war.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "From the outset, the original concept of Krav Maga was to take the most effective and practical techniques of other fighting styles (originally European boxing, wrestling, and street fighting) and make them rapidly teachable to conscripted soldiers. It has a philosophy emphasizing aggression and simultaneous defensive and offensive manoeuvres. It has been used by Israeli special forces and regular infantry units alike. Closely related variations have been developed and adopted by Israeli law enforcement and intelligence organizations, and there are several organizations teaching variations of Krav Maga internationally. There are two forms of Krav Maga, with one type adapted for Israeli security forces and the other type adapted for civilian use.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The term krav maga in Hebrew is literally translated as 'contact combat' – the three letter root of the first word is k-r-v (קרב), and the noun derived from this root means either \"combat\" or \"battle\"; whereas the second word is a participle form derived from the verb root n-g-'a (נגע), that literally means either \"contact\" or \"touch\".",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Like most martial arts, Krav Maga encourages students to avoid physical confrontation. If this is impossible or unsafe, it promotes finishing a fight as quickly and aggressively as possible. Attacks are aimed at the most vulnerable parts of the body, and training is not limited to techniques that avoid severe injury; some even permanently injure or cause death to the opponent.",
"title": "Basic principles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Students learn to defend against all variety of attacks and are taught to counter in the quickest and most efficient way.",
"title": "Basic principles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Ideas in Krav Maga include:",
"title": "Basic principles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Training can also cover the study and development of situational awareness to develop an understanding of one's surroundings, learning to understand the psychology of a street confrontation, and identifying potential threats before an attack occurs. It may also cover physical and verbal methods to avoid violence whenever possible. It also teaches mental toughness, using controlled scenarios to strengthen mental fortitude in order for students to control the impulse and not do something rash, but instead attack only when necessary and as a last resort.",
"title": "Basic principles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Some of the key focuses of techniques in Krav Maga are—as described above—effectiveness and instinctive response under stress. To that end, Krav Maga is an eclectic system that has not sought to replace existing effective techniques, taking what is useful from available systems, for example:",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Imre \"Imi\" Lichtenfeld (also known as Imi S'de-Or) was born in 1910 in Budapest, Austro-Hungary to a Jewish family and grew up in Bratislava (Slovakia). Lichtenfeld became active in a wide range of sports, including gymnastics, wrestling, and boxing. In 1928, Lichtenfeld won the Slovak Youth Wrestling Championship, and in 1929 the adult championship (light and middle weight divisions). That same year, he also won the national boxing championship and an international gymnastics championship. During the ensuing decade, Lichtenfeld's athletic activities focused mainly on wrestling, both as a contestant and a trainer.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In the mid-1930s, anti-Semitic riots began to threaten the Jews of Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. Lichtenfeld became the leader of a group of Jewish boxers and wrestlers who took to the streets to defend Jewish neighborhoods against the growing numbers of anti-Semitic Nazis. Lichtenfeld quickly discovered, however, that actual fighting was very different from competition fighting, and although boxing and wrestling were good sports, they were not always practical for the aggressive and brutal nature of street combat. It was then that he started to re-evaluate his ideas about fighting and started developing the skills and techniques that would eventually become Krav Maga. Having become a thorn in the side of the equally anti-Semitic local authorities, in 1940 Lichtenfeld left his home with his family and friends on the last refugee ship to escape Europe.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "After making his way to Mandatory Palestine, Lichtenfeld joined the Haganah paramilitary organization. In 1944 Lichtenfeld began training fighters in his areas of expertise: physical fitness, swimming, wrestling, use of the knife, and defense against knife attacks. During this period, Lichtenfeld trained several elite units of the Haganah, including the Palmach (striking force of the Haganah and forerunner of the special units of the Israel Defense Forces) and the Palyam, as well as groups of police officers.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In 1948, when the State of Israel was founded and the IDF was formed, Lichtenfeld became Chief Instructor for Physical Fitness and Krav Maga at the IDF School of Combat Fitness. He served in the IDF for about 20 years, during which time he developed and refined his unique method for self-defense and hand-to-hand combat. Self-defense was not a new concept, since nearly all martial arts had developed some form of defensive techniques in their quest for tournament or sport dominance. However, self-defense was based strictly upon the scientific and dynamic principles of the human body. In 1965 judo training was added as part of the Krav Maga training. Until 1968 there were no grades in Krav Maga. Then a trainee's grades were determined largely by his knowledge in judo.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In 1968, Eli Avikzar, Lichtenfeld's principal student and first black belt, began learning aikido. In 1971 Eli left for France, where he received a black belt in aikido. Upon his return, Avikzar started working as an instructor alongside Imi to integrate more traditional martial arts into krav maga. Then in 1974 Imre retired and gave Eli Avikzar control over the Krav Maga training center in Netanya. Shortly after, in 1976, Avikzar joined the permanent force of IDF, as head of the Krav Maga section. The role of Krav Maga in the army advanced greatly after Eli's appointment. More courses were given, and every P.E. instructor was obliged to learn Krav Maga. Avikzar continued to develop Krav Maga within the IDF until his retirement in 1987. Up to this date, Eli had trained 80,000 male soldiers and 12,000 female soldiers.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Further pursuing excellence as a student of martial arts, Eli went to Germany in 1977 and received a black belt in aikido from the European Federation. In 1978 the Krav Maga association was established, and in 1989, as an active member of the judo association, Eli Avikzar helped to establish the professional and rank committees by founding the Israeli Krav Maga Association (IKMA or KAMI). Eli retired as the Chief Krav Maga instructor in 1987 and Boaz Aviram became the third person to hold the position, being the last head instructor to have studied directly with both Lichtenfeld and Avikzar.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The IDF offers a five-week Krav Maga instructor course. It has held an annual Krav Maga competition since May 2013.",
"title": "Israeli Defense Forces"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Upon Imi Lichtenfeld's retirement from the IDF, he decided to open a school and teach Krav Maga to civilians. The first Krav Maga course took place at the Wingate Institute, Netanya, Israel, in 1971, under his direct supervision.",
"title": "Civilian use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Most of the Krav Maga organizations in Israel use Imi Lichtenfeld's colored belt grading system which is based upon the Judo ranking system. It starts with white belt, and then yellow, orange, green, blue, brown and black belts. Black belt students can move up the ranks from 1st to 9th Dan. The time and requirements for advancing have some differences between the organizations.",
"title": "Civilian use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Other organizations that teach Krav Maga in and outside of Israel use similar grading systems.",
"title": "Civilian use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "A patch system was developed by Eyal Yanilov in the late 1980s. The grades are divided into three main categories: Practitioner, Graduate and Expert. Each of the categories, which are often abbreviated to their initials, has five ranks. Grades P1 through to P5 are the student levels and make up the majority of the Krav Maga community. After P5 are G1-G5, and in order to achieve Graduate level the student has to demonstrate a proficiency in all of the P level techniques before advancing.",
"title": "Civilian use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Although there are some subtle differences, the various organizations teach the same core techniques and principles. Some other organizations have less formal grading ranks without belts or patches but do have levels by which students can monitor their progress.",
"title": "Civilian use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In some organizations sparring is slow and light until the student reaches G2 level. This takes approximately four to six years because rising one level in the Practitioner and Graduate categories takes at minimum half a year of consistent training. It is, however, more common to observe regular trainees grading only once a year from P3 and up.",
"title": "Civilian use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Once in G2, students also practice simulated \"real\" fighting with protective gear.",
"title": "Civilian use"
}
] |
Krav Maga is an Israeli martial art. Developed for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), it is derived from a combination of techniques used in aikido, judo, karate, boxing, and wrestling. It is known for its focus on real-world situations and its extreme efficiency. Hungarian-born Israeli martial artist Imi Lichtenfeld, who made use of his training as a boxer and wrestler to defend Jews in Bratislava against fascist groups in the mid-to-late 1930s, developed Krav Maga through his experiences in street fighting. After his immigration to Mandatory Palestine in the late 1940s, he began to provide lessons on combat training to Jewish paramilitary groups that would later form the IDF during the 1948 Palestine war. From the outset, the original concept of Krav Maga was to take the most effective and practical techniques of other fighting styles and make them rapidly teachable to conscripted soldiers. It has a philosophy emphasizing aggression and simultaneous defensive and offensive manoeuvres. It has been used by Israeli special forces and regular infantry units alike. Closely related variations have been developed and adopted by Israeli law enforcement and intelligence organizations, and there are several organizations teaching variations of Krav Maga internationally. There are two forms of Krav Maga, with one type adapted for Israeli security forces and the other type adapted for civilian use.
|
2001-09-12T09:27:47Z
|
2023-11-29T18:42:50Z
|
[
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Commons category-inline",
"Template:Martial arts",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:YouTube",
"Template:IPAc-en",
"Template:Respell",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Lang",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite tweet",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Infobox martial art",
"Template:IPA",
"Template:Literal translation",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Cite magazine",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Lang-he"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krav_Maga
|
16,802 |
The Katzenjammer Kids
|
The Katzenjammer Kids is an American comic strip created by Rudolph Dirks in 1897 and later drawn by Harold Knerr for 35 years (1914 to 1949). It debuted December 12, 1897, in the American Humorist, the Sunday supplement of William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal. The comic strip was turned into a stage play in 1903. It inspired several animated cartoons and was one of 20 strips included in the Comic Strip Classics series of U.S. commemorative postage stamps.
After a series of legal battles between 1912 and 1914, Dirks left the Hearst organization and began a new strip, first titled Hans and Fritz and then The Captain and the Kids. It featured the same characters seen in The Katzenjammer Kids, which was continued by Knerr. The two separate versions of the strip competed with each other until 1979, when The Captain and the Kids ended its six-decade run. The Katzenjammer Kids published its last original strip in 2006, but is still distributed in reprints by King Features Syndicate, making it the oldest comic strip still in syndication and the longest-running ever.
The Katzenjammer Kids was inspired by Max and Moritz, a children's story of the 1860s by German author Wilhelm Busch.
Katzenjammer translates literally as the wailing of cats (i.e. "caterwaul") but is used to mean contrition after a failed endeavor or hangover in German (and, in the latter sense, in English too). Whereas Max & Moritz were grotesquely but comically put to death after seven destructive pranks, the Katzenjammer Kids and the other characters still thrive.
The Katzenjammer Kids was so popular that it became two competing comic strips and the subject of a lawsuit. This happened because Dirks, in 1912, wanted to take a break after drawing the strip for 15 years, but the Hearst newspaper syndicate would not allow it. Dirks left anyway, and the strip was taken over by Harold Knerr. Dirks' last strip appeared March 16, 1913. Dirks sued, and after a long legal battle, the Hearst papers were allowed to continue The Katzenjammer Kids, with Knerr as writer and artist. He took over permanently in the summer of 1914. However, Dirks was allowed to create an almost identical strip of his own for the rival Pulitzer newspapers, although he had to use a different name for the strip.
Initially named Hans und Fritz after the two naughty protagonist brothers, Dirks' new feature was called The Captain and the Kids from 1918 on. The Captain and the Kids was very similar to The Katzenjammer Kids in terms of content and characters, but Dirks had a looser and more verbal style than Knerr, who on the other hand often produced stronger, more direct gags and drawings. The Captain and the Kids soon proved equal in popularity to The Katzenjammer Kids. It was later distributed by the United Feature Syndicate, while Hearst's King Features distributed The Katzenjammer Kids.
The Captain and the Kids expanded as a daily strip during the 1930s, but it had only a short run. However, the Sunday strip remained popular for decades. From 1946, Dirks' son, John Dirks, gradually began doing more of the work on The Captain and the Kids. They introduced new characters and plots during the 1950s, including a 1958 science fiction storyline about a brilliant inventor and alien invasions. Even as John Dirks took over most of the work, Rudolph Dirks signed the strip until his death in 1968. John Dirks' drawing shifted slightly towards a more square-formed line, though it maintained the original style until The Captain and the Kids ended its run in 1979.
Knerr continued drawing The Katzenjammer Kids until his death in 1949; the strip was then written and drawn by C.H. "Doc" Winner (1949–1956), with Joe Musial taking over in 1956. Musial was replaced on The Katzenjammer Kids by Mike Senich (1976–1981), Angelo DeCesare (1981–1986), and Hy Eisman (1986–2006). Now syndicated in reprint form, the strip is distributed internationally to some 50 newspapers and magazines. Eisman reused a lot of old gags and stories in later years.
The Katzenjammer Kids (three brothers in the first strip but soon reduced to two) featured Hans and Fritz, twins who rebelled against authority, particularly in the form of their mother, Mama; der Captain, a sailor who acted as a surrogate father; and der Inspector, a long-bearded school official. Other characters included John Silver, a pirate sea captain; the Herring Brothers, John Silver's three-man crew; and King Bongo, a primitive-living but sophisticated-acting black jungle monarch who ruled a tropical island.
As originally created, Mama's husband was Papa Katzenjammer, her brother was the bungling sailor Heinie, and der Captain–introduced in 1902—was Heinie's boss. After a short while, Papa was dropped from the strip without explanation, with der Captain taking over his function. By the 1940s, der Captain and Mama were often presented as a de facto couple.
The immediate Katzenjammer family usually spoke stereotypical German-accented English. When first introduced, der Captain and der Inspector did not, but within months adopted the accent as well. During World Wars I and II, when the United States was at war with Germany, the Katzenjammer family were temporarily presented as Dutch.
The defining theme of the strip was Hans and Fritz pranking der Captain, der Inspector, Mama, or all three, for which the boys were often spanked, but sometimes shifted the blame to others. Other stories involved der Captain taking the Katzenjammers on treasure hunts or cargo voyages, sometimes aided by or competing with John Silver. Still other stories involved King Bongo enlisting the Katzenjammers to run errands or go on missions related to his kingdom; in both strips, by the mid-1930s, the family lived on Bongo's island—usually called Squee-Jee—and were readily at hand.
Knerr's version of The Katzenjammer Kids introduced several major new characters in the 1930s. Miss Twiddle, a pompous tutor, and her brainy niece Lena came to stay permanently with the Katzenjammers in early 1936. Later in the year Twiddle's ex-pupil, "boy prodigy" Rollo Rhubarb joined them. The ever-smug Rollo is always trying to outwit Hans and Fritz, but his cunning plans often backfire.
The Captain and the Kids also introduced some new characters. Ginga Dun is a snooty Indian trader who can outsmart almost anyone and only talks in verse. Captain Bloodshot is a pint-sized pirate rival of John Silver's.
Notable features of the later strips, at both syndicates, included a more constructive relationship between the Captain and the boys, who sometimes bickered like friendly rivals rather than pranking each other outright. The King and his people, also in both strips, were now Polynesian rather than African.
The Katzenjammer Kids characters initially appeared outside comics in a two of live-action silent films. The first film, titled The Katzenjammer Kids in School released in 1898., was made for the Biograph Company by William George Bitzer. The second film titled The Katzenjammer Kids in Love. was released in 1900
Between December 1916 and August 1918, a total of 37 Katzenjammer Kids silent cartoon shorts were produced by William Randolph Hearst's own cartoon studio International Film Service, which adapted Hearst's well-known comic strips. The series was retired in 1918 at the height of the characters' popularity – partly because of the growing tension against titles with German associations after World War I. The comic strip was briefly renamed to The Shenanigan Kids around this time, and in 1920 another five cartoons were produced under this title. All Katzenjammer Kids/Shenanigan Kids cartoons from International Film Services were directed (and most likely also animated) by Gregory La Cava. The series was transferred and continued by Bray Productions in 1920.
The Katzenjammer Kids also appeared (along with other King Features comic-strip stars) in Hal Seeger's TV special Popeye Meets the Man Who Hated Laughter (1972).
In 1938, The Captain and the Kids became the subject of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's first self-produced series of theatrical short subject cartoons, directed by William Hanna, Bob Allen and Friz Freleng: The Captain and the Kids. Unlike the strip, which focused most of all on the gruesomely amusing antics of Hans and Fritz, the MGM cartoons often centered on the Captain. The series was overall unsuccessful, ending after one year and a total of 15 cartoons. Following that cancellation, Freleng returned to Warner Bros., where he had earlier been an animation director. The Captain was voiced by Billy Bletcher, Mama was voiced by Martha Wentworth, and John Silver was voiced by Mel Blanc.
The Captain and the Kids version of the strip was also animated for television as a back-up segment on Filmation's Archie's TV Funnies in 1971, and in the spinoff series Fabulous Funnies from 1978 to 1979.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Katzenjammer Kids is an American comic strip created by Rudolph Dirks in 1897 and later drawn by Harold Knerr for 35 years (1914 to 1949). It debuted December 12, 1897, in the American Humorist, the Sunday supplement of William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal. The comic strip was turned into a stage play in 1903. It inspired several animated cartoons and was one of 20 strips included in the Comic Strip Classics series of U.S. commemorative postage stamps.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "After a series of legal battles between 1912 and 1914, Dirks left the Hearst organization and began a new strip, first titled Hans and Fritz and then The Captain and the Kids. It featured the same characters seen in The Katzenjammer Kids, which was continued by Knerr. The two separate versions of the strip competed with each other until 1979, when The Captain and the Kids ended its six-decade run. The Katzenjammer Kids published its last original strip in 2006, but is still distributed in reprints by King Features Syndicate, making it the oldest comic strip still in syndication and the longest-running ever.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The Katzenjammer Kids was inspired by Max and Moritz, a children's story of the 1860s by German author Wilhelm Busch.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Katzenjammer translates literally as the wailing of cats (i.e. \"caterwaul\") but is used to mean contrition after a failed endeavor or hangover in German (and, in the latter sense, in English too). Whereas Max & Moritz were grotesquely but comically put to death after seven destructive pranks, the Katzenjammer Kids and the other characters still thrive.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The Katzenjammer Kids was so popular that it became two competing comic strips and the subject of a lawsuit. This happened because Dirks, in 1912, wanted to take a break after drawing the strip for 15 years, but the Hearst newspaper syndicate would not allow it. Dirks left anyway, and the strip was taken over by Harold Knerr. Dirks' last strip appeared March 16, 1913. Dirks sued, and after a long legal battle, the Hearst papers were allowed to continue The Katzenjammer Kids, with Knerr as writer and artist. He took over permanently in the summer of 1914. However, Dirks was allowed to create an almost identical strip of his own for the rival Pulitzer newspapers, although he had to use a different name for the strip.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Initially named Hans und Fritz after the two naughty protagonist brothers, Dirks' new feature was called The Captain and the Kids from 1918 on. The Captain and the Kids was very similar to The Katzenjammer Kids in terms of content and characters, but Dirks had a looser and more verbal style than Knerr, who on the other hand often produced stronger, more direct gags and drawings. The Captain and the Kids soon proved equal in popularity to The Katzenjammer Kids. It was later distributed by the United Feature Syndicate, while Hearst's King Features distributed The Katzenjammer Kids.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The Captain and the Kids expanded as a daily strip during the 1930s, but it had only a short run. However, the Sunday strip remained popular for decades. From 1946, Dirks' son, John Dirks, gradually began doing more of the work on The Captain and the Kids. They introduced new characters and plots during the 1950s, including a 1958 science fiction storyline about a brilliant inventor and alien invasions. Even as John Dirks took over most of the work, Rudolph Dirks signed the strip until his death in 1968. John Dirks' drawing shifted slightly towards a more square-formed line, though it maintained the original style until The Captain and the Kids ended its run in 1979.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Knerr continued drawing The Katzenjammer Kids until his death in 1949; the strip was then written and drawn by C.H. \"Doc\" Winner (1949–1956), with Joe Musial taking over in 1956. Musial was replaced on The Katzenjammer Kids by Mike Senich (1976–1981), Angelo DeCesare (1981–1986), and Hy Eisman (1986–2006). Now syndicated in reprint form, the strip is distributed internationally to some 50 newspapers and magazines. Eisman reused a lot of old gags and stories in later years.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The Katzenjammer Kids (three brothers in the first strip but soon reduced to two) featured Hans and Fritz, twins who rebelled against authority, particularly in the form of their mother, Mama; der Captain, a sailor who acted as a surrogate father; and der Inspector, a long-bearded school official. Other characters included John Silver, a pirate sea captain; the Herring Brothers, John Silver's three-man crew; and King Bongo, a primitive-living but sophisticated-acting black jungle monarch who ruled a tropical island.",
"title": "Characters and story"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "As originally created, Mama's husband was Papa Katzenjammer, her brother was the bungling sailor Heinie, and der Captain–introduced in 1902—was Heinie's boss. After a short while, Papa was dropped from the strip without explanation, with der Captain taking over his function. By the 1940s, der Captain and Mama were often presented as a de facto couple.",
"title": "Characters and story"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The immediate Katzenjammer family usually spoke stereotypical German-accented English. When first introduced, der Captain and der Inspector did not, but within months adopted the accent as well. During World Wars I and II, when the United States was at war with Germany, the Katzenjammer family were temporarily presented as Dutch.",
"title": "Characters and story"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The defining theme of the strip was Hans and Fritz pranking der Captain, der Inspector, Mama, or all three, for which the boys were often spanked, but sometimes shifted the blame to others. Other stories involved der Captain taking the Katzenjammers on treasure hunts or cargo voyages, sometimes aided by or competing with John Silver. Still other stories involved King Bongo enlisting the Katzenjammers to run errands or go on missions related to his kingdom; in both strips, by the mid-1930s, the family lived on Bongo's island—usually called Squee-Jee—and were readily at hand.",
"title": "Characters and story"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Knerr's version of The Katzenjammer Kids introduced several major new characters in the 1930s. Miss Twiddle, a pompous tutor, and her brainy niece Lena came to stay permanently with the Katzenjammers in early 1936. Later in the year Twiddle's ex-pupil, \"boy prodigy\" Rollo Rhubarb joined them. The ever-smug Rollo is always trying to outwit Hans and Fritz, but his cunning plans often backfire.",
"title": "Characters and story"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The Captain and the Kids also introduced some new characters. Ginga Dun is a snooty Indian trader who can outsmart almost anyone and only talks in verse. Captain Bloodshot is a pint-sized pirate rival of John Silver's.",
"title": "Characters and story"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Notable features of the later strips, at both syndicates, included a more constructive relationship between the Captain and the boys, who sometimes bickered like friendly rivals rather than pranking each other outright. The King and his people, also in both strips, were now Polynesian rather than African.",
"title": "Characters and story"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The Katzenjammer Kids characters initially appeared outside comics in a two of live-action silent films. The first film, titled The Katzenjammer Kids in School released in 1898., was made for the Biograph Company by William George Bitzer. The second film titled The Katzenjammer Kids in Love. was released in 1900",
"title": "In other media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Between December 1916 and August 1918, a total of 37 Katzenjammer Kids silent cartoon shorts were produced by William Randolph Hearst's own cartoon studio International Film Service, which adapted Hearst's well-known comic strips. The series was retired in 1918 at the height of the characters' popularity – partly because of the growing tension against titles with German associations after World War I. The comic strip was briefly renamed to The Shenanigan Kids around this time, and in 1920 another five cartoons were produced under this title. All Katzenjammer Kids/Shenanigan Kids cartoons from International Film Services were directed (and most likely also animated) by Gregory La Cava. The series was transferred and continued by Bray Productions in 1920.",
"title": "In other media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The Katzenjammer Kids also appeared (along with other King Features comic-strip stars) in Hal Seeger's TV special Popeye Meets the Man Who Hated Laughter (1972).",
"title": "In other media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In 1938, The Captain and the Kids became the subject of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's first self-produced series of theatrical short subject cartoons, directed by William Hanna, Bob Allen and Friz Freleng: The Captain and the Kids. Unlike the strip, which focused most of all on the gruesomely amusing antics of Hans and Fritz, the MGM cartoons often centered on the Captain. The series was overall unsuccessful, ending after one year and a total of 15 cartoons. Following that cancellation, Freleng returned to Warner Bros., where he had earlier been an animation director. The Captain was voiced by Billy Bletcher, Mama was voiced by Martha Wentworth, and John Silver was voiced by Mel Blanc.",
"title": "In other media"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The Captain and the Kids version of the strip was also animated for television as a back-up segment on Filmation's Archie's TV Funnies in 1971, and in the spinoff series Fabulous Funnies from 1978 to 1979.",
"title": "In other media"
}
] |
The Katzenjammer Kids is an American comic strip created by Rudolph Dirks in 1897 and later drawn by Harold Knerr for 35 years. It debuted December 12, 1897, in the American Humorist, the Sunday supplement of William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal. The comic strip was turned into a stage play in 1903. It inspired several animated cartoons and was one of 20 strips included in the Comic Strip Classics series of U.S. commemorative postage stamps. After a series of legal battles between 1912 and 1914, Dirks left the Hearst organization and began a new strip, first titled Hans and Fritz and then The Captain and the Kids. It featured the same characters seen in The Katzenjammer Kids, which was continued by Knerr. The two separate versions of the strip competed with each other until 1979, when The Captain and the Kids ended its six-decade run. The Katzenjammer Kids published its last original strip in 2006, but is still distributed in reprints by King Features Syndicate, making it the oldest comic strip still in syndication and the longest-running ever.
|
2001-08-30T18:44:37Z
|
2023-12-17T02:12:01Z
|
[
"Template:Portal-inline",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:ISBN",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Use mdy dates",
"Template:Italic title",
"Template:King Features Syndicate Comics",
"Template:Commonscat",
"Template:Redirect",
"Template:Infobox comic strip",
"Template:Reflist"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Katzenjammer_Kids
|
16,803 |
Ketone
|
In organic chemistry, a ketone /ˈkiːtoʊn/ is a functional group with the structure R−C(=O)−R', where R and R' can be a variety of carbon-containing substituents. Ketones contain a carbonyl group −C(=O)− (which contains a carbon-oxygen double bond C=O). The simplest ketone is acetone (where R and R' is methyl), with the formula (CH3)2CO. Many ketones are of great importance in biology and in industry. Examples include many sugars (ketoses), many steroids (e.g., testosterone), and the solvent acetone.
The word ketone is derived from Aketon, an old German word for acetone.
According to the rules of IUPAC nomenclature, ketone names are derived by changing the suffix -ane of the parent alkane to -anone. Typically, the position of the carbonyl group is denoted by a number, but traditional nonsystematic names are still generally used for the most important ketones, for example acetone and benzophenone. These nonsystematic names are considered retained IUPAC names, although some introductory chemistry textbooks use systematic names such as "2-propanone" or "propan-2-one" for the simplest ketone (CH3−C(=O)−CH3) instead of "acetone".
The derived names of ketones are obtained by writing separately the names of the two alkyl groups attached to the carbonyl group, followed by "ketone" as a separate word. Traditionally the names of the alkyl groups were written in order of increasing complexity, for example methyl ethyl ketone. However, according to the rules of IUPAC nomenclature, the alkyl groups are written alphabetically, for example ethyl methyl ketone. When the two alkyl groups are the same, the prefix "di-" is added before the name of alkyl group. The positions of other groups are indicated by Greek letters, the α-carbon being the atom adjacent to carbonyl group.
Although used infrequently, oxo is the IUPAC nomenclature for the oxo group (=O) and used as prefix when the ketone does not have the highest priority. Other prefixes, however, are also used. For some common chemicals (mainly in biochemistry), keto refer to the ketone functional group.
The ketone carbon is often described as sp hybridized, a description that includes both their electronic and molecular structure. Ketones are trigonal planar around the ketonic carbon, with C–C–O and C–C–C bond angles of approximately 120°. Ketones differ from aldehydes in that the carbonyl group (C=O) is bonded to two carbons within a carbon skeleton. In aldehydes, the carbonyl is bonded to one carbon and one hydrogen and are located at the ends of carbon chains. Ketones are also distinct from other carbonyl-containing functional groups, such as carboxylic acids, esters and amides.
The carbonyl group is polar because the electronegativity of the oxygen is greater than that for carbon. Thus, ketones are nucleophilic at oxygen and electrophilic at carbon. Because the carbonyl group interacts with water by hydrogen bonding, ketones are typically more soluble in water than the related methylene compounds. Ketones are hydrogen-bond acceptors. Ketones are not usually hydrogen-bond donors and cannot hydrogen-bond to themselves. Because of their inability to serve both as hydrogen-bond donors and acceptors, ketones tend not to "self-associate" and are more volatile than alcohols and carboxylic acids of comparable molecular weights. These factors relate to the pervasiveness of ketones in perfumery and as solvents.
Ketones are classified on the basis of their substituents. One broad classification subdivides ketones into symmetrical and unsymmetrical derivatives, depending on the equivalency of the two organic substituents attached to the carbonyl center. Acetone and benzophenone ((C6H5)2CO) are symmetrical ketones. Acetophenone (C6H5C(O)CH3) is an unsymmetrical ketone.
Many kinds of diketones are known, some with unusual properties. The simplest is diacetyl (CH3C(O)C(O)CH3), once used as butter-flavoring in popcorn. Acetylacetone (pentane-2,4-dione) is virtually a misnomer (inappropriate name) because this species exists mainly as the monoenol CH3C(O)CH=C(OH)CH3. Its enolate is a common ligand in coordination chemistry.
Ketones containing alkene and alkyne units are often called unsaturated ketones. The most widely used member of this class of compounds is methyl vinyl ketone, CH3C(O)CH=CH2, which is useful in the Robinson annulation reaction. Lest there be confusion, a ketone itself is a site of unsaturation; that is, it can be hydrogenated.
Many ketones are cyclic. The simplest class have the formula (CH2)nCO, where n varies from 2 for cyclopropanone ((CH2)2CO) to the tens. Larger derivatives exist. Cyclohexanone ((CH2)5CO), a symmetrical cyclic ketone, is an important intermediate in the production of nylon. Isophorone, derived from acetone, is an unsaturated, asymmetrical ketone that is the precursor to other polymers. Muscone, 3-methylpentadecanone, is an animal pheromone. Another cyclic ketone is cyclobutanone, having the formula (CH2)3CO.
Ketones that have at least one alpha-hydrogen, undergo keto-enol tautomerization; the tautomer is an enol. Tautomerization is catalyzed by both acids and bases. Usually, the keto form is more stable than the enol. This equilibrium allows ketones to be prepared via the hydration of alkynes.
C−H bonds adjacent to the carbonyl in ketones are more acidic pKa ≈ 20) than the C−H bonds in alkane (pKa ≈ 50). This difference reflects resonance stabilization of the enolate ion that is formed upon deprotonation. The relative acidity of the α-hydrogen is important in the enolization reactions of ketones and other carbonyl compounds. The acidity of the α-hydrogen also allows ketones and other carbonyl compounds to react as nucleophiles at that position, with either stoichiometric and catalytic base. Using very strong bases like lithium diisopropylamide (LDA, pKa of conjugate acid ~36) under non-equilibrating conditions (–78 °C, 1.1 equiv LDA in THF, ketone added to base), the less-substituted kinetic enolate is generated selectively, while conditions that allow for equilibration (higher temperature, base added to ketone, using weak or insoluble bases, e.g., CH3CH2ONa in CH3CH2OH, or NaH) provides the more-substituted thermodynamic enolate.
Ketones are also weak bases, undergoing protonation on the carbonyl oxygen in the presence of Brønsted acids. Ketonium ions (i.e., protonated ketones) are strong acids, with pKa values estimated to be somewhere between –5 and –7. Although acids encountered in organic chemistry are seldom strong enough to fully protonate ketones, the formation of equilibrium concentrations of protonated ketones is nevertheless an important step in the mechanisms of many common organic reactions, like the formation of an acetal, for example. Acids as weak as pyridinium cation (as found in pyridinium tosylate) with a pKa of 5.2 are able to serve as catalysts in this context, despite the highly unfavorable equilibrium constant for protonation (Keq < 10).
An aldehyde differs from a ketone in that it has a hydrogen atom attached to its carbonyl group, making aldehydes easier to oxidize. Ketones do not have a hydrogen atom bonded to the carbonyl group, and are therefore more resistant to oxidation. They are oxidized only by powerful oxidizing agents which have the ability to cleave carbon–carbon bonds.
Ketones and aldehydes absorb strongly in the infra-red spectrum near 1700 cm. The exact position of the peak depends on the substituents.
Whereas H NMR spectroscopy is generally not useful for establishing the presence of a ketone, C NMR spectra exhibit signals somewhat downfield of 200 ppm depending on structure. Such signals are typically weak due to the absence of nuclear Overhauser effects. Since aldehydes resonate at similar chemical shifts, multiple resonance experiments are employed to definitively distinguish aldehydes and ketones.
Ketones give positive results in Brady's test, the reaction with 2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine to give the corresponding hydrazone. Ketones may be distinguished from aldehydes by giving a negative result with Tollens' reagent or with Fehling's solution. Methyl ketones give positive results for the iodoform test. Ketones also give positive results when treated with m-dinitrobenzene in presence of dilute sodium hydroxide to give violet coloration.
Many methods exist for the preparation of ketones in industrial scale and academic laboratories. Ketones are also produced in various ways by organisms; see the section on biochemistry below.
In industry, the most important method probably involves oxidation of hydrocarbons, often with air. For example, a billion kilograms of cyclohexanone are produced annually by aerobic oxidation of cyclohexane. Acetone is prepared by air-oxidation of cumene.
For specialized or small scale organic synthetic applications, ketones are often prepared by oxidation of secondary alcohols:
Typical strong oxidants (source of "O" in the above reaction) include potassium permanganate or a Cr(VI) compound. Milder conditions make use of the Dess–Martin periodinane or the Moffatt–Swern methods.
Many other methods have been developed, examples include:
Ketones engage in many organic reactions. The most important reactions follow from the susceptibility of the carbonyl carbon toward nucleophilic addition and the tendency for the enolates to add to electrophiles. Nucleophilic additions include in approximate order of their generality:
Ketones are pervasive in nature. The formation of organic compounds in photosynthesis occurs via the ketone ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate. Many sugars are ketones, known collectively as ketoses. The best known ketose is fructose; it mostly exists as a cyclic hemiketal, which masks the ketone functional group. Fatty acid synthesis proceeds via ketones. Acetoacetate is an intermediate in the Krebs cycle which releases energy from sugars and carbohydrates.
In medicine, acetone, acetoacetate, and beta-hydroxybutyrate are collectively called ketone bodies, generated from carbohydrates, fatty acids, and amino acids in most vertebrates, including humans. Ketone bodies are elevated in the blood (ketosis) after fasting, including a night of sleep; in both blood and urine in starvation; in hypoglycemia, due to causes other than hyperinsulinism; in various inborn errors of metabolism, and intentionally induced via a ketogenic diet, and in ketoacidosis (usually due to diabetes mellitus). Although ketoacidosis is characteristic of decompensated or untreated type 1 diabetes, ketosis or even ketoacidosis can occur in type 2 diabetes in some circumstances as well.
Ketones are produced on massive scales in industry as solvents, polymer precursors, and pharmaceuticals. In terms of scale, the most important ketones are acetone, methylethyl ketone, and cyclohexanone. They are also common in biochemistry, but less so than in organic chemistry in general. The combustion of hydrocarbons is an uncontrolled oxidation process that gives ketones as well as many other types of compounds.
Although it is difficult to generalize on the toxicity of such a broad class of compounds, simple ketones are, in general, not highly toxic. This characteristic is one reason for their popularity as solvents. Exceptions to this rule are the unsaturated ketones such as methyl vinyl ketone with LD50 of 7 mg/kg (oral).
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "In organic chemistry, a ketone /ˈkiːtoʊn/ is a functional group with the structure R−C(=O)−R', where R and R' can be a variety of carbon-containing substituents. Ketones contain a carbonyl group −C(=O)− (which contains a carbon-oxygen double bond C=O). The simplest ketone is acetone (where R and R' is methyl), with the formula (CH3)2CO. Many ketones are of great importance in biology and in industry. Examples include many sugars (ketoses), many steroids (e.g., testosterone), and the solvent acetone.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The word ketone is derived from Aketon, an old German word for acetone.",
"title": "Nomenclature and etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "According to the rules of IUPAC nomenclature, ketone names are derived by changing the suffix -ane of the parent alkane to -anone. Typically, the position of the carbonyl group is denoted by a number, but traditional nonsystematic names are still generally used for the most important ketones, for example acetone and benzophenone. These nonsystematic names are considered retained IUPAC names, although some introductory chemistry textbooks use systematic names such as \"2-propanone\" or \"propan-2-one\" for the simplest ketone (CH3−C(=O)−CH3) instead of \"acetone\".",
"title": "Nomenclature and etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The derived names of ketones are obtained by writing separately the names of the two alkyl groups attached to the carbonyl group, followed by \"ketone\" as a separate word. Traditionally the names of the alkyl groups were written in order of increasing complexity, for example methyl ethyl ketone. However, according to the rules of IUPAC nomenclature, the alkyl groups are written alphabetically, for example ethyl methyl ketone. When the two alkyl groups are the same, the prefix \"di-\" is added before the name of alkyl group. The positions of other groups are indicated by Greek letters, the α-carbon being the atom adjacent to carbonyl group.",
"title": "Nomenclature and etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Although used infrequently, oxo is the IUPAC nomenclature for the oxo group (=O) and used as prefix when the ketone does not have the highest priority. Other prefixes, however, are also used. For some common chemicals (mainly in biochemistry), keto refer to the ketone functional group.",
"title": "Nomenclature and etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The ketone carbon is often described as sp hybridized, a description that includes both their electronic and molecular structure. Ketones are trigonal planar around the ketonic carbon, with C–C–O and C–C–C bond angles of approximately 120°. Ketones differ from aldehydes in that the carbonyl group (C=O) is bonded to two carbons within a carbon skeleton. In aldehydes, the carbonyl is bonded to one carbon and one hydrogen and are located at the ends of carbon chains. Ketones are also distinct from other carbonyl-containing functional groups, such as carboxylic acids, esters and amides.",
"title": "Structure and properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The carbonyl group is polar because the electronegativity of the oxygen is greater than that for carbon. Thus, ketones are nucleophilic at oxygen and electrophilic at carbon. Because the carbonyl group interacts with water by hydrogen bonding, ketones are typically more soluble in water than the related methylene compounds. Ketones are hydrogen-bond acceptors. Ketones are not usually hydrogen-bond donors and cannot hydrogen-bond to themselves. Because of their inability to serve both as hydrogen-bond donors and acceptors, ketones tend not to \"self-associate\" and are more volatile than alcohols and carboxylic acids of comparable molecular weights. These factors relate to the pervasiveness of ketones in perfumery and as solvents.",
"title": "Structure and properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Ketones are classified on the basis of their substituents. One broad classification subdivides ketones into symmetrical and unsymmetrical derivatives, depending on the equivalency of the two organic substituents attached to the carbonyl center. Acetone and benzophenone ((C6H5)2CO) are symmetrical ketones. Acetophenone (C6H5C(O)CH3) is an unsymmetrical ketone.",
"title": "Structure and properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Many kinds of diketones are known, some with unusual properties. The simplest is diacetyl (CH3C(O)C(O)CH3), once used as butter-flavoring in popcorn. Acetylacetone (pentane-2,4-dione) is virtually a misnomer (inappropriate name) because this species exists mainly as the monoenol CH3C(O)CH=C(OH)CH3. Its enolate is a common ligand in coordination chemistry.",
"title": "Structure and properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Ketones containing alkene and alkyne units are often called unsaturated ketones. The most widely used member of this class of compounds is methyl vinyl ketone, CH3C(O)CH=CH2, which is useful in the Robinson annulation reaction. Lest there be confusion, a ketone itself is a site of unsaturation; that is, it can be hydrogenated.",
"title": "Structure and properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Many ketones are cyclic. The simplest class have the formula (CH2)nCO, where n varies from 2 for cyclopropanone ((CH2)2CO) to the tens. Larger derivatives exist. Cyclohexanone ((CH2)5CO), a symmetrical cyclic ketone, is an important intermediate in the production of nylon. Isophorone, derived from acetone, is an unsaturated, asymmetrical ketone that is the precursor to other polymers. Muscone, 3-methylpentadecanone, is an animal pheromone. Another cyclic ketone is cyclobutanone, having the formula (CH2)3CO.",
"title": "Structure and properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Ketones that have at least one alpha-hydrogen, undergo keto-enol tautomerization; the tautomer is an enol. Tautomerization is catalyzed by both acids and bases. Usually, the keto form is more stable than the enol. This equilibrium allows ketones to be prepared via the hydration of alkynes.",
"title": "Structure and properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "C−H bonds adjacent to the carbonyl in ketones are more acidic pKa ≈ 20) than the C−H bonds in alkane (pKa ≈ 50). This difference reflects resonance stabilization of the enolate ion that is formed upon deprotonation. The relative acidity of the α-hydrogen is important in the enolization reactions of ketones and other carbonyl compounds. The acidity of the α-hydrogen also allows ketones and other carbonyl compounds to react as nucleophiles at that position, with either stoichiometric and catalytic base. Using very strong bases like lithium diisopropylamide (LDA, pKa of conjugate acid ~36) under non-equilibrating conditions (–78 °C, 1.1 equiv LDA in THF, ketone added to base), the less-substituted kinetic enolate is generated selectively, while conditions that allow for equilibration (higher temperature, base added to ketone, using weak or insoluble bases, e.g., CH3CH2ONa in CH3CH2OH, or NaH) provides the more-substituted thermodynamic enolate.",
"title": "Structure and properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Ketones are also weak bases, undergoing protonation on the carbonyl oxygen in the presence of Brønsted acids. Ketonium ions (i.e., protonated ketones) are strong acids, with pKa values estimated to be somewhere between –5 and –7. Although acids encountered in organic chemistry are seldom strong enough to fully protonate ketones, the formation of equilibrium concentrations of protonated ketones is nevertheless an important step in the mechanisms of many common organic reactions, like the formation of an acetal, for example. Acids as weak as pyridinium cation (as found in pyridinium tosylate) with a pKa of 5.2 are able to serve as catalysts in this context, despite the highly unfavorable equilibrium constant for protonation (Keq < 10).",
"title": "Structure and properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "An aldehyde differs from a ketone in that it has a hydrogen atom attached to its carbonyl group, making aldehydes easier to oxidize. Ketones do not have a hydrogen atom bonded to the carbonyl group, and are therefore more resistant to oxidation. They are oxidized only by powerful oxidizing agents which have the ability to cleave carbon–carbon bonds.",
"title": "Characterization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Ketones and aldehydes absorb strongly in the infra-red spectrum near 1700 cm. The exact position of the peak depends on the substituents.",
"title": "Characterization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Whereas H NMR spectroscopy is generally not useful for establishing the presence of a ketone, C NMR spectra exhibit signals somewhat downfield of 200 ppm depending on structure. Such signals are typically weak due to the absence of nuclear Overhauser effects. Since aldehydes resonate at similar chemical shifts, multiple resonance experiments are employed to definitively distinguish aldehydes and ketones.",
"title": "Characterization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Ketones give positive results in Brady's test, the reaction with 2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine to give the corresponding hydrazone. Ketones may be distinguished from aldehydes by giving a negative result with Tollens' reagent or with Fehling's solution. Methyl ketones give positive results for the iodoform test. Ketones also give positive results when treated with m-dinitrobenzene in presence of dilute sodium hydroxide to give violet coloration.",
"title": "Characterization"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Many methods exist for the preparation of ketones in industrial scale and academic laboratories. Ketones are also produced in various ways by organisms; see the section on biochemistry below.",
"title": "Synthesis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In industry, the most important method probably involves oxidation of hydrocarbons, often with air. For example, a billion kilograms of cyclohexanone are produced annually by aerobic oxidation of cyclohexane. Acetone is prepared by air-oxidation of cumene.",
"title": "Synthesis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "For specialized or small scale organic synthetic applications, ketones are often prepared by oxidation of secondary alcohols:",
"title": "Synthesis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Typical strong oxidants (source of \"O\" in the above reaction) include potassium permanganate or a Cr(VI) compound. Milder conditions make use of the Dess–Martin periodinane or the Moffatt–Swern methods.",
"title": "Synthesis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Many other methods have been developed, examples include:",
"title": "Synthesis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Ketones engage in many organic reactions. The most important reactions follow from the susceptibility of the carbonyl carbon toward nucleophilic addition and the tendency for the enolates to add to electrophiles. Nucleophilic additions include in approximate order of their generality:",
"title": "Reactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Ketones are pervasive in nature. The formation of organic compounds in photosynthesis occurs via the ketone ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate. Many sugars are ketones, known collectively as ketoses. The best known ketose is fructose; it mostly exists as a cyclic hemiketal, which masks the ketone functional group. Fatty acid synthesis proceeds via ketones. Acetoacetate is an intermediate in the Krebs cycle which releases energy from sugars and carbohydrates.",
"title": "Biochemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In medicine, acetone, acetoacetate, and beta-hydroxybutyrate are collectively called ketone bodies, generated from carbohydrates, fatty acids, and amino acids in most vertebrates, including humans. Ketone bodies are elevated in the blood (ketosis) after fasting, including a night of sleep; in both blood and urine in starvation; in hypoglycemia, due to causes other than hyperinsulinism; in various inborn errors of metabolism, and intentionally induced via a ketogenic diet, and in ketoacidosis (usually due to diabetes mellitus). Although ketoacidosis is characteristic of decompensated or untreated type 1 diabetes, ketosis or even ketoacidosis can occur in type 2 diabetes in some circumstances as well.",
"title": "Biochemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Ketones are produced on massive scales in industry as solvents, polymer precursors, and pharmaceuticals. In terms of scale, the most important ketones are acetone, methylethyl ketone, and cyclohexanone. They are also common in biochemistry, but less so than in organic chemistry in general. The combustion of hydrocarbons is an uncontrolled oxidation process that gives ketones as well as many other types of compounds.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Although it is difficult to generalize on the toxicity of such a broad class of compounds, simple ketones are, in general, not highly toxic. This characteristic is one reason for their popularity as solvents. Exceptions to this rule are the unsaturated ketones such as methyl vinyl ketone with LD50 of 7 mg/kg (oral).",
"title": "Toxicity"
}
] |
In organic chemistry, a ketone is a functional group with the structure R−C(=O)−R', where R and R' can be a variety of carbon-containing substituents. Ketones contain a carbonyl group −C(=O)−. The simplest ketone is acetone, with the formula (CH3)2CO. Many ketones are of great importance in biology and in industry. Examples include many sugars (ketoses), many steroids, and the solvent acetone.
|
2001-09-30T14:03:45Z
|
2023-11-09T12:45:20Z
|
[
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Commons category-inline",
"Template:Cholesterol and steroid metabolism enzymes",
"Template:Isomerases",
"Template:Main",
"Template:LD50",
"Template:McMurry3rd",
"Template:Distinguish",
"Template:Functional Groups",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Wikiquote",
"Template:Multiple image",
"Template:See also",
"Template:March6th",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Chem2",
"Template:VogelQuantitative6th",
"Template:Transferases",
"Template:IPAc-en",
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:ISBN",
"Template:Aldehyde-ketone transferases",
"Template:Intramolecular oxidoreductases",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:OEtymD",
"Template:Orgchemsuffixes"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketone
|
16,804 |
Ketene
|
In organic chemistry, a ketene is an organic compound of the form RR'C=C=O, where R and R' are two arbitrary monovalent chemical groups (or two separate substitution sites in the same molecule). The name may also refer to the specific compound ethenone H2C=C=O, the simplest ketene.
Although they are highly useful, most ketenes are unstable. When used as reagents in a chemical procedure, they are typically generated when needed, and consumed as soon as (or while) they are produced.
Ketenes were first studied as a class by Hermann Staudinger before 1905.
Ketenes were systematically investigated by Hermann Staudinger in 1905 in the form of diphenylketene (conversion of α {\displaystyle \alpha } -chlorodiphenyl acetyl chloride with zinc). Staudinger was inspired by the first examples of reactive organic intermediates and stable radicals discovered by Moses Gomberg in 1900 (compounds with triphenylmethyl group).
Ketenes are highly electrophilic at the carbon atom bonded with the heteroatom, due to its sp character. Ketene can be formed with different heteroatom bonded to the sp carbon atom, such as O, S or Se, respectively named ketene, thioketene and selenoketene.
Ethenone, the simplest ketene, has different experimental lengths for each of the double bonds; the C=O bond is 1,160Å and the C=C bond is 1,314Å. The angle between the two H atoms is 121.5°, similar to the theoretically ideal angle formed in alkenes between sp carbon atom and H substituents.
Ketenes are unstable and cannot be stored. In the absence of nucleophiles with which to react, ethenone dimerises to give β-lactone, a cyclic ester. If the ketene is disubstituted, the dimerisation product is a substituted cyclobutadione. For monosubstituted ketenes, the dimerisation could afford either the ester or the diketone product.
Ethenone can be generated by pyrolysis (thermal cracking) of acetone:
This reaction is called the Schmidlin ketene synthesis.
Other ketenes can be prepared from acyl chlorides by an elimination reaction in which HCl is lost:
In this reaction, a base, usually triethylamine, removes the acidic proton alpha to the carbonyl group, inducing the formation of the carbon-carbon double bond and the loss of a chloride ion:
Ketenes can also be formed from α-diazoketones by Wolff rearrangement.
Another way to generate ketenes is through flash vacuum thermolysis (FVT) with 2-pyridylamines. Plüg and Wentrup developed a method in 1997 that improved on FVT reactions to produce ketenes with a stable FVT that is moisture insensitive, using mild conditions (480 °C). The N-pyridylamines are prepared via a condensation with R-malonates with N-amino(pyridene) and DCC as the solvent.
A more robust method for preparing ketenes is the carbonylation of metal-carbenes, and in situ reaction of the thus produced highly reactive ketenes with suitable reagents such as imines, amines, or alcohols. This method is an efficient one‐pot tandem protocol of the carbonylation of α‐diazocarbonyl compounds and a variety of N‐tosylhydrazones catalysed by Co(II)–porphyrin metalloradicals leading to the formation of ketenes, which subsequently react with a variety of nucleophiles and imines to form esters, amides and β‐lactams. This system has a broad substrate scope and can be applied to various combinations of carbene precursors, nucleophiles and imines.
Due to their cumulated double bonds, ketenes are very reactive.
By reaction with alcohols, carboxylic acid esters are formed:
Ketenes react with a carboxylic acids to form carboxylic acid anhydrides:
Ketenes react with ammonia to primary amides:
The reaction of ketenes with primary amines produces secondary amides:
Ketenes react with secondary amines to give tertiary amides:
By reaction with water, carboxylic acids are formed from ketenes
Enol esters are formed from ketenes with enolisable carbonyl compounds. The following example shows the reaction of ethenone with acetone to form a propen-2-yl acetate:
At room temperature, ketene quickly dimerizes to diketene, but the ketene can be recovered by heating:
Ketenes can react with alkenes, carbonyl compounds, carbodiimides and imines in a [2+2] cycloaddition. The example shows the synthesis of a β-lactam by the reaction of a ketene with an imine (see Staudinger synthesis):
Ketenes are generally very reactive, and participate in various cycloadditions. One important process is the dimerization to give propiolactones. A specific example is the dimerization of the ketene of stearic acid to afford alkyl ketene dimers, which are widely used in the paper industry. AKD's react with the hydroxyl groups on the cellulose via esterification reaction.
They will also undergo [2+2] cycloaddition reactions with electron-rich alkynes to form cyclobutenones, or carbonyl groups to form beta-lactones. With imines, beta-lactams are formed. This is the Staudinger synthesis, a facile route to this important class of compounds. With acetone, ketene reacts to give isopropenyl acetate.
A variety of hydroxylic compounds can add as nucleophiles, forming either enol or ester products. As examples, a water molecule easily adds to ketene to give 1,1-dihydroxyethene and acetic anhydride is produced by the reaction of acetic acid with ketene. Reactions between diols (HO−R−OH) and bis-ketenes (O=C=CH−R'−CH=C=O) yield polyesters with a repeat unit of (−O−R−O−CO−R'−CO).
Ethyl acetoacetate, an important starting material in organic synthesis, can be prepared using a diketene in reaction with ethanol. They directly form ethyl acetoacetate, and the yield is high when carried out under controlled circumstances; this method is therefore used industrially.
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "In organic chemistry, a ketene is an organic compound of the form RR'C=C=O, where R and R' are two arbitrary monovalent chemical groups (or two separate substitution sites in the same molecule). The name may also refer to the specific compound ethenone H2C=C=O, the simplest ketene.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Although they are highly useful, most ketenes are unstable. When used as reagents in a chemical procedure, they are typically generated when needed, and consumed as soon as (or while) they are produced.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Ketenes were first studied as a class by Hermann Staudinger before 1905.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Ketenes were systematically investigated by Hermann Staudinger in 1905 in the form of diphenylketene (conversion of α {\\displaystyle \\alpha } -chlorodiphenyl acetyl chloride with zinc). Staudinger was inspired by the first examples of reactive organic intermediates and stable radicals discovered by Moses Gomberg in 1900 (compounds with triphenylmethyl group).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Ketenes are highly electrophilic at the carbon atom bonded with the heteroatom, due to its sp character. Ketene can be formed with different heteroatom bonded to the sp carbon atom, such as O, S or Se, respectively named ketene, thioketene and selenoketene.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Ethenone, the simplest ketene, has different experimental lengths for each of the double bonds; the C=O bond is 1,160Å and the C=C bond is 1,314Å. The angle between the two H atoms is 121.5°, similar to the theoretically ideal angle formed in alkenes between sp carbon atom and H substituents.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Ketenes are unstable and cannot be stored. In the absence of nucleophiles with which to react, ethenone dimerises to give β-lactone, a cyclic ester. If the ketene is disubstituted, the dimerisation product is a substituted cyclobutadione. For monosubstituted ketenes, the dimerisation could afford either the ester or the diketone product.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Ethenone can be generated by pyrolysis (thermal cracking) of acetone:",
"title": "Synthesis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "This reaction is called the Schmidlin ketene synthesis.",
"title": "Synthesis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Other ketenes can be prepared from acyl chlorides by an elimination reaction in which HCl is lost:",
"title": "Synthesis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In this reaction, a base, usually triethylamine, removes the acidic proton alpha to the carbonyl group, inducing the formation of the carbon-carbon double bond and the loss of a chloride ion:",
"title": "Synthesis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "",
"title": "Synthesis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Ketenes can also be formed from α-diazoketones by Wolff rearrangement.",
"title": "Synthesis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Another way to generate ketenes is through flash vacuum thermolysis (FVT) with 2-pyridylamines. Plüg and Wentrup developed a method in 1997 that improved on FVT reactions to produce ketenes with a stable FVT that is moisture insensitive, using mild conditions (480 °C). The N-pyridylamines are prepared via a condensation with R-malonates with N-amino(pyridene) and DCC as the solvent.",
"title": "Synthesis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "A more robust method for preparing ketenes is the carbonylation of metal-carbenes, and in situ reaction of the thus produced highly reactive ketenes with suitable reagents such as imines, amines, or alcohols. This method is an efficient one‐pot tandem protocol of the carbonylation of α‐diazocarbonyl compounds and a variety of N‐tosylhydrazones catalysed by Co(II)–porphyrin metalloradicals leading to the formation of ketenes, which subsequently react with a variety of nucleophiles and imines to form esters, amides and β‐lactams. This system has a broad substrate scope and can be applied to various combinations of carbene precursors, nucleophiles and imines.",
"title": "Synthesis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Due to their cumulated double bonds, ketenes are very reactive.",
"title": "Reactions and applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "By reaction with alcohols, carboxylic acid esters are formed:",
"title": "Reactions and applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Ketenes react with a carboxylic acids to form carboxylic acid anhydrides:",
"title": "Reactions and applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Ketenes react with ammonia to primary amides:",
"title": "Reactions and applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The reaction of ketenes with primary amines produces secondary amides:",
"title": "Reactions and applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Ketenes react with secondary amines to give tertiary amides:",
"title": "Reactions and applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "By reaction with water, carboxylic acids are formed from ketenes",
"title": "Reactions and applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Enol esters are formed from ketenes with enolisable carbonyl compounds. The following example shows the reaction of ethenone with acetone to form a propen-2-yl acetate:",
"title": "Reactions and applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "At room temperature, ketene quickly dimerizes to diketene, but the ketene can be recovered by heating:",
"title": "Reactions and applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Ketenes can react with alkenes, carbonyl compounds, carbodiimides and imines in a [2+2] cycloaddition. The example shows the synthesis of a β-lactam by the reaction of a ketene with an imine (see Staudinger synthesis):",
"title": "Reactions and applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Ketenes are generally very reactive, and participate in various cycloadditions. One important process is the dimerization to give propiolactones. A specific example is the dimerization of the ketene of stearic acid to afford alkyl ketene dimers, which are widely used in the paper industry. AKD's react with the hydroxyl groups on the cellulose via esterification reaction.",
"title": "Reactions and applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "They will also undergo [2+2] cycloaddition reactions with electron-rich alkynes to form cyclobutenones, or carbonyl groups to form beta-lactones. With imines, beta-lactams are formed. This is the Staudinger synthesis, a facile route to this important class of compounds. With acetone, ketene reacts to give isopropenyl acetate.",
"title": "Reactions and applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "A variety of hydroxylic compounds can add as nucleophiles, forming either enol or ester products. As examples, a water molecule easily adds to ketene to give 1,1-dihydroxyethene and acetic anhydride is produced by the reaction of acetic acid with ketene. Reactions between diols (HO−R−OH) and bis-ketenes (O=C=CH−R'−CH=C=O) yield polyesters with a repeat unit of (−O−R−O−CO−R'−CO).",
"title": "Reactions and applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Ethyl acetoacetate, an important starting material in organic synthesis, can be prepared using a diketene in reaction with ethanol. They directly form ethyl acetoacetate, and the yield is high when carried out under controlled circumstances; this method is therefore used industrially.",
"title": "Reactions and applications"
}
] |
In organic chemistry, a ketene is an organic compound of the form RR'C=C=O, where R and R' are two arbitrary monovalent chemical groups. The name may also refer to the specific compound ethenone H2C=C=O, the simplest ketene. Although they are highly useful, most ketenes are unstable. When used as reagents in a chemical procedure, they are typically generated when needed, and consumed as soon as they are produced.
|
2002-02-25T15:43:11Z
|
2023-08-24T10:08:30Z
|
[
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Chem2",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Citation",
"Template:Commons category-inline",
"Template:Molecules detected in outer space",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:About",
"Template:Cite journal"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketene
|
16,806 |
Kistvaen
|
A kistvaen or cistvaen is a tomb or burial chamber formed from flat stone slabs in a box-like shape. If set completely underground, it may be covered by a tumulus. The word is derived from the Welsh cist (chest) and maen (stone). The term originated in relation to Celtic structures, typically pre-Christian, but in antiquarian scholarship of the 19th and early 20th centuries it was sometimes applied to similar structures outside the Celtic world.
One of the most numerous kinds of kistvaen are the Dartmoor kistvaens. These often take the form of small rectangular pits about 3 ft. (0.9 m) long by 2 feet (0.6 m) wide. The kistvaens were usually covered with a mound of earth and surrounded by a circle of small stones. When a body was placed in the kistvaen, it was usually lain in a contracted position. Sometimes however the body was cremated with the ashes placed in a cinerary urn.
Kistvaens are also found associated with holy sites or burial places of early Celtic saints, who are often semi-legendary. Saints associated with kistvaens include Callwen daughter of Brychan, Geraint, Begnet, and Melangell. Foundation remains of stone slab- or gable-shrines, or the cella memoriae of Mediterranean origin, may sometimes have been misunderstood in an earlier era of scholarship as a kistvaen, and the subject is complicated by this "woolly nomenclature."
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "A kistvaen or cistvaen is a tomb or burial chamber formed from flat stone slabs in a box-like shape. If set completely underground, it may be covered by a tumulus. The word is derived from the Welsh cist (chest) and maen (stone). The term originated in relation to Celtic structures, typically pre-Christian, but in antiquarian scholarship of the 19th and early 20th centuries it was sometimes applied to similar structures outside the Celtic world.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "One of the most numerous kinds of kistvaen are the Dartmoor kistvaens. These often take the form of small rectangular pits about 3 ft. (0.9 m) long by 2 feet (0.6 m) wide. The kistvaens were usually covered with a mound of earth and surrounded by a circle of small stones. When a body was placed in the kistvaen, it was usually lain in a contracted position. Sometimes however the body was cremated with the ashes placed in a cinerary urn.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Kistvaens are also found associated with holy sites or burial places of early Celtic saints, who are often semi-legendary. Saints associated with kistvaens include Callwen daughter of Brychan, Geraint, Begnet, and Melangell. Foundation remains of stone slab- or gable-shrines, or the cella memoriae of Mediterranean origin, may sometimes have been misunderstood in an earlier era of scholarship as a kistvaen, and the subject is complicated by this \"woolly nomenclature.\"",
"title": "Kistvaens and Celtic saints"
}
] |
A kistvaen or cistvaen is a tomb or burial chamber formed from flat stone slabs in a box-like shape. If set completely underground, it may be covered by a tumulus. The word is derived from the Welsh cist (chest) and maen (stone). The term originated in relation to Celtic structures, typically pre-Christian, but in antiquarian scholarship of the 19th and early 20th centuries it was sometimes applied to similar structures outside the Celtic world. One of the most numerous kinds of kistvaen are the Dartmoor kistvaens. These often take the form of small rectangular pits about 3 ft. long by 2 feet wide. The kistvaens were usually covered with a mound of earth and surrounded by a circle of small stones. When a body was placed in the kistvaen, it was usually lain in a contracted position. Sometimes however the body was cremated with the ashes placed in a cinerary urn.
|
2023-05-14T09:36:39Z
|
[
"Template:Prehistoric technology",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Wiktionary",
"Template:Commons category",
"Template:Webarchive",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Expand German",
"Template:Globalize"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kistvaen
|
|
16,807 |
Kim Stanley Robinson
|
Kim Stanley Robinson (born March 23, 1952) is an American writer of science fiction. He has published 22 novels and numerous short stories and is best known for his Mars trilogy. His work has been translated into 24 languages. Many of his novels and stories have ecological, cultural, and political themes and feature scientists as heroes. Robinson has won numerous awards, including the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the Nebula Award for Best Novel and the World Fantasy Award. The Atlantic has called Robinson's work "the gold standard of realistic, and highly literary, science-fiction writing." According to an article in The New Yorker, Robinson is "generally acknowledged as one of the greatest living science-fiction writers."
Robinson was born in Waukegan, Illinois. He moved to Southern California as a child.
In 1974, he earned a B.A. in literature from the University of California, San Diego. In 1975, he earned an M.A. in English from Boston University. In 1978 Robinson moved to Davis, California, to take a break from his graduate studies at the University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego). During this time, he worked as a bookseller for Orpheus Books. He also taught freshman composition and other courses at University of California, Davis.
In 1982, Robinson earned a PhD in English from UC San Diego under the direction of Donald Wesling. His initial PhD advisor was literary critic and Marxist scholar Fredric Jameson, who told Robinson to read works by Philip K. Dick. Jameson described Dick to Robinson as "the greatest living American writer". Robinson's doctoral thesis, The Novels of Philip K. Dick, was published in 1984 and a hardcover version was published by UMI Research Press.
In 2009, Robinson was an instructor at the Clarion Workshop. In 2010, he was the guest of honor at the 68th World Science Fiction Convention, held in Melbourne. In April 2011, Robinson presented at the second annual Rethinking Capitalism conference, held at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Among other points made, his talk addressed the cyclical nature of capitalism.
Robinson was appointed as a Muir Environmental Fellow in 2011 by John Muir College at UC San Diego.
Sheldon Brown described Robinson's novels as ways to explore how nature and culture continuously reformulate one another; Three Californias Trilogy as California in the future; Washington DC undergoing the impact of climate change in the Science in the Capital series; or Mars as a stand-in for Earth in the Mars trilogy to think about re-engineering on a global scale, both social and natural conditions.
Virtually all of Robinson's novels have an ecological component; sustainability is one of his primary themes (a strong contender for the primary theme would be the nature of a plausible utopia). The Orange County trilogy is about the way in which the technological intersects with the natural, highlighting the importance of keeping the two in balance. In the Mars trilogy, one of the principal divisions among the population of Mars is based on dissenting views on terraforming. Colonists debate whether or not the barren Martian landscape has a similar ecological or spiritual value when compared with a living ecosphere like Earth's. Forty Signs of Rain has an entirely ecological thrust, taking global warming as its principal subject.
Robinson's work often explores alternatives to modern capitalism. In the Mars trilogy, it is argued that capitalism is an outgrowth of feudalism, which could be replaced in the future by a more democratic economic system. Worker ownership and cooperatives figure prominently in Green Mars and Blue Mars as replacements for traditional corporations. The Orange County trilogy explores similar arrangements; Pacific Edge includes the idea of attacking the legal framework behind corporate domination to promote social egalitarianism. Tim Kreider writes in the New Yorker that Robinson may be our greatest political novelist and describes how Robinson uses the Mars trilogy as a template for a credible utopia. His works have made reference to real-world examples of economic organization that have been cited as examples of alternatives to conventional capitalist structures, such as the Mondragon Corporation and the Kerala model.
Robinson's writing also reflects an interest in economic models that reject the growth-oriented basis of capitalism: Robert Markley has identified the work of Murray Bookchin as an influence on his thinking, as well as steady-state economics.
Robinson's work often portrays characters struggling to preserve and enhance the world around them in an environment characterized by individualism and entrepreneurialism, often facing the political and economic authoritarianism of corporate power acting in this environment. Robinson has been described as anti-capitalist, and his work often portrays a form of frontier capitalism that promotes egalitarian ideals that closely resemble socialist systems, but faced with a capitalism that is maintained by entrenched hegemonic corporations. In particular, his Martian Constitution draws upon social democratic ideals explicitly emphasizing a community-participation element in political and economic life.
Robinson's works often portray the worlds of tomorrow in a manner similar to the mythologized American Western frontier, showing a sentimental affection for the freedom and wildness of the frontier. This aesthetic includes a preoccupation with competing models of political and economic organization.
The environmental, economic, and social themes in Robinson's oeuvre stand in marked contrast to the right-libertarian science fiction prevalent in much of the genre (Robert A. Heinlein, Poul Anderson, Larry Niven, and Jerry Pournelle being prominent examples). He has been described as "one of America's best-selling […] left-wing novelists" and his work has been called "probably the most successful attempt to reach a mass audience with an anti-capitalist utopian vision since Ursula K. Le Guin's 1974 novel, The Dispossessed".
Robinson's work often features scientists as heroes. They are portrayed in a mundane way compared to most work featuring scientists: rather than being adventurers or action heroes, Robinson's scientists become critically important because of research discoveries, networking and collaboration with other scientists, political lobbying, or becoming public figures. Robinson captures the joy of scientists as they work at something they care about. Robert Markley has argued that Robinson "views science as the model for a utopian politics... Even in Robinson's novels that don't seem to be sci-fi, like Shaman, the inductive method, the collective search for greater knowledge about the world that can be put to use for the good for all, is front and center". The Mars trilogy and The Years of Rice and Salt rely heavily on the idea that scientists must take responsibility for ensuring public understanding and responsible use of their discoveries. Robinson's scientists often emerge as the best people to direct public policy on important environmental and technological questions, of which politicians are often ignorant.
Related to Robinson's focus on the environment are his themes of the imminent catastrophe of global warming and the need to limit greenhouse gas emissions in the present day. His 2012 novel 2312 explores the detrimental, long-term effects of climate change, which include food shortages, global instability, mass extinction, and 7-metre (23 ft) sea level rise that has drowned many major coastal cities. The novel condemns the people of the period it calls "the Dithering", from 2005 to 2060, for failing to address climate change and thereby causing mass suffering and death in the future. Robinson and his work accuse global capitalism for the failure to address climate change. In his 2017 novel New York 2140 Robinson explores the themes of climate change and global warming, setting the novel in the year 2140 when the New York City he imagines is beset by a 50-foot (15 m) sea level rise that submerges half of the city. Climate change is also the focus of his Science in the Capital series and his 2020 novel The Ministry for the Future.
Asteroid 72432 Kimrobinson discovered by astronomer Donald P. Pray in 2001, was named in his honor. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on April 22, 2016 (M.P.C. 99892).
In 2008, Time magazine named Robinson a "Hero of the Environment" for his optimistic focus on the future.
Robinson and his wife have two sons. Robinson has lived in Washington, D.C., California, and during some of the 1980s, in Switzerland. At times, Robinson was a stay-at-home dad. He later moved to Davis, California, in a cohousing community.
Robinson has described himself as an avid backpacker with the Sierra Nevada serving as his home range and a big influence on how he sees the world.
Politically, Robinson identifies as a democratic socialist, and in a February 2019 interview mentioned he is a dues-paying member of the Democratic Socialists of America. He has also remarked that libertarianism has never "[made] any sense to me, nor sounds attractive as a principle."
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Kim Stanley Robinson (born March 23, 1952) is an American writer of science fiction. He has published 22 novels and numerous short stories and is best known for his Mars trilogy. His work has been translated into 24 languages. Many of his novels and stories have ecological, cultural, and political themes and feature scientists as heroes. Robinson has won numerous awards, including the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the Nebula Award for Best Novel and the World Fantasy Award. The Atlantic has called Robinson's work \"the gold standard of realistic, and highly literary, science-fiction writing.\" According to an article in The New Yorker, Robinson is \"generally acknowledged as one of the greatest living science-fiction writers.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Robinson was born in Waukegan, Illinois. He moved to Southern California as a child.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In 1974, he earned a B.A. in literature from the University of California, San Diego. In 1975, he earned an M.A. in English from Boston University. In 1978 Robinson moved to Davis, California, to take a break from his graduate studies at the University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego). During this time, he worked as a bookseller for Orpheus Books. He also taught freshman composition and other courses at University of California, Davis.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In 1982, Robinson earned a PhD in English from UC San Diego under the direction of Donald Wesling. His initial PhD advisor was literary critic and Marxist scholar Fredric Jameson, who told Robinson to read works by Philip K. Dick. Jameson described Dick to Robinson as \"the greatest living American writer\". Robinson's doctoral thesis, The Novels of Philip K. Dick, was published in 1984 and a hardcover version was published by UMI Research Press.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In 2009, Robinson was an instructor at the Clarion Workshop. In 2010, he was the guest of honor at the 68th World Science Fiction Convention, held in Melbourne. In April 2011, Robinson presented at the second annual Rethinking Capitalism conference, held at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Among other points made, his talk addressed the cyclical nature of capitalism.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Robinson was appointed as a Muir Environmental Fellow in 2011 by John Muir College at UC San Diego.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Sheldon Brown described Robinson's novels as ways to explore how nature and culture continuously reformulate one another; Three Californias Trilogy as California in the future; Washington DC undergoing the impact of climate change in the Science in the Capital series; or Mars as a stand-in for Earth in the Mars trilogy to think about re-engineering on a global scale, both social and natural conditions.",
"title": "Major themes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Virtually all of Robinson's novels have an ecological component; sustainability is one of his primary themes (a strong contender for the primary theme would be the nature of a plausible utopia). The Orange County trilogy is about the way in which the technological intersects with the natural, highlighting the importance of keeping the two in balance. In the Mars trilogy, one of the principal divisions among the population of Mars is based on dissenting views on terraforming. Colonists debate whether or not the barren Martian landscape has a similar ecological or spiritual value when compared with a living ecosphere like Earth's. Forty Signs of Rain has an entirely ecological thrust, taking global warming as its principal subject.",
"title": "Major themes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Robinson's work often explores alternatives to modern capitalism. In the Mars trilogy, it is argued that capitalism is an outgrowth of feudalism, which could be replaced in the future by a more democratic economic system. Worker ownership and cooperatives figure prominently in Green Mars and Blue Mars as replacements for traditional corporations. The Orange County trilogy explores similar arrangements; Pacific Edge includes the idea of attacking the legal framework behind corporate domination to promote social egalitarianism. Tim Kreider writes in the New Yorker that Robinson may be our greatest political novelist and describes how Robinson uses the Mars trilogy as a template for a credible utopia. His works have made reference to real-world examples of economic organization that have been cited as examples of alternatives to conventional capitalist structures, such as the Mondragon Corporation and the Kerala model.",
"title": "Major themes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Robinson's writing also reflects an interest in economic models that reject the growth-oriented basis of capitalism: Robert Markley has identified the work of Murray Bookchin as an influence on his thinking, as well as steady-state economics.",
"title": "Major themes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Robinson's work often portrays characters struggling to preserve and enhance the world around them in an environment characterized by individualism and entrepreneurialism, often facing the political and economic authoritarianism of corporate power acting in this environment. Robinson has been described as anti-capitalist, and his work often portrays a form of frontier capitalism that promotes egalitarian ideals that closely resemble socialist systems, but faced with a capitalism that is maintained by entrenched hegemonic corporations. In particular, his Martian Constitution draws upon social democratic ideals explicitly emphasizing a community-participation element in political and economic life.",
"title": "Major themes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Robinson's works often portray the worlds of tomorrow in a manner similar to the mythologized American Western frontier, showing a sentimental affection for the freedom and wildness of the frontier. This aesthetic includes a preoccupation with competing models of political and economic organization.",
"title": "Major themes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The environmental, economic, and social themes in Robinson's oeuvre stand in marked contrast to the right-libertarian science fiction prevalent in much of the genre (Robert A. Heinlein, Poul Anderson, Larry Niven, and Jerry Pournelle being prominent examples). He has been described as \"one of America's best-selling […] left-wing novelists\" and his work has been called \"probably the most successful attempt to reach a mass audience with an anti-capitalist utopian vision since Ursula K. Le Guin's 1974 novel, The Dispossessed\".",
"title": "Major themes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Robinson's work often features scientists as heroes. They are portrayed in a mundane way compared to most work featuring scientists: rather than being adventurers or action heroes, Robinson's scientists become critically important because of research discoveries, networking and collaboration with other scientists, political lobbying, or becoming public figures. Robinson captures the joy of scientists as they work at something they care about. Robert Markley has argued that Robinson \"views science as the model for a utopian politics... Even in Robinson's novels that don't seem to be sci-fi, like Shaman, the inductive method, the collective search for greater knowledge about the world that can be put to use for the good for all, is front and center\". The Mars trilogy and The Years of Rice and Salt rely heavily on the idea that scientists must take responsibility for ensuring public understanding and responsible use of their discoveries. Robinson's scientists often emerge as the best people to direct public policy on important environmental and technological questions, of which politicians are often ignorant.",
"title": "Major themes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Related to Robinson's focus on the environment are his themes of the imminent catastrophe of global warming and the need to limit greenhouse gas emissions in the present day. His 2012 novel 2312 explores the detrimental, long-term effects of climate change, which include food shortages, global instability, mass extinction, and 7-metre (23 ft) sea level rise that has drowned many major coastal cities. The novel condemns the people of the period it calls \"the Dithering\", from 2005 to 2060, for failing to address climate change and thereby causing mass suffering and death in the future. Robinson and his work accuse global capitalism for the failure to address climate change. In his 2017 novel New York 2140 Robinson explores the themes of climate change and global warming, setting the novel in the year 2140 when the New York City he imagines is beset by a 50-foot (15 m) sea level rise that submerges half of the city. Climate change is also the focus of his Science in the Capital series and his 2020 novel The Ministry for the Future.",
"title": "Major themes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Asteroid 72432 Kimrobinson discovered by astronomer Donald P. Pray in 2001, was named in his honor. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on April 22, 2016 (M.P.C. 99892).",
"title": "Awards and honors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In 2008, Time magazine named Robinson a \"Hero of the Environment\" for his optimistic focus on the future.",
"title": "Awards and honors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Robinson and his wife have two sons. Robinson has lived in Washington, D.C., California, and during some of the 1980s, in Switzerland. At times, Robinson was a stay-at-home dad. He later moved to Davis, California, in a cohousing community.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Robinson has described himself as an avid backpacker with the Sierra Nevada serving as his home range and a big influence on how he sees the world.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Politically, Robinson identifies as a democratic socialist, and in a February 2019 interview mentioned he is a dues-paying member of the Democratic Socialists of America. He has also remarked that libertarianism has never \"[made] any sense to me, nor sounds attractive as a principle.\"",
"title": "Personal life"
}
] |
Kim Stanley Robinson is an American writer of science fiction. He has published 22 novels and numerous short stories and is best known for his Mars trilogy. His work has been translated into 24 languages. Many of his novels and stories have ecological, cultural, and political themes and feature scientists as heroes. Robinson has won numerous awards, including the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the Nebula Award for Best Novel and the World Fantasy Award. The Atlantic has called Robinson's work "the gold standard of realistic, and highly literary, science-fiction writing." According to an article in The New Yorker, Robinson is "generally acknowledged as one of the greatest living science-fiction writers."
|
2001-09-03T07:08:38Z
|
2023-08-06T18:23:53Z
|
[
"Template:LCAuth",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:For",
"Template:MoMP",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:Cite podcast",
"Template:Isfdb name",
"Template:IBList",
"Template:Kim Stanley Robinson",
"Template:Nebula Award Best Novel",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Convert",
"Template:Small",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite magazine",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Cite thesis",
"Template:Use mdy dates",
"Template:Infobox writer",
"Template:See",
"Template:Citation",
"Template:Wikiquote",
"Template:Commons",
"Template:Locus Award Best SF Novel"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Stanley_Robinson
|
16,808 |
King Arthur
|
King Arthur (Welsh: Brenin Arthur, Cornish: Arthur Gernow, Breton: Roue Arzhur, French: Roi Arthur) is a legendary king of Britain, and a central figure in the medieval literary tradition known as the Matter of Britain.
In Welsh sources, Arthur is portrayed as a leader of the post-Roman Britons in battles against Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain in the late 5th and early 6th centuries. He first appears in two early medieval historical sources, the Annales Cambriae and the Historia Brittonum, but these date to 300 years after he is supposed to have lived, and most historians who study the period do not consider him a historical figure. His name also occurs in early Welsh poetic sources such as Y Gododdin. The character developed through Welsh mythology, appearing either as a great warrior defending Britain from human and supernatural enemies or as a magical figure of folklore, sometimes associated with the Welsh otherworld Annwn.
The legendary Arthur developed as a figure of international interest largely through the popularity of Geoffrey of Monmouth's fanciful and imaginative 12th-century Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain). Geoffrey depicted Arthur as a king of Britain who defeated the Saxons and established a vast empire. Many elements and incidents that are now an integral part of the Arthurian story appear in Geoffrey's Historia, including Arthur's father Uther Pendragon, the magician Merlin, Arthur's wife Guinevere, the sword Excalibur, Arthur's conception at Tintagel, his final battle against Mordred at Camlann, and final rest in Avalon. The 12th-century French writer Chrétien de Troyes, who added Lancelot and the Holy Grail to the story, began the genre of Arthurian romance that became a significant strand of medieval literature. In these French stories, the narrative focus often shifts from King Arthur himself to other characters, such as various Knights of the Round Table. The themes, events and characters of the Arthurian legend vary widely from text to text, and there is no one canonical version. Arthurian literature thrived during the Middle Ages but waned in the centuries that followed, until it experienced a major resurgence in the 19th century. In the 21st century, the legend continues to have prominence, not only in literature but also in adaptations for theatre, film, television, comics and other media.
The historical basis for King Arthur has been long debated by scholars. One school of thought, citing entries in the Historia Brittonum (History of the Britons) and Annales Cambriae (Welsh Annals), saw Arthur as a genuine historical figure, a Romano-British leader who fought against the invading Anglo-Saxons some time in the late 5th to early 6th century.
The Historia Brittonum, a 9th-century Latin historical compilation attributed in some late manuscripts to a Welsh cleric called Nennius, contains the first datable mention of King Arthur, listing twelve battles that Arthur fought. These culminate in the Battle of Badon, where he is said to have single-handedly killed 960 men. Recent studies question the reliability of the Historia Brittonum.
Archaeological evidence in the Low Countries and what was to become England shows early Anglo-Saxon migration to Great Britain reversed between 500 and 550, which concurs with Frankish chronicles. John Davies notes this as consistent with the British victory at Badon Hill, attributed to Arthur by Nennius. The monks of Glastonbury are also said to have discovered the grave of Arthur in 1180.
The other text that seems to support the case for Arthur's historical existence is the 10th-century Annales Cambriae, which also link Arthur with the Battle of Badon. The Annales date this battle to 516–518, and also mention the Battle of Camlann, in which Arthur and Medraut (Mordred) were both killed, dated to 537–539. These details have often been used to bolster confidence in the Historia's account and to confirm that Arthur really did fight at Badon.
Problems have been identified, however, with using this source to support the Historia Brittonum's account. The latest research shows that the Annales Cambriae was based on a chronicle begun in the late 8th century in Wales. Additionally, the complex textual history of the Annales Cambriae precludes any certainty that the Arthurian annals were added to it even that early. They were more likely added at some point in the 10th century and may never have existed in any earlier set of annals. The Badon entry probably derived from the Historia Brittonum.
This lack of convincing early evidence is the reason many recent historians exclude Arthur from their accounts of sub-Roman Britain. In the view of historian Thomas Charles-Edwards, "at this stage of the enquiry, one can only say that there may well have been an historical Arthur [but ...] the historian can as yet say nothing of value about him". These modern admissions of ignorance are a relatively recent trend; earlier generations of historians were less sceptical. The historian John Morris made the putative reign of Arthur the organising principle of his history of sub-Roman Britain and Ireland, The Age of Arthur (1973). Even so, he found little to say about a historical Arthur.
Partly in reaction to such theories, another school of thought emerged which argued that Arthur had no historical existence at all. Morris's Age of Arthur prompted the archaeologist Nowell Myres to observe that "no figure on the borderline of history and mythology has wasted more of the historian's time". Gildas's 6th-century polemic De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae (On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain), written within living memory of Badon, mentions the battle but does not mention Arthur. Arthur is not mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle or named in any surviving manuscript written between 400 and 820. He is absent from Bede's early-8th-century Ecclesiastical History of the English People, another major early source for post-Roman history that mentions Badon. The historian David Dumville wrote: "I think we can dispose of him [Arthur] quite briefly. He owes his place in our history books to a 'no smoke without fire' school of thought ... The fact of the matter is that there is no historical evidence about Arthur; we must reject him from our histories and, above all, from the titles of our books."
Some scholars argue that Arthur was originally a fictional hero of folklore—or even a half-forgotten Celtic deity—who became credited with real deeds in the distant past. They cite parallels with figures such as the Kentish Hengist and Horsa, who may be totemic horse-gods that later became historicised. Bede ascribed to these legendary figures a historical role in the 5th-century Anglo-Saxon conquest of eastern Britain. It is not even certain that Arthur was considered a king in the early texts. Neither the Historia nor the Annales calls him "rex": the former calls him instead "dux bellorum" (leader of wars) and "miles" (soldier).
Details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of Welsh mythology, English folklore and literary invention, and most historians of the period do not think that he was a historical figure. Because historical documents for the post-Roman period are scarce, a definitive answer to the question of Arthur's historical existence is unlikely. Sites and places have been identified as "Arthurian" since the 12th century, but archaeology can confidently reveal names only through inscriptions found in secure contexts. The so-called "Arthur stone", discovered in 1998 among the ruins at Tintagel Castle in Cornwall in securely dated 6th-century contexts, created a brief stir but proved irrelevant. Other inscriptional evidence for Arthur, including the Glastonbury cross, is tainted with the suggestion of forgery.
Andrew Breeze has recently argued that Arthur was historical, and claimed to have identified the locations of his battles as well as the place and date of his death (in the context of the extreme weather events of 535–536), but his conclusions are disputed. Other scholars have questioned his findings, which they consider are based on coincidental resemblances between place-names. Nicholas Higham comments that it is difficult to justify identifying Arthur as the leader in northern battles listed in the Historia Brittonum while rejecting the implication in the same work that they were fought against Anglo-Saxons, and that there is no textual justification for separating Badon from the other battles.
Several historical figures have been proposed as the basis for Arthur, ranging from Lucius Artorius Castus, a Roman officer who served in Britain in the 2nd or 3rd century, to sub-Roman British rulers such as Riotamus, Ambrosius Aurelianus, and the Welsh kings Owain Ddantgwyn, Enniaun Girt, and Athrwys ap Meurig. However, no convincing evidence for these identifications has emerged.
The origin of the Welsh name "Arthur" remains a matter of debate. The most widely accepted etymology derives it from the Roman nomen gentile (family name) Artorius. Artorius itself is of obscure and contested etymology. Linguist Stephan Zimmer suggests Artorius possibly had a Celtic origin, being a Latinization of a hypothetical name *Artorījos, in turn derived from an older patronym *Arto-rīg-ios, meaning "son of the bear/warrior-king". This patronym is unattested, but the root, *arto-rīg, "bear/warrior-king", is the source of the Old Irish personal name Artrí. Some scholars have suggested it is relevant to this debate that the legendary King Arthur's name only appears as Arthur or Arturus in early Latin Arthurian texts, never as Artōrius (though Classical Latin Artōrius became Arturius in some Vulgar Latin dialects). However, this may not say anything about the origin of the name Arthur, as Artōrius would regularly become Art(h)ur when borrowed into Welsh.
Another commonly proposed derivation of Arthur from Welsh arth "bear" + (g)wr "man" (earlier *Arto-uiros in Brittonic) is not accepted by modern scholars for phonological and orthographic reasons. Notably, a Brittonic compound name *Arto-uiros should produce Old Welsh *Artgur (where u represents the short vowel /u/) and Middle/Modern Welsh *Arthwr, rather than Arthur (where u is a long vowel /ʉː/). In Welsh poetry the name is always spelled Arthur and is exclusively rhymed with words ending in -ur—never words ending in -wr—which confirms that the second element cannot be [g]wr "man".
An alternative theory, which has gained only limited acceptance among professional scholars, derives the name Arthur from Arcturus, the brightest star in the constellation Boötes, near Ursa Major or the Great Bear. Classical Latin Arcturus would also have become Art(h)ur when borrowed into Welsh, and its brightness and position in the sky led people to regard it as the "guardian of the bear" (which is the meaning of the name in Ancient Greek) and the "leader" of the other stars in Boötes.
Many other theories exist, for example that the name has Messapian or Etruscan origins.
The familiar literary persona of Arthur began with Geoffrey of Monmouth's pseudo-historical Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain), written in the 1130s. The textual sources for Arthur are usually divided into those written before Geoffrey's Historia (known as pre-Galfridian texts, from the Latin form of Geoffrey, Galfridus) and those written afterwards, which could not avoid his influence (Galfridian, or post-Galfridian, texts).
The earliest literary references to Arthur come from Welsh and Breton sources. There have been few attempts to define the nature and character of Arthur in the pre-Galfridian tradition as a whole, rather than in a single text or text/story-type. A 2007 academic survey led by Caitlin Green has identified three key strands to the portrayal of Arthur in this earliest material. The first is that he was a peerless warrior who functioned as the monster-hunting protector of Britain from all internal and external threats. Some of these are human threats, such as the Saxons he fights in the Historia Brittonum, but the majority are supernatural, including giant cat-monsters, destructive divine boars, dragons, dogheads, giants, and witches. The second is that the pre-Galfridian Arthur was a figure of folklore (particularly topographic or onomastic folklore) and localised magical wonder-tales, the leader of a band of superhuman heroes who live in the wilds of the landscape. The third and final strand is that the early Welsh Arthur had a close connection with the Welsh Otherworld, Annwn. On the one hand, he launches assaults on Otherworldly fortresses in search of treasure and frees their prisoners. On the other, his warband in the earliest sources includes former pagan gods, and his wife and his possessions are clearly Otherworldly in origin.
One of the most famous Welsh poetic references to Arthur comes in the collection of heroic death-songs known as Y Gododdin (The Gododdin), attributed to the 6th-century poet Aneirin. One stanza praises the bravery of a warrior who slew 300 enemies, but says that despite this, "he was no Arthur" – that is, his feats cannot compare to the valour of Arthur. Y Gododdin is known only from a 13th-century manuscript, so it is impossible to determine whether this passage is original or a later interpolation, but John Koch's view that the passage dates from a 7th-century or earlier version is regarded as unproven; 9th- or 10th-century dates are often proposed for it. Several poems attributed to Taliesin, a poet said to have lived in the 6th century, also refer to Arthur, although these all probably date from between the 8th and 12th centuries. They include "Kadeir Teyrnon" ("The Chair of the Prince"), which refers to "Arthur the Blessed"; "Preiddeu Annwn" ("The Spoils of Annwn"), which recounts an expedition of Arthur to the Otherworld; and "Marwnat vthyr pen[dragon]" ("The Elegy of Uther Pen[dragon]"), which refers to Arthur's valour and is suggestive of a father-son relationship for Arthur and Uther that pre-dates Geoffrey of Monmouth.
Other early Welsh Arthurian texts include a poem found in the Black Book of Carmarthen, "Pa gur yv y porthaur?" ("What man is the gatekeeper?"). This takes the form of a dialogue between Arthur and the gatekeeper of a fortress he wishes to enter, in which Arthur recounts the names and deeds of himself and his men, notably Cei (Kay) and Bedwyr (Bedivere). The Welsh prose tale Culhwch and Olwen (c. 1100), included in the modern Mabinogion collection, has a much longer list of more than 200 of Arthur's men, though Cei and Bedwyr again take a central place. The story as a whole tells of Arthur helping his kinsman Culhwch win the hand of Olwen, daughter of Ysbaddaden Chief-Giant, by completing a series of apparently impossible tasks, including the hunt for the great semi-divine boar Twrch Trwyth. The 9th-century Historia Brittonum also refers to this tale, with the boar there named Troy(n)t. Finally, Arthur is mentioned numerous times in the Welsh Triads, a collection of short summaries of Welsh tradition and legend which are classified into groups of three linked characters or episodes to assist recall. The later manuscripts of the Triads are partly derivative from Geoffrey of Monmouth and later continental traditions, but the earliest ones show no such influence and are usually agreed to refer to pre-existing Welsh traditions. Even in these, however, Arthur's court has started to embody legendary Britain as a whole, with "Arthur's Court" sometimes substituted for "The Island of Britain" in the formula "Three XXX of the Island of Britain". While it is not clear from the Historia Brittonum and the Annales Cambriae that Arthur was even considered a king, by the time Culhwch and Olwen and the Triads were written he had become Penteyrnedd yr Ynys hon, "Chief of the Lords of this Island", the overlord of Wales, Cornwall and the North.
In addition to these pre-Galfridian Welsh poems and tales, Arthur appears in some other early Latin texts besides the Historia Brittonum and the Annales Cambriae. In particular, Arthur features in a number of well-known vitae ("Lives") of post-Roman saints, none of which are now generally considered to be reliable historical sources (the earliest probably dates from the 11th century). According to the Life of Saint Gildas, written in the early 12th century by Caradoc of Llancarfan, Arthur is said to have killed Gildas's brother Hueil and to have rescued his wife Gwenhwyfar from Glastonbury. In the Life of Saint Cadoc, written around 1100 or a little before by Lifris of Llancarfan, the saint gives protection to a man who killed three of Arthur's soldiers, and Arthur demands a herd of cattle as wergeld for his men. Cadoc delivers them as demanded, but when Arthur takes possession of the animals, they turn into bundles of ferns. Similar incidents are described in the medieval biographies of Carannog, Padarn, and Eufflam, probably written around the 12th century. A less obviously legendary account of Arthur appears in the Legenda Sancti Goeznovii, which is often claimed to date from the early 11th century (although the earliest manuscript of this text dates from the 15th century and the text is now dated to the late 12th to early 13th century). Also important are the references to Arthur in William of Malmesbury's De Gestis Regum Anglorum and Herman's De Miraculis Sanctae Mariae Laudunensis, which together provide the first certain evidence for a belief that Arthur was not actually dead and would at some point return, a theme that is often revisited in post-Galfridian folklore.
Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, completed c. 1138, contains the first narrative account of Arthur's life. This work is an imaginative and fanciful account of British kings from the legendary Trojan exile Brutus to the 7th-century Welsh king Cadwallader. Geoffrey places Arthur in the same post-Roman period as do Historia Brittonum and Annales Cambriae. According to Geoffrey's tale, Arthur was a descendant of Constantine the Great. He incorporates Arthur's father Uther Pendragon, his magician advisor Merlin, and the story of Arthur's conception, in which Uther, disguised as his enemy Gorlois by Merlin's magic, sleeps with Gorlois's wife Igerna (Igraine) at Tintagel, and she conceives Arthur. On Uther's death, the fifteen-year-old Arthur succeeds him as King of Britain and fights a series of battles, similar to those in the Historia Brittonum, culminating in the Battle of Bath. He then defeats the Picts and Scots before creating an Arthurian empire through his conquests of Ireland, Iceland and the Orkney Islands. After twelve years of peace, Arthur sets out to expand his empire once more, taking control of Norway, Denmark and Gaul. Gaul is still held by the Roman Empire when it is conquered, and Arthur's victory leads to a further confrontation with Rome. Arthur and his warriors, including Kaius (Kay), Beduerus (Bedivere) and Gualguanus (Gawain), defeat the Roman emperor Lucius Tiberius in Gaul but, as he prepares to march on Rome, Arthur hears that his nephew Modredus (Mordred)—whom he had left in charge of Britain—has married his wife Guenhuuara (Guinevere) and seized the throne. Arthur returns to Britain and defeats and kills Modredus on the river Camblam in Cornwall, but he is mortally wounded. He hands the crown to his kinsman Constantine and is taken to the isle of Avalon to be healed of his wounds, never to be seen again.
How much of this narrative was Geoffrey's own invention is open to debate. He seems to have made use of the list of Arthur's twelve battles against the Saxons found in the 9th-century Historia Brittonum, along with the battle of Camlann from the Annales Cambriae and the idea that Arthur was still alive. Arthur's status as the king of all Britain seems to be borrowed from pre-Galfridian tradition, being found in Culhwch and Olwen, the Welsh Triads, and the saints' lives. Finally, Geoffrey borrowed many of the names for Arthur's possessions, close family, and companions from the pre-Galfridian Welsh tradition, including Kaius (Cei), Beduerus (Bedwyr), Guenhuuara (Gwenhwyfar), Uther (Uthyr) and perhaps also Caliburnus (Caledfwlch), the latter becoming Excalibur in subsequent Arthurian tales. However, while names, key events, and titles may have been borrowed, Brynley Roberts has argued that "the Arthurian section is Geoffrey's literary creation and it owes nothing to prior narrative." Geoffrey makes the Welsh Medraut into the villainous Modredus, but there is no trace of such a negative character for this figure in Welsh sources until the 16th century. There have been relatively few modern attempts to challenge the notion that the Historia Regum Britanniae is primarily Geoffrey's own work, with scholarly opinion often echoing William of Newburgh's late-12th-century comment that Geoffrey "made up" his narrative, perhaps through an "inordinate love of lying". Geoffrey Ashe is one dissenter from this view, believing that Geoffrey's narrative is partially derived from a lost source telling of the deeds of a 5th-century British king named Riotamus, this figure being the original Arthur, although historians and Celticists have been reluctant to follow Ashe in his conclusions.
Whatever his sources may have been, the immense popularity of Geoffrey's Historia Regum Britanniae cannot be denied. Well over 200 manuscript copies of Geoffrey's Latin work are known to have survived, as well as translations into other languages. For example, 60 manuscripts are extant containing the Brut y Brenhinedd, Welsh-language versions of the Historia, the earliest of which were created in the 13th century. The old notion that some of these Welsh versions actually underlie Geoffrey's Historia, advanced by antiquarians such as the 18th-century Lewis Morris, has long since been discounted in academic circles. As a result of this popularity, Geoffrey's Historia Regum Britanniae was enormously influential on the later medieval development of the Arthurian legend. While it was not the only creative force behind Arthurian romance, many of its elements were borrowed and developed (e.g., Merlin and the final fate of Arthur), and it provided the historical framework into which the romancers' tales of magical and wonderful adventures were inserted.
The popularity of Geoffrey's Historia and its other derivative works (such as Wace's Roman de Brut) gave rise to a significant numbers of new Arthurian works in continental Europe during the 12th and 13th centuries, particularly in France. It was not, however, the only Arthurian influence on the developing "Matter of Britain". There is clear evidence that Arthur and Arthurian tales were familiar on the Continent before Geoffrey's work became widely known (see for example, the Modena Archivolt), and "Celtic" names and stories not found in Geoffrey's Historia appear in the Arthurian romances. From the perspective of Arthur, perhaps the most significant effect of this great outpouring of new Arthurian story was on the role of the king himself: much of this 12th-century and later Arthurian literature centres less on Arthur himself than on characters such as Lancelot and Guinevere, Percival, Galahad, Gawain, Ywain, and Tristan and Iseult. Whereas Arthur is very much at the centre of the pre-Galfridian material and Geoffrey's Historia itself, in the romances he is rapidly sidelined. His character also alters significantly. In both the earliest materials and Geoffrey he is a great and ferocious warrior, who laughs as he personally slaughters witches and giants and takes a leading role in all military campaigns, whereas in the continental romances he becomes the roi fainéant, the "do-nothing king", whose "inactivity and acquiescence constituted a central flaw in his otherwise ideal society". Arthur's role in these works is frequently that of a wise, dignified, even-tempered, somewhat bland, and occasionally feeble monarch. So, he simply turns pale and silent when he learns of Lancelot's affair with Guinevere in the Mort Artu, whilst in Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, he is unable to stay awake after a feast and has to retire for a nap. Nonetheless, as Norris J. Lacy has observed, whatever his faults and frailties may be in these Arthurian romances, "his prestige is never—or almost never—compromised by his personal weaknesses ... his authority and glory remain intact."
Arthur and his retinue appear in some of the Lais of Marie de France, but it was the work of another French poet, Chrétien de Troyes, that had the greatest influence with regard to the development of Arthur's character and legend. Chrétien wrote five Arthurian romances between c. 1170 and 1190. Erec and Enide and Cligès are tales of courtly love with Arthur's court as their backdrop, demonstrating the shift away from the heroic world of the Welsh and Galfridian Arthur, while Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, features Yvain and Gawain in a supernatural adventure, with Arthur very much on the sidelines and weakened. However, the most significant for the development of the Arthurian legend are Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, which introduces Lancelot and his adulterous relationship with Arthur's queen Guinevere, extending and popularising the recurring theme of Arthur as a cuckold, and Perceval, the Story of the Grail, which introduces the Holy Grail and the Fisher King and which again sees Arthur having a much reduced role. Chrétien was thus "instrumental both in the elaboration of the Arthurian legend and in the establishment of the ideal form for the diffusion of that legend", and much of what came after him in terms of the portrayal of Arthur and his world built upon the foundations he had laid. Perceval, although unfinished, was particularly popular: four separate continuations of the poem appeared over the next half century, with the notion of the Grail and its quest being developed by other writers such as Robert de Boron, a fact that helped accelerate the decline of Arthur in continental romance. Similarly, Lancelot and his cuckolding of Arthur with Guinevere became one of the classic motifs of the Arthurian legend, although the Lancelot of the prose Lancelot (c. 1225) and later texts was a combination of Chrétien's character and that of Ulrich von Zatzikhoven's Lanzelet. Chrétien's work even appears to feed back into Welsh Arthurian literature, with the result that the romance Arthur began to replace the heroic, active Arthur in Welsh literary tradition. Particularly significant in this development were the three Welsh Arthurian romances, which are closely similar to those of Chrétien, albeit with some significant differences: Owain, or the Lady of the Fountain is related to Chrétien's Yvain; Geraint and Enid, to Erec and Enide; and Peredur son of Efrawg, to Perceval.
Up to c. 1210, continental Arthurian romance was expressed primarily through poetry; after this date the tales began to be told in prose. The most significant of these 13th-century prose romances was the Vulgate Cycle (also known as the Lancelot-Grail Cycle), a series of five Middle French prose works written in the first half of that century. These works were the Estoire del Saint Grail, the Estoire de Merlin, the Lancelot propre (or Prose Lancelot, which made up half the entire Vulgate Cycle on its own), the Queste del Saint Graal and the Mort Artu, which combine to form the first coherent version of the entire Arthurian legend. The cycle continued the trend towards reducing the role played by Arthur in his own legend, partly through the introduction of the character of Galahad and an expansion of the role of Merlin. It also made Mordred the result of an incestuous relationship between Arthur and his sister Morgause, and established the role of Camelot, first mentioned in passing in Chrétien's Lancelot, as Arthur's primary court. This series of texts was quickly followed by the Post-Vulgate Cycle (c. 1230–40), of which the Suite du Merlin is a part, which greatly reduced the importance of Lancelot's affair with Guinevere but continued to sideline Arthur, and to focus more on the Grail quest. As such, Arthur became even more of a relatively minor character in these French prose romances; in the Vulgate itself he only figures significantly in the Estoire de Merlin and the Mort Artu. During this period, Arthur was made one of the Nine Worthies, a group of three pagan, three Jewish and three Christian exemplars of chivalry. The Worthies were first listed in Jacques de Longuyon's Voeux du Paon in 1312, and subsequently became a common subject in literature and art.
The development of the medieval Arthurian cycle and the character of the "Arthur of romance" culminated in Le Morte d'Arthur, Thomas Malory's retelling of the entire legend in a single work in English in the late 15th century. Malory based his book—originally titled The Whole Book of King Arthur and of His Noble Knights of the Round Table—on the various previous romance versions, in particular the Vulgate Cycle, and appears to have aimed at creating a comprehensive and authoritative collection of Arthurian stories. Perhaps as a result of this, and the fact that Le Morte D'Arthur was one of the earliest printed books in England, published by William Caxton in 1485, most later Arthurian works are derivative of Malory's.
The end of the Middle Ages brought with it a waning of interest in King Arthur. Although Malory's English version of the great French romances was popular, there were increasing attacks upon the truthfulness of the historical framework of the Arthurian romances – established since Geoffrey of Monmouth's time – and thus the legitimacy of the whole Matter of Britain. So, for example, the 16th-century humanist scholar Polydore Vergil famously rejected the claim that Arthur was the ruler of a post-Roman empire, found throughout the post-Galfridian medieval "chronicle tradition", to the horror of Welsh and English antiquarians. Social changes associated with the end of the medieval period and the Renaissance also conspired to rob the character of Arthur and his associated legend of some of their power to enthrall audiences, with the result that 1634 saw the last printing of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur for nearly 200 years. King Arthur and the Arthurian legend were not entirely abandoned, but until the early 19th century the material was taken less seriously and was often used simply as a vehicle for allegories of 17th- and 18th-century politics. Thus Richard Blackmore's epics Prince Arthur (1695) and King Arthur (1697) feature Arthur as an allegory for the struggles of William III against James II. Similarly, the most popular Arthurian tale throughout this period seems to have been that of Tom Thumb, which was told first through chapbooks and later through the political plays of Henry Fielding; although the action is clearly set in Arthurian Britain, the treatment is humorous and Arthur appears as a primarily comedic version of his romance character. John Dryden's masque King Arthur is still performed, largely thanks to Henry Purcell's music, though seldom unabridged.
In the early 19th century, medievalism, Romanticism, and the Gothic Revival reawakened interest in Arthur and the medieval romances. A new code of ethics for 19th-century gentlemen was shaped around the chivalric ideals embodied in the "Arthur of romance". This renewed interest first made itself felt in 1816, when Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur was reprinted for the first time since 1634. Initially, the medieval Arthurian legends were of particular interest to poets, inspiring, for example, William Wordsworth to write "The Egyptian Maid" (1835), an allegory of the Holy Grail. Pre-eminent among these was Alfred Tennyson, whose first Arthurian poem "The Lady of Shalott" was published in 1832. Arthur himself played a minor role in some of these works, following in the medieval romance tradition. Tennyson's Arthurian work reached its peak of popularity with Idylls of the King, however, which reworked the entire narrative of Arthur's life for the Victorian era. It was first published in 1859 and sold 10,000 copies within the first week. In the Idylls, Arthur became a symbol of ideal manhood who ultimately failed, through human weakness, to establish a perfect kingdom on earth. Tennyson's works prompted a large number of imitators, generated considerable public interest in the legends of Arthur and the character himself, and brought Malory's tales to a wider audience. Indeed, the first modernisation of Malory's great compilation of Arthur's tales was published in 1862, shortly after Idylls appeared, and there were six further editions and five competitors before the century ended.
This interest in the "Arthur of romance" and his associated stories continued through the 19th century and into the 20th, and influenced poets such as William Morris and Pre-Raphaelite artists including Edward Burne-Jones. Even the humorous tale of Tom Thumb, which had been the primary manifestation of Arthur's legend in the 18th century, was rewritten after the publication of Idylls. While Tom maintained his small stature and remained a figure of comic relief, his story now included more elements from the medieval Arthurian romances and Arthur is treated more seriously and historically in these new versions. The revived Arthurian romance also proved influential in the United States, with such books as Sidney Lanier's The Boy's King Arthur (1880) reaching wide audiences and providing inspiration for Mark Twain's satire A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889). Although the 'Arthur of romance' was sometimes central to these new Arthurian works (as he was in Burne-Jones's "The Sleep of Arthur in Avalon", 1881–1898), on other occasions he reverted to his medieval status and is either marginalised or even missing entirely, with Wagner's Arthurian opera Parsifal providing a notable instance of the latter. Furthermore, the revival of interest in Arthur and the Arthurian tales did not continue unabated. By the end of the 19th century, it was confined mainly to Pre-Raphaelite imitators, and it could not avoid being affected by World War I, which damaged the reputation of chivalry and thus interest in its medieval manifestations and Arthur as chivalric role model. The romance tradition did, however, remain sufficiently powerful to persuade Thomas Hardy, Laurence Binyon and John Masefield to compose Arthurian plays, and T. S. Eliot alludes to the Arthur myth (but not Arthur) in his poem The Waste Land, which mentions the Fisher King.
In the latter half of the 20th century, the influence of the romance tradition of Arthur continued, through novels such as T. H. White's The Once and Future King (1958), Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave (1970) and its four sequels, Thomas Berger's tragicomic Arthur Rex and Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon (1982), in addition to comic strips such as Prince Valiant (from 1937 onward). Tennyson had reworked the romance tales of Arthur to suit and comment upon the issues of his day, and the same is often the case with modern treatments too. Mary Stewart's first three Arthurian novels present the wizard Merlin as the central character, rather than Arthur, and The Crystal Cave is narrated by Merlin in the first person, whereas Bradley's tale takes a feminist approach to Arthur and his legend, in contrast to the narratives of Arthur found in medieval materials. American authors often rework the story of Arthur to be more consistent with values such as equality and democracy. In John Cowper Powys's Porius: A Romance of the Dark Ages (1951), set in Wales in 499, just prior to the Saxon invasion, Arthur, the Emperor of Britain, is only a minor character, whereas Myrddin (Merlin) and Nineue, Tennyson's Vivien, are major figures. Myrddin's disappearance at the end of the novel is, "in the tradition of magical hibernation when the king or mage leaves his people for some island or cave to return either at a more propitious or more dangerous time", (see King Arthur's messianic return). Powys's earlier novel, A Glastonbury Romance (1932) is concerned with both the Holy Grail and the legend that Arthur is buried at Glastonbury.
The romance Arthur has become popular in film and theatre as well. T. H. White's novel was adapted into the Lerner and Loewe stage musical Camelot (1960) and Walt Disney's animated film The Sword in the Stone (1963); Camelot, with its focus on the love of Lancelot and Guinevere and the cuckolding of Arthur, was itself made into a film of the same name in 1967. The romance tradition of Arthur is particularly evident and in critically respected films like Robert Bresson's Lancelot du Lac (1974), Éric Rohmer's Perceval le Gallois (1978) and John Boorman's Excalibur (1981); it is also the main source of the material used in the Arthurian spoof Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975).
Retellings and reimaginings of the romance tradition are not the only important aspect of the modern legend of King Arthur. Attempts to portray Arthur as a genuine historical figure of c. 500, stripping away the "romance", have also emerged. As Taylor and Brewer have noted, this return to the medieval "chronicle tradition" of Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Historia Brittonum is a recent trend which became dominant in Arthurian literature in the years following the outbreak of the Second World War, when Arthur's legendary resistance to Germanic enemies struck a chord in Britain. Clemence Dane's series of radio plays, The Saviours (1942), used a historical Arthur to embody the spirit of heroic resistance against desperate odds, and Robert Sherriff's play The Long Sunset (1955) saw Arthur rallying Romano-British resistance against the Germanic invaders. This trend towards placing Arthur in a historical setting is also apparent in historical and fantasy novels published during this period.
Arthur has also been used as a model for modern-day behaviour. In the 1930s, the Order of the Fellowship of the Knights of the Round Table was formed in Britain to promote Christian ideals and Arthurian notions of medieval chivalry. In the United States, hundreds of thousands of boys and girls joined Arthurian youth groups, such as the Knights of King Arthur, in which Arthur and his legends were promoted as wholesome exemplars. However, Arthur's diffusion within modern culture goes beyond such obviously Arthurian endeavours, with Arthurian names being regularly attached to objects, buildings, and places. As Norris J. Lacy has observed, "The popular notion of Arthur appears to be limited, not surprisingly, to a few motifs and names, but there can be no doubt of the extent to which a legend born many centuries ago is profoundly embedded in modern culture at every level."
|
[
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "King Arthur (Welsh: Brenin Arthur, Cornish: Arthur Gernow, Breton: Roue Arzhur, French: Roi Arthur) is a legendary king of Britain, and a central figure in the medieval literary tradition known as the Matter of Britain.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "In Welsh sources, Arthur is portrayed as a leader of the post-Roman Britons in battles against Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain in the late 5th and early 6th centuries. He first appears in two early medieval historical sources, the Annales Cambriae and the Historia Brittonum, but these date to 300 years after he is supposed to have lived, and most historians who study the period do not consider him a historical figure. His name also occurs in early Welsh poetic sources such as Y Gododdin. The character developed through Welsh mythology, appearing either as a great warrior defending Britain from human and supernatural enemies or as a magical figure of folklore, sometimes associated with the Welsh otherworld Annwn.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The legendary Arthur developed as a figure of international interest largely through the popularity of Geoffrey of Monmouth's fanciful and imaginative 12th-century Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain). Geoffrey depicted Arthur as a king of Britain who defeated the Saxons and established a vast empire. Many elements and incidents that are now an integral part of the Arthurian story appear in Geoffrey's Historia, including Arthur's father Uther Pendragon, the magician Merlin, Arthur's wife Guinevere, the sword Excalibur, Arthur's conception at Tintagel, his final battle against Mordred at Camlann, and final rest in Avalon. The 12th-century French writer Chrétien de Troyes, who added Lancelot and the Holy Grail to the story, began the genre of Arthurian romance that became a significant strand of medieval literature. In these French stories, the narrative focus often shifts from King Arthur himself to other characters, such as various Knights of the Round Table. The themes, events and characters of the Arthurian legend vary widely from text to text, and there is no one canonical version. Arthurian literature thrived during the Middle Ages but waned in the centuries that followed, until it experienced a major resurgence in the 19th century. In the 21st century, the legend continues to have prominence, not only in literature but also in adaptations for theatre, film, television, comics and other media.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The historical basis for King Arthur has been long debated by scholars. One school of thought, citing entries in the Historia Brittonum (History of the Britons) and Annales Cambriae (Welsh Annals), saw Arthur as a genuine historical figure, a Romano-British leader who fought against the invading Anglo-Saxons some time in the late 5th to early 6th century.",
"title": "Historicity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The Historia Brittonum, a 9th-century Latin historical compilation attributed in some late manuscripts to a Welsh cleric called Nennius, contains the first datable mention of King Arthur, listing twelve battles that Arthur fought. These culminate in the Battle of Badon, where he is said to have single-handedly killed 960 men. Recent studies question the reliability of the Historia Brittonum.",
"title": "Historicity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Archaeological evidence in the Low Countries and what was to become England shows early Anglo-Saxon migration to Great Britain reversed between 500 and 550, which concurs with Frankish chronicles. John Davies notes this as consistent with the British victory at Badon Hill, attributed to Arthur by Nennius. The monks of Glastonbury are also said to have discovered the grave of Arthur in 1180.",
"title": "Historicity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The other text that seems to support the case for Arthur's historical existence is the 10th-century Annales Cambriae, which also link Arthur with the Battle of Badon. The Annales date this battle to 516–518, and also mention the Battle of Camlann, in which Arthur and Medraut (Mordred) were both killed, dated to 537–539. These details have often been used to bolster confidence in the Historia's account and to confirm that Arthur really did fight at Badon.",
"title": "Historicity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Problems have been identified, however, with using this source to support the Historia Brittonum's account. The latest research shows that the Annales Cambriae was based on a chronicle begun in the late 8th century in Wales. Additionally, the complex textual history of the Annales Cambriae precludes any certainty that the Arthurian annals were added to it even that early. They were more likely added at some point in the 10th century and may never have existed in any earlier set of annals. The Badon entry probably derived from the Historia Brittonum.",
"title": "Historicity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "This lack of convincing early evidence is the reason many recent historians exclude Arthur from their accounts of sub-Roman Britain. In the view of historian Thomas Charles-Edwards, \"at this stage of the enquiry, one can only say that there may well have been an historical Arthur [but ...] the historian can as yet say nothing of value about him\". These modern admissions of ignorance are a relatively recent trend; earlier generations of historians were less sceptical. The historian John Morris made the putative reign of Arthur the organising principle of his history of sub-Roman Britain and Ireland, The Age of Arthur (1973). Even so, he found little to say about a historical Arthur.",
"title": "Historicity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Partly in reaction to such theories, another school of thought emerged which argued that Arthur had no historical existence at all. Morris's Age of Arthur prompted the archaeologist Nowell Myres to observe that \"no figure on the borderline of history and mythology has wasted more of the historian's time\". Gildas's 6th-century polemic De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae (On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain), written within living memory of Badon, mentions the battle but does not mention Arthur. Arthur is not mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle or named in any surviving manuscript written between 400 and 820. He is absent from Bede's early-8th-century Ecclesiastical History of the English People, another major early source for post-Roman history that mentions Badon. The historian David Dumville wrote: \"I think we can dispose of him [Arthur] quite briefly. He owes his place in our history books to a 'no smoke without fire' school of thought ... The fact of the matter is that there is no historical evidence about Arthur; we must reject him from our histories and, above all, from the titles of our books.\"",
"title": "Historicity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Some scholars argue that Arthur was originally a fictional hero of folklore—or even a half-forgotten Celtic deity—who became credited with real deeds in the distant past. They cite parallels with figures such as the Kentish Hengist and Horsa, who may be totemic horse-gods that later became historicised. Bede ascribed to these legendary figures a historical role in the 5th-century Anglo-Saxon conquest of eastern Britain. It is not even certain that Arthur was considered a king in the early texts. Neither the Historia nor the Annales calls him \"rex\": the former calls him instead \"dux bellorum\" (leader of wars) and \"miles\" (soldier).",
"title": "Historicity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of Welsh mythology, English folklore and literary invention, and most historians of the period do not think that he was a historical figure. Because historical documents for the post-Roman period are scarce, a definitive answer to the question of Arthur's historical existence is unlikely. Sites and places have been identified as \"Arthurian\" since the 12th century, but archaeology can confidently reveal names only through inscriptions found in secure contexts. The so-called \"Arthur stone\", discovered in 1998 among the ruins at Tintagel Castle in Cornwall in securely dated 6th-century contexts, created a brief stir but proved irrelevant. Other inscriptional evidence for Arthur, including the Glastonbury cross, is tainted with the suggestion of forgery.",
"title": "Historicity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Andrew Breeze has recently argued that Arthur was historical, and claimed to have identified the locations of his battles as well as the place and date of his death (in the context of the extreme weather events of 535–536), but his conclusions are disputed. Other scholars have questioned his findings, which they consider are based on coincidental resemblances between place-names. Nicholas Higham comments that it is difficult to justify identifying Arthur as the leader in northern battles listed in the Historia Brittonum while rejecting the implication in the same work that they were fought against Anglo-Saxons, and that there is no textual justification for separating Badon from the other battles.",
"title": "Historicity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Several historical figures have been proposed as the basis for Arthur, ranging from Lucius Artorius Castus, a Roman officer who served in Britain in the 2nd or 3rd century, to sub-Roman British rulers such as Riotamus, Ambrosius Aurelianus, and the Welsh kings Owain Ddantgwyn, Enniaun Girt, and Athrwys ap Meurig. However, no convincing evidence for these identifications has emerged.",
"title": "Historicity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The origin of the Welsh name \"Arthur\" remains a matter of debate. The most widely accepted etymology derives it from the Roman nomen gentile (family name) Artorius. Artorius itself is of obscure and contested etymology. Linguist Stephan Zimmer suggests Artorius possibly had a Celtic origin, being a Latinization of a hypothetical name *Artorījos, in turn derived from an older patronym *Arto-rīg-ios, meaning \"son of the bear/warrior-king\". This patronym is unattested, but the root, *arto-rīg, \"bear/warrior-king\", is the source of the Old Irish personal name Artrí. Some scholars have suggested it is relevant to this debate that the legendary King Arthur's name only appears as Arthur or Arturus in early Latin Arthurian texts, never as Artōrius (though Classical Latin Artōrius became Arturius in some Vulgar Latin dialects). However, this may not say anything about the origin of the name Arthur, as Artōrius would regularly become Art(h)ur when borrowed into Welsh.",
"title": "Name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Another commonly proposed derivation of Arthur from Welsh arth \"bear\" + (g)wr \"man\" (earlier *Arto-uiros in Brittonic) is not accepted by modern scholars for phonological and orthographic reasons. Notably, a Brittonic compound name *Arto-uiros should produce Old Welsh *Artgur (where u represents the short vowel /u/) and Middle/Modern Welsh *Arthwr, rather than Arthur (where u is a long vowel /ʉː/). In Welsh poetry the name is always spelled Arthur and is exclusively rhymed with words ending in -ur—never words ending in -wr—which confirms that the second element cannot be [g]wr \"man\".",
"title": "Name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "An alternative theory, which has gained only limited acceptance among professional scholars, derives the name Arthur from Arcturus, the brightest star in the constellation Boötes, near Ursa Major or the Great Bear. Classical Latin Arcturus would also have become Art(h)ur when borrowed into Welsh, and its brightness and position in the sky led people to regard it as the \"guardian of the bear\" (which is the meaning of the name in Ancient Greek) and the \"leader\" of the other stars in Boötes.",
"title": "Name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Many other theories exist, for example that the name has Messapian or Etruscan origins.",
"title": "Name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The familiar literary persona of Arthur began with Geoffrey of Monmouth's pseudo-historical Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain), written in the 1130s. The textual sources for Arthur are usually divided into those written before Geoffrey's Historia (known as pre-Galfridian texts, from the Latin form of Geoffrey, Galfridus) and those written afterwards, which could not avoid his influence (Galfridian, or post-Galfridian, texts).",
"title": "Medieval literary traditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The earliest literary references to Arthur come from Welsh and Breton sources. There have been few attempts to define the nature and character of Arthur in the pre-Galfridian tradition as a whole, rather than in a single text or text/story-type. A 2007 academic survey led by Caitlin Green has identified three key strands to the portrayal of Arthur in this earliest material. The first is that he was a peerless warrior who functioned as the monster-hunting protector of Britain from all internal and external threats. Some of these are human threats, such as the Saxons he fights in the Historia Brittonum, but the majority are supernatural, including giant cat-monsters, destructive divine boars, dragons, dogheads, giants, and witches. The second is that the pre-Galfridian Arthur was a figure of folklore (particularly topographic or onomastic folklore) and localised magical wonder-tales, the leader of a band of superhuman heroes who live in the wilds of the landscape. The third and final strand is that the early Welsh Arthur had a close connection with the Welsh Otherworld, Annwn. On the one hand, he launches assaults on Otherworldly fortresses in search of treasure and frees their prisoners. On the other, his warband in the earliest sources includes former pagan gods, and his wife and his possessions are clearly Otherworldly in origin.",
"title": "Medieval literary traditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "One of the most famous Welsh poetic references to Arthur comes in the collection of heroic death-songs known as Y Gododdin (The Gododdin), attributed to the 6th-century poet Aneirin. One stanza praises the bravery of a warrior who slew 300 enemies, but says that despite this, \"he was no Arthur\" – that is, his feats cannot compare to the valour of Arthur. Y Gododdin is known only from a 13th-century manuscript, so it is impossible to determine whether this passage is original or a later interpolation, but John Koch's view that the passage dates from a 7th-century or earlier version is regarded as unproven; 9th- or 10th-century dates are often proposed for it. Several poems attributed to Taliesin, a poet said to have lived in the 6th century, also refer to Arthur, although these all probably date from between the 8th and 12th centuries. They include \"Kadeir Teyrnon\" (\"The Chair of the Prince\"), which refers to \"Arthur the Blessed\"; \"Preiddeu Annwn\" (\"The Spoils of Annwn\"), which recounts an expedition of Arthur to the Otherworld; and \"Marwnat vthyr pen[dragon]\" (\"The Elegy of Uther Pen[dragon]\"), which refers to Arthur's valour and is suggestive of a father-son relationship for Arthur and Uther that pre-dates Geoffrey of Monmouth.",
"title": "Medieval literary traditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Other early Welsh Arthurian texts include a poem found in the Black Book of Carmarthen, \"Pa gur yv y porthaur?\" (\"What man is the gatekeeper?\"). This takes the form of a dialogue between Arthur and the gatekeeper of a fortress he wishes to enter, in which Arthur recounts the names and deeds of himself and his men, notably Cei (Kay) and Bedwyr (Bedivere). The Welsh prose tale Culhwch and Olwen (c. 1100), included in the modern Mabinogion collection, has a much longer list of more than 200 of Arthur's men, though Cei and Bedwyr again take a central place. The story as a whole tells of Arthur helping his kinsman Culhwch win the hand of Olwen, daughter of Ysbaddaden Chief-Giant, by completing a series of apparently impossible tasks, including the hunt for the great semi-divine boar Twrch Trwyth. The 9th-century Historia Brittonum also refers to this tale, with the boar there named Troy(n)t. Finally, Arthur is mentioned numerous times in the Welsh Triads, a collection of short summaries of Welsh tradition and legend which are classified into groups of three linked characters or episodes to assist recall. The later manuscripts of the Triads are partly derivative from Geoffrey of Monmouth and later continental traditions, but the earliest ones show no such influence and are usually agreed to refer to pre-existing Welsh traditions. Even in these, however, Arthur's court has started to embody legendary Britain as a whole, with \"Arthur's Court\" sometimes substituted for \"The Island of Britain\" in the formula \"Three XXX of the Island of Britain\". While it is not clear from the Historia Brittonum and the Annales Cambriae that Arthur was even considered a king, by the time Culhwch and Olwen and the Triads were written he had become Penteyrnedd yr Ynys hon, \"Chief of the Lords of this Island\", the overlord of Wales, Cornwall and the North.",
"title": "Medieval literary traditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In addition to these pre-Galfridian Welsh poems and tales, Arthur appears in some other early Latin texts besides the Historia Brittonum and the Annales Cambriae. In particular, Arthur features in a number of well-known vitae (\"Lives\") of post-Roman saints, none of which are now generally considered to be reliable historical sources (the earliest probably dates from the 11th century). According to the Life of Saint Gildas, written in the early 12th century by Caradoc of Llancarfan, Arthur is said to have killed Gildas's brother Hueil and to have rescued his wife Gwenhwyfar from Glastonbury. In the Life of Saint Cadoc, written around 1100 or a little before by Lifris of Llancarfan, the saint gives protection to a man who killed three of Arthur's soldiers, and Arthur demands a herd of cattle as wergeld for his men. Cadoc delivers them as demanded, but when Arthur takes possession of the animals, they turn into bundles of ferns. Similar incidents are described in the medieval biographies of Carannog, Padarn, and Eufflam, probably written around the 12th century. A less obviously legendary account of Arthur appears in the Legenda Sancti Goeznovii, which is often claimed to date from the early 11th century (although the earliest manuscript of this text dates from the 15th century and the text is now dated to the late 12th to early 13th century). Also important are the references to Arthur in William of Malmesbury's De Gestis Regum Anglorum and Herman's De Miraculis Sanctae Mariae Laudunensis, which together provide the first certain evidence for a belief that Arthur was not actually dead and would at some point return, a theme that is often revisited in post-Galfridian folklore.",
"title": "Medieval literary traditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, completed c. 1138, contains the first narrative account of Arthur's life. This work is an imaginative and fanciful account of British kings from the legendary Trojan exile Brutus to the 7th-century Welsh king Cadwallader. Geoffrey places Arthur in the same post-Roman period as do Historia Brittonum and Annales Cambriae. According to Geoffrey's tale, Arthur was a descendant of Constantine the Great. He incorporates Arthur's father Uther Pendragon, his magician advisor Merlin, and the story of Arthur's conception, in which Uther, disguised as his enemy Gorlois by Merlin's magic, sleeps with Gorlois's wife Igerna (Igraine) at Tintagel, and she conceives Arthur. On Uther's death, the fifteen-year-old Arthur succeeds him as King of Britain and fights a series of battles, similar to those in the Historia Brittonum, culminating in the Battle of Bath. He then defeats the Picts and Scots before creating an Arthurian empire through his conquests of Ireland, Iceland and the Orkney Islands. After twelve years of peace, Arthur sets out to expand his empire once more, taking control of Norway, Denmark and Gaul. Gaul is still held by the Roman Empire when it is conquered, and Arthur's victory leads to a further confrontation with Rome. Arthur and his warriors, including Kaius (Kay), Beduerus (Bedivere) and Gualguanus (Gawain), defeat the Roman emperor Lucius Tiberius in Gaul but, as he prepares to march on Rome, Arthur hears that his nephew Modredus (Mordred)—whom he had left in charge of Britain—has married his wife Guenhuuara (Guinevere) and seized the throne. Arthur returns to Britain and defeats and kills Modredus on the river Camblam in Cornwall, but he is mortally wounded. He hands the crown to his kinsman Constantine and is taken to the isle of Avalon to be healed of his wounds, never to be seen again.",
"title": "Medieval literary traditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "How much of this narrative was Geoffrey's own invention is open to debate. He seems to have made use of the list of Arthur's twelve battles against the Saxons found in the 9th-century Historia Brittonum, along with the battle of Camlann from the Annales Cambriae and the idea that Arthur was still alive. Arthur's status as the king of all Britain seems to be borrowed from pre-Galfridian tradition, being found in Culhwch and Olwen, the Welsh Triads, and the saints' lives. Finally, Geoffrey borrowed many of the names for Arthur's possessions, close family, and companions from the pre-Galfridian Welsh tradition, including Kaius (Cei), Beduerus (Bedwyr), Guenhuuara (Gwenhwyfar), Uther (Uthyr) and perhaps also Caliburnus (Caledfwlch), the latter becoming Excalibur in subsequent Arthurian tales. However, while names, key events, and titles may have been borrowed, Brynley Roberts has argued that \"the Arthurian section is Geoffrey's literary creation and it owes nothing to prior narrative.\" Geoffrey makes the Welsh Medraut into the villainous Modredus, but there is no trace of such a negative character for this figure in Welsh sources until the 16th century. There have been relatively few modern attempts to challenge the notion that the Historia Regum Britanniae is primarily Geoffrey's own work, with scholarly opinion often echoing William of Newburgh's late-12th-century comment that Geoffrey \"made up\" his narrative, perhaps through an \"inordinate love of lying\". Geoffrey Ashe is one dissenter from this view, believing that Geoffrey's narrative is partially derived from a lost source telling of the deeds of a 5th-century British king named Riotamus, this figure being the original Arthur, although historians and Celticists have been reluctant to follow Ashe in his conclusions.",
"title": "Medieval literary traditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Whatever his sources may have been, the immense popularity of Geoffrey's Historia Regum Britanniae cannot be denied. Well over 200 manuscript copies of Geoffrey's Latin work are known to have survived, as well as translations into other languages. For example, 60 manuscripts are extant containing the Brut y Brenhinedd, Welsh-language versions of the Historia, the earliest of which were created in the 13th century. The old notion that some of these Welsh versions actually underlie Geoffrey's Historia, advanced by antiquarians such as the 18th-century Lewis Morris, has long since been discounted in academic circles. As a result of this popularity, Geoffrey's Historia Regum Britanniae was enormously influential on the later medieval development of the Arthurian legend. While it was not the only creative force behind Arthurian romance, many of its elements were borrowed and developed (e.g., Merlin and the final fate of Arthur), and it provided the historical framework into which the romancers' tales of magical and wonderful adventures were inserted.",
"title": "Medieval literary traditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The popularity of Geoffrey's Historia and its other derivative works (such as Wace's Roman de Brut) gave rise to a significant numbers of new Arthurian works in continental Europe during the 12th and 13th centuries, particularly in France. It was not, however, the only Arthurian influence on the developing \"Matter of Britain\". There is clear evidence that Arthur and Arthurian tales were familiar on the Continent before Geoffrey's work became widely known (see for example, the Modena Archivolt), and \"Celtic\" names and stories not found in Geoffrey's Historia appear in the Arthurian romances. From the perspective of Arthur, perhaps the most significant effect of this great outpouring of new Arthurian story was on the role of the king himself: much of this 12th-century and later Arthurian literature centres less on Arthur himself than on characters such as Lancelot and Guinevere, Percival, Galahad, Gawain, Ywain, and Tristan and Iseult. Whereas Arthur is very much at the centre of the pre-Galfridian material and Geoffrey's Historia itself, in the romances he is rapidly sidelined. His character also alters significantly. In both the earliest materials and Geoffrey he is a great and ferocious warrior, who laughs as he personally slaughters witches and giants and takes a leading role in all military campaigns, whereas in the continental romances he becomes the roi fainéant, the \"do-nothing king\", whose \"inactivity and acquiescence constituted a central flaw in his otherwise ideal society\". Arthur's role in these works is frequently that of a wise, dignified, even-tempered, somewhat bland, and occasionally feeble monarch. So, he simply turns pale and silent when he learns of Lancelot's affair with Guinevere in the Mort Artu, whilst in Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, he is unable to stay awake after a feast and has to retire for a nap. Nonetheless, as Norris J. Lacy has observed, whatever his faults and frailties may be in these Arthurian romances, \"his prestige is never—or almost never—compromised by his personal weaknesses ... his authority and glory remain intact.\"",
"title": "Medieval literary traditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Arthur and his retinue appear in some of the Lais of Marie de France, but it was the work of another French poet, Chrétien de Troyes, that had the greatest influence with regard to the development of Arthur's character and legend. Chrétien wrote five Arthurian romances between c. 1170 and 1190. Erec and Enide and Cligès are tales of courtly love with Arthur's court as their backdrop, demonstrating the shift away from the heroic world of the Welsh and Galfridian Arthur, while Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, features Yvain and Gawain in a supernatural adventure, with Arthur very much on the sidelines and weakened. However, the most significant for the development of the Arthurian legend are Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, which introduces Lancelot and his adulterous relationship with Arthur's queen Guinevere, extending and popularising the recurring theme of Arthur as a cuckold, and Perceval, the Story of the Grail, which introduces the Holy Grail and the Fisher King and which again sees Arthur having a much reduced role. Chrétien was thus \"instrumental both in the elaboration of the Arthurian legend and in the establishment of the ideal form for the diffusion of that legend\", and much of what came after him in terms of the portrayal of Arthur and his world built upon the foundations he had laid. Perceval, although unfinished, was particularly popular: four separate continuations of the poem appeared over the next half century, with the notion of the Grail and its quest being developed by other writers such as Robert de Boron, a fact that helped accelerate the decline of Arthur in continental romance. Similarly, Lancelot and his cuckolding of Arthur with Guinevere became one of the classic motifs of the Arthurian legend, although the Lancelot of the prose Lancelot (c. 1225) and later texts was a combination of Chrétien's character and that of Ulrich von Zatzikhoven's Lanzelet. Chrétien's work even appears to feed back into Welsh Arthurian literature, with the result that the romance Arthur began to replace the heroic, active Arthur in Welsh literary tradition. Particularly significant in this development were the three Welsh Arthurian romances, which are closely similar to those of Chrétien, albeit with some significant differences: Owain, or the Lady of the Fountain is related to Chrétien's Yvain; Geraint and Enid, to Erec and Enide; and Peredur son of Efrawg, to Perceval.",
"title": "Medieval literary traditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Up to c. 1210, continental Arthurian romance was expressed primarily through poetry; after this date the tales began to be told in prose. The most significant of these 13th-century prose romances was the Vulgate Cycle (also known as the Lancelot-Grail Cycle), a series of five Middle French prose works written in the first half of that century. These works were the Estoire del Saint Grail, the Estoire de Merlin, the Lancelot propre (or Prose Lancelot, which made up half the entire Vulgate Cycle on its own), the Queste del Saint Graal and the Mort Artu, which combine to form the first coherent version of the entire Arthurian legend. The cycle continued the trend towards reducing the role played by Arthur in his own legend, partly through the introduction of the character of Galahad and an expansion of the role of Merlin. It also made Mordred the result of an incestuous relationship between Arthur and his sister Morgause, and established the role of Camelot, first mentioned in passing in Chrétien's Lancelot, as Arthur's primary court. This series of texts was quickly followed by the Post-Vulgate Cycle (c. 1230–40), of which the Suite du Merlin is a part, which greatly reduced the importance of Lancelot's affair with Guinevere but continued to sideline Arthur, and to focus more on the Grail quest. As such, Arthur became even more of a relatively minor character in these French prose romances; in the Vulgate itself he only figures significantly in the Estoire de Merlin and the Mort Artu. During this period, Arthur was made one of the Nine Worthies, a group of three pagan, three Jewish and three Christian exemplars of chivalry. The Worthies were first listed in Jacques de Longuyon's Voeux du Paon in 1312, and subsequently became a common subject in literature and art.",
"title": "Medieval literary traditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The development of the medieval Arthurian cycle and the character of the \"Arthur of romance\" culminated in Le Morte d'Arthur, Thomas Malory's retelling of the entire legend in a single work in English in the late 15th century. Malory based his book—originally titled The Whole Book of King Arthur and of His Noble Knights of the Round Table—on the various previous romance versions, in particular the Vulgate Cycle, and appears to have aimed at creating a comprehensive and authoritative collection of Arthurian stories. Perhaps as a result of this, and the fact that Le Morte D'Arthur was one of the earliest printed books in England, published by William Caxton in 1485, most later Arthurian works are derivative of Malory's.",
"title": "Medieval literary traditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The end of the Middle Ages brought with it a waning of interest in King Arthur. Although Malory's English version of the great French romances was popular, there were increasing attacks upon the truthfulness of the historical framework of the Arthurian romances – established since Geoffrey of Monmouth's time – and thus the legitimacy of the whole Matter of Britain. So, for example, the 16th-century humanist scholar Polydore Vergil famously rejected the claim that Arthur was the ruler of a post-Roman empire, found throughout the post-Galfridian medieval \"chronicle tradition\", to the horror of Welsh and English antiquarians. Social changes associated with the end of the medieval period and the Renaissance also conspired to rob the character of Arthur and his associated legend of some of their power to enthrall audiences, with the result that 1634 saw the last printing of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur for nearly 200 years. King Arthur and the Arthurian legend were not entirely abandoned, but until the early 19th century the material was taken less seriously and was often used simply as a vehicle for allegories of 17th- and 18th-century politics. Thus Richard Blackmore's epics Prince Arthur (1695) and King Arthur (1697) feature Arthur as an allegory for the struggles of William III against James II. Similarly, the most popular Arthurian tale throughout this period seems to have been that of Tom Thumb, which was told first through chapbooks and later through the political plays of Henry Fielding; although the action is clearly set in Arthurian Britain, the treatment is humorous and Arthur appears as a primarily comedic version of his romance character. John Dryden's masque King Arthur is still performed, largely thanks to Henry Purcell's music, though seldom unabridged.",
"title": "Decline, revival, and the modern legend"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In the early 19th century, medievalism, Romanticism, and the Gothic Revival reawakened interest in Arthur and the medieval romances. A new code of ethics for 19th-century gentlemen was shaped around the chivalric ideals embodied in the \"Arthur of romance\". This renewed interest first made itself felt in 1816, when Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur was reprinted for the first time since 1634. Initially, the medieval Arthurian legends were of particular interest to poets, inspiring, for example, William Wordsworth to write \"The Egyptian Maid\" (1835), an allegory of the Holy Grail. Pre-eminent among these was Alfred Tennyson, whose first Arthurian poem \"The Lady of Shalott\" was published in 1832. Arthur himself played a minor role in some of these works, following in the medieval romance tradition. Tennyson's Arthurian work reached its peak of popularity with Idylls of the King, however, which reworked the entire narrative of Arthur's life for the Victorian era. It was first published in 1859 and sold 10,000 copies within the first week. In the Idylls, Arthur became a symbol of ideal manhood who ultimately failed, through human weakness, to establish a perfect kingdom on earth. Tennyson's works prompted a large number of imitators, generated considerable public interest in the legends of Arthur and the character himself, and brought Malory's tales to a wider audience. Indeed, the first modernisation of Malory's great compilation of Arthur's tales was published in 1862, shortly after Idylls appeared, and there were six further editions and five competitors before the century ended.",
"title": "Decline, revival, and the modern legend"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "This interest in the \"Arthur of romance\" and his associated stories continued through the 19th century and into the 20th, and influenced poets such as William Morris and Pre-Raphaelite artists including Edward Burne-Jones. Even the humorous tale of Tom Thumb, which had been the primary manifestation of Arthur's legend in the 18th century, was rewritten after the publication of Idylls. While Tom maintained his small stature and remained a figure of comic relief, his story now included more elements from the medieval Arthurian romances and Arthur is treated more seriously and historically in these new versions. The revived Arthurian romance also proved influential in the United States, with such books as Sidney Lanier's The Boy's King Arthur (1880) reaching wide audiences and providing inspiration for Mark Twain's satire A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889). Although the 'Arthur of romance' was sometimes central to these new Arthurian works (as he was in Burne-Jones's \"The Sleep of Arthur in Avalon\", 1881–1898), on other occasions he reverted to his medieval status and is either marginalised or even missing entirely, with Wagner's Arthurian opera Parsifal providing a notable instance of the latter. Furthermore, the revival of interest in Arthur and the Arthurian tales did not continue unabated. By the end of the 19th century, it was confined mainly to Pre-Raphaelite imitators, and it could not avoid being affected by World War I, which damaged the reputation of chivalry and thus interest in its medieval manifestations and Arthur as chivalric role model. The romance tradition did, however, remain sufficiently powerful to persuade Thomas Hardy, Laurence Binyon and John Masefield to compose Arthurian plays, and T. S. Eliot alludes to the Arthur myth (but not Arthur) in his poem The Waste Land, which mentions the Fisher King.",
"title": "Decline, revival, and the modern legend"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In the latter half of the 20th century, the influence of the romance tradition of Arthur continued, through novels such as T. H. White's The Once and Future King (1958), Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave (1970) and its four sequels, Thomas Berger's tragicomic Arthur Rex and Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon (1982), in addition to comic strips such as Prince Valiant (from 1937 onward). Tennyson had reworked the romance tales of Arthur to suit and comment upon the issues of his day, and the same is often the case with modern treatments too. Mary Stewart's first three Arthurian novels present the wizard Merlin as the central character, rather than Arthur, and The Crystal Cave is narrated by Merlin in the first person, whereas Bradley's tale takes a feminist approach to Arthur and his legend, in contrast to the narratives of Arthur found in medieval materials. American authors often rework the story of Arthur to be more consistent with values such as equality and democracy. In John Cowper Powys's Porius: A Romance of the Dark Ages (1951), set in Wales in 499, just prior to the Saxon invasion, Arthur, the Emperor of Britain, is only a minor character, whereas Myrddin (Merlin) and Nineue, Tennyson's Vivien, are major figures. Myrddin's disappearance at the end of the novel is, \"in the tradition of magical hibernation when the king or mage leaves his people for some island or cave to return either at a more propitious or more dangerous time\", (see King Arthur's messianic return). Powys's earlier novel, A Glastonbury Romance (1932) is concerned with both the Holy Grail and the legend that Arthur is buried at Glastonbury.",
"title": "Decline, revival, and the modern legend"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The romance Arthur has become popular in film and theatre as well. T. H. White's novel was adapted into the Lerner and Loewe stage musical Camelot (1960) and Walt Disney's animated film The Sword in the Stone (1963); Camelot, with its focus on the love of Lancelot and Guinevere and the cuckolding of Arthur, was itself made into a film of the same name in 1967. The romance tradition of Arthur is particularly evident and in critically respected films like Robert Bresson's Lancelot du Lac (1974), Éric Rohmer's Perceval le Gallois (1978) and John Boorman's Excalibur (1981); it is also the main source of the material used in the Arthurian spoof Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975).",
"title": "Decline, revival, and the modern legend"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Retellings and reimaginings of the romance tradition are not the only important aspect of the modern legend of King Arthur. Attempts to portray Arthur as a genuine historical figure of c. 500, stripping away the \"romance\", have also emerged. As Taylor and Brewer have noted, this return to the medieval \"chronicle tradition\" of Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Historia Brittonum is a recent trend which became dominant in Arthurian literature in the years following the outbreak of the Second World War, when Arthur's legendary resistance to Germanic enemies struck a chord in Britain. Clemence Dane's series of radio plays, The Saviours (1942), used a historical Arthur to embody the spirit of heroic resistance against desperate odds, and Robert Sherriff's play The Long Sunset (1955) saw Arthur rallying Romano-British resistance against the Germanic invaders. This trend towards placing Arthur in a historical setting is also apparent in historical and fantasy novels published during this period.",
"title": "Decline, revival, and the modern legend"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Arthur has also been used as a model for modern-day behaviour. In the 1930s, the Order of the Fellowship of the Knights of the Round Table was formed in Britain to promote Christian ideals and Arthurian notions of medieval chivalry. In the United States, hundreds of thousands of boys and girls joined Arthurian youth groups, such as the Knights of King Arthur, in which Arthur and his legends were promoted as wholesome exemplars. However, Arthur's diffusion within modern culture goes beyond such obviously Arthurian endeavours, with Arthurian names being regularly attached to objects, buildings, and places. As Norris J. Lacy has observed, \"The popular notion of Arthur appears to be limited, not surprisingly, to a few motifs and names, but there can be no doubt of the extent to which a legend born many centuries ago is profoundly embedded in modern culture at every level.\"",
"title": "Decline, revival, and the modern legend"
}
] |
King Arthur is a legendary king of Britain, and a central figure in the medieval literary tradition known as the Matter of Britain. In Welsh sources, Arthur is portrayed as a leader of the post-Roman Britons in battles against Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain in the late 5th and early 6th centuries. He first appears in two early medieval historical sources, the Annales Cambriae and the Historia Brittonum, but these date to 300 years after he is supposed to have lived, and most historians who study the period do not consider him a historical figure. His name also occurs in early Welsh poetic sources such as Y Gododdin. The character developed through Welsh mythology, appearing either as a great warrior defending Britain from human and supernatural enemies or as a magical figure of folklore, sometimes associated with the Welsh otherworld Annwn. The legendary Arthur developed as a figure of international interest largely through the popularity of Geoffrey of Monmouth's fanciful and imaginative 12th-century Historia Regum Britanniae. Geoffrey depicted Arthur as a king of Britain who defeated the Saxons and established a vast empire. Many elements and incidents that are now an integral part of the Arthurian story appear in Geoffrey's Historia, including Arthur's father Uther Pendragon, the magician Merlin, Arthur's wife Guinevere, the sword Excalibur, Arthur's conception at Tintagel, his final battle against Mordred at Camlann, and final rest in Avalon. The 12th-century French writer Chrétien de Troyes, who added Lancelot and the Holy Grail to the story, began the genre of Arthurian romance that became a significant strand of medieval literature. In these French stories, the narrative focus often shifts from King Arthur himself to other characters, such as various Knights of the Round Table. The themes, events and characters of the Arthurian legend vary widely from text to text, and there is no one canonical version. Arthurian literature thrived during the Middle Ages but waned in the centuries that followed, until it experienced a major resurgence in the 19th century. In the 21st century, the legend continues to have prominence, not only in literature but also in adaptations for theatre, film, television, comics and other media.
|
2001-09-27T03:00:14Z
|
2023-12-13T20:17:21Z
|
[
"Template:Cite journal",
"Template:Arthurian Legend",
"Template:Culture of Cornwall",
"Template:Lang-fr",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:C.",
"Template:Col div",
"Template:Citation",
"Template:Sister project links",
"Template:S-start",
"Template:Lang-kw",
"Template:Lang-br",
"Template:Clear left",
"Template:Clear",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Refbegin",
"Template:S-aft",
"Template:Geoffrey of Monmouth",
"Template:Pp",
"Template:'",
"Template:Anchor",
"Template:Doi",
"Template:S-reg",
"Template:S-bef",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:Circa",
"Template:Redirect",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Efn",
"Template:Portal",
"Template:Refend",
"Template:Pp-move",
"Template:Featured article",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Colend",
"Template:Notelist",
"Template:Harvnb",
"Template:S-ttl",
"Template:S-end",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Use British English",
"Template:Authority control",
"Template:Project MUSE",
"Template:Celtic mythology (Welsh)",
"Template:Lang-cy",
"Template:See also"
] |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Arthur
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.