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1804_11 | The NRA only had small number of armoured vehicles and mechanised troops. At the beginning of the war in 1937 the armour were organized in three Armoured Battalions, equipped with tanks and armoured cars from various countries. After these battalions were mostly destroyed in the Battle of Shanghai and Battle of Nanjing. The newly provided tanks, armoured cars, and trucks from the Soviet Union and Italy made it possible to create the only mechanized division in the army, the 200th Division. This Division eventually ceased to be a mechanized unit after the June 1938 reorganization of Divisions. The armoured and artillery Regiments were placed under direct command of 5th Corps and the 200th Division became a motorized Infantry Division within the same Corps. This Corps fought battles in Guangxi in 1939–1940 and in the Battle of Yunnan-Burma Road in 1942 reducing the armoured units due to losses and mechanical breakdown of the vehicles. On paper China had 3.8 million men under arms in |
1804_12 | 1941. They were organized into 246 "front-line" divisions, with another 70 divisions assigned to rear areas. Perhaps as many as forty Chinese divisions had been equipped with European-manufactured weapons and trained by foreign, particularly German and Soviet, advisers. The rest of the units were under strength and generally untrained. Overall, the Nationalist Army impressed most Western military observers as more reminiscent of a 19th- than a 20th-century army. |
1804_13 | Late in the Burma Campaign the NRA Army there had an armoured battalion equipped with Sherman tanks. |
1804_14 | Despite the poor reviews given by European observers to the European-trained Divisions, the Muslim Divisions of the National Revolutionary Army, trained in China (not by Westerners) and led by Ma Clique Muslim generals, frightened the European observers with their appearance and fighting skills in battle. Europeans like Sven Hedin and Georg Vasel were in awe of the appearance Chinese Muslim NRA divisions made and their ferocious combat abilities. They were trained in harsh, brutal conditions. The 36th Division (National Revolutionary Army), trained entirely in China without any European help, was composed of Chinese Muslims and fought and severely mauled an invading Soviet Russian army during the Soviet Invasion of Xinjiang. The division was lacking in technology and manpower, but badly damaged the superior Russian force. |
1804_15 | The Muslim divisions of the army controlled by Muslim Gen. Ma Hongkui were reported by Western observers to be tough and disciplined. Despite having diabetes Ma Hongkui personally drilled with his troops and engaged in sword fencing during training.
When the leaders of many of the warlord and provincial armies joined with the KMT and were appointed as officers and generals, their troops joined the NRA. These armies were renamed as NRA divisions. The entire Ma Clique armies were absorbed into the NRA. When the Muslim Ma Clique General Ma Qi joined the KMT, the Ninghai Army was renamed the National Revolutionary Army 26th Division.
Unit organization
The unit organisation of the NRA is as follows: (Note that a unit is not necessarily subordinate to one immediately above it; several army regiments can be found under an army group, for example.)
The commander-in-chief of the NRA from 1925 to 1947 was Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. |
1804_16 | Military Affairs Commission
Military Region ×12 (戰區)
Army Corps ×4(兵團) – the Army Corps, 兵團, was one of the largest military formations in the NRA during the Second Sino-Japanese War. These Army Corps were composed of a number of Group Armies, Army, Corps, Divisions, Brigades and Regiments. In numbers of divisions, they were larger than Western Army groups. Only four were ever formed to command the large forces defending the Chinese capital during the Battle of Wuhan in 1938. (See Order of battle of Battle of Wuhan).
Army Group ×40 (集團軍 Group Army)
Route Army (路軍)
Field army ×30 (軍) |
1804_17 | Corps ×133 (軍團 Army Group) – usually exercised command over two to three NRA Divisions and often a number of Independent Brigades or Regiments and supporting units. The Chinese Republic had 133 Corps during the Second Sino-Japanese War. After losses in the early part of the war, under the 1938 reforms, the remaining scarce artillery and the other support formations were withdrawn from the Division and was held at Corps, or Army level or higher. The Corps became the basic tactical unit of the NRA having strength nearly equivalent to an allied Division.
Division (師)
Brigade (旅)
Regiment (團)
Battalion (營)
Company (連)
Platoon (排)
Squad (班) |
1804_18 | Dare to Die Corps
During the Xinhai Revolution and the Warlord Era of the Republic of China, "Dare to Die Corps" () were frequently used by Chinese armies. China deployed these suicide units against the Japanese during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
"Dare to Die" troops were used by warlords in their armies to conduct suicide attacks. "Dare to Die" corps continued to be used in the Chinese military. The Kuomintang used one to put down an insurrection in Canton. Many women joined them in addition to men to achieve martyrdom against China's opponents.
A "dare to die corps" was effectively used against Japanese units at the Battle of Taierzhuang. They used swords. |
1804_19 | Suicide bombing was also used against the Japanese. A Chinese soldier detonated a grenade vest and killed 20 Japanese soldiers at Sihang Warehouse. Chinese troops strapped explosives like grenade packs or dynamite to their bodies and threw themselves under Japanese tanks to blow them up. This tactic was used during the Battle of Shanghai, where a Chinese suicide bomber stopped a Japanese tank column by exploding himself beneath the lead tank, and at the Battle of Taierzhuang where dynamite and grenades were strapped on by Chinese troops who rushed at Japanese tanks and blew themselves up. In one incident at Taierzhuang, Chinese suicide bombers obliterated four Japanese tanks with grenade bundles. |
1804_20 | Penal Battalions
During the Chinese Civil War the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) was known to have used penal battalions from 1945 to 1949. A unit made up of deserters and those accused of cowardice, the penal battalion was giving such tasks as scouting ahead of the main forces to check for ambushes, crossing rivers and torrents to see whether they were fordable, and walking across unmapped minefields.
Conscription |
1804_21 | The military was formed through bloody and inhumane conscription campaigns. These are described by Rudolph Rummel as:This was a deadly affair in which men were kidnapped for the army, rounded up indiscriminately by press-gangs or army units among those on the roads or in the towns and villages, or otherwise gathered together. Many men, some the very young and old, were killed resisting or trying to escape. Once collected, they would be roped or chained together and marched, with little food or water, long distances to camp. They often died or were killed along the way, sometimes less than 50 percent reaching camp alive. Then recruit camp was no better, with hospitals resembling Nazi concentration camps like Buchenwald.
Personnel
Officers
Other ranks
Equipment |
1804_22 | For regular provincial Chinese divisions the standard rifles were the Hanyang 88 (copy of Gewehr 88). Central army divisions were typically equipped with the Chiang Kai-shek rifle and other Mauser type rifles from Germany, Belgium and Czechoslovakia. The standard light machine gun were imported or domestically produced of the Czech Brno ZB vz. 26 in the standard 7.92 mm. There were machine guns from other sources, such as Belgian, French and from the Soviet Aid Programme. In general, there were 6-9 LMG's in an infantry company, with the monthly ammunition supply being around 5,000 rounds (for 5 days consumption). Heavy machine guns were mainly locally-made Type 24 water-cooled Maxim guns (which were based on the commercial version of the German MG08), and Type Triple-Ten M1917 Browning machine guns chambered for the standard 8mm Mauser round. On average, every Central Army battalion contained a machine gun company with 5-6 heavy machine guns. They were allotted a monthly supply of |
1804_23 | 20,000 rounds. The most common sidearm for NCOs and officers was the 7.63 mm Mauser C96 semi-automatic pistol. Submachine guns were not part of any TO&E, but many were inherited from former warlord armies or locally produced. They were generally carried by the guards of divisional or corps commanders or special service platoon/companies. Some elite units, such as the X Force in Burma used Lend-Lease US equipment. |
1804_24 | Generally speaking, the regular provincial army divisions did not possess any artillery. However, some Central Army divisions were equipped with 37 mm PaK 35/36 anti-tank guns, and/or mortars from Oerlikon, Madsen, and Solothurn. Each of these infantry divisions ideally had 6 French Brandt 81 mm mortars and 6 Solothurn 20 mm autocannons. Some independent brigades and artillery regiments were equipped with Krupp 75 mm L/29 field guns, Krupp 75 mm L/14, or Bofors 75 mm L/20 mountain guns. There were also 24 Rheinmetall 150 mm L/32 sFH 18 howitzers (bought in 1934) and 24 Krupp 150 mm L/30 sFH 18 howitzers (bought in 1936). At the start of the war, the NRA and the Tax Police Regiment had three tank battalions armed with German Panzer I light tanks and CV-35 tankettes. After defeat in the Battle of Shanghai the remaining tanks, together with several hundred T-26 and BT-5 tanks acquired from the Soviet Union were reorganised into the 200th Division. |
1804_25 | Infantry uniforms were basically redesigned Zhongshan suits. Puttees were standard for soldiers and officers alike, since the primary mode of movement for NRA troops was by foot. Troops were also issued sewn field caps. The helmets were the most distinguishing characteristic of these divisions. From the moment German M35 Stahlhelms rolled off the production lines in 1935, and until 1936, the NRA imported 315,000 of these helmets, usually seen with the Blue Sky with a White Sun emblem of the ROC on the sides. These helmets were worn by both the German-trained divisions and regular Central Army divisions. Other helmets included the French Adrian helmet, the British Brodie helmet and later the American M1 helmet. Other equipment included straw shoes for soldiers (cloth shoes for Central Army), leather shoes for officers and leather boots for high-ranking officers. Every soldier was issued ammunition for his weapon, along with ammunition pouches or harness, a water flask, bayonet, food |
1804_26 | bag, and a gas mask. |
1804_27 | See also
Whampoa Military Academy
List of German-trained divisions of the National Revolutionary Army
Sino-German cooperation until 1941
Military history of the Republic of China
Douglas MacArthur
References
Bibliography
Further reading
Dreyer, Edward L. (1995) China at War 1901–1949 (reprint Routledge, 2014)
Jowett, Philip. (2013) China's Wars: Rousing the Dragon 1894–1949 (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013).
Li, Xiaobing. (2012) China at War: An Encyclopedia excerpt
Lynch, Dr Michael, The Chinese Civil War 1945–49: Modern Warfare (Guide To... Book 61) Osprey Publishing (2010),
External links
ROC Ministry of National Defense Official Website
The Armed Forces Museum of ROC
Information and pictures of Nationalist Revolutionary Army weapons and equipment
rare pictures of NRA heavy armoury
more pictures of NRA |
1804_28 | Military of the Republic of China
Kuomintang
Military history of the Republic of China (1912–1949)
Military wings of nationalist parties
Military units and formations established in 1925
1925 establishments in China
1920s in China
1930s in China
1940s in China |
1805_0 | Solution of triangles () is the main trigonometric problem of finding the characteristics of a triangle (angles and lengths of sides), when some of these are known. The triangle can be located on a plane or on a sphere. Applications requiring triangle solutions include geodesy, astronomy, construction, and navigation.
Solving plane triangles
A general form triangle has six main characteristics (see picture): three linear (side lengths ) and three angular (). The classical plane trigonometry problem is to specify three of the six characteristics and determine the other three. A triangle can be uniquely determined in this sense when given any of the following:
Three sides (SSS)
Two sides and the included angle (SAS)
Two sides and an angle not included between them (SSA), if the side length adjacent to the angle is shorter than the other side length.
A side and the two angles adjacent to it (ASA)
A side, the angle opposite to it and an angle adjacent to it (AAS). |
1805_1 | For all cases in the plane, at least one of the side lengths must be specified. If only the angles are given, the side lengths cannot be determined, because any similar triangle is a solution.
Trigonomic relations
The standard method of solving the problem is to use fundamental relations.
Law of cosines
Law of sines
Sum of angles
Law of tangents
There are other (sometimes practically useful) universal relations: the law of cotangents and Mollweide's formula. |
1805_2 | Notes
To find an unknown angle, the law of cosines is safer than the law of sines. The reason is that the value of sine for the angle of the triangle does not uniquely determine this angle. For example, if , the angle can equal either 30° or 150°. Using the law of cosines avoids this problem: within the interval from 0° to 180° the cosine value unambiguously determines its angle. On the other hand, if the angle is small (or close to 180°), then it is more robust numerically to determine it from its sine than its cosine because the arc-cosine function has a divergent derivative at 1 (or −1).
We assume that the relative position of specified characteristics is known. If not, the mirror reflection of the triangle will also be a solution. For example, three side lengths uniquely define either a triangle or its reflection.
Three sides given (SSS)
Let three side lengths be specified. To find the angles , the law of cosines can be used:
Then angle . |
1805_3 | Some sources recommend to find angle from the law of sines but (as Note 1 above states) there is a risk of confusing an acute angle value with an obtuse one.
Another method of calculating the angles from known sides is to apply the law of cotangents.
Two sides and the included angle given (SAS)
Here the lengths of sides and the angle between these sides are known. The third side can be determined from the law of cosines:
Now we use law of cosines to find the second angle:
Finally, .
Two sides and non-included angle given (SSA)
This case is not solvable in all cases; a solution is guaranteed to be unique only if the side length adjacent to the angle is shorter than the other side length. Assume that two sides and the angle are known. The equation for the angle can be implied from the law of sines: |
1805_4 | We denote further (the equation's right side). There are four possible cases:
If , no such triangle exists because the side does not reach line . For the same reason a solution does not exist if the angle and .
If , a unique solution exists: , i.e., the triangle is right-angled.
If two alternatives are possible.
If , then (the larger side corresponds to a larger angle). Since no triangle can have two obtuse angles, is an acute angle and the solution is unique.
If , the angle may be acute: or obtuse: . The figure on right shows the point , the side and the angle as the first solution, and the point , side and the angle as the second solution.
Once is obtained, the third angle .
The third side can then be found from the law of sines:
or from the law of cosines:
A side and two adjacent angles given (ASA)
The known characteristics are the side and the angles . The third angle .
Two unknown sides can be calculated from the law of sines:
or |
1805_5 | A side, one adjacent angle and the opposite angle given (AAS)
The procedure for solving an AAS triangle is same as that for an ASA triangle: First, find the third angle by using the angle sum property of a triangle, then find the other two sides using the law of sines.
Other given lengths
In many cases, triangles can be solved given three pieces of information some of which are the lengths of the triangle's medians, altitudes, or angle bisectors. Posamentier and Lehmann list the results for the question of solvability using no higher than square roots (i.e., constructibility) for each of the 95 distinct cases; 63 of these are constructible.
Solving spherical triangles |
1805_6 | The general spherical triangle is fully determined by three of its six characteristics (3 sides and 3 angles). The lengths of the sides of a spherical triangle are their central angles, measured in angular units rather than linear units. (On a unit sphere, the angle (in radians) and length around the sphere are numerically the same. On other spheres, the angle (in radians) is equal to the length around the sphere divided by the radius.)
Spherical geometry differs from planar Euclidean geometry, so the solution of spherical triangles is built on different rules. For example, the sum of the three angles depends on the size of the triangle. In addition, similar triangles cannot be unequal, so the problem of constructing a triangle with specified three angles has a unique solution. The basic relations used to solve a problem are similar to those of the planar case: see Spherical law of cosines and Spherical law of sines. |
1805_7 | Among other relationships that may be useful are the half-side formula and Napier's analogies:
Three sides given (spherical SSS)
Known: the sides (in angular units). The triangle's angles are computed using the spherical law of cosines:
Two sides and the included angle given (spherical SAS)
Known: the sides and the angle between them. The side can be found from the spherical law of cosines:
The angles can be calculated as above, or by using Napier's analogies:
This problem arises in the navigation problem of finding the great circle between two points on the earth specified by their latitude and longitude; in this application, it is important to use formulas which are not susceptible to round-off errors. For this purpose, the following formulas (which may be derived using vector algebra) can be used:
where the signs of the numerators and denominators in these expressions should be used to determine the quadrant of the arctangent. |
1805_8 | Two sides and non-included angle given (spherical SSA)
This problem is not solvable in all cases; a solution is guaranteed to be unique only if the side length adjacent to the angle is shorter than the other side length. Known: the sides and the angle not between them. A solution exists if the following condition holds:
The angle can be found from the spherical law of sines:
As for the plane case, if then there are two solutions: and .
We can find other characteristics by using Napier's analogies:
A side and two adjacent angles given (spherical ASA)
Known: the side and the angles . First we determine the angle using the spherical law of cosines:
We can find the two unknown sides from the spherical law of cosines (using the calculated angle ):
or by using Napier's analogies:
A side, one adjacent angle and the opposite angle given (spherical AAS)
Known: the side and the angles . The side can be found from the spherical law of sines: |
1805_9 | If the angle for the side is acute and , another solution exists:
We can find other characteristics by using Napier's analogies:
Three angles given (spherical AAA)
Known: the angles . From the spherical law of cosines we infer:
Solving right-angled spherical triangles
The above algorithms become much simpler if one of the angles of a triangle (for example, the angle ) is the right angle. Such a spherical triangle is fully defined by its two elements, and the other three can be calculated using Napier's Pentagon or the following relations.
(from the spherical law of sines)
(from the spherical law of cosines)
(also from the spherical law of cosines)
Some applications
Triangulation
If one wants to measure the distance from shore to a remote ship via triangulation, one marks on the shore two points with known distance between them (the baseline). Let be the angles between the baseline and the direction to the ship. |
1805_10 | From the formulae above (ASA case, assuming planar geometry) one can compute the distance as the triangle height:
For the spherical case, one can first compute the length of side from the point at to the ship (i.e. the side opposite to ) via the ASA formula
and insert this into the AAS formula for the right subtriangle that contains the angle and the sides and :
(The planar formula is actually the first term of the Taylor expansion of of the spherical solution in powers of .)
This method is used in cabotage. The angles are defined by observation of familiar landmarks from the ship.
As another example, if one wants to measure the height of a mountain or a high building, the angles from two ground points to the top are specified. Let be the distance between these points. From the same ASA case formulas we obtain:
The distance between two points on the globe |
1805_11 | To calculate the distance between two points on the globe,
Point A: latitude , longitude , and
Point B: latitude , longitude
we consider the spherical triangle , where is the North Pole. Some characteristics are:
If two sides and the included angle given, we obtain from the formulas
Here is the Earth's radius.
See also
Congruence
Hansen's problem
Hinge theorem
Lénárt sphere
Snellius–Pothenot problem
References |
1805_12 | External links
Trigonometric Delights, by Eli Maor, Princeton University Press, 1998. Ebook version, in PDF format, full text presented.
Trigonometry by Alfred Monroe Kenyon and Louis Ingold, The Macmillan Company, 1914. In images, full text presented. Google book.
Spherical trigonometry on Math World.
Intro to Spherical Trig. Includes discussion of The Napier circle and Napier's rules
Spherical Trigonometry — for the use of colleges and schools by I. Todhunter, M.A., F.R.S. Historical Math Monograph posted by Cornell University Library.
Triangulator – Triangle solver. Solve any plane triangle problem with the minimum of input data. Drawing of the solved triangle.
TriSph – Free software to solve the spherical triangles, configurable to different practical applications and configured for gnomonic.
Spherical Triangle Calculator – Solves spherical triangles.
TrianCal – Triangles solver by Jesus S.
Spherical trigonometry
Triangle problems
Trigonometry |
1805_13 | de:Dreieck#Berechnung eines beliebigen Dreiecks |
1806_0 | Elizabeth Seymour ( – 19 March 1568) was a younger daughter of Sir John Seymour of Wulfhall, Wiltshire and Margery Wentworth. Elizabeth and her sister Jane served in the household of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII. In his quest for a male heir, the king had divorced his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, whose only surviving child was a daughter, Mary. His marriage to Anne Boleyn had also resulted in a single daughter, Elizabeth. The queen's miscarriage of a son in January 1536 sealed her fate. The king, convinced that Anne could never give him male children, increasingly infatuated with Jane Seymour, and encouraged by the queen's enemies, was determined to replace her. The Seymours rose to prominence after the king's attention turned to Jane. |
1806_1 | In May 1536, Anne Boleyn was accused of treason and adultery with Mark Smeaton, a court musician, the courtiers Henry Norris, Sir Francis Weston, William Brereton and her brother, George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford.
The trials and executions of the queen and her co-accused followed swiftly, and on 30 May 1536, eleven days after Anne's execution, Henry VIII and Jane were married. Elizabeth was not included in her sister's household during her brief reign, although she would serve two of Henry VIII's later wives, Anne of Cleves and Catherine Howard. Jane died 24 October 1537, twelve days after giving birth to a healthy son, Edward VI. |
1806_2 | Elizabeth lived under four Tudor monarchs and was married three times. By July 1530 she had married Sir Anthony Ughtred, Governor of Jersey, who died in 1534. She then married Gregory Cromwell, 1st Baron Cromwell, the son of Thomas Cromwell, chief minister to Henry VIII in 1537, who died in 1551. She married her third and last husband, Sir John Paulet, later Lord St. John, the son of William Paulet, 1st Marquess of Winchester in 1554. |
1806_3 | Seymour family
The Seymour family took its name from St. Maur-sur-Loire in Touraine. William de St. Maur in 1240 held the manors of Penhow and Woundy (now called Undy in Monmouthshire). William's great-grandson, Sir Roger de St. Maur, had two sons: John, whose granddaughter conveyed these manors by marriage into the family of Bowlay of Penhow, who bore the Seymour arms; and Sir Roger ( – Bef. 1366), who married Cicely, eldest sister and heir of John de Beauchamp, 3rd Baron Beauchamp. Cicely brought to the Seymours the manor of Hache, Somerset, and her grandson, Roger Seymour, by his marriage with Maud, daughter and heir of Sir William Esturmy, acquired Wolf Hall in Wiltshire. Elizabeth's father, Sir John Seymour, was a great-great-grandson of this Roger Seymour. |
1806_4 | Sir John Seymour was born in 1474. He succeeded his father in 1492, was knighted by Henry VII for his services against the Cornish rebels at Blackheath in 1497, and was sheriff of Wiltshire in 1508. He was present at the sieges of Thérouanne and Tournay in 1513, at the two interviews between Henry VIII and Francis I in 1520 and 1532, and died on 21 December 1536.
He married Margery, the daughter of Sir Henry Wentworth of Nettlestead, Suffolk, and his wife Anne Say. Anne was the daughter of Sir John Say and his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Lawrence Cheney (or Cheyne) ( – 1461) and Elizabeth Cokayne. Margery Wentworth's grandfather, Sir Philip Wentworth, had married Mary, daughter of John Clifford, 7th Baron de Clifford, whose mother Elizabeth was daughter of Henry Percy (Hotspur) and great-great-granddaughter of Edward III. |
1806_5 | Sir John Seymour (1474 – 21 December 1536), of Wulfhall, Savernake, Wiltshire, and Margery Wentworth ( – ) were married 22 October 1494. The couple had ten children:
John Seymour (died 15 July 1510)
Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, Lord Protector of Edward VI (/1506 – 22 January 1552) married firstly Catherine, daughter of Sir William Fillol, and secondly Anne, daughter of Sir Edward Stanhope.
Sir Henry Seymour (1503 – 1578) married Barbara, daughter of Morgan Wolfe
Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley ( – 20 March 1549) married Catherine Parr, widow of Henry VIII
John Seymour (died young)
Anthony Seymour (died )
Jane Seymour, queen Consort of Henry VIII ( – 24 October 1537)
Margery Seymour (died )
Elizabeth Seymour ( – 19 Mar 1568)
Dorothy Seymour ( – 4 January 1574) married firstly, Sir Clement Smith ( – 26 August 1552) of Little Baddow, Essex and secondly, Thomas Leventhorpe of Shingle Hall, Hertfordshire. |
1806_6 | Of the ten children born at Wulfhall, six survived:– three sons: Edward, Henry and Thomas, and three daughters: Jane, Elizabeth and Dorothy. Edward, Thomas, Jane and Elizabeth were courtiers. Edward and Thomas were both executed during the reign of Edward VI. Henry Seymour, who did not share his brothers' ambition, escaped their fate.
Early life
Elizabeth Seymour was probably born at Wulfhall around 1518. Her letters to Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII show that she was both intelligent and astute. She was also skilled in needlework. She played a brief but prominent role in the 1530s and 1540s, during the rise to power of her father-in-law, Thomas Cromwell, and her brother, Edward. Elizabeth and her sister, Jane, served in the household of Henry VIII's second wife, Anne Boleyn, their second cousin. She married three times and by her first two marriages had seven children. She is best known as the wife of Gregory Cromwell.
First marriage |
1806_7 | By July 1530, Elizabeth had married, as his second wife, Sir Anthony Ughtred, of Kexby, Yorkshire.
The couple had two children:
Sir Henry Ughtred, ( – 1599), born at Mont Orgueil, Jersey, married Elizabeth, daughter to John Paulet, Lord St. John and his first wife Elizabeth Willoughby and the widow of Sir William Courtenay. After his wife's death in 1576, Henry remarried, however the identity of his second wife is not recorded.
Margery Ughtred, () married William Hungate of Burnby, Yorkshire.
In January 1531, Henry VIII granted the couple the manors of Lepington and Kexby (Yorkshire), previously held by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. She was well-placed at court, in the service of Anne Boleyn, to support her husband's interests. In August 1532, when the pro-Boleyn Sir Anthony Ughtred was appointed captain and Governor of Jersey, it was almost certainly due to the influence of Anne Boleyn. He served in person, and remained in the post until his death. |
1806_8 | Sir Anthony Ughtred died 6 October 1534 in Jersey, and was buried in the chapel of St George, in the castle of Mont Orgueil. After her husband's death, Elizabeth returned to Kexby, Yorkshire where her daughter, Margery was probably born. Her one-year-old son, Henry, remained on the island for a time, in the care of Helier de Carteret, Bailiff of Jersey.
The Queen's sister
When Anne Boleyn failed to produce a male heir after almost three years of marriage, the able and ambitious Edward Seymour and his family, gained wealth and power as Jane supplanted Anne in the king's affections. In March 1536, Edward was made a gentleman of the privy chamber, and a few days later, he and his wife Anne together with his sister Jane, were lodged at the palace at Greenwich in apartments which the king could reach through a private passage. |
1806_9 | In May 1536, accused of treason, incest and plotting the king's death, Anne was imprisoned in the Tower, awaiting her trial. Jane Seymour resided with members of her family, first at the home of Sir Nicholas Carew in Surrey and then moved closer to the king, to a house at Chelsea, formerly owned by Thomas More. While the king's second wife prepared for her execution, Jane was planning her wedding, "splendidly served by the King's cook and other officers" and "most richly dressed". On 30 May 1536, eleven days after Anne Boleyn's execution, Henry VIII and Jane were married. On 5 June, a week after his sister's marriage to the king, Edward Seymour was created Viscount Beauchamp. Two days later he received a grant of numerous manors in Wiltshire, including Ambresbury, Easton Priory, Chippenham, and Maiden Bradley. On 7 July he was made governor and captain of Jersey, and in August, chancellor of North Wales. He had livery of his father's lands in the following year, was on 30 January |
1806_10 | granted the manor of Muchelney, Somerset, and on 22 May sworn of the privy council. In the same month he was on the commission appointed to try Lords Darcy and Hussey for their role in the pilgrimage of grace. On 15 October he carried Princess Elizabeth at Edward VI's christening, and 18 October was created Earl of Hertford. Thomas Seymour was also made a gentleman of the privy chamber in 1536, and knighted 18 October of the same year. He was made captain of the Sweepstake in 1537. |
1806_11 | When Henry VIII sought to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn, Jane, who had previously served in Catherine's household, had remained loyal to her and her daughter, Mary. Elizabeth and her first husband, Sir Anthony Ughtred had supported Anne Boleyn and benefited from her rise. It is not surprising therefore, that she was not included in the new queen's household. There is no evidence that Elizabeth benefited directly from her sister's royal status, before the news of a royal pregnancy became public knowledge in 1537. The impending birth of an heir to the throne would dramatically increase her value as a potential bride. |
1806_12 | On 18 March 1537, then a young widow of reduced means, residing in York, Elizabeth had written to Thomas Cromwell, then Baron Cromwell, who had previously offered to help her, if she was ever in need. She had hoped to "be holpen to obtain of the king's grace to be farmer of one of these abbeys if they fortune to go down ..." Cromwell, probably encouraged by Edward Seymour, proposed instead that she marry his only son and heir, Gregory. By June, it appears that Cromwell's offer had been accepted. Arthur Darcy, the son of Thomas Darcy, 1st Baron Darcy de Darcy, assured her that "I would have been glad to have had you likewise, but sure it is, as I said, that some southern lord shall make you forget the North."
Second marriage |
1806_13 | On 3 August 1537, Elizabeth married Gregory Cromwell at Mortlake. Edward Seymour, then Viscount Beauchamp wrote to Cromwell on 2 September 1537, to know how he has fared since the writer's departure. Wishes Cromwell were with him, when he should have had the best sport with bow, hounds, and hawks and sends commendations to his brother-in-law and sister, adding: "and I pray God to send me by them shortly a nephew." |
1806_14 | The couple had five children:
Henry Cromwell, 2nd Baron Cromwell, (before 1 March 1538 – 16 December 1592), married Mary, (died 1592), the daughter of John Paulet, Lord St. John and his first wife Elizabeth Willoughby.
Edward Cromwell, (1539 – ?) died young
Thomas Cromwell, ( – died between February 1610 and April 1611), married 18 August 1580, Katherine (died before 1 August 1616), daughter of Thomas Gardner of Coxford.
Katherine Cromwell, ( – ?), probably named after Queen Catherine Howard, married John Strode of Parnham, Dorset
Frances Cromwell, ( – 7 February 1562), married Richard Strode of Newnham, Devon. |
1806_15 | On 12 November, three months after their wedding, Elizabeth and Gregory took part in the queen's funeral procession. Jane's death on 24 October, after being delivered of the king's longed-for son, naturally came as a blow to the Seymour family. It proved to be a setback to Edward Seymour's influence. He was described in the following year as "young and wise," but "of small power". The death of the queen would have disastrous consequences for Thomas Cromwell.
The couple's first child, Henry was born in 1538, shortly before their arrival at Lewes Priory in Sussex, recently acquired by Thomas Cromwell, where they resided until early 1539. Another son, Edward, followed in 1539, who may have been born, at Leeds Castle in Kent. |
1806_16 | Gregory Cromwell appears to have been devoted to his wife and children. In December 1539, while in Calais waiting to welcome Henry VIII's new bride, Anne of Cleves, he wrote to his wife at Leeds Castle, addressing her as his "loving bedfellow", describing the arrival of Anne of Cleves, and requesting news "as well of yourself as also my little boys, of whose increase and towardness be you assured I am not a little desirous to be advertised".
In January 1540, Elizabeth was appointed to the household of the new Queen, Anne of Cleves.
Thomas Cromwell was created Earl of Essex on 17 April, and his son, Gregory assumed the courtesy title of Lord Cromwell In May, Lady Cromwell watched her husband compete in the May Day jousts at the Palace of Westminster and afterwards feasted with the queen and her ladies. Anne of Cleves would not remain as queen for long, however, as the mercurial Henry VIII wanted a divorce. |
1806_17 | Thomas Cromwell was at the height of his ascendancy, however his political enemies were gaining ground and his time in power would soon come to an end. He was arrested at a council meeting at 3.00 p.m. on the afternoon of 10 June 1540, accused of treason and heresy, taken to the Tower and his possessions seized. He was condemned without a trial and his sentence was later confirmed by an act of attainder. There are no surviving records of Gregory and Elizabeth's whereabouts at this time.
Thomas Cromwell wrote a desperate letter from the tower to the king to plead his innocence and appealed to him to be merciful to his son and the rest of his family.
Elizabeth also wrote to Henry VIII, to assure him of her loyalty and that of her husband: |
1806_18 | This undated letter is placed at the end of July 1540 in Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII. It was probably written while Thomas Cromwell was imprisoned in the Tower, as Elizabeth refers to her father-in-law, and not her late father-in-law. Moreover, it was customary at that time to write "may his soul God pardon" or something similar when referring to someone who had recently died, which she did not do. The letter was almost certainly written on the advice of her brother, Edward.
Thomas Cromwell was beheaded on Tower Hill on 28 July 1540, the same day as the king's marriage to Catherine Howard. He was buried in an unmarked grave in the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula in the Tower. It is unknown if Gregory and his family were present at his execution or burial. |
1806_19 | Gregory and Elizabeth were not implicated, although it would be almost six months before their desperate situation was to be resolved. They had been dependants of Thomas Cromwell, with no home and little income of their own, and would have had to rely on the generosity of family and friends. The king was inclined to be generous and Elizabeth was included in the future queen Catherine Howard's household as one of her attendant ladies.
On 18 December 1540, less than five months after his father's execution, Gregory Cromwell was created Baron Cromwell by letters patent, and summoned to Parliament as a peer of the realm. This title was a new creation, rather than a restoration of his father's forfeited barony. The following February he received a royal grant of lands that had been owned by his late father. |
1806_20 | At the coronation of King Edward VI, on 20 February 1547, Elizabeth's husband and her brother, Henry were invested as Knights of the Order of the Bath.– Her brother, Thomas was found guilty of treason and executed 20 March 1549.
Elizabeth became a widow again upon the death of Gregory Cromwell from sweating sickness in 1551. He died at Launde Abbey 4 July 1551 and was buried three days later in the chapel at Launde. In London, Henry Machyn recorded the events in his diary:
Gregory lies buried under a magnificent monument in the chapel at Launde. The initials "E C" can be seen in the intricate entablature beneath the pediment. |
1806_21 | Edward, Duke of Somerset, who had always been a constant source of support to his sister, Elizabeth, went to the block 22 January 1552 and his wife, remained in the Tower. Since he had been found guilty of the lesser charge of felony, and not for treason, his lands and dignities were not thereby affected, however an act of parliament was passed on 12 April 1552 declaring them forfeited and confirming his attainder. In May, his four younger daughters were placed in Elizabeth's care. She was granted 100 marks for the provision and education of each of her nieces per year, as well as the lease of her minor son's house of Launde Abbey, by way of an inducement. However, by October, the arrangement was placing the widow under a considerable strain. On 25 October 1552, she wrote to her friend, Sir William Cecil, of the Privy Council, requesting to be relieved of her troublesome nieces, who did not take her advice "in such good part as my good meaning was, nor according to my expectation in |
1806_22 | them". Her husband's family were all dead, her own surviving family did not live nearby, and she no longer had the support of her husband or her brother, Edward. She reminded Cecil that she had no near relations who could give her advice. Her pleas fell on deaf ears and her nieces would remain with her until their mother, Anne, Duchess of Somerset, was released from the Tower by Mary I in August 1553. |
1806_23 | Third marriage
Between 10 March and 24 April 1554, Elizabeth married, as his second wife, Sir John Paulet, later Lord St. John, who outlived her. There were no children by this marriage. Elizabeth's two eldest sons married John Paulet's daughters. Henry Ughtred married the widowed Elizabeth after 1557 and Henry Cromwell married Mary sometime before 1560. Details of her later life remain obscure, however she and her husband appear in the records from time to time in matters relating to her son, Henry Cromwell's minority and suits for the continuation of royal grants at the commencement of each new reign.
Death
Elizabeth died 19 March 1568, and was buried 5 April in St. Mary's Church, Basing, Hampshire. John Paulet, Lord St. John married, before 30 September 1568, Winifred, widow of Sir Richard Sackville, and daughter of John Brydges, a former Lord Mayor of London. He succeeded his father as Marquess of Winchester in 1572. |
1806_24 | Arms of Seymour
In the Seymour arms, an augmentation of honour was granted to Edward Seymour, Viscount Beauchamp, (later Earl of Hertford and Duke of Somerset), following Henry VIII's marriage to Jane Seymour: Or, on a pile gules between six fleurs-de-lys azure three lions of England. Note the six fleurs-de-lis on the lady's left sleeve in the Holbein portrait at the head of the page.
Portraits
In 1909 British art historian, Sir Lionel Cust, then Director of the National Portrait Gallery in London, identified a portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger that had belonged to the Cromwell family for centuries as a likeness of Queen Catherine Howard. Inscribed ETATIS SVÆ 21, indicating that the sitter was depicted at the age of twenty-one, the portrait has long been associated with Henry VIII's young queen, but the lady is now thought to be a member of the Cromwell family. |
1806_25 | The portrait shown on this page, dated circa 1535–1540, is exhibited at the Toledo Museum of Art as Portrait of a Lady, probably a Member of the Cromwell Family (1926.57). A sixteenth-century version of the portrait, at Hever Castle in Kent, is exhibited as Portrait of a Lady, thought to be Catherine Howard. The National Portrait Gallery exhibits a similar painting, Unknown woman, formerly known as Catherine Howard (NPG 1119), dating from the late seventeenth century. |
1806_26 | Art historian Sir Roy Strong, following the lead of Charles Kingsley Adams, noted that both the Toledo portrait and the National Portrait Gallery version appear in the context of a series of portraits of members of the family of the Protector's uncle, Sir Oliver Cromwell (–1655), and have provenances linking them with the Cromwell family. He argued that the portrait in the Toledo Museum of Art, "should by rights depict a lady of the Cromwell family aged 21 c.1535–40" and suggested that the lady might be Elizabeth Seymour, wife of Gregory Cromwell, 1st Baron Cromwell, son of Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex. He stated that a "dated parallel for costume, notably the distinctive cut of the sleeves, is Holbein's Christina of Denmark of 1538." Herbert Norris claimed that the sitter is wearing a sleeve which follows a style set by Anne of Cleves, which would date the portrait to after 6 January 1540, when Anne's marriage to Henry VIII took place. |
1806_27 | Historians Antonia Fraser and Derek Wilson believe that the portrait is very likely to depict Elizabeth Seymour. Antonia Fraser has argued that the sitter is Jane Seymour's sister, Elizabeth, the widow of Sir Anthony Ughtred (d. 1534), on the grounds that the lady bears a resemblance to Jane, especially around the nose and chin, and wears widow's black. The lady's sumptuous black clothing, an indication of wealth and status, did not necessarily signify mourning; her jewellery suggests otherwise. Derek Wilson observed that "In August 1537 Cromwell succeeded in marrying his son, Gregory, to Elizabeth Seymour", the queen's younger sister. He was therefore related by marriage to the king, "an event worth recording for posterity, by a portrait of his daughter-in-law".
Lineage
References
Attribution
Bibliography
at HathiTrust
External links |
1806_28 | Teri Fitzgerald, All that Glitters: Hans Holbein's Lady of the Cromwell Family
Portrait of a Lady, probably a Member of the Cromwell Family at the Toledo Museum of Art
Unknown Woman, Formerly Known as Catherine Howard at the National Portrait Gallery, London
St Mary's Church, Basing Paulet monuments
Letter from Gregory Cromwell to his wife
Elizabeth, Lady Ughtred's letters to Thomas Cromwell
Elizabeth, Lady Cromwell's letter to Henry VIII
1518 births
1568 deaths
16th-century English women
Ladies of the Privy Chamber
English baronesses
Elizabeth Seymour, Baroness Cromwell
Wives of knights
Elizabeth
Year of birth uncertain
Burials at St. Mary's Church, Old Basing
Household of Anne Boleyn |
1807_0 | Devan Bracci-Selvey was a 14-year-old ninth-grade student at Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School who was stabbed to death outside the school by a fellow student in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, on 7 October 2019. |
1807_1 | Incident |
1807_2 | Bracci-Selvey's mother had driven to the school to pick up her son around 1:30PM after he called to say that a student he believed had stolen his bike was near school property. Devan's friends father arrived at Parkdale arena and confronted a group of teenagers and ripped the backpack off of one of the students. The student responded by spraying the man with what is believed to have been bear mace. Devan's mother then arrived to further escalate the situation. The adults in the situation did nothing to de-escalate the situation. Devan pursued a boy, holding a knife, while his mother followed closely in her vehicle. At no point did Devan attempt to get away from the situation, and instead continued to pursue an 18-year-old boy threateningly. A 16-year-old girl repeatedly taunted Bracci-Selvey demanding he hit her, to which he replied, "I can’t hit you, I wasn’t raised that way." There is no proof that this actually happened, but it is what Selvey's mother alleges. Bracci-Selvey |
1807_3 | attempted to rush over to enter her vehicle, according to his mother, but was stabbed from behind by a single perpetrator, one who did not know Devan personally and had never bullied him or stolen his bike, according to the court's agreed-upon facts. The boy who stabbed Bracci-Selvey believed his brother was in danger, as Selvey had been pursuing him with a knife for several blocks |
1807_4 | The victim
Devan Bracci-Selvey was 14 years old at the time of his death, and went to Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School, where he was in the ninth-grade. |
1807_5 | Devan's sister wrote on a GoFundMe fundraiser for his funeral that her brother was a "shy, quiet, [helpful] kid who had tried get help with the bullying he was experiencing." Devan was fond of cars, video games, and animals, had dreams of becoming a mechanic, and was excited to become an uncle for the second time. Devan, as per his mother, "protected everybody" and never hesitated to stick up for friends when they were being harassed. Citing the age of the victim and suspects as well as an ongoing investigation, police would not comment on nor confirm speculation and reports surrounding possible motives and the nature of the confirmed "existing relationship" between the victim and the accused. Relatives, including the boy's mother, who spoke to Global News and CP24, confirmed Devan was relentlessly bullied since beginning high school a month earlier, and their concerns were dismissed by school officials who deemed there was "insufficient evidence to take action." Devan had begun |
1807_6 | skipping classes, attending school part-time before calling home asking to be picked up, or refusing to go to school in the mornings as a result of the bullying. |
1807_7 | Arrests and sentencing
Two brothers, a 14-year-old and an 18-year-old, were arrested after the incident and later charged with first-degree murder following a preliminary investigation by Hamilton Police Service. A third individual was arrested but "was interviewed and later released unconditionally once [their] involvement in the investigation was established." On October 8, 2019, police had announced a 16-year-old male and a 16-year-old female, outstanding suspects, were also arrested and taken into custody on suspicion of first-degree murder. On October 9, 2019, both were released without charge after being questioned lengthily about the homicide. Detective-Sergeant Steve Bereziuk noted in a media release that "based on evidence there is some element of pre-planning […] and premeditation [involved with] this homicide."
In August 2020, the 18-year-old suspect received a suspended sentence with 15 months on probation. The family of the victim was not satisfied with the sentence. |
1807_8 | Response |
1807_9 | A crisis response intervention team, social workers, police liaison officers, wellness counsellors, and extra staff support for teachers and administrators were sent to the school following the incident. As public frustration and anger grew against the perceived inaction of the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB) leading up to the incident, Director of Education Manny Figueiredo advised CBC News that "an investigation into what happened [would] get underway once the police investigation wraps [up]." After the stabbing, Figueiredo felt the school was still "the safest place for a kid to be right now [as] a lot of [students] want to be together, they want to be with their friends and talk and make sense and deal with their grief" even as many parents kept their children home from school in the days after the stabbing. When pressed specifically on the bullying Bracci-Selvey endured and what the school did in response, Figueiredo said he was not aware of what led up to the |
1807_10 | violence and instead advocated for a community-oriented response: "The schools don't live in isolation of the community... they need to take a leadership role [when it comes to bullying] because we have these students for five hours a day. We have to continue to engage our kids...if a kid turns to us, how are we responding so they see that it's safe to respond?" Figueiredo encouraged students who do not feel safe, or have not felt safe in the past, to raise their concerns with adults. |
1807_11 | References
2010s murders in Canada
October 2019 crimes in North America
October 2019 events in Canada
Deaths by stabbing in Canada
Incidents of violence against boys
2019 in Ontario |
1808_0 | A financial crisis is any of a broad variety of situations in which some financial assets suddenly lose a large part of their nominal value. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many financial crises were associated with banking panics, and many recessions coincided with these panics. Other situations that are often called financial crises include stock market crashes and the bursting of other financial bubbles, currency crises, and sovereign defaults. Financial crises directly result in a loss of paper wealth but do not necessarily result in significant changes in the real economy (e.g. the crisis resulting from the famous tulip mania bubble in the 17th century).
Many economists have offered theories about how financial crises develop and how they could be prevented. There is no consensus, however, and financial crises continue to occur from time to time.
Types
Banking crisis |
1808_1 | When a bank suffers a sudden rush of withdrawals by depositors, this is called a bank run. Since banks lend out most of the cash they receive in deposits (see fractional-reserve banking), it is difficult for them to quickly pay back all deposits if these are suddenly demanded, so a run renders the bank insolvent, causing customers to lose their deposits, to the extent that they are not covered by deposit insurance. An event in which bank runs are widespread is called a systemic banking crisis or banking panic.
Examples of bank runs include the run on the Bank of the United States in 1931 and the run on Northern Rock in 2007. Banking crises generally occur after periods of risky lending and resulting loan defaults.
Currency crisis |
1808_2 | A currency crisis, also called a devaluation crisis, is normally considered as part of a financial crisis. Kaminsky et al. (1998), for instance, define currency crises as occurring when a weighted average of monthly percentage depreciations in the exchange rate and monthly percentage declines in exchange reserves exceeds its mean by more than three standard deviations. Frankel and Rose (1996) define a currency crisis as a nominal depreciation of a currency of at least 25% but it is also defined as at least a 10% increase in the rate of depreciation. In general, a currency crisis can be defined as a situation when the participants in an exchange market come to recognize that a pegged exchange rate is about to fail, causing speculation against the peg that hastens the failure and forces a devaluation.
Speculative bubbles and crashes |
1808_3 | A speculative bubble exists in the event of large, sustained overpricing of some class of assets. One factor that frequently contributes to a bubble is the presence of buyers who purchase an asset based solely on the expectation that they can later resell it at a higher price, rather than calculating the income it will generate in the future. If there is a bubble, there is also a risk of a crash in asset prices: market participants will go on buying only as long as they expect others to buy, and when many decide to sell the price will fall. However, it is difficult to predict whether an asset's price actually equals its fundamental value, so it is hard to detect bubbles reliably. Some economists insist that bubbles never or almost never occur. |
1808_4 | Well-known examples of bubbles (or purported bubbles) and crashes in stock prices and other asset prices include the 17th century Dutch tulip mania, the 18th century South Sea Bubble, the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the Japanese property bubble of the 1980s, the crash of the United States housing bubble during 2006-2008. The 2000s sparked a real estate bubble where housing prices were increasing significantly as an asset good.
International financial crisis |
1808_5 | When a country that maintains a fixed exchange rate is suddenly forced to devalue its currency due to accruing an unsustainable current account deficit, this is called a currency crisis or balance of payments crisis. When a country fails to pay back its sovereign debt, this is called a sovereign default. While devaluation and default could both be voluntary decisions of the government, they are often perceived to be the involuntary results of a change in investor sentiment that leads to a sudden stop in capital inflows or a sudden increase in capital flight.
Several currencies that formed part of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism suffered crises in 1992–93 and were forced to devalue or withdraw from the mechanism. Another round of currency crises took place in Asia in 1997–98. Many Latin American countries defaulted on their debt in the early 1980s. The 1998 Russian financial crisis resulted in a devaluation of the ruble and default on Russian government bonds. |
1808_6 | Wider economic crisis
Negative GDP growth lasting two or more quarters is called a recession. An especially prolonged or severe recession may be called a depression, while a long period of slow but not necessarily negative growth is sometimes called economic stagnation. |
1808_7 | Some economists argue that many recessions have been caused in large part by financial crises. One important example is the Great Depression, which was preceded in many countries by bank runs and stock market crashes. The subprime mortgage crisis and the bursting of other real estate bubbles around the world also led to recession in the U.S. and a number of other countries in late 2008 and 2009.
Some economists argue that financial crises are caused by recessions instead of the other way around, and that even where a financial crisis is the initial shock that sets off a recession, other factors may be more important in prolonging the recession. In particular, Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz argued that the initial economic decline associated with the crash of 1929 and the bank panics of the 1930s would not have turned into a prolonged depression if it had not been reinforced by monetary policy mistakes on the part of the Federal Reserve, a position supported by Ben Bernanke. |
1808_8 | Causes and consequences
Strategic complementarities in financial markets
It is often observed that successful investment requires each investor in a financial market to guess what other investors will do. George Soros has called this need to guess the intentions of others 'reflexivity'. Similarly, John Maynard Keynes compared financial markets to a beauty contest game in which each participant tries to predict which model other participants will consider most beautiful.
Furthermore, in many cases, investors have incentives to coordinate their choices. For example, someone who thinks other investors want to heavily buy Japanese yen may expect the yen to rise in value, and therefore has an incentive to buy yen, too. Likewise, a depositor in IndyMac Bank who expects other depositors to withdraw their funds may expect the bank to fail, and therefore has an incentive to withdraw, too. Economists call an incentive to mimic the strategies of others strategic complementarity. |
1808_9 | It has been argued that if people or firms have a sufficiently strong incentive to do the same thing they expect others to do, then self-fulfilling prophecies may occur. For example, if investors expect the value of the yen to rise, this may cause its value to rise; if depositors expect a bank to fail this may cause it to fail. Therefore, financial crises are sometimes viewed as a vicious circle in which investors shun some institution or asset because they expect others to do so.
Leverage |
1808_10 | Leverage, which means borrowing to finance investments, is frequently cited as a contributor to financial crises. When a financial institution (or an individual) only invests its own money, it can, in the very worst case, lose its own money. But when it borrows in order to invest more, it can potentially earn more from its investment, but it can also lose more than all it has. Therefore, leverage magnifies the potential returns from investment, but also creates a risk of bankruptcy. Since bankruptcy means that a firm fails to honor all its promised payments to other firms, it may spread financial troubles from one firm to another (see 'Contagion' below).
The average degree of leverage in the economy often rises prior to a financial crisis. For example, borrowing to finance investment in the stock market ("margin buying") became increasingly common prior to the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
Asset-liability mismatch |
1808_11 | Another factor believed to contribute to financial crises is asset-liability mismatch, a situation in which the risks associated with an institution's debts and assets are not appropriately aligned. For example, commercial banks offer deposit accounts that can be withdrawn at any time and they use the proceeds to make long-term loans to businesses and homeowners. The mismatch between the banks' short-term liabilities (its deposits) and its long-term assets (its loans) is seen as one of the reasons bank runs occur (when depositors panic and decide to withdraw their funds more quickly than the bank can get back the proceeds of its loans). Likewise, Bear Stearns failed in 2007–08 because it was unable to renew the short-term debt it used to finance long-term investments in mortgage securities. |
1808_12 | In an international context, many emerging market governments are unable to sell bonds denominated in their own currencies, and therefore sell bonds denominated in US dollars instead. This generates a mismatch between the currency denomination of their liabilities (their bonds) and their assets (their local tax revenues), so that they run a risk of sovereign default due to fluctuations in exchange rates.
Uncertainty and herd behavior
Many analyses of financial crises emphasize the role of investment mistakes caused by lack of knowledge or the imperfections of human reasoning. Behavioural finance studies errors in economic and quantitative reasoning. Psychologist Torbjorn K A Eliazon has also analyzed failures of economic reasoning in his concept of 'œcopathy'. |
1808_13 | Historians, notably Charles P. Kindleberger, have pointed out that crises often follow soon after major financial or technical innovations that present investors with new types of financial opportunities, which he called "displacements" of investors' expectations. Early examples include the South Sea Bubble and Mississippi Bubble of 1720, which occurred when the notion of investment in shares of company stock was itself new and unfamiliar, and the Crash of 1929, which followed the introduction of new electrical and transportation technologies. More recently, many financial crises followed changes in the investment environment brought about by financial deregulation, and the crash of the dot com bubble in 2001 arguably began with "irrational exuberance" about Internet technology. |
1808_14 | Unfamiliarity with recent technical and financial innovations may help explain how investors sometimes grossly overestimate asset values. Also, if the first investors in a new class of assets (for example, stock in "dot com" companies) profit from rising asset values as other investors learn about the innovation (in our example, as others learn about the potential of the Internet), then still more others may follow their example, driving the price even higher as they rush to buy in hopes of similar profits. If such "herd behaviour" causes prices to spiral up far above the true value of the assets, a crash may become inevitable. If for any reason the price briefly falls, so that investors realize that further gains are not assured, then the spiral may go into reverse, with price decreases causing a rush of sales, reinforcing the decrease in prices.
Regulatory failures |
1808_15 | Governments have attempted to eliminate or mitigate financial crises by regulating the financial sector. One major goal of regulation is transparency: making institutions' financial situations publicly known by requiring regular reporting under standardized accounting procedures. Another goal of regulation is making sure institutions have sufficient assets to meet their contractual obligations, through reserve requirements, capital requirements, and other limits on leverage.
Some financial crises have been blamed on insufficient regulation, and have led to changes in regulation in order to avoid a repeat. For example, the former Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has blamed the financial crisis of 2007–2008 on 'regulatory failure to guard against excessive risk-taking in the financial system, especially in the US'. Likewise, the New York Times singled out the deregulation of credit default swaps as a cause of the crisis. |
1808_16 | However, excessive regulation has also been cited as a possible cause of financial crises. In particular, the Basel II Accord has been criticized for requiring banks to increase their capital when risks rise, which might cause them to decrease lending precisely when capital is scarce, potentially aggravating a financial crisis.
International regulatory convergence has been interpreted in terms of regulatory herding, deepening market herding (discussed above) and so increasing systemic risk. From this perspective, maintaining diverse regulatory regimes would be a safeguard. |
1808_17 | Fraud has played a role in the collapse of some financial institutions, when companies have attracted depositors with misleading claims about their investment strategies, or have embezzled the resulting income. Examples include Charles Ponzi's scam in early 20th century Boston, the collapse of the MMM investment fund in Russia in 1994, the scams that led to the Albanian Lottery Uprising of 1997, and the collapse of Madoff Investment Securities in 2008. |
1808_18 | Many rogue traders that have caused large losses at financial institutions have been accused of acting fraudulently in order to hide their trades. Fraud in mortgage financing has also been cited as one possible cause of the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis; government officials stated on 23 September 2008 that the FBI was looking into possible fraud by mortgage financing companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, and insurer American International Group. Likewise it has been argued that many financial companies failed in the recent crisis <which "recent crisis?"> because their managers failed to carry out their fiduciary duties.
Contagion |
1808_19 | Contagion refers to the idea that financial crises may spread from one institution to another, as when a bank run spreads from a few banks to many others, or from one country to another, as when currency crises, sovereign defaults, or stock market crashes spread across countries. When the failure of one particular financial institution threatens the stability of many other institutions, this is called systemic risk.
One widely cited example of contagion was the spread of the Thai crisis in 1997 to other countries like South Korea. However, economists often debate whether observing crises in many countries around the same time is truly caused by contagion from one market to another, or whether it is instead caused by similar underlying problems that would have affected each country individually even in the absence of international linkages. |
1808_20 | Recessionary effects
Some financial crises have little effect outside of the financial sector, like the Wall Street crash of 1987, but other crises are believed to have played a role in decreasing growth in the rest of the economy. There are many theories why a financial crisis could have a recessionary effect on the rest of the economy. These theoretical ideas include the 'financial accelerator', 'flight to quality' and 'flight to liquidity', and the Kiyotaki-Moore model. Some 'third generation' models of currency crises explore how currency crises and banking crises together can cause recessions.
Theories
Austrian theories
Austrian School economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek discussed the business cycle starting with Mises' Theory of Money and Credit, published in 1912.
Marxist theories |
1808_21 | Recurrent major depressions in the world economy at the pace of 20 and 50 years have been the subject of studies since Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi (1773–1842) provided the first theory of crisis in a critique of classical political economy's assumption of equilibrium between supply and demand. Developing an economic crisis theory became the central recurring concept throughout Karl Marx's mature work. Marx's law of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall borrowed many features of the presentation of John Stuart Mill's discussion Of the Tendency of Profits to a Minimum (Principles of Political Economy Book IV Chapter IV). The theory is a corollary of the Tendency towards the Centralization of Profits. |
1808_22 | In a capitalist system, successfully-operating businesses return less money to their workers (in the form of wages) than the value of the goods produced by those workers (i.e. the amount of money the products are sold for). This profit first goes towards covering the initial investment in the business. In the long-run, however, when one considers the combined economic activity of all successfully-operating business, it is clear that less money (in the form of wages) is being returned to the mass of the population (the workers) than is available to them to buy all of these goods being produced. Furthermore, the expansion of businesses in the process of competing for markets leads to an abundance of goods and a general fall in their prices, further exacerbating the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. |
1808_23 | The viability of this theory depends upon two main factors: firstly, the degree to which profit is taxed by government and returned to the mass of people in the form of welfare, family benefits and health and education spending; and secondly, the proportion of the population who are workers rather than investors/business owners. Given the extraordinary capital expenditure required to enter modern economic sectors like airline transport, the military industry, or chemical production, these sectors are extremely difficult for new businesses to enter and are being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. |
1808_24 | Empirical and econometric research continues especially in the world systems theory and in the debate about Nikolai Kondratiev and the so-called 50-years Kondratiev waves. Major figures of world systems theory, like Andre Gunder Frank and Immanuel Wallerstein, consistently warned about the crash that the world economy is now facing. World systems scholars and Kondratiev cycle researchers always implied that Washington Consensus oriented economists never understood the dangers and perils, which leading industrial nations will be facing and are now facing at the end of the long economic cycle which began after the oil crisis of 1973. |
1808_25 | Minsky's theory
Hyman Minsky has proposed a post-Keynesian explanation that is most applicable to a closed economy. He theorized that financial fragility is a typical feature of any capitalist economy. High fragility leads to a higher risk of a financial crisis. To facilitate his analysis, Minsky defines three approaches to financing firms may choose, according to their tolerance of risk. They are hedge finance, speculative finance, and Ponzi finance. Ponzi finance leads to the most fragility.
for hedge finance, income flows are expected to meet financial obligations in every period, including both the principal and the interest on loans.
for speculative finance, a firm must roll over debt because income flows are expected to only cover interest costs. None of the principal is paid off. |
1808_26 | for Ponzi finance, expected income flows will not even cover interest cost, so the firm must borrow more or sell off assets simply to service its debt. The hope is that either the market value of assets or income will rise enough to pay off interest and principal. |
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