id
stringlengths 2
8
| url
stringlengths 31
133
| title
stringlengths 1
79
| text
stringlengths 10
201k
|
---|---|---|---|
18477 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lulach | Lulach | Lulach mac Gille Coemgáin (Modern Gaelic: Lughlagh mac Gille Chomghain, known in English simply as Lulach, and nicknamed Tairbith, "the Unfortunate" and Fatuus, "the Simple-minded" or "the Foolish"; before 1033 – 17 March 1058) was King of Scots between 15 August 1057 and 17 March 1058.
Lulach was the son of Gruoch of Scotland, from her first marriage to Gille Coemgáin, Mormaer of Moray, and thus the stepson of Macbeth (Mac Bethad mac Findlaích). Following the death of Macbeth at the Battle of Lumphanan on 15 August 1057, the king's followers placed Lulach on the throne. He has the distinction of being the first king of Scotland of whom there are coronation details available: he was crowned, probably on 8 September 1057 at Scone. Lulach appears to have been a weak king, as his nicknames suggest, and ruled only for a few months before being assassinated and usurped by Malcolm III.
Lulach's son Máel Snechtai was Mormaer of Moray, while Óengus of Moray was the son of Lulach's daughter.
He is believed to be buried on Saint Columba's Holy Island of Iona in or around the monastery. The exact position of his grave is unknown.
Depictions in fiction
Lulach is an important secondary character in Dorothy Dunnett's historical novel King Hereafter, where he is portrayed as a seer. In the novel, Dunnett used Lulach as a mouthpiece for researched information about the real Macbeth.
Lulach is also one of the protagonists in Jackie French's children's novel Macbeth and Son and in Susan Fraser King's novel Lady MacBeth.
Lulach is also a character in David Greig's play Dunsinane where he is hunted by the English soldiers as a threat to peace in Malcolm's Scotland.
References
|-
1058 deaths
11th-century Scottish monarchs
Assassinated heads of state
Burials in Iona
House of Moray
11th-century murdered monarchs
Year of birth unknown
Mormaers of Moray
Gaelic monarchs in Scotland
11th-century mormaers |
18483 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexicography | Lexicography | Lexicography is the study of lexicons, and is divided into two separate but equally important academic disciplines:
Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries.
Theoretical lexicography is the scholarly study of semantic, orthographic, syntagmatic and paradigmatic features of lexemes of the lexicon (vocabulary) of a language, developing theories of dictionary components and structures linking the data in dictionaries, the needs for information by users in specific types of situations, and how users may best access the data incorporated in printed and electronic dictionaries. This is sometimes referred to as 'metalexicography'.
There is some disagreement on the definition of lexicology, as distinct from lexicography. Some use "lexicology" as a synonym for theoretical lexicography; others use it to mean a branch of linguistics pertaining to the inventory of words in a particular language.
A person devoted to lexicography is called a lexicographer.
Focus
General lexicography focuses on the design, compilation, use and evaluation of general dictionaries, i.e. dictionaries that provide a description of the language in general use. Such a dictionary is usually called a general dictionary or LGP dictionary (Language for General Purpose). Specialized lexicography focuses on the design, compilation, use and evaluation of specialized dictionaries, i.e. dictionaries that are devoted to a (relatively restricted) set of linguistic and factual elements of one or more specialist subject fields, e.g. legal lexicography. Such a dictionary is usually called a specialized dictionary or Language for specific purposes dictionary and following Nielsen 1994, specialized dictionaries are either multi-field, single-field or sub-field dictionaries.
It is now widely accepted that lexicography is a scholarly discipline in its own right and not a sub-branch of applied linguistics, as the chief object of study in lexicography is the dictionary (see e.g. Bergenholtz/Nielsen/Tarp 2009).
Lexicography is the practice of creating books, computer programs, or databases that reflect lexicographical work and are intended for public use. These include dictionaries and thesauri which are widely accessible resources that present various aspects of lexicology, such as spelling, pronunciation, and meaning.
Lexicographers are tasked with defining simple words as well as figuring out how compound or complex words or words with many meanings can be clearly explained. They also make decisions regarding which words should be kept, added, or removed from a dictionary. They are responsible for arranging lexical material (usually alphabetically) to facilitate understanding and navigation.
Etymology
Coined in English 1680, the word "lexicography" derives from the Greek λεξικογράφος lexikographos, "lexicographer", from λεξικόν lexicon, neut. of λεξικός lexikos, "of or for words", from λέξις lexis, "speech", "word", (in turn from λέγω lego, "to say", "to speak") and γράφω grapho, "to scratch, to inscribe, to write".
Aspects
Practical lexicographic work involves several activities, and the compilation of well-crafted dictionaries requires careful consideration of all or some of the following aspects:
profiling the intended users (i.e. linguistic and non-linguistic competences) and identifying their needs
defining the communicative and cognitive functions of the dictionary
selecting and organizing the components of the dictionary
choosing the appropriate structures for presenting the data in the dictionary (i.e. frame structure, distribution structure, macro-structure, micro-structure and cross-reference structure)
selecting words and affixes for systematization as entries
selecting collocations, phrases and examples
choosing lemma forms for each word or part of word to be lemmatized
defining words
organizing definitions
specifying pronunciations of words
labeling definitions and pronunciations for register and dialect, where appropriate
selecting equivalents in bi- and multi-lingual dictionaries
translating collocations, phrases and examples in bi- and multilingual dictionaries
designing the best way in which users can access the data in printed and electronic dictionaries
One important goal of lexicography is to keep the lexicographic information costs incurred by dictionary users as low as possible. Nielsen (2008) suggests relevant aspects for lexicographers to consider when making dictionaries as they all affect the users' impression and actual use of specific dictionaries.
Theoretical lexicography concerns the same aspects as lexicography, but aims to develop principles that can improve the quality of future dictionaries, for instance in terms of access to data and lexicographic information costs. Several perspectives or branches of such academic dictionary research have been distinguished: 'dictionary criticism' (or evaluating the quality of one or more dictionaries, e.g. by means of reviews (see Nielsen 1999), 'dictionary history' (or tracing the traditions of a type of dictionary or of lexicography in a particular country or language), 'dictionary typology' (or classifying the various genres of reference works, such as dictionary versus encyclopedia, monolingual versus bilingual dictionary, general versus technical or pedagogical dictionary), 'dictionary structure' (or formatting the various ways in which the information is presented in a dictionary), 'dictionary use' (or observing the reference acts and skills of dictionary users), and 'dictionary IT' (or applying computer aids to the process of dictionary compilation).
One important consideration is the status of 'bilingual lexicography', or the compilation and use of the bilingual dictionary in all its aspects (see e.g. Nielsen 1894). In spite of a relatively long history of this type of dictionary, it is often said to be less developed in a number of respects than its unilingual counterpart, especially in cases where one of the languages involved is not a major language. Not all genres of reference works are available in interlingual versions, e.g. LSP, learners' and encyclopedic types, although sometimes these challenges produce new subtypes, e.g. 'semi-bilingual' or 'bilingualised' dictionaries such as Hornby's (Oxford) Advanced Learner's Dictionary English-Chinese, which have been developed by translating existing monolingual dictionaries (see Marello 1998).
See also
Linguistic description
Dictionary
Bilingual dictionary
Monolingual learner's dictionary
Specialized dictionary (Picture dictionary, Multi-field dictionary, Single-field dictionary, Sub-field dictionary, LSP dictionary)
Glossary (defining dictionary, Core glossary)
List of lexicographers
Lexicology
Lexicon
Lexical definition
Vocabulary
Idioms Lexicon
Specialised lexicography
English lexicology and lexicography
Terminology
Dictionary Society of North America
References
Further reading
Atkins, B.T.S. & Rundell, Michael (2008) The Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography, Oxford U.P.
Béjoint, Henri (2000) Modern Lexicography: An Introduction, Oxford U.P.
Bergenholtz, H., Nielsen, S., Tarp, S. (eds.): Lexicography at a Crossroads: Dictionaries and Encyclopedias Today, Lexicographical Tools Tomorrow. Peter Lang 2009.
Bergenholtz, Henning & Tarp, Sven (eds.) (1995) Manual of Specialised Lexicography: The Preparation of Specialised Dictionaries, J. Benjamins.
Green, Jonathon (1996) Chasing the Sun: Dictionary-Makers and the Dictionaries They Made, J. Cape.
Hartmann, R.R.K. (2001) Teaching and Researching Lexicography, Pearson Education.
Hartmann, R.R.K. (ed.) (2003) Lexicography: Critical Concepts, Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 3 volumes.
Hartmann, R.R.K. & James, Gregory (comps.) (1998/2001) Dictionary of Lexicography, Routledge.
Inglis, Douglas (2004) Cognitive Grammar and lexicography. Payap University Graduate School Linguistics Department.
Kirkness, Alan (2004) "Lexicography", in The Handbook of Applied Linguistics ed. by A. Davies & C. Elder, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 54–81.
Landau, Sidney (2001) Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography, Cambridge U.P. 2nd ed.
Marello, Carla (1998) "Hornby's bilingualized dictionaries", in International Journal of Lexicography 11,4, pp. 292–314.
Nielsen, Sandro (1994) The Bilingual LSP Dictionary, G. Narr.
Nielsen, Sandro (2008) "The effect of lexicographical information costs on dictionary making and use", in Lexikos (AFRILEX-reeks/series 18), pp. 170–189.
Nielsen, Sandro (2009): "Reviewing printed and electronic dictionaries: A theoretical and practical framework". In S. Nielsen/S. Tarp (eds): Lexicography in the 21st Century. In honour of Henning Bergenholtz. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 23–41.
Ooi, Vincent (1998) Computer Corpus Lexicography, Edinburgh U.P.
Zgusta, Ladislav (1971) Manual of lexicography (Janua Linguarum. Series maior 39). Prague: Academia / The Hague, Paris: Mouton.
External links
International Journal of Lexicography
Lexicographica. International Annual for Lexicography - Revue Internationale de Lexicographie - Internationales Jahrbuch für Lexikographie
Societies
Centre for Lexicography EN version
Dictionary Society of North America
Euralex – European Association for Lexicography
Afrilex – African Association for Lexicography
Australex – Australasian Association for Lexicography
Nordic Federation for Lexicography
Asialex – Asian Association for Lexicography
Lexicology
Applied linguistics
+ |
18486 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law%20enforcement | Law enforcement | Law enforcement is the activity of some members of government who act in an organized manner to enforce the law by discovering, deterring, rehabilitating, or punishing people who violate the rules and norms governing that society. The term encompasses police, courts, and corrections. These three components may operate independently of each other or collectively, through the use of record sharing and mutual cooperation.
Modern state legal codes use the term peace officer, or law enforcement officer, to include every person vested by the legislating state with police power or authority, traditionally, anyone "sworn or badged, who can arrest any person for a violation of criminal law, is included under the umbrella term of law enforcement.
Although law enforcement may be most concerned with the prevention and punishment of crimes, organizations exist to discourage a wide variety of non-criminal violations of rules and norms, effected through the imposition of less severe consequences such as probation.
Law enforcement agencies
Most law enforcement is conducted by some type of law enforcement agency, with the most typical agency fulfilling this role being a police force. Social investment in enforcement through such organizations can be massive, both in terms of the resources invested in the activity, and in the number of people professionally engaged to perform those functions.
Law enforcement agencies tend to be limited to operating within a specified jurisdiction. In some cases, jurisdiction may overlap in between organizations; for example, in the United States, each state has its own statewide law enforcement arms, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation is able to act against certain types of crimes occurring in any state. Various segments of society may have their own specialist law enforcement organizations. For example, military organizations may have military police. Some segments of society, such as private companies that are responsible for significant and critical infrastructure, may have their own law enforcement agencies. For example, in the United States, the protection of the Union Pacific Railroad network is carried out by the Union Pacific Police Department.
Depending on a variety of factors, such as whether an agency is autonomous or dependent on other organizations for its operations, the governing body that funds and oversees the agency may decide to dissolve or consolidate operations. Dissolution of an agency may occur when the governing body or the department itself decides to end operations. This can occur due to multiple reasons, including police reform, a lack of population in the jurisdiction, or because of mass resignations.
According to the International Association of Chiefs of Police, agency consolidation can occur to improve efficiency, consolidate resources, and when forming a new type of government.
Until today, law enforcement department professions are dominantly served by Caucasian males in America, even with a growing number of organizations emphasizing on recruitment of females and minorities.
See also
Outline of law enforcement – structured list of topics related to law enforcement, organized by subject area
Law enforcement by country
Vigilantism
Criminal law
Police abolition movement
References
External links |
18488 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libido | Libido | Libido (; colloquial: sex drive) is a person's overall sexual drive or desire for sexual activity. Libido is influenced by biological, psychological, and social factors. Biologically, the sex hormones and associated neurotransmitters that act upon the nucleus accumbens (primarily testosterone and dopamine, respectively) regulate libido in humans. Social factors, such as work and family, and internal psychological factors, such as personality and stress, can affect libido. Libido can also be affected by medical conditions, medications, lifestyle and relationship issues, and age (e.g., puberty). A person who has extremely frequent sexual urges, or a suddenly increased sex drive may be experiencing hypersexuality, while the opposite condition is hyposexuality. In psychoanalytic theory, libido is psychic drive or energy, particularly associated with sexual instinct, but also present in other instinctive desires and drives.
A person may have a desire for sex, but not have the opportunity to act on that desire, or may on personal, moral or religious reasons refrain from acting on the urge. Psychologically, a person's urge can be repressed or sublimated. Conversely, a person can engage in sexual activity without an actual desire for it. Multiple factors affect human sex drive, including stress, illness, pregnancy, and others. A 2001 review found that, on average, men have a higher desire for sex than women.
Sexual desires are often an important factor in the formation and maintenance of intimate relationships in humans. A lack or loss of sexual desire can adversely affect relationships. Changes in the sexual desires of any partner in a sexual relationship, if sustained and unresolved, may cause problems in the relationship. The infidelity of a partner may be an indication that a partner's changing sexual desires can no longer be satisfied within the current relationship. Problems can arise from disparity of sexual desires between partners, or poor communication between partners of sexual needs and preferences.
There is no widely accepted measure of what is a healthy level for sex desire. Some people want to have sex every day, or more than once a day; others once a year or not at all. However, a person who lacks a desire for sexual activity for some period of time may be experiencing a hypoactive sexual desire disorder or may be asexual.
Psychological perspectives
Psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud, who is considered the originator of the modern use of the term, defined libido as "the energy, regarded as a quantitative magnitude... of those instincts which have to do with all that may be comprised under the word 'love'." It is the instinctual energy or force, contained in what Freud called the id, the strictly unconscious structure of the psyche. He also explained that it is analogous to hunger, the will to power, and so on insisting that it is a fundamental instinct that is innate in all humans.
Freud developed the idea of a series of developmental phases in which the libido fixates on different erogenous zones—first in the oral stage (exemplified by an infant's pleasure in nursing), then in the anal stage (exemplified by a toddler's pleasure in controlling his or her bowels), then in the phallic stage, through a latency stage in which the libido is dormant, to its reemergence at puberty in the genital stage. (Karl Abraham would later add subdivisions in both oral and anal stages.)
Freud pointed out that these libidinal drives can conflict with the conventions of civilised behavior, represented in the psyche by the superego. It is this need to conform to society and control the libido that leads to tension and disturbance in the individual, prompting the use of ego defenses to dissipate the psychic energy of these unmet and mostly unconscious needs into other forms. Excessive use of ego defenses results in neurosis. A primary goal of psychoanalysis is to bring the drives of the id into consciousness, allowing them to be met directly and thus reducing the patient's reliance on ego defenses.
Freud viewed libido as passing through a series of developmental stages within the individual. Failure to adequately adapt to the demands of these different stages could result in libidinal energy becoming 'dammed up' or fixated in these stages, producing certain pathological character traits in adulthood. Thus the psychopathologized individual for Freud was an immature individual, and the goal of psychoanalysis was to bring these fixations to conscious awareness so that the libido energy would be freed up and available for conscious use in some sort of constructive sublimation.
Analytical psychology
According to Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung, the libido is identified as the totality of psychic energy, not limited to sexual desire. As Jung states in "The Concept of Libido," "[libido] denotes a desire or impulse which is unchecked by any kind of authority, moral or otherwise. Libido is appetite in its natural state. From the genetic point of view it is bodily needs like hunger, thirst, sleep, and sex, and emotional states or affects, which constitute the essence of libido." The Duality (opposition) creates the energy (or libido) of the psyche, which Jung asserts expresses itself only through symbols: "It is the energy that manifests itself in the life process and is perceived subjectively as striving and desire." (Ellenberger, 697) These symbols may manifest as "fantasy-images" in the process of psychoanalysis which embody the contents of the libido, otherwise lacking in any definite form. Desire, conceived generally as a psychic longing, movement, displacement and structuring, manifests itself in definable forms which are apprehended through analysis.
Defined more narrowly, libido also refers to an individual's urge to engage in sexual activity, and its antonym is the force of destruction termed mortido or destrudo.
Factors that affect libido
Endogenous compounds
Libido is governed primarily by activity in the mesolimbic dopamine pathway (ventral tegmental area and nucleus accumbens). Consequently, dopamine and related trace amines (primarily phenethylamine) that modulate dopamine neurotransmission play a critical role in regulating libido.
Other neurotransmitters, neuropeptides, and sex hormones that affect sex drive by modulating activity in or acting upon this pathway include:
Testosterone (directly correlated) – and other androgens
Estrogen (directly correlated) – and related female sex hormones
Progesterone (inversely correlated)
Oxytocin (directly correlated)
Serotonin (inversely correlated)
Norepinephrine (directly correlated)
Acetylcholine
Sex hormone levels and the menstrual cycle
A woman's desire for sex is correlated to her menstrual cycle, with many women experiencing a heightened sexual desire in the several days immediately before ovulation, which is her peak fertility period, which normally occurs two days before and until two days after the ovulation. This cycle has been associated with changes in a woman's testosterone levels during the menstrual cycle. According to Gabrielle Lichterman, testosterone levels have a direct impact on a woman's interest in sex. According to her, testosterone levels rise gradually from about the 24th day of a woman's menstrual cycle until ovulation on about the 14th day of the next cycle, and during this period the woman's desire for sex increases consistently. The 13th day is generally the day with the highest testosterone levels. In the week following ovulation, the testosterone level is the lowest and as a result women will experience less interest in sex.
Also, during the week following ovulation, progesterone levels increase, resulting in a woman experiencing difficulty achieving orgasm. Although the last days of the menstrual cycle are marked by a constant testosterone level, women's libido may get a boost as a result of the thickening of the uterine lining which stimulates nerve endings and makes a woman feel aroused. Also, during these days, estrogen levels decline, resulting in a decrease of natural lubrication.
Although some specialists disagree with this theory, menopause is still considered by the majority a factor that can cause decreased sex desire in women. The levels of estrogen decrease at menopause and this usually causes a lower interest in sex and vaginal dryness which makes intercourse painful. However, the levels of testosterone increase at menopause and this may be why some women may experience a contrary effect of an increased libido.
Psychological and social factors
Certain psychological or social factors can reduce the desire for sex. These factors can include lack of privacy or intimacy, stress or fatigue, distraction, or depression. Environmental stress, such as prolonged exposure to elevated sound levels or bright light, can also affect libido. Other causes include experience of sexual abuse, assault, trauma, or neglect, body image issues, and anxiety about engaging in sexual activity.
Individuals with PTSD may find themselves with reduced sexual desire. Struggling to find pleasure, as well as having trust issues, many with PTSD experience feelings of vulnerability, rage and anger, and emotional shutdowns, which have been shown to inhibit sexual desire in those with PTSD. Reduced sex drive may also be present in trauma victims due to issues arising in sexual function. For women, it has been found that treatment can improve sexual function, thus helping restore sexual desire. Depression and libido decline often coincide, with reduced sex drive being one of the symptoms of depression. Those suffering from depression often report the decline in libido to be far reaching and more noticeable than other symptoms. In addition, those with depression often are reluctant to report their reduced sex drive, often normalizing it with cultural/social values, or by the failure of the physician to inquire about it.
Physical factors
Physical factors that can affect libido include endocrine issues such as hypothyroidism, the effect of certain prescription medications (for example flutamide), and the attractiveness and biological fitness of one's partner, among various other lifestyle factors.
In males, the frequency of ejaculations affects the levels of serum testosterone, a hormone which promotes libido. A study of 28 males aged 21–45 found that all but one of them had a peak (145.7% of baseline [117.8%–197.3%]) in serum testosterone on the 7th day of abstinence from ejaculation.
Anemia is a cause of lack of libido in women due to the loss of iron during the period.
Smoking, alcohol abuse, and the use of certain drugs can also lead to a decreased libido. Moreover, specialists suggest that several lifestyle changes such as exercising, quitting smoking, lowering consumption of alcohol or using prescription drugs may help increase one's sexual desire.
Medications
Some people purposefully attempt to decrease their libido through the usage of anaphrodisiacs. Aphrodisiacs, such as dopaminergic psychostimulants, are a class of drugs which can increase libido. On the other hand, a reduced libido is also often iatrogenic and can be caused by many medications, such as hormonal contraception, SSRIs and other antidepressants, antipsychotics, opioids, beta blockers and Isotretinoin.
Isotretinoin and many SSRIs can cause a long-term decrease in libido and other sexual functions, even after users of those drugs have shown improvement in their depression and have stopped usage. Multiple studies have shown that with the exception of bupropion (Wellbutrin), trazodone (Desyrel) and nefazodone (Serzone), antidepressants generally will lead to lowered libido. SSRIs that typically lead to decreased libido are fluoxetine (Prozac), paroxetine (Paxil), fluvoxamine (Luvox), citalopram (Celexa) and sertraline (Zoloft). There are several ways to try to reap the benefits of the antidepressants while maintaining high enough sex drive levels. Some antidepressant users have tried decreasing their dosage in the hopes of maintaining an adequate sex drive. Results of this are often positive, with both drug effectiveness not reduced and libido preserved. Other users try enrolling in psychotherapy to solve depression-related issues of libido. However, the effectiveness of this therapy is mixed, with many reporting that it had no or little effect on sexual drive.
Testosterone is one of the hormones controlling libido in human beings. Emerging research is showing that hormonal contraception methods like oral contraceptive pills (which rely on estrogen and progesterone together) are causing low libido in females by elevating levels of sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG). SHBG binds to sex hormones, including testosterone, rendering them unavailable. Research is showing that even after ending a hormonal contraceptive method, SHBG levels remain elevated and no reliable data exists to predict when this phenomenon will diminish.
Oral contraceptives lower androgen levels in users, and lowered androgen levels generally lead to a decrease in sexual desire. However, usage of oral contraceptives has shown to typically not have a connection with lowered libido in women. Multiple studies have shown that usage of oral contraceptives is associated with either a small increase or decrease in libido, with most users reporting a stable sex drive.
Effects of age
Males reach the peak of their sex drive in their teenage years, while females reach it in their thirties. The surge in testosterone hits the male at puberty resulting in a sudden and extreme sex drive which reaches its peak at age 15–16, then drops slowly over his lifetime. In contrast, a female's libido increases slowly during adolescence and peaks in her mid-thirties.
Actual testosterone and estrogen levels that affect a person's sex drive vary considerably.
Some boys and girls will start expressing romantic or sexual interest by age 10–12. The romantic feelings are not necessarily sexual, but are more associated with attraction and desire for another. For boys and girls in their preteen years (ages 11–12), at least 25% report "thinking a lot about sex". By the early teenage years (ages 13–14), however, boys are much more likely to have sexual fantasies than girls. In addition, boys are much more likely to report an interest in sexual intercourse at this age than girls. Masturbation among youth is common, with prevalence among the population generally increasing until the late 20s and early 30s. Boys generally start masturbating earlier, with less than 10% boys masturbating around age 10, around half participating by age 11–12, and over a substantial majority by age 13–14. This is in sharp contrast to girls where virtually none are engaging in masturbation before age 13, and only around 20% by age 13–14.
People in their 60s and early 70s generally retain a healthy sex drive, but this may start to decline in the early to mid-70s. Older adults generally develop a reduced libido due to declining health and environmental or social factors. In contrast to common belief, postmenopausal women often report an increase in sexual desire and an increased willingness to satisfy their partner. Women often report family responsibilities, health, relationship problems, and well-being as inhibitors to their sexual desires. Aging adults often have more positive attitudes towards sex in older age due to being more relaxed about it, freedom from other responsibilities, and increased self-confidence. Those exhibiting negative attitudes generally cite health as one of the main reasons. Stereotypes about aging adults and sexuality often regard seniors as asexual beings, doing them no favors when they try to talk about sexual interest with caregivers and medical professionals. Non-western cultures often follow a narrative of older women having a much lower libido, thus not encouraging any sort of sexual behavior for women. Residence in retirement homes has affects on residents' libidos. In these homes, sex occurs, but it is not encouraged by the staff or other residents. Lack of privacy and resident gender imbalance are the main factors lowering desire. Generally, for older adults, being excited about sex, good health, sexual self-esteem and having a sexually talented partner can be factors.
Sexual desire disorders
A sexual desire disorder is more common in women than in men, and women tend to exhibit less frequent and less intense sexual desires than men. Erectile dysfunction may happen to the penis because of lack of sexual desire, but these two should not be confused. For example, large recreational doses of amphetamine or methamphetamine can simultaneously cause erectile dysfunction and significantly increase libido. However, men can also experience a decrease in their libido as they age.
The American Medical Association has estimated that several million US women suffer from a female sexual arousal disorder, though arousal is not at all synonymous with desire, so this finding is of limited relevance to the discussion of libido. Some specialists claim that women may experience low libido due to some hormonal abnormalities such as lack of luteinising hormone or androgenic hormones, although these theories are still controversial.
See also
References
Further reading
Ellenberger, Henri (1970). The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry. New York: Basic Books. Hardcover , softcover .
Froböse, Gabriele, and Froböse, Rolf. Lust and Love: Is It More than Chemistry? Michael Gross (trans. and ed.). Royal Society of Chemistry, (2006)
Giles, James, The Nature of Sexual Desire, Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 2008.
Carl Jung
Energy and instincts
Estrogens
Freudian psychology
Motivation
Philosophy of sexuality
Psychoanalytic terminology
Psychodynamics
Testosterone |
18490 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larissa | Larissa | Larissa (; , , ) is the capital and largest city of the Thessaly region in Greece. It is the fifth-most populous city in Greece with a population of 144,651 according to the 2011 census. It is also capital of the Larissa regional unit. It is a principal agricultural centre and a national transport hub, linked by road and rail with the port of Volos, the cities of Thessaloniki and Athens. The municipality of Larissa has 162,591 inhabitants, while the regional unit of Larissa reached a population of 284,325 ().
Legend has it that Achilles was born here. Hippocrates, the "Father of Medicine", died here. Today, Larissa is an important commercial, transportation, educational, agricultural and industrial centre of Greece.
Geography
There are a number of highways including E75 and the main railway from Athens to Thessaloniki (Salonika) crossing through Thessaly. The region is directly linked to the rest of Europe through the International Airport of Central Greece located in Nea Anchialos a short distance from Larissa (about 60 km). Larissa lies on the river Pineios.
The municipality of Larissa has an area of , the municipal unit Larissa has an area of , and the community Larissa has an area of .
The Larissa Chasma, a deep gash in the surface of Dione, a natural satellite of Saturn, was named after Larissa.
Climate
The climate of Larissa is cool semi-arid (Köppen: BSk) but it is close to a hot summer Mediterranean climate (Csa). The winter is fairly mild, and some snowstorms may occur. The summer is particularly hot, and temperatures of may occur. Thunderstorms or heavy rain may cause agricultural damage. Larissa receives of rain per year.
Mythology
According to Greek mythology it is said that the city was founded by Acrisius, who was killed accidentally by his grandson, Perseus. There lived Peleus, the hero beloved by the gods, and his son Achilles.
In mythology, the nymph Larissa was a daughter of the primordial man Pelasgus.
The city of Larissa is mentioned in Book II of Iliad by Homer: "Hippothous led the tribes of Pelasgian spearsmen, who dwelt in fertile Larissa- Hippothous, and Pylaeus of the race of Mars, two sons of the Pelasgian Lethus, son of Teutamus." The Internet Classics Archive | The Iliad by Homer In this paragraph, Homer shows that the Pelasgians, Trojan allies, used to live in the city of Larissa. It is likely that this city of Larissa was different to the city that was the birthplace of Achilles. The Larissa that features as a Trojan ally in the Iliad was likely to be located in the Troad, on the other side of the Aegean Sea.
History
Antiquity
Pre-history
Traces of Paleolithic human settlement have been recovered from the area, but it was peripheral to areas of advanced culture. The area around Larissa was extremely fruitful; it was agriculturally important and in antiquity was known for its horses.
Archaic Era
The name Larissa (Λάρισα Lárīsa) is in origin a Pelasgian word for "fortress". There were many ancient Greek cities with this name.
The name of Thessalian Larissa is first recorded in connection with the aristocratic Aleuadai family.<ref>"The city and the plain around it were settled in prehistoric times, and its name must be early, but it is first mentioned in connection with the(Richard Stillwell, William L. MacDonald, Marian Holland McAllister, eds., The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites (Princeton University Press) 1976, 's.v. "Larissa, or Larisa, or Pelasgis, Thessaly").</ref> It was also a polis (city-state).
Classical Era
Larissa was a polis (city-state) during the Classical Era. Larissa is thought to be where the famous Greek physician Hippocrates and the famous philosopher Gorgias of Leontini died.
When Larissa ceased minting the federal coins it shared with other Thessalian towns and adopted its own coinage in the late 5th century BC, it chose local types for its coins. The obverse depicted the nymph of the local spring, Larissa, for whom the town was named; probably the choice was inspired by the famous coins of Kimon depicting the Syracusan nymph Arethusa. The reverse depicted a horse in various poses. The horse was an appropriate symbol of Thessaly, a land of plains, which was well known for its horses. Usually there is a male figure; he should perhaps be seen as the eponymous hero of the Thessalians, Thessalos, who is probably also to be identified on many of the earlier, federal coins of Thessaly.
Larissa, sometimes written Larisa on ancient coins and inscriptions, is near the site of the Homeric Argissa. It appears in early times, when Thessaly was mainly governed by a few aristocratic families, as an important city under the rule of the Aleuadae, whose authority extended over the whole district of Pelasgiotis. This powerful family possessed for many generations before 369 BC the privilege of furnishing the tagus, the local term for the strategos of the combined Thessalian forces. The principal rivals of the Aleuadae were the Scopadae of Crannon, the remains of which are about 14 miles south west.
Larissa was the birthplace of Meno, who thus became, along with Xenophon and a few others, one of the generals leading several thousands Greeks from various places, in the ill-fated expedition of 401 (retold in Xenophon's Anabasis) meant to help Cyrus the Younger, son of Darius II, king of Persia, overthrow his elder brother Artaxerxes II and take over the throne of Persia (Meno is featured in Plato's dialogue bearing his name, in which Socrates uses the example of "the way to Larissa" to help explain Meno the difference between true opinion and science (Meno, 97a–c); this "way to Larissa" might well be on the part of Socrates an attempt to call to Meno's mind a "way home", understood as the way toward one's true and "eternal" home reached only at death, that each man is supposed to seek in his life).
The constitution of the town was democratic, which explains why it sided with Athens in the Peloponnesian War. In the neighbourhood of Larissa was celebrated a festival which recalled the Roman Saturnalia, and at which the slaves were waited on by their masters. As the chief city of ancient Thessaly, Larissa was taken by the Thebans and later directly annexed by Philip II of Macedon in 344. It remained under Macedonian control afterwards, except for a brief period when Demetrius Poliorcetes captured it in 302 BC.
Hellenistic Era
Roman Era
It was in Larissa that Philip V of Macedon signed in 197 BC a treaty with the Romans after his defeat at the Battle of Cynoscephalae, and it was there also that Antiochus III the Great, won a great victory in 192 BC. In 196 BC Larissa became an ally of Rome and was the headquarters of the Thessalian League.
Larissa is frequently mentioned in connection with the Roman civil wars which preceded the establishment of the Roman Empire and Pompey sought refuge there after the defeat of Pharsalus.
Middle Ages and Ottoman period
Larissa was sacked by the Ostrogoths in the late 5th century, and rebuilt under the Byzantine emperor Justinian I.
In the 8th century, the city became the metropolis of the theme of Hellas. The city was captured in 986 by Tsar Samuel of Bulgaria, who carried off the relics of its patron saint, Saint Achilleios, to Prespa. It was again unsuccessfully besieged by the Italo-Normans under Bohemond I in 1082/3.
After the Fourth Crusade, the King of Thessalonica, Boniface of Montferrat, gave the city to Lombard barons, but they launched a rebellion in 1209 that had to be subdued by the Latin Emperor Henry of Flanders himself. The city was recovered by Epirus soon after.
It was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1386/87 and again in the 1390s, but only came under permanent Ottoman control in 1423, by Turahan Bey. Under Ottoman rule, the city was known as Yeni-şehir i-Fenari, "new citadel". As the chief town and military base of Ottoman Thessaly, Larissa was a predominantly Muslim city. During Ottoman rule the administration of the Metropolis of Larissa was transferred to nearby Trikala where it remained until 1734, when Metropolitan Iakovos II returned the see from Trikala to Larissa and established the present-day metropolis of Larissa and Tyrnavos.
The town was noted for its trade fair in the 17th and 18th centuries, while the seat of the pasha of Thessaly was also transferred there in 1770. Larissa was the headquarters of Hursid Pasha during the Greek War of Independence. It was also renowned for its mosques (four of which were still in use in the late 19th century) and its muslim cemeteries.
The city remained in Ottoman hands until Thessaly became part of the independent Kingdom of Greece in 1881, except for a period where Ottoman forces re-occupied it during the Greco-Turkish War of 1897. In the late 19th century, there was still a small village in the outskirts of the town inhabited by Africans from Sudan, a curious remnant of the forces collected by Ali Pasha.
In the 19th century, the town produced leather, cotton, silk and tobacco. Fevers and agues were prevalent owing to bad drainage and the overflowing of the river; and the death rate was higher than the birth rate.
Modern Greek era
In 1881, the city, along with the rest of Thessaly, was incorporated into the Kingdom of Greece during the prime ministry of Alexandros Koumoundouros. On 31 August 1881 a unit of the Greek Army headed by General Skarlatos Soutsos entered the city. A considerable portion of the Turkish population emigrated into the Ottoman Empire at that point. In this new era the city starts gradually to expand and to be rebuilt by the Greek authorities.
During the Greco-Turkish War of 1897, the city was the headquarters of Greek Crown Prince Constantine. The flight of the Greek army from here to Farsala took place on April 23, 1897. Turkish troops entered the city two days later. After a treaty for peace was signed, they withdrew and Larissa remained permanently in Greece. This was followed by a further exodus of Turks in 1898. The Hassan Bey mosque (which was built in the early 16th century) was demolished in 1908.
During the Axis Occupation of the country, the Jewish community of the city (dated back to 2nd BC, see Romaniotes) suffered heavy losses. Today in the city there is a Holocaust memorial and a synagogue.
After WWII
After WWII the city was expanded rapidly. Today Larissa is the fourth largest Greek city with many squares, taverns and cafes. It has three public hospitals with one being a military hospital. It hosts the Hellenic Air Force Headquarters and NATO Headquarters in Greece. It has a School of Medicine and a School of Biochemistry – Biotechnology and the third largest in the country Institute of Technology. It occupies the first place among Greek cities into green coverage rate per square-metre urban space and the first place with the highest percentance of bars-taverns-restaurants per capita in Greece. It also has two public libraries and five museums.
Ecclesiastical history
Christianity penetrated early to Larissa, though its first bishop is recorded only in 325 at the Council of Nicaea. St. Achillius of the 4th century, is celebrated for his miracles. Le Quien cites twenty-nine bishops from the fourth to the 18th centuries; the most famous is Jeremias II, who occupied the see until 733, when the Emperor Leo III the Isaurian transferred it from the jurisdiction of the Pope of Rome to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. In the first years of the 10th century it had ten suffragan sees; subsequently the number increased and about the year 1175 under the Emperor Manuel I Comnenus, it reached twenty-eight. At the close of the 15th century, under the Ottoman domination, there were only ten suffragan sees, which gradually grew less and finally disappeared.
Larissa is an Orthodox Metropolis of the Church of Greece.
It was also briefly a Latin archbishopric in the early 13th century, and remains a Latin Metropolitan (top-ranking) titular see of the Roman Catholic Church, which must not be confused with the Latin episcopal (low-ranking) titular see Larissa in Syria. Today there is a Catholic church in the city (Sacred Heart of Jesus).
Administration
The municipality Larissa was formed at the 2011 local government reform by the merger of the following 3 former municipalities, that became municipal units:
Giannouli
Koilada
Larissa
Districts
The municipal unit of Larissa is divided into four city-districts or municipal communities (29 city areas) plus 2 suburban communities (Amphithea and Koulourion). The municipality includes also the Community of Terpsithèa (with the suburban community of Argyssa).
1st Municipal District
(pop. 26,035)
Papastàvrou
Saint Athanàsios
Alkazàr
Hippocrates-Pèra
Potamòpolis
Philippòpolis
Livadàki
Saint Thomas
Saint Paraskevi-Mezourlo
Neàpolis
2nd Municipal District
(pop. 41,816)
Saint Achellios
Saint Nikòlaos
Ambelòkipoi
Saints Sarànta
Saint Konstantinos
Stathmòs
3rd Municipal District
(pop. 30,121)
Lachanòkipoi
Nèa Smyrne-Kamynia
Kalyvia-Saint Marina
Saint Geòrgios
Anatoli
Koulouri
Amphithèa
4th Municipal District
(pop. 26,814)
Charavgi-Toumba-OKE
Pyrovolikà-Pharos
Avèrof-Sèkfo
Nèa Politia
Epiròtika
Anthoupolis
Neràida
Kàmpos
Community of Terpsithèa
(pop. 1,290)
Terpsithèa
Argyssa
From 1 January 2011, in accordance with the Kallikratis Plan (new administrative division of Greece), the new municipality of Larissa includes also the former municipalities of Giannouli and Koilada.
Province
The province of Larissa () was one of the provinces of the Larissa Prefecture. Its territory corresponded with that of the current municipalities Larissa (except the municipal unit Giannouli) and Tempi (except the municipal units Gonnoi and Kato Olympos). It was abolished in 2006.
Main streets
Anthimou Gazi Street
Kouma Street
Roosevelt Street
31 August Street
Karamanli Avenue
Koumoundourou
Mandilara
Rizopoulou
Papanastasiou
Venizelou (former Makedonias)
Kyprou (Alexandras)
Polykarpou
Asclepiou Street
Iroon Polytechniou Avenue
Lambraki Street
Thetidos Street
Korai
Ipsilanti
Sklirou
Panagouli
Ioanninon
Kolokotroni
Manolaki
Economy
Larissa is a major agricultural center of Greece, due to the plain of Thessaly.
In manufacturing sector, Larissa is among others home to Biokarpet carpet company (whose owners were also major shareholders of AEL FC in the past) and Orient Bikes.
It comes also in first place with the highest percentage of bars-taverns-restaurants per capita in Greece. Mikel Coffee Company and Bruno Coffee Stores chains started and have also their base in the city.
Culture
Theatres and Odeons
Municipal Conservatory of Larissa
Pappas's Mile Theatre
Municipal Theatre OUHL of Larissa (Thessalian Theatre)
Hatzigianeio Cultural Centre
Tiritomba Shadows Theatre
Landmarks
Second Ancient Theatre
Cenotaph monument of Hippocrates
Frourio Hill
First Ancient Theatre
Basilica of St. Achillios
Bezesten of Larissa
Yeni Mosque (a rare example of mosque built in neoclassical style)
Alkazar Park
Some historical buildings that have been listed as architecturally preserved, include the Cine Palace (architect Colonello), the Charokopos tower (arch. Anastasios Metaxas, endangered to collapse as 2019), the old Mills of Pappas, such as the complex of the Averofeios Agricultural School.
Cuisine
Local specialities:Batzina (Μπατζίνα) pie baked in the ovenKelaidi (Κελαηδί)Pita (Πίτα, traditional pies with pasta phyllo, baked in the oven) like Kreatopita, Loukanikopita, Melintzanopita, Tyropita, SpanakopitaPlastós (Πλαστός) pieLahanópsomo (Λαχανόψωμο) cabbage breadHalvas (Χαλβάς) sweet
Museums
Diachronic Museum of Larissa / Archaeological and Byzantine Myseum of Larissa
Municipal Gallery of Larissa – G.I. Katsigras Museum
Folklore and Historical Museum of Larissa
Military Veterinary Museum of Larissa
Museum of the Folklore Society of Larissa
Museum of Grain and Flours
Media
TV: Thessalian Radio Television (TRT), Astra TV
Press: Eleftheria (newspaper)Festivals
Among the notable festivals that the city hosts, is the "Pineiou Festival" (music) and "AgroThessaly", a major agricultural fair.
Organizations
Panhellenic Federation of Cultural Associations of Vlachs
In popular culture
A notable film of the Greek cinema partially shot in the area of Larissa and referred to the history of the region is Blood on the Land (1966) by Vasilis Georgiadis.
Transport
Larissa sits in the middle of the plain of Thessaly, with connections to Motorway A1 and national roads EO3 and EO6.
Larissa's Urban Bus System
Larissa's Interurban System (Ktel Larissas)
Larissa Central Railway Station Station at
Mezourlo Freight Railway station at
Larissa National Airport (military)
Close destinations
The city is in close proximity of many interesting destinations in the region (Mount Olympus, Mount Kissavos, Meteora, Lake Plastira, Pilio, etc.) suitable for daily trips.
Sports
The local football club AEL FC currently participates in Superleague Greece. The team won the Greek Championship, in 1988, and won the Greek Cup in 1985 and 2007. These titles place AEL among the five most important football clubs in Greece. AEL has hosted its home games at the AEL FC Arena, a UEFA 3-star-rated football ground, since November 2010.
Other important sport venues are the National Sport Center of Larissa'' (EAK Larissas), which includes the Alcazar Stadium and the Neapoli Indoor Hall.
The National Sports Center of Larissa can accommodate a number of sports and events (football, basketball, wrestling, swimming, boxing, martial arts, handball, water polo, etc.), while the Sports Hall has hosted important athletic events (the 1995 FIBA Under-19 World Cup, the 1997 Women's EuroLeague Final Four, the 2003 Greek Basketball Cup Final Four, martial arts events, etc.), and it is also used for cultural events, such as dance festivals.
Historical population
Notable people
Ancient
Campaspe, mistress of Alexander the Great
Achilles (mythology)
Gorgias of Leontinoi (483 BC–375 BC), sophist, worked and died in Larissa
Hippocrates of Kos (460 BC–370 BC), physician, worked and died in Larissa
Medius (4th century BC), officer of Alexander the Great
Philinna (4th century BC), dancer, mother of Philip III Arrhidaeus
Philo (1st century BC), philosopher
Heliodorus of Larissa, mathematician
Achillius of Larissa (270–330), first bishop and patron saint of the city
Medieval
Irene of Larissa, empress consort of Bulgaria
Agatha, wife of Samuel of Bulgaria
Nikoulitzas Delphinas, Byzantine lord of Larissa
Modern
Alexander Helladius, scholar
Giorgakis Olympios (1772–1821), commander of the Greek War of Independence
Theoklitos Farmakidis (1784–1860), scholar, figure of the Modern Greek Enlightenment
Moshe Pesach (1869-1955), rabbi
Michail Sapkas, mayor of Larissa and MP
Achilleas Protosyngelos, Army officer
M. Karagatsis (1908–1960), novelist, journalist
Sofia Vembo (1910-1978), singer and actress
Eleni Zafeiriou (1916–2004), actress
Antonis Vratsanos (1919–2008), resistance figure during WWII
Kostas Gousgounis (1931–), porn actor
Athena Tacha (1936–), artist
Efthymios Christodoulou (1932–), economist
Georgios Souflias (1941–), politician
Angela Kokkola, politician
Petros Efthimiou (1950–), politician
Lakis Lazopoulos (1956–), actor, comedian, script author & director
Thanasis Papakonstantinou (1959–), poet, songwriter, singer, musician
Georgios Mitsibonas (1962–1997), footballer
Maria Papayanni (1964–), writer
Vassilis Karapialis (1965–), footballer
Christos Papoutsis, politician
Maria Spyraki, politician
Ekaterini Voggoli (1970–), discus thrower
Alexis Georgoulis (1974–), actor
Kostas Chalkias (1974–), footballer
Yannis Goumas (1975–), footballer
Dimosthenis Dikoudis (1977–), basketball player
Nestoras Kommatos (1977–), basketball player
Fani Halkia (1979–), hurdler
Dimitris Spanoulis (1979–), basketball player
Theofanis Gekas (1980–), footballer
Vangelis Moras (1981–), footballer
Vassilis Spanoulis (1982–), basketball player
Giorgos Tsiaras (1982–), basketball player
Vasilios Koutsianikoulis (1988–), footballer
Haido Alexouli (1991-), long jumper
Chrysoula Anagnostopoulou (1991-), discus thrower
Vasileia Zachou, (1994-), gymnast
Mayor history
Hasan Etem Aga
Argyrios Didikas
Christos Georgiadis
Dionysios Galatis
Achilleas Asteriadis
Achilleas Logiotatou
Konstantinos Anastasiadis
Konstantinos Markidis
Vasileios Sylivridis
Anastasios Zarmanis
Michail Sapkas
Konstantinos Vlachos
Christos Koutsoubas
Dimitris Papageorgiou
Vasileios Arsenidis
Stylianos Asteriadis
Nikolaos Tzavellas
Dimitrios Karathanos
Sotirios Zazias
Dimitrios Hatzigiannis
Alexandros Chondronasios
Athanasios Messinis
Stylianos Zografidis
Agamemnon Blanas
Aristeides Labroulis
Christodoulos Kafes
Konstantinos Tzanakoulis
Apostolos Kalogiannis (2014-)
Twin towns – sister cities
Larissa is twinned with:
Anapa, Russia (2016)
Bălți, Moldova (1986)
Banská Bystrica, Slovakia (1985)
Foča, Bosnia and Herzegovina (1994)
Knoxville, United States (1996)
Kos, Greece (1978)
Larnaca, Cyprus (1990)
Rybnik, Poland (2003)
Stara Zagora, Bulgaria (1985)
Gallery
See also
Ampelakia, Larissa
Vale of Tempe
University of Thessaly
CERETETH, Center of Technology Thessaly
References
External links
Source
Official Website
Region of Thessaly Official Website
International airport of Central Greece
Larissa on Web
Larissa The Official website of the Greek National Tourism Organisation
Larissa Photos
Municipalities of Thessaly
Greek regional capitals
Provinces of Greece
Pelasgian words
Pelasgiotis
Populated places in ancient Thessaly
Cities in ancient Greece
Thessalian city-states
Populated places in Larissa (regional unit) |
18491 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%20and%20follow | Lead and follow | In some types of partner dance, lead and follow are designations for the two dancers' roles in a dance pairing. The leader is responsible for guiding the couple and initiating transitions to different dance steps and, in improvised dances, for choosing the dance steps to perform. The leader communicates choices to the follower, and directs the follower by means of subtle physical and visual signals, thereby allowing the pair to be smoothly coordinated.
The amount of direction given by the leader depends on several factors, including dance style, social context of the dance, and experience and personalities of the dancers.
Gender roles
Traditionally, the male dance partner is the leader and the female dance partner is the follower, though this is not always the case, such as in Schottische danced in the Madrid style where women lead and men follow (although this is not totally true: during the dance there is an exchange of roles, the leader becomes the follower and vice versa.). Many social dance forms have a long history of same-sex (e.g. tango) and role-crossing partnerships, and there have been some changes to the strict gendering of partner dances in some competition or performance contexts. An example is a "Jack and Jack" dance contest.
Communication
Partner dancing requires awareness and clear communication; this is essential both for safety and for the overall success of the dance. If following in the dance, it helps to maintain a centered readiness to the leader. This helps the follower be ready for cues both visually and physically. The leader in the dance will best support the follower by giving clear directions.
For the leader and follower to interact with each other, communication needs to occur between the dance couple. Dancers take cues through physical connection, with the follower using it to communicate feedback to the leader just as the leader uses it to suggest moves to the follower. The most accomplished dancers use connection as a line of communication which allows the leader to incorporate the follower's ideas, abilities, and creative suggestions into their own styling and selection of moves.
In many partner dances, the leader's steps differ from the follower's. In face-to-face positions, the follower generally "mirrors" the leader's footwork. For example, if the leader begins on their left foot, the follower will begin on their right foot. In choreographed pieces and other situations where the follower is in a tandem position or shadow position, the leader and follower will use the same footwork. Usually both partners move together as a unit, but in some dances the partners move in opposite directions - together and apart again.
In partner dancing, dancers seek to work together to create synchronized or complementary movements. The leader is largely responsible for initiating movement, whereas the follower's role is to maintain this movement (though they may choose not to). This process can be described as involving the initiation of momentum or 'energy' (by the leader) and then the subsequent maintenance, exaggeration, decreasing or dissolving of this momentum by both partners.
This momentum or energy may be manifested as movement (in its most obvious form), or in a range of more complex interactions between partners:
Compression (where each partner 'compress' the energy by bending joints and moving towards or 'into' their partner, to varying degrees);
Leverage (where one partner – usually the leader – exploits the development of compression or connection to shift their follower's weight or to 'ground' (develop 'compression' downwards, with the contact their feet make with the floor) themselves more thoroughly before initiating movement);
Tension (is the opposite of compression - partners moving away from each other but still in contact)
It is also helpful for dancers to regard their partners in terms of their points of balance to help the leader initiate movements for their follower. These points of balance include the front-facing side of the shoulders, the front facing side of the hips, and the follower's center (the abdomen). If the leader wants to bring the follower close, the leader is to apply tension and draw the hand in and down toward the leader's own hip; to send the follower away, the leader would guide the hand toward the follower and add compression, signaling the move away.
Obstruction avoidance
A general rule is that both leader and follower watch each other's back in a dance hall situation. Collision avoidance is one of the cases when the follower is required to "backlead" or at least to communicate about the danger to the leader. In travelling dances, such as waltz, common follower signals of danger are an unusual resistance to the leader, or a slight tap by the shoulder. In open-position dances, such as swing or Latin dances, maintaining eye contact with the partner is an important safety communication link.
Weight transfer
For partner dancers, using weight transfers is a way for a leader to communicate a 'lead' for a dance step to a follower.
In another example, for a leader to have their follower walk forwards while connected, the leader begins by taking his or her center back, indicating a backward walking move. As the partners' arms/points of contact move away from each other, they develop tension, which the follower may either break by dropping their arms or breaking the hold, or 'follow' by moving.
A more experienced leader may realize (if only on an unconscious level) that the most effective execution of even this "simple" step is achieved by preparing for movement before the step begins.
The leader-follower connection facilitates this. The principles of leading and following are explored in contact improvisation of modern dance.
Recovery from miscommunication
Sometimes a miscommunication will occur between the leader and follower. Techniques of the recovery of connection and synchronization vary from dance to dance, but below are a few common examples.
In dances without obligatory body contact (Latin, swing, hustle, American Smooth), free spin recovers from anything.
In dances danced in body contact (waltz, tango, quickstep, foxtrot) it is very important to recover the feet match. To recover, leaders may initiate a well-known (i.e. basic) step with slightly exaggerated sideways shift of weight to force the follower to free the required foot. For example, in waltz or foxtrot one might end a measure in the open promenade position, as there would then be no doubt as to the direction of the movement and which foot to use at the beginning of the next measure.
Lead
Methods to lead
Body lead
Arm lead
Body lead vs. arm lead
A body lead occurs where the leader initiates a lead by moving their body, which moves their arm(s), and thus transmits a lead to the follower. 'Body lead' means much the same as 'weight transfer'.
An arm lead occurs where the leader moves their arm(s) without moving their body, or moves their body in a different direction to their arm.
While an 'arm lead' without the transfer of weight (or movement of the body) on the part of the leader is often a marker of an inexperienced or poorly taught dancer, the process of leading and following, particularly at an advanced level, often involves the contrasting uses of weight transfers and 'arm moves'. As an example, a leader may lead a follower back onto their right foot through the leader's own weight transfer forwards onto their left foot; yet at the same time turn the follower's torso to the left from above the hips.
Techniques of leading
The leader has to communicate the direction of the movement to the follower. Traditionally, the leader's right hand is on the follower's back, near the lowest part of the shoulder-blade. This is the strongest part of the back and the leader can easily pull the follower's body inwards. To enable the leader to communicate a step forward (backward for the follower) the follower has to constantly put a little weight against the leader's right hand. When the leader goes forward, the follower will naturally go backwards.
An important leading mechanism is the leader's left hand, which usually holds the follower's right hand. At no point should it be necessary for any partner to firmly grab the other's hand. It is sufficient to press the hand or even only finger tips slightly against each other, the follower's hand following the leader's hand.
Another important leading mechanism is hip contact. Though not possible in traditional Latin dances like Rumba, Cha-cha, Tango Argentino because of partner separation, hip contact is a harmonious and sensual way of communicating movement to the partner, used primarily in Standard or Ballroom dances (English / slow waltz, European tango, quickstep etc.) and Caribbean dances.
Follow
Types of follow
Active follow
Passive follow
Techniques of following
Backleading
Backleading is when a follower is executing steps without waiting for, or contrary to the lead's lead. Both are considered bad dancing habits because it makes the follower difficult to lead and dance with.
Backleading can be a teaching tool that is often used intentionally by an instructor when dancing with a student lead, in order to help them learn the desired technique.
Backleading sounds similar to "hijacking", and indeed it is often used in place of "hijacking". However the two terms have significant differences, stemming from intentions. The first difference is superficial; hijacking is usually an occasional "outburst" from the follower, who otherwise diligently follows the lead, while a "backlead" may refer to a consistent habit. The second difference is more significant; hijacking is an actual reversal of roles, meaning that the hijacker leads the leader and takes control of the dance, while backleading only takes care of the follower.
Hijacking
Sometimes the follower steals the lead and the couple reverses roles for some time. This is called hijacking (also known as lead stealing). Hijacking requires experience and good connection, since without proper timing it may look like sloppy dancing. A signal for hijacking is typically an unusually changed (mostly, increased) stress in the connection from the follower's side. "Unusually" meaning more than typically required for the execution of the current step (by these partners). For a follower to hijack, they must be sure that the lead will understand or at least guess the follower's intentions.
See also
Glossary of partner dance terms
References
Partner dance technique |
18492 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexeme | Lexeme | A lexeme () is a unit of lexical meaning that underlies a set of words that are related through inflection. It is a basic abstract unit of meaning, a unit of morphological analysis in linguistics that roughly corresponds to a set of forms taken by a single root word. For example, in English, run, runs, ran and running are forms of the same lexeme, which can be represented as RUN.
One form, the lemma (or citation form), is chosen by convention as the canonical form of a lexeme. The lemma is the form used in dictionaries as an entry's headword. Other forms of a lexeme are often listed later in the entry if they are uncommon or irregularly inflected.
Description
The notion of the lexeme is central to morphology, the basis for defining other concepts in that field. For example, the difference between inflection and derivation can be stated in terms of lexemes:
Inflectional rules relate a lexeme to its forms.
Derivational rules relate a lexeme to another lexeme.
A lexeme belongs to a particular syntactic category, has a certain meaning (semantic value) and, in inflecting languages, has a corresponding inflectional paradigm. That is, a lexeme in many languages will have many different forms. For example, the lexeme RUN has a present third person singular form runs, a present non-third-person singular form run (which also functions as the past participle and non-finite form), a past form ran, and a present participle running. (It does not include runner, runners, runnable etc.) The use of the forms of a lexeme is governed by rules of grammar. In the case of English verbs such as RUN, they include subject-verb agreement and compound tense rules, which determine the form of a verb that can be used in a given sentence.
In many formal theories of language, lexemes have subcategorization frames to account for the number and types of complements. They occur within sentences and other syntactic structures.
Decomposition
A language's lexemes are often composed of smaller units with individual meaning called morphemes, according to root morpheme + derivational morphemes + suffix (not necessarily in that order), where:
The root morpheme is the primary lexical unit of a word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced to smaller constituents.
The derivational morphemes carry only derivational information.
The suffix is composed of all inflectional morphemes, and carries only inflectional information.
The compound root morpheme + derivational morphemes is often called the stem. The decomposition stem + desinence can then be used to study inflection.
See also
Ending (linguistics)
Inflection
Lexical word vs. grammatical word
Marker (linguistics)
Multiword expression
Null morpheme
Root (linguistics)
Stem
Syntagma (linguistics)
Word family
Notes
References
External links
Lexical units
Linguistics terminology |
18494 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord%27s%20Prayer | Lord's Prayer | The Lord's Prayer, also called the Our Father (), is a central Christian prayer which, according to the New Testament, Jesus taught as the way to pray:
Pray then in this way ...
When you pray, say ...
Two versions of this prayer are recorded in the gospels: a longer form within the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew, and a shorter form in the Gospel of Luke when "one of his disciples said to him, 'Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples. Lutheran theologian Harold Buls suggested that both were original, the Matthean version spoken by Jesus early in his ministry in Galilee, and the Lucan version one year later, "very likely in Judea".
The first three of the seven petitions in Matthew address God; the other four are related to human needs and concerns. Matthew's account alone includes the "Your will be done" and the "Rescue us from the evil one" (or "Deliver us from evil") petitions. Both original Greek texts contain the adjective epiousios, which does not appear in any other classical or Koine Greek literature; while controversial, "daily" has been the most common English-language translation of this word.
Initial words on the topic from the Catechism of the Catholic Church teach that it "is truly the summary of the whole gospel". The prayer is used by most Christian churches in their worship; with few exceptions, the liturgical form is the Matthean. Protestants usually conclude the prayer with a doxology, a later addendum appearing in some manuscripts of Matthew. Although theological differences and various modes of worship divide Christians, according to Fuller Seminary professor Clayton Schmit, "there is a sense of solidarity in knowing that Christians around the globe are praying together ... and these words always unite us."
Texts
New Revised Standard Version
Relationship between the Matthaean and Lucan texts
In biblical criticism, the absence of the Lord's Prayer in the Gospel of Mark, together with its occurrence in Matthew and Luke, has caused scholars who accept the two-source hypothesis (against other document hypotheses) to conclude that it is probably a logion original to Q. The common source of the two existing versions, whether Q or an oral or another written tradition, was elaborated differently in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.
Marianus Pale Hera considers it unlikely that either of the two used the other as its source and that it is possible that they "preserve two versions of the Lord’s Prayer used in two different communities: the Matthean in a Jewish Christian community and the Lucan in the Gentile Christian community".
If either evangelist built on the other, Joachim Jeremias attributes priority to Luke on the grounds that "in the early period, before wordings were fixed, liturgical texts were elaborated, expanded and enriched". On the other hand, Michael Goulder, Thomas J. Mosbo and Ken Olson see the shorter Lucan version as a reworking of the Matthaean text, removing unnecessary verbiage and repetition.
The Matthaean version has completely ousted the Lucan in general Christian usage, The following considerations are based on the Matthaean version.
Original Greek text and Syriac and Latin translations
Standard edition of Greek text
Standard edition of Syriac text of Peshitta
1.
(ʾăḇūn d-ḇa-šmayyā)
2.
(neṯqaddaš šmāḵ)
3.
(têṯē malkūṯāḵ)
4.
(nēhwē ṣeḇyānāḵ ʾaykannā ḏ-ḇa-šmayyā ʾāp̄ b-ʾarʿā)
5.
(haḇ lan laḥmā ḏ-sūnqānan yawmānā)
6.
(wa-šḇoq lan ḥawbayn ʾaykannā ḏ-ʾāp̄ ḥnan šḇaqn l-ḥayyāḇayn)
7.
(w-lā ṯaʿlan l-nesyōnā ʾellā p̄aṣṣān men bīšā)
Vulgata Clementina (1692)
1. pater noster qui es in cælis
2. sanctificetur nomen tuum
3. adveniat regnum tuum
4. fiat voluntas tua sicut in cælo et in terra
5. panem nostrum supersubstantialem da nobis hodie
6. et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris
7. et ne nos inducas in tentationem sed libera nos a malo
Liturgical texts: Greek, Syriac, Latin
Patriarchal Edition 1904
,
,
,
.
.
.
ὅτι σοῦ ἐστιν ἡ βασιλεία καὶ ἡ δύναμις καὶ ἡ δόξα εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας ἀμήν.
Syriac liturgical
(our father who art in heaven)
(hallowed be thy name)
(thy kingdom come)
(thy will be done as it is in heaven also on earth)
(give us the bread of our need this day)
(and forgive us our debts and our sins as we have forgiven our debtors)
(and bring us not into temptation but deliver us from evil)
(for thine is the kingdom the power the glory for an age of ages amen)
Roman Missal
Pater noster qui es in cælis:
sanctificétur nomen tuum;
advéniat regnum tuum;
fiat volúntas tua, sicut in cælo, et in terra.Panem nostrum cotidiánum da nobis hódie;
et dimítte nobis débita nostra,
sicut et nos dimíttimus debitóribus nostris;
et ne nos indúcas in tentatiónem;
sed líbera nos a malo.
Greek texts
English versions
There are several different English translations of the Lord's Prayer from Greek or Latin, beginning around AD 650 with the Northumbrian translation. Of those in current liturgical use, the three best-known are:
The translation in the 1662 Anglican Book of Common Prayer (BCP) of the Church of England
The slightly modernized "traditional ecumenical" form used in the Catholic and (often with doxology) many Protestant Churches
The 1988 translation of the ecumenical English Language Liturgical Consultation (ELLC)
The concluding doxology ("For thine is the kingdom and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen") is often added at the end of the prayer by Protestants. The 1662 Book of Common Prayer (BCP) of the Church of England adds doxology in some services, but not in all. For example, the doxology is not used in the 1662 BCP at Morning and Evening Prayer when it is preceded by the Kyrie eleison. Older English translations of the Bible, based on late Byzantine Greek manuscripts, included it, but it is excluded in critical editions of the New Testament, such as that of the United Bible Societies. It is absent in the oldest manuscripts and is not considered to be part of the original text of Matthew 6:9–13.
In the Byzantine Rite, whenever a priest is officiating, after the Lord's Prayer he intones this augmented form of the doxology, "For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory: of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages.", and in either instance, reciter(s) of the prayer reply "Amen".
Latin Rite Roman Catholic usage has never attached the doxology to the end of the Lord's Prayer. The doxology does appear in the Roman Rite Mass as revised in 1969. After the conclusion of the Lord's Prayer, the priest says a prayer known as the embolism. In the official ICEL English translation, the embolism reads: "Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil, graciously grant peace in our days, that, by the help of your mercy, we may be always free from sin and safe from all distress, as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Saviour, Jesus Christ." This elaborates on the final petition, "Deliver us from evil." The people then respond to this with the doxology: "For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and forever."
The translators of the 1611 King James Bible assumed that a Greek manuscript they possessed was ancient and therefore adopted the phrase "For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory for ever" into the Lord's Prayer of Matthew's Gospel. However, the use of the doxology in English dates from at least 1549 with the First Prayer Book of Edward VI which was influenced by William Tyndale's New Testament translation in 1526. Later scholarship demonstrated that inclusion of the doxology in New Testament manuscripts was actually a later addition based in part on Eastern liturgical tradition.
1662 Anglican BCP
Our Father, which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name;
Thy kingdom come;
Thy will be done
in earth, as it is in heaven:
Give us this day our daily bread;
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive them that trespass against us;
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil;
For thine is the kingdom,
the power, and the glory,
For ever and ever.
Amen.
Traditional Ecumenical Version
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name;
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us;
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
Most Protestants conclude with the doxology:
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen. (or ...forever. Amen.)
At Mass in the Catholic Church the embolism is followed by:
For the kingdom,
the power and the glory are yours,
now and for ever.
1988 ELLC
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Save us from the time of trial
and deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours
now and for ever. Amen.
King James Version
Although Matthew 6:12 uses the term debts, most older English versions of the Lord's Prayer use the term trespasses, while ecumenical versions often use the term sins. The latter choice may be due to Luke 11:4, which uses the word sins, while the former may be due to Matthew 6:14 (immediately after the text of the prayer), where Jesus speaks of trespasses. As early as the third century, Origen of Alexandria used the word trespasses () in the prayer. Although the Latin form that was traditionally used in Western Europe has debita (debts), most English-speaking Christians (except Scottish Presbyterians and some others of the Dutch Reformed tradition) use trespasses. For example, the Church of Scotland, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Reformed Church in America, as well as some Congregational heritage churches in the United Church of Christ follow the version found in Matthew 6 in the King James Version, which in the prayer uses the words "debts" and "debtors".
King James Version (1611)
Our Father which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done in earth,
as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil:
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever. Amen.
Slightly Modernized AV/KJV Version
Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done on earth,
as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil:
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
forever. Amen.
All these versions are based on the text in Matthew, rather than Luke, of the prayer given by Jesus:
Matthew 6:9-13 (ESV)
"Pray then like this: 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.'"
Luke 11:2-4 (ESV)
And he said to them, "When you pray, say: 'Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation.'"
Analysis
Saint Augustine of Hippo gives the following analysis of the Lord's Prayer, which elaborates on Jesus' words just before it in Matthew's gospel: "Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then in this way" (Mt. 6:8-9):We need to use words (when we pray) so that we may remind ourselves to consider carefully what we are asking, not so that we may think we can instruct the Lord or prevail on him.
When we say: "Hallowed be your name", we are reminding ourselves to desire that his name, which in fact is always holy, should also be considered holy among men. ...But this is a help for men, not for God. ...And as for our saying: "Your kingdom come," it will surely come whether we will it or not. But we are stirring up our desires for the kingdom so that it can come to us and we can deserve to reign there. ...When we say: "Deliver us from evil," we are reminding ourselves to reflect on the fact that we do not yet enjoy the state of blessedness in which we shall suffer no evil. ...It was very appropriate that all these truths should be entrusted to us to remember in these very words. Whatever be the other words we may prefer to say (words which the one praying chooses so that his disposition may become clearer to himself or which he simply adopts so that his disposition may be intensified), we say nothing that is not contained in the Lord’s Prayer, provided of course we are praying in a correct and proper way.This excerpt from Augustine is included in the Office of Readings in the Catholic Liturgy of the Hours.
Many have written Biblical commentaries on the Lord's Prayer. Contained below are a variety of selections from some of those commentaries.
Introduction
This subheading and those that follow use 1662 Book of Common Prayer (BCP) (see above)
"Our" indicates that the prayer is that of a group of people who consider themselves children of God and who call God their "Father". "In heaven" indicates that the Father who is addressed is distinct from human fathers on earth.
Augustine interpreted "heaven" (coelum, sky) in this context as meaning "in the hearts of the righteous, as it were in His holy temple".
First Petition
Former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams explains this phrase as a petition that people may look upon God's name as holy, as something that inspires awe and reverence, and that they may not trivialize it by making God a tool for their purposes, to "put other people down, or as a sort of magic to make themselves feel safe". He sums up the meaning of the phrase by saying: "Understand what you're talking about when you're talking about God, this is serious, this is the most wonderful and frightening reality that we could imagine, more wonderful and frightening than we can imagine."
Second Petition
"This petition has its parallel in the Jewish prayer, 'May he establish his Kingdom during your life and during your days.'" In the gospels Jesus speaks frequently of God's kingdom, but never defines the concept: "He assumed this was a concept so familiar that it did not require definition." Concerning how Jesus' audience in the gospels would have understood him, G. E. Ladd turns to the concept's Hebrew Biblical background: "The Hebrew word malkuth […] refers first to a reign, dominion, or rule and only secondarily to the realm over which a reign is exercised. […] When malkuth is used of God, it almost always refers to his authority or to his rule as the heavenly King." This petition looks to the perfect establishment of God's rule in the world in the future, an act of God resulting in the eschatological order of the new age.
Some see the coming of God's kingdom as a divine gift to be prayed for, not a human achievement. Others believe that the Kingdom will be fostered by the hands of those faithful who work for a better world. These believe that Jesus' commands to feed the hungry and clothe the needy make the seeds of the kingdom already present on earth (Lk 8:5-15; Mt 25:31-40).
Hilda C. Graef notes that the operative Greek word, basileia, means both kingdom and kingship (i.e., reign, dominion, governing, etc.), but that the English word kingdom loses this double meaning. Kingship adds a psychological meaning to the petition: one is also praying for the condition of soul where one follows God's will.
Third Petition
According to William Barclay, this phrase is a couplet with the same meaning as "Thy kingdom come." Barclay argues: "The kingdom is a state of things on earth in which God's will is as perfectly done as it is in heaven. ...To do the will of God and to be in the Kingdom of God are one and the same thing."
John Ortberg interprets this phrase as follows: "Many people think our job is to get my afterlife destination taken care of, then tread water till we all get ejected and God comes back and torches this place. But Jesus never told anybody – neither his disciples nor us – to pray, 'Get me out of here so I can go up there.' His prayer was, 'Make up there come down here.' Make things down here run the way they do up there." The request that "thy will be done" is God's invitation to "join him in making things down here the way they are up there."
Fourth Petition
As mentioned earlier in this article, the original word (epiousios), commonly characterized as daily, is unique to the Lord's Prayer in all of ancient Greek literature. The word is almost a hapax legomenon, occurring only in Luke and Matthew's versions of the Lord's Prayer, and nowhere else in any other extant Greek texts. While epiousios is often substituted by the word "daily," all other New Testament translations from the Greek into "daily" otherwise reference hemeran (ἡμέραν, "the day"), which does not appear in this usage.
Via linguistic parsing, Jerome translated "ἐπιούσιον" (epiousios) as "supersubstantialem" in the Gospel of Matthew, but chose "cotidianum" ("daily") in the Gospel of Luke. This wide-ranging difference with respect to meaning of epiousios is discussed in detail in the current Catechism of the Catholic Church by way of an inclusive approach toward tradition as well as a literal one for meaning: "Taken in a temporal sense, this word is a pedagogical repetition of 'this day', to confirm us in trust 'without reservation'. Taken in the qualitative sense, it signifies what is necessary for life, and more broadly every good thing sufficient for subsistence. Taken literally (epi-ousios: "super-essential"), it refers directly to the Bread of Life, the Body of Christ, the 'medicine of immortality,' without which we have no life within us."
Epiousios is translated as supersubstantialem in the Vulgate Matthew 6:11 and accordingly as supersubstantial in the Douay–Rheims Bible Matthew 6:11.
Barclay M. Newman's A Concise Greek-English Dictionary of the New Testament, published in a revised edition in 2010 by the United Bible Societies, has the following entry:
ἐπι|ούσιος, ον (εἰμί) of doubtful meaning, for today; for the coming day; necessary for existence.
It thus derives the word from the preposition ἐπί (epi) and the verb εἰμί (eimi), from the latter of which are derived words such as οὐσία (ousia), the range of whose meanings is indicated in A Greek–English Lexicon.
Fifth Petition
The Presbyterian and other Reformed churches tend to use the rendering "forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors". Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans and Methodists are more likely to say "trespasses… those who trespass against us". The "debts" form appears in the first English translation of the Bible, by John Wycliffe in 1395 (Wycliffe spelling "dettis"). The "trespasses" version appears in the 1526 translation by William Tyndale (Tyndale spelling "treaspases"). In 1549 the first Book of Common Prayer in English used a version of the prayer with "trespasses". This became the "official" version used in Anglican congregations. On the other hand, the 1611 King James Version, the version specifically authorized for the Church of England, has "forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors".
After the request for bread, Matthew and Luke diverge slightly. Matthew continues with a request for debts to be forgiven in the same manner as people have forgiven those who have debts against them. Luke, on the other hand, makes a similar request about sins being forgiven in the manner of debts being forgiven between people. The word "debts" () does not necessarily mean financial obligations, as shown by the use of the verbal form of the same word () in passages such as Romans 13:8. The Aramaic word ḥôbâ can mean "debt" or "sin". This difference between Luke's and Matthew's wording could be explained by the original form of the prayer having been in Aramaic. The generally accepted interpretation is thus that the request is for forgiveness of sin, not of supposed loans granted by God. Asking for forgiveness from God was a staple of Jewish prayers (e.g., Penitential Psalms). It was also considered proper for individuals to be forgiving of others, so the sentiment expressed in the prayer would have been a common one of the time.
Anthony C. Deane, Canon of Worcester Cathedral, suggested that the choice of the word "ὀφειλήματα" (debts), rather than "ἁμαρτίας" (sins), indicates a reference to failures to use opportunities of doing good. He linked this with the parable of the sheep and the goats (also in Matthew's Gospel), in which the grounds for condemnation are not wrongdoing in the ordinary sense, but failure to do right, missing opportunities for showing love to others.
"As we forgive ...". Divergence between Matthew's "debts" and Luke's "sins" is relatively trivial compared to the impact of the second half of this statement. The verses immediately following the Lord's Prayer, Matthew 6:14-15 show Jesus teaching that the forgiveness of our sin/debt (by God) is linked with how we forgive others, as in the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant Matthew 18:23-35, which Matthew gives later. R. T. France comments:
The point is not so much that forgiving is a prior condition of being forgiven, but that forgiving cannot be a one-way process. Like all God's gifts it brings responsibility; it must be passed on. To ask for forgiveness on any other basis is hypocrisy. There can be no question, of course, of our forgiving being in proportion to what we are forgiven, as 18:23–35 makes clear.
Sixth Petition
Interpretations of the penultimate petition of the prayer – not to be led by God into peirasmos – vary considerably. The range of meanings of the Greek word "πειρασμός" (peirasmos) is illustrated in New Testament Greek lexicons. In different contexts it can mean temptation, testing, trial, experiment. Although the traditional English translation uses the word "temptation" and Carl Jung saw God as actually leading people astray, Christians generally interpret the petition as not contradicting James 1:13-14: "Let no one say when he is tempted, 'I am being tempted by God', for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire." Some see the petition as an eschatological appeal against unfavourable Last Judgment, a theory supported by the use of the word "peirasmos" in this sense in Revelations 3:10. Others see it as a plea against hard tests described elsewhere in scripture, such as those of Job. It is also read as: "Do not let us be led (by ourselves, by others, by Satan) into temptations". Since it follows shortly after a plea for daily bread (i.e., material sustenance), it is also seen as referring to not being caught up in the material pleasures given. A similar phrase appears in Matthew 26:41 and Luke 22:40 in connection with the prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane.
Joseph Smith, the founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in a translation of the Holy Bible which was not completed before his death, used: "And suffer us not to be led into temptation".
In a conversation on the Italian TV channel TV2000 on 6 December 2017, Pope Francis commented that the then Italian wording of this petition (similar to the traditional English) was a poor translation. He said "the French" (i.e., the Bishops' Conference of France) had changed the petition to "Do not let us fall in/into temptation". He was referring to the 2017 change to a new French version, Et ne nous laisse pas entrer en tentation ("Do not let us enter into temptation"), but spoke of it in terms of the Spanish translation, no nos dejes caer en la tentación ("do not let us fall in/into temptation"), that he was accustomed to recite in Argentina before his election as Pope. He explained: "I am the one who falls; it's not him [God] pushing me into temptation to then see how I have fallen". Anglican theologian Ian Paul said that such a proposal was "stepping into a theological debate about the nature of evil".
In January 2018, after "in-depth study", the German Bishops' Conference rejected any rewording of their translation of the Lord's Prayer.
In November 2018, the Episcopal Conference of Italy adopted a new edition of the Messale Romano, the Italian translation of the Roman Missal. One of the changes made from the older (1983) edition was to render this petition as non abbandonarci alla tentazione ("do not abandon us to temptation"). The Italian-speaking Waldensian Evangelical Church maintains its translation of the petition: non esporci alla tentazione ("do not expose us to temptation").
In May 2019, Pope Francis officially approved a change to the sixth petition, replacing "lead us not into temptation" with "do not let us fall into temptation."
Seventh Petition
Translations and scholars are divided over whether the final word here refers to "evil" in general or "the evil one" (the devil) in particular. In the original Greek, as well as in the Latin translation, the word could be either of neuter (evil in general) or masculine (the evil one) gender. Matthew's version of the prayer appears in the Sermon on the Mount, in earlier parts of which the term is used to refer to general evil. Later parts of Matthew refer to the devil when discussing similar issues. However, the devil is never referred to as the evil one in any known Aramaic sources. While John Calvin accepted the vagueness of the term's meaning, he considered that there is little real difference between the two interpretations, and that therefore the question is of no real consequence. Similar phrases are found in John 17:15 and Thessalonians 3:3.
Doxology
Content
The doxology sometimes attached to the prayer in English is similar to a passage in 1 Chronicles 29:11 – "Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O LORD, and you are exalted as head above all." It is also similar to the paean to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon in Daniel 2:37 – "You, O king, the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, and the might, and the glory,"
The doxology has been interpreted as connected with the final petition: "Deliver us from evil". The kingdom, the power and the glory are the Father's, not of our antagonist's, who is subject to him to whom Christ will hand over the kingdom after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power (1 Corinthians 15:24). It makes the prayer end as well as begin with the vision of God in heaven, in the majesty of his name and kingdom and the perfection of his will and purpose.
Origin
The doxology is not included in Luke's version of the Lord's Prayer, nor is it present in the earliest manuscripts (papyrus or parchment) of Matthew, representative of the Alexandrian text, although it is present in the manuscripts representative of the later Byzantine text. Most scholars do not consider it part of the original text of Matthew. The Codex Washingtonianus, which adds a doxology (in the familiar text), is of the early fifth or late fourth century. New translations generally omit it except as a footnote.
The Didache, generally considered a first-century text, has a doxology, "for yours is the power and the glory forever", as a conclusion for the Lord's Prayer (Didache, 8:2). C. Clifton Black, although regarding the Didache as an "early second century" text, nevertheless considers the doxology it contains to be the "earliest additional ending we can trace". Of a longer version, Black observes: "Its earliest appearance may have been in Tatian's Diatessaron, a second-century harmony of the four Gospels". The first three editions of the UBS text cited the Diatessaron for inclusion of the familiar doxology in Matthew 6:13, but in the later editions it cites the Diatessaron for excluding it. The Apostolic Constitutions added "the kingdom" to the beginning of the formula in the Didache, thus establishing the now familiar doxology.
Varied liturgical use
In the Divine Liturgy of the Byzantine Rite, the priest sings, after the last line of the prayer, the doxology, "For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages."
Adding a doxology to the Our Father is not part of the liturgical tradition of the Roman Rite nor does the Latin Vulgate of St. Jerome contain the doxology that appears in late Greek manuscripts. However, it is recited since 1970 in the Roman Rite Order of Mass, not as part of the Lord's Prayer but separately as a response acclamation after the embolism developing the seventh petition in the perspective of the Final Coming of Christ.
In most Anglican editions of the Book of Common Prayer, the Lord's Prayer ends with the doxology unless it is preceded by the Kyrie eleison. This happens at the daily offices of Morning Prayer (Mattins) and Evening Prayer (Evensong) and in a few other offices.
The vast majority of Protestant churches conclude the Lord's Prayer with the doxology.
Use as a language comparison tool
In the course of Christianization, one of the first texts to be translated between many languages has historically been the Lord's Prayer, long before the full Bible would be translated into the respective languages. Since the 16th century, collections of translations of the prayer have often been used for a quick comparison of languages. The first such collection, with 22 versions, was Mithridates, de differentiis linguarum by Conrad Gessner (1555; the title refers to Mithridates VI of Pontus who according to Pliny the Elder was an exceptional polyglot).
Gessner's idea of collecting translations of the prayer was taken up by authors of the 17th century, including Hieronymus Megiserus (1603) and Georg Pistorius (1621). Thomas Lüdeken in 1680 published an enlarged collection of 83 versions of the prayer, of which three were in fictional philosophical languages.
Lüdeken quotes as a Barnum Hagius as his source for the exotic scripts used, while their true (anonymous) author was Andreas Müller.
In 1700, Lüdeken's collection was re-edited by B. Mottus as Oratio dominica plus centum linguis versionibus aut characteribus reddita et expressa.
This edition was comparatively inferior, but a second, revised edition was published in 1715 by John Chamberlain.
This 1715 edition was used by Gottfried Hensel in his Synopsis Universae Philologiae (1741) to compile "geographico-polyglot maps" where the beginning of the prayer was shown in the geographical area where the respective languages were spoken.
Johann Ulrich Kraus also published a collection with more than 100 entries.
These collections continued to be improved and expanded well into the 19th century; Johann Christoph Adelung and Johann Severin Vater in 1806–1817 published the prayer in "well-nigh five hundred languages and dialects".
Samples of scripture, including the Lord's Prayer, were published in 52 oriental languages, most of them not previously found in such collections, translated by the brethren of the Serampore Mission and printed at the mission press there in 1818.
Comparisons with other prayer traditions
The book The Comprehensive New Testament, by T.E. Clontz and J. Clontz, points to similarities between elements of the Lord's Prayer and expressions in writings of other religions as diverse as the Dhammapada, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Golden Verses, and the Egyptian Book of the Dead. It mentions in particular parallels in 1 Chronicles.
Rabbi Aron Mendes Chumaceiro says that nearly all the elements of the prayer have counterparts in the Jewish Bible and Deuterocanonical books: the first part in Isaiah 63 ("Look down from heaven and see, from your holy and beautiful habitation ... for you are our Father ...") and Ezekiel 36 ("I will vindicate the holiness of my great name ...") and 38 ("I will show my greatness and my holiness and make myself known in the eyes of many nations ..."), the second part in Obadiah 1 ("Saviours shall go up to Mount Zion to rule Mount Esau, and the kingdom shall be the LORD's") and 1 Samuel 3 ("... It is the LORD. Let him do what seems good to him."), the third part in Proverbs 30 ("... feed me with my apportioned bread..."), the fourth part in Sirach 28 ("Forgive your neighbour the wrong he has done, and then your sins will be pardoned when you pray."). "Deliver us from evil" can be compared with Psalm 119 ("... let no iniquity get dominion over me.").
Chumaceiro says that, because the idea of God leading a human into temptation contradicts the righteousness and love of God, "Lead us not into temptation" has no counterpart in the Jewish Bible/Christian Old Testament. However, the word "πειρασμός", which is translated as "temptation", can also be translated as "test" or "trial", making evident the attitude of someone's heart, and in the Old Testament God tested Abraham, and told David, "Go, number Israel and Judah," an action that David later acknowledged as sin; and the testing of Job in the Book of Job.
Reuben Bredenhof says that the various petitions of the Lord's Prayer, as well as the doxology attached to it, have a conceptual and thematic background in the Old Testament Book of Psalms.
On the other hand, Andrew Wommack says that the Lord's Prayer "technically speaking [...] isn't even a true New Testament prayer".
In post-biblical Jewish prayer, especially Kiddushin 81a (Babylonian). "Our Father which art in heaven" (אבינו שבשמים, Avinu shebashamayim) is the beginning of many Hebrew prayers. "Hallowed be thy name" is reflected in the Kaddish. "Lead us not into sin" is echoed in the "morning blessings" of Jewish prayer. A blessing said by some Jewish communities after the evening Shema includes a phrase quite similar to the opening of the Lord's Prayer: "Our God in heaven, hallow thy name, and establish thy kingdom forever, and rule over us for ever and ever. Amen."
Musical settings
In modern times, various composers have incorporated The Lord's Prayer into a musical setting for utilization during liturgical services for a variety of religious traditions as well as interfaith ceremonies. Included among them are:
9th–10th century: Gregorian chant
1565: Robert Stone – The Lord's Prayer
1573: Orlandus Lassus – Pater Noster a4
1592: John Farmer – The Lord's Prayer
1625: Heinrich Schütz – Pater Noster
1783: William Billings – "Kittery" (words from Tate and Brady)
1854: Josef Rheinberger – Vater Unser
1878: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky – Otche Nash (Отче наш; Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, op. 41)
1883: Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov – Otche Nash
1906: Leoš Janáček – Otče náš
1919: Emil von Reznicek – "Vater Unser im Himmel" (A Choral Fantasy with Mixed Chorus and Organ)
1910: Sergei Rachmaninoff – Otche Nash (Отче наш; Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, op. 31)
1926: Igor Stravinsky – Otche Nash (Church Slavonic), arr. Pater Noster (Latin, c. 1949)
1935: Albert Hay Malotte – "The Lord's Prayer"
1961: Bernard Rose – Lord's Prayer (as part of Preces and Responses)
1973: Arnold Strals – "The Lord's Prayer" (performed by Sister Janet Mead)
1975: Mark Alburger – The Lord's Prayer, Op. 5
1976: Maurice Duruflé – Notre Père
1985: Clive Strutt – XIII Paternoster in the Festal Eucharist in honour of Saint Olaf, King and Martyr
1992: John Serry Sr. – The Lord's Prayer for Organ & Chorus
1999: Paul Field and Stephen Deal – "The Millennium Prayer" (performed by Cliff Richard)
2000: John Tavener – "The Lord's Prayer"
In popular culture
As with other prayers, the Lord's Prayer was used by cooks to time their recipes before the spread of clocks. For example, a step could be "simmer the broth for three Lord's Prayers".
American songwriter and arranger Brian Wilson set the text of the Lord's Prayer to an elaborate close-harmony arrangement loosely based on Malotte's melody. Wilson's group, The Beach Boys, would return to the piece several times throughout their recording career, most notably as the B-side to their 1964 single "Little Saint Nick." The band Yazoo used the prayer interspersed with the lyrics of "In My Room" on the album Upstairs at Eric's.
Images
See also
Amen
Didache, an early book of rituals which mentions saying the prayer three times daily
Discourse on ostentation, a portion of the Sermon on the Mount
Five Discourses of Matthew
Hail Mary
High Priestly Prayer
Prayer in the New Testament
Novum Testamentum Graece, the primary source for most contemporary New Testament translations
Rosary
Textus Receptus
Church of the Pater Noster on the Mount of Olives, Jerusalem
Al-Fatiha
Notes
References
Citations
Sources
Clark, D. The Lord's Prayer. Origins and Early Interpretations (Studia Traditionis Theologiae, 21) Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2016,
Albright, W.F. and C.S. Mann. "Matthew." The Anchor Bible Series. New York: Doubleday & Co., 1971.
Augsburger, Myron. Matthew. Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1982.
Barclay, William. The Gospel of Matthew: Volume 1 Chapters 1–10. Edinburgh: Saint Andrew Press, 1975.
Beare, Francis Wright. The Gospel According to Matthew. Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1981.
Brown, Raymond E. The Pater Noster as an Eschatological Prayer, article in Theological Studies (1961) Vol. 22, pp. 175–208: from the website of Marquette University; also reprinted in New Testament Essays (1965)
Filson, Floyd V. A Commentary on the Gospel According to St. Matthew. London: A. & C. Black, 1960.
Fowler, Harold. The Gospel of Matthew: Volume One. Joplin: College Press, 1968
France, R.T. The Gospel According to Matthew: an Introduction and Commentary. Leicester: Inter-Varsity, 1985.
Hendriksen, William. The Gospel of Matthew. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1976
Hill, David. The Gospel of Matthew. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981
"Lilies in the Field." A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature. David Lyle Jeffrey, general editor. Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 1992.
Lewis, Jack P. The Gospel According to Matthew. Austin, Texas: R.B. Sweet, 1976..
Luz, Ulrich. Matthew 1–7: A Commentary. trans. Wilhlem C. Linss. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1989.
Morris, Leon. The Gospel According to Matthew. Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 1992.
Schweizer, Eduard. The Good News According to Matthew. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1975
Underhill, Evelyn, Abba. A meditation on the Lord's Prayer (1940); reprint 2003.
External links
Text
Pater Noster : a chirographic opus in one hundred and twenty-six languages, by Z. W. Wolkowski
Learning the Lord’s Prayer in Gothic, by Robert Oliphant
the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic
The Lord's Prayer in different languages
Commentary
Jewish Encyclopedia
Max Heindel: Rosicrucian view
Jehovah's Witnesses view
Rudolf Steiner lecture
Music
Biblical phrases
Christian prayer
Gospel of Matthew
Language comparison
Rosary
Sayings of Jesus
Sermon on the Mount |
18495 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightworks | Lightworks | Lightworks is a non-linear editing system (NLE) for editing and mastering digital video. It was an early developer of computer-based non-linear editing systems, and has been in development since 1989 and won a 2017 EMMY Award for pioneering digital nonlinear editing. Lightworks has millions of adopters worldwide due to the software being available across three platforms in Windows, Mac and Linux. The development of an open-source version was announced on April 11, 2010. No source code of the program has yet been released. In July 2020, a Lightworks product manager confirmed that they "Still hope to announce something in the future" about it becoming open source.
Features
The free version comes with a limited number of features:
Realtime effects
Advanced multicam editing
Second monitor output
Ability to import a wide range of file types
Export to Vimeo (H.264/MPEG-4) up to 720p HD
Export to YouTube (H.264/MPEG-4) up to 720p HD
The free version cannot export to DVD or Blu-ray, but can export to a hard drive (since Lightworks 14).
Use in films and TV series
History
OLE Limited was founded in 1989 by Paul Bamborough, Nick Pollock and Neil Harris. In 1994 it was sold to Tektronix, who were not successful at developing the company's products. In 1999 it was sold on to the newly formed Lightworks Inc., then owned by Fairlight Japan, and then purchased by Gee Broadcast in May 2004.
Gee Broadcast ownership, 2004–2009
Under Gee Broadcast ownership, new product releases resumed with the release of the Lightworks Touch range, and the Alacrity and Softworks ranges for SD & HD editing. Softworks offered the Lightworks User Interface and toolset in a software only package for laptops or office workstations. Softworks and Alacrity supported mixed formats and resolutions in real time and project output in different resolutions without re-rendering. Alacrity supported dual outputs while the same facility was available for Softworks users as an option.
EditShare ownership, 2009–2020
In August 2009 the UK and US based company EditShare acquired Gee Broadcast and the Lightworks editing platform from, along with their video server system GeeVS.
At the annual convention of the National Association of Broadcasters, NAB Show, on 11 April 2010, EditShare announced that they plan to transform Lightworks into Lightworks Open Source. It was presented at IBC in Amsterdam September 2010.
On 9 November 2010, EditShare announced that Lightworks would be downloadable on 29 November of the same year, at first exclusively for the users who had registered during the initial announcement, but subsequently publishing the software as "public beta".
EditShare planned the release of the open source version in Q4 of 2011, after they finished code review. They plan to make money from proprietary plugins offered in their associated online shop, including plugins needed to access professional video formats. Shortly before the scheduled release date of 29 November 2011, EditShare announced that an open source release of the software would be temporarily delayed, but did not announce a new release date. The announcement noted that they were not yet satisfied with the stability of the new version.
Windows version released at NAB 2012
After an 18-month beta program, EditShare released Lightworks 11, for Windows only, on 28 May 2012. The non beta release of Lightworks includes a host of new features for editors, and runs on wide range of PC hardware. The software was re-designed and re-written for portability (versions for Linux and Mac OS X have also been released) and now supports many more codecs including AVCHD, H.264, AVC-Intra, DNxHD, ProRes, Red R3D, DPX, XDCAM HD 50, XDCAM EX, DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K, but only for the paid Pro version. The free version supports DV, MPEG, Uncompressed and other codecs for both import and export.
Windows version 11.1 released 29 May 2013
On 29 May 2013, v11.1 stable release was made available for download. A major development in the Pro version is much improved performance of the H.264/AVC codec in MP4 and MOV containers. This makes it possible to edit this format natively, even with less powerful CPUs. This should interest HDSLR and GoPro camera users. Native editing of H.264 MTS files has been possible since version 11.0.3.
This version of Lightworks has also replaced HASP with the new EditShare Licensing System (ELS), which eliminates some installation problems. Lightworks Free users can now download the 64 bit version, which was previously limited to Pro users. The Free version now also comes with a 30-day Pro Trial period.
Linux version announced at IBC 2012
EditShare demonstrated the Linux version at the NAB in Las Vegas in April 2012, and posted a video of it running on Ubuntu on their YouTube channel. At IBC in Amsterdam in September, an updated Linux demo was presented, and EditShare announced that the initial Linux alpha version would become available on 30 October . Lightworks 11 alpha for Linux was released on 30 April 2012, but only to a limited audience. The Linux version of Lightworks was made available as a Public Beta on 30 April 2013.
Lightworks 12 beta released for Windows, Linux and Mac
On 8 August 2014, the first beta of Lightworks version 12 working on Windows, Linux and Mac was released.
Lightworks 12.6 released for Windows, Linux and Mac
On 29 August 2015, Lightworks version 12.5 for Windows, Linux and Mac was released.
Lightworks 12.7 released for Windows, Linux and Mac
On 4 February 2016, Lightworks version 12.6 for Windows, Linux and Mac was released.
Lightworks 14.5 released for Windows, Linux and Mac
In October 2018, Lightworks released version 14.5 for Windows, Linux and Mac platforms. 14.5 added a vast array of new features including variable frame rate support, a huge amount of codec support including Red Cinema R3D, Cineform and Blackmagic Q1 codecs.
LWKS Software Ltd ownership, 2020-present
In September 2020, a new company, LWKS Software Ltd, founded in August of the same year by two members of the development team, took ownership of Lightworks, as well as QScan AQC software. the agreement also mentions Key member of the development teams of both software joining the new company.
Users
Lightworks confirmed that over 4-million downloads and registrations had taken place.
See also
List of video editing software
Comparison of video editing software
References
External links
Lightworks Tutorials
Lightworks Users' Video Tutorials
Film and video technology
Video editing software
1989 software
Video editing software for Linux |
18496 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love%20Parade | Love Parade | The Love Parade () was a popular electronic dance music festival and technoparade that originated in 1989 in West Berlin, Germany. It was held annually in Berlin from 1989 to 2003 and in 2006, then from 2007 to 2010 in the Ruhr region. Events scheduled for 2004 and 2005 in Berlin and for 2009 in Bochum were canceled.
On 24 July 2010, a crowd crush at the Love Parade in Duisburg caused the deaths of 21 people, with at least 500 others injured. As a consequence, the organizer of the festival announced that no further Love Parades would be held and that the festival was permanently canceled.<ref>Mara, Darren; Levitz, David (25 July 2010)."Prosecutors Launch Investigation into Love Parade Tragedy — German State Prosecutors Have Opened an Investigation into the Stampede that Killed 19 People and Injured Hundreds at the Love Parade Music Festival in Duisburg — But Questions Remain as to What Caused the Tragedy" . The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse (via Deutsche Welle). Retrieved 27 July 2010.</ref>
History
The parade first occurred in July 1989, when 150 people took to the streets in Berlin. It was started by the Berlin underground at the initiative of Matthias Roeingh (also known as "Dr Motte") and his then girlfriend Danielle de Picciotto. It was conceived as a political demonstration for peace and international understanding through love and music. It was supposed to be a bigger birthday party for Roeingh, and the motto Friede, Freude, Eierkuchen (in English — Peace, Joy, Pancakes) stood for disarmament (peace), music (joy) and a fair food production/distribution (pancakes). Roeingh dissociated himself from the parade in 2006 because of the commercialization of the event.
The parade was held on the Berlin Kurfürstendamm until 1996. Because of overcrowding on this street, the festival moved to the Straße des 17. Juni in the Großer Tiergarten park in the center of Berlin. The festival became centered around the Siegessäule in the middle of the park; and the golden angel atop the column became the parade's emblem.
Many people from Germany and abroad traveled to Berlin to take part in the Parade — over a million attended in the years 1997 through 2000 and 800,000 in 2001. Attendance at the 2001 festival was significantly lower because the date of the parade was changed with little advance notice. 2002 and 2003 also saw lower figures, and in 2004 and 2005 the parade was canceled because of funding difficulties. The parade had inspired opposition because of the damage to the Tiergarten by attendees, who were provided with insufficient toilet facilities. Opponents allegedly complicated matters for organisers by booking their own events in Berlin and so to exclude the parade from being able to register with city police. In 2004, however, a scaled-down version took place which served more as a mini-protest and was promoted with the title Love Weekend. Dozens of clubs promoted the weekend-long event all over the city, with various clubs staying open for three days straight without closing. In 2006, the parade made a comeback with the help of German exercise studio McFit.
The Love Parade 2007 was planned for 7 July 2007 in Berlin. However, the Berlin event was canceled in February because the Senate of Berlin did not issue the necessary permits at that time. After negotiations with several German cities, on 21 July, it was announced that the parade would move to the Ruhr Area for the next five years. The first event took place in Essen on 25 August. The parade in Essen saw 1.2 million visitors in comparison to the 500,000 who attended the 2006 parade in Berlin.
In 2008, the festival took place in Dortmund on 19 July on the Bundesstraße 1 under the motto Highway of Love''. The event was planned as a "Love Weekend", with parties throughout the region. The official estimate is that 1.6 million visitors attended, making it the largest parade to date.
The 2009 event, planned for Bochum, was canceled; a year later, the deaths of 21 attendees at the Duisburg venue prompted the parade's organiser Rainer Schaller to declare an end to the festival. "The Love Parade has always been a peaceful party, but it will forever be overshadowed by the accident, so out of respect for the victims the Love Parade will never take place again," Schaller said. The parade was one of the oldest and largest festivals of electronic music, together with Zürich's Streetparade, Mayday and Nature One.
Setup
The music played at the events was predominantly electronic dance music — in this case mainly trance, house, techno, and schranz music. Attempts to introduce other music styles, such as hip hop, have failed. Hardcore and gabber music were part of the parade in early years, but were later removed. They are now celebrated separately on a counter-demonstration called "Fuckparade".
The parade was seen to be louder and more crowded than most concerts. With its water-cooled sound systems on every truck, the parade produced an extremely loud sound floor. After the 2001 arrangement, veterinarians at the Berlin Zoo blamed the parade for giving more than half of its animals diarrhea. Chairman Heiner Kloes said veterinarians told him the heavy bass was to blame for disturbing the animals. The parade consisted of the sound trucks that usually featured local, or important, clubs and their DJs. It had become a rule that only trucks that had sponsors from a techno-related field, such as clubs, labels or stores, were allowed, but advertising space was increased after the 2006 event to offset the high costs of equipping a truck. The trucks were usually open on top and featured dancers, with box-systems mounted on the side or rear.
The parade was a place where some exhibited and enjoyed other people's exhibitionist tendencies. Some attendees enjoyed carrying around toys or other items such as dummies (pacifiers) or face masks. Often the crowd was imaginative in terms of clothing (or lack thereof) and appearance.
One famous picture from the parade is people sitting and dancing on streetlamps, trees, commercial signs, telephone booths, which gave the event's nickname "the greatest amateur circus on earth".
The demonstration concluded with the so-called "Abschlusskundgebung" which were sets of the world's leading top DJs such as DJ Tiesto, Paul Van Dyk, Carl Cox, Armin Van Buuren, DJ Rush, DJ Hell, Westbam, Drum Connection, Miss Djax, Marusha or Chris Liebing. During this time all trucks (usually about 40) were connected to each other and set online to the statue of victory where the turntables are. This was one of the few chances a DJ can ever have to play for a crowd of about one million people.
Disturbances
The parade was quite peaceful for an event of its size, seeing few arrests. In 2008, for example, charges were pressed for six robberies, three sexually related offences and forty thefts. Twenty-three attendees were caught with drugs and forty-nine were charged with bodily harm. There were 177 parade visitors provisionally arrested by the police. Arrests were usually related to drug crimes and most other incidents featured people passing out due to dehydration or hyperthermia. In 2000, after the parade, a girl under the influence of ecstasy was run over by an S-Bahn after she had been leaning on the door too hard.
2010 disaster
At the 2010 Love Parade in Duisburg, the number of people attending allegedly reached 1.4 million – the original expectation was around 800,000 – whereas police believed around 400,000 people were present. 21 people were killed, and more than 500 injured, in an incident on an overcrowded ramp leading from a tunnel into the festival. At least 20 casualties resulted from suffocation, caused by crowd pressure.
Safety experts and a fire service investigator had previously warned that the site was not suitable for the numbers expected to attend. Rainer Schaller, the festival's organizer and chief executive officer, later said the festival would not continue in future.
A preliminary investigation of the ministry of the interior placed heavy blame on the organizers around Rainer Schaller. Schaller in turn claimed that errors by the police in controlling streams of visitors led to the accident.
Love Parade International
Similar festivals have taken place in other cities of Germany and many other countries worldwide. Large spin-off festivals in Europe include Zürich's Street Parade, Geneva's Lake Parade, Paris's Techno Parade, Rotterdam's FFWD Dance Parade, Munich's Union Move, Hamburg's Generation Move, Hannover's Reincarnation, Bremen's Vision Parade and the Love Parade and the Freeparade in Vienna. In 1994, 1995 and 1996 an event called Love Parade was held in Melbourne, Australia. Unlike its overseas counterparts, this was a smaller "rave party" version of the festival. In 1996 it was held at Festival Hall in West Melbourne and included a parade that made the evening news. It was followed in 1997 by a Love Parade in Sydney, Australia, likewise a smaller rave party, held at the infamous Graffiti Hall of Fame in Redfern. In 1999 and 2000 technoparades named "Buenos Aires Energy Parade" took place in Buenos Aires, Argentina under the motto "Love, Peace and Dance". On Saturday 8 July 2000 a Love Parade was held in Roundhay Park, Leeds, United Kingdom sponsored by BBC Radio 1. In 2001, the official UK parade had moved to Newcastle upon Tyne which was to have seen a parade through the streets of Newcastle before ending up on Town Moor but was canceled after the police refused a license: BBC Radio 1 still hosted a more contained event, however. Since then no Love Parade has taken place in the United Kingdom. In Summer 2000 one of the first public events that took place in post-war Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, was Futura, Festival of Electronic Music. Some of the world's most famous DJs, including the organizers of the Berlin Love Parade, performed in a bombed and burnt out factory.
After being held in the North-American Continent for the first time in Mexico (2002), in the fall of 2004 the Love Parade was held in San Francisco. They had held their inaugural Parade in September 2004 with 37,000 attending. The parade was held again in San Francisco in September 2005 as a rousing success drawing over 50–60,000 people. In 2006, the parade was held on 23 September and was renamed Love Fest because the Loveparade Berlin organization did not renew any of their worldwide licenses not already under contract so they could focus on their own event. 2009 was the biggest success of the parade now renamed Lovevolution with over 100,000 people. The first Love Parade in Santiago was held in 2005 and gathered over 100,000 people; the 2006 version gathered over 200,000 people. The first Love Parade in Caracas was held in June 2007 and gathered over 25,000 people.
Spin-off festivals of the Love Parade have taken place in:
Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt, Bremen and Hannover, Germany
Zürich, Geneva, Basel and Bern, Switzerland
Vienna and Salzburg, Austria
Paris, France
Rotterdam, Netherlands
Bologna and Turin, Italy
Oporto, Portugal
Sydney, Australia
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Santiago, Chile
Leeds, England
Budapest, Hungary
Tel Aviv, Israel
Mexico City and Acapulco, Mexico
Oslo, Norway
Cape Town, South Africa
Caracas, Venezuela
Little Rock, Arkansas; and San Francisco, California, United States
Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Legal issues
Under German law the state has to pay for security during political demonstrations as well as cleaning up the streets after the demonstration. In the case of a commercial event however, the organizer must cover these expenses. For a large event like the Love Parade the costs are quite high: an estimated €300,000 to €400,000.
The Love Parade was initially held as a political demonstration to save costs; however it was organized by two companies set up just for the Love Parade. Due to this there was a dispute between the organizers and the city of Berlin every year about the status of the Love Parade and who should bear what costs. Finally in 2001, the courts ruled that the Love Parade had to be held as commercial event.
Anthems
Every German parade has had its own anthem.
List of Love Parades
According to media reports, the attendance figures had been misstated by the organizers for years. Accurate counts are not available since entry is free and uncontrolled. The mayor of Dortmund and the police confirmed the number of attendees in Dortmund.
See also
List of technoparades
List of electronic music festivals
Fuckparade
Love Parade disaster
References
External links
Love Parade 2008 in Dortmund – Official Site
Berlin Life: 'The Death of Dance?' A history of the Berlin Love Parade
San Francisco Love Fest (formerly Love Parade San Francisco)
2005 Lovefest Gallery
Festivalpigs Love Parade and Euro Techno & Trance Festivals info
Sean Nye and Ronald Hitzler. The Love Parade: European Techno, The EDM Festival, and The Tragedy in Duisburg
Love Parade Argentina (Buenos Aires Energy Parade)
Music festivals in Berlin
Music in Berlin
Music festivals established in 1989
1989 establishments in Germany
Recurring events disestablished in 2010
Counterculture festivals
Electronic music festivals in Germany
Free parties
Technoparade
2010 disestablishments in Germany |
18497 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost%20Generation | Lost Generation | The Lost Generation was the social generational cohort that was in early adulthood during World War I. "Lost" in this context refers to the "disoriented, wandering, directionless" spirit of many of the war's survivors in the early postwar period. The term is also particularly used to refer to a group of American expatriate writers living in Paris during the 1920s. Gertrude Stein is credited with coining the term, and it was subsequently popularized by Ernest Hemingway who used it in the epigraph for his 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises: "You are all a lost generation".
In a more general sense, the Lost Generation is considered to be made up of individuals born between 1883 and 1900. In the wake of the Industrial Revolution, Western members of the Lost Generation grew up in societies which were more literate, consumerist and media saturated than ever before, but which also tended to maintain strictly conservative social values.
Young men of the cohort were mobilized on a mass scale for the First World War, a conflict which was often seen as the defining moment of their age group's lifespan. Young women also contributed to and were affected by the War, and in its aftermath gained greater freedoms politically and in other areas of life. The Lost Generation was also heavily vulnerable to the Spanish flu pandemic and became the driving force behind many cultural changes, particularly in major cities during what became known as the Roaring Twenties.
Later, they experienced the economic effects of the Great Depression and often saw their own sons leave for the battlefields of the Second World War. In the developed world, they tended to reach retirement and average life expectancy during the decades after the conflict, but some significantly outlived the norm. The last surviving person who was known to have been born during the 19th century died in 2018.
Terminology and age range
The term is used for the generation of young people who came of age at around the time of World War I. Authors William Strauss and Neil Howe define the Lost Generation as the cohort born from 1883 to 1900, who came of age during World War I and the Roaring Twenties. In Europe, they are mostly known as the "Generation of 1914", for the year World War I began, though the eschatology of Jehovah's Witnesses uses this term differently. In France, the country in which many expatriates settled, they were sometimes called the Génération du feu, the "(gun)fire generation". In Great Britain, the term was originally used for those who died in the war, and often implicitly referred to upper-class casualties who were perceived to have died disproportionately, robbing the country of a future elite. Many felt that "the flower of youth and the best manhood of the peoples [had] been mowed down," for example such notable casualties as the poets Isaac Rosenberg, Rupert Brooke, Edward Thomas and Wilfred Owen, composer George Butterworth and physicist Henry Moseley.
Characteristics
As children and adolescents
Family life and upbringing
When the Lost Generation were growing up, the ideal family arrangement was generally seen as the man of the house being the breadwinner and primary authority figure whilst his wife dedicated herself to caring for the home and children. Most, even less well off, married couples attempted to conform to this ideal. It was common for family members of three different generations to share a home. Wealthier households also tended to include domestic servants, though their numbers would have varied from a single maid to a large team depending on how rich the family was.
Public concern for the welfare of children was intensifying by the later 19th century with laws being passed and societies formed to prevent their abuse. The state increasingly gained the legal right to intervene in private homes and family life to protect minors from harm. However, beating children for misbehaviour was not only common but viewed as the duty of a responsible caregiver.
Health and living conditions
Sewer systems designed to remove human waste from urban areas had become widespread in industrial cities by the late 19th century helping to reduce the spread of diseases such as cholera. Legal standards for the quality of drinking water also began to be introduced. However, the introduction of electricity was slower and during the formative years of the Lost Generation gas lights and candles were still the most common form of lighting.
Though statistics on child mortality dating back to the beginning of the Lost Generation's lifespan are limited, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports that in 1900 one in ten American infants died before their first birthday. Figures for the United Kingdom state that during the final years of the 19th century, mortality in the first five years of childhood was plateauing at a little under one in every four births. At around one in three in 1800, the early childhood mortality rate had declined overall throughout the next hundred years but would fall most sharply during the first half of the 20th century, reaching less than one in twenty by 1950. This meant that members of the Lost Generation were somewhat less likely to die at a very early age than their parents and grandparents, but were significantly more likely to do so than children born even a few decades later.
Literacy and education
By the end of the 19th century, compulsory education had been introduced throughout much of the Western world for at least a few years of childhood. By 1900, levels of illiteracy had fallen to less than 11% in the United States, around 3% in Great Britain, and only 1% in Germany. However, the problems of illiteracy and lack of school provision or attendance were felt more acutely in parts of Eastern and Southern Europe.
Schools of this time period tended to emphasize strict discipline, expecting pupils to memorize information by rote. To help deal with teacher shortages, older students were often used to help supervise and educate their younger peers. Dividing children into classes based on age became more common as schools grew.
However, whilst elementary schooling was becoming increasingly accessible for Western children at the turn of the century, secondary education was still much more of a luxury. Only 11% of American fourteen to seventeen year olds were enrolled at High School in 1900, a figure which had only marginally increased by 1910. Though the school leaving age was officially meant to be 14 by 1900, until the First World War, most British children could leave school through rules put in place by local authorities at 12 or 13 years old. It was not uncommon at the end of the 19th century for Canadian children to leave school at nine or ten years old.
Leisure and play
By the 1890s, children's toys entered into mass production. In 1893, the British toy company William Britain revolutionized the production of toy soldiers by devising the method of hollow casting, making soldiers that were cheaper and lighter than their competitors. This led to metal toy soldiers, which had previously been the preserve of boys from wealthier families, gaining mass appeal during the late Victorian and Edwardian period. Dolls often sold by street vendors at a low price were popular with girls. Teddy bears appeared for the first time in the early 1900s. Tin plated penny toys were also sold by street sellers for a single penny.
The turn of the 20th century saw a surge in public park building in parts of the west to provide public space in rapidly growing industrial towns. They provided a means for children from different backgrounds to play and interact together, sometimes in especially designed facilities. They held frequent concerts and performances.
Popular culture and mass media
Beginning around the middle of the 19th century, magazines of various types which had previously mainly targeted the few that could afford them found rising popularity among the general public. The latter part of the century not only saw rising popularity for magazines targeted specifically at young boys, but the development of a relatively new genre aimed at girls.
A significant milestone was reached in the development of cinema when, in 1895, projected moving images were first shown to a paying audience in Paris. Early films were very short (generally taking the form of newsreels, comedic sketches, and short documentaries). They lacked sound but were accompanied by music, lectures, and a lot of audience participation. A notable film industry had developed by the start of the First World War.
As young adults
Military service in First World War
The Lost Generation is best known as being the cohort which primarily fought in World War I. More than 70 million people were mobilised during the First World War, around 8.5 million of whom were killed and 21 million wounded in the conflict. About two million soldiers are believed to have been killed by disease, while individual battles sometimes caused hundreds of thousands of deaths.
Around 60 million of the enlisted originated from the European continent, which saw its younger men mobilised on a mass scale. Most of Europe's great powers operated peacetime conscription systems where men were expected to do a brief period of military training in their youth before spending the rest of their lives in the army reserve. Nations with this system saw a huge portion of their manpower directly invested in the conflict: 55% of male Italians and Bulgarians aged 18 to 50 were called to military service. Elsewhere the proportions were even higher: 63% of military-aged men in Serbia, 78% in Austro-Hungary, and 81% of military-aged men in France and Germany served. Britain, which relied primarily on the Royal Navy for its security, was a notable exception to this rule and did not introduce conscription until 1916. Around five million British men fought in the First World War out of a total United Kingdom population of 46 million including women, children, and men too old to bear arms.
Additionally, nations recruited heavily from their colonial empires. Three million men from around the British empire outside the United Kingdom served in the British Army as soldiers and labourers. Whilst France recruited 475,000 soldiers from its colonies. Other nations involved including the United States which enlisted four million men during the conflict and the Ottoman Empire which mobilised 2,850,000 soldiers.
Beyond the extent of the death, the war had a profound effect on many of its survivors, giving many young men severe mental health problems and crippling physical disabilities. The war also unsettled many soldiers' sense of reality, who had gone into the conflict with a belief that battle and hardship was a path to redemption and greatness. When years of pain, suffering and loss seemed to bring about little in the way of a better future, many were left with a profound sense of disillusionment.
Young women in the 1910s and '20s
Though soldiers on the frontlines of the First World War were almost exclusively men, women contributed to the war effort in other ways. Many took the jobs men had left in previously male-dominated sectors such as heavy industry, while some even took on non-combat military roles. Many particularly wealthier women took part in voluntary work to contribute to the war effort or help those suffering due to it such as the wounded or refugees, often experiencing manual labour for the first time. However, this reshaping of the female role led to fears that the sexes having the same responsibilities would disrupt the fabric of society and that more competition for work would leave men unemployed and erode their pay. Most women had to exit the employment they had taken during the war as soon as it concluded.
The war also had a personal impact on the lives of female members of the Lost Generation. Many women lost their husbands in the conflict, which frequently meant losing the main breadwinner of the household. However, war widows often received a pension and financial assistance to support their children. Even with some economic support, raising a family alone was often financially difficult and emotionally draining, and women faced losing their pensions if they remarried or were accused of engaging in frowned upon behaviour. In some cases, grief and the other pressures on them drove widows to alcoholism, depression, or suicide. Additionally, the large number of men killed in the First World War made it harder for many young women who were still single at the start of conflict to get married; this accelerated a trend towards them gaining greater independence and embarking on careers.
Women's gaining of political rights sped up in the Western world after the First World War, while employment opportunities for unmarried women widened. This time period saw the development of a new type of young woman in popular culture known as a flapper, who were known for their rebellion against previous social norms. They had a physically distinctive appearance compared to their predecessors only a few years earlier, cutting their hair into bobs, wearing shorter dresses and more makeup, while taking on a new code of behaviour filled with more recklessness, party-going and overt sexuality.
Aftermath of the First World War
The aftermath of the First World War saw substantive changes in the political situation, including a trend towards republicanism, the founding of many new relatively small nation-states which had previously been part of larger empires, and greater suffrage for groups such as the working class and women. France and the United Kingdom both gained territory from their enemies, while the war and the damage it did to the European empires are generally considered a major stepping stone in the United States' path to becoming the world's dominant superpower. The German and Italian populations' resentment against what they generally saw as a peace settlement that took too much away from the former or didn't give enough to the latter fed into the fascist movements, which would eventually turn those countries into totalitarian dictatorships. For Russia, the years after its revolution in 1917 were plagued by disease, famine, terror, and civil war eventually concluded in the establishment of the Soviet Union.
The immediate post-World War One period was characterised by continued political violence and economic instability. The late 1910s saw the Spanish flu pandemic, which was unusual in the sense that it killed many younger adults of the same Lost Generation age group that had mainly died in the war. Later, especially in major cities, much of the 1920s is considered to have been a more prosperous period when the Lost Generation in particular escaped the suffering and turmoil they had lived through by rebelling against the social and cultural norms of their elders.
In midlife
1930s
Politics and economics
This more optimistic period was short-lived, however, as 1929 saw the beginning of the Great Depression, which would continue throughout the 1930s and become the longest and most severe financial downturn ever experienced in Western industrialised history. Though it had begun in the United States, the crises led to sharp increases in worldwide unemployment, reductions in economic output and deflation. The depression was also a major catalyst for the rise of Nazism in Germany and the beginnings of its quest to establish dominance over the European continent, which would eventually lead to World War II in Europe. Additionally, the 1930s saw the less badly damaged Imperial Japan engage in its own empire-building, contributing to conflict in the Far East, where some scholars have argued the Second World War began as early as 1931.
Popular media
The 1930s saw rising popularity for radio, with the vast majority of Western households having access to the medium by the end of decade. Programming including soap operas, music and sport. Educational broadcasts were frequently available. The airwaves also provided a source of news and, particularly for the era's autocratic regimes, an outlet for political propaganda.
Second World War
When World War II broke out in 1939, the Lost Generation faced a major global conflict for the second time in their lifetime, and now often had to watch their sons go to the battlefield. The place of the older generation who had been young adults during World War I in the new conflict was a theme in popular media of the time period, with examples including Waterloo Bridge and Old Bill and Son. Civil defence organisations designed to provide a final line of resistance against invasion and assist in home defence more broadly recruited heavily from the older male population. Like in the First World War, women helped to make up for labour shortages caused by mass military recruitment by entering more traditionally masculine employment and entering the conflict more directly in female military branches and underground resistance movements. However, those in middle age were generally less likely to become involved in this kind of work than the young. This was particularly true of any kind of military involvement.
In later life
In the West, the Lost Generation tended to reach the end of their working lives in around the 1950s and '60s. For those members of the cohort who had fought in World War I, their military service was frequently viewed as a defining moment in their lives even many years later. Retirement notices of this era often included information on a man's service in the First World War.
Though there were slight differences between individual countries and from one year to the next, the average life expectancy in the developed world during the 1950s, '60s, and early '70s was typically around seventy years old. However, some members of the Lost Generation outlived the norm by several decades. Nabi Tajima, the last surviving person known to have been born in the 19th century died in 2018. The final remaining veteran to have served in World War I in any capacity was Florence Green who died in 2012, while Claude Choules, the last veteran to have been involved in combat, had died the previous year. Although, these individuals were born in 1902 and 1901 respectively, putting them outside the usual birth years for the Lost Generation.
In literature
In his memoir A Moveable Feast (1964), published after Hemingway's and Stein's deaths, Ernest Hemingway writes that Gertrude Stein heard the phrase from a French garage owner who serviced Stein's car. When a young mechanic failed to repair the car quickly enough, the garage owner shouted at the young man, "You are all a "génération perdue."" While telling Hemingway the story, Stein added: "That is what you are. That's what you all are ... all of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation." Hemingway thus credits the phrase to Stein, who was then his mentor and patron.
The 1926 publication of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises popularized the term; that novel serves to epitomize the post-war expatriate generation. However, Hemingway later wrote to his editor Max Perkins that the "point of the book" was not so much about a generation being lost, but that "the earth abideth forever". Hemingway believed the characters in The Sun Also Rises may have been "battered" but were not lost.
Consistent with this ambivalence, Hemingway employs "Lost Generation" as one of two contrasting epigraphs for his novel. In A Moveable Feast, Hemingway writes, "I tried to balance Miss Stein's quotation from the garage owner with one from Ecclesiastes." A few lines later, recalling the risks and losses of the war, he adds: "I thought of Miss Stein and Sherwood Anderson and egotism and mental laziness versus discipline and I thought 'who is calling who a lost generation?
Themes
The writings of the Lost Generation literary figures often pertained to the writers' experiences in World War I and the years following it. It is said that the work of these writers was autobiographical based on their use of mythologized versions of their lives. One of the themes that commonly appears in the authors' works is decadence and the frivolous lifestyle of the wealthy. Both Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald touched on this theme throughout the novels The Sun Also Rises and The Great Gatsby. Another theme commonly found in the works of these authors was the death of the American dream, which is exhibited throughout many of their novels. It is particularly prominent in The Great Gatsby, in which the character Nick Carraway comes to realize the corruption that surrounds him.
Notable figures
Notable figures of the Lost Generation include F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Jean Rhys and Sylvia Beach.
See also
Belle Époque
Edwardian era
Fin de siècle
Gay Nineties
Generation Gap
Roaring Twenties
World War I
List of named generations
References
Further reading
Doyle, Barry M., "Urban Liberalism and the 'lost generation': politics and middle class culture in Norwich, 1900–1935". Historical Journal 38.3 (1995): 617–634. in Great Britain.
Winter, Jay M., "Britain's 'Lost Generation' of the First World War". Population Studies 31.3 (1977): 449–466. online, covers the statistical and demographic history.
External links
Writers of the Lost Generation discussed in Conversations from Penn State interview
19th century
Aftermath of World War I
American literary movements
Cultural generations
Ernest Hemingway
Gertrude Stein
20th-century American literature
Roaring Twenties
1920s neologisms
2018 disestablishments |
18499 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing%20politics | Left-wing politics | Left-wing politics support social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition of social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in society whom its adherents perceive as disadvantaged relative to others as well as a belief that there are unjustified inequalities that need to be reduced or abolished. According to emeritus professor of economics Barry Clark, left-wing supporters "claim that human development flourishes when individuals engage in cooperative, mutually respectful relations that can thrive only when excessive differences in status, power, and wealth are eliminated."
Within the left–right political spectrum, Left and Right were coined during the French Revolution, referring to the seating arrangement in the French Estates General. Those who sat on the left generally opposed the Ancien Régime and the Bourbon monarchy and supported the French Revolution, the creation of a democratic republic and the secularisation of society while those on the right were supportive of the traditional institutions of the Old Regime. Usage of the term Left became more prominent after the restoration of the French monarchy in 1815, when it was applied to the Independents. The word wing was first appended to Left and Right in the late 19th century, usually with disparaging intent, and left-wing was applied to those who were unorthodox in their religious or political views.
The term Left was later applied to a number of movements, especially republicanism in France during the 18th century, followed by socialism, including anarchism, communism, the labour movement, Marxism, social democracy and syndicalism in the 19th and 20th centuries. Since then, the term left-wing has been applied to a broad range of movements, including the civil rights movement, feminist movement, LGBT rights movement, anti-war movement and environmental movement as well as a wide range of political parties.
Positions
The following positions are typically associated with left-wing politics.
Economics
Leftist economic beliefs range from Keynesian economics and the welfare state through industrial democracy and the social market to the nationalization of the economy and central planning, to the anarcho-syndicalist advocacy of a council- and assembly-based self-managed anarchist communism. During the Industrial Revolution, leftists supported trade unions. At the beginning of the 20th century, many leftists advocated strong government intervention in the economy. Leftists continue to criticize the perceived exploitative nature of globalization, the "race to the bottom" and unjust lay-offs and exploitation of workers. In the last quarter of the 20th century, the belief that the government (ruling in accordance with the interests of the people) ought to be directly involved in the day-to-day workings of an economy declined in popularity amongst the centre-left, especially social democrats who adopted the Third Way.
Other leftists believe in Marxian economics, named after the economic theories of Karl Marx. Some distinguish Marx's economic theories from his political philosophy, arguing that Marx's approach to understanding the economy is independent of his advocacy of revolutionary socialism or his belief in the inevitability of a proletarian revolution. Marxian economics do not exclusively rely on Marx and draw from a range of Marxist and non-Marxist sources. The dictatorship of the proletariat and workers' state are terms used by some Marxists, particularly Leninists and Marxist–Leninists, to describe what they see as a temporary state between the capitalist state of affairs and a communist society. Marx defined the proletariat as salaried workers, in contrast to the lumpenproletariat, who he defined as the outcasts of society such as beggars, tricksters, entertainers, buskers, criminals and prostitutes. The political relevance of farmers has divided the left. In Das Kapital, Marx scarcely mentioned the subject. Mikhail Bakunin thought the lumpenproletariat was a revolutionary class while Mao Zedong believed that it would be rural peasants, not urban workers, who would bring about the proletarian revolution.
Left-libertarians, libertarian socialists and anarchists believe in a decentralized economy run by trade unions, workers' councils, cooperatives, municipalities and communes, opposing both state and private control of the economy, preferring social ownership and local control in which a nation of decentralized regions is united in a confederation. The global justice movement, also known as the anti-globalisation movement and the alter-globalisation movement, protests against corporate economic globalisation due to its negative consequences for the poor, workers, the environment, and small businesses.
Environment
One of the foremost left-wing advocates was Thomas Paine, one of the first individuals since left and right became political terms to describe the collective human ownership of the world which he speaks of in Agrarian Justice. As such, most of left-wing thought and literature regarding environmentalism stems from this duty of ownership and the aforementioned form of cooperative ownership means that humanity must take care of the Earth. This principle is reflected in much of the historical left-wing thought and literature that came afterwards, although there were disagreements about what this entailed. Both Karl Marx and the early socialist philosopher and scholar William Morris arguably had a concern for environmental matters. According to Marx, "[e]ven an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations". Following the Russian Revolution, environmental scientists such as revolutionary Alexander Bogdanov and the Proletkult organisation made efforts to incorporate environmentalism into Bolshevism and "integrate production with natural laws and limits" in the first decade of Soviet rule, before Joseph Stalin attacked ecologists and the science of ecology, purged environmentalists and promoted the pseudoscience of Trofim Lysenko during his rule up until his death in 1953. Similarly, Mao Zedong rejected environmentalism and believed that based on the laws of historical materialism, all of nature must be put into the service of revolution.
From the 1970s onwards, environmentalism became an increasing concern of the left, with social movements and several unions campaigning on environmental issues and causes. In Australia, the left-wing Builders Labourers Federation, led by the communist Jack Mundy, united with environmentalists to place green bans on environmentally destructive development projects. Several segments of the socialist and Marxist left consciously merged environmentalism and anti-capitalism into an eco-socialist ideology. Barry Commoner articulated a left-wing response to The Limits to Growth model that predicted catastrophic resource depletion and spurred environmentalism, postulating that capitalist technologies were the key cause responsible for environmental degradation, as opposed to human population pressures. Environmental degradation can be seen as a class or equity issue, as environmental destruction disproportionately affects poorer communities and countries.
Several left-wing or socialist groupings have an overt environmental concern and several green parties contain a strong socialist presence. The Green Party of England and Wales features an eco-socialist group, the Green Left, which was founded in June 2005. Its members held several influential positions within the party, including both the former Principal Speakers Siân Berry and Derek Wall, himself an eco-socialist and Marxist academic. In Europe, several green left political parties such as the European United Left–Nordic Green Left combine traditional social-democratic values such as a desire for greater economic equality and workers rights with demands for environmental protection. Democratic socialist Bolivian president Evo Morales has traced environmental degradation to capitalist consumerism, stating that "[t]he Earth does not have enough for the North to live better and better, but it does have enough for all of us to live well". James Hansen, Noam Chomsky, Raj Patel, Naomi Klein, The Yes Men and Dennis Kucinich hold similar views.
In the 21st century, questions about the environment have become increasingly politicized as the Left almost unanimously accepted the findings and consensus of environmental scientists and climatologists about anthropogenic global warming, while the Right has disputed or outright rejected the scientific consensus that modern-day global warming is caused by human activity. However, the Left is also divided over how to effectively and equitably reduce carbon emissions as the center-left often advocates a reliance on market measures such as emissions trading and a carbon tax while those further to the left support direct government regulation and intervention in the form of a Green New Deal, either alongside or instead of market mechanisms.
Nationalism, anti-imperialism and anti-nationalism
The question of nationality, imperialism and nationalism has been a central feature of political debates on the Left. During the French Revolution, nationalism was a key policy of the Republican Left. The Republican Left advocated for civic nationalism and argued that the nation is a "daily plebiscite" formed by the subjective "will to live together". Related to revanchism, the belligerent will to take revenge against Germany and retake control of Alsace-Lorraine, nationalism was sometimes opposed to imperialism. In the 1880s, there was a debate between leftists such as the Radical Georges Clemenceau, the Socialist Jean Jaurès and the nationalist Maurice Barrès, who argued that colonialism diverted France from liberating the "blue line of the Vosges", in reference to Alsace-Lorraine; and the "colonial lobby" such as Jules Ferry of the Moderate Republicans, Léon Gambetta of the Republicans and Eugène Etienne, the president of the Parliamentary Colonial Group. After the antisemitic Dreyfus Affair in which officer Alfred Dreyfus was falsely convicted of sedition and exiled to a penal colony in 1894 before being exonerated in 1906, nationalism in the form of Boulangism increasingly became associated with the far-right.
The Marxist social class theory of proletarian internationalism asserts that members of the working class should act in solidarity with working people in other countries in pursuit of a common class interest, rather than only focusing on their own countries. Proletarian internationalism is summed up in the slogan: "Workers of the world, unite!", the last line of The Communist Manifesto. Union members had learned that more members meant more bargaining power. Taken to an international level, leftists argued that workers should act in solidarity with the international proletariat in order to further increase the power of the working class. Proletarian internationalism saw itself as a deterrent against war and international conflicts, because people with a common interest are less likely to take up arms against one another, instead focusing on fighting the bourgeoisie as the ruling class. According to Marxist theory, the antonym of proletarian internationalism is bourgeois nationalism. Some Marxists, together with others on the left, view nationalism, racism (including antisemitism) and religion as divide and conquer tactics used by the ruling classes to prevent the working class from uniting against them in solidarity with one another. Left-wing movements have often taken up anti-imperialist positions. Anarchism has developed a critique of nationalism that focuses on nationalism's role in justifying and consolidating state power and domination. Through its unifying goal, nationalism strives for centralisation (both in specific territories and in a ruling elite of individuals) while it prepares a population for capitalist exploitation. Within anarchism, this subject has been extensively discussed by Rudolf Rocker in his book titled Nationalism and Culture and by the works of Fredy Perlman such as Against His-Story, Against Leviathan and The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism.
The failure of revolutions in Germany and Hungary in the 1918–1920 years ended Bolshevik hopes for an imminent world revolution and led to the promotion of the doctrine of socialism in one country by Joseph Stalin. In the first edition of his book titled Osnovy Leninizma (Foundations of Leninism, 1924), Stalin argued that revolution in one country is insufficient. By the end of that year in the second edition of the book, he argued that the "proletariat can and must build the socialist society in one country". In April 1925, Nikolai Bukharin elaborated on the issue in his brochure titled Can We Build Socialism in One Country in the Absence of the Victory of the West-European Proletariat?, whose position was adopted as state policy after Stalin's January 1926 article titled On the Issues of Leninism (К вопросам ленинизма) was published. This idea was opposed by Leon Trotsky and his supporters, who declared the need for an international "permanent revolution" and condemned Stalin for betraying the goals and ideals of the socialist revolution. Various Fourth Internationalist groups around the world who describe themselves as Trotskyist see themselves as standing in this tradition while Maoist China formally supported the theory of socialism in one country.
European social democrats strongly support Europeanism and supranational integration within the European Union, although there is a minority of nationalists and Eurosceptics on the left. Several scholars have linked this form of left-wing nationalism to the pressure generated by economic integration with other countries, often encouraged by neoliberal free trade agreements. This view is sometimes used to justify hostility towards supranational organizations. Left-wing nationalism can also refer to any form of nationalism which emphasizes a leftist working-class populist agenda that seeks to overcome exploitation or oppression by other nations. Many Third World anti-colonialist movements have adopted leftist and socialist ideas. Third-Worldism is a tendency within leftist thought that regards the division between First World and Second World developed countries and Third World developing countries as being of high political importance. This tendency supports decolonization and national liberation movements against imperialism by capitalists. Third-Worldism is closely connected with African socialism, Latin American socialism, Maoism, pan-Africanism and pan-Arabism. Several left-wing groups in the developing world such as the Zapatista Army of National Liberation in Mexico, the Abahlali baseMjondolo in South Africa and the Naxalites in India have argued that the First World and the Second World Left takes a racist and paternalistic attitude towards liberation movements in the Third World.
Religion
The original French Left was firmly anti-clerical, strongly opposing the influence of the Roman Catholic Church and supporting atheism and the separation of church and state, ushering in a policy known as laïcité. Karl Marx asserted that "[r]eligion 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". In Soviet Russia, the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin originally embraced an ideological principle which professed that all religion would eventually atrophy and resolved to eradicate organized Christianity and other religious institutions. In 1918, 10 Russian Orthodox hierarchs were summarily executed by a firing squad, and children were deprived of any religious education outside of the home.
Today in the Western world, those on the Left generally support secularization and the separation of church and state. However, religious beliefs have also been associated with many left-wing movements such as the progressive movement, the Social Gospel movement, the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, the anti-capital punishment movement and Liberation Theology. Early utopian socialist thinkers such as Robert Owen, Charles Fourier and the Comte de Saint-Simon based their theories of socialism upon Christian principles. From St. Augustine of Hippo's City of God through St. Thomas More's Utopia, major Christian writers defended ideas that socialists found agreeable and advocated for. Other common leftist concerns such as pacifism, social justice, racial equality, human rights and the rejection of capitalism and excessive wealth can be found in the Holy Bible.
In the late 19th century, the Social Gospel movement arose, particularly among Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists and Baptists in North America and Britain which integrated progressive and socialist thought with Christianity through faith-based social activism, promoted by movements such as Christian anarchism, Christian socialism and Christian communism. In the 20th century, the theology of liberation and Creation Spirituality was championed by several scholars and priests, such as Gustavo Gutierrez and Matthew Fox. Other left-wing religious movements include Buddhist socialism, Jewish socialism and Islamic socialism. There have been alliances between the left and anti-war Muslims, such as the Respect Party and the Stop the War Coalition in Britain. In France, the left has been divided over moves to ban the hijab from schools, with some leftists supporting a ban based on the separation of church and state in accordance with the principle of laïcité and other leftists opposing the prohibition based on personal and religious freedom.
Social progressivism and counterculture
Social progressivism is another common feature of modern leftism, particularly in the United States, where social progressives played an important role in the abolition of slavery, the enshrinement of women's suffrage in the United States Constitution, and the protection of civil rights, LGBTQ rights, women's rights and multiculturalism. Progressives have both advocated for alcohol prohibition legislation and worked towards its repeal in the mid to late 1920s and early 1930s. Current positions associated with social progressivism in the Western world include strong opposition to the death penalty, torture, mass surveillance, and the war on drugs, and support for abortion rights, cognitive liberty, LGBTQ rights including legal recognition of same-sex marriage, same-sex adoption of children, the right to change one's legal gender, distribution of contraceptives, and public funding of embryonic stem-cell research. The desire for an expansion of social and civil liberties often overlaps that of the libertarian movement. Public education was a subject of great interest to groundbreaking social progressives such as Lester Frank Ward and John Dewey, who believed that a democratic society and system of government was practically impossible without a universal and comprehensive nationwide system of education.
Various counterculture and anti-war movements in the 1960s and 1970s were associated with the New Left. Unlike the earlier leftist focus on labour union activism and a proletarian revolution, the New Left instead adopted a broader definition of political activism commonly called social activism. The New Left in the United States is associated with the hippie movement, mass protest movements on school campuses and a broadening of focus from protesting class-based oppression to include issues such as gender, race and sexual orientation. The British New Left was an intellectually driven movement which attempted to correct the perceived errors of the Old Left. The New Left opposed prevailing authoritarian structures in society which it designated as "The Establishment" and became known as the "Anti-Establishment". The New Left did not seek to recruit industrial workers en masse, but instead concentrated on a social activist approach to organization, convinced that they could be the source for a better kind of social revolution. This view has been criticized by several Marxists, especially Trotskyists, who characterized this approach as "substitutionism" which they described as a misguided and non-Marxist belief that other groups in society could "substitute" for and "replace" the revolutionary agency of the working class.
Many early feminists and advocates of women's rights were considered a part of the Left by their contemporaries. Feminist pioneer Mary Wollstonecraft was influenced by Thomas Paine. Many notable leftists have been strong supporters of gender equality such as Marxist philosophers and activists Rosa Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin and Alexandra Kollontai, anarchist philosophers and activists such as Virginia Bolten, Emma Goldman and Lucía Sánchez Saornil and democratic socialist philosophers and activists such as Helen Keller and Annie Besant. However, Marxists such as Rosa Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin, and Alexandra Kollontai, who are supporters of radical social equality for women and have rejected and opposed liberal feminism because they considered it to be a capitalist bourgeois ideology. Marxists were responsible for organizing the first International Working Women's Day events.
The women's liberation movement is closely connected to the New Left and other new social movements which openly challenged the orthodoxies of the Old Left. Socialist feminism as exemplified by the Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women and Marxist feminism, spearheaded by Selma James, saw themselves as a part of the Left that challenges male-dominated and sexist structures within the Left. The connection between left-wing ideologies and the struggle for LGBTQ rights also has an important history. Prominent socialists who were involved in early struggles for LGBTQ rights include Edward Carpenter, Oscar Wilde, Harry Hay, Bayard Rustin and Daniel Guérin, among others. The New Left is also strongly supportive of LGBTQ rights and liberation, having been instrumental in the founding of the LGBTQ rights movement in the aftermath of the Stonewall Uprising of 1969 and contemporary leftist activists and socialist countries such as Cuba are actively supportive of LGBTQ+ people and are involved in the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights and equality.
History
In politics, the term Left derives from the French Revolution as the political groups opposed to the royal veto privilege (Montagnard and Jacobin deputies from the Third Estate) generally sat to the left of the presiding member's chair in parliament while the ones in favour of the royal veto privilege sat on its right. That habit began in the French Estates General of 1789. Throughout the 19th century, the main line dividing Left and Right was between supporters of the French republic and those of the monarchy's privileges. The June Days uprising during the Second Republic was an attempt by the Left to re-assert itself after the 1848 Revolution, but only a small portion of the population supported this.
In the mid-19th century, nationalism, socialism, democracy and anti-clericalism became key features of the French Left. After Napoleon III's 1851 coup and the subsequent establishment of the Second Empire, Marxism began to rival radical republicanism and utopian socialism as a force within left-wing politics. The influential Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, published amidst the wave of revolutions of 1848 across Europe, asserted that all of human history is defined by class struggle. They predicted that a proletarian revolution would eventually overthrow bourgeois capitalism and create a stateless, moneyless and classless communist society. It was in this period that the word wing was appended to both Left and Right.
The International Workingmen's Association (1864–1876), sometimes called the First International, brought together delegates from many different countries, with many different views about how to reach a classless and stateless society. Following a split between supporters of Marx and Mikhail Bakunin, anarchists formed the International Workers' Association (IWA–AIT). The Second International (1888–1916) became divided over the issue of World War I. Those who opposed the war, among them Vladimir Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg, saw themselves as further to the left.
In the United States, leftists such as social liberals, progressives and trade unionists were influenced by the works of Thomas Paine, who introduced the concept of asset-based egalitarianism which theorises that social equality is possible by a redistribution of resources. After the Reconstruction era in the aftermath of the American Civil War, the phrase "the Left" was used to describe those who supported trade unions, the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement. More recently, left-wing and right-wing have often been used as synonyms for the Democratic and Republican parties, or as synonyms for liberalism and conservatism, respectively.
Since the Right was populist, both in the Western and the Eastern Bloc anything viewed as avant-garde art was called leftist across Europe, thus the identification of Picasso's Guernica as "leftist" in Europe and the condemnation of the Russian composer Shostakovich's opera (The Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District) in Pravda as follows: "Here we have 'leftist' confusion instead of natural, human music".
Types
The spectrum of left-wing politics ranges from centre-left to far-left or ultra-left. The term centre-left describes a position within the political mainstream that accepts capitalism and a market economy. The terms far-left and ultra-left are used for positions that are more radical, more strongly rejecting capitalism and mainstream representative democracy, instead advocating for a socialist society based on economic democracy and direct democracy, representing economic, political and social democracy. The centre-left includes social democrats, social liberals, progressives and greens. Centre-left supporters accept market allocation of resources in a mixed economy with an empowered public sector and a thriving private sector. Centre-left policies tend to favour limited state intervention in matters pertaining to the public interest.
In several countries, the terms far-left and radical left have been associated with many varieties of anarchism, autonomism and communism. They have been used to describe groups that advocate anti-capitalism and eco-terrorism. In France, a distinction is made between the centre-left and the left represented by the Socialist Party and the French Communist Party and the far-left as represented by anarcho-communists, Maoists and Trotskyists. The United States Department of Homeland Security defines "left-wing extremism" as groups that "seek to bring about change through violent revolution, rather than through established political processes". In China, the term Chinese New Left denotes those who oppose the economic reforms enacted by Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s and 1990s, favour instead the restoration of Maoist policies and the immediate transition to a socialist economy. In the Western world, the term New Left is used for social and cultural politics.
In the United Kingdom during the 1980s, the term hard left was applied to supporters of Tony Benn such as the Campaign Group and those involved in the London Labour Briefing newspaper as well as Trotskyist groups such as Militant and the Alliance for Workers' Liberty. In the same period, the term soft left was applied to supporters of the British Labour Party who were perceived to be more moderate and closer to the centre, accepting Keynesianism. Under the leadership of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, the Labour Party adopted the Third Way and rebranded itself as New Labour in order to promote the notion that it was less left-wing than it had been in the past to accommodate the neoliberal trend arising since the 1970s with the displacement of Keynesianism and post-war social democracy. One of the first actions of Ed Miliband, the Labour Party leader who succeeded Blair and Brown, was the rejection of the New Labour label and a promise to abandon the Third Way and turn back to the left. However, Labour's voting record in the House of Commons from 2010 to 2015 indicated that the Labour Party under Miliband had maintained the same distance from the left as it did under Blair. In contrast, the election of Jeremy Corbyn as the Labour Party leader was viewed by scholars and political commentators as Labour turning back toward its more classical socialist roots, rejecting neoliberalism and the Third Way whilst supporting a democratic socialist society and an end to austerity measures.
See also
Conflict theory
History of trade unions in the United Kingdom
Labor history of the United States
Left-wing populism
List of left-wing internationals
List of left-wing political parties
Post-left anarchy
Red-baiting
Red Scare
Redwashing
Social criticism
References
Further reading
Encyclopedia of the American Left, ed. by Mari Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle, Dan Georgakas, Second Edition, Oxford University Press 1998, .
Lin Chun, The British New Left, Edinburgh : Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1993.
Geoff Eley, Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850–2000, Oxford University Press 2002, .
"Leftism in India, 1917–1947", Satyabrata Rai Chowdhuri, Palgrave Macmillan, UK, 2007, .
Political spectrum
Political terminology |
18504 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los%20Angeles-class%20submarine | Los Angeles-class submarine | The Los Angeles class of submarines are nuclear-powered fast attack submarines (SSN) in service with the United States Navy. Also known as the 688 class (pronounced "six-eighty-eight") after the hull number of lead vessel , 62 were built from 1972 to 1996, the latter 23 to an improved 688i standard. As of 2020, 32 of the Los Angeles class remain in commission — more than any other class in the world — and they account for more than half of the U.S. Navy's 53 fast attack submarines.
Of the 30 retired boats, a few were in commission for nearly 40 years, including , and . With a wide variance in longevity, 12 of the 688s were laid up halfway through their projected lifespans, being the youngest-retired at 15 years, 11 months. Another five also laid up early (20–25 years), due to their midlife reactor refueling being cancelled, and one was lost during overhaul due to arson. Two have been converted to moored training ships, and all others are being scrapped per the Navy's Ship-Submarine Recycling Program.
Submarines of this class are named after American towns and cities, such as Albany, New York; Los Angeles, California; and Tucson, Arizona, with the exception of , named for the "father of the nuclear Navy." This was a change from traditionally naming attack submarines after marine animals, such as or .
Design
Flights
Los Angeles-class submarines were built in three successive flights: SSNs 688–718, SSNs 719–750, and SSNs 751–773. In 1982, after building 31 boats, the class underwent a minor redesign. The following eight that made up the second "flight" of subs had 12 new vertical launch tubes that could fire Tomahawk missiles. The last 23 had a significant upgrade with the 688i improvement program. These boats are quieter, with more advanced electronics, sensors, and noise-reduction technology. The diving planes are placed at the bow rather than on the sail, and are retractable. A further four boats were proposed by the Navy, but later cancelled.
Capabilities
According to the U.S. Department of Defense, the top speed of the submarines of the Los Angeles class is over , although the actual maximum is classified. Some published estimates have placed their top speed at . In his book Submarine: A Guided Tour Inside a Nuclear Warship, Tom Clancy estimated the top speed of Los Angeles-class submarines at about .
The U.S. Navy gives the maximum operating depth of the Los Angeles class as , while Patrick Tyler, in his book Running Critical, suggests a maximum operating depth of . Although Tyler cites the 688-class design committee for this figure, the government has not commented on it. The maximum diving depth is according to Jane's Fighting Ships, 2004–2005 Edition, edited by Commodore Stephen Saunders of the Royal Navy.
Weapons
Los Angeles-class submarines carry about 25 torpedo tube-launched weapons, as well as Mark 67 and Mark 60 CAPTOR mines and were designed to launch Tomahawk cruise missiles, and Harpoon missiles horizontally (from the torpedo tubes). The last 31 boats of this class (Flight II/688i) also have 12 dedicated vertical launching system tubes for launching Tomahawks. The tube configuration for the first two boats of Flight II differed from the later ones: Providence and Pittsburgh have four rows of three tubes vs. the inner two rows of four and outer two rows of two tubes found on other examples.
Control systems
Over close to 40 years, the control suite of the class has changed dramatically. The class was originally equipped with the Mk 113 mod 10 fire control system, also known as the Pargo display program. The Mk 113 runs on a UYK-7 computer.
The Mk 117 FCS, the first "all digital" fire control system replaced the Mk 113. The Mk 117 transferred the duties of the analog Mk 75 attack director to the UYK-7, and the digital Mk 81 weapon control consoles, removing the two analog conversions, and allowing "all digital" control of the digital mk 48 control. The first 688 sub to be built with the Mk 117 was .
The Mark 1 Combat Control System/All Digital Attack Center replaced the Mk 117 FCS, on which it was based. The Mk 1 CCS was built by Lockheed Martin, and gave the class the ability to fire Tomahawk missiles. The CSS internal tracker model provides processing for both towed-array and spherical-array trackers. Trackers are signal followers that generate bearing, arrival angle, and frequency reports based on information received by an acoustic sensor. It incorporated the Gyro Static Navigator into the system in replacement of the DMINS of the earlier 688 class.
The Mk 1 CCS was replaced by the Mk 2, which was built by Raytheon. Mk 2 provides Tomahawk Block III vertical launch capability as well as fleet-requested improvements to Mk 48 ADCAP torpedo and Towed Array Target Motion Analysis operability. The Mk 2 CCS paired with the AN/BQQ-5E system is referred to as the QE-2" system. The CCS MK2 Block 1 A/B system architecture extends the CCS MK2 tactical system with a network of tactical advanced computers (TAC-3). These TAC-3s are configured to support the SFMPL, NTCS-A, LINK-11 and ATWCS subsystems.
Sensors
Sonar
AN/BQQ-5
sensor suite consists of the AN/BQS-13 spherical sonar array and AN/UYK-44 computer. The AN/BQQ-5 was developed from the AN/BQQ-2 sonar system. The BQS 11, 12, and 13 spherical arrays have 1,241 transducers. Also equipped are a conformal hull array with 104 to 156 hydrophones and two towed arrays: the TB-12 (later replaced by the TB-16) and TB-23 or TB-29, of which there are multiple variants. There are 5 versions of the AN/BQQ-5 system, sequentially identified by letters A-E.
The 688i (Improved) subclass was initially equipped with the AN/BSY-1 SUBACS submarine advanced combat system that used an AN/BQQ-5E sensor system with updated computers and interface equipment. Development of the AN/BSY-1 and its sister the AN/BSY-2 for the was widely reported as one of the most problematic programs for the Navy, its cost and schedule suffering many setbacks.
A series of conformal passive hydrophones are hard-mounted to each side of the hull, using the AN/BQR-24 internal processor. The system uses FLIT (frequency line integration tracking) which homes in on precise narrowband frequencies of sound and, using the Doppler principle, can accurately provide firing solutions against very quiet submarines. The AN/BQQ-5's hull array doubled the performance of its predecessors.
AN/BQQ-10
The AN/BQQ-5 system was replaced by the AN/BQQ-10 system. Acoustic Rapid Commercial Off-The-Shelf Insertion (A-RCI), designated AN/BQQ-10, is a four-phase program for transforming existing submarine sonar systems (AN/BSY-1, AN/BQQ-5, and AN/BQQ-6) from legacy systems to a more capable and flexible COTS/Open System Architecture (OSA) and also provide the submarine force with a common sonar system. A single A-RCI Multi-Purpose Processor (MPP) has as much computing power as the entire Los Angeles (SSN-688/688I) submarine fleet combined and will allow the development and use of complex algorithms previously beyond the reach of legacy processors. The use of COTS/OSA technologies and systems will enable rapid periodic updates to both software and hardware. COTS-based processors will allow computer power growth at a rate commensurate with the commercial industry.
Engineering and auxiliary systems
Two watertight compartments are used in the Los Angeles-class submarines. The forward compartment contains crew living spaces, weapons-handling spaces, and control spaces not critical to recovering propulsion. The aft compartment contains the bulk of the submarine's engineering systems, power generation turbines, and water-making equipment. Some submarines in the class are capable of delivering Navy SEALs through either a SEAL Delivery Vehicle deployed from the Dry Deck Shelter or the Advanced SEAL Delivery System mounted on the dorsal side, although the latter was canceled in 2006 and removed from service in 2009. A variety of atmospheric control devices are used to allow the vessel to remain submerged for long periods of time without ventilating, including an electrolytic oxygen generator, which produces oxygen for the crew and hydrogen as a byproduct. The hydrogen is pumped overboard but there is always a risk of fire or explosion from this process.
While on the surface or at snorkel depth, the submarine may use the submarine's auxiliary or emergency diesel generator for power or ventilation (e.g., following a fire). The diesel engine in a 688 class can be quickly started by compressed air during emergencies or to evacuate noxious (nonvolatile) gases from the boat, although 'ventilation' requires raising a snorkel mast. During nonemergency situations, design constraints call for operators to allow the engine to reach normal operating temperatures before it is capable of producing full power, a process that may take from 20 to 30 minutes. However, the diesel generator can be immediately loaded to 100% power output, despite design criteria cautions, at the discretion of the submarine commander on the recommendation of the submarine's engineer, if necessity dictates such actions to: (a) restore electrical power to the submarine, (b) prevent a reactor incident from occurring or escalating, or (c) to protect the lives of the crew or others as determined necessary by the commanding officer.
Propulsion
The Los Angeles class is powered by the General Electric S6G pressurized water reactor. The hot reactor coolant water heats water in the steam generators, producing steam to power the propulsion turbines and ship service turbine generators (SSTGs), which generate the submarine's electrical power. The high-speed propulsion turbines drive the shaft and propeller through a reduction gear. In the case of a reactor plant casualty, the submarine has a diesel generator and a bank of batteries to provide electrical power. An emergency propulsion motor on the shaft line or a retractable 325-hp secondary propulsion motor power the submarine off the battery or diesel generator.
The S6G reactor plant was originally designed to use the D1G-2 core, similar to the D2G reactor used on the guided missile cruiser. The D1G-2 core had a rated thermal power of 150 MW and the turbines were rated at 30,000 shp. All Los Angeles-class submarines from on were built with a D2W core and older submarines with D1G-2 cores have been refueled with D2W cores. The D2W core is rated at 165 MW and turbine power rose to approximately 33,500 shp.
In popular culture
Los Angeles-class submarines have been featured prominently in numerous Tom Clancy literary works and film adaptations, most notably in The Hunt for Red October. Other appearances include in the novel Red Storm Rising and in SSN. In addition to fictional works, Clancy's 1993 non-fiction book Submarine: A Guided Tour Inside a Nuclear Warship features an in-depth exploration of .
was used in the 2008 made-for-television film Stargate: Continuum.
688 Attack Sub, a 1989 MS-DOS submarine simulator, allowed the player to control a Los Angeles-class submarine during a set of Cold War missions. The game was also released for the Sega Genesis console.
Jane's 688(i) Hunter/Killer, Sub Command, Dangerous Waters, developed by Sonalysts Inc., and Cold Waters by Killerfish Games, are video games where players control the 688i Los Angeles-class submarine.
See also
List of Los Angeles-class submarines
List of active Los Angeles-class submarines by homeport
List of submarine classes of the United States Navy
List of submarines of the United States Navy
List of submarine classes in service
Submarines in the United States Navy
Cruise missile submarine
Attack submarine
Notes
References
External links
Role of the Modern Submarine at Submarine History.
Submarine classes
Naval ships of the United States
Cold War submarines of the United States |
18507 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucretia | Lucretia | According to Roman tradition, Lucretia (/luːˈkriːʃə/ loo-KREE-shə, Classical Latin: [lʊˈkreːtɪ.a]; died c. 510 BC), anglicized as Lucrece, was a noblewoman in ancient Rome, whose rape by Sextus Tarquinius (Tarquin) and subsequent suicide precipitated a rebellion that overthrew the Roman monarchy and led to the transition of Roman government from a kingdom to a republic. The incident kindled the flames of dissatisfaction over the tyrannical methods of Tarquin's father, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the last king of Rome. As a result, the prominent families instituted a republic, drove the extensive royal family of Tarquin from Rome, and successfully defended the republic against attempted Etruscan and Latin intervention.
There are no contemporary sources of Lucretia and the event. Information regarding Lucretia, her rape and suicide, and the consequence of this being the start of the Roman Republic, come from the accounts of Roman historian Livy and Greco-Roman historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus approximately 500 years later. Secondary sources on the establishment of the republic reiterate the basic events of Lucretia's story, though accounts vary slightly between historians. The evidence points to the historical existence of a woman named Lucretia and an event that played a critical part in the downfall of the monarchy. However, specific details are debatable and vary depending on the writer. According to modern sources, Lucretia's narrative is considered a part of Roman mythohistory. Much like the rape of the Sabine women, Lucretia's story provides an explanation for historical change in Rome through a recounting of sexual assault against women.
Early life and marriage
Lucretia was the daughter of magistrate Spurius Lucretius and the wife of Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus. The marriage between Lucretia and Collatinus was depicted as the ideal Roman union, as both Lucretia and Collatinus were faithfully devoted to one another. According to Livy, Lucretia was an exemplar of "beauty and purity," as well as Roman standards. While her husband was away at battle, Lucretia would stay at home and pray for his safe return. As with Livy, Dionysius' depiction of Lucretia separates her from the rest of Roman women in a story about the men returning home from a battle. The narrative begins with a bet between the sons of Tarquinius and their kinsmen, Brutus and Collatinus. The men fight over which of their wives best exemplified sophrosyne, an ideal of superb moral and intellectual character. The men return home to find the women socializing with each other, presumably drinking and in conversation. In contrast, they find Lucretia home alone, working with her wool in silence. Because of her devotion to her husband, Roman writers Livy and Dionysus outline Lucretia as the role model for Roman girls.
Rape
As the events of the story move rapidly, the date of Lucretia's rape is most likely the same year as the first of the fasti. Dionysius of Halicarnassus sets this year "at the beginning of the sixty-eighth Olympiad ... Isagoras being the annual archon at Athens"; that is, 508/507 BC. According to Dionysius, Lucretia therefore died in 508 BC. This approximate date is met with consensus by other historians; however, the exact year is debatable within a range of about five years.
While engaged in the siege of Ardea, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the last king of Rome, sent his son, Tarquin, on a military errand to Collatia. Tarquin was received with great hospitality at the governor's mansion, home of Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, son of the king's nephew, Arruns Tarquinius, former governor of Collatia and first of the Tarquinii Collatini. Spurius Lucretius, father of Collatinus' wife Lucretia and prefect of Rome, made sure that the king's son was treated as a guest and a figure of his rank.
In a variant of the story, Tarquin and Collatinus, at a wine party on furlough, were debating the virtues of wives when Collatinus volunteered to settle the debate. In order to do so, he proposed riding to his home to observe Lucretia. Upon their arrival, she was weaving with her maids. The party awarded her the palm of victory and Collatinus invited them to stay, but for the time being they returned to camp.
Later in the night, Tarquin entered Lucretia's bedroom, quietly going around the slaves who were sleeping at her door. When she awoke, he identified himself and offered her two choices: she could submit to his sexual advances and become his wife and future queen, or he would kill her and one of her slaves and place the bodies together, then claim he had caught her having adulterous sex (see sexuality in ancient Rome for Roman attitudes toward sex). In the alternative story, he returned from camp a few days later with one companion to take Collatinus up on his invitation to visit and was lodged in a guest bedroom. He entered Lucretia's room while she lay naked in her bed and started to wash her belly with water, which woke her up. Tarquin tried to convince Lucretia that she should be with him, using "every argument likely to influence a female heart." However, Lucretia stood firm in her devotion to her husband, even when Tarquin threatened her life and honor, while ultimately raping her.
Suicide
The account of Dionysius of Halicarnassus
In Dionysius of Halicarnassus' account, the following day Lucretia dressed in black and went to her father's house in Rome and cast herself down in the supplicant's position (embracing the knees), weeping in front of her father and husband. She asked to explain herself and insisted on summoning witnesses before she told them about her rape. After disclosing the rape, she asked them for vengeance, a plea that could not be ignored because she was speaking to the chief magistrate of Rome. While the men debated the proper course of action, Lucretia drew a concealed dagger and stabbed herself in the heart. She died in her father's arms, while the women present lamented her death. According to Dionysius, "This dreadful scene struck the Romans who were present with so much horror and compassion that they all cried out with one voice that they would rather die a thousand deaths in defense of their liberty than suffer such outrages to be committed by the tyrants."
The account of Livy
In Livy's version, Lucretia acts quickly and calmly, deciding not to go to Rome, but instead sends for her father and her husband, asking them to bring one friend each to act as a witness. Those selected were Publius Valerius Publicola from Rome and Lucius Junius Brutus from the camp at Ardea. Once the men found Lucretia in her room, her explanation of the facts leads the men to state that "it is the mind that sins, not the body, and where there has been no consent there is no guilt." After exacting an oath of vengeance while the men were discussing the matter—"Pledge me your solemn word that the adulterer shall not go unpunished"— Lucretia drew a poignard and stabbed herself in her heart.
The account of Dio
In Dio's version, Lucretia's request for revenge is: "And, whereas I (for I am a woman) shall act in a manner which is fitting for me: you, if you are men, and if you care for your wives and children, exact vengeance on my behalf and free your selves and show the tyrants what sort of woman they outraged, and what sort of men were her menfolk!" She follows her statement by plunging the dagger into her chest and promptly dying.
In this version, Collatinus and Brutus were encountered returning to Rome unaware of the incident, were briefed, and were brought to the death scene. Brutus happened to be a politically motivated participant. By kinship he was a Tarquin on his mother's side, the son of Tarquinia, daughter of Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, the third king before last. He was a candidate for the throne if anything should happen to Superbus. By law, however, because he was a Junius on his father's side, he was thus not a Tarquin and therefore could later propose the exile of the Tarquins without fear for himself. Superbus had taken his inheritance and left him a pittance, keeping him at court for entertainment.
Collatinus, seeing his wife dead, became distraught. He held her, kissed her, called her name and spoke to her. Dio stated that after seeing the hand of Destiny in these events, Brutus called the grieving party to order, explained that his simplicity had been a sham, and proposed that they drive the Tarquins from Rome. Grasping the bloody dagger, he swore by Mars and all the other gods that he would do everything in his power to overthrow the dominion of the Tarquinii. He stated that he would neither be reconciled to the tyrants himself, nor tolerate any who should be reconciled to them, but would look upon every man who thought otherwise as an enemy, and til his death would pursue with unrelenting hatred both the tyranny and its abettors; and if he should violate his oath, he prayed that he and his children might meet with the same end as Lucretia.
He passed the dagger around and each mourner swore the same oath by it. The primary sources of both Dio and Livy agree on this point: Livy's version is:
By this blood—most pure before the outrage wrought by the king's son—I swear, and you, O gods, I call to witness that I will drive hence Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, together with his cursed wife and his whole blood, with fire and sword and every means in my power, and I will not suffer them or anyone else to reign in Rome.
Revolution
The newly sworn revolutionary committee paraded the bloody corpse of Lucretia to the Roman Forum where it remained on display as a reminder of the dishonor committed. At the forum, the committee heard grievances against the Tarquins and began to enlist an army to abolish the monarchy. Brutus "urged them to act as men and Romans and take up arms against their insolent foes" in response to the death of a dutiful wife. The gates of Rome were blockaded by the new revolutionary soldiers and more were sent to guard Collatia. By now a crowd had gathered in the forum; the presence of the magistrates among the revolutionaries kept them in good order.
Brutus was the Tribune of the Celeres, a minor office of some religious duties, which as a magistracy gave him the theoretical power to summon the curiae, an organization of patrician families used mainly to ratify the decrees of the king. Summoning them on the spot, he transformed the crowd into an authoritative legislative assembly and began to address them in one of the more noted and effective speeches of ancient Rome.
He began by revealing that his pose as a fool was a sham designed to protect him against an evil king. He levelled a number of charges against the king and his family: the outrage against Lucretia, whom everyone could see on the dais, the king's tyranny, the forced labor of the plebeians in the ditches and sewers of Rome. In his speech, he pointed out that Superbus had come to rule by the murder of Servius Tullius, his wife's father, next-to-the-last king of Rome. He "solemnly invoked the gods as the avengers of murdered parents." He suggested that the king's wife, Tullia, was in fact in Rome and probably was a witness to the proceedings from her palace near the forum. Seeing herself the target of so much animosity, she fled from the palace in fear of her life and proceeded to the camp at Ardea.
Brutus opened a debate on the form of government Rome ought to have, a debate at which many patricians spoke. In summation, he proposed the banishment of the Tarquins from all the territories of Rome and the appointment of an interrex to nominate new magistrates and conduct an election of ratification. They decided on a republican form of government with two consuls in place of a king executing the will of a patrician senate. This was a temporary measure until they could consider the details more carefully. Brutus renounced all right to the throne. In subsequent years, the powers of the king were divided among various elected magistracies.
A final vote of the curiae carried the interim constitution. Spurius Lucretius was swiftly elected interrex; he was prefect of the city already. He proposed Brutus and Collatinus as the first two consuls and that choice was ratified by the curiae. Needing to acquire the assent of the population as a whole, they paraded Lucretia through the streets, summoning the plebeians to a legal assembly in the forum. Once there, they heard a constitutional speech by Brutus. It began:
A general election was held and the vote won in favor of the republic. This ended the monarchy, and during these proceedings Lucretia was still displayed in the forum.
The constitutional consequences of this event ended the reign of the hereditary king; however, later emperors were absolute rulers in all but name.This constitutional tradition prevented both Julius Caesar and Octavian Augustus from accepting a crown; instead, they had to devise a confluence of several republican offices onto their persons in order to secure absolute power. Their successors both in Rome and in Constantinople adhered to this tradition in essence, and the office of German Holy Roman Emperor remained elective rather than hereditary—up to its abolition in the Napoleonic Wars, over 2300 years later.
In literature and music
Lucretia became an important embodiment of political and literary ideals for different authors throughout the ages, specifically because "stories of sexual violence against women serve as foundational myths of Western culture."
Livy's account in Ab Urbe Condita Libri (c. 25–8 BC) is the earliest surviving full historical treatment. In his account, her husband has boasted of the virtue of his wife to Tarquin and others. Livy contrasts the virtue of the Roman Lucretia, who remained in her room weaving, with the Etruscan ladies who feasted with friends. Ovid recounts the story of Lucretia in Book II of his Fasti, published in 8 AD, concentrating on the bold over-reaching character of Tarquin. Later, St. Augustine made use of the figure of Lucretia in The City of God (published 426 AD) to defend the honour of Christian women who had been raped in the sack of Rome and had not committed suicide.
The story of Lucretia was a popular moral tale in the later Middle Ages. Lucretia appears to Dante in the section of Limbo, reserved for the nobles of Rome and other "virtuous pagans", in Canto IV of the Inferno. Christine de Pizan used Lucretia, just as St. Augustine of Hippo did, in her City of Ladies, defending a woman's sanctity.
The myth is recounted in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Legend of Good Women, and it follows a similar storyline to Livy's. Lucretia calls for her father and husband, but Chaucer's tale also has her call for her mother and attendants as well, whereas Livy's has both her father and husband bring a friend as witness. The tale also deviates from Livy's account, as it begins with her husband coming home to surprise her, rather than the men placing a bet on the virtue of their wives.
John Gower's Confessio Amantis (Book VII), and John Lydgate's Fall of Princes recount the myth of Lucretia. Gower's work is a collection of narrative poems. In Book VII, he tells the "Tale of the Rape of Lucrece." Lydgate's work is a long poem containing stories and myths about various kings and princes who fell from power. It follows their lives from their rise into power and their fall into adversity. Lydgate's poem mentions the fall of Tarquin, the rape and suicide of Lucretia, and her speech prior to death.
Lucretia's rape and suicide is also the subject of William Shakespeare's 1594 long poem The Rape of Lucrece, which draws extensively on Ovid's treatment of the story; he also mentions her in Titus Andronicus, in As You Like It, and in Twelfth Night, wherein Malvolio authenticates his fateful letter by spotting Olivia's Lucrece seal. Shakespeare also alludes to her in Macbeth, and in Cymbeline he further refers to the story, though without mentioning Lucretia by name. Shakespeare's poem, based on the rape of Lucretia, draws on the beginning of the Livy's account of the incident. The poem begins with a bet between husbands about the virtuousness of their wives. Shakespeare draws on the idea of Lucretia as a moral agent, as Livy did, when he explores his characters response to death and her unwillingness to yield to her rapist. A direct excerpt from Livy is used when Shakespeare prefaces his poem with a brief prose called "Argument". This is the internal deliberation Lucrece suffered from, following the rape.
Niccolò Machiavelli's comedy La Mandragola is loosely based on the Lucretia story.
She is also mentioned in the poem "Appius and Virginia" by John Webster and Thomas Heywood, which includes the following lines:
Thomas Heywood's play The Rape of Lucretia dates from 1607. The subject also enjoyed a revival in the mid twentieth century; André Obey's 1931 play was adapted by librettist Ronald Duncan for The Rape of Lucretia, a 1946 opera by Benjamin Britten which premiered at Glyndebourne. Ernst Krenek set Emmet Lavery's libretto Tarquin (1940), a version in a contemporary setting.
Jacques Gallot (died ) composed the allemandes "Lucrèce" and "Tarquin" for baroque lute.
In Samuel Richardson's 1740 novel Pamela, Mr. B. cites the story of Lucretia as a reason why Pamela ought not fear for her reputation, should he rape her. Pamela quickly sets him straight with a better reading of the story. Colonial Mexican poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz also mentions Lucretia in her poem "Redondillas," a commentary on prostitution and who is to blame.
In 1769, doctor Juan Ramis wrote a tragedy in Menorca entitled Lucrecia. The play is written in the Catalan language using a neoclassical style and is a significant work of the eighteenth century written in this language.
In 1932, the play Lucrece was produced on Broadway, starring legendary actress Katharine Cornell in the title part. It was mostly performed in pantomime.
In 1989, a song entitled The Rape of Lucretia was released by the Scottish musician Momus.
In Donna Leon's 2009 Venetian novel, About Face, Franca Marinello refers to the tale of Tarquin and Lucrezia, as recounted in Ovid's Fasti (Book II, for February 24, "Regifugium") to explain her actions to Commissario Brunetti.
Subject in art
Since the Renaissance, the suicide of Lucretia has been an enduring subject for visual artists, including Titian, Rembrandt, Dürer, Raphael, Botticelli, Jörg Breu the Elder, Johannes Moreelse, Artemisia Gentileschi, Damià Campeny, Eduardo Rosales, Lucas Cranach the Elder, and others. Most commonly, either the moment of the rape is shown or Lucretia is shown alone at the moment of her suicide. In either situation, her clothing is loosened or absent, while Tarquin is normally clothed.
The subject was one of a group showing women from legend or the Bible who were either powerless, such as Susanna and Verginia, or only able to escape their situations by suicide, such as Dido of Carthage and Lucretia. These formed a counterpoint to, or sub-group of, the set of subjects known as the Power of Women, showing female violence against, or domination of, men. These were often depicted by the same artists, and especially popular in Northern Renaissance art. The story of Esther lay somewhere between these two extremes.
The subject of Lucretia spinning with her ladies, is sometimes depicted, as in a series of four engravings of her story by Hendrick Goltzius, which also includes a banquet.
Examples with article
Tarquin and Lucretia— life-size image of the rape by Titian
The Story of Lucretia (Botticelli)—three scenes, of the rape, Brutus arousing the people, and the suicide
The Suicide of Lucretia (Dürer)—single figure painting
Lucretia and her Husband—distinctive depiction of Lucretia with a knife, and a shadowy male figure just behind. He is either Tarquin or her husband. By either Titian or Palma Vecchio.
Lucretia (Veronese)
See also
Lucretia gens
Verginia
The Rape of the Sabine Women
References
Sources
Dionysius of Halicarnassus (2007) [1939]. "Book IV, sections 64–85". In Thayer, William (ed.). Roman Antiquities. Loeb Classical Library. Translated by Cary, Earnest. Cambridge MA, Chicago: Harvard University, University of Chicago.
Donaldson, Ian (1982). The Rapes of Lucretia: A Myth and Its Transformations. New York: Oxford University Press.
Livy (1912). "Book I, sections 57-60" in History of Rome. English Translation by Rev. Canon Roberts. New York: E.P. Dutton and Co.
Russell, H. D., & Barnes, B. (1990). Eva/Ave: Women in Renaissance and Baroque Prints. National Gallery of Art.
External links
Ancient Romans who committed suicide
510s BC deaths
6th-century BC Roman women
Kidnapped people
Lucretii
People whose existence is disputed
Characters in Roman mythology |
18508 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight%20Directory%20Access%20Protocol | Lightweight Directory Access Protocol | The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP ) is an open, vendor-neutral, industry standard application protocol for accessing and maintaining distributed directory information services over an Internet Protocol (IP) network. Directory services play an important role in developing intranet and Internet applications by allowing the sharing of information about users, systems, networks, services, and applications throughout the network. As examples, directory services may provide any organized set of records, often with a hierarchical structure, such as a corporate email directory. Similarly, a telephone directory is a list of subscribers with an address and a phone number.
LDAP is specified in a series of Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Standard Track publications called Request for Comments (RFCs), using the description language ASN.1. The latest specification is Version 3, published as RFC 4511 (a road map to the technical specifications is provided by RFC4510).
A common use of LDAP is to provide a central place to store usernames and passwords. This allows many different applications and services to connect to the LDAP server to validate users.
LDAP is based on a simpler subset of the standards contained within the X.500 standard. Because of this relationship, LDAP is sometimes called X.500-lite.
History
Telecommunication companies' understanding of directory requirements were well developed after some 70 years of producing and managing telephone directories. These companies introduced the concept of directory services to information technology and computer networking, their input culminating in the comprehensive X.500 specification, a suite of protocols produced by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in the 1980s.
X.500 directory services were traditionally accessed via the X.500 Directory Access Protocol (DAP), which required the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) protocol stack. LDAP was originally intended to be a lightweight alternative protocol for accessing X.500 directory services through the simpler (and now widespread) TCP/IP protocol stack. This model of directory access was borrowed from the DIXIE and Directory Assistance Service protocols.
The protocol was originally created by Tim Howes of the University of Michigan, Steve Kille of Isode Limited, Colin Robbins of Nexor and Wengyik Yeong of Performance Systems International, circa 1993, as a successor to DIXIE and DAS. Mark Wahl of Critical Angle Inc., Tim Howes, and Steve Kille started work in 1996 on a new version of LDAP, LDAPv3, under the aegis of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). LDAPv3, first published in 1997, superseded LDAPv2 and added support for extensibility, integrated the Simple Authentication and Security Layer, and better aligned the protocol to the 1993 edition of X.500. Further development of the LDAPv3 specifications themselves and of numerous extensions adding features to LDAPv3 has come through the IETF.
In the early engineering stages of LDAP, it was known as Lightweight Directory Browsing Protocol, or LDBP. It was renamed with the expansion of the scope of the protocol beyond directory browsing and searching, to include directory update functions. It was given its Lightweight name because it was not as network intensive as its DAP predecessor and thus was more easily implemented over the Internet due to its relatively modest bandwidth usage.
LDAP has influenced subsequent Internet protocols, including later versions of X.500, XML Enabled Directory (XED), Directory Service Markup Language (DSML), Service Provisioning Markup Language (SPML), and the Service Location Protocol (SLP). It is also used as the basis for Microsoft's Active Directory.
Protocol overview
A client starts an LDAP session by connecting to an LDAP server, called a Directory System Agent (DSA), by default on TCP and UDP port 389, or on port 636 for LDAPS (LDAP over TLS/SSL, see below). The client then sends an operation request to the server, and a server sends responses in return. With some exceptions, the client does not need to wait for a response before sending the next request, and the server may send the responses in any order. All information is transmitted using Basic Encoding Rules (BER).
The client may request the following operations:
StartTLS – use the LDAPv3 Transport Layer Security (TLS) extension for a secure connection
Bind – authenticate and specify LDAP protocol version
Search – search for and/or retrieve directory entries
Compare – test if a named entry contains a given attribute value
Add a new entry
Delete an entry
Modify an entry
Modify Distinguished Name (DN) – move or rename an entry
Abandon – abort a previous request
Extended Operation – generic operation used to define other operations
Unbind – close the connection (not the inverse of Bind)
In addition the server may send "Unsolicited Notifications" that are not responses to any request, e.g. before the connection is timed out.
A common alternative method of securing LDAP communication is using an SSL tunnel. The default port for LDAP over SSL is 636. The use of LDAP over SSL was common in LDAP Version 2 (LDAPv2) but it was never standardized in any formal specification. This usage has been deprecated along with LDAPv2, which was officially retired in 2003.
Directory structure
The protocol provides an interface with directories that follow the 1993 edition of the X.500 model:
An entry consists of a set of attributes.
An attribute has a name (an attribute type or attribute description) and one or more values. The attributes are defined in a schema (see below).
Each entry has a unique identifier: its Distinguished Name (DN). This consists of its Relative Distinguished Name (RDN), constructed from some attribute(s) in the entry, followed by the parent entry's DN. Think of the DN as the full file path and the RDN as its relative filename in its parent folder (e.g. if /foo/bar/myfile.txt were the DN, then myfile.txt would be the RDN).
A DN may change over the lifetime of the entry, for instance, when entries are moved within a tree. To reliably and unambiguously identify entries, a UUID might be provided in the set of the entry's operational attributes.
An entry can look like this when represented in LDAP Data Interchange Format (LDIF) (LDAP itself is a binary protocol):
dn: cn=John Doe,dc=example,dc=com
cn: John Doe
givenName: John
sn: Doe
telephoneNumber: +1 888 555 6789
telephoneNumber: +1 888 555 1232
mail: john@example.com
manager: cn=Barbara Doe,dc=example,dc=com
objectClass: inetOrgPerson
objectClass: organizationalPerson
objectClass: person
objectClass: top
"dn" is the distinguished name of the entry; it is neither an attribute nor a part of the entry. "cn=John Doe" is the entry's RDN (Relative Distinguished Name), and "dc=example,dc=com" is the DN of the parent entry, where "dc" denotes 'Domain Component'. The other lines show the attributes in the entry. Attribute names are typically mnemonic strings, like "cn" for common name, "dc" for domain component, "mail" for e-mail address, and "sn" for surname.
A server holds a subtree starting from a specific entry, e.g. "dc=example,dc=com" and its children. Servers may also hold references to other servers, so an attempt to access "ou=department,dc=example,dc=com" could return a referral or continuation reference to a server that holds that part of the directory tree. The client can then contact the other server. Some servers also support chaining, which means the server contacts the other server and returns the results to the client.
LDAP rarely defines any ordering: The server may return the values of an attribute, the attributes in an entry, and the entries found by a search operation in any order. This follows from the formal definitions - an entry is defined as a set of attributes, and an attribute is a set of values, and sets need not be ordered.
Operations
Add
The ADD operation inserts a new entry into the directory-server database. If the distinguished name in the add request already exists in the directory, then the server will not add a duplicate entry but will set the result code in the add result to decimal 68, "entryAlreadyExists".
LDAP-compliant servers will never dereference the distinguished name transmitted in the add request when attempting to locate the entry, that is, distinguished names are never de-aliased.
LDAP-compliant servers will ensure that the distinguished name and all attributes conform to naming standards.
The entry to be added must not exist, and the immediate superior must exist.
dn: uid=user,ou=people,dc=example,dc=com
changetype: add
objectClass:top
objectClass:person
uid: user
sn: last-name
cn: common-name
userPassword: password
In the above example, uid=user,ou=people,dc=example,dc=com must not exist, and ou=people,dc=example,dc=com must exist.
Bind (authenticate)
When an LDAP session is created, that is, when an LDAP client connects to the server, the authentication state of the session
is set to anonymous. The BIND operation establishes the authentication state for a session.
Simple BIND and SASL PLAIN can send the user's DN and password in plaintext, so the connections utilizing either Simple or SASL PLAIN
should be encrypted using Transport Layer Security (TLS). The server typically checks the password against the userPassword
attribute in the named entry. Anonymous BIND (with empty DN and password) resets the connection to anonymous state.
SASL (Simple Authentication and Security Layer) BIND provides authentication services through a
wide range of mechanisms, e.g. Kerberos or the client certificate sent with
TLS.
BIND also sets the LDAP protocol version by sending a version number in the form of an integer. If the client requests a version that the server does not support,
the server must set the result code in the BIND response to the code for a protocol error. Normally clients should use LDAPv3, which is the
default in the protocol but not always in LDAP libraries.
BIND had to be the first operation in a session in LDAPv2, but is not required as of LDAPv3. In LDAPv3, each
successful BIND request changes the authentication state of the session and each unsuccessful BIND request resets the authentication state
of the session.
Delete
To delete an entry, an LDAP client transmits a properly formed delete request to the server.
A delete request must contain the distinguished name of the entry to be deleted
Request controls may also be attached to the delete request
Servers do not dereference aliases when processing a delete request
Only leaf entries (entries with no subordinates) may be deleted by a delete request. Some servers support an operational attribute hasSubordinates whose value indicates whether an entry has any subordinate entries, and some servers support an operational attribute numSubordinates indicating the number of entries subordinate to the entry containing the numSubordinates attribute.
Some servers support the subtree delete request control permitting deletion of the DN and all objects subordinate to the DN, subject to access controls. Delete requests are subject to access controls, that is, whether a connection with a given authentication state will be permitted to delete a given entry is governed by server-specific access control mechanisms.
Search and compare
The Search operation is used to both search for and read entries. Its parameters are:
baseObject The name of the base object entry (or possibly the root) relative to which the search is to be performed.
scope What elements below the baseObject to search. This can be BaseObject (search just the named entry, typically used to read one entry), singleLevel (entries immediately below the base DN), or wholeSubtree (the entire subtree starting at the base DN).
filter Criteria to use in selecting elements within scope. For example, the filter (&(objectClass=person)(|(givenName=John)(mail=john*))) will select "persons" (elements of objectClass person) where the matching rules for givenName and mail determine whether the values for those attributes match the filter assertion. Note that a common misconception is that LDAP data is case-sensitive, whereas in fact matching rules and ordering rules determine matching, comparisons, and relative value relationships. If the example filters were required to match the case of the attribute value, an extensible match filter must be used, for example, (&(objectClass=person)(|(givenName:caseExactMatch:=John)(mail:caseExactSubstringsMatch:=john*)))
derefAliases Whether and how to follow alias entries (entries that refer to other entries),
attributes Which attributes to return in result entries.
sizeLimit, timeLimit Maximum number of entries to return, and maximum time to allow search to run. These values, however, cannot override any restrictions the server places on size limit and time limit.
typesOnly Return attribute types only, not attribute values.
The server returns the matching entries and potentially continuation references. These may be returned in any order. The final result will include the result code.
The Compare operation takes a DN, an attribute name and an attribute value, and checks if the named entry contains that attribute with that value.
Modify
The MODIFY operation is used by LDAP clients to request that the LDAP server make changes to existing entries. Attempts to modify entries that do not exist will fail. MODIFY requests are subject to access controls as implemented by the server.
The MODIFY operation requires that the distinguished name (DN) of the entry be specified, and a sequence of changes. Each change in the sequence must be one of:
add (add a new value, which must not already exist in the attribute)
delete (delete an existing value)
replace (replace an existing value with a new value)
LDIF example of adding a value to an attribute:
dn: dc=example,dc=com
changetype: modify
add: cn
cn: the-new-cn-value-to-be-added
-
To replace the value of an existing attribute, use the replace keyword. If the attribute is multi-valued, the client must specify the value of the attribute to update.
To delete an attribute from an entry, use the keyword delete and the changetype designator modify. If the attribute is multi-valued, the client must specify the value of the attribute to delete.
There is also a Modify-Increment extension which allows an incrementable attribute value to be incremented by a specified amount. The following example using LDIF increments employeeNumber by 5:
dn: uid=user.0,ou=people,dc=example,dc=com
changetype: modify
increment: employeeNumber
employeeNumber: 5
-
When LDAP servers are in a replicated topology, LDAP clients should consider using the post-read control to verify updates instead of a search after an update. The post-read control is designed so that applications need not issue a search request after an update – it is bad form to retrieve an entry for the sole purpose of checking that an update worked because of the replication eventual consistency model. An LDAP client should not assume that it connects to the same directory server for each request because architects may have placed load-balancers or LDAP proxies or both between LDAP clients and servers.
Modify DN
Modify DN (move/rename entry) takes the new RDN (Relative Distinguished Name), optionally the new parent's DN, and a flag that indicates whether to delete the value(s) in the entry that match the old RDN. The server may support renaming of entire directory subtrees.
An update operation is atomic: Other operations will see either the new entry or the old one. On the other hand, LDAP does not define transactions of multiple operations: If you read an entry and then modify it, another client may have updated the entry in the meantime. Servers may implement extensions that support this, though.
Extended operations
The Extended Operation is a generic LDAP operation that can define new operations that were not part of the original protocol specification. StartTLS is one of the most significant extensions. Other examples include Cancel and Password Modify.
StartTLS
The StartTLS operation establishes Transport Layer Security (the descendant of SSL) on the connection. It can provide data confidentiality (to protect data from being observed by third parties) and/or data integrity protection (which protects the data from tampering). During TLS negotiation the server sends its X.509 certificate to prove its identity. The client may also send a certificate to prove its identity. After doing so, the client may then use SASL/EXTERNAL. By using the SASL/EXTERNAL, the client requests the server derive its identity from credentials provided at a lower level (such as TLS). Though technically the server may use any identity information established at any lower level, typically the server will use the identity information established by TLS.
Servers also often support the non-standard "LDAPS" ("Secure LDAP", commonly known as "LDAP over SSL") protocol on a separate port, by default 636. LDAPS differs from LDAP in two ways:
1) upon connect, the client and server establish TLS before any LDAP messages are transferred (without a StartTLS operation) and
2) the LDAPS connection must be closed upon TLS closure.
Some "LDAPS" client libraries only encrypt communication; they do not check the host name against the name in the supplied certificate.
Abandon
The Abandon operation requests that the server abort an operation named by a message ID. The server need not honor the request. Neither Abandon nor a successfully abandoned operation send a response. A similar Cancel extended operation does send responses, but not all implementations support this.
Unbind
The Unbind operation abandons any outstanding operations and closes the connection. It has no response. The name is of historical origin, and is not the opposite of the Bind operation.
Clients can abort a session by simply closing the connection, but they should use Unbind. Unbind allows the server to gracefully close the connection and free resources that it would otherwise keep for some time until discovering the client had abandoned the connection. It also instructs the server to cancel operations that can be canceled, and to not send responses for operations that cannot be canceled.
URI scheme
An LDAP uniform resource identifier (URI) scheme exists, which clients support in varying degrees, and servers return in referrals and continuation references (see RFC 4516):
ldap://host:port/DN?attributes?scope?filter?extensions
Most of the components described below are optional.
host is the FQDN or IP address of the LDAP server to search.
port is the network port (default port 389) of the LDAP server.
DN is the distinguished name to use as the search base.
attributes is a comma-separated list of attributes to retrieve.
scope specifies the search scope and can be "base" (the default), "one" or "sub".
filter is a search filter. For example, (objectClass=*) as defined in RFC 4515.
extensions are extensions to the LDAP URL format.
For example, "ldap://ldap.example.com/cn=John%20Doe,dc=example,dc=com" refers to all user attributes in John Doe's entry in ldap.example.com, while "ldap:///dc=example,dc=com??sub?(givenName=John)" searches for the entry in the default server (note the triple slash, omitting the host, and the double question mark, omitting the attributes). As in other URLs, special characters must be percent-encoded.
There is a similar non-standard ldaps URI scheme for LDAP over SSL. This should not be confused with LDAP with TLS, which is achieved using the StartTLS operation using the standard ldap scheme.
Schema
The contents of the entries in a subtree are governed by a directory schema, a set of definitions and constraints concerning the structure of the directory information tree (DIT).
The schema of a Directory Server defines a set of rules that govern the kinds of information that the server can hold. It has a number of elements, including:
Attribute Syntaxes—Provide information about the kind of information that can be stored in an attribute.
Matching Rules—Provide information about how to make comparisons against attribute values.
Matching Rule Uses—Indicate which attribute types may be used in conjunction with a particular matching rule.
Attribute Types—Define an object identifier (OID) and a set of names that may refer to a given attribute, and associates that attribute with a syntax and set of matching rules.
Object Classes—Define named collections of attributes and classify them into sets of required and optional attributes.
Name Forms—Define rules for the set of attributes that should be included in the RDN for an entry.
Content Rules—Define additional constraints about the object classes and attributes that may be used in conjunction with an entry.
Structure Rule—Define rules that govern the kinds of subordinate entries that a given entry may have.
Attributes are the elements responsible for storing information in a directory, and the schema defines the rules for which attributes may be used in an entry, the kinds of values that those attributes may have, and how clients may interact with those values.
Clients may learn about the schema elements that the server supports by retrieving an appropriate subschema subentry.
The schema defines object classes. Each entry must have an objectClass attribute, containing named classes defined in the schema. The schema definition of the classes of an entry defines what kind of object the entry may represent - e.g. a person, organization or domain. The object class definitions also define the list of attributes that must contain values and the list of attributes which may contain values.
For example, an entry representing a person might belong to the classes "top" and "person". Membership in the "person" class would require the entry to contain the "sn" and "cn" attributes, and allow the entry also to contain "userPassword", "telephoneNumber", and other attributes. Since entries may have multiple ObjectClasses values, each entry has a complex of optional and mandatory attribute sets formed from the union of the object classes it represents. ObjectClasses can be inherited, and a single entry can have multiple ObjectClasses values that define the available and required attributes of the entry itself. A parallel to the schema of an objectClass is a class definition and an instance in Object-oriented programming, representing LDAP objectClass and LDAP entry, respectively.
Directory servers may publish the directory schema controlling an entry at a base DN given by the entry's subschemaSubentry operational attribute. (An operational attribute describes operation of the directory rather than user information and is only returned from a search when it is explicitly requested.)
Server administrators can add additional schema entries in addition to the provided schema elements. A schema for representing individual people within organizations is termed a white pages schema.
Variations
A lot of the server operation is left to the implementor or administrator to decide. Accordingly, servers may be set up to support a wide variety of scenarios.
For example, data storage in the server is not specified - the server may use flat files, databases, or just be a gateway to some other server. Access control is not standardized, though there has been work on it and there are commonly used models. Users' passwords may be stored in their entries or elsewhere. The server may refuse to perform operations when it wishes, and impose various limits.
Most parts of LDAP are extensible. Examples: One can define new operations. Controls may modify requests and responses, e.g. to request sorted search results. New search scopes and Bind methods can be defined. Attributes can have options that may modify their semantics.
Other data models
As LDAP has gained momentum, vendors have provided it as an access protocol to other services. The implementation then recasts the data to mimic the LDAP/X.500 model, but how closely this model is followed varies. For example, there is software to access SQL databases through LDAP, even though LDAP does not readily lend itself to this. X.500 servers may support LDAP as well.
Similarly, data previously held in other types of data stores are sometimes moved to LDAP directories. For example, Unix user and group information can be stored in LDAP and accessed via PAM and NSS modules. LDAP is often used by other services for authentication and/or authorization (what actions a given already-authenticated user can do on what service). For example in Active Directory Kerberos is used in the authentication step, while LDAP is used in the authorization step.
An example of such data model is the GLUE Schema, which is used in a distributed information system based on LDAP that enable users, applications and services to discover which services exist in a Grid infrastructure and further information about their structure and state.
Usage
An LDAP server may return referrals to other servers for requests that it cannot fulfill itself. This requires a naming structure for LDAP entries so one can find a server holding a given distinguished name (DN), a concept defined in the X.500 Directory and also used in LDAP. Another way of locating LDAP servers for an organization is a DNS server record (SRV).
An organization with the domain example.org may use the top level LDAP DN dc=example,dc=org (where dc means domain component). If the LDAP server is also named ldap.example.org, the organization's top level LDAP URL becomes ldap://ldap.example.org/dc=example,dc=org.
Primarily two common styles of naming are used in both X.500 [2008] and LDAPv3. These are documented in the ITU specifications and IETF RFCs. The original form takes the top level object as the country object, such as c=US, c=FR. The domain component model uses the model described above. An example of country based naming could be l=Locality, ou=Some Organizational Unit, o=Some Organization, c=FR, or in the US: cn=Common Name, l=Locality, ou=Some Organizational Unit, o=Some Organization, st=CA, c=US.
See also
Ambiguous name resolution
CCSO Nameserver
Federated Naming Service
Hesiod (name service)
Hierarchical database model
Key server (cryptographic)
LDAP Application Program Interface
List of LDAP software
Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL)
References
Sources
ITU-T Rec. X.680, "Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1) - Specification of Basic Notation", 1994
Basic encoding rules (BER) - ITU-T Rec. X.690, "Specification of ASN.1 encoding rules: Basic, Canonical, and Distinguished Encoding Rules", 1994
- Generic String Encoding Rules (GSER) for ASN.1 Types
- The TLS Protocol Version 1.1
- Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL)
SASL mechanisms registered at IANA
Further reading
External links
List of public LDAP Servers (2013):
Application layer protocols
Directory services
Internet protocols
Internet Standards
Open Group standards |
18521 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latina | Latina | Latina or Latinas most often refers to:
Latinas, a demographic group in the United States
Latino (demonym), a term used in the United States for people with cultural ties to Latin America.
Latin Americans
Latina and Latinas may also refer to:
Arts and entertainment
Latina (magazine), a monthly American magazine
Latina, an album by Cristina Pato
Latina (album), a 2016 album by Thalía
Geography
Italy
Province of Latina, a province in Latium (Lazio), Italy
Latina, Lazio, the capital of the province of Latina
Latina Nuclear Power Plant
Valle Latina, a valley of Lazio, Italy, from south of Rome to Cassino
Spain
Latina (Madrid), a district of Madrid
Barrio de La Latina (Madrid), a neighbourhood of Madrid
Language and science
or Latin, from the Latin name of the language
Latina (genus), a genus of parasitic wasps
Latina (architecture), the most common type of northern Indian shikhara (tower or spire on top of a shrine)
Sport
Latina Calcio 1932, an Italian football club formerly known as Unione Sportiva Latina Calcio.
See also
Latin (disambiguation)
Latino (disambiguation) |
18522 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latino%20%28demonym%29 | Latino (demonym) | The masculine term Latino (), along with its feminine form Latina, is a noun and adjective, often used in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, that most commonly refers to United States inhabitants who have cultural ties to Latin America.
Within the Latino community itself in the United States, there is some variation in how the term is defined or used. Various governmental agencies, especially the U.S. Census Bureau, have specific definitions of Latino which may or may not agree with community usage. These agencies also employ the term Hispanic, which includes Spaniards, whereas Latino often does not. Conversely, Latino includes Brazilians and Haitians, and depending on the user may include Spaniards and sometimes even some European romanophones such as Portuguese (a usage sometimes found in bilingual subgroups within the U.S., borrowing from how the word is defined in Spanish), but Hispanic does not include any of those other than Spaniards.
Usage of the term is mostly limited to the United States. Residents of Central and South American countries usually refer to themselves by national origin, rarely as Latino. Because of this, many Latin American scholars, journalists, and Indigenous-rights organizations have objected to the mass-media use of the word to refer to all people of Latin American background.
Origins
In the English language, the term Latino is a loan word from American Spanish. (Oxford Dictionaries attributes the origin to Latin-American Spanish.) Its origin is generally given as a shortening of , Spanish for 'Latin American'. The Oxford English Dictionary traces its usage to 1946.
Juan Francisco Martinez writes that Latino has its origins in the French term , coined in the mid-19th century to identify areas of the Americas colonized by Romance-speaking people and used to justify French intervention in Latin American affairs.
By the late 1850s, with the loss of California to Anglo-Americans or the United States, owing to the Mexican-American War, the term latino was being used in local California newspapers such as El Clamor Publico by californios writing about America latina and Latinoamerica, and identifying themselves as latinos as the abbreviated term for their "hemispheric membership in ".
Usage
Community usage
Both Hispanic and Latino are generally used to denote people living in the United States. Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco and Mariela Páez write that "Outside the United States, we don't speak of Latinos; we speak of Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, and so forth." In Latin America, the term is not a common endonym and its usage in Spanish as a demonym is restricted to the Latin American-descended population of the United States, but this is not always the case. The exception is Spain where is a common demonym for immigrants from Latin America.
Sociologist Salvador Vidal‑Ortiz and literary scholar Juliana Martínez write that after the U.S. census introduced Hispanic in the 1970s, Latino emerged as "a term of resistance to the explicit colonial relations that 'Hispanic' sets between Spain and countries in Latin America".
Governmental usage
The U.S. government Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has defined Hispanic or Latino people as "a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race". The U.S. census uses the ethnonym Hispanic or Latino to refer to "a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race". The Census Bureau also explains that "[o]rigin can be viewed as the heritage, nationality group, lineage, or country of birth of the person or the person’s ancestors before their arrival in the United States. People who identify their origin as Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish may be of any race." Hence the U.S. census and the OMB are using the terms differently. The U.S. census and the OMB use the terms interchangeably, where both terms are synonyms. According to a study by the Pew Research Center, the majority (51%) of Hispanic and Latino Americans prefer to identify with their families' country of origin, while only 24% prefer the term Hispanic or Latino.
Style guides
The AP Stylebooks recommended usage of Latino in Latin America includes not only persons of Spanish-speaking ancestry, but also more generally includes persons "from – or whose ancestors were from – ... Latin America, including Brazilians". However, in the recent past, the term Latinos was also applied to people from the Caribbean region, but those from former French, Dutch and British colonies are excluded.
Contrast with Hispanic
Whereas Latino designates someone with roots in Latin America, the term Hispanic in contrast is a demonym that includes Spaniards and other speakers of the Spanish language.
The term Latino was officially adopted in 1997 by the United States Government in the ethnonym Hispanic or Latino, which replaced the single term Hispanic: "Because regional usage of the terms differs – Hispanic is commonly used in the eastern portion of the United States, whereas Latino is commonly used in the western portion."
U.S. official use of the term Hispanic has its origins in the 1970 census. The Census Bureau attempted to identify all Hispanics by use of the following criteria in sampled sets:
Spanish speakers and persons belonging to a household where Spanish was spoken
Persons with Spanish heritage by birth location
Persons who self-identify with Latin America, excluding Brazil, Haiti and French Guiana
Neither "Hispanic" nor "Latino" refers to a race, as a person of Latino/Hispanic ethnicity can be of any race. Like non-Latinos, a Latino can be of any race or combination of races: White American / Caucasian, Black / African American, Asian American, Native American / Alaskan Native, Native Hawaiian / Other Pacific Islander American, or two or more ethnicities. While Brazilian Americans are not included with Hispanics and Latinos in the government's census population reports, any Brazilian American can report as being Hispanic or Latino since Hispanic or Latino origin is, like race or ethnicity, a matter of self-identification.
Other federal and local government agencies and non-profit organizations include Brazilians and Portuguese in their definition of Hispanic. The U.S. Department of Transportation defines Hispanic Americans as, "persons of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican, Central or South American, or other Spanish or Portuguese culture or origin, regardless of race". This definition has been adopted by the Small Business Administration as well as by many federal, state, and municipal agencies for the purposes of awarding government contracts to minority owned businesses.
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Conference include representatives of Spanish and Portuguese descent. The Hispanic Society of America is dedicated to the study of the arts and cultures of Spain, Portugal, and Latin America. Each year since 1997 the International Latino Book Award is conferred to the best achievements in Spanish or Portuguese literature at BookExpo America, the largest publishing trade show in the United States. The Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, which proclaims itself the champion of Hispanic success in higher education, has member institutions in the U.S., Puerto Rico, Latin America, Spain, and Portugal.
Some authorities of American English maintain a distinction between the terms "Hispanic" and "Latino":
Though often used interchangeably in American English, Hispanic and Latino are not identical terms, and in certain contexts the choice between them can be significant. Hispanic, from the Latin word for "Spain," has the broader reference, potentially encompassing all Spanish-speaking peoples in both hemispheres and emphasizing the common denominator of language among communities that sometimes have little else in common. Latino—which in Spanish and Portuguese means "Latin" but which as an English word is probably a shortening of the Spanish word latinoamericano—refers more exclusively to persons or communities of Latin American origin. Of the two, only Hispanic can be used in referring to Spain and its history and culture; a native of Spain residing in the United States is a Hispanic, not a Latino, and one cannot substitute Latino in the phrase the Hispanic influence on native Mexican cultures without garbling the meaning. In practice, however, this distinction is of little significance when referring to residents of the United States, most of whom are of Latin American origin and can theoretically be called by either word. – American Heritage Dictionary
The AP Stylebook also distinguishes between the terms Hispanic and Latino. The Stylebook limits the term Hispanic to people "from – or whose ancestors were from – a Spanish-speaking land or culture". It provides a more expansive definition, however, of the term Latino. The Stylebook definition of Latino includes not only people of Spanish-speaking ancestry, but also more generally includes persons "from – or whose ancestors were from – . . . Latin America". The Stylebook specifically lists "Brazilian" as an example of a group which can be considered Latino.
There were 28 categories tabulated in the 2000 United States census: Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican Republic; Central American: Costa Rican, Guatemalan, Honduran, Nicaraguan, Panamanian, Salvadoran, Other Central American; South American: Argentinian, Bolivian, Chilean, Colombian, Ecuadorian, Paraguayan, Peruvian, Uruguayan, Venezuelan, Other South American; Other Hispanic or Latino: Spaniard, Spanish, Spanish American, All other Hispanic or Latino.
Debates
The use of the term Latino, despite its increasing popularity, is still highly debated among those who are called by the name. Since the adoption of the term by the U.S. Census Bureau and its subsequent widespread use, there have been several controversies and disagreements, especially in the United States and, to a lesser extent, in Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries. Since it is an arbitrary generic term, many Latin American scholars, journalists, and indigenous-rights organisations have objected to the mass-media use of the word "Latino", pointing out that such ethnonyms are optional and should be used only to describe people involved in the practices, ideologies, and identity politics of their supporters. Journalist Rodolfo Acuña writes:
When and why the Latino identity came about is a more involved story. Essentially, politicians, the media, and marketers find it convenient to deal with the different U.S. Spanish-speaking people under one umbrella. However, many people with Spanish surnames contest the term Latino. They claim it is misleading because no Latino or Hispanic nationality exists since no Latino state exists, so generalizing the term Latino slights the various national identities included under the umbrella.
Gender-neutral forms
Attempts have been made to introduce gender-neutral language into Spanish by changing the ending of Latino, as in the terms Latin@, Latine, Latino/a, and Latinx. Both supporters and opponents of Latinx have cited linguistic imperialism as a reason for supporting or opposing the use of the term.
See also
Chicano
Latin American Australians
Latin American Canadians
Latin Union
Latino diaspora
Latino (disambiguation)
Latino studies
List of Latinos in film
Race and ethnicity in the United States Census
Racial and ethnic demographics of the United States
Notes
References
Further reading
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in the United States, 4 Vols., Oxford University Press, 2006,
Miguel A. De La Torre (ed.), Hispanic American Religious Cultures, 2 Vols., ABC-CLIO Publishers, 2009,
External links
Latino Cultural Heritage Digital Archives
What's in a name?
Yale University – Understanding Ethnic Labels and Puerto Rican Identity
Chicano/Latino Studies University of California, Irvine
Latino news for and about Latinos
Progressives, Hispanics are not 'Latinx.' Stop trying to Anglicize our Spanish language.
Hispanic and Latino American
Demonyms |
18524 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin%20America | Latin America | Latin America is the portion of the Americas comprising countries and regions where Romance languages—languages that derived from Latin—such as Spanish, Portuguese, and French are predominantly spoken.<ref>Dressing, J. David. "Latin America" in The Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture", vol. 3, p. 390. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons 1996.</ref> The term is used for those places once ruled under the Spanish, Portuguese, and French empires. Parts of the United States and Canada where Romance languages are primarily spoken are not usually included due to being collectively grouped as Anglo-America (an exception to this is Puerto Rico, which is almost always included within the definition of Latin America despite being a territory of the United States). The term is broader than categories such as Hispanic America, which specifically refers to Spanish-speaking countries; and Ibero-America, which specifically refers to both Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries. The term is also more recent in origin.
The term Latin America was first used in an 1856 conference called "Initiative of America: Idea for a Federal Congress of the Republics" (Iniciativa de la América. Idea de un Congreso Federal de las Repúblicas), by the Chilean politician Francisco Bilbao. The term was further popularized by French Emperor Napoleon III's government in the 1860s as to justify France's military involvement in the Second Mexican Empire and to include French-speaking territories in the Americas such as French Canada, French Louisiana, or French Guiana, in the larger group of countries where Spanish and Portuguese languages prevailed.
Latin America consists of 20 countries and 14 dependent territories that cover an area that stretches from Mexico to Tierra del Fuego and includes much of the Caribbean. It has an area of approximately 19,197,000 km (7,412,000 sq mi), almost 13% of the Earth's land surface area. As of March 2, 2020, the population of Latin America and the Caribbean was estimated at more than 652 million, and in 2019, Latin America had a combined nominal GDP of US$5,188,250 million and a GDP PPP of US$10,284,588 million.
Etymology and definitions
Origins
There is no universal agreement on the origin of the term Latin America. The concept and term came into being in the nineteenth century, following political independence of countries from Spain and Portugal. It was popularized in 1860s France during the reign of Napoleon III. The term Latin America was a part of its attempt to create a French empire in the Americas. Research has shown that the idea that a part of the Americas has a linguistic and cultural affinity with the Romance cultures as a whole can be traced back to the 1830s, in the writing of the French Saint-Simonian Michel Chevalier, who postulated that this part of the Americas was inhabited by people of a "Latin race", and that it could, therefore, ally itself with "Latin Europe", ultimately overlapping the Latin Church, in a struggle with "Teutonic Europe", "Anglo-Saxon America," and "Slavic Europe."
Historian John Leddy Phelan located the origins of the term Latin America in the French occupation of Mexico. His argument is that French imperialists used the concept of "Latin" America as a way to counter British imperialism, as well as to challenge the German threat to France. The idea of a "Latin race" was then taken up by Latin American intellectuals and political leaders of the mid- and late-nineteenth century, who no longer looked to Spain or Portugal as cultural models, but rather to France. French ruler Napoleon III had a strong interest in extending French commercial and political power in the region. He and his business promoter Felix Belly called it "Latin America" to emphasize the shared Latin background of France with the former Viceroyalties of Spain and colonies of Portugal. This led to Napoleon's failed attempt to take military control of Mexico in the 1860s.
However, though Phelan's thesis is still frequently cited in the US Academy, further scholarship has shown earlier usage of the term. Two Latin American historians, Uruguayan Arturo Ardao and Chilean Miguel Rojas Mix found evidence that the term "Latin America" was used earlier than Phelan claimed, and the first use of the term was in fact in opposition to imperialist projects in the Americas. Ardao wrote about this subject in his book Génesis de la idea y el nombre de América latina (Genesis of the Idea and the Name of Latin America, 1980), and Miguel Rojas Mix in his article "Bilbao y el hallazgo de América latina: Unión continental, socialista y libertaria" (Bilbao and the Finding of Latin America: a Continental, Socialist and Libertarian Union, 1986). As Michel Gobat points out in his article "The Invention of Latin America: A Transnational History of Anti-Imperialism, Democracy, and Race", "Arturo Ardao, Miguel Rojas Mix, and Aims McGuinness have revealed [that] the term 'Latin America' had already been used in 1856 by Central Americans and South Americans protesting US expansion into the Southern Hemisphere". Edward Shawcross summarizes Ardao's and Rojas Mix's findings in the following way: "Ardao identified the term in a poem by a Colombian diplomat and intellectual resident in France, José María Torres Caicedo, published on 15 February 1857 in a French based Spanish-language newspaper, while Rojas Mix located it in a speech delivered in France by the radical liberal Chilean politician Francisco Bilbao in June 1856".
By the late 1850s, the term was being used in California (which was now a part of the United States), in local newspapers such as El Clamor Público by Californios writing about and , and identifying as as the abbreviated term for their "hemispheric membership in ".
The words "Latin" and "America" were first combined in a printed work to produce the term "Latin America" in 1856 in a conference by the Chilean politician Francisco Bilbao in Paris. The conference had the title "Initiative of the America. Idea for a Federal Congress of Republics." The following year the Colombian writer José María Torres Caicedo also used the term in his poem "The Two Americas". Two events related with the United States played a central role in both works. The first event happened less than a decade before the publication of Bilbao's and Torres Caicedo's works: the Invasion of Mexico or, in USA the Mexican–American War, after which Mexico lost a third of its territory. The second event, the Walker affair, happened the same year both works were written: the decision by US president Franklin Pierce to recognize the regime recently established in Nicaragua by American William Walker and his band of filibusters who ruled Nicaragua for nearly a year (1856–57) and attempted to reinstate slavery there, where it had been already abolished for three decades
In both Bilbao's and Torres Caicedo's works, the Mexican–American War (1846–48 and William Walker's expedition to Nicaragua are explicitly mentioned as examples of dangers for the region. For Bilbao, "Latin America" was not a geographical concept, since he excluded Brazil, Paraguay, and Mexico. Both authors also ask for the union of all Latin American countries as the only way to defend their territories against further foreign US interventions. Both rejected also European imperialism, claiming that the return of European countries to non-democratic forms of government was another danger for Latin American countries, and used the same word to describe the state of European politics at the time: "despotism." Several years later, during the French invasion of Mexico, Bilbao wrote another work, "Emancipation of the Spirit in America," where he asked all Latin American countries to support the Mexican cause against France, and rejected French imperialism in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. He asked Latin American intellectuals to search for their "intellectual emancipation" by abandoning all French ideas, claiming that France was: "Hypocrite, because she [France] calls herself protector of the Latin race just to subject it to her exploitation regime; treacherous, because she speaks of freedom and nationality, when, unable to conquer freedom for herself, she enslaves others instead!" Therefore, as Michel Gobat puts it, the term Latin America itself had an "anti-imperial genesis," and their creators were far from supporting any form of imperialism in the region, or in any other place of the globe.
In France the term Latin America was used with the opposite intention. It was employed by the French Empire of Napoleon III during the French invasion of Mexico as a way to include France among countries with influence in the Americas and to exclude Anglophone countries. It played a role in his campaign to imply cultural kinship of the region with France, transform France into a cultural and political leader of the area, and install Maximilian of Habsburg as emperor of the Second Mexican Empire. This term was also used in 1861 by French scholars in La revue des races Latines, a magazine dedicated to the Pan-Latinism movement.
Contemporary definitions
Latin America is often used synonymously with Ibero-America ("Iberian America"), excluding the predominantly Dutch-, French-, and English-speaking territories. Thus the countries of Haiti, Belize, Guyana and Suriname, as well as several French overseas departments, are excluded. On the other hand, Puerto Rico is then usually included.
In another definition, which is close to the semantic origin, Latin America designates the set of countries in the Americas where a Romance language (a language derived from Latin) predominates: Spanish, Portuguese, French, or a creole language based upon these. Thus it includes Mexico, most of Central and South America, and in the Caribbean, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti. Latin America then comprises all those countries of the Americas that were once part of the Spanish, Portuguese, and French Empires. Puerto Rico, although not a country, may also be included.
The term is sometimes used more broadly to refer to all of the Americas south of the United States, thus including the Guianas (French Guiana, Guyana, and Suriname); the Anglophone Caribbean (and Belize); the Francophone Caribbean; and the Dutch Caribbean. This definition emphasizes a similar socioeconomic history of the region, which was characterized by formal or informal colonialism, rather than cultural aspects (see, for example, dependency theory). Some sources avoid this simplification by using the alternative phrase "Latin America and the Caribbean", as in the United Nations geoscheme for the Americas.Latin America and the Caribbean. The World Bank. Retrieved July 17, 2009.
The distinction between Latin America and Anglo-America is a convention based on the predominant languages in the Americas by which Romance-language and English-speaking cultures are distinguished. Neither area is culturally or linguistically homogeneous; in substantial portions of Latin America (e.g., highland Peru, Bolivia, Mexico, Guatemala), Native American cultures and, to a lesser extent, Amerindian languages, are predominant, and in other areas, the influence of African cultures is strong (e.g., the Caribbean basinincluding parts of Colombia and Venezuela).
The term is not without controversy. Historian Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo explores at length the "allure and power" of the idea of Latin America. He remarks at the outset, "The idea of 'Latin America' ought to have vanished with the obsolescence of racial theory... But it is not easy to declare something dead when it can hardly be said to have existed," going on to say, "The term is here to stay, and it is important." Following in the tradition of Chilean writer Francisco Bilbao, who excluded Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay from his early conceptualization of Latin America, Chilean historian Jaime Eyzaguirre has criticized the term Latin America for "disguising" and "diluting" the Spanish character of a region (i.e. Hispanic America) with the inclusion of nations that according to him do not share the same pattern of conquest and colonization.
Subregions and countries
Latin America can be subdivided into several subregions based on geography, politics, demographics and culture. It is defined as all of the Americas south of the United States, the basic geographical subregions are North America, Central America, the Caribbean and South America; the latter contains further politico-geographical subdivisions such as the Southern Cone, the Guianas and the Andean states. It may be subdivided on linguistic grounds into Spanish America, Portuguese America and French America.
*: Not a sovereign state
History
Pre-Columbian history
There is no evidence of human evolution in the Americas; human settlement in the Americas is the result of migration from Asia.
The earliest known human settlement was identified at Monte Verde, near Puerto Montt in southern Chile. Its occupation dates to some 14,000 years ago and there is some disputed evidence of even earlier occupation. Over the course of millennia, people spread to all parts of the North and South America and the Caribbean islands. Although the region now known as Latin America stretches from northern Mexico to Tierra del Fuego, the diversity of its geography, topography, climate, and cultivable land means that populations were not evenly distributed. Sedentary populations of fixed settlements supported by agriculture gave rise to complex civilizations in Mesoamerica (central and southern Mexico and Central America) and the highland Andes populations of Quechua and Aymara, as well as Chibcha.
Agricultural surpluses from intensive cultivation of maize in Mesoamerica and potatoes and hardy grains in the Andes were able to support distant populations beyond farmers' households and communities. Surpluses allowed the creation of social, political, religious, and military hierarchies, urbanization with stable village settlements and major cities, specialization of craft work, and the transfer of products via tribute and trade. In the Andes, llamas were domesticated and used to transport goods; Mesoamerica had no large domesticated animals to aid human labor or provide meat. Mesoamerican civilizations developed systems of writing; in the Andes, knotted quipus emerged as a system of accounting.
The Caribbean region had sedentary populations settled by Arawak or Tainos and in what is now Brazil, many Tupian peoples lived in fixed settlements. Semi-sedentary populations had agriculture and settled villages, but soil exhaustion required relocation of settlements. Populations were less dense and social and political hierarchies less institutionalized. Non-sedentary peoples lived in small bands, with low population density and without agriculture. They lived in harsh environments. By the first millennium CE, the Western Hemisphere was the home of tens of millions of people; the exact numbers are a source of ongoing research and controversy.
The last two great civilizations, the Aztecs and Incas, emerged into prominence in the early fourteenth century and mid-fifteenth centuries. Although the Indigenous empires were conquered by Europeans, the sub-imperial organization of the densely populated regions remained in place. The presence or absence of Indigenous populations had an impact on how European imperialism played out in the Americas. The pre-Columbian civilizations of Mesoamerica and the highland Andes became sources of pride for American-born Spaniards in the late colonial era and for nationalists in the post-independence era. For some modern Latin American nation-states, the Indigenous roots of national identity are expressed in the ideology of indigenismo. These modern constructions of national identity usually critique their colonial past.
Spanish and Portuguese colonization
Spanish and Portuguese colonization of the Western Hemisphere laid the basis for societies now seen as characteristic of Latin America.
In the fifteenth century, both Portugal and Spain embarked on voyages of overseas exploration, following the Christian Reconquista of Iberia from Muslims. Portugal sailed down the west coast of Africa and the Crown of Castile in central Spain authorized the voyage of Genoese mariner Christopher Columbus. Portugal's expansion into the Indian Ocean occupied much of its interest, although beginning with the voyage of Pedro Álvares Cabral in 1500 it laid claim to Brazil. The 1494 line of demarcation between Spain and Portugal gave Spain all areas to the west, and Portugal all areas to the east. However, compared to the riches of Africa, India, and the Spice Islands, Brazil did not immediately attract much Portuguese exploration or settlement. Spanish colonists began founding permanent settlements in Hispaniola (1492), Puerto Rico (1508), Cuba (1509) and the Spanish Main (tierra firme) (1509–13). In these regions of early contact, Spaniards established patterns of interaction with Indigenous peoples that they transferred to the mainland. At the time of European contact, the area was densely populated by Indigenous peoples who had not organized as empires, nor created large physical complexes. With the expedition of Hernán Cortés from Cuba to Mexico in 1519, Spaniards encountered the Indigenous imperial civilization of the Aztecs. Using techniques of warfare honed in their early Caribbean settlements, Cortés sought Indigenous allies to topple the superstructure of the Aztec Empire after a two-year war of conquest. The Spanish recognized many Indigenous elites as nobles under Spanish rule with continued power and influence over commoners, and used them as intermediaries in the emerging Spanish imperial system.
With the example of the conquest of central Mexico, Spaniards sought similar great empires to conquer, and expanded into other regions of Mexico and Central America, and then the Inca empire, by Francisco Pizarro. By the end of the sixteenth century Spain and Portugal claimed territory extending from Alaska to the southern tip of Patagonia. They founded cities that remain important centers. In Spanish America, these include Panama City (1519), Mexico City (1521) Guadalajara (1531–42), Cartagena (1532), Lima (1535), and Quito (1534). In Brazil, coastal cities were founded: Olinda (1537), Salvador de Bahia (1549), São Paulo (1554), and Rio de Janeiro (1565).
Spaniards explored extensively in the mainland territories they claimed, but they settled in great numbers in areas with dense and hierarchically organized Indigenous populations and exploitable resources, especially silver. Early Spanish conquerors saw the Indigenous themselves as an exploitable resource for tribute and labor, and individual Spaniards were awarded grants of encomienda forced labor as reward for participation in the conquest. Throughout most of Spanish America, Indigenous populations were the largest component, with some black slaves serving in auxiliary positions. The three racial groups during the colonial era were European whites, black Africans, and Indigenous. Over time, these populations intermixed, resulting in castas. In most of Spanish America, the Indigenous were the majority population.
Both dense Indigenous populations and silver were found in New Spain (colonial Mexico) and Peru, and these became centers of Spanish empire. The viceroyalty of New Spain, centered in Mexico City, was established in 1535 and the Viceroyalty of Peru, centered in Lima, in 1542. The viceroyalty of New Spain also had jurisdiction over the Philippines, once the Spanish established themselves there in the late sixteenth century. The viceroy was the direct representative of the king.
Roman Catholic Church as an institution launched a "spiritual conquest" to convert Indigenous populations to Christianity, incorporating them into Christiandom, with no other religion permitted. Pope Alexander VI in 1493 had bestowed on the Catholic Monarchs great power over ecclesiastical appointments and the functioning of the church in overseas possessions. The monarch was the patron of the institutional church. The state and the Catholic church were the institutional pillars of Spanish colonial rule. In the late eighteenth century, the crown also established a royal military to defend its possessions against foreign incursions, especially by the British. It also increased the number of viceroyalties in Spanish South America.
Portugal did not establish firm institutional rule in Brazil until the 1530s, but it paralleled many patterns of colonization in Spanish America. The Brazilian Indigenous peoples were initially dense, but were semi-sedentary and lacked the organization that allowed Spaniards more easily incorporate the Indigenous into the colonial order. The Portuguese used Indigenous laborers to extract the valuable commodity known as brazilwood, which gave its name to the colony. Portugal took greater control of the region to prevent other European powers, particularly France, from threatening its claims.
Europeans sought wealth in the form of high-value, low-bulk products exported to Europe. The Spanish Empire established institutions to secure wealth for itself and protect its empire in the Americas from rivals. In trade it followed principles of mercantilism, where its overseas possessions were to enrich the center of power in Iberia. Trade was regulated through the royal House of Trade in Seville, Spain, with the main export from Spanish America to Spain being silver, later followed by the red dye cochineal. Silver was found in the Andes, in particular the silver mountain of Potosí, (now in Bolivia) in the region where Indigenous men were forced to labor in the mines. In New Spain, rich deposits of silver were found in northern Mexico, in Zacatecas and Guanajuato, outside areas of dense Indigenous settlement. Labor was attracted from elsewhere for mining and landed estates were established to raise wheat, range cattle and sheep. Mules were bred for transportation and to replace of human labor in refining silver. Plantations for sugar cultivation developed on a large scale for the export market in Brazil and the Caribbean islands.
Manufactured and luxury goods were sent from Spain and entered Spanish America legally only through the Caribbean ports of Veracruz, Havana, and Cartagena, as well as the Pacific port of Callao, in Peru. Trans-Pacific trade was established in the late sixteenth century from Acapulco to Manila, transporting silver from Mexico and Peru to Asia; Chinese silks and porcelains were sent first to Mexico and then re-exported to Spain. This system of commerce was in theory was tightly controlled, but was increasingly undermined by other European powers. The English, French, and Dutch seized Caribbean islands claimed by the Spanish and established their own sugar plantations. These islands also became hubs for contraband trade with Spanish America. Many regions of Spanish America that were not well supplied by Spanish merchants, such as Central America, participated in contraband trade with foreign merchants.
Eighteenth-century Bourbon reforms sought to modernize the mercantile system to stimulate greater trade exchanges between Spain and Spanish America in a system known as comercio libre. This was not free trade in the modern sense, but rather free commerce within the Spanish empire. Liberalization of trade and limited deregulation sought to break the monopoly of merchants based in the Spanish port of Cádiz. Administrative reforms created the system of districts known as intendancies, modeled on those in France. Their creation was aimed at strengthening crown control over its possessions and sparking economic development.
Brazil's economic importance emerged in the seventeenth century with the establishment of large-scale cane sugar plantations. It was the high value, low bulk export product that the Portuguese sought and it was entirely dependent on black slave labor. Unlike core areas of Spanish America, Indigenous populations in Brazil were not a source of labor, except during the earliest years of the colony. Blacks became the majority of Brazil's population. For Portugal, Brazil was one pole of a triangular Atlantic system of trade between Iberia, Africa, and its American colony. Huge numbers of African slaves were shipped to Brazil. They worked first on sugar plantations in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, then in diamond mines in the eighteenth century, and coffee plantations in the nineteenth century. Like Spain, Portugal restricted foreign powers from trading in its American colony or entering coastal waters it had claimed. As the economic center of the colony shifted from the sugar-producing northeast to the southern region of gold and diamond mines, the capital was transferred from Salvador de Bahia to Rio de Janeiro in 1763. During the colonial era, Brazil was also the manufacturing center for Portugal's ships. As a global maritime empire, Portugal created a vital industry in Brazil. Once Brazil achieved its independence, this industry languished.
Colonial legacies
The more than three centuries of direct Spanish and Portuguese colonial rule left lasting imprints on Latin America. The most salient are linguistic, with Spanish and Portuguese the dominant languages of the region, and religious, with Roman Catholicism continuing to claim the largest number of adherents. Diseases to which Indigenous peoples had no immunity devastated their populations, although they still exist in many places. The forced transportation of African slaves transformed major regions where they labored to produce the export products, especially sugar. In regions with dense Indigenous populations, they remained the largest percentage of the population; sugar-producing regions had the largest percentage of blacks. European whites in both Spanish America and Brazil were a small percentage of the population, but they were the also wealthiest and most socially elite, and the racial hierarchies they established in the colonial era have persisted. Cities founded by Europeans in the colonial era remain major centers of power. In the modern era, Latin American governments have worked to designate many colonial cities as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Exports of metals and agricultural products to Europe dominated Latin American economies, with the manufacturing sector deliberately suppressed; the development of modern, industrial economies of Europe depended on the underdevelopment of Latin America.Halperin Donghi, Tulio, The Contemporary History of Latin America. Durham: Duke University Press 1993, 1-42
Despite the many commonalities of colonial Spanish America and Brazil, they did not conceive of themselves as being part of a single region; that was a development of the post-independence period beginning in the nineteenth century. The imprint of Christopher Columbus and Iberian colonialism in Latin America began shifting in the twentieth century. There was a re-evaluation of the colonial legacy as the 500th anniversary of Columbus's voyage approached. "Discovery" by Europeans was reframed as "encounter" of the Old World and the New. An example of the new consciousness was the dismantling of the Christopher Columbus monument in Buenos Aires, one of many in the hemisphere, mandated by leftist President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Its replacement was a statue to a mestiza fighter for independence, Juana Azurduy de Padilla, provoking a major controversy in Argentina over historical and national identity.
Independence era (1776–1825)
Independence in the Americas was not inevitable or uniform in the Americas. Events in Europe had a profound impact on the colonial empires of Spain, Portugal, and France in the Americas. France and Spain had supported the American Revolution that saw the independence of the Thirteen Colonies from Britain, which had defeated them in the Seven Years' War (1757–63). The outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, a political and social uprising toppling the Bourbon monarchy and overturning the established order, precipitated events in France's rich Caribbean sugar colony of Saint-Domingue, whose black population rose up, led by Toussaint L'ouverture. The Haitian Revolution had far-reaching consequences. Britain declared war on France and attacked ports in Saint-Domingue. Haiti gained independence in 1804, led by ex-slave Jean-Jacques Dessalines following many years of violent struggle, with huge atrocities on both sides. Haitian independence affected colonial empires in the Americas, as well as the United States. Many white, slave-owning sugar planters of Saint-Domingue fled to the Spanish island of Cuba, where they established sugar plantations that became the basis of Cuba's economy. Uniquely in the hemisphere, the black victors in Haiti abolished slavery at independence. Many thousands of remaining whites were executed on the orders of Dessalines. For other regions with large enslaved populations, the Haitian Revolution was a cautionary tale for the white slave-owning planters. Despite Spain and Britain's satisfaction with France's defeat, they "were obsessed by the possible impact of the slave uprising on Cuba, Santo Domingo, and Jamaica", by then a British sugar colony. US President Thomas Jefferson, a wealthy slave owner, refused to recognize Haiti's independence. Recognition only came in 1862 from President Abraham Lincoln. Given France's failure to defeat the slave insurgency and since needing money for the war with Britain, Napoleon Bonaparte sold France's remaining mainland holdings in North America to the United States in the 1803 Louisiana Purchase.
Napoleon's invasion of the Iberian peninsula in 1807-1808 was a major change in the world order, with the stability of both the metropoles and their overseas possessions upended. It resulted in the flight, with British help, of the Portuguese royal court to Brazil, its richest colony. In Spain, France forced abdication of the Spanish Bourbon monarchs and their replacement with Napoleon's brother Joseph Bonaparte as king. The period from 1808 to the restoration in 1814 of the Bourbon monarchy saw new political experiments. In Spanish America, the question of the legitimacy of the new foreign monarch's right to rule set off fierce debate and in many regions to wars of independence. The conflicts were regional and usually quite complex. Chronologically these Spanish American independence wars were the conquest in reverse, with the areas most recently incorporated into the Spanish empire, such as Argentina and Chile, becoming the first to achieve independence, while the colonial strongholds of Mexico and Peru were the last to achieve independence in the early nineteenth century. Cuba and Puerto Rico, both old Caribbean sugar-producing areas, did not achieve independence from Spain until the 1898 Spanish-American War, with US intervention.
In Spain, a bloody war against the French invaders broke out and regional juntas were established to rule in the name of the deposed Bourbon king, Ferdinand VII. In Spanish America, local juntas also rejected Napoleon's brother as their monarch. Spanish Liberals re-imagined the Spanish Empire as equally being Iberia and the overseas territories. Liberals sought a new model of government, a constitutional monarchy, with limits on the power of the king as well as on the Catholic Church. Ruling in the name of the deposed Bourbon monarch Ferdinand VII, representatives of the Spanish empire, both from the peninsula and Spanish America, convened a convention in the port of Cadiz. For Spanish American elites who had been shut out of official positions in the late eighteenth century in favor of peninsular-born appointees, this was a major recognition of their role in the empire. These empire-wide representatives drafted and ratified the Spanish Constitution of 1812, establishing a constitutional monarchy and set down other rules of governance, including citizenship and limitations on the Catholic Church. Constitutional rule was a break from absolutist monarchy and gave Spanish America a starting point for constitutional governance. So long as Napoleon controlled Spain, the liberal constitution was the governing document.
When Napoleon was defeated and the Bourbon monarchy was restored in 1814, Ferdinand VII and his conservative supporters immediately reasserted absolutist monarchy, ending the liberal interregnum. In Spanish America, this counter-revolution set off a new wave of struggles for independence in Spanish America.Hamnett, The End of Iberian Rule, 209-234.
In South America Simón Bolívar of Venezuela and José de San Martín of Argentina, and Bernardo O'Higgins in Chile led armies who fought for independence. In Mexico, which had seen the initial insurgency led by Hidalgo and José María Morelos, royalist forces kept control. In 1820, when military officers in Spain restored the liberal Constitution of 1812, conservatives in Mexico saw independence as a better option. Royalist military officer Agustín de Iturbide changed sides and forged an alliance with insurgent leader Vicente Guerrero, and together they brought about Mexico's independence in 1821.
For Portugal and Brazil, Napoleon's defeat did not immediately result in the return of the Portuguese monarch to Portugal, since Brazil was the richest part of the Portuguese empire. As with Spain in 1820, Portuguese liberals threatened the power of the monarchy and compelled John VI to return in April 1821, leaving his son Pedro to rule Brazil as regent. In Brazil, Pedro contended with revolutionaries and insubordination by Portuguese troops, all of whom he subdued. The Portuguese government threatened to revoke the political autonomy that Brazil had enjoyed since 1808, provoking widespread opposition in Brazil. Pedro declared Brazil's independence from Portugal on 7 September 1822 and became emperor. By March 1824 he had defeated all armies loyal to Portugal. Brazil's independence was achieved relatively peaceably, territorial integrity was maintained, and its ruler was from the Royal House of Braganza, whose successors ruled Brazil until their overthrow in 1889.Diégues 2004, pp. 179–180
Post-Independence in Latin America, ca. 1825–1879
Although much of Latin America gained its independence in the early nineteenth century, formal recognition by their former metropolitan powers in Spain and Portugal did not come immediately. Portugal officially recognized Brazil on August 29, 1825. The Spanish crown did not recognize new Spanish American nations' independence and sent expeditions to Mexico in failed attempts to regain control over its valuable former territory. Spain finally recognized Mexico's independence in 1836, 15 years after it was achieved. Its recognition of Ecuador's independence came in 1840 and Paraguay's as late as 1880. The new independent territories exerted their rights to establish a government, control their national territory, establish trade relations with other nations, and levy taxes. Brazil and Mexico both established monarchies in 1822. Mexico's was short-lived (1822–23) under leader of the independence movement General Iturbide, elected constitutional emperor 19 May 1822 and forced to abdicate 19 March 1823. Iturbide had no royal pedigree, so as a commoner he had no prestige or permanent legitimacy as ruler. Brazil's monarchy, a branch of the House of Braganza, lasted until 1889. Spanish America fragmented into various regions.
As a consequence of the violent struggles for independence in most of Spanish America, the military grew in importance. In the post-independence period, it often played a key role in politics. Military leaders often became the first heads of state, but regional strongmen or caudillos also emerged. The first half of the nineteenth century is sometimes characterized as the “age of caudillos.” In Argentina, Juan Manuel Rosas and in Mexico Antonio López de Santa Anna are exemplars of caudillos. Although most countries created written constitutions and created separate branches of government, the state and the rule of law were weak, and the military emerged as the dominant institution in the civil sphere. Constitutions were written laying out division of powers, but the rule of personalist strongmen dominated. Dictatorial powers were granted to some strongmen, nominally ruling as presidents under a constitution, as "constitutional dictators."
In the religious sphere, the Roman Catholic Church, one of the pillars of colonial rule, remained a powerful institution and generally continued as the only permissible religion. With the Spanish monarch no longer the patron of the church, many national governments asserted their right to appoint clerics as a logical transfer of power to a sovereign state. The Catholic Church denied that this right had transferred to the new governments, and for a time the Vatican refused to appoint new bishops. In Brazil, because the ruler after independence was a member of the House of Braganza, and Portugal recognized political independence quite speedily, the Vatican appointed a papal nuncio to Brazil in 1830. This official had jurisdiction over not just Brazil, but also the new states in Spanish America. However, in Brazil, there were also conflicts between church and state. During the reign of Pedro II, Protestant missionaries were tolerated, and when the monarchy was overthrown in 1889, the Catholic Church was disestablished.
In the new nation-states, conservatives favored the old order of a powerful, centralized state and continuation of the Catholic Church as a key institution. In Mexico, following the abdication of Emperor Iturbide in 1823, Mexican political leaders wrote a constitution for its newly declared federated republic, the Constitution of 1824. Central America opted out of joining the new federated republic of Mexico, with no real conflict. Hero of the insurgency Guadalupe Victoria became the first president of Mexico in 1824. Conservatives pushed to take control of the government, favoring central rule of the nation, as opposed to liberals, who generally favored the power of states expressed in federalism. General Santa Anna was elected president in 1833 and was in and out of office until 1854. In South America, Gran Colombia came into being, spanning what are now the separate countries of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama, and Peru, with independence leader Simón Bolívar as head of state (1819–30). Gran Colombia dissolved in 1831 due to conflicts similar to those elsewhere in Spanish America between centralist conservatives and pro-federalist liberals. In Argentina, the conflict resulted in a prolonged civil war between unitarianas (i.e. centralists) and federalists, which were in some aspects respectively analogous to liberals and conservatives in other countries. Adding to this dispute was the almost inherited colonial-era conflict over its borders with Brazil. The Cisplatine War erupted in 1814 and ended in 1828, resulting in occupation and further secession of Provincia Oriental which in 1830 became the modern Republic of Uruguay with a central government in Montevideo. Between 1832 and 1852, Argentina existed as a confederation, without a head of state, although the federalist governor of Buenos Aires province, Juan Manuel de Rosas, was given the power to pay debt and manage international relations, and exerted a growing hegemony over the country. A national constitution was not enacted until 1853, and reformed in 1860, and the country reorganized as a federal republic led by a liberal-conservative elite. Ironically, centralist Uruguay enacted its constitution on its first day of life in 1830, but wasn't immune to a similar polarization of the new state that involved blancos and colorados, where the agrarian conservative interests of blancos were pitted against the liberal commercial interests of colorados based in Montevideo, and which eventually resulted in the Guerra Grande civil war (1839–1851). Both the blancos and colorados evolved into political parties of the same names that still exist in Uruguay today and are considered among the first and most longstanding political parties in the world.
In Brazil, Emperor Dom Pedro I, worn down by years of administrative turmoil and political dissension with both the liberal and conservative sides of politics, including an attempt of republican secession, went to Portugal in 1831 to reclaim his daughter's crown, abdicating the Brazilian throne in favor of his five-year-old son and heir (who thus became the Empire's second monarch, with the title of Dom Pedro II). As a minor, the new Emperor could not exert his constitutional powers until he came of age, so a regency was set up by the National Assembly. In the absence of a charismatic figure who could represent a moderate face of power, during this period a series of localized rebellions took place, as the Cabanagem, the Malê Revolt, the Balaiada, the Sabinada, and the Ragamuffin War, which emerged from dissatisfaction of the provinces with the central power, coupled with old and latent social tensions peculiar to a vast, slave-holding and newly independent nation state. This period of internal political and social upheaval, which included the Praieira revolt, was overcome only at the end of the 1840s, years after the end of the regency, which occurred with the premature coronation of Pedro II in 1841. During the last phase of the monarchy, an internal political debate was centered on the issue of slavery. The Atlantic slave trade was abandoned in 1850, as a result of the British Aberdeen Act, but only in May 1888 after a long process of internal mobilization and debate for an ethical and legal dismantling of slavery in the country, was the institution formally abolished. On 15 November 1889, worn out by years of economic stagnation, attrition of the majority of Army officers, as well as with rural and financial elites (for different reasons), the monarchy was overthrown by a military coup.
Foreign powers' influence and interventions, ca. 1825-1870
Foreign powers, particularly the British and the U.S., were keenly interested in the possibilities opening for their countries with the struggles for independence. They quickly recognized newly independent countries in Latin America and established commercial relationships with them, since the colonial limits on trade with foreign powers had ended. With the 1803 Louisiana Purchase from France, the U.S. now bordered Spanish Mexico, and both the U.S. and Spain sought clarity about their borders, signing the 1819 Adams-Onís Treaty ceding Florida to the U.S. and setting the northern border of Spain's claim in North America. When Mexico achieved independence, the U.S. recognized the government under Agustín de Iturbide, sending diplomat Joel Poinsett as its representative 1822–23. Poinsett concluded an agreement with Mexico confirming the terms of the Adams-Onís Treaty. Previously Poinsett had traveled widely in Latin America and had concluded a trade agreement with independent Argentina. European and U.S. interests in the region fueled the demand for Latin American travelogues, an important source of information that described economic, political, and social conditions.
The first major articulation of U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America as a region was the 1820 Monroe Doctrine. It warned foreign powers not to intervene in the Americas. The U.S. was relatively weak compared to the powerful British Empire, but it was a key policy that informed U.S. actions toward Latin America. The U.S. was concerned that foreign powers could support Spain in its attempts to reclaim its empire. Those actions often included its own direct interventions in the region, justified by President Theodore Roosevelt in his 1904 Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.
British commercial interests were eager to seize the opportunity to trade in Latin America. Britain and Portugal had long been allies against the Spanish and French, so British recognition of Brazil's independence followed quickly after Portugal's. As with many other Latin American countries, Brazil exported raw materials and imported manufactured goods. For Britain, asserting economic dominance in Latin America in what is now called neocolonialism meant that nation-states were sovereign countries, but were dependent on other powers economically. British dominance hindered the development of Latin American industries and strengthened their dependence on the world trade network. Britain now replaced Spain as the region's largest trading partner. Great Britain invested significant capital in Latin America to develop the area as a market for processed goods. From the early 1820s to 1850, the post-independence economies of Latin American countries were lagging and stagnant. Over the nineteenth century, enhanced trade between Britain and Latin America led to development such as infrastructure improvements, including roads and railroads, which grew the trade between thes countries and outside nations such as Great Britain. By 1870, exports dramatically increased, attracting capital from abroad (including Europe and USA). Until 1914 and the outbreak of World War I, Britain was a major economic power in Latin America.
For the U.S., its initial sphere of influence was in Mexico, but the drive for territorial expansion, particularly for southern slave-owners seeking new territory for their enterprises, saw immigration of white slave-owners with their slaves to Texas, which ultimately precipitated conflict between the Mexican government and the Anglo-American settlers. The Texas Revolution of 1836-37 defeated Mexican forces, and in 1845, U.S. annexation of the Texas territory that Mexico still claimed set the stage for the Mexican-American War (1846–48). That war resulted in the resounding defeat of Mexico. U.S. troops occupied Mexico City. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo added a huge swath of what had been north and northwest Mexico to the U.S., territory that Spain and then Mexico had claimed, but had not succeeded in occupying effectively. Southern slave owners, such as Thomas Jefferson and John C. Calhoun, were also interested in the possibility of the U.S. acquiring Cuba from Spain, with the aim of expanding both slavery and U.S. territory. The 1854 leak of the Ostend Manifesto, offering $130 million to Spain, caused a scandal among abolitionists in the U.S., who sought to end the expansion of slavery. It was repudiated by U.S. President Franklin Pierce. The American Civil War (1861–65) decided the question of slavery. Another episode in US-Latin American relations involved the filibuster William Walker. In 1855, he traveled to Nicaragua hoping to overthrow the government and take territory for the United States. With Only 56 followers, he was able to take over the city of Granada, declaring himself commander of the army and installing Patricio Rivas as a puppet president. However, Rivas' presidency ended when he fled Nicaragua; Walker rigged the ensuing election to ensure that he became the next president. His presidency did not last long, however, as he was met with much opposition in Nicaragua and from neighboring countries. On 1 May 1857, Walker was forced by a coalition of Central American armies to surrender himself to a United States Navy officer who repatriated him and his followers. When Walker subsequently returned to Central America in 1860, he was apprehended by the Honduran authorities and executed.
Britain's nineteenth-century policy was to end slavery and the slave trade, including in Latin America. In Brazil, Britain made the end of the slave trade a condition for diplomatic recognition. The Brazilian economy was entirely dependent on slaves. Abolitionists in Brazil pressed for the end of slavery, which finally ended in 1888, followed the next year by the fall of the Brazilian monarchy.
The French also sought commercial ties to Latin America, to export luxury goods and establish financial ties, including extending foreign loans to governments, often in dire need of revenue. France intervened in Mexico in a spectacular fashion. As Mexican conservatives and liberals fought the War of the Reform over La Reforma, Mexican conservatives, to bolster their side, sought a European monarch to put on the throne of Mexico. Napoleon III of France invaded Mexico in 1862 and facilitated the appointment of Maximilian von Hapsburg. Since the U.S. was embroiled in its own civil war, it could not hinder the French occupation, which it saw as a violation of the Monroe Doctrine, but the government of Abraham Lincoln continued to recognize the Mexican government of Benito Juárez. The French withdrew their support of Maximilian in 1867, and Maximilian and two conservative Mexican generals were executed, when Mexican liberals returned to power.
European and United States interests in nineteenth-century Latin America is also reflected in the popularity of travelogues describing the landscapes, peoples, customs, and economics of the region.
Wars between nations
Many armed conflicts broke out between Latin American nations in the late nineteenth century, as well as protracted civil wars in Mexico and Colombia. One notable international conflict was the War of the Pacific from 1879 to 1884, in which Chile seized territory and resources from Peru and Bolivia, gaining valuable nitrate deposits and leaving Bolivia landlocked with no access to the sea. Also notable was the War of the Triple Alliance (1864–1870) in which Paraguay under Francisco Solano López provoked war against Brazil, which allied with Argentina and Uruguay. The war was a disaster for Paraguay, with huge loss of life and destruction of the modernized sector.
US involvement 1870–1933
In the late 19th century and early 20th century, U.S. banana importers United Fruit Company and Cuyamel Fruit Company, both ancestors of Chiquita, and the Standard Fruit Company (now Dole), acquired large amounts of land in Central American countries like Guatemala, Honduras, and Costa Rica. The companies gained leverage over governments and ruling elites in these countries by dominating their economies and paying kickbacks, and exploited local workers. These countries came to be called banana republics.
Cubans, with the aid of Dominicans, launched a war for independence in 1868 and, over the next 30 years, suffered 279,000 casualties in a brutal war against Spain that culminated in U.S. intervention. The 1898 Spanish–American War resulted in the end of the Spanish colonial presence in the Americas. A period of frequent U.S. intervention in Latin America followed, with the acquisition of the Panama Canal Zone in 1903, the so-called Banana Wars in Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Honduras; the Caco Wars in Haiti; and the so-called Border War with Mexico. Some 3,000 Latin Americans were killed between 1914 and 1933. The U.S. press described the occupation of the Dominican Republic as an 'Anglo-Saxon crusade', carried out to keep the Latin Americans 'harmless against the ultimate consequences of their own misbehavior'.
In the 1930s the Ford Motor Company invested in land and industry in northern Brazil to produce rubber for its tires. The installation was known as Fordlandia and although the project was abandoned because of cultural breakdown and the emergence of vulcanization that made it economically unviable, the city is still inhabited and retains its name.
After World War I, U.S. interventionism diminished, culminating in President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Good Neighbor policy in 1933.
World War I (1914–1918)
In general, Latin America stayed out of direct conflict in World War I, but the Great Powers were aware of the region's importance for the short and long term. Germany attempted to draw Mexico into supporting its side against the British, the French, and especially the U.S., by trying to leverage anti-Americanism to its advantage. The Great Powers had been actively working to affect the course of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920). Great Britain and the U.S. had huge investments in Mexico, with Germany close behind, so the outcome of the conflict would have consequences there. The U.S. directly intervened militarily, but not on a huge scale. A German diplomatic proposal, now known as the January 1917 Zimmermann Telegram, sought to entice Mexico to join an alliance with Germany in the event of the United States entering World War I against Germany by promising the return of territory Mexico had lost to the U.S. The proposal was intercepted and decoded by British intelligence. The revelation of the contents outraged the American public and swayed public opinion. The news helped to generate support for the United States declaration of war on Germany in April 1917 as well as to calm U.S.-Mexico relations. Mexico, far weaker militarily, economically and politically than the U.S., ignored the German proposal; after the U.S. entered the war, it officially rejected it.
When the U.S. entered the conflict in 1917, it abandoned its hunt in Mexico for the revolutionary Pancho Villa who had attacked the U.S. in Columbus, New Mexico. The Mexican government was not pro-Villa, but was angered by U.S. violation of Mexico's sovereign territory with troops. The expeditionary force led by General John J. Pershing that had hopelessly chased him around northern Mexico was deployed to Europe. The U.S. then asked Latin American nations to join Britain, France, and the U.S. against Germany. They were not quick to join, since Germany was now a major financial lender to Latin America, and a number of nations were antipathetic to the traditional lenders in Britain and France. While Latin America did join the allies, it was not without cost. The U.S. sought hemispheric solidarity against Germany, and Brazil, Costa Rica, Cuba, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Haiti declared war. Others took the lesser step of breaking diplomatic relations. Argentina, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay remained neutral.
More important was the impact of the war on transatlantic shipping, the economic lifeline for their export economies. Exports economies from the mining sector and especially nitrates for gunpowder did boom, but agricultural exports of sugar and coffee languished when European economies turned to war production. Britain was on the winning side of the war, but in its aftermath its economic power was much reduced. After 1914, the U.S. replaced Britain as the major foreign power in Latin America. Latin American nations gained standing internationally in the aftermath of the war, participating in the Versailles Conference, signing the Treaty of Versailles and joining the League of Nations. Latin America also played an important role in the International Court of Justice.
Interwar and WWII, 1920s–1945
The Great Depression was a worldwide phenomenon and had an impact on Latin America. Exports largely fell and economies stagnated. For a number of Latin American countries, the Depression made them favor an internal economic development policy of import substitution industrialization.
World War I and the League of Nations did not settle conflicts between European nations, but in the wake of World War I, Latin American nations gained success in pressing discussions of hemispheric importance. The Inter-American System was institutionally established with the First International Conference of American States of 1889–90, where 17 Latin American nations sent delegates to Washington D.C. and formed the Pan American Union. Subsequent Pan-American Conferences saw the initial dominance of the U.S. in the hemisphere give way as Latin American nations asserted their priorities. The Havana Conference of 1928 was the high water mark of U.S. dominance and assertion of its right to intervene in Latin America, but with the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the U.S. presidency in 1932, U.S. policy changed toward Latin America. He abandoned the routine U.S. interventions in Latin America that it had claimed as its right and initiated the Good Neighbor Policy in March 1933. He sought hemispheric cooperation rather than U.S. coercion in the region. At the Montevideo Convention in December 1933, the U.S. Secretary of State voted in favor of the Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, declaring “no state has the right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of another.” President Roosevelt himself attended the inaugural session of the hemispheric conference in Buenos Aires in 1936, where the U.S. reaffirmed the policy of non-intervention in Latin America and discussed the issue of neutrality for the hemisphere should war break out. With the Nazi invasion of Poland in September 1939 and the spread of war in Europe, foreign ministers of hemispheric nations met in Panama, at which the Declaration of Neutrality was signed, and the territorial waters bordering the hemisphere were expanded. The aim of these moves was to strengthen hemispheric solidarity and security. With the 7 December 1941 Japanese attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, hemispheric ministers met in January 1942 in Rio de Janeiro. Some nations had already declared war on the Axis powers, while others severed relations with the Axis. Chile did not do so until 1943, and Argentina, traditionally pro-German, not until 1945. The U.S. requested that Germans suspected of Nazi sympathies be deported from Latin America to the U.S.
Brazil in World War II
After World War I, in which Brazil was an ally of the United States, Great Britain, and France, the country realized it needed a more capable army but did not have the technology to create it. In 1919, the French Military Mission was established by the French Commission in Brazil. Their main goal was to contain internal rebellions in Brazil. They tried to assist the army by bringing them up to the European military standard but constant civil missions did not prepare them for World War II. Brazil's president, Getúlio Vargas, wanted to industrialize Brazil and make it more competitive with other countries. He reached out to Germany, Italy, France, and the United States as trade allies. Many Italian and German people had immigrated to Brazil many years before World War II and created a Nazi influence. These immigrants held high positions in government and the armed forces.
Brazil remained neutral but attended continental meetings in Buenos Aires, Argentina (1936); Lima, Peru (1938); and Havana, Cuba (1940) that obligated them to agree to defend any part of the Americas if attacked. Brazil stopped trading with Germany once Germany began attacking offshore trading ships, resulting in Germany declaring a blockade against the Americas in the Atlantic Ocean. Once German submarines attacked unarmed Brazilian trading ships, President Vargas met with Roosevelt to discuss how to retaliate. On 22 January 1942, Brazil officially ended all relations with Germany, Japan, and Italy, and joined the Allies.
The Brazilian Expeditionary Force was sent to Naples, Italy to fight with the Allied Powers. Brazil was the only Latin American country to send troops to Europe. Initially, Brazil wanted to only provide resources and shelter for the war to have a chance of gaining a high postwar status but ended up sending 25,000 men to fight. However, it was not a secret that Vargas admired Hitler's Nazi Germany and its Führer. He even let the German Luftwaffe build secret air forces around Brazil. This alliance with Germany became Brazil's second best trade alliance after the United States.
In the post-war period, nine thousand war criminals escaped to South America, including Croats, Ukrainians, Russians and other western Europeans who aided the Nazi war machine. Most, perhaps as many as 5,000, went to Argentina; between 1,500 and 2,000 are thought to have made it to Brazil; around 500 to 1,000 to Chile; and the rest to Paraguay and Uruguay.
After World War II, the United States and Latin America continued to have a close relationship. For example, USAID created family planning programs in Latin America combining the NGOs already in place, providing women in largely Catholic areas with access to contraception.
Mexico and World War II
Mexico entered World War II in response to German attacks on Mexican ships. The Potrero del Llano, originally an Italian tanker, had been seized in port by the Mexican government in April 1941 and renamed for a region in Veracruz. It was attacked and crippled by the on May 13, 1942. The attack killed 13 of 35 crewmen. On May 20, 1942, a second tanker, Faja de Oro, also a seized Italian ship, was attacked and sunk by the , killing 10 of 37 crewmen. In response, President Manuel Ávila Camacho and the Mexican government declared war on the Axis powers on May 22, 1942.
A large part of Mexico's contribution to the war came through an agreement in January 1942 that allowed Mexican nationals living in the United States to join the U.S. armed forces. As many as 250,000 Mexicans served in this way. In the final year of the war, Mexico sent one air squadron to serve under the Mexican flag: the Mexican Air Force's Escuadrón Aéreo de Pelea 201 (201st Fighter Squadron), which saw combat in the Philippines in the war against Imperial Japan. Mexico was the only Latin-American country to send troops to the Asia-Pacific theatre of the war. In addition to those in the armed forces, tens of thousands of Mexican men were hired as farm workers in the United States during the war years through the Bracero program, which continued and expanded in the decades after the war.
World War II helped spark an era of rapid industrialization known as the Mexican Miracle. Mexico supplied the United States with more strategic raw materials than any other country, and American aid spurred the growth of industry. President Ávila was able to use the increased revenue to improve the country's credit, invest in infrastructure, subsidize food, and raise wages.
World War II and the Caribbean
President Federico Laredo Brú led Cuba when war broke out in Europe, though real power belonged to Fulgencio Batista as the army's Chief of Staff. In 1940, Brú infamously denied entry to 900 Jewish refugees who arrived in Havana aboard the MS St. Louis. After both the United States and Canada likewise refused to accept the refugees, they returned to Europe, where many were eventually murdered in the Holocaust. Batista became president in his own right following the 1940 election. He cooperated with the United States as it moved closer to war against the Axis. Cuba declared war on Japan on December 8, 1941, and on Germany and Italy on December 11.
Cuba was an important participant in the Battle of the Caribbean and its navy gained a reputation for skill and efficiency. The navy escorted hundreds of Allied ships through hostile waters, flew thousands of hours on convoy and patrol duty, and rescued over 200 victims of German U-Boat attacks from the sea. Six Cuban merchant ships were sunk by U-boats, taking the lives of around eighty sailors. On May 15, 1943, a squadron of Cuban submarine chasers sank the near Cayo Blanquizal. Cuba received millions of dollars in American military aid through the Lend-Lease program, which included air bases, aircraft, weapons, and training. The United States naval station at Guantanamo Bay also served as a base for convoys passing between the mainland United States and the Panama Canal or other points in the Caribbean.
The Dominican Republic declared war on Germany and Japan following the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Nazi declaration of war on the US. It did not directly contribute with troops, aircraft, or ships, however 112 Dominicans joined the US military and fought in the war.
On May 3, 1942, sank the Dominican ship San Rafael with one torpedo and 32 rounds from the deck gun 50 miles west off Jamaica; one was killed, but 37 survived. On May 21, 1942, sank the Dominican ship Presidente Trujillo off Fort-de-France, Martinique; 24 were killed, 15 survived. Rumors of pro-Nazi Dominicans supplying German U-boats with food, water and fuel abounded during the war.
Nazi flight
In the immediate aftermath of World War II and the defeat of fascism, many Nazis and other fascists escaped Europe to South America via ratlines, with the aid of the Vatican. Argentina was a favored destination, because of its large German population and the pro-German government of Juan Domingo Perón. Prominent Nazis Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele were able to flee there from Europe. Both lived undetected for years, with Mengele dying in Brazil. Israeli intelligence tracked down Eichmann, living under an assumed name, and abducted and brought him to Israel to stand trial. He was executed.
Cold War era (1945–1992)
Following World War II, the United States focused on what it perceived as the threat of communism and the Soviet Union to the interests of Western Europe and the United States. Although Latin American countries had been staunch allies in the war and reaped some benefits from it, in the post-war period the region did not prosper as it had expected. Latin America struggled in the post-war period without large-scale aid from the U.S., which devoted its resources to rebuilding Western Europe, including Germany. In Latin America there was increasing inequality, with political consequences in individual countries. The U.S. returned to a policy of interventionism where it felt its political and economic interests were threatened. With the breakup of the Soviet bloc in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including the Soviet Union itself, Latin America sought to find new solutions to long-standing problems. With its Soviet alliance dissolved, Cuba entered a Special Period of severe economic disruption, high death rates, and food shortages.
Economy
Many Latin American economies continued to grow in the post-World War II era, but not as quickly as they had hoped. When the transatlantic trade re-opened following the peace, Europe looked as if it would need Latin American food exports and raw materials. The policies of industrialization adopted in Latin America when exports slowed due to the Great Depression and subsequent isolation in World War II were now subject to international competition. Those who supported a return to the export of commodities for which Latin America had a competitive advantage disagreed with advocatez of an expanded industrial sector. The rebuilding of Europe, including Germany, with the aid of the U.S. after World War II did not bring stronger demand for Latin American exports. In Latin America, much of the hard currency earned by their participation in the war went to nationalize foreign-owned industries and pay down their debt. A number of governments set tariff and exchange rate policies that undermined the export sector and aided the urban working classes. Growth slowed in the post-war period and by the mid-1950s, the optimism of the postwar period was replaced by pessimism.
Economic integration was called for, to attain economies that could compete with the economies of the United States or Europe. Starting in the 1960s with the Latin American Free Trade Association and Central American Common Market, Latin countries worked toward economic integration.
Guatemalan Revolution (1944–54)
In the postwar era, the Guatemalan Revolution overthrew the U.S.-backed dictator Jorge Ubico in 1945 and held free and fair elections. These brought in the reformist president Dr. Juan José Arévalo (1945–51), a non-communist believer in "spiritual socialism", with populist institutional reforms. Reforms included land laws that threatened the interests of large foreign-owned enterprises, a social security law, workmen's compensation, laws allowing labor to organize and strike, and universal suffrage except for illiterate women. His government established diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union in April 1945, when it was still an ally against the Axis powers. Communists entered leadership positions in the labor movement. At the end of his term, his hand-picked successor, the populist and nationalist Jacobo Arbenz, was elected following the assassination of the rival right-wing candidate. Arbenz proposed placing capital in the hands of Guatemalans, building new infrastructure, and significant land reform via Decree 900. With what the U.S. considered the prospect of even more radical changes in Guatemala, it backed a coup against Arbenz in 1954, overthrowing him.Ebel, Roland H, "Jacobo Arbenz". Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture, v. 1, 120-22 Argentine Che Guevara was in Guatemala during the Arbenz presidency; the coup ousting Arbenz was instructive for him and for Latin American nations seeking significant structural change.
Cuban Revolution (1959–1992)
After years of struggle, Cuban revolutionaries led by the Jesuit-educated Cuban lawyer Fidel Castro overthrew the regime of Fulgencio Batista, with 1 January 1959 marking as the revolution's victory. The revolution was a huge event not only in Cuban history, but also the history of Latin America and the world. Almost the immediately, the U.S. reacted with hostility against the new regime. As the revolutionaries began consolidating power, many middle- and upper-class Cubans left for the U.S., likely not expecting the Castro regime to last long. Cuba became a poorer and blacker country, and the Cuba Revolution sought to transform the social and economic inequalities and political instability of the previous regimes into a more socially and economically equal one. The government put emphasis on literacy as a key to Cuba's overall betterment, essentially wiping out illiteracy after an early major literacy campaign. Schools became a means to instill in Cuban students messages of nationalism, solidarity with the Third World, and Marxism. Cuba also made a commitment to universal health care, so the education of doctors and construction of hospitals were top priorities. Cuba also sought to diversify its economy, until then based mainly on sugar, but also tobacco.
After the failed U.S. attempt to overthrow Castro in the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, Cuba entered into a formal alliance with the Soviet Union. In February 1962, the U.S. U.S. placed an embargo on trade with Cuba, which remains in force as of June 2021. Also in February 1962, the U.S. pressured members of the Organization of American States to expel Cuba, attempting to isolate it. In response to the Bay of Pigs, Cuba called for revolution in the Americas. These efforts ultimately failed, most notably Che Guevara in Bolivia, where he was isolated, captured, and executed. When the U.S. discovered that the Soviet Union had placed missiles in Cuba in 1962, the U.S. reacted swiftly in a showdown now called the Cuban Missile Crisis, which ended with an agreement between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, who did not consult Cuba about its terms. One term of the agreement was that the U.S. would cease efforts to invade Cuba, a guarantee of its sovereignty. However, the U.S. continued to try to remove Castro from power by assassination. The Soviet Union continued to materially support the Cuban regime, providing oil and other petrochemicals, technical support, and other aid, in exchange for Cuban sugar and tobacco.
From 1959 to 1992, Fidel Castro ruled as a caudillo, or strong man, dominating politics and the international stage. His commitment to social and economic equality brought about positive changes in Cuba, including the improvement of the position of women, eliminating prostitution, solving the problem of homelessness, and raising the standard of living for most Cubans. However, Cuba lacks freedom of expression, dissenters were monitored by the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, and travel was restricted. In 1980, Castro told Cubans who wanted to leave to do so, promising that the government would not stop them. The Mariel boatlift saw some 125,000 Cubans sail from the Cuban port of Mariel, across the straits to the U.S., where U.S. President Carter initially welcomed them. Many of the positive changes in Cuba disappeared in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the economic crisis in Cuba followed.
Impact of the Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution was for many countries an inspiration and a model, but for the U.S. it was a challenge to its power and influence in Latin America. After leftists took power in Chile (1970) and Nicaragua (1979), Fidel Castro visited them both, extending Cuban solidarity. In Chile, Salvador Allende and a coalition of leftists, Unidad Popular, won an electoral victory in 1970 and lasted until the violent military coup of 11 September 1973. In the Nicaragua leftists held power from 1979 to 1990. The U.S. was concerned with the spread of communism in Latin America, and U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower responded to the threat he saw in the Dominican Republic's dictator Rafael Trujillo, who voiced a desire to seek an alliance with the Soviet Union. In 1961, Trujillo was murdered with weapons supplied by the CIA. U.S. President John F. Kennedy initiated the Alliance for Progress in 1961, to establish economic cooperation between the U.S. and Latin America and provide $20 billion for reform and counterinsurgency measures. The reform failed because of the simplistic theory that guided it and the lack of experienced American experts who understood Latin American customs.
From 1966 to the late 1980s, the Soviet government upgraded Cuba's military capabilities, and Cuba was active in foreign interventions, assisting with the liberation movements of several countries in Latin America and elsewhere in the world. Most notable were Angola and Mozambique, and the anti-imperialist struggles of countries such as Syria, Algeria, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Vietnam. Che Guevara left Cuba to fight first in Africa, then went to Bolivia to try to mount a revolution there. In September 1977, twelve MiG-21s conducted strafing flights over Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic to warn then-president Joaquín Balaguer against intercepting Cuban warships headed to or returning from Angola. Cuba's overseas interventions ended with the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the Cuban economy in its wake.
Chile (1958–1990)
In Chile, the postwar period saw uneven economic development. The mining sector (copper, nitrates) continued to be important, but an industrial sector also emerged. The agricultural sector stagnated and Chile needed to import foodstuffs. After the 1958 election, Chile entered a period of reform. The secret ballot was introduced, the Communist Party was relegalized, and populism grew in the countryside. In 1970, democratic elections brought to power socialist Salvador Allende, who implemented many reforms begun in 1964 under Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei. The economy continued to depend on mineral exports and a large portion of the population reaped no benefits from the prosperity and modernity of some sectors. Chile had a long tradition of stable electoral democracy, In the 1970 election, a coalition of leftists, the Unidad Popular ("popular unity") candidate Allende was elected. Allende and his coalition held power for three years, with the increasing hostility of the U.S. The Chilean military staged a bloody coup with US support in 1973. The military under General Augusto Pinochet then held power until 1990.
Nicaraguan Revolution and Central American wars
The 1970s and 1980s saw a large and complex political conflict in Central America. The U.S. administrative of Ronald Reagan funded right-wing governments and proxy fighters against left-wing challenges to the political order. Complicating matters were the liberation theology emerging in the Catholic Church and the rapid growth of evangelical Christianity, which were entwined with politics.
After the 1912 American occupation of Nicaragua in the Banana Wars, the Somoza political dynasty came to power, and ruled Nicaragua until its ouster in 1979 during the Nicaraguan Revolution. The era of Somoza family rule was characterized by strong U.S. support for the government and its military as well as heavy reliance on U.S.-based multinational corporations. The Nicaraguan Revolution (Spanish: Revolución Nicaragüense or Revolución Popular Sandinista) encompassed the rising opposition to the Somoza dictatorship in the 1960s and 1970s, the campaign led by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) to violently oust the dictatorship in 1978–79, the subsequent efforts of the FSLN to govern Nicaragua from 1979 until 1990 and the Contra War between the FSLN and the Contras from 1981 to 1990.
The Revolution revealed the country as a major proxy war battleground in the Cold War. Although the initial overthrow of the Somoza regime in 1978–79 was a bloody affair, the Contra War of the 1980s took the lives of tens of thousands of Nicaraguans and was the subject of fierce international debate. During the 1980s both the FSLN (a leftist collection of political parties) and the Contras (a rightist collection of counter-revolutionary groups) received large amounts of aid from the Cold War superpowers. The Sandinistas allowed free elections in 1990 and after years of war, lost the election. They became the opposition party, following a peaceful transfer of power.
A civil war in El Salvador pitted leftist guerrillas against a repressive government. The bloody war there ended in a stalemate, and following the fall of the Soviet Union, a negotiated peace accord ended the conflict in 1992. In Guatemala, the civil war included genocide of Mayan peasants. A peace accord was reached in 1996 and the Catholic Church called for a truth and reconciliation commission.
Religious changes
The Roman Catholic Church had a monopoly on religion in the colonial era and continued to be a major institution in nineteenth-century Latin America. For a number of countries in the nineteenth century, especially Mexico, liberals viewed the Catholic Church as an intransigent obstacle to modernization, and when liberals gained power, anticlericalism was written into law, such as the Mexican liberal Constitution of 1857 and the Uruguayan Constitution of 1913 which secularized the state. Although secularism was an increasing trend in Europe and North America, most Latin Americans identified as Catholic, even if they did not attend church regularly. Many followed folk Catholicism, venerated saints, and celebrated religious festivals. Many communities did not have a resident priest or even visits by priests to keep contact between the institutional church and the people. In the 1950s, evangelical Protestants began proselytizing in Latin America. In Brazil, the Catholic bishops organized themselves into a national council, aimed at better meeting the competition not only of Protestants, but also of secular socialism and communism. Following Vatican II (1962–65) called by Pope John XXIII, the Catholic Church initiated a series of major reforms empowering the laity. Pope Paul VI actively implemented reforms and sought to align the Catholic Church on the side of the dispossessed, (“preferential option for the poor”), rather than remain a of conservative elites and right-wing repressive regimes. Colombian Catholic priest Camilo Torres took up arms with the Colombian guerrilla movement ELN, which modeled itself on Cuba but was killed in his first combat in 1966. In 1968, Pope Paul came to the meeting of Latin American bishops in Medellín, Colombia. Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutiérrez was one of the founders of liberation theology, a term he coined in 1968, sometimes described as linking Christianity and Marxism. Conservatives saw the church as politicized, and priests ask proselytizing leftist positions. Priests became targets as “subversives,” such as Salvadoran Jesuit Rutilio Grande. Archbishop of El Salvador Óscar Romero called for an end to persecution of the church, and took positions of social justice. He was assassinated on 24 March 1980 while saying mass. Liberation theology informed the struggle by Nicaraguan leftists against the Somoza dictatorship, and when they came to power in 1979, the ruling group included some priests.
When a Polish cleric became Pope John Paul II following the death of Paul VI, and the brief papacy of John Paul I, he reversed the progressive position of the church, evident in the 1979 Puebla conference of Latin American bishops. On a papal visit to Nicaragua in 1983, he reprimanded Father Ernesto Cardenal, who was Minister of Culture, and called on priests to leave politics. Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff was silenced by the Vatican. Despite the Vatican stance against liberation theology, articulated in 1984 by Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, many Catholic clergy and laity worked against repressive military regimes. After a military coup ousted the democratically elected Salvador Allende, the Chilean Catholic Church was a force in opposition to the regime of Augusto Pinochet and for human rights. The Argentine Church did not follow the Chilean pattern of opposition however. When Jesuit Jorge Bergoglio was elected Pope Francis, his actions during the Dirty War were an issue, as portrayed in the film The Two Popes.
Although most countries did not have Catholicism as the established religion, Protestantism made few inroads in the region until the late twentieth century. Evangelical Protestants, particularly Pentecostals, proselytized and gained adherents in Brazil, Central America, and elsewhere. In Brazil, Pentecostals had a long history. But in a number of countries ruled by military dictatorships many Catholics followed the social and political teachings of liberation theology and were seen as subversives. Under these conditions, the influence of religious non-Catholics grew. Evangelical churches often grew quickly in poor communities where small churches and members could participate in ecstatic worship, often many times a week. Pastors in these churches did attend a seminary nor were there other institutional requirements. In some cases, the first evangelical pastors came from the U.S., but these churches quickly became "Latin Americanized," with local pastors building religious communities. In some countries, they gained a significant hold and were not persecuted by military dictators, since they were largely apolitical. In Guatemala under General Efraín Ríos Montt, an evangelical Christian, Catholic Maya peasants were targeted as subversives and slaughtered. Perpetrators were later put on trial in Guatemala, including Ríos Montt.
Post-Cold War era
Washington Consensus
After the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, U.S. policy-makers developed the Washington Consensus, a set of specific economic policy prescriptions considered the standard reform package for crisis-wracked developing countries by Washington, D.C.-based institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), thWorld Bank, and the US Department of the Treasury during the 1980s and 1990s.
In recent years, several Latin American countries led by socialist or other left wing governmentsincluding Argentina and Venezuelahave campaigned for, and to some degree adopted, policies contrary to the Washington Consensus. Other Latin countries with governments of the left, including Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Peru, have in practice adopted the bulk of the policies. Also critical of the policies promoted by the International Monetary Fund have been some US economists, such as Joseph Stiglitz and Dani Rodrik, who have challenged what are sometimes described as the fundamentalist policies of the International Monetary Fund and the US Treasury for what Stiglitz called a one size fits all treatment of individual economies.
The term has become associated with neoliberal policies in general and drawn into the broader debate over the expanding role of the free market, constraints upon the state, and US influence on other countries' national sovereignty.
This politico-economical initiative was institutionalized in North America by the 1994 NAFTA, and elsewhere in the Americas through a series of like agreements. The comprehensive Free Trade Area of the Americas project, however, was rejected by most South American countries at the 4th Summit of the Americas in 2005.
Return of social movements
In 1982, Mexico announced that it could not meet its foreign debt payment obligations, inaugurating a debt crisis that would "discredit" Latin American economies throughout the decade. This debt crisis would lead to neoliberal reforms that would instigate many social movements in the region. A "reversal of development" reigned over Latin America, seen through negative economic growth, declines in industrial production, and thus, falling living standards for the middle and lower classes. Governments made financial security their primary policy goal over social security, enacting new neoliberal economic policies that implemented privatization of previously national industries and the informal sector of labor. In an effort to bring more investors to these industries, these governments also embraced globalization through more open interactions with the international economy.
Significantly, as democracy re-emerged across much of Latin America and the realm of the state became more inclusive (a trend that proved conducive to social movements), economic ventures remained exclusive to a few elite groups within society. Neoliberal restructuring consistently redistributed income upward, while denying political responsibility to provide social welfare rights, and development projects throughout the region increased both inequality and poverty. Feeling excluded from these new projects, the lower classes took ownership of their own democracy through a revitalization of social movements in Latin America.
Both urban and rural populations had serious grievances as a result of economic and global trends and voiced them in mass demonstrations. Some of the largest and most violent have been protests against cuts in urban services, such as the Caracazo in Venezuela and the Argentinazo in Argentina. In 2000, the Cochabamba Water War in Bolivia saw major protests against a World Bank-funded project that would have brought potable water to the city, but at a price that no residents could afford. The title of the Oscar nominated film Even the Rain alludes to the fact that Cochabamba residents could no longer legally collect rainwater; the film depicts the protest movement.
Rural movements made demands related to unequal land distribution, displacement at the hands of development projects and dams, environmental and Indigenous concerns, neoliberal agricultural restructuring, and insufficient means of livelihood. In Bolivia, coca workers organized into a union, and Evo Morales, ethnically an Aymara, became its head. The cocaleros supported the struggles in the Cochabamba water war. The rural-urban coalition became a political party, Movement for Socialism (Bolivia) (MAS), which decisively won the 2005 presidential election, making Evo Morales the first Indigenous president of Bolivia. A documentary of the campaign, Cocalero, shows how they successfully organized.
A number of movements have benefited considerably from transnational support from conservationists and INGOs. The Movement of Rural Landless Workers (MST) in Brazil for example is an important contemporary Latin American social movement.
Indigenous movements account for a large portion of rural social movements, including, in Mexico, the Zapatista rebellion and the broad Indigenous movement in Guerrero, Also important are the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) and Indigenous organizations in the Amazon region of Ecuador and Bolivia, pan-Mayan communities in Guatemala, and mobilization by the Indigenous groups of Yanomami peoples in the Amazon, Kuna peoples in Panama, and Altiplano Aymara and Quechua peoples in Bolivia.
Other significant types of social movements include labor struggles and strikes, such as recovered factories in Argentina.
In Argentina in the wake of the state terrorism, a gender-based movement, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo arose in Argentina. Protests against maquila production have taken place; it has been seen largely as a women's issue because assembly plants draw on women for cheap labor.
Turn to the left
In many countries in the early 2000s, left-wing political parties rose to power. The presidencies of Hugo Chávez (1999–2013) in Venezuela, Ricardo Lagos and Michelle Bachelet in Chile, Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff of the Workers Party (PT) in Brazil, Néstor Kirchner and his wife Cristina Fernández in Argentina, Tabaré Vázquez and José Mujica in Uruguay, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Fernando Lugo in Paraguay, Manuel Zelaya in Honduras (removed from power by a coup d'état), Mauricio Funes and Salvador Sánchez Cerén in El Salvador are all part of this wave of left-wing politicians who often declare themselves socialists, Latin Americanists, or anti-imperialists, often implying opposition to US policies towards the region). An aspect of this has been the creation of the eight-member ALBA alliance, or "The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America" (Spanish: Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América) by some of thesebcountries.
By June 2014, Honduras (Juan Orlando Hernández), Guatemala (Otto Pérez Molina), and Panama (Ricardo Martinelli) had right-wing governments, however.
Conservative wave
Following the pink tide, the conservative wave swept across the continent. Several right-wing leaders rose to power, including Argentina's Mauricio Macri and Brazil's Michel Temer, following the impeachment of the country's first female president. In Chile, the conservative Sebastián Piñera succeeded the socialist Michelle Bachelet in 2017.
The 2000s commodities boom caused positive effects for many Latin American economies. Another trend is the rapidly increasing importance of the relations with China.
With the end of the commodity boom in the 2010s, economic stagnation or recession resulted in some countries. As a result, the left-wing governments of the Pink Tide lost support. The worst-hit was Venezuela, which is facing severe social and economic upheaval.
The corruption scandal of Odebrecht, a Brazilian conglomerate, has raised allegations of corruption across the region's governments (see Operation Car Wash). This bribery ring has become the largest corruption scandal in Latin American history. As of July 2017, the highest ranking politicians charged were former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was arrested, and former Peruvian presidents Ollanta Humala, also arrested, and Alejandro Toledo, who fled to the United States and is now a fugitive.
The COVID-19 pandemic proved a political challenge for many unstable Latin American democracies, with scholars identifying a decline in civil liberties as a result of opportunistic emergency powers. This was especially true for countries with strong presidential regimes, such as Brazil.
Inequality
Wealth inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean remains a serious issue despite strong economic growth and improved social indicators. A report released in 2013 by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs entitled Inequality Matters. Report of the World Social Situation, observed that: ‘Declines in the wage share have been attributed to the impact of labour-saving technological change and to a general weakening of labour market regulations and institutions.’ Such declines are likely to disproportionately affect individuals in the middle and bottom of the income distribution, since they rely mostly on wages for income. In addition, the report noted that ‘highly-unequal land distribution has created social and political tensions and is a source of economic inefficiency, as small landholders frequently lack access to credit and other resources to increase productivity, while big owners may not have had enough incentive to do so.
According to the United Nations ECLAC, Latin America is the most unequal region in the world. Inequality in Latin America has deep historical roots in the Latin European racially based Casta systemSee Passing (racial identity) for a discussion of a related phenomenon, although in a later and very different cultural and legal context. instituted in Latin America in colonial times that have been difficult to eradicate since the differences between initial endowments and opportunities among social groups have constrained the poorest's social mobility, thus causing poverty to transmit from generation to generation, and become a vicious cycle. High inequality is rooted in the deepest exclusionary institutions of the Casta system that have been perpetuated ever since colonial times and that have survived different political and economic regimes. Inequality has been reproduced and transmitted through generations because Latin American political systems allow a differentiated access on the influence that social groups have in the decision-making process, and it responds in different ways to the least favored groups that have less political representation and capacity of pressure. Recent economic liberalisation also plays a role as not everyone is equally capable of taking advantage of its benefits. Differences in opportunities and endowments tend to be based on race, ethnicity, rurality and gender. Because inequality in gender and location are near-universal, race and ethnicity play a larger, more integral role in discriminatory practices in Latin America. These differences have a strong impact on the distribution of income, capital and political standing.
Standard of living
Latin America has the highest levels of income inequality in the world. The following table lists all the countries in Latin America indicating a valuation of the country's Human Development Index, GDP at purchasing power parity per capita, measurement of inequality through the Gini index, measurement of poverty through the Human Poverty Index, a measure of extreme poverty based on people living on less than 1.25 dollars a day, life expectancy, murder rates and a measurement of safety through the Global Peace Index. Green cells indicate the best performance in each category, and red the lowest.
Demographics
Largest cities
Urbanization accelerated starting in the mid-twentieth century, especially in capital cities, or in the case of Brazil, traditional economic and political hubs founded in the colonial era. In Mexico, the rapid growth and modernization in country's north has seen the growth of Monterrey, in Nuevo León. The following is a list of the ten largest metropolitan areas in Latin America.
Race and ethnicity
Latin American populations are diverse, with descendants of the Indigenous peoples, European whites, Africans initially brought as slaves, and Asians, as well as new immigrants. Mixing of groups was a fact of life at contact of the Old World and the New, but colonial regimes established legal and social discrimination against non-white populations simply on the basis of perceived ethnicity and skin color. Social class was usually linked to a person's racial category, with whites on top. During the colonial era, with a dearth initially of European women, European men and Indigenous women and African women produced what were considered mixed-race children. In Spanish America, the so-called Sociedad de castas or Sistema de castas was constructed by white elites to try to rationalize the processes at work. In the sixteenth century the Spanish crown sought to protect Indigenous populations from exploitation by white elites for their labor and land. The crown created the to paternalistically govern and protect Indigenous peoples. It also created the República de Españoles, which included not only European whites, but all non-Indigenous peoples, such as blacks, mulattoes, and mixed-race castas who were not dwelling in Indigenous communities. In the religious sphere, the Indigenous were deemed perpetual neophytes in the Catholic faith, which meant Indigenous men were not eligible to be ordained as Catholic priests; however, Indigenous were also excluded from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition. Catholics saw military conquest and religious conquest as two parts of the assimilation of Indigenous populations, suppressing Indigenous religious practices and eliminating the Indigenous priesthood. Some worship continued underground. Jews and other non-Catholics, such as Protestants (all called "Lutherans") were banned from settling and were subject to the Inquisition. Considerable mixing of populations occurred in cities, while the countryside was largely Indigenous. At independence in the early nineteenth century, in many places in Spanish America formal racial and legal distinctions disappeared, although black slavery was not uniformly abolished.
Large black populations exist in Brazil and Spanish Caribbean islands such as Cuba and Puerto Rico and the circum-Caribbean mainland (Venezuela, Colombia, Panama), as long as in the southern part of South America and Central America (Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua Ecuador, and Peru) a legacy of their use in plantations. All these areas had small white populations. In Brazil, coastal Indigenous peoples largely died out in the early sixteenth century, with Indigenous populations surviving far from cities, sugar plantations, and other European enterprises.
In the nineteenth century, a number of Latin American countries sought immigrants from Europe and Asia. With the abolition of black slavery in 1888, the Brazilian monarchy fell in 1889. By then, another source of cheap labor to work on coffee plantations was found in Japan. Chinese male immigrants arrived in Cuba, Mexico, Peru and elsewhere. With political turmoil in Europe during the mid-nineteenth century and widespread poverty, Germans, Spaniards, and Italians immigrated to Latin America in large numbers, welcomed by Latin American governments both as a source of labor as well as a way to increase the size of their white populations. In Argentina, many Afro-Argentines married Europeans, so that in modern Argentina there is no discernible black population.
In twentieth-century Brazil, sociologist Gilberto Freyre proposed that Brazil was a “racial democracy,” with less discrimination against blacks than in the U.S. Subsequent research has shown that Brazilians also discriminate against darker citizens, and that whites remain the elites in the country.France Winddance Twine Racism in a Racial Democracy: The Maintenance of White Supremacy in Brazil,(1997) Rutgers University Press In Mexico, the Afro-Mexican population was largely written out of the national narrative of indigenismo, and Indigenous and especially mestizo populations were considered the true embodiment of Mexicanness (mexicanidad), “the cosmic race”, according to Mexican intellectual José Vasconcelos. In Mexico, there was considerable discrimination against Asians, with calls for the expulsion of Chinese in northern Mexico during the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) and racially motivated massacres.
In a number of Latin American countries, Indigenous groups have organized explicitly as Indigenous, to claim human rights and influence political power. With the passage of anti-colonial resolutions in the United Nations General Assembly and the signing of resolutions for Indigenous rights, the Indigenous are able to act to guarantee their existence within nation-states with legal standing.
Language
Spanish is the predominant language of Latin America. It is spoken as first language by about 60% of the population. Portuguese is spoken by about 30%, and about 10% speak other languages such as Quechua, Mayan languages, Guaraní, Aymara, Nahuatl, English, French, Dutch and Italian. Portuguese is spoken mostly in Brazil (Brazilian Portuguese), the biggest and most populous country in the region. Spanish is the official language of most of the other countries and territories on the Latin American mainland (Spanish language in the Americas), as well as in Cuba and Puerto Rico (where it is co-official with English), and the Dominican Republic. French is spoken in Haiti and in the French overseas departments of Guadeloupe, Martinique and Guiana. It is also spoken by some Panamanians of Afro-Antillean descent. Dutch is the official language in Suriname, Aruba, Curaçao, and the Netherlands Antilles. (As Dutch is a Germanic language, these territories are not necessarily considered part of Latin America.) However, the native language of Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao, is Papiamento, a creole language largely based on Portuguese and Spanish that has had a considerable influence from Dutch language and the Portuguese-based creole languages.
Amerindian languages are widely spoken in Peru, Guatemala, Bolivia, Paraguay and Mexico, and to a lesser degree, in Panama, Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, and Chile. In other Latin American countries, the population of speakers of Indigenous languages tend to be very small or even non-existent, for example in Uruguay. Mexico is possibly contains more Indigenous languages than any other Latin American country, but the most spoken language there is Nahuatl.
In Peru, Quechua is an official language, alongside Spanish and other Indigenous languages in the areas where they predominate. In Ecuador, while Quichua holds no official status, it is a recognized language under the country's constitution; however, it is only spoken by a few groups in the country's highlands. In Bolivia, Aymara, Quechua and Guaraní hold official status alongside Spanish. Guaraní, like Spanish, is an official language of Paraguay, and is spoken by a majority of the population, which is, for the most part, bilingual, and it is co-official with Spanish in the Argentine province of Corrientes. In Nicaragua, Spanish is the official language, but on the country's Caribbean coast English and Indigenous languages such as Miskito, Sumo, and Rama also hold official status. Colombia recognizes all Indigenous languages spoken within its territory as official, though fewer than 1% of its population are native speakers of these languages. Nahuatl is one of the 62 Native languages spoken by Indigenous people in Mexico, which are officially recognized by the government as "national languages" along with Spanish.
Other European languages spoken in Latin America include: English, by half of the current population in Puerto Rico, as well as in nearby countries that may or may not be considered Latin American, like Belize and Guyana, and spoken by descendants of British settlers in Argentina and Chile. German is spoken in southern Brazil, southern Chile, portions of Argentina, Venezuela and Paraguay, Italian in Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, and Uruguay, Ukrainian, Polish and Russian in southern Brazil and Argentina, and Welsh, in southern Argentina.
Yiddish and Hebrew are possible to be heard around Buenos Aires and São Paulo especially. Non-European or Asian languages include Japanese in Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, and Paraguay, Korean in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Chile, Arabic in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, and Chile, and Chinese throughout South America. Countries like Venezuela, Argentina and Brazil have their own dialects or variations of German and Italian.
In several nations, especially in the Caribbean region, creole languages are spoken. The most widely spoken creole language in Latin America and the Caribbean is Haitian Creole, the predominant language of Haiti, derived primarily from French and certain West African tongues with Amerindian, English, Portuguese and Spanish influences as well. Creole languages of mainland Latin America, similarly, are derived from European languages and various African tongues.
The Garifuna language is spoken along the Caribbean coast in Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Belize, mostly by the Garifuna people, oa mixed race Zambo people who were the result of mixing between Indigenous Caribbeans and escaped Black slaves. Primarily an Arawakan language, it has influences from Caribbean and European languages.
Archaeologists have deciphered over 15 pre-Columbian distinct writing systems from Mesoamerican societies. Ancient Maya had the most sophisticated textually written language, but since texts were largely confined to the religious and administrative elite, traditions were passed down orally. Oral traditions also prevailed in other major Indigenous groups including, but not limited to the Aztecs and other Nahuatl speakers, Quechua and Aymara of the Andean regions, the Quiché of Central America, the Tupi-Guaraní in today's Brazil, the Guaraní in Paraguay and the Mapuche in Chile.
Religion
The vast majority of Latin Americans are Christians (90%), mostly Roman Catholics belonging to the Latin Church. About 70% of the Latin American population considers itself Catholic. In 2012 Latin America constitutes in absolute terms the second world's largest Christian population, after Europe.
According to the detailed Pew multi-country survey in 2014, 69% of the Latin American population is Catholic and 19% is Protestant. Protestants are 26% in Brazil and over 40% in much of Central America. More than half of these are converts from Roman Catholicism.
Migration
The entire hemisphere was settled by migrants from Asia, Europe, and Africa, so migration is not a new phenomenon. Native American populations settled throughout the hemisphere before the arrival of Europeans in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the forced migration of slaves from Africa.
In the post-independence period, a number of Latin American countries sought to attract European immigrants as a source of labor as well as to deliberately change the proportions of racial and ethnic groups within their borders. Chile, Argentina, and Brazil actively recruited labor from Catholic southern Europe, where populations were poor and sought better economic opportunities. Many nineteenth-century immigrants went to the United States and Canada, but a significant number arrived in Latin America. Although Mexico tried to attract immigrants, it largely failed. As black slavery was abolished in Brazil in 1888, coffee growers recruited Japanese migrants to work in coffee plantations. There is a significant population of Japanese descent in Brazil. Cuba and Peru recruited Chinese labor in the late nineteenth century. Some Chinese immigrants who were excluded from immigrating to the U.S. settled in northern Mexico. When the U.S. acquired its southwest by conquest in the Mexican American War, Latin American populations did not cross the border to the U.S., the border crossed them.
In the twentieth century there have been several types of migration. One is the movement of rural populations within a given country to cities in search of work, causing many Latin American cities to grow significantly. Another is international movement of populations, often fleeing repression or war. Other international migration is for economic reasons, often unregulated or undocumented. Mexicans immigrated to the U.S. during the violence of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) and the religious Cristero War (1926–29); during World War II, Mexican men worked in the U.S. in the bracero program. Economic migration from Mexico followed the crash of the Mexican economy in the 1980s.
Spanish refugees fled to Mexico following the fascist victory in the Spanish Civil War (1936–38), with some 50,000 exiles finding refuge at the invitation of President Lázaro Cárdenas. Following World War II a larger wave of refugees to Latin America, many of them Jews, settled in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, and Venezuela. Some were only transiting through the region, but others stayed and created communities. A number of Nazis escaped to Latin America, living under assumed names, in an attempting to avoid attention and prosecution.
In the aftermath of the Cuban Revolution, middle class and elite Cubans moved to the U.S., particularly to Florida. Some fled Chile for the U.S. and Europe after the 1973 military coup. Colombians migrated to Spain and the United Kingdom during the region's political turmoil, compounded by the rise of narcotrafficking and guerrilla warfare. During the Central American wars of the 1970s to the 1990s, many Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Hondurans migrated to the U.S. to escape narcotrafficking, gangs, and poverty. As living conditions deteriorated in Venezuela under Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, many left for neighboring Colombia and elsewhere. In the i990s, economic stress in Ecuador triggered considerable migration to Spain and to the U.S.
Some Latin American countries seek to strengthen links between migrants and their states of origin, while promoting their integration in the receiving state. These emigrant policies focus on the rights, obligations and opportunities for participation of emigrated citizens who already live outside the borders of the country of origin. Research on Latin America shows that the extension of policies towards migrants is linked to a focus on civil rights and state benefits that can positively influence integration in recipient countries. In addition, the tolerance of dual citizenship has spread more in Latin America than in any other region of the world.
Education
Despite significant progress, education access and school completion remains unequal in Latin America. The region has made great progress in educational coverage; almost all children attend primary school and access to secondary education has increased considerably. Quality issues such as poor teaching methods, lack of appropriate equipment and overcrowding exist throughout the region. These issues lead to adolescents dropping out of the educational system early. Most educational systems in the region have implemented various types of administrative and institutional reforms that have enabled reach for places and communities that had no access to education services in the early 1990s. Compared to prior generations, Latin American youth have seen an increase in their levels of education. On average, they have completed two more years of school than their parents.
However, there are still 23 million children in the region between the ages of 4 and 17 outside of the formal education system. Estimates indicate that 30% of preschool age children (ages 4–5) do not attend school, and for the most vulnerable populations, the poor and rural, this proportion exceeds 40 percent. Among primary school age children (ages 6 to 12), attendance is almost universal; however there is still a need to enroll five million more children in the primary education system. These children mostly live in remote areas, are Indigenous or Afro-descendants and live in extreme poverty.
Among people between the ages of 13 and 17 years, only 80% are full-time students, and only 66% of these advance to secondary school. These percentages are lower among vulnerable population groups: only 75% of the poorest youth between the ages of 13 and 17 years attend school. Tertiary education has the lowest coverage, with only 70% of people between the ages of 18 and 25 years outside of the education system. Currently, more than half of low income or rural children fail to complete nine years of education.
Crime and violence
Latin America and the Caribbean have been cited by numerous sources to be the most dangerous regions in the world. Studies have shown that Latin America contains the majority of the world's most dangerous cities. Many analysts attribute this to social and income inequality in the region. Many agree that the prison crisis will not be resolved until the gap between the rich and the poor is addressed.
Crime and violence prevention and public security are now important issues for governments and citizens in Latin America and the Caribbean region. Homicide rates in Latin America are the highest in the world. From the early 1980s through the mid-1990s, homicide rates increased by 50 percent. Latin America and the Caribbean experienced more than 2.5 million murders between 2000 and 2017. There were a total of 63,880 murders in Brazil in 2018.
The most frequent victims of such homicides are young men, 69 percent of them between the ages of 15 and 19. Countries with the highest homicide rate per year per 100,000 inhabitants in 2015 were: El Salvador 109, Honduras 64, Venezuela 57, Jamaica 43, Belize 34.4, St. Kitts and Nevis 34, Guatemala 34, Trinidad and Tobago 31, the Bahamas 30, Brazil 26.7, Colombia 26.5, the Dominican Republic 22, St. Lucia 22, Guyana 19, Mexico 16, Puerto Rico 16, Ecuador 13, Grenada 13, Costa Rica 12, Bolivia 12, Nicaragua 12, Panama 11, Antigua and Barbuda 11, and Haiti 10. Most of the countries with the highest homicide rates are in Africa and Latin America. Countries in Central America, like El Salvador and Honduras, top the list of homicides in the world.
Brazil has more overall homicides than any country in the world, at 50,108, accounting for one in 10 globally. Crime-related violence is the biggest threat to public health in Latin America, striking more victims than HIV/AIDS or any other infectious disease. Countries with the lowest homicide rate per year per 100,000 inhabitants as of 2015 were: Chile 3, Peru 7, Argentina 7, Uruguay 8 and Paraguay 9. International Journal of Epidemiology
Public health
Water
Reproductive rights
HIV/AIDS
Economy
Size
According to Goldman Sachs' BRICS review of emerging economies, by 2050 the largest economies in the world will be as follows: China, United States, India, Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, Mexico and Brazil.
Environment
The environment of Latin America has been changed by human use in the expanding of agriculture, new agricultural technologies, including the Green Revolution, extraction of minerals, growth of cities, and redirection of rivers by the construction of dams for irrigation, drinking water, and hydroelectric power. In the twentieth century, there is a growing movement to protect nature and many governments have sought recognition of natural sites by the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Brazil, Mexico, and Peru currently have the greatest number of natural sites.
Agriculture
The four countries with the strongest agricultural sector in South America are Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Colombia. Currently:
Brazil is the world's largest producer of sugarcane, soy, coffee, oranges, guaraná, açaí and Brazil nut; is one of the top five producers of maize, papaya, tobacco, pineapple, banana, cotton, beans, coconut, watermelon, lemon and yerba mate; is one of the top ten world producers of cocoa, cashew, avocado, tangerine, persimmon, mango, guava, rice, oat, sorghum and tomato; and is one of the top 15 world producers of grapes, apples, melons, peanuts, figs, peaches, onions, palm oil and natural rubber;
Argentina is the world's largest producer of yerba mate; is one of the five largest producers in the world of soy, maize, sunflower seeds, lemons and pears, one of the 10 largest producers in the world of barley, grapes, artichokes, tobacco and cotton, and one of the 15 largest producers in the world of wheat, oats, chickpeas, sugarcane, sorghum and grapefruit;
Chile is one of the five largest world producers of cherries and cranberries, and one of the ten largest world producers of grapes, apples, kiwi, peaches, plums and hazelnuts, focusing on exporting high-value fruits;
Colombia is one of the five largest producers in the world of coffee, avocados and palm oil, and one of the ten largest producers in the world of sugarcane, bananas, pineapples and cocoa;
Peru is the world's largest producer of quinoa; is one of the five largest producers of avocados, blueberry, artichokes and asparagus; one of the ten largest producers in the world of coffee and cocoa; one of the 15 largest producers in the world of potatoes and pineapples, and also has a large production of grapes, sugarcane, rice, bananas, maize and cassava; its agriculture is considerably diversified;
Paraguay is currently the 6th largest producer of soy in the world and entering the list of the 20 largest producers of maize and sugarcane.
In Central America, the following stand out:
Guatemala is one of the ten largest producers in the world of coffee, sugar cane, melons and natural rubber, and one of the world's 15 largest producers of bananas and palm oil;
Honduras is one of the five largest producers of coffee in the world, and one of the ten largest producers of palm oil;
Costa Rica is the world's largest producer of pineapples;
Dominican Republic is one of the world's top five producers of papayas and avocados, and one of the ten largest producers of cocoa.
Mexico is the world's largest producer of avocados, one of the world's top five producers of Chile, lemons, oranges, mangos, papayas, strawberries, grapefruit, pumpkins and asparagus, and one of the world's 10 largest producers of sugar cane, maize, sorghum, beans, tomatoes, coconuts, pineapple, melons and blueberries.
Brazil is the world's largest exporter of chicken meat: 3.77 million tons in 2019. The country had the second largest herd of cattle in the world, 22.2% of the world herd. The country was the second largest producer of beef in 2019, responsible for 15.4% of global production. It was also the third largest world producer of milk in 2018. This year, the country produced 35.1 billion liters. In 2019, Brazil was the fourth largest pork producer in the world, with almost four million tons.
In 2018, Argentina was the fourth largest producer of beef in the world, with a production of 3 million tons (behind only USA, Brazil and China). Uruguay is also a major meat producer. In 2018, it produced 589 thousand tons of beef.
In the production of chicken meat, Mexico is among the ten largest producers in the world, Argentina among the 15 largest and Peru and Colombia among the 20 largest. In beef production, Mexico is one of the ten largest producers in the world and Colombia is one of the 20 largest producers. In the production of pork, Mexico is among the 15 largest producers in the world. In the production of honey, Argentina is among the five largest producers in the world, Mexico among the ten largest and Brazil among the 15 largest. In terms of cow's milk production, Mexico is among the 15 largest producers in the world and Argentina among the 20 largest.
Mining and petroleum
Mining is one of the most important economic sectors in Latin America, especially for Chile, Peru and Bolivia, whose economies are highly dependent on this sector. The continent has large productions of:
gold (mainly in Peru, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina);
silver (mainly in Mexico, Peru, Chile, Bolivia and Argentina);
copper (mainly in Chile, Peru, Mexico and Brazil);
iron ore (Brazil, Peru and Chile);
zinc (Peru, Mexico, Bolivia and Brazil);
molybdenum (Chile, Peru and Mexico);
lithium (Chile, Argentina and Brazil);
lead (Peru, Mexico and Bolivia);
bauxite (Brazil and Jamaica);
tin (Peru, Bolivia and Brazil);
manganese (Brazil and Mexico);
antimony (Bolivia, Mexico, Guatemala and Ecuador);
nickel (Brazil, Dominican Republic and Cuba);
niobium (Brazil);
rhenium (Chile);
iodine (Chile),
Brazil stands out in the extraction of
iron ore (where it is the 2nd largest producer and exporter in the world—iron ore is usually one of the three export products that generate the greatest value in the country's trade balance)
copper
gold
bauxite (one of the five largest producers in the world)
manganese (one of the five largest producers in the world)
tin (one of the largest producers in the world)
niobium (98% of known world reserves) and
nickel
In terms of gemstones, Brazil is the world's largest producer of amethysts, topaz, and agates and one of the main producers of tourmaline, emeralds, aquamarines, garnets and opals.
Chile contributes about a third of the world's copper production. In addition, Chile was, in 2019, the world's largest producer of iodine and rhenium, the second largest producer of lithium and molybdenum, the sixth largest producer of silver, the seventh largest producer of salt, the eighth largest producer of potash, the thirteenth-largest producer of sulfur and the thirteenth largest producer of iron ore in the world.
In 2019, Peru was the second largest world producer of copper and silver, 8th largest world producer of gold, third largest world producer of lead, second largest world producer of zinc, fourth largest world producer of tin, fifth largest world producer of boron, and fourth largest world producer of molybdenum.
In 2019, Bolivia was the eighth largest world producer of silver; fourth largest world producer of boron; fifth largest world producer of antimony; fifth largest world producer of tin; sixth largest world producer of tungsten; seventh largest producer of zinc, and the eighth largest producer of lead.
In 2019, Mexico was the world's largest producer of silver (representing almost 23% of world production, producing more than 200 million ounces in 2019); ninth largest producer of gold, the eighth largest producer of copper, the world's fifth largest producer of lead, the world's sixth largest producer of zinc, the world's fifth largest producer of molybdenum, the world's third largest producer of mercury, the world's fifth largest producer of bismuth, the world's 13th largest producer of manganese and the 23rd largest world producer of phosphate. It is also the eighth largest world producer of salt.
In 2019, Argentina was the fourth largest world producer of lithium, the ninth largest world producer of silver, the 17th largest world producer of gold and the seventh largest world producer of boron.
Colombia is the world's largest producer of emeralds. In the production of gold, between 2006 and 2017, the country produced 15 tons per year until 2007, when its production increased significantly, breaking a record of 66.1 tons extracted in 2012. In 2017, it extracted 52.2 tons. The country is among the 25 largest gold producers in the world. In the production of silver, in 2017 the country extracted 15,5 tons.
In the production of oil, Brazil was the tenth largest oil producer in the world in 2019, with 2.8 million barrels a day. Mexico was the twelfth largest, with 2.1 million barrels a day, Colombia in 20th place with 886 thousand barrels a day, Venezuela was the twenty-first place, with 877 thousand barrels a day, Ecuador in 28th with 531 thousand barrels a day and Argentina. 29th with 507 thousand barrels a day. Since Venezuela and Ecuador consume little oil and export most of their production, they are part of OPEC. Venezuela had a big drop in production after 2015 (when it produced 2.5 million barrels a day), falling in 2016 to 2.2 million, in 2017 to 2 million, in 2018 to 1.4 million and in 2019 to 877 thousand, due to lack of investment.
In the production of natural gas, in 2018, Argentina produced 1,524 bcf (billions of cubic feet), Mexico produced 999, Venezuela 946, Brazil 877, Bolivia 617, Peru 451, Colombia 379.
In the production of coal, the continent had three of the 30 largest world producers in 2018: Colombia (12th), Mexico (24th) and Brazil (27th).
Manufacturing
The World Bank annually lists the top manufacturing countries by total manufacturing value. According to the 2019 list:
Mexico had the twelfth most valuable industry in the world (US$217.8 billion)
Brazil the thirteenth largest (US$173.6 billion)
Venezuela the thirtieth largest (US$58.2 billion, however, it depends on oil to reach this value)
Argentina the 31st largest (US$57.7 billion)
Colombia the 46th largest (US$35.4 billion)
Peru the 50th largest (US$28.7 billion)
Chile the 51st largest (US$28.3 billion).
In Latin America, few countries stand out in industrial activity: Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and, less prominently, Chile. Begun late, the industrialization of these countries received a great boost from World War II: this prevented the countries at war from buying the products they were used to importing and exporting what they produced. At that time, benefiting from the abundant local raw material, the low wages paid to the labor force and a certain specialization brought by immigrants, countries such as Brazil, Mexico and Argentina, as well as Venezuela, Chile, Colombia and Peru, were able to implement important industrial parks. In general, in these countries there are industries that require little capital and simple technology for their installation, such as the food processing and textile industries. The basic industries (steel, etc.) also stand out, as well as the metallurgical and mechanical industries.
The industrial parks of Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Chile, however, present much greater diversity and sophistication, producing advanced technology items. In the rest of Latin American countries, mainly in Central America, the processing industries of primary products for export predominate.
In the food industry, in 2019, Brazil was the second largest exporter of processed foods in the world. In 2016, the country was the second largest producer of pulp in the world and the eighth largest producer of paper. In the footwear industry, in 2019, Brazil ranked fourth among world producers. In 2019, the country was the eighth largest producer of vehicles and the ninth largest producer of steel in the world. In 2018, the chemical industry of Brazil was the eighth largest in the world. In the textile industry, Brazil, although it was among the five largest world producers in 2013, is very little integrated into world trade. In the aviation sector, Brazil has Embraer, the third largest aircraft manufacturer in the world, behind Boeing and Airbus.
Infrastructure
Transport in Latin America is basically carried out using the road mode, the most developed in the region. There is also a considerable infrastructure of ports and airports. The railway and fluvial sector, although it has potential, is usually treated in a secondary way.
Brazil has more than 1.7 million km of roads, of which 215,000 km are paved, and about 14,000 km are divided highways. The two most important highways in the country are BR-101 and BR-116. Argentina has more than 600,000 km of roads, of which about 70,000 km are paved, and about 2,500 km are divided highways. The three most important highways in the country are Route 9, Route 7 and Route 14. Colombia has about 210,000 km of roads, and about 2,300 km are divided highways. Chile has about 82,000 km of roads, 20,000 km of which are paved, and about 2,000 km are divided highways. The most important highway in the country is the Route 5 (Pan-American Highway) These 4 countries are the ones with the best road infrastructure and with the largest number of double-lane highways, in South America.
The roadway network in Mexico has an extent of , of which are paved,With data from The World Factbook Of these, are multi-lane expressways: are four-lane highways and the rest have 6 or more lanes.
Due to the Andes Mountains, Amazon River and Amazon Forest, there have always been difficulties in implementing transcontinental or bioceanic highways. Practically the only route that existed was the one that connected Brazil to Buenos Aires, in Argentina and later to Santiago, in Chile. However, in recent years, with the combined effort of countries, new routes have started to emerge, such as Brazil-Peru (Interoceanic Highway), and a new highway between Brazil, Paraguay, northern Argentina and northern Chile (Bioceanic Corridor).
There are more than 2,000 airports in Brazil. The country has the second largest number of airports in the world, behind only the United States. São Paulo International Airport, located in the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo, is the largest and busiest in the country – the airport connects São Paulo to practically all major cities around the world. Brazil has 44 international airports, such as those in Rio de Janeiro, Brasília, Belo Horizonte, Porto Alegre, Florianópolis, Cuiabá, Salvador, Recife, Fortaleza, Belém and Manaus, among others. Argentina has important international airports such as Buenos Aires, Cordoba, Bariloche, Mendoza, Salta, Puerto Iguazú, Neuquén and Usuhaia, among others. Chile has important international airports such as Santiago, Antofagasta, Puerto Montt, Punta Arenas and Iquique, among others. Colombia has important international airports such as Bogotá, Medellín, Cartagena, Cali and Barranquilla, among others. Peru has important international airports such as Lima, Cuzco and Arequipa. Other important airports are those in the capitals of Uruguay (Montevideo), Paraguay (Asunción), Bolivia (La Paz) and Ecuador (Quito). The 10 busiest airports in South America in 2017 were: São Paulo-Guarulhos (Brazil), Bogotá (Colombia), São Paulo-Congonhas (Brazil), Santiago (Chile), Lima (Peru), Brasília (Brazil), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Buenos Aires-Aeroparque (Argentina), Buenos Aires-Ezeiza (Argentina), and Minas Gerais (Brazil).
There are 1,834 airports in Mexico, the third-largest number of airports by country in the world. The seven largest airports—which absorb 90% of air travel—are (in order of air traffic): Mexico City, Cancún, Guadalajara, Monterrey, Tijuana, Acapulco, and Puerto Vallarta. Considering all of Latin America, the 10 busiest airports in 2017 were: Mexico City (Mexico), São Paulo-Guarulhos (Brazil), Bogotá (Colombia), Cancún (Mexico), São Paulo-Congonhas (Brazil), Santiago ( Chile), Lima (Peru), Brasilia (Brazil), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and Tocumen (Panama).
About ports, Brazil has some of the busiest ports in South America, such as Port of Santos, Port of Rio de Janeiro, Port of Paranaguá, Port of Itajaí, Port of Rio Grande, Port of São Francisco do Sul and Suape Port. Argentina has ports such as Port of Buenos Aires and Port of Rosario. Chile has important ports in Valparaíso, Caldera, Mejillones, Antofagasta, Iquique, Arica and Puerto Montt. Colombia has important ports such as Buenaventura, Cartagena Container Terminal and Puerto Bolivar. Peru has important ports in Callao, Ilo and Matarani. The 15 busiest ports in South America are: Port of Santos (Brazil), Port of Bahia de Cartagena (Colombia), Callao (Peru), Guayaquil (Ecuador), Buenos Aires (Argentina), San Antonio (Chile), Buenaventura (Colombia), Itajaí (Brazil), Valparaíso (Chile), Montevideo (Uruguay), Paranaguá (Brazil), Rio Grande (Brazil), São Francisco do Sul (Brazil), Manaus (Brazil) and Coronel (Chile).
The four major seaports concentrating around 60% of the merchandise traffic in Mexico are Altamira and Veracruz in the Gulf of Mexico, and Manzanillo and Lázaro Cárdenas in the Pacific Ocean. Considering all of Latin America, the 10 largest ports in terms of movement are: Colon (Panama), Santos (Brazil), Manzanillo (Mexico), Bahia de Cartagena (Colombia), Pacifico (Panama), Callao (Peru), Guayaquil ( Ecuador), Buenos Aires (Argentina), San Antonio (Chile) and Buenaventura (Colombia).
The Brazilian railway network has an extension of about 30,000 kilometers. It is basically used for transporting ores. The Argentine rail network, with 47,000 km of tracks, was one of the largest in the world and continues to be the most extensive in Latin America. It came to have about 100,000 km of rails, but the lifting of tracks and the emphasis placed on motor transport gradually reduced it. It has four different trails and international connections with Paraguay, Bolivia, Chile, Brazil and Uruguay. Chile has almost 7,000 km of railways, with connections to Argentina, Bolivia and Peru. Colombia has only about 3,500 km of railways.
Among the main Brazilian waterways, two stand out: Hidrovia Tietê-Paraná (which has a length of 2,400 km, 1,600 on the Paraná River and 800 km on the Tietê River, draining agricultural production from the states of Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Goiás and part of Rondônia, Tocantins and Minas General) and Hidrovia do Solimões-Amazonas (it has two sections: Solimões, which extends from Tabatinga to Manaus, with approximately 1600 km, and Amazonas, which extends from Manaus to Belém, with 1650 km. Almost entirely passenger transport from the Amazon plain is done by this waterway, in addition to practically all cargo transportation that is directed to the major regional centers of Belém and Manaus). In Brazil, this transport is still underutilized: the most important waterway stretches, from an economic point of view, are found in the Southeast and South of the country. Its full use still depends on the construction of locks, major dredging works and, mainly, of ports that allow intermodal integration. In Argentina, the waterway network is made up of the La Plata, Paraná, Paraguay and Uruguay rivers. The main river ports are Zárate and Campana. The port of Buenos Aires is historically the first in individual importance, but the area known as Up-River, which stretches along 67 km of the Santa Fé portion of the Paraná River, brings together 17 ports that concentrate 50% of the total exports of the country.
Energy
Brazil
The Brazilian government has undertaken an ambitious program to reduce dependence on imported petroleum. Imports previously accounted for more than 70% of the country's oil needs but Brazil became self-sufficient in oil in 2006–2007. Brazil was the 10th largest oil producer in the world in 2019, with 2.8 million barrels / day. Production manages to supply the country's demand. In the beginning of 2020, in the production of oil and natural gas, the country exceeded 4 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, for the first time. In January this year, 3.168 million barrels of oil per day and 138.753 million cubic meters of natural gas were extracted.
Brazil is one of the main world producers of hydroelectric power. In 2019, Brazil had 217 hydroelectric plants in operation, with an installed capacity of 98,581 MW, 60.16% of the country's energy generation. In the total generation of electricity, in 2019 Brazil reached 170,000 megawatts of installed capacity, more than 75% from renewable sources (the majority, hydroelectric).
In 2013, the Southeast Region used about 50% of the load of the National Integrated System (SIN), being the main energy consuming region in the country. The region's installed electricity generation capacity totaled almost 42,500 MW, which represented about a third of Brazil's generation capacity. The hydroelectric generation represented 58% of the region's installed capacity, with the remaining 42% corresponding basically to the thermoelectric generation. São Paulo accounted for 40% of this capacity; Minas Gerais by about 25%; Rio de Janeiro by 13.3%; and Espírito Santo accounted for the rest. The South Region owns the Itaipu Dam, which was the largest hydroelectric plant in the world for several years, until the inauguration of Three Gorges Dam in China. It remains the second largest operating hydroelectric in the world. Brazil is the co-owner of the Itaipu Plant with Paraguay: the dam is located on the Paraná River, located on the border between countries. It has an installed generation capacity of 14 GW for 20 generating units of 700 MW each. North Region has large hydroelectric plants, such as Belo Monte Dam and Tucuruí Dam, which produce much of the national energy. Brazil's hydroelectric potential has not yet been fully exploited, so the country still has the capacity to build several renewable energy plants in its territory.
according to ONS, total installed capacity of wind power was 19.1 GW, with average capacity factor of 58%. While the world average wind production capacity factors is 24.7%, there are areas in Northern Brazil, specially in Bahia State, where some wind farms record with average capacity factors over 60%; the average capacity factor in the Northeast Region is 45% in the coast and 49% in the interior. In 2019, wind energy represented 9% of the energy generated in the country. In 2019, it was estimated that the country had an estimated wind power generation potential of around 522 GW (this, only onshore), enough energy to meet three times the country's current demand. In 2020 Brazil was the 8th country in the world in terms of installed wind power (17.2 GW).
Nuclear energy accounts for about 4% of Brazil's electricity. The nuclear power generation monopoly is owned by Eletronuclear (Eletrobrás Eletronuclear S/A), a wholly owned subsidiary of Eletrobrás. Nuclear energy is produced by two reactors at Angra. It is located at the Central Nuclear Almirante Álvaro Alberto (CNAAA) on the Praia de Itaorna in Angra dos Reis, Rio de Janeiro. It consists of two pressurized water reactors, Angra I, with capacity of 657 MW, connected to the power grid in 1982, and Angra II, with capacity of 1,350 MW, connected in 2000. A third reactor, Angra III, with a projected output of 1,350 MW, is planned to be finished.
according to ONS, total installed capacity of photovoltaic solar was 10.3 GW, with average capacity factor of 23%. Some of the most irradiated Brazilian States are MG ("Minas Gerais"), BA ("Bahia") and GO (Goiás), which have indeed world irradiation level records. In 2019, solar power represented 1.27% of the energy generated in the country. In 2020, Brazil was the 14th country in the world in terms of installed solar power (7.8 GW).
In 2020, Brazil was the 2nd largest country in the world in the production of energy through biomass (energy production from solid biofuels and renewable waste), with 15,2 GW installed.
Other countries
After Brazil, Mexico is the country in Latin America that most stands out in energy production. In 2020, the country was the 14th largest petroleum producer in the world, and in 2018 it was the 12th largest exporter. In natural gas, the country was, in 2015, the 21st largest producer in the world, and in 2007 it was the 29th largest exporter. Mexico was also the world's 24th largest producer of coal in 2018. In renewable energies, in 2020, the country ranked 14th in the world in terms of installed wind energy (8.1 GW), 20th in the world in terms of installed solar energy (5.6 GW) and 19th in the world in terms of installed hydroelectric power (12.6 GW). In third place, Colombia stands out: In 2020, the country was the 20th largest petroleum producer in the world, and in 2015 it was the 19th largest exporter. In natural gas, the country was, in 2015, the 40th largest producer in the world. Colombia's biggest highlight is in coal, where the country was, in 2018, the world's 12th largest producer and the 5th largest exporter. In renewable energies, in 2020, the country ranked 45th in the world in terms of installed wind energy (0.5 GW), 76th in the world in terms of installed solar energy (0.1 GW) and 20th in the world in terms of installed hydroelectric power (12.6 GW). Venezuela, which was one of the world's largest oil producers (about 2.5 million barrels/day in 2015) and one of the largest exporters, due to its political problems, has had its production drastically reduced in recent years: in 2016, it dropped to 2.2 million, in 2017 to 2 million, in 2018 to 1.4 million and in 2019 to 877 thousand, reaching only 300,000 barrels/day at a given point. The country also stands out in hydroelectricity, where it was the 14th country in the world in terms of installed capacity in 2020 (16,5 GW). Argentina was, in 2017, the 18th largest producer in the world, and the largest producer in Latin America, of natural gas, in addition to being the 28th largest oil producer; although the country has the Vaca Muerta field, which holds close to 16 billion barrels of technically recoverable shale oil, and is the second largest shale natural gas deposit in the world, the country lacks the capacity to exploit the deposit: it is necessary capital, technology and knowledge that can only come from offshore energy companies, who view Argentina and its erratic economic policies with considerable suspicion, not wanting to invest in the country. In renewable energies, in 2020, the country ranked 27th in the world in terms of installed wind energy (2.6 GW), 42nd in the world in terms of installed solar energy (0.7 GW) and 21st in the world in terms of installed hydroelectric power (11.3 GW). The country has great future potential for the production of wind energy in the Patagonia region. Chile, although currently not a major energy producer, has great future potential for solar energy production in the Atacama Desert region. Paraguay stands out today in hydroelectric production thanks to the Itaipu Power Plant. Trinidad and Tobago and Bolivia stand out in the production of natural gas, where they were, respectively, the 20th and 31st largest in the world in 2015. Ecuador, because it consumes little energy, is part of OPEC and was the 27th largest oil producer in the world in 2020, being the 22nd largest exporter in 2014.IEA. Key World Energy Statistics 2014. Natural Gas. Access date - 01/17/2021
Trade blocs
The major trade blocs (or agreements) in the region are the Pacific Alliance and Mercosur. Minor blocs or trade agreements are the G3 Free Trade Agreement, the Dominican Republic – Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA), the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the Andean Community of Nations (CAN). However, major reconfigurations are taking place along opposing approaches to integration and trade; Venezuela has officially withdrawn from both the CAN and G3 and it has been formally admitted into the Mercosur (pending ratification from the Paraguayan legislature). The president-elect of Ecuador has manifested his intentions of following the same path. This bloc nominally opposes any Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the United States, although Uruguay has manifested its intention otherwise. Chile, Peru, Colombia and Mexico are the only four Latin American nations that have an FTA with the United States and Canada, both members of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
Tourism
Income from tourism is key to the economy of several Latin American countries. Mexico is the only Latin American country to be ranked in the top 10 worldwide in the number of tourist visits. It received by far the largest number of international tourists, with 39.3 million visitors in 2017, followed by Argentina, with 6.7 million; then Brazil, with 6.6 million; Chile, with 6.5 million; Dominican Republic, with 6.2 million; Cuba with 4.3 million; Peru and Colombia with 4.0 million. The World Tourism Organization reports the following destinations as the top six tourism earners for the year 2017: Mexico, with US$21,333 million; the Dominican Republic, with US$7,178 million; Brazil, with US$6,024 million; Colombia, with US$4,773 million; Argentina, with US$4,687 million; and Panama, with US$4,258 million.
Places such as Cancún, Riviera Maya, Galápagos Islands, Punta Cana, Chichen Itza, Cartagena de Indias, Cabo San Lucas, Mexico City, Machu Picchu, Margarita Island, Acapulco, San Ignacio Miní, Santo Domingo, Buenos Aires, Salar de Uyuni, Rio de Janeiro, Florianópolis, Punta del Este, Labadee, San Juan, São Paulo, Havana, Panama City, Iguazú Falls, Puerto Vallarta, Poás Volcano National Park, Viña del Mar, Guanajuato City, Bogotá, Santa Marta, San Andrés, San Miguel de Allende, Lima, Guadalajara, Cuzco, Ponce and Perito Moreno Glacier are popular among international visitors in the region.
(*) Data for 2015 rather than 2017, as the newest data is currently unavailable.
Culture
Latin American culture is a mixture of many diverse influences:
Indigenous cultures of the people who inhabited the continent prior to European colonization. Ancient and very advanced civilizations developed their own political, social and religious systems. The Maya, the Aztec and the Inca are examples of these. Indigenous legacies in music, dance, foods, arts and crafts, clothing, folk culture and traditions are very strong in Latin America. Linguistic effects on Spanish and Portuguese are also marked, such as in terms like pampa, taco, tamale, cacique.
The culture of Europe, was brought mainly by the colonial powersthe Spanish, Portuguese and Frenchbetween the 16th and 19th centuries. The most enduring European colonial influence is language and Catholicism. More recently, additional cultural influences came from the United States and Europe during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, due to the growing influence of the former on the world stage and immigration from the latter. The influence of the United States is particularly strong in northern Latin America, especially Puerto Rico, which is an American territory. Prior to 1959, Cuba, which fought for its independence alongside American soldiers in the Spanish–American War, also had a close socioeconomic relation with the United States. In addition, the United States also helped Panama become independent from Colombia and built the twenty-mile-long Panama Canal Zone in Panama which held from 1903 — the Panama Canal opened to transoceanic freight traffic in 1914 — to 1999, when the Torrijos-Carter Treaties restored Panamanian control of the Canal Zone. South America experienced waves of immigration of Europeans, especially Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Germans, Austrians, Poles, Ukrainians, French, Dutch, Russians, Croatians, Lithuanians and Ashkenazi Jews. With the end of colonialism, French culture also exerted a direct influence in Latin America, especially in the realms of high culture, science and medicine. This can be seen in the region's artistic traditions, including painting, literature and music, and in the realms of science and politics.
Due to the impact of Enlightenment ideals after the French revolution, a certain number of Iberian-American countries decriminalized homosexuality after France and French territories in the Americas did so in 1791. Some of the countries that abolished sodomy laws or banned state interference in consensual adult sexuality in the 19th century were Dominican Republic (1822), Brazil (1824), Peru (1836), Mexico (1871), Paraguay (1880), Argentina (1887), Honduras (1899), Guatemala and El Salvador. Today same-sex marriage is legal in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Uruguay, and French overseas departments, as well as in several states of Mexico. Civil unions can be held in Chile.
African cultures, whose presence stems from a long history of the Atlantic slave trade. People of African descent have influenced the ethno-scapes of Latin America and the Caribbean. This is manifested for instance in music, dance and religion, especially in countries like Brazil, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Haiti, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, and Cuba.
Asian cultures, whose part of the presence derives from the long history of the coolies who mostly arrived during the 19th and 20th centuries, most commonly Chinese workers in Peru and Venezuela, but also from Japanese and Korean immigration. especially headed to Brazil. This has greatly affected cuisine and other traditions including literature, art and lifestyles and politics. Asian influences have especially affected Brazil, Cuba, Panama and Peru.
Art
Beyond the rich tradition of Indigenous art, the development of Latin American visual art owed much to the influence of Spanish, Portuguese and French Baroque painting, which in turn often followed the trends of the Italian masters. In general, this artistic Eurocentrism began to wane in the early twentieth century, as Latin Americans began to acknowledge the uniqueness of their condition and follow their own path.
From the early twentieth century, the art of Latin America was greatly inspired by the Constructivist Movement. The movement rapidly spread from Russia to Europe and then into Latin America. Joaquín Torres García and Manuel Rendón have been credited with bringing the Constructivist Movement into Latin America from Europe.
An important artistic movement generated in Latin America is muralism represented by Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco and Rufino Tamayo in Mexico, Santiago Martinez Delgado and Pedro Nel Gómez in Colombia and Antonio Berni in Argentina. Some of the most impressive Muralista works can be found in Mexico, Colombia, New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.
Painter Frida Kahlo, one of the most famous Mexican artists, painted about her own life and the Mexican culture in a style combining Realism, Symbolism and Surrealism. Kahlo's work commands the highest selling price of all Latin American paintings.
The Venezuelan Armando Reverón, whose work begins to be recognized internationally, is one of the most important artists of the 20th century in South America; he is a precursor of Arte Povera and Happening. In the 60s kinetic art emerged in Venezuela. Its main representatives are Jesús Soto, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Alejandro Otero and Gego.
Colombian sculptor and painter Fernando Botero is also widely known for his works which, on first examination, are noted for their exaggerated proportions and the corpulence of the human and animal figures.
Film
Latin American film is both rich and diverse. Historically, the main centers of production have been Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, and Cuba. Latin American film flourished after sound was introduced in cinema, which added a linguistic barrier to the export of Hollywood film south of the border.
Mexican cinema began in the silent era from 1896 to 1929 and flourished in the Golden Era of the 1940s. It boasted a huge industry comparable to Hollywood at the time, with stars such as María Félix, Dolores del Río, and Pedro Infante. In the 1970s, Mexico was the location for many cult horror and action movies. More recently, films such as Amores Perros (2000) and Y tu mamá también (2001) enjoyed box office and critical acclaim and propelled Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González Iñárritu to the front rank of Hollywood directors. Iñárritu in 2010 directed Biutiful and Birdman (2014), Alfonso Cuarón directed Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in 2004 and Gravity in 2013. A close friend of both, Guillermo del Toro, a top rank Hollywood director in Hollywood and Spain, directed Pan's Labyrinth (2006) and produced El Orfanato (2007). Carlos Carrera (The Crime of Father Amaro), and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga are also some of the best known modern Mexican film makers. Rudo y Cursi released in December (2008) in Mexico, was directed by Carlos Cuarón.
Argentine cinema has also been prominent since the first half of the 20th century and today averages over 60 full-length titles yearly. The industry suffered during the 1976–1983 military dictatorship; but re-emerged to produce the Academy Award winner The Official Story in 1985. A wave of imported US films again damaged the industry in the early 1990s, though it soon recovered, thriving even during the Argentine economic crisis around 2001. Many Argentine movies produced during recent years have been internationally acclaimed, including Nueve reinas (2000), Son of the Bride (2001), El abrazo partido (2004), El otro (2007), the 2010 Foreign Language Academy Award winner El secreto de sus ojos and Wild Tales (2014).
In Brazil, the Cinema Novo movement created a particular way of making movies with critical and intellectual screenplays, clearer photography related to the light of the outdoors in a tropical landscape, and a political message. The modern Brazilian film industry has become more profitable inside the country, and some of its productions have received prizes and recognition in Europe and the United States, with movies such as Central do Brasil (1999), Cidade de Deus (2002) and Tropa de Elite (2007).
Puerto Rican cinema has produced some notable films, such as Una Aventura Llamada Menudo, Los Diaz de Doris and Casi Casi. An influx of Hollywood films affected the local film industry in Puerto Rico during the 1980s and 1990s, but several Puerto Rican films have been produced since and it has been recovering.
Cuban cinema has enjoyed much official support since the Cuban revolution and important film-makers include Tomás Gutiérrez Alea.
Venezuelan television has also had a great impact in Latin America, is said that whilst "Venezuelan cinema began sporadically in the 1950s[, it] only emerged as a national-cultural movement in the mid-1970s" when it gained state support and auteurs could produce work. International co-productions with Latin America and Spain continued into this era and beyond, and Venezuelan films of this time were counted among the works of New Latin American Cinema. This period is known as Venezuela's Golden Age of cinema, having massive popularity even though it was a time of much social and political upheaval.
One of the most famous Venezuelan films, even to date, is the 1976 film Soy un delincuente by Clemente de la Cerda, which won the Special Jury Prize at the 1977 Locarno International Film Festival. Soy un delincuente was one of nine films for which the state gave substantial funding to produce, made in the year after the Venezuelan state began giving financial support to cinema in 1975. The support likely came from increased oil wealth in the early 1970s, and the subsequent 1973 credit incentive policy. At the time of its production the film was the most popular film in the country, and took a decade to be usurped from this position, even though it was only one in a string of films designed to tell social realist stories of struggle in the 1950s and '60s. Equally famous is the 1977 film El Pez que Fuma (Román Chalbaud). In 1981 FONCINE (the Venezuelan Film Fund) was founded, and this year it provided even more funding to produce seventeen feature films. A few years later in 1983 with Viernes Negro, oil prices dropped and Venezuela entered a depression which prevented such extravagant funding, but film production continued; more transnational productions occurred, many more with Spain due to Latin America's poor economic fortune in general, and there was some in new cinema, as well: Fina Torres' 1985 Oriana won the Caméra d'Or Prize at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival as the best first feature. Film production peaked in 1984–5,:37 with 1986 considered Venezuelan cinema's most successful year by the state, thanks to over 4 million admissions to national films, according to Venezuelanalysis. The Venezuelan capital of Caracas hosted the Ibero-American Forum on Cinematography Integration in 1989, from which the pan-continental IBERMEDIA was formed; a union which provides regional funding.
Literature
Pre-Columbian cultures were primarily oral, although the Aztecs and Maya, for instance, produced elaborate codices. Oral accounts of mythological and religious beliefs were also sometimes recorded after the arrival of European colonizers, as was the case with the Popol Vuh. Moreover, a tradition of oral narrative survives to this day, for instance among the Quechua-speaking population of Peru and the Quiché (K'iche') of Guatemala.
From the very moment of Europe's discovery of the continents, early explorers and conquistadores produced written accounts and crónicas of their experiencesuch as Columbus's letters or Bernal Díaz del Castillo's description of the conquest of Mexico. During the colonial period, written culture was often in the hands of the church, within which context Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz wrote memorable poetry and philosophical essays. Towards the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th, a distinctive criollo literary tradition emerged, including the first novels such as Lizardi's El Periquillo Sarniento (1816).
The 19th century was a period of "foundational fictions" in critic Doris Sommer's words, novels in the Romantic or Naturalist traditions that attempted to establish a sense of national identity, and which often focussed on the Indigenous question or the dichotomy of "civilization or barbarism" (for which see, say, Domingo Sarmiento's Facundo (1845), Juan León Mera's Cumandá (1879), or Euclides da Cunha's Os Sertões (1902)). The 19th century also witnessed the realist work of Machado de Assis, who made use of surreal devices of metaphor and playful narrative construction, much admired by critic Harold Bloom.
At the turn of the 20th century, modernismo emerged, a poetic movement whose founding text was Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío's Azul (1888). This was the first Latin American literary movement to influence literary culture outside of the region, and was also the first truly Latin American literature, in that national differences were no longer so much at issue. José Martí, for instance, though a Cuban patriot, also lived in Mexico and the United States and wrote for journals in Argentina and elsewhere.
However, what really put Latin American literature on the global map was no doubt the literary boom of the 1960s and 1970s, distinguished by daring and experimental novels (such as Julio Cortázar's Rayuela (1963)) that were frequently published in Spain and quickly translated into English. The Boom's defining novel was Gabriel García Márquez's Cien años de soledad (1967), which led to the association of Latin American literature with magic realism, though other important writers of the period such as the Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa and Carlos Fuentes do not fit so easily within this framework. Arguably, the Boom's culmination was Augusto Roa Bastos's monumental Yo, el supremo (1974). In the wake of the Boom, influential precursors such as Juan Rulfo, Alejo Carpentier, and above all Jorge Luis Borges were also rediscovered.
Contemporary literature in the region is vibrant and varied, ranging from the best-selling Paulo Coelho and Isabel Allende to the more avant-garde and critically acclaimed work of writers such as Diamela Eltit, Giannina Braschi, Ricardo Piglia, or Roberto Bolaño. There has also been considerable attention paid to the genre of testimonio, texts produced in collaboration with subaltern subjects such as Rigoberta Menchú. Finally, a new breed of chroniclers is represented by the more journalistic Carlos Monsiváis and Pedro Lemebel.
The region boasts six Nobel Prize winners: in addition to the two Chilean poets Gabriela Mistral (1945) and Pablo Neruda (1971), there is also the Guatemalan novelist Miguel Angel Asturias (1967), the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez (1982), the Mexican poet and essayist Octavio Paz (1990), and the Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa (2010).
Music and dance
Latin America has produced many successful worldwide artists in terms of recorded global music sales. Among the most successful have been Juan Gabriel (Mexico) only Latin American musician to have sold over 200 million records worldwide, Gloria Estefan (Cuba), Carlos Santana, Luis Miguel (Mexico) of whom have sold over 90 million records, Shakira (Colombia) and Vicente Fernández (Mexico) with over 50 million records sold worldwide. Enrique Iglesias, although not a Latin American, has also contributed for the success of Latin music.
Other notable successful mainstream acts through the years, include RBD, Celia Cruz, Soda Stereo, Thalía, Ricky Martin, Maná, Marc Anthony, Ricardo Arjona, Selena, and Menudo.
Latin Caribbean music, such as merengue, bachata, salsa, and more recently reggaeton, from such countries as the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Panama, has been strongly influenced by African rhythms and melodies. Haiti's compas is a genre of music that is influenced by its Latin Caribbean counterparts, along with elements of jazz and modern sounds.
Another well-known Latin American musical genre includes the Argentine and Uruguayan tango (with Carlos Gardel as the greatest exponent), as well as the distinct nuevo tango, a fusion of tango, acoustic and electronic music popularized by bandoneón virtuoso Ástor Piazzolla. Samba, North American jazz, European classical music and choro combined to form bossa nova in Brazil, popularized by guitarist João Gilberto with singer Astrud Gilberto and pianist Antonio Carlos Jobim.
Other influential Latin American sounds include the Antillean soca and calypso, the Honduran (Garifuna) punta, the Colombian cumbia and vallenato, the Chilean cueca, the Ecuadorian boleros, and rockoleras, the Mexican ranchera and the mariachi which is the epitome of Mexican soul, the Nicaraguan palo de Mayo, the Peruvian marinera and tondero, the Uruguayan candombe, the French Antillean zouk (derived from Haitian compas) and the various styles of music from pre-Columbian traditions that are widespread in the Andean region.
The classical composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887–1959) worked on the recording of Native musical traditions within his homeland of Brazil. The traditions of his homeland heavily influenced his classical works. Also notable is the recent work of the Cuban Leo Brouwer and guitar work of the Venezuelan Antonio Lauro and the Paraguayan Agustín Barrios. Latin America has also produced world-class classical performers such as the Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau, Brazilian pianist Nelson Freire and the Argentine pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim. Brazilian opera soprano Bidu Sayão, one of Brazil's most famous musicians, was a leading artist of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City from 1937 to 1952.
Arguably, the main contribution to music entered through folklore, where the true soul of the Latin American and Caribbean countries is expressed. Musicians such as Yma Súmac, Chabuca Granda, Atahualpa Yupanqui, Violeta Parra, Víctor Jara, Jorge Cafrune, Facundo Cabral, Mercedes Sosa, Jorge Negrete, Luiz Gonzaga, Caetano Veloso, Susana Baca, Chavela Vargas, Simon Diaz, Julio Jaramillo, Toto la Momposina, Gilberto Gil, Maria Bethânia, Nana Caymmi, Nara Leão, Gal Costa, Ney Matogrosso as well as musical ensembles such as Inti Illimani and Los Kjarkas are magnificent examples of the heights that this soul can reach.
Latin pop, including many forms of rock, is popular in Latin America today (see Spanish language rock and roll). A few examples are Café Tacuba, Soda Stereo, Maná, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs, Rita Lee, Mutantes, Secos e Molhados Legião Urbana, Titãs, Paralamas do Sucesso, Cazuza, Barão Vermelho, Skank, Miranda!, Cansei de Ser Sexy or CSS, and Bajo Fondo.
More recently, reggaeton, which blends Jamaican reggae and dancehall with Latin America genres such as bomba and plena, as well as hip hop, is becoming more popular, in spite of the controversy surrounding its lyrics, dance steps (Perreo) and music videos. It has become very popular among populations with a "migrant culture" influence – both Latino populations in the United States, such as southern Florida and New York City, and parts of Latin America where migration to the United States is common, such as Trinidad and Tobago, Dominican Republic, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, and Mexico.
World Heritage sites
The following is a list of the ten countries with the most UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Latin America.
See also
Americas (terminology)
Amerindians
Euro-Latin American Parliamentary Assembly
Ibero-America
Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance
Latin America and the Caribbean (region)
Latin America and the League of Nations
Latin America–United States relations
Latin American integration
Latin American studies
Latin American Studies Association
Latin Americans
Latin American diaspora
Latino Americans
List of Latin Americans
Mesoamerica
Organization of American States
Pan-American Conferences
Pan-Americanism
Spanish America
Notes
References
Further reading
Ardao, Arturo. Génesis de la idea y nombre de América Latina. Caracas: Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos Rómulo Gallegos, 1980.
Ayala Mora, Enrique. "El origen del nombre América Latina y la tradición católica del siglo XIX." Anuario Colombiano de Historia Social y de la Cultura 40, no. 1 (2013), 213–41.
Berryman, Phillip. Latin America at 200. Austin: University of Texas Press 2016.
Bethell, Leslie, The Cambridge History of Latin America. 12 volumes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1985–2008.
Bomfim, Manoel. A América latina: Males de origem. Rio de Janeiro: H. Garnier 1905.
Braudel, Fernand. "Y a-t-il une Amérique latine?" Annales ESC 3 (1948), 467–71.
Calderón, Fernando and Manuel Castells. The New Latin America. Cambridge: Polity Press 2020.
Coatsworth, John H., and Alan M. Taylor, eds. Latin America and the World Economy Since 1800. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press 1998.
Edwards, Sebastián. Left Behind: Latin America and the False Promise of Populism. University of Chicago Press, 2010.
Galeano, Eduardo. Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. 1973
Gobat, Michel, "The Invention of Latin America: A Transnational History of Anti-Imperialism, Democracy, and Race," American Historical Review Vol. 118, no. 3 (December 2013), pp. 1345–1375.
Halperin Donghi, Tulio. The Contemporary History of Latin America. Durham: Duke University Press 1993.
Lockhart, James and Stuart B. Schwartz. Early Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1982.
Martínez Estrada, Ezequiel. Diferencias y semejanzas entre los países de América Latina. Mexico" Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México 1962.
Maurer Queipo, Isabel (ed.): "Directory of World Cinema: Latin America", intellectbooks, Bristol 2013,
Mazzuca, Sebastián, Latecomer State Formation: Political Geography and Capacity Failure in Latin America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021.
McGinnes, Aims. "Searching for 'Latin America': Race and Sovereignty in the Americas in the 1850s." In Race and Nation in Modern Latin America, edited by Nancy P. Appelbaum, Anne S. Macpherson, and Karin alejandra Rosemblatt. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 2003, pp, 87–107.
Mignolo, Walter, The Idea of Latin America. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell 2005.
Moraña, Mabel, Enrique Dussel, and Carlos A. Jáuregui, eds. Coloniality at Large: Latin America and the Postcolonial Debate. Durham: Duke University Press 2008.
Phelan, John Leddy. (1968). Pan-latinisms, French Intervention in Mexico (1861–1867) and the Genesis of the Idea of Latin America. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autonónoma de México 1968.
Tenenbaum, Barbara A. ed. Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture. 5 vols. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons 1996
Tenorio-Trillo, Mauricio. Latin America: The Allure and Power of an Idea. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2017.
Vasconcelos, José. Indología: Una interpretación de la cultura ibero-americana. Barcelona: Agencia Mundial de Librería 1927.
Zea, Leopoldo, ed. Fuentes de la cultura latinoamericana. 2 vols. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica 1993.
External links
IDB Education Initiative
Latin American Network Information Center
Latin America Data Base
Washington Office on Latin America
Council on Hemispheric Affairs
Codigos De Barra
Map of Land Cover: Latin America and Caribbean (FAO)
Lessons From Latin America by Benjamin Dangl, The Nation'', March 4, 2009
Latin America Cold War Resources, Yale University
Latin America Cold War, Harvard University
http://larc.ucalgary.ca/ Latin American Research Centre, University of Calgary
The war on Democracy, by John Pilger
Country classifications |
18529 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx%20%28web%20browser%29 | Lynx (web browser) | Lynx is a customizable text-based web browser for use on cursor-addressable character cell terminals. , it is the oldest web browser still being maintained, having started in 1992.
History
Lynx was a product of the Distributed Computing Group within Academic Computing Services of the University of Kansas, and was initially developed in 1992 by a team of students and staff at the university (Lou Montulli, Michael Grobe and Charles Rezac) as a hypertext browser used solely to distribute campus information as part of a Campus-Wide Information Server and for browsing the Gopher space. Beta availability was announced to Usenet on 22 July 1992. In 1993, Montulli added an Internet interface and released a new version (2.0) of the browser.
the support of communication protocols in Lynx is implemented using a version of libwww, forked from the library's code base in 1996. The supported protocols include Gopher, HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, NNTP and WAIS. Support for NNTP was added to libwww from ongoing Lynx development in 1994. Support for HTTPS was added to Lynx's fork of libwww later, initially as patches due to concerns about encryption.
Garrett Blythe created DosLynx in April 1994 and later joined the Lynx effort as well. Foteos Macrides ported much of Lynx to VMS and maintained it for a time. In 1995, Lynx was released under the GNU General Public License, and is now maintained by a group of volunteers led by .
Features
Browsing in Lynx consists of highlighting the chosen link using cursor keys, or having all links on a page numbered and entering the chosen link's number. Current versions support SSL and many HTML features. Tables are formatted using spaces, while frames are identified by name and can be explored as if they were separate pages. Lynx is not inherently able to display various types of non-text content on the web, such as images and video, but it can launch external programs to handle it, such as an image viewer or a video player.
Unlike most web browsers, Lynx does not support JavaScript, which many websites require to work correctly.
The speed benefits of text-only browsing are most apparent when using low bandwidth internet connections, or older computer hardware that may be slow to render image-heavy content.
Privacy
Because Lynx does not support graphics, web bugs that track user information are not fetched, meaning that web pages can be read without the privacy concerns of graphic web browsers. However, Lynx does support HTTP cookies, which can also be used to track user information. Lynx therefore supports cookie whitelisting and blacklisting, or alternatively cookie support can be disabled permanently.
As with conventional browsers, Lynx also supports browsing histories and page caching, both of which can raise privacy concerns.
Configurability
Lynx accepts configuration options from either command-line options or configuration files. There are 142 command line options according to its help message. The template configuration file lynx.cfg lists 233 configurable features. There is some overlap between the two, although there are command-line options such as -restrict which are not matched in lynx.cfg. In addition to pre-set options by command-line and configuration file, Lynx's behavior can be adjusted at runtime using its options menu. Again, there is some overlap between the settings. Lynx implements many of these runtime optional features, optionally (controlled through a setting in the configuration file) allowing the choices to be saved to a separate writable configuration file. The reason for restricting the options which can be saved originated in a usage of Lynx which was more common in the mid-1990s, i.e., using Lynx itself as a front-end application to the Internet accessed by dial-in connections.
Accessibility
Because Lynx is a text-based browser, it can be used for internet access by visually impaired users on a refreshable braille display and is easily compatible with text-to-speech software. As Lynx substitutes images, frames and other non-textual content with the text from alt, name and title HTML attributes and allows hiding the user interface elements, the browser becomes specifically suitable for use with cost-effective general purpose screen reading software. A version of Lynx specifically enhanced for use with screen readers on Windows was developed at Indian Institute of Technology Madras.
Remote access
Lynx is also useful for accessing websites from a remotely connected system in which no graphical display is available. Despite its text-only nature and age, it can still be used to effectively browse much of the modern web, including performing interactive tasks such as editing Wikipedia.
Web design and robots
Since Lynx will take keystrokes from a text file, it is still very useful for automated data entry, web page navigation, and web scraping. Consequently, Lynx is used in some web crawlers. Web designers may use Lynx to determine the way in which search engines and web crawlers see the sites that they develop. Online services that provide Lynx's view of a given web page are available.
Lynx is also used to test websites' performance. As one can run the browser from different locations over remote access technologies like telnet and ssh, one can use Lynx to test the web site's connection performance from different geographical locations simultaneously. Another possible web design application of the browser is quick checking of the site's links.
Supported platforms
Lynx was originally designed for Unix-like operating systems, though it was ported to VMS soon after its public release and to other systems, including DOS, Microsoft Windows, Classic Mac OS and OS/2. It was included in the default OpenBSD installation from OpenBSD 2.3 (May 1998) to 5.5 (May 2014), being in the main tree prior to July 2014, subsequently being made available through the ports tree, and can also be found in the repositories of most Linux distributions, as well as in the Homebrew and Fink repositories for macOS. Ports to BeOS, MINIX, QNX, AmigaOS and OS/2 are also available.
The sources can be built on many platforms, e.g., mention is made of Google's Android operating system.
See also
Computer accessibility
Links (web browser)
ELinks
w3m
ModSecurity#Former Lynx browser blocking
Comparison of web browsers
Timeline of web browsers
Comparison of Usenet newsreaders
Notes
References
External links
1992 software
Cross-platform free software
Curses (programming library)
Free web browsers
Gopher clients
OS/2 web browsers
MacOS web browsers
Portable software
POSIX web browsers
RISC OS software
Software that uses S-Lang
Text-based web browsers
University of Kansas
Web browsers for AmigaOS
Web browsers for DOS
Free software programmed in C |
18530 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx%20%28programming%20language%29 | Lynx (programming language) | Lynx is a programming language for large distributed networks, using remote procedure calls. It was developed by the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1984 for the Charlotte multicomputer operating system.
In 1986 at the University of Rochester Lynx was ported to the Chrysalis operating system running on a BBN Butterfly multiprocessor.
References
Bibliography
M. L. Scott, "The Lynx Distributed Programming Language: Motivation, Design, and Experience," Computer Languages 16:3/4 (1991), pp. 209-233. http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/scott91lynx.html
Concurrent programming languages |
18531 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27H%C3%B4pital%27s%20rule | L'Hôpital's rule | In mathematics, more specifically calculus, L'Hôpital's rule or L'Hospital's rule (, , ), also known as Bernoulli's rule, is a theorem which provides a technique to evaluate limits of indeterminate forms. Application (or repeated application) of the rule often converts an indeterminate form to an expression that can be easily evaluated by substitution. The rule is named after the 17th-century French mathematician Guillaume de l'Hôpital. Although the rule is often attributed to L'Hôpital, the theorem was first introduced to him in 1694 by the Swiss mathematician Johann Bernoulli.
L'Hôpital's rule states that for functions and which are differentiable on an open interval except possibly at a point contained in , if and for all in with , and exists, then
The differentiation of the numerator and denominator often simplifies the quotient or converts it to a limit that can be evaluated directly.
History
Guillaume de l'Hôpital (also written l'Hospital) published this rule in his 1696 book Analyse des Infiniment Petits pour l'Intelligence des Lignes Courbes (literal translation: Analysis of the Infinitely Small for the Understanding of Curved Lines), the first textbook on differential calculus. However, it is believed that the rule was discovered by the Swiss mathematician Johann Bernoulli.
General form
The general form of L'Hôpital's rule covers many cases. Let and be extended real numbers (i.e., real numbers, positive infinity, or negative infinity). Let be an open interval containing (for a two-sided limit) or an open interval with endpoint (for a one-sided limit, or a limit at infinity if is infinite). The real valued functions and are assumed to be differentiable on except possibly at , and additionally on except possibly at . It is also assumed that Thus the rule applies to situations in which the ratio of the derivatives has a finite or infinite limit, but not to situations in which that ratio fluctuates permanently as gets closer and closer to .
If either
or
then
Although we have written throughout, the limits may also be one-sided limits ( or ), when is a finite endpoint of .
In the second case, the hypothesis that diverges to infinity is not used in the proof (see note at the end of the proof section); thus, while the conditions of the rule are normally stated as above, the second sufficient condition for the rule's procedure to be valid can be more briefly stated as
The hypothesis that appears most commonly in the literature, but some authors sidestep this hypothesis by adding other hypotheses elsewhere. One method is to define the limit of a function with the additional requirement that the limiting function is defined everywhere on the relevant interval except possibly at . Another method is to require that both and be differentiable everywhere on an interval containing .
Cases where theorem cannot be applied (Necessity of conditions)
All four conditions for L'Hôpital's rule are necessary:
Indeterminancy of form: or ; and
Differentiability of functions: and are differentiable on an open interval except possibly at a point contained in ; and
Non-zero derivative of denominator: for all in with ; and
Existence of limit of the quotient of the derivatives: exists.
Where one of the above conditions is not satisfied, L'Hôpital's rule is not valid in general, and so it cannot always be applied.
Form is not indeterminate
The necessity of the first condition can be seen by considering the counterexample where the functions are and and .
The first condition is not satisfied for this counterexample because and . This means that the form is not indeterminate.
The second and third conditions are satisfied by and . The fourth condition is also satisfied with .
But, L'Hôpital's rule fails in this counterexample, since .
Derivative of denominator is zero
The necessity of the condition that near can be seen by the following counterexample due to Otto Stolz. Let and Then there is no limit for as However,
which tends to 0 as . Further examples of this type were found by Ralph P. Boas Jr.
Limit of derivatives does not exist
The requirement that the limit
exist is essential. Without this condition, or may exhibit undamped oscillations as approaches , in which case L'Hôpital's rule does not apply. For example, if , and , then
this expression does not approach a limit as goes to , since the cosine function oscillates between and . But working with the original functions, can be shown to exist:
In a case such as this, all that can be concluded is that
so that if the limit of f/g exists, then it must lie between the inferior and superior limits of f′/g′. (In the example above, this is true, since 1 indeed lies between 0 and 2.)
Examples
Here is a basic example involving the exponential function, which involves the indeterminate form at :
This is a more elaborate example involving . Applying L'Hôpital's rule a single time still results in an indeterminate form. In this case, the limit may be evaluated by applying the rule three times:
Here is an example involving : Repeatedly apply L'Hôpital's rule until the exponent is zero (if is an integer) or negative (if is fractional) to conclude that the limit is zero.
Here is an example involving the indeterminate form (see below), which is rewritten as the form :
Here is an example involving the mortgage repayment formula and . Let be the principal (loan amount), the interest rate per period and the number of periods. When is zero, the repayment amount per period is (since only principal is being repaid); this is consistent with the formula for non-zero interest rates:
One can also use L'Hôpital's rule to prove the following theorem. If is twice-differentiable in a neighborhood of and that its second derivative is continuous on this neighbourhood, then
Sometimes L'Hôpital's rule is invoked in a tricky way: suppose converges as and that converges to positive or negative infinity. Then: and so, exists and The result remains true without the added hypothesis that converges to positive or negative infinity, but the justification is then incomplete.
Complications
Sometimes L'Hôpital's rule does not lead to an answer in a finite number of steps unless some additional steps are applied. Examples include the following:
Two applications can lead to a return to the original expression that was to be evaluated: This situation can be dealt with by substituting and noting that goes to infinity as goes to infinity; with this substitution, this problem can be solved with a single application of the rule: Alternatively, the numerator and denominator can both be multiplied by at which point L'Hôpital's rule can immediately be applied successfully:
An arbitrarily large number of applications may never lead to an answer even without repeating:This situation too can be dealt with by a transformation of variables, in this case : Again, an alternative approach is to multiply numerator and denominator by before applying L'Hôpital's rule:
A common pitfall is using L'Hôpital's rule with some circular reasoning to compute a derivative via a difference quotient. For example, consider the task of proving the derivative formula for powers of x:
Applying L'Hôpital's rule and finding the derivatives with respect to of the numerator and the denominator yields
as expected. However, differentiating the numerator required the use of the very fact that is being proven. This is an example of begging the question, since one may not assume the fact to be proven during the course of the proof.
Other indeterminate forms
Other indeterminate forms, such as , , , , and , can sometimes be evaluated using L'Hôpital's rule. For example, to evaluate a limit involving , convert the difference of two functions to a quotient:
where L'Hôpital's rule is applied when going from (1) to (2) and again when going from (3) to (4).
L'Hôpital's rule can be used on indeterminate forms involving exponents by using logarithms to "move the exponent down". Here is an example involving the indeterminate form :
It is valid to move the limit inside the exponential function because the exponential function is continuous. Now the exponent has been "moved down". The limit is of the indeterminate form , but as shown in an example above, l'Hôpital's rule may be used to determine that
Thus
The following table lists the most common indeterminate forms, and the transformations for applying l'Hôpital's rule:
Stolz–Cesàro theorem
The Stolz–Cesàro theorem is a similar result involving limits of sequences, but it uses finite difference operators rather than derivatives.
Geometric interpretation
Consider the curve in the plane whose -coordinate is given by and whose -coordinate is given by , with both functions continuous, i.e., the locus of points of the form . Suppose . The limit of the ratio as is the slope of the tangent to the curve at the point . The tangent to the curve at the point is given by . L'Hôpital's rule then states that the slope of the curve when is the limit of the slope of the tangent to the curve as the curve approaches the origin, provided that this is defined.
Proof of L'Hôpital's rule
Special case
The proof of L'Hôpital's rule is simple in the case where and are continuously differentiable at the point and where a finite limit is found after the first round of differentiation. It is not a proof of the general L'Hôpital's rule because it is stricter in its definition, requiring both differentiability and that c be a real number. Since many common functions have continuous derivatives (e.g. polynomials, sine and cosine, exponential functions), it is a special case worthy of attention.
Suppose that and are continuously differentiable at a real number , that , and that . Then
This follows from the difference-quotient definition of the derivative. The last equality follows from the continuity of the derivatives at . The limit in the conclusion is not indeterminate because .
The proof of a more general version of L'Hôpital's rule is given below.
General proof
The following proof is due to , where a unified proof for the and indeterminate forms is given. Taylor notes that different proofs may be found in and .
Let f and g be functions satisfying the hypotheses in the General form section. Let be the open interval in the hypothesis with endpoint c. Considering that on this interval and g is continuous, can be chosen smaller so that g is nonzero on .
For each x in the interval, define and as ranges over all values between x and c. (The symbols inf and sup denote the infimum and supremum.)
From the differentiability of f and g on , Cauchy's mean value theorem ensures that for any two distinct points x and y in there exists a between x and y such that . Consequently, for all choices of distinct x and y in the interval. The value g(x)-g(y) is always nonzero for distinct x and y in the interval, for if it was not, the mean value theorem would imply the existence of a p between x and y such that g' (p)=0.
The definition of m(x) and M(x) will result in an extended real number, and so it is possible for them to take on the values ±∞. In the following two cases, m(x) and M(x) will establish bounds on the ratio .
Case 1:
For any x in the interval , and point y between x and c,
and therefore as y approaches c, and become zero, and so
Case 2:
For every x in the interval , define . For every point y between x and c,
As y approaches c, both and become zero, and therefore
The limit superior and limit inferior are necessary since the existence of the limit of has not yet been established.
It is also the case that
and
and
In case 1, the squeeze theorem establishes that exists and is equal to L. In the case 2, and the squeeze theorem again asserts that , and so the limit exists and is equal to L. This is the result that was to be proven.
In case 2 the assumption that f(x) diverges to infinity was not used within the proof. This means that if |g(x)| diverges to infinity as x approaches c and both f and g satisfy the hypotheses of L'Hôpital's rule, then no additional assumption is needed about the limit of f(x): It could even be the case that the limit of f(x) does not exist. In this case, L'Hopital's theorem is actually a consequence of Cesàro–Stolz.
In the case when |g(x)| diverges to infinity as x approaches c and f(x) converges to a finite limit at c, then L'Hôpital's rule would be applicable, but not absolutely necessary, since basic limit calculus will show that the limit of f(x)/g(x) as x approaches c must be zero.
Corollary
A simple but very useful consequence of L'Hopital's rule is a well-known criterion for differentiability. It states the following:
suppose that f is continuous at a, and that exists for all x in some open interval containing a, except perhaps for . Suppose, moreover, that exists. Then also exists and
In particular, f''' is also continuous at a.
Proof
Consider the functions and . The continuity of f at a'' tells us that . Moreover, since a polynomial function is always continuous everywhere. Applying L'Hopital's rule shows that .
See also
L'Hôpital controversy
Notes
References
Sources
Articles containing proofs
Theorems in calculus
Theorems in real analysis
Limits (mathematics) |
18532 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexicology | Lexicology | Lexicology is the branch of linguistics that analyzes the lexicon of a specific language. A word is the smallest meaningful unit of a language that can stand on its own, and is made up of small components called morphemes and even smaller elements known as phonemes, or distinguishing sounds. Lexicology examines every feature of a word – including formation, spelling, origin, usage, and definition.
Lexicology also considers the relationships that exist between words. In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is composed of lexemes, which are abstract units of meaning that correspond to a set of related forms of a word. Lexicology looks at how words can be broken down as well as identifies common patterns they follow.
Lexicology is associated with lexicography, which is the practice of compiling dictionaries.
Etymology
The term lexicology derives from the Greek word λεξικόν lexicon (neuter of λεξικός lexikos, "of or for words", from λέξις lexis, "speech" or "word") and -λογία -logia, "the study of" (a suffix derived from λόγος logos, amongst others meaning "learning, reasoning, explanation, subject-matter").
Etymology as a science is actually a focus of lexicology. Since lexicology studies the meaning of words and their semantic relations, it often explores the history and development of a word. Etymologists analyze related languages using the comparative method, which is a set of techniques that allow linguists to recover the ancestral phonological, morphological, syntactic, etc., components of modern languages by comparing their cognate material. This means many word roots from different branches of the Indo-European language family can be traced back to single words from the Proto-Indo-European language. The English language, for instance, contains more borrowed words (or loan words) in its vocabulary than native words. Examples include parkour from French, karaoke from Japanese, coconut from Portuguese, mango from Hindi, etc. A lot of music terminology, like piano, solo, and opera, is borrowed from Italian. These words can be further classified according to the linguistic element that is borrowed: phonemes, morphemes, and semantics.
Approach
General lexicology is the broad study of words regardless of a language's specific properties. It is concerned with linguistic features that are common among all languages, such as phonemes and morphemes. Special lexicology, on the other hand, looks at what a particular language contributes to its vocabulary, such as grammars. Altogether lexicological studies can be approached two ways:
Diachronic or historical lexicology is devoted to the evolution of words and word-formation over time. It investigates the origins of a word and the ways in which its structure, meaning, and usage have since changed.
Synchronic or descriptive lexicology examines the words of a language within a certain time frame. This could be a period during the language's early stages of development, its current state, or any given interval in between.
These complementary perspectives were proposed by Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. Lexicology can have both comparative and contrastive methodologies. Comparative lexicology searches for similar features that are shared among two or more languages. Contrastive lexicology identifies the linguistic characteristics which distinguish between related and unrelated languages.
Semantics
The subfield of semantics that pertains especially to lexicological work is called lexical semantics. In brief, lexical semantics contemplates the significance of words and their meanings through several lenses, including synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, and polysemy, among others. Semantic analysis of lexical material may involve both the contextualization of the word(s) and syntactic ambiguity. Semasiology and onomasiology are relevant linguistic disciplines associated with lexical semantics.
A word can have two kinds of meaning: grammatical and lexical. Grammatical meaning refers to a word's function in a language, such as tense or plurality, which can be deduced from affixes. Lexical meaning is not limited to a single form of a word, but rather what the word denotes as a base word. For example, the verb to walk can become walks, walked, and walking – each word has a different grammatical meaning, but the same lexical meaning ("to move one's feet at a regular pace").
Phraseology
Another focus of lexicology is phraseology, which studies multi-word expressions, or idioms, like 'raining cats and dogs.' The meaning of the phrase as a whole has a different meaning than each word does on its own and is often unpredictable when considering its components individually. Phraseology examines how and why such meanings exist, and analyzes the laws that govern these word combinations.
Idioms and other phraseological units can be classified according to content and/ or meaning. They are difficult to translate word-for-word from one language to another.
Lexicography
Lexicologists
Dámaso Alonso (October 22, 1898 - January 25, 1990): Spanish poet, literary critic, and philologist
Roland Barthes (November 12, 1915 - March 25, 1980): French writer, critic, and semiotician
Ghil'ad Zuckermann (born June 1, 1971): Israeli linguist and language revivalist
See also
Lexicography
Lexicon
Lexeme
Calque
Vocabulary
Computational lexicology
Lexicostatistics
Lexical semantics
Lexical analysis
English lexicology and lexicography
List of lexicographers
List of linguists
Lexical Markup Framework
References
External links
Societies
Association for Automatic Language Processing (ATALA), Paris, France
International Society for Historical Lexicography and Lexicology, University of Leicester
Theory
Lexicology vs. lexicography – an explanation
Lexicography, lexicology, lexicon theory
Glossary
'L' entries (from lexeme to lexicon) at SIL (Summer Institute of Linguistics)'s glossary of linguistic terms
Teaching material
English and General Historical Lexicology (by Joachim Grzega and Marion Schöner
Journals
Lexis, E-Journal in English Lexicology (by Denis Jamet)
+ |
18534 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake%20Abitibi | Lake Abitibi | Lake Abitibi (, ) is a shallow lake in northeastern Ontario and western Quebec, Canada. The lake, which lies within the vast Clay Belt, is separated in two distinct portions by a short narrows, making it actually 2 lakes. Its total area is , and net area . The lake is shallow and studded with islands. Its shores and vicinity are covered with small timber.
Its outlet is the Abitibi River, a tributary of the Moose River, which empties into James Bay. The lake takes its name from the river. "Abitibi" comes from the Algonquin words abitah, meaning middle and nipi meaning water, possibly a reference to its geographic location between the Harricana (from the Algonquin word Nanikana, meaning "the main way") to the east and the Kapuskasing–Mattagami river system to the west.
Water levels on the lake are influenced by the Twin Falls Dam on the Abitibi River.
Portions of Lake Abitibi's southern shores and a section of the Abitibi River are part of the Abitibi-de-Troyes Provincial Park. The islands in Ontario's portion of the lake are protected in the Lake Abitibi Islands Provincial Park. The entire McDougall Point Peninsula, that separates the lake in two, is part of the Mcdougal Point Peninsula Conservation Reserve.
Pointe Abitibi at the mouth of the Duparquet River is a National Historic Site of Canada. This site, known as Apitipik National Historic Site of Canada, was a summer gathering place for the Abitibiwinnik until 1956 and the location of several trading posts between 1686 and 1922.
History
Application of Abitibi to describe the lake and the people living in the area around it was first noted in The Jesuit Relations in 1640. One of the first Europeans in this area was Pierre de Troyes, who built a post on Lake Abitibi when he was on his way to capture English HBC posts on James Bay in 1686. The Abitibi Post lay halfway between trading posts on James Bay and those on the Ottawa River and was in continuous existence throughout the French period.
The lake was part of the canoe route from James Bay to Montreal, via the Moose and Abitibi Rivers, then a series of intermediate streams and portages to Lake Temiskaming and the Ottawa River.
After the British conquered Canada in 1763, free traders either took over the French fort or built another post on the lake, providing strong trading competition to the main Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) fort at Moose Factory and the HBC outpost at Frederick House. This moved the HBC to set up a post, called Abitibi House, on Lake Abitibi in 1794, located on the peninsula at the mouth of the Duparquet River. In subsequent decades this post, as well as competing posts of the North West Company, were rebuilt or moved to various locations around the lake and its islands. Being unproductive due to competition, the HBC abandoned Abitibi House in 1811. When two companies merged in 1821, the HBC took over the trading post of the North West Company on Lake Abitibi.
The construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway (now Canadian National Railway) through this district made it of some importance at the start of the 20th century.
Lake Abitibi Islands
The Lake Abitibi Islands Provincial Park protects nearly all the islands on the Ontario side of Lake Abitibi. It includes 786 islands, from tiny shoals to large islands of up to . Some of the larger islands are Deer, Dominion, and St. Patrick, as well as the Mistaken Islands (the largest island in the lake, Nepawa Island, is not part of the park since it is in Clerval, Quebec). The park was created in 2005 when the Abitibi-De-Troyes Provincial Park was reconfigured.
The park is an important nesting habitat for many bird species, including great blue heron, bald eagle, osprey, and double-crested cormorant. The vegetation is characterized by intolerant hardwood and mixedwood forests, with black spruce, white spruce, and white birch as the common tree species.
It is a non-operating park, meaning that there are no facilities or services, and only accessible via air or water.
See also
Pont de l'Île - covered bridge connecting Nepawa Island to the mainland
Wahgoshig First Nation
Blake River Megacaldera Complex
List of lakes in Ontario
Notes
References
External links
Canadian Model Forests Network
Abitibi
Abitibi
Abitibi
Borders of Ontario
Borders of Quebec |
18538 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lansing%2C%20Michigan | Lansing, Michigan | Lansing () is the capital of the U.S. state of Michigan. It is mostly in Ingham County, although portions of the city extend west into Eaton County and north into Clinton County. The 2020 Census placed the city's population at 112,644, making it the sixth largest city in Michigan. The population of its metropolitan statistical area (MSA) was 541,297 at the 2020 Census, the third largest in the state after metropolitan Detroit and Grand Rapids. It was named the new state capital of Michigan in 1847, ten years after Michigan became a state.
The Lansing metropolitan area, colloquially referred to as "Mid-Michigan", is an important center for educational, cultural, governmental, commercial, and industrial functions. Neighboring East Lansing is home to Michigan State University, a public research university with an enrollment of more than 50,000. The area features two medical schools, one veterinary school, two nursing schools, and two law schools. It is the site of the Michigan State Capitol, the state Supreme Court, the Court of Appeals, a federal court, the Library of Michigan and Historical Center, and headquarters of four national insurance companies.
Lansing is the only U.S. state capital (among the 47 located in counties) that is not also a county seat. The seat of government of Ingham County is Mason, but the county maintains some offices in Lansing.
History
The first recorded person of European descent to travel through the area that is now Lansing was British fur trader Hugh Heward and his French-Canadian team on April 24, 1790, while canoeing the Grand River. The land that was to become Lansing was surveyed as "Township 4 North Range 2 West" in February 1827 in what was then dense forest. It was the last of the county's townships to be surveyed, and the land was not offered for sale until October 1830. There would be no roads to this area for decades to come.
In the winter of 1835 and early 1836, two brothers from New York plotted the area now known as REO Town just south of downtown Lansing and named it "Biddle City". This land lay in a floodplain and was underwater during the majority of the year. Nevertheless, the brothers went back to Lansing, New York, to sell plots for the town that did not exist. They told the New Yorkers this new "city" had an area of 65 blocks, a church and a public and academic square. 16 men bought plots in the nonexistent city, and upon reaching the area later that year found they had been scammed. Many in the group, too disappointed to stay, ended up settling around what is now metropolitan Lansing.
The settlement of fewer than 20 people would remain dormant until the winter of 1847 when the state constitution required the capital be moved from Detroit to a more central and safer location in the state's interior; many were concerned about Detroit's proximity to British-controlled Canada, which had captured Detroit in the War of 1812. The United States had recaptured the city in 1813, but these events led to the dire need to have the center of government relocate away from hostile British territory. There was also concern with Detroit's strong influence over Michigan politics, being the state's largest city as well as the capital city.
During the multi-day session to determine a new location for the state capital, many cities, including Ann Arbor, Marshall, and Jackson, lobbied hard to win this designation. Unable to publicly reach a consensus because of constant political wrangling, the Michigan House of Representatives privately chose the Township of Lansing out of frustration. When announced, many present openly laughed that such an insignificant settlement was now Michigan's capital. Two months later, Governor William L. Greenly signed into law the act of the legislature making Lansing Township the state capital.
With the announcement that Lansing Township had been made the capital, the small village quickly transformed into the seat of state government. Within months after it became the capital city, individual settlements began to develop along three key points along the Grand River in the township:
"Lower Village/Town", where present-day Old Town stands, was the oldest of the three villages. It was home to the first house built in Lansing in 1843 by pioneer James Seymour and his family. Lower Town began to develop in 1847 with the completion of the Franklin Avenue (now Grand River Avenue) covered bridge over the Grand River.
"Upper Village/Town", where present-day REO Town stands at the confluence of the Grand River and the Red Cedar River. It began to take off in 1847 when the Main Street Bridge was constructed over the Grand River. This village's focal point was the Benton House, a 4-story hotel, which opened in 1848. It was the first brick building in Lansing and was later razed in 1900.
"Middle Village/Town", where downtown Lansing now stands, was the last of the three villages to develop in 1848 with the completion of the Michigan Avenue bridge across the Grand River and the completion of the temporary capitol building which sat where Cooley Law School stands today on Capitol Avenue between Allegan and Washtenaw Streets, and finally the relocation of the post office to the village in 1851. This area would grow to become larger than the other two villages up and down river.
The collection of original settlements ("Upper Town", "Lower Town" and "Middle Town") had for some years been collectively referred to as the "Village of Michigan". On February 16, 1842, Alaiedon township was split into the townships of Lansing, Delhi and Meridian (originally suggested as "Genoa") based on a petition submitted in December 1841 by Henry North, Roswell Everett and Zalmon Holmes. Henry North proposed the name "Lansing" for the township at the request of his father, who wanted it named after their old town of Lansing, New York.
On April 3, 1848, the settlement, having grown to nearly 3,000 and encompassing about in area, was incorporated as a city, carving off a section of seven square miles from Lansing Township. The municipal government of the City of Lansing was initially shared with that of Lansing Township. The boundaries of the original city were Douglas Avenue to the north, Wood and Regent streets to the east, Mount Hope Avenue to the south, and Jenison Avenue to the west. These boundaries would remain until 1916. Lansing began to grow steadily over the next two decades with the completion of the railroads through the city, a plank road, and the completion of the current capitol building in 1878.
Most of what is known as Lansing today is the result of the city becoming an industrial powerhouse which began with the founding of Olds Motor Vehicle Company in August 1897. The company went through many changes, including a buyout, between its founding to 1905 when founder Ransom E. Olds started his new REO Motor Car Company, which would last in Lansing for another 70 years. Olds would be joined by the less successful Clarkmobile around 1903. Over the next decades, the city would be transformed into a major American industrial center for the manufacturing of automobiles and parts, among other industries. The city also continued to grow in area. By 1956, the city had grown to , and doubled in size over the next decade to its current size of roughly .
Today, the city's economy is diversified among government service, healthcare, manufacturing, insurance, banking, and education.
Notable events
Anti-slavery movement
In the late 1840s to early 1850s, the citizens of Lansing were unified against slavery, and the city became a secondary stop on the Underground Railroad, as one of the last steps of an escape route that led through Battle Creek, Schoolcraft and Cassopolis. From Lansing, the route led to Durand, and then to either Port Huron or Detroit.
Major Fires
The Kerns Hotel fire on December 11, 1934, was the deadliest in the city's history. Perhaps thirty-four people died in the fire, although the hotel register was also destroyed making an exact count impossible.
On February 8, 1951, the Elliott-Larsen Building was intentionally set on fire by a state office employee. The following morning, the seventh floor collapsed down to the next level, which destroyed a large number of state historical records.
Elephant incident
On September 26, 1963, a 12-year-old, 3,000-pound female dancing elephant named Rajje (alternately reported as Raji and Little Rajjee, among other variations) rebelled against her trainer during a performance in a shopping-center circus near what was then Logan Street and Holmes Road in Lansing, and escaped into the streets, aggravated by the frenzied pursuit of nearly 4,000 local residents. The incident ended with the shooting of the elephant by Lansing police. Provoked by the growing crowd, Rajje's rampage took her through the men's wear, sporting goods and gift departments of a local Arlan's discount store before leading police on a two-mile chase in which she knocked down and injured a 67-year-old man, tried to move a car, and caused thousands of dollars in damage before being killed.
Life Magazine quoted Rajje's trainer, William Pratt, as shouting at the scene, "Damn these people [...] They wouldn't leave her alone."
The incident was widely reported, including a photospread in Life. While the Lansing State Journal coverage stressed the danger of the incident, the Detroit Free Press noted that witnesses cried out "Murderers! Murderers!" as police fired eight shots.
Author Nelson Algren cites the injustice and sad end of the pursuit of "Raji, the Pixie-Eared Elephant" in continuity with the ambush of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow in his introduction to a 1968 biography of the outlaws. Then teenage Lansing residents who had goaded the elephant later on recalled the incident with sober regret in a local newspaper retrospective in 2011.
Geography
Lansing is the centerpiece of a region of Michigan known as Mid-Michigan or Central Michigan.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and is water. This figure includes two 425 Agreements with Alaiedon Township and Meridian Township, and the four 425 Agreements with Delta Township since 2000.
Since the 2010 Census, the city has entered into two additional 425 Agreements. The first agreement consisted of the temporary transfer of 1,888.2 acres of Lansing Capital Region International Airport to the city from DeWitt Township in 2011. The second agreement consisted of the temporary transfer of in Alaiedon Township for the expansion of the headquarters of Jackson National Life Insurance Company in 2013 bringing the area either fully or conditionally under control of the city to .
Under Michigan law, 425 Agreements are only temporary land sharing agreements and do not count as official annexations. The Census Bureau, however, for statistical purposes does count these as annexations. Not counting the temporary 425 Agreements, Lansing administers total.
Lansing is located in the south-central part of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, where the Grand River meets the Red Cedar River. The city occupies most of what had formerly been part of Lansing Charter Township. It has also annexed adjacent tracts of land in Delta Charter Township and Windsor Township in Eaton County to the west, Delhi Charter Township in Ingham County to the south, and in DeWitt Charter Township in Clinton County to the north. The city also controls three non-contiguous tracts of land through 425 Agreements (conditional land transfer agreements) with Meridian Charter Township, Delta Charter Township, and Alaiedon Township in Ingham County to the southeast.
Lansing elevations range between above sea level on the far south side of Lansing along Northrup Street near the Cedar Street intersection, to to above sea level along the Grand River.
The Grand River, the largest river in Michigan, flows through downtown Lansing, and the Red Cedar River, a tributary of the Grand, flows through the campus of Michigan State University to its confluence with the Grand in Lansing. Sycamore Creek, a tributary of the Red Cedar, flows northward through the southeastern part of the city. There are two lakes in the area, Park Lake and Lake Lansing, both northeast of the city. Lake Lansing is approximately in size and is a summer favorite for swimmers, boaters, and fishermen. Michigan State University Sailing Club and the Lansing Sailing Club are located on Lake Lansing, where sailing regattas are hosted throughout the summer.
The City of Lansing operates a total of of parkland, of which is parkland, are golflands, and are cemetery lands. However, this figure includes the Waverly Hills Golf Course and adjacent Michigan Avenue Park, whose are located within neighboring Lansing Township, but operated by the City of Lansing, and does not include the of the combined Hawk Island County Park and adjacent Soldan Dog Park operated by Ingham County within the city of Lansing. All together then, of the city (or approximately 10%) is publicly administered open space.
Climate
Lansing has a Midwestern humid continental climate (Köppen Dfb/Dfa) that is influenced by the Great Lakes, and is part of USDA Hardiness zone 5b. Winters are cold with moderate to heavy snowfall, while summers are very warm and humid. The monthly daily average temperature in July is , while the same figure for January is ; the annual mean is . On average, temperatures reach or exceed on 8.8 days of the year and drop to or below on 10.5 nights. Precipitation is generally greatest during summer but still frequent and significant in winter. Snowfall, which normally occurs from November to April, averages per season, significantly less than areas to the west such as Grand Rapids as Lansing is relatively immune to lake-effect snows; seasonal snowfall has historically ranged from in 1863−64 to in 1880−81. The highest and lowest officially recorded temperatures were on July 6, 2012, and on February 2, 1868, with the last or colder reading occurred on February 27, 1994; the record low maximum is on January 22, 1883, while, conversely, the record high minimum is on August 1, 2006, and July 18, 1942. Freezing temperatures in June are exceedingly rare and have not occurred in July or August since the 19th century; on average, they arrive on October 4 and depart on May 7, allowing a growing season of 149 days. The average window for measurable snow (≥) is November 4 thru April 6.
Neighborhoods
The city's downtown is dominated by state government buildings, especially the State Capitol; but downtown has also experienced recent growth in new restaurants, retail stores and residential developments. Downtown Lansing had a historic city market that was one of the oldest continuously operating farmers' markets in the United States, until it closed in 2019. Downriver and north of downtown is historic Old Town Lansing with many architecturally significant buildings dating to the mid-19th century. Directly south of downtown on the other side of I-496 along Washington Avenue lies "REO Town", the birthplace of the automobile in the United States, is where Ransom Eli Olds built factories along Washington Avenue. Ransom Eli Olds' home, which once overlooked the factories along Washington Avenue, was displaced by I-496.
Lansing is generally divided into four sections: the Eastside, Westside, Northwestside, and Southside. Each section contains a diverse array of neighborhoods. The Eastside, located east of the Grand River and north of the Red Cedar River, is the most ethnically diverse side of Lansing, with foreign-born citizens making up more of its population than any other side in the city. The Eastside's commercial districts are located mainly along Michigan Avenue, and to a lesser extent along Kalamazoo Street. It is anchored by Frandor Shopping Center on the very eastern edge of the eastside.
The Westside, roughly located north, west, and south of the Grand River as it curves through the city, is sometimes regarded as the city's most socio-economically diverse section. This side also contains Lansing's downtown area, though this neighborhood is often included as an area all its own. Outside downtown, this side is largely a collection of residential neighborhoods and is served by only one other commercial area along Saginaw Street. However, it also includes a small part of the Old Town Commercial Association.
The Northwestside, generally located north of the Grand River, with the city limits defining its north and western borders, is physically the smallest side of the city. This part of the city includes moderate-density residential areas and some green areas. North of Grand River Avenue, the main street of the side, lie warehouses and light industrial areas served by a major rail line that runs through Lansing. The most notable landmark of this side is Lansing's airport: Capital Region International Airport.
The Southside, usually described as the neighborhoods located south of the Grand and Red Cedar rivers and the I-496 freeway, is physically the largest and most populous side of the city. The area is largely residential in nature (south of Mount Hope Road near the northern edge) and is served by numerous commercial strips along Cedar Street, Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, Pennsylvania Avenue, and Waverly Road, which run north–south. The large Edgewood District is located in the southernmost part of the Southside and is sometimes referred to as South Lansing. Though it is the largest area of the city by both physical size and population, it has often been regarded by Southside citizens as Lansing's most overlooked and forgotten area, as most of Lansing's attention in recent decades has been put into the revitalization of the city's historic core located mostly on small parts of both the East and Westside.
The middle of the Southside—South-Central Lansing—contains the Old Everett Area. This location once contained the Everett School District and was annexed into the city in 1948.
Unincorporated areas adjacent to Lansing include parts of Lansing Charter Township, such as the unincorporated community of Edgemont Park, as well as parts of Delta Charter Township, such as the unincorporated community of Waverly. Though they are not part of the City of Lansing, these unincorporated communities often use Lansing mailing addresses.
Districts
Cherry Hill
Churchill Downs
Colonial Village
Eastside
Edgewood
Genesee
Gier Park
Hosmer
Lansing-Eaton
Moores Park
Museum District
Old Everett
Old Town
REO Town
Stadium District
Walnut
Washington Square
Westside
Demographics
2020 Census
As of the census of 2020, there were 112,644 people residing in the city. The population density was 2,874.3 per square mile (1,109.7/km2). There were 54,599 housing units at an average density of 1,393.1 per square mile (537.9/km2). The racial makeup of the city was 55.0% White (51.3% Non-Hispanic White), 23.3% African American, 0.8% Native American, 4.2% Asian, 0.03% Pacific Islander, 4.9% from other races, and 11.5% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 13.7% of the population.
2010 census
As of the census of 2010, there were 114,297 people, 48,450 households, and 26,234 families residing in the city. The population density was 3,174.9 per square mile (1,226.3/km2). There were 54,181 housing units at an average density of 1,505.0 per square mile (581.3/km2). The racial makeup of the city was 61.2% White (55.5% Non-Hispanic White), 23.7% African American, 0.8% Native American, 3.7% Asian, 0.04% Pacific Islander, 4.3% from other races, and 6.2% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 12.5% of the population. Foreign-born residents made up 8.3% of the population.
The median age in the city was 32.2 years. 24.2% of residents were under the age of 18; 12.3% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 30.2% were from 25 to 44; 23.8% were from 45 to 64; and 9.7% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the city was 48.4% male and 51.6% female.
2000 census
As of the census of 2000, there were 119,128 people, 49,505 households, and 28,366 families residing in the city. The population density was 3,399.0 per square mile (1,312.3/km2). There were 53,159 housing units at an average density of 1,516.8/sq mi (585.6/km2). The racial makeup of the city was 65.28% White (61.4% non-Hispanic White), 21.91% African American, 0.80% Native American, 2.83% Asian, 0.05% Pacific Islander, 4.54% from other races, and 4.60% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 10.0% of the population. The city's foreign-born population stood at 5.9%.
As of 2000, the city's population rose by 32,293 (27%) to 151,421 during the day due to the influx of workers.
There were 49,505 households, out of which 30.0% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 35.8% were married couples living together, 17.0% had a female householder with no husband present, and 42.7% were non-families. 33.2% of all households were made up of individuals, and 8.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.39 and the average family size was 3.08.
In the city, the population was spread out, with 26.8% under the age of 18, 11.4% from 18 to 24, 32.7% from 25 to 44, 19.3% from 45 to 64, and 9.7% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 31 years. For every 100 females, there were 92.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.9 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $34,833, and the median income for a family was $41,283. Males had a median income of $32,648 versus $27,051 for females. The per capita income for the city was $17,924. About 13.2% of families and 16.9% of the population were below the poverty line, including 23.2% of those under age 18 and 9.0% of those age 65 or over.
Immigration and refugee resettlement
The Brookings Institution has ranked Greater Lansing among the top 10 "medium-sized metropolitan areas" in the United States for refugee resettlement, with 5,369 refugees resettled from 1983 to 2004. St. Vincent Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Services handle the adult and unaccompanied minor resettlement processes, respectively, while other organizations, such as the Refugee Development Center, focus on providing educational and social support services to refugees in the Lansing area. Nearby Michigan State University provides a source of volunteers for many of these programs.
, the Lansing area has about 2,000 Arab Americans, mostly second-generation Christian Lebanese Americans as well as some Palestinian Americans.
The city is also home to a large number of temporary foreign residents enrolled as international students at Lansing Community College and nearby Michigan State University, with the city's visitors bureau specifically promoting Mandarin-language video tours of Lansing, touting the "more than 6,000" Chinese students enrolled at MSU. The Lansing School District offers language immersion programs for its students in both Spanish and Chinese.
Government
Lansing is administered under a mayor–council government, more specifically a strong mayor form in which the mayor is the city's chief executive officer. The mayor is obligated to appoint department heads (subject to council approval), and draft and administer a city budget among other responsibilities. The mayor may also veto legislation from council, though the veto can be overridden by an affirmative vote of two-thirds of the council. The mayor and city clerk are elected at-large every four years.
The city council is the legislative body of the city and consists of eight members. Four members are elected from four single-member districts using the first-past-the-post method in the city's wards, and four members are elected at-large using the block voting method. Members of the council serve staggered four-year terms. Half the council is up for election every two years, including two ward seats and two at-large seats. At its first meeting of the year, the council chooses from amongst its members a president and vice president. The president is the council's presiding officer, and also chooses the chairs of council committees. In the absence of the president and vice president, the city clerk chairs the council.
The city largely supports the Democratic Party. It has not had a Republican mayor in office since 1993 when then-Democratic state representative David Hollister defeated incumbent Mayor Jim Crawford, who had formerly served as a Republican member on the Ingham County Board of Commissioners. However, all city elections are held on an officially nonpartisan basis.
Since given the ability to do so by the state in 1964, the city has levied an income tax of 1 percent on residents. 0.5 percent on non-residents, and 1.0 percent on corporations.
State and federal representation
Lansing is currently split between three congressional districts. Most of the city lies within the boundaries of Michigan's 8th congressional district, which is represented by Democratic congresswoman Elissa Slotkin, who was elected in the 2018 midterm election. The small portion of the city that extends into Eaton County is located in Michigan's 7th congressional district, which has been represented by Republican congressman Tim Walberg since 2011. The small portion of the city that extends into Clinton County is located in Michigan's 4th congressional district, which has been represented by Republican congressman John Moolenaar since 2015.
At the state level, most of Lansing is located in the 23rd district of the Michigan Senate, which has been represented by Democratic state senator Curtis Hertel Jr. since 2015. The small portions of the city that extend into Eaton County and Clinton County is located in the 24th district of the Michigan Senate, are currently represented by Republican state senator Tom Barrett. The city lies in the 67th, 68th, 71st, and 93rd districts of the Michigan State House of Representatives, represented by state representatives Kara Hope (D-67), Sarah Anthony (D-68), Angela Witwer (D-71), and Graham Filler (R-93).
Though Lansing is not the designated county seat, some Ingham County offices are located in downtown Lansing, including a branch office of the county clerk, the county personnel office, and some courtrooms.
Economy
The Lansing metropolitan area's major industries are government, education, insurance, healthcare, and automobile manufacturing. Being the state capital, many state government workers reside in the area.
Michigan State University, Thomas M. Cooley Law School, and Lansing Community College are significant employers in the region.
General Motors has offices and a hi-tech manufacturing facility in Lansing and several manufacturing facilities immediately outside the city, as well, in nearby Lansing and Delta townships. The Lansing area is headquarters to four major national insurance companies: Auto-Owners Insurance Company, Jackson National Life, the Accident Fund, and Michigan Millers Insurance Company. Other insurers based in Lansing include Farm Bureau Insurance of Michigan.
Locally owned and operated convenience store chain Quality Dairy is a significant presence in the Lansing market.
The recent decline of the auto industry in the region has increased the region's awareness of the importance of a strategy to foster the high-technology sector.
Early availability of high-speed Internet in 1996, as well as the MSU, Cooley Law School, and Lansing Community College student body population, fostered an intellectual environment for information technology companies to incubate. Lansing has a number of technology companies in the fields of information technology and biotechnology.
Healthcare
Sparrow Hospital is a 740-bed hospital affiliated with Michigan State University and its College of Human Medicine and College of Osteopathic Medicine. In February 2009 it was announced that Sparrow and MSU formalized their partnership to increase research and faculty recruitment. Sparrow Hospital is the Regional Center for pediatrics, cancer care, including radiation therapy, trauma care, neurological care, high-risk obstetrics and neonatal intensive care. The Sparrow Tower was finished January 2008 and includes but is not limited to: a dedicated pediatric emergency room (the only one in the region), the largest adult emergency room in the region, state-of-the-art operating rooms, a rooftop helipad, oncology center, heart and vascular center and orthopedic department. In addition, 4,500 deliveries are performed at Sparrow Hospital annually, rehabilitation, and emergency treatment is more than any other hospital in mid-Michigan. The Sparrow Health System Laboratory performs over 3 million tests per year, at various laboratory sites, which include four remote testing facilities and thirteen patient service centers. Sparrow Hospital is certified as a Level I Trauma Center by the American College of Surgeons. In May 2009 Sparrow announced that it now has its own helicopter service based at its downtown Lansing hospital's new $2.5 million helipad. The addition is expected to increase helicopter patient transport to the hospital from four a month to 400 a year.
McLaren–Greater Lansing Hospital is also a university-affiliated teaching hospital. Ingham enjoys a special affiliation in radiation oncology with the University of Michigan and Michigan State University; McLaren–Greater Lansing is part of the Great Lakes Cancer Institute (GLCI). McLaren received five-star ratings for Coronary bypass surgery, Cardiac interventions, Treatment of heart attacks, Total knee replacement, Total hip replacement, Back and neck surgery, Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease care, Community-Acquired pneumonia care.
Urban renewal and downtown redevelopment
Several urban renewal projects by private developers are adding higher end apartments and condominiums to the Lansing market. The Arbaugh, a former department store across from Cooley Law School, was converted into apartments in 2005. Motor Wheel Lofts, a former industrial site, was converted into loft-style living spaces in mid-2006. A combination retail and residential complex immediately south of Cooley Law School Stadium (formerly Oldsmobile Park) called "The Stadium District", was completed in 2007. The Stadium District was redeveloped using a grant from the Michigan State Housing Development Authority through the Cool Cities Initiative.
In May 2006 the historically significant Mutual Building located on Capitol Avenue was purchased by The Christman Company to be renovated back to its original grandeur and used as the company's headquarters. Additional downtown developments include the renovation of the historic Hollister Building and the expansion of the former Abrams Aerial Building. As of August 2008, an 18-story condominium high-rise called Capitol Club Tower was in the design phase with the adjacent parking structure having been approved by city council and purchased by the developer. The city market, in existence since 1909, was approved to be sold for a multi-building mixed-use development called MarketPlace, right next to the current market on the adjacent riverfront. The MarketPlace project was redeveloped along with BallPark North, another mixed-use development that will be immediately north of Oldsmobile Stadium. A new city market was built north of the Lansing Center, but closed in 2019. Across the river, the Accident Fund Insurance Company renovated the former (art deco) Ottawa Street Powerplant into their new headquarters. In addition to the renovation, Accident Fund Insurance Company built a modern addition to the north of the historic portion that is connected by an atrium for more office space, as well as a parking structure. In 2009, the restaurant Troppo began construction on a new 2-story building that will have an open-air patio on the roof facing the Capitol building. Developer Eyde Co. announced plans on April 6, 2010, to renovate the historical and prominent Knapp's building in downtown Lansing for first floor retail, office space and apartments/condos on the top floor (5th) in a $22–24 million project.
Retail
The Lansing area has two major malls: Lansing Mall and Meridian Mall. Other major retail centers include Eastwood Towne Center and Frandor Shopping Center.
Education
Michigan State University, a member of the Big Ten Conference, is known as "the pioneer land grant college", located in neighboring East Lansing. MSU has one of the largest land campuses in the United States and is home to several nationally and internationally recognized academic and research-oriented programs. Michigan State offers over 200 programs of study and is home to fourteen different degree-granting schools and colleges including two medical schools, a veterinary school, a law school, and numerous PhD programs. It is the only university in the nation with three medical schools. MSU is consistently one of the top three programs in the United States for study abroad programs. The MSU College of Education is also consistently rated as the top education program in the nation. Michigan State University is the oldest agricultural college in the United States. The MSU School of Criminal Justice is the oldest continuous degree granting criminal justice program in the nation. In 2008, the Department of Energy announced MSU won the contest for a $550 million Facility for Rare Isotope Beams that will attract top researchers from around the world to conduct experiments in nuclear science, astrophysics and applications of isotopes to other fields.
The Thomas M. Cooley Law School is the largest law school in the nation and is located in downtown Lansing. Cooley is fully accredited by the American Bar Association. A majority of Cooley students are from out-of-state.
Lansing Community College offers more than 500 areas of study to over 18,000 students at its main facilities in Lansing, and another 5,000 students at twenty-nine extension centers and a site in Otsu, Japan. LCC's new, state-of-the-art University Center enables students to take courses with the goal of eventually earning an undergraduate or graduate degree from other Michigan institutions. The University Center stands on the former site of "Old Central", Lansing's first public high school, which was established in 1875 as Lansing High School. (In the 1920s it was renamed as Central High School, and in 1957 became the first building on the LCC campus.)
Other institutions of higher education include Western Michigan University (branch campus in Delta Township), Davenport University in Downtown Lansing, Central Michigan University (branch campus), and Great Lakes Christian College (campus in Delta Township).
Schools
Public schools
Lansing School District
Lansing Eastern High School
Lansing Everett High School
J. W. Sexton High School
Grand Ledge Public Schools
Ingham Intermediate School District
Ingham Academy High School
Mid-Michigan Public School Academy
Shabazz Public School Academy (named after Malcolm X)
Waverly School District
Private schools
Capitol City Baptist School
Emanuel Lutheran School
Lansing Catholic High School
Lansing Christian Schools
New Covenant Christian School
Our Savior Lutheran School
Cultural celebrations
Parades
Each year in August, the Michigan Pride festival includes a LGBT pride parade from Riverfront Park to the capitol.
The Capital City African American Cultural Association hosts an African American Parade and Heritage Festival every year for over a decade. The chair of the CCAACA is the Rev. Dr. Michael C. Murphy, who was pastor of St. Stephen's Community Church and is currently the pastor of Peoples Congregational, United Church of Christ, Washington D.C. He is a former State Representative for the 68th House District in Michigan, former President of the Lansing City Council, and a long-time community leader. The parade highlights African American culture, its influence in Michigan, and recognizes prominent African American individuals in the community and their contributions to Lansing as the grand marshal of each parade. The festival immediately following the parade consists of live entertainment, soul food and fun for adults and children. It is held every year on the first Saturday in August and begins at 11:00 a.m. in downtown Lansing, Michigan. The festival is held at Ferris Park in downtown Lansing. In 2009 they celebrated ten years.
The annual Silver Bells in the City Electric Light Parade proceeds through the streets of downtown Lansing every November, the Friday before Thanksgiving. It is followed by the lighting of Michigan's official Christmas tree in front of the State Capitol and a firework show (weather permitting) over the State Capitol.
Music
The Lansing Symphony Orchestra has been entertaining generations of Lansing-area residents since 1929. The current music director is Timothy Muffett.
The Lansing JazzFest and the Old Town BluesFest host leading musicians, and are two of the larger music festivals held each year in the state.
Old Town's Festival of the Moon and Sun is a two-day festival of food and live music.
Old Town Oktoberfest is a two-day event drawing hundreds to the Old Town neighborhood for live polka music, authentic German food and world-renowned German-style beer.
It was announced in May 2007 that the city would host "Blues on the Square", a series of summertime blues concerts featuring national acts Thursday nights along Washington Square in downtown Lansing. In 2008 the event regularly drew crowds over 500.
The Common Ground Festival is a musical event held over a week every July at the Adado Riverfront Park in downtown Lansing pulling in crowds over 90,000 for the week. It began in 2000 and replaced the Michigan Festival that was held in nearby East Lansing. It has a wide range of musical acts. In 2008 acts included Staind, Drowning Pool, Sammy Hagar, The Hard Lessons, Snoop Dogg, REO Speedwagon, Kellie Pickler, Seether and Trace Adkins. 2012 acts included The Flaming Lips, Man Man, Motion City Soundtrack, Joshua Davis, mewithoutyou, with local ensembles The Lansing Unionized Vaudeville Spectacle and Vandalay on the bill.
Every year City Pulse names the "Top Original Act" in the Top of the Town Awards. The 2010 winner was Eastside neighborhood native indie rock band Loune. The 2011 winner was pop punk act Frank and Earnest.
On June 23, 2018, REO Town hosted the Three Stacks Music Festival featuring Against Me!, Murder by Death, Pup, mewithoutyou, Screaming Females, Camp Cove, Petal, Oceanator, City Mouse, Worn Spirit, Stefanie Haapala, Ness Lake, and Secret Forte.
Other notable Lansing musicians include Tell Yo Mama, Root Doctor, Jen Sygit, James Gardin, The Further Adventures of Fat Boy and the Jive Turkeys, MSU Professors of Jazz, Joe Hertler and the Rainbow Seekers, Jahshua Smith, BLAT! Pack, Deacon Earl and Frontier Ruckus.
Points of interest
Farmers' markets
Lansing has several farmers' markets throughout the city in the summer months. These markets include the Allen Street Farmer's Market on the city's eastside, the Westside Farmers' Market, the Old Town Farmer's Market, and the South Lansing Farmer's Market.
Libraries
The Library of Michigan and Historical Center is a highly regarded state library and research center. The library is one of the top five genealogical research facilities in the United States. The Capital Area District Library has 13 branches within Ingham County, some of these include the Main Library downtown, the Foster Library on the east side, and the South Lansing Library on the south side.
Lansing Art Gallery
The Lansing Art Gallery, founded in 1965, is Lansing's oldest art gallery and a non-profit membership organization. Showcasing the works of Michigan artists such as Frances Farrand Dodge, the gallery is committed to providing cultural enhancement opportunities for Michigan residents. The museum is open to the public with free admission.
Museums
Lansing is home to a number of small, specialized museums:
The Impression 5 Science Center is a children's science center located in a historic wagon works factory on the Grand River.
The Michigan Library and Historical Center contains one of the 10 largest genealogy collections in the nation, has a museum dedicated to Michigan's history among other attractions.
The Michigan Women's Hall of Fame is a museum dedicated to the historical accomplishments and achievements of Michigan women. The house is located directly south of downtown in the 1903-built Cooley-Haze House. The museum is surrounded by Cooley Gardens.
The R. E. Olds Transportation Museum is dedicated to the education of Lansing's role in the development of transportation, particularly the automobile.
The Turner-Dodge House is a museum dedicated to Lansing's early pioneers. The museum sits in the Classical Revival-styled Turner-Dodge Mansion, built in 1858 for James and Marion Turner, and later by their daughter and her husband. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Theatre
The Riverwalk Theatre, (formerly the Okemos Barn Theatre), the Lansing Civic Players, and the now defunct BoarsHead Theater are or were all located in downtown.
Peppermint Creek Theatre Company is a well established "new" theater company.
Happendance, Michigan's longest-running professional modern dance company, has been based in Greater Lansing since 1976.
The Greater Lansing Ballet Company is a ballet and dance company.
The Creole Gallery brings in various musicians and hosts the Icarus Falling Theater group.
Potter Park Zoo
The historic Potter Park Zoo, located along the Red Cedar River in Lansing, is a 102-acre park that has more than 160 species of animals. The park holds numerous programs and events for children and families to enjoy. With annual attendance increasing every year since 2006 (110,167 in 2006, 137,237 in 2008, and 167,000 in 2009) there are $667,100 in capital improvements planned for 2009 including a giant walk-in aviary and a new female tiger. In 2009 the zoo began a $1.4 million renovation to its rhinoceros exhibit. This is in addition to $1.3 million spent on capital improvements in 2008. In 2011 the Black Rhino exhibit opened; and three tiger cubs were born. In 2016 a 3-acre moose exhibit opened in the park.
Other area destinations
In October 2009 the Wharton Center for Performing Arts completed a , $18.5 million expansion and renovation, having already spent over $1.3 million in 2008. Many Broadway shows come to The Wharton Center before traveling to theaters in larger places such as Chicago. The Kresge Art Museum, the MSU Museum, and the Abrams Planetarium are highly acclaimed cultural destinations located on the campus of Michigan State University in East Lansing. In June 2007 MSU announced the plans to build a new art museum after a $26 million gift from Eli and Edythe Broad. Internationally known Pritzker Prize winning architect Zaha Hadid of London won the design competition for the East Lansing museum that was completed in November 2012.
Media
Newspapers and magazines
Lansing State Journal
City Pulse
The New Citizens Press
Capital Gains Media
Capital Area Women's Lifestyle Magazine
The Greater Lansing Business Monthly
Greater Lansing Woman Magazine
The Hub
MIRS News-Michigan Information & Research Service
The State News
Gongwer News Service
The Michigan Bulletin
Patient In Charge Magazine
Television
Cable slots listed reflect the Comcast cable system in Lansing.
WLNS 6 (CBS) (Cable 9)
WILX 10 (NBC) (Cable 4)
WKAR 23 (PBS) (Cable 13) / DT2 (World) (Cable 20) / DT3 (Create) (Cable 18) / DT4 (PBS Kids) (Cable 293)
WSYM 47 (Fox) (Cable 7)
WLAJ 53 (ABC) (Cable 3) / DT2 (The CW) (Cable 5)
WILX maintains WSYM's News programming. Both affiliates broadcast their newscasts at the News 10 studios in Lansing. Often the same reporters are used on both broadcasts.
Radio
Note: If the station has no city listed before the format, it is licensed to Lansing.
88.1 WLGH – (Leroy Township, contemporary Christian) "Smile FM"
88.5 WJOM – (Eagle, contemporary Christian) "Smile FM"
88.9 WDBM – (East Lansing, college/Michigan State University) "The Impact"
89.7 WLNZ – (public radio/Lansing Community College)
90.5 WKAR – (East Lansing, public radio/Michigan State University)
Note: WKAR has an effective radiated power of 86,000 watts
91.3 WOES – (Ovid, polka/Ovid-Elsie High School)
92.1 WQTX – (St. Johns, sports talk) "The Team"
92.9 WLMI – (Grand Ledge, CHR) "Lansing's New Hits"
93.7 WBCT-FM – (Grand Rapids, country) "B93"
Note: WBCT has an effective radiated power 320,000 watts
94.1 WWDK – (Jackson, Classic Country) "94.1 Duke FM"
94.9 WMMQ – (East Lansing, classic rock)
96.5 WQHH – (DeWitt, urban) "Power 96.5"
97.5 WJIM – (CHR) "97-5 Now-FM"
99.1 WFMK – (East Lansing, adult contemporary)
99.9 W260BX - (religious/southern gospel) "Family Life Radio"
Rebroadcasts WUNN 1110 AM.
100.7 WITL-FM – (country) "Whittle"
101.7 WHZZ – (adult hits) "Mike-FM"
105.7 WSRW – (Grand Rapids, adult contemporary) "Star 105.7"
106.1 WJXQ – (Charlotte, active rock) "Q106"
107.3 WTNR – (Greenville/Grand Rapids, Country)
730 AM WVFN – (East Lansing, sports talk) "The Game"
870 AM WKAR – (East Lansing, NPR news/talk)
1110 AM WUNN – (Mason, religious/southern gospel) "Family Life Radio"
1180 AM WXLA – Dimondale, (adult standards) "Timeless Classics 1180"
1240 AM WJIM – (news/talk) "Lansing's Big Talker"
1320 AM WILS – (news/talk) "More Compelling Talk Radio"
1390 AM WLCM – (Charlotte, religious)
1580 AM WWSJ – (St. Johns, urban contemporary gospel) "Joy 1580"
162.400 WXK81 – NOAA Weather Radio (Onondaga, weather)
Radio stations from Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Saginaw, and Flint can also be heard in the Lansing area.
Sports
The Lansing Lugnuts are a High-A Central league, Minor League Baseball team, currently affiliated with the Oakland A's. The team plays its home games at Jackson Field, which was built at a cost of $12.7 million and opened in 1996 in downtown Lansing. It was partially renovated in 2006. Jackson Field has a seating capacity of 11,215 fans, and was built to accommodate additional expansion. Previously known as Oldsmobile Park, the facility was renamed Thomas M. Cooley Law School Stadium in April 2010, in reference to the park's new sponsor. It was renamed again to Jackson Field after a change in sponsorship to Jackson National Life.
The Summit at the Capital Centre is a hockey arena and convention center located in the suburb of Dimondale that hosts youth and high school hockey.
The Lansing Capitals began play in the International Basketball League in 2006 but eventually disband for a few seasons. The team recently resumed playing in the newly formed Independent Basketball Association in 2011.
Michigan State University, located in East Lansing, is the largest university in the State of Michigan. MSU sponsors both men's and women's sports, usually competing as a member of the Big Ten Conference. The Spartans have won National Titles in Men's Basketball, Football, Men's Boxing, Men's Cross Country, Men's Gymnastics, Men's Ice Hockey, Men's Soccer, and Men's Wrestling.
On November 27, 2011, MSU beat Northwestern in their Big Ten Football finale to secure the top Big Ten record at 7–1 in conference play, and qualified to play in the first ever Big Ten Football Championship Game which was held December 3, 2011, at Lucas Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana against the Wisconsin Badgers.
Lansing Community College also sponsors many sports, competing as members of the Michigan Community College Athletic Association. The Stars have won NJCAA titles in the following sports: Women's Softball, Men's Basketball, Women's Basketball, Men's Cross Country, Women's Cross Country, Women's Marathon and Men's Marathon.
The Lansing area is also known for its many golf courses, with two courses owned by Michigan State University, four municipal courses, and many additional public and private courses in the area. Walnut Hills Country Club in nearby East Lansing formerly hosted the LPGA's Oldsmobile Classic from 1992 to 2000. The Michigan PGA recently relocated from the Detroit area to Bath, Michigan, which is on the northern edge of Lansing.
The Capital City Stealth, Lansing's Semi-pro Football team was founded in 2010. The Stealth have posted winning seasons in every year of their existence. They play in the Great Lakes Football League which is nationally known as one of the top leagues in the country. The Stealth appeared in the USFA AA National Championship game for 3 straight seasons from 2012 to 2014 and won the USFA AA National Championship in 2014 over the Pioneer Valley Knights (New England Football League) by the score of 22–13. The team is made up of Lansing area athletes who play for the love of the game – none of the Stealth coaches or players are paid.
In the 1980s and 1990s Lansing was a major player in semi-pro football. The Lansing Crusaders won MFL/MCFL championships in 1982, 1983, 1985, 1987, 1989, and 1990. The team finished second in 1984, 1986, and 1991.
Other past sports teams include:
Lansing – Michigan State League (baseball) – 1889 to 1890
Lansing Senators – Michigan State League (baseball) – 1895 and 1902
Southern Michigan League – 1907 to 1914
Central League – 1921 to 1922
renamed the Lansing Lancers – Michigan State League – 1940
and then back as the Lansing Senators – Michigan State League – 1941
Lansing Capitals – North American Basketball League – 1966–67 to 1967–68
Lansing Lancers – International Hockey League – 1974 to 1975
Capital City Cardinals – Michigan Charity Football League – 1980
Lansing Crusaders – Michigan Charity Football League – 1980 to 1988
Michigan Football League – 1989 to 1994
Capital City Cowboys – Michigan Football League – 1992
Lansing Ice Nuts – International Independent Hockey League – 2003 to 2004
Lansing United – USL PDL – 2014 to 2018
Lansing Ignite – USL League One – 2018 to 2019
Transportation
Airports
Scheduled commercial airline service is offered from Capital Region International Airport (formerly known as Capital City Airport). Delta Air Lines maintains routes to Detroit and Minneapolis. United Airlines maintains routes to Chicago O'Hare. American Airlines offers non-stop flights to Washington, D.C. and Chicago O'Hare. Apple Vacations provides seasonal flights to Cancún, Mexico; Montego Bay, Jamaica; and Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. UPS has a freight hub at Capital Region International Airport making up part of the 42 million pounds of annual cargo moving through the airport. In 2008 the airport received a port of entry designation – known as Port Lansing – and now has a permanent customs facility, thus changing its name to reflect the port of entry status. The same year a extension to the largest of the three runways – now – was completed to allow for larger aircraft to use the airport.
Major highways
runs from Indianapolis north to Lansing and east to Flint and Port Huron, connecting to Canada.
runs from Muskegon, past Grand Rapids and Lansing, to Detroit.
loops through downtown Lansing, connecting with I-96 on either end.
is a loop route running through Lansing and East Lansing.
is a loop route running through Lansing.
a loop route off I-496 serving the state capitol and other downtown facilities.
is a north–south highway passing between the city and neighboring East Lansing, continuing northerly toward Clare and Grayling and southerly toward Jackson, Michigan and into Ohio.
(Saginaw Street/Grand River Avenue)
(Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard)
Railways
Amtrak provides intercity passenger rail service at a stop in nearby East Lansing, on the Blue Water line from Chicago to Port Huron.
Three freight railroads serve Lansing including Canadian National Railway, CSX Transportation, and the Jackson & Lansing Railroad.
Public transportation
Capital Area Transportation Authority (CATA) provides public transit bus service to the Lansing-East Lansing Metropolitan area on 33 routes. CATA boasts the second highest ridership in the state of Michigan after Detroit with 53,000 daily rides in September 2008 and 11,306,339 rides in fiscal year 2008. CATA also provides paratransit services through Spec-Tran and the "Night Owl." Also, the "Entertainment Express" (CATA route 4) runs Thursday through Saturday from 7 pm to 2 am connecting downtown Lansing's and East Lansing's entertainment districts. CATA won APTA's America's Best Transit Award in the medium-size category (4–30 million rides) in 2007. CATA has two transportation centers (CTC), one in downtown Lansing and one on the campus of Michigan State University. In 2010, a study was conducted to consider ways of enhancing the Lansing-to-East Lansing route (currently known as Route 1), with options including enhanced bus service, single-car trolley service and light rail service. (Heavy rail was eliminated as an option early in the process, with enhanced bus service eventually winning out.)
Greyhound Lines provides inter-city bus service. CATA and Greyhound are both located in the CATA Transportation Center (CTC) in downtown Lansing.
Several taxicab companies serve the area. In 2001, Big Daddy Taxi opened using large vans to address the safety concerns of drunk driving and offered $3 rides for students of Michigan State University. In 2008 the Green Cab Company opened using Toyota Prius hybrid cars to provide "green" cabs to Lansing.
The Michigan Flyer provides bus service between Lansing and Detroit Metro Airport 12 times daily, with a stop in Ann Arbor along the way.
Bicycling
The , non-motorized Lansing River Trail runs along the Grand River and the Red Cedar River, running as far east as Michigan State University, and passes Potter Park Zoo, the Capitol Loop, and several other destinations of interest, and as far west as Moores Park. The trail is accessible at many points along it, some with car parking lots. The trails breadth is extended from time to time. Currently, the trailheads are: North – Dietrich Park; East – Kircher Park; South – Maguire Park; West – Moores Park. All segments are hard-surfaced. The River Trail connects to other pathways/trails in the Lansing-metro area: East – Michigan State University path system; South – Sycamore Trail. Since the trail follows a river, most street crossings use platforms under existing street bridges to provide an uncommon amount of grade separation, to the benefit of both trail users and automobile traffic. As of February 2015, the River Trail is under construction to add paths as far as Holt.
Utilities
Water supply, power and steam are municipally owned utilities which are provided by Lansing Board of Water & Light. In 2008 the Lansing BWL constructed Michigan's largest solar array towards the goal of increasing renewable energy in the energy grid.
Natural gas is provided by Consumers Energy.
Notable people
Joel Bakan, Canadian law professor and documentary filmmaker
Ray Stannard Baker, journalist and author
L. Anna Ballard, first female medical physician in Lansing, Michigan
Terry Brunk, ex-WWE, ECW, TNA/WCW professional wrestler known as "Sabu"
Timothy Busfield, actor and director, thirtysomething, Field of Dreams, The West Wing
Charles G. Callard, co-founder of Callard Madden & Associates and a pioneer developer of corporate valuation models
Candi Carpenter, country singer & songwriter
Jim Cash, screenwriter of Top Gun and other commercially successful films
Carolyn Cassady, writer, wife of beat generation icon Neal Cassady
Doc Corbin Dart, singer of punk band The Crucifucks
DJ Infamous, hip-hop DJ
Tony Earl, former Governor of Wisconsin
Ed Emshwiller, visual artist and founder of CalArts computer animation Lab
Rashad Evans, UFC fighter
David Fairchild, botanist
Ed Farhat, professional wrestler known as "The Sheik"
Jonathan Farwell, actor
Bryn Forbes, NBA basketball player
Chris Hansen, Dateline NBC correspondent
Thom Hartmann, radio talk-show host and author
Ahney Her, actress, Gran Torino
Joel Higgins, actor, graduated from Michigan State
Andy Hilbert, NHL hockey player
Keiffer Hubbell, figure skater
Madison Hubbell, figure skater
Steve Huffman, American entrepreneur and web developer, CEO and co-founder of Reddit and also co-founded the now defunct airfare search site Hipmunk.
John Hughes, film writer and director, born in Lansing
Carol Hutchins, softball Hall of Famer
Magic Johnson, Michigan State University and NBA basketball star, Hall of Famer, president of Los Angeles Lakers, co-owner of Los Angeles Dodgers
Jacquelyn Kelley, All-American Girls Professional Baseball League player
Michael Kimball, novelist
Lisa Kron, theatre actress and playwright
Matthew Lillard, actor
Dean Look, football player and official
Malcolm X, human rights activist
Jef Mallett, creator and artist of the comic strip Frazz
Suzanne Malveaux, CNN television news reporter
Todd Martin, tennis player
Pop McKale, athlete and coach; University of Arizona arena bears his name
Drew Miller, NHL hockey player
Kelly Miller, NHL player, ranks third all-time for the Washington Capitals in games played
Kip Miller, NHL player, 1990 recipient of Hobey Baker Memorial Award
Ryan Miller, NHL and Olympic hockey player
Muhsin Muhammad, NFL football player
Needlz, hip-hop and rap producer
Ransom E. Olds, automobile manufacturer, founded Olds Motor Vehicle Company
Larry Page, co-founder of Google.com
DJ Perry, film writer, actor and director, born in Lansing
Wally Pipp, former Baseball player and member of the New York Yankees first World Series championship team 1923
Alice Pollitt, All-American Girls Professional Baseball League player
Corey Potter, NHL hockey player
Merv Pregulman, NFL player for Green Bay Packers, Detroit Lions
Dan Price, co-founder and CEO of Gravity Payments
Greg Raymer, 2004 World Series of Poker champion
Carl Benton Reid, actor
Burt Reynolds, Oscar-nominated and Golden Globe award-winning actor, film and television star, born and raised in Lansing
Vic Saier, MLB player
Steven Seagal, actor and martial artist, born in Lansing
Frederic L. Smith, co-founder of General Motors, born in Lansing
John Smoltz, MLB pitcher, 1996 Cy Young Award winner, Hall of Famer
Jim "Soni" Sonefeld, drummer and percussionist for Hootie & the Blowfish
Lori Nelson Spielman, Author of the bestseller Life List
Debbie Stabenow, U.S. senator
Gary Starkweather, Inventor of the laser printer
Marcus Taylor, professional basketball player
George Teague, NFL player for Green Bay Packers, Dallas Cowboys, Miami Dolphins
Denzel Valentine, professional basketball player
Jay Vincent, professional basketball player
Sam Vincent, professional basketball player
Gretchen Whitmer, Governor of Michigan and former Minority Leader of the Michigan State Senate
Howard Wolpe, Congressman who was a Lansing resident during his term in office.
Lebbeus Woods, architect.
International relations
Sister cities
Lansing's sister cities are:
Akuapim South District, Ghana
Asan, South Korea
Guadalajara, Mexico
Ōtsu, Japan
Pianezza, Italy
Saltillo, Mexico
Sanming, China
Lansing was a sister city of Kubyashi District in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The agreement began in 1992 and ended in practice when a change to the political structure of Saint Petersburg cancelled the district. The relations were officially severed by Lansing in 2013 as a protest of the laws against LGBT rights in Russia.
Friendship cities
Lansing's friendship cities are:
Cosenza, Italy
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Sakaide, Japan
Notes
A.
References
Further reading
Balaskovitz, Andy. "Despite hurdles, consolidating Lansing, East Lansing and Lansing Township makes sense." Lansing City Pulse. Wednesday, November 28, 2012. News section. Available on NewsBank, Record Number: 33658e6f3e435749c466e59bf44dd1b692752.
External links
City of Lansing official website
Greater Lansing Convention & Visitors Bureau
Great Lakes Capital Fund promotes affordable housing and community economic development activities in Lansing
The Lansing Republican, excerpts from 1859 editions
OpenStreetMap:Lansing, Michigan
Cities in Clinton County, Michigan
Cities in Eaton County, Michigan
Cities in Ingham County, Michigan
Populated places established in 1835
1835 establishments in Michigan Territory |
18539 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leukemia | Leukemia | Leukemia (also spelled leukaemia and pronounced ) is a group of blood cancers that usually begin in the bone marrow and result in high numbers of abnormal blood cells. These blood cells are not fully developed and are called blasts or leukemia cells. Symptoms may include bleeding and bruising, bone pain, fatigue, fever, and an increased risk of infections. These symptoms occur due to a lack of normal blood cells. Diagnosis is typically made by blood tests or bone marrow biopsy.
The exact cause of leukemia is unknown. A combination of genetic factors and environmental (non-inherited) factors are believed to play a role. Risk factors include smoking, ionizing radiation, some chemicals (such as benzene), prior chemotherapy, and Down syndrome. People with a family history of leukemia are also at higher risk. There are four main types of leukemia—acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), acute myeloid leukemia (AML), chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and chronic myeloid leukemia (CML)—as well as a number of less common types. Leukemias and lymphomas both belong to a broader group of tumors that affect the blood, bone marrow, and lymphoid system, known as tumors of the hematopoietic and lymphoid tissues.
Treatment may involve some combination of chemotherapy, radiation therapy, targeted therapy, and bone marrow transplant, in addition to supportive care and palliative care as needed. Certain types of leukemia may be managed with watchful waiting. The success of treatment depends on the type of leukemia and the age of the person. Outcomes have improved in the developed world. Five-year survival rate is 57% in the United States. In children under 15, the five-year survival rate is greater than 60% or even 90%, depending on the type of leukemia. In children with acute leukemia who are cancer-free after five years, the cancer is unlikely to return.
In 2015, leukemia was present in 2.3 million people worldwide and caused 353,500 deaths. In 2012 it newly developed in 352,000 people. It is the most common type of cancer in children, with three-quarters of leukemia cases in children being the acute lymphoblastic type. However, over 90% of all leukemias are diagnosed in adults, with CLL and AML being most common in adults. It occurs more commonly in the developed world.
Classification
General classification
Clinically and pathologically, leukemia is subdivided into a variety of large groups. The first division is between its acute and chronic forms:
Acute leukemia is characterized by a rapid increase in the number of immature blood cells. The crowding that results from such cells makes the bone marrow unable to produce healthy blood cells resulting in low hemoglobin and low platelets. Immediate treatment is required in acute leukemia because of the rapid progression and accumulation of the malignant cells, which then spill over into the bloodstream and spread to other organs of the body. Acute forms of leukemia are the most common forms of leukemia in children.
Chronic leukemia is characterized by the excessive buildup of relatively mature, but still abnormal, white blood cells. Typically taking months or years to progress, the cells are produced at a much higher rate than normal, resulting in many abnormal white blood cells. Whereas acute leukemia must be treated immediately, chronic forms are sometimes monitored for some time before treatment to ensure maximum effectiveness of therapy. Chronic leukemia mostly occurs in older people but can occur in any age group.
Additionally, the diseases are subdivided according to which kind of blood cell is affected. This divides leukemias into lymphoblastic or lymphocytic leukemias and myeloid or myelogenous leukemias:
In lymphoblastic or lymphocytic leukemias, the cancerous change takes place in a type of marrow cell that normally goes on to form lymphocytes, which are infection-fighting immune system cells. Most lymphocytic leukemias involve a specific subtype of lymphocyte, the B cell.
In myeloid or myelogenous leukemias, the cancerous change takes place in a type of marrow cell that normally goes on to form red blood cells, some other types of white cells, and platelets.
Combining these two classifications provides a total of four main categories. Within each of these main categories, there are typically several subcategories. Finally, some rarer types are usually considered to be outside of this classification scheme.
Specific types
Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most common type of leukemia in young children. It also affects adults, especially those 65 and older. Standard treatments involve chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Subtypes include precursor B acute lymphoblastic leukemia, precursor T acute lymphoblastic leukemia, Burkitt's leukemia, and acute biphenotypic leukemia. While most cases of ALL occur in children, 80% of deaths from ALL occur in adults.
Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) most often affects adults over the age of 55. It sometimes occurs in younger adults, but it almost never affects children. Two-thirds of affected people are men. The five-year survival rate is 85%. It is incurable, but there are many effective treatments. One subtype is B-cell prolymphocytic leukemia, a more aggressive disease.
Acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) occurs far more commonly in adults than in children, and more commonly in men than women. It is treated with chemotherapy. The five-year survival rate is 20%. Subtypes of AML include acute promyelocytic leukemia, acute myeloblastic leukemia, and acute megakaryoblastic leukemia.
Chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) occurs mainly in adults; a very small number of children also develop this disease. It is treated with imatinib (Gleevec in United States, Glivec in Europe) or other drugs. The five-year survival rate is 90%. One subtype is chronic myelomonocytic leukemia.
Hairy cell leukemia (HCL) is sometimes considered a subset of chronic lymphocytic leukemia, but does not fit neatly into this category. About 80% of affected people are adult men. No cases in children have been reported. HCL is incurable but easily treatable. Survival is 96% to 100% at ten years.
T-cell prolymphocytic leukemia (T-PLL) is a very rare and aggressive leukemia affecting adults; somewhat more men than women are diagnosed with this disease. Despite its overall rarity, it is the most common type of mature T cell leukemia; nearly all other leukemias involve B cells. It is difficult to treat, and the median survival is measured in months.
Large granular lymphocytic leukemia may involve either T-cells or NK cells; like hairy cell leukemia, which involves solely B cells, it is a rare and indolent (not aggressive) leukemia.
Adult T-cell leukemia is caused by human T-lymphotropic virus (HTLV), a virus similar to HIV. Like HIV, HTLV infects CD4+ T-cells and replicates within them; however, unlike HIV, it does not destroy them. Instead, HTLV "immortalizes" the infected T-cells, giving them the ability to proliferate abnormally. Human T-cell lymphotropic virus types I and II (HTLV-I/II) are endemic in certain areas of the world.
Clonal eosinophilias (also called clonal hypereosinophilias) are a group of blood disorders characterized by the growth of eosinophils in the bone marrow, blood, and/or other tissues. They may be pre-cancerous or cancerous. Clonal eosinophilias involve a "clone" of eosinophils, i.e., a group of genetically identical eosinophils that all grew from the same mutated ancestor cell. These disorders may evolve into chronic eosinophilic leukemia or may be associated with various forms of myeloid neoplasms, lymphoid neoplasms, myelofibrosis, or the myelodysplastic syndrome.
Pre-leukemia
Transient myeloproliferative disease, also termed transient leukemia, involves the abnormal proliferation of a clone of non-cancerous megakaryoblasts. The disease is restricted to individuals with Down syndrome or genetic changes similar to those in Down syndrome, develops in a baby during pregnancy or shortly after birth, and resolves within 3 months or, in ~10% of cases, progresses to acute megakaryoblastic leukemia. Transient myeloid leukemia is a pre-leukemic condition.
Signs and symptoms
The most common symptoms in children are easy bruising, pale skin, fever, and an enlarged spleen or liver.
Damage to the bone marrow, by way of displacing the normal bone marrow cells with higher numbers of immature white blood cells, results in a lack of blood platelets, which are important in the blood clotting process. This means people with leukemia may easily become bruised, bleed excessively, or develop pinprick bleeds (petechiae).
White blood cells, which are involved in fighting pathogens, may be suppressed or dysfunctional. This could cause the person's immune system to be unable to fight off a simple infection or to start attacking other body cells. Because leukemia prevents the immune system from working normally, some people experience frequent infection, ranging from infected tonsils, sores in the mouth, or diarrhea to life-threatening pneumonia or opportunistic infections.
Finally, the red blood cell deficiency leads to anemia, which may cause dyspnea and pallor.
Some people experience other symptoms, such as fevers, chills, night sweats, weakness in the limbs, feeling fatigued and other common flu-like symptoms. Some people experience nausea or a feeling of fullness due to an enlarged liver and spleen; this can result in unintentional weight loss. Blasts affected by the disease may come together and become swollen in the liver or in the lymph nodes causing pain and leading to nausea.
If the leukemic cells invade the central nervous system, then neurological symptoms (notably headaches) can occur. Uncommon neurological symptoms like migraines, seizures, or coma can occur as a result of brain stem pressure. All symptoms associated with leukemia can be attributed to other diseases. Consequently, leukemia is always diagnosed through medical tests.
The word leukemia, which means 'white blood', is derived from the characteristic high white blood cell count that presents in most afflicted people before treatment. The high number of white blood cells is apparent when a blood sample is viewed under a microscope, with the extra white blood cells frequently being immature or dysfunctional. The excessive number of cells can also interfere with the level of other cells, causing further harmful imbalance in the blood count.
Some people diagnosed with leukemia do not have high white blood cell counts visible during a regular blood count. This less-common condition is called aleukemia. The bone marrow still contains cancerous white blood cells that disrupt the normal production of blood cells, but they remain in the marrow instead of entering the bloodstream, where they would be visible in a blood test. For a person with aleukemia, the white blood cell counts in the bloodstream can be normal or low. Aleukemia can occur in any of the four major types of leukemia, and is particularly common in hairy cell leukemia.
Causes
There is no single known cause for any of the different types of leukemias. The few known causes, which are not generally factors within the control of the average person, account for relatively few cases. The cause for most cases of leukemia is unknown. The different leukemias likely have different causes.
Leukemia, like other cancers, results from mutations in the DNA. Certain mutations can trigger leukemia by activating oncogenes or deactivating tumor suppressor genes, and thereby disrupting the regulation of cell death, differentiation or division. These mutations may occur spontaneously or as a result of exposure to radiation or carcinogenic substances.
Among adults, the known causes are natural and artificial ionizing radiation and some chemicals, notably benzene and alkylating chemotherapy agents for previous malignancies. Use of tobacco is associated with a small increase in the risk of developing acute myeloid leukemia in adults. Cohort and case-control studies have linked exposure to some petrochemicals and hair dyes to the development of some forms of leukemia. Diet has very limited or no effect, although eating more vegetables may confer a small protective benefit.
Viruses have also been linked to some forms of leukemia. For example, human T-lymphotropic virus (HTLV-1) causes adult T-cell leukemia.
A few cases of maternal-fetal transmission (a baby acquires leukemia because its mother had leukemia during the pregnancy) have been reported. Children born to mothers who use fertility drugs to induce ovulation are more than twice as likely to develop leukemia during their childhoods than other children.
Radiation
Large doses of Sr-90 emission from nuclear reactor accidents, nicknamed bone seeker increases the risk of bone cancer and leukemia in animals and is presumed to do so in people.
Genetic conditions
Some people have a genetic predisposition towards developing leukemia. This predisposition is demonstrated by family histories and twin studies. The affected people may have a single gene or multiple genes in common. In some cases, families tend to develop the same kinds of leukemia as other members; in other families, affected people may develop different forms of leukemia or related blood cancers.
In addition to these genetic issues, people with chromosomal abnormalities or certain other genetic conditions have a greater risk of leukemia. For example, people with Down syndrome have a significantly increased risk of developing forms of acute leukemia (especially acute myeloid leukemia), and Fanconi anemia is a risk factor for developing acute myeloid leukemia. Mutation in SPRED1 gene has been associated with a predisposition to childhood leukemia.
Chronic myelogenous leukemia is associated with a genetic abnormality called the Philadelphia translocation; 95% of people with CML carry the Philadelphia mutation, although this is not exclusive to CML and can be observed in people with other types of leukemia.
Non-ionizing radiation
Whether or not non-ionizing radiation causes leukemia has been studied for several decades. The International Agency for Research on Cancer expert working group undertook a detailed review of all data on static and extremely low frequency electromagnetic energy, which occurs naturally and in association with the generation, transmission, and use of electrical power. They concluded that there is limited evidence that high levels of ELF magnetic (but not electric) fields might cause some cases of childhood leukemia. No evidence for a relationship to leukemia or another form of malignancy in adults has been demonstrated. Since exposure to such levels of ELFs is relatively uncommon, the World Health Organization concludes that ELF exposure, if later proven to be causative, would account for just 100 to 2400 cases worldwide each year, representing 0.2 to 4.9% of the total incidence of childhood leukemia for that year (about 0.03 to 0.9% of all leukemias).
Diagnosis
Diagnosis is usually based on repeated complete blood counts and a bone marrow examination following observations of the symptoms. Sometimes, blood tests may not show that a person has leukemia, especially in the early stages of the disease or during remission. A lymph node biopsy can be performed to diagnose certain types of leukemia in certain situations.
Following diagnosis, blood chemistry tests can be used to determine the degree of liver and kidney damage or the effects of chemotherapy on the person. When concerns arise about other damages due to leukemia, doctors may use an X-ray, MRI, or ultrasound. These can potentially show leukemia's effects on such body parts as bones (X-ray), the brain (MRI), or the kidneys, spleen, and liver (ultrasound). CT scans can be used to check lymph nodes in the chest, though this is uncommon.
Despite the use of these methods to diagnose whether or not a person has leukemia, many people have not been diagnosed because many of the symptoms are vague, non-specific, and can refer to other diseases. For this reason, the American Cancer Society estimates that at least one-fifth of the people with leukemia have not yet been diagnosed.
Treatment
Most forms of leukemia are treated with pharmaceutical medication, typically combined into a multi-drug chemotherapy regimen. Some are also treated with radiation therapy. In some cases, a bone marrow transplant is effective.
Acute lymphoblastic
Management of ALL is directed towards control of bone marrow and systemic (whole-body) disease. Additionally, treatment must prevent leukemic cells from spreading to other sites, particularly the central nervous system (CNS) e.g. monthly lumbar punctures. In general, ALL treatment is divided into several phases:
Induction chemotherapy to bring about bone marrow remission. For adults, standard induction plans include prednisone, vincristine, and an anthracycline drug; other drug plans may include L-asparaginase or cyclophosphamide. For children with low-risk ALL, standard therapy usually consists of three drugs (prednisone, L-asparaginase, and vincristine) for the first month of treatment.
Consolidation therapy or intensification therapy to eliminate any remaining leukemia cells. There are many different approaches to consolidation, but it is typically a high-dose, multi-drug treatment that is undertaken for a few months. People with low- to average-risk ALL receive therapy with antimetabolite drugs such as methotrexate and 6-mercaptopurine (6-MP). People who are high-risk receive higher drug doses of these drugs, plus additional drugs.
CNS prophylaxis (preventive therapy) to stop cancer from spreading to the brain and nervous system in high-risk people. Standard prophylaxis may include radiation of the head and/or drugs delivered directly into the spine.
Maintenance treatments with chemotherapeutic drugs to prevent disease recurrence once remission has been achieved. Maintenance therapy usually involves lower drug doses and may continue for up to three years.
Alternatively, allogeneic bone marrow transplantation may be appropriate for high-risk or relapsed people.
Chronic lymphocytic
Decision to treat
Hematologists base CLL treatment on both the stage and symptoms of the individual person. A large group of people with CLL have low-grade disease, which does not benefit from treatment. Individuals with CLL-related complications or more advanced disease often benefit from treatment. In general, the indications for treatment are:
Falling hemoglobin or platelet count
Progression to a later stage of disease
Painful, disease-related overgrowth of lymph nodes or spleen
An increase in the rate of lymphocyte production
Treatment approach
Most CLL cases are incurable by present treatments, so treatment is directed towards suppressing the disease for many years, rather than curing it. The primary chemotherapeutic plan is combination chemotherapy with chlorambucil or cyclophosphamide, plus a corticosteroid such as prednisone or prednisolone. The use of a corticosteroid has the additional benefit of suppressing some related autoimmune diseases, such as immunohemolytic anemia or immune-mediated thrombocytopenia. In resistant cases, single-agent treatments with nucleoside drugs such as fludarabine, pentostatin, or cladribine may be successful. Younger and healthier people may choose allogeneic or autologous bone marrow transplantation in the hope of a permanent cure.
Acute myelogenous
Many different anti-cancer drugs are effective for the treatment of AML. Treatments vary somewhat according to the age of the person and according to the specific subtype of AML. Overall, the strategy is to control bone marrow and systemic (whole-body) disease, while offering specific treatment for the central nervous system (CNS), if involved.
In general, most oncologists rely on combinations of drugs for the initial, induction phase of chemotherapy. Such combination chemotherapy usually offers the benefits of early remission and a lower risk of disease resistance. Consolidation and maintenance treatments are intended to prevent disease recurrence. Consolidation treatment often entails a repetition of induction chemotherapy or the intensification of chemotherapy with additional drugs. By contrast, maintenance treatment involves drug doses that are lower than those administered during the induction phase.
Chronic myelogenous
There are many possible treatments for CML, but the standard of care for newly diagnosed people is imatinib (Gleevec) therapy. Compared to most anti-cancer drugs, it has relatively few side effects and can be taken orally at home. With this drug, more than 90% of people will be able to keep the disease in check for at least five years, so that CML becomes a chronic, manageable condition.
In a more advanced, uncontrolled state, when the person cannot tolerate imatinib, or if the person wishes to attempt a permanent cure, then an allogeneic bone marrow transplantation may be performed. This procedure involves high-dose chemotherapy and radiation followed by infusion of bone marrow from a compatible donor. Approximately 30% of people die from this procedure.
Hairy cell
Decision to treat
People with hairy cell leukemia who are symptom-free typically do not receive immediate treatment. Treatment is generally considered necessary when the person shows signs and symptoms such as low blood cell counts (e.g., infection-fighting neutrophil count below 1.0 K/µL), frequent infections, unexplained bruises, anemia, or fatigue that is significant enough to disrupt the person's everyday life.
Typical treatment approach
People who need treatment usually receive either one week of cladribine, given daily by intravenous infusion or a simple injection under the skin, or six months of pentostatin, given every four weeks by intravenous infusion. In most cases, one round of treatment will produce a prolonged remission.
Other treatments include rituximab infusion or self-injection with Interferon-alpha. In limited cases, the person may benefit from splenectomy (removal of the spleen). These treatments are not typically given as the first treatment because their success rates are lower than cladribine or pentostatin.
T-cell prolymphocytic
Most people with T-cell prolymphocytic leukemia, a rare and aggressive leukemia with a median survival of less than one year, require immediate treatment.
T-cell prolymphocytic leukemia is difficult to treat, and it does not respond to most available chemotherapeutic drugs. Many different treatments have been attempted, with limited success in certain people: purine analogues (pentostatin, fludarabine, cladribine), chlorambucil, and various forms of combination chemotherapy (cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, prednisone CHOP, cyclophosphamide, vincristine, prednisone [COP], vincristine, doxorubicin, prednisone, etoposide, cyclophosphamide, bleomycin VAPEC-B). Alemtuzumab (Campath), a monoclonal antibody that attacks white blood cells, has been used in treatment with greater success than previous options.
Some people who successfully respond to treatment also undergo stem cell transplantation to consolidate the response.
Juvenile myelomonocytic
Treatment for juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia can include splenectomy, chemotherapy, and bone marrow transplantation.
Teeth
Before dental work it is recommended that the person's physician be consulted. Dental work is recommended before chemotherapy or radiation therapy. Those in remission can be treated per normal.
Prognosis
The success of treatment depends on the type of leukemia and the age of the person. Outcomes have improved in the developed world. The average five-year survival rate is 61% in the United States. In children under 15, the five-year survival rate is greater (60 to 85%), depending on the type of leukemia. In children with acute leukemia who are cancer-free after five years, the cancer is unlikely to return.
Outcomes depend on whether it is acute or chronic, the specific abnormal white blood cell type, the presence and severity of anemia or thrombocytopenia, the degree of tissue abnormality, the presence of metastasis and lymph node and bone marrow infiltration, the availability of therapies and the skills of the health care team. Treatment outcomes may be better when people are treated at larger centers with greater experience.
Epidemiology
In 2010, globally, approximately 281,500 people died of leukemia. In 2000, approximately 256,000 children and adults around the world developed a form of leukemia, and 209,000 died from it. This represents about 3% of the almost seven million deaths due to cancer that year, and about 0.35% of all deaths from any cause. Of the sixteen separate sites the body compared, leukemia was the 12th most common class of neoplastic disease and the 11th most common cause of cancer-related death. Leukemia occurs more commonly in the developed world.
United States
About 245,000 people in the United States are affected with some form of leukemia, including those that have achieved remission or cure. Rates from 1975 to 2011 have increased by 0.7% per year among children. Approximately 44,270 new cases of leukemia were diagnosed in the year 2008 in the US. This represents 2.9% of all cancers (excluding simple basal cell and squamous cell skin cancers) in the United States, and 30.4% of all blood cancers.
Among children with some form of cancer, about a third have a type of leukemia, most commonly acute lymphoblastic leukemia. A type of leukemia is the second most common form of cancer in infants (under the age of 12 months) and the most common form of cancer in older children. Boys are somewhat more likely to develop leukemia than girls, and white American children are almost twice as likely to develop leukemia than black American children. Only about 3% cancer diagnoses among adults are for leukemias, but because cancer is much more common among adults, more than 90% of all leukemias are diagnosed in adults.
Race is a risk factor in the United States. Hispanics, especially those under the age of 20, are at the highest risk for leukemia, while whites, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and Alaska Natives are at higher risk than African Americans.
More men than women are diagnosed with leukemia and die from the disease. Around 30 percent more men than women have leukemia.
UK
Overall, leukemia is the eleventh most common cancer in the UK (around 8,600 people were diagnosed with the disease in 2011), and it is the ninth most common cause of cancer death (around 4,800 people died in 2012).
History
Leukemia was first described by anatomist and surgeon Alfred-Armand-Louis-Marie Velpeau in 1827. A more complete description was given by pathologist Rudolf Virchow in 1845. Around ten years after Virchow's findings, pathologist Franz Ernst Christian Neumann found that the bone marrow of a deceased person with leukemia was colored "dirty green-yellow" as opposed to the normal red. This finding allowed Neumann to conclude that a bone marrow problem was responsible for the abnormal blood of people with leukemia.
By 1900, leukemia was viewed as a family of diseases as opposed to a single disease. By 1947, Boston pathologist Sidney Farber believed from past experiments that aminopterin, a folic acid mimic, could potentially cure leukemia in children. The majority of the children with ALL who were tested showed signs of improvement in their bone marrow, but none of them was actually cured. This, however, led to further experiments.
In 1962, researchers Emil J. Freireich, Jr. and Emil Frei III used combination chemotherapy to attempt to cure leukemia. The tests were successful with some people surviving long after the tests.
Etymology
Observing an abnormally large number of white blood cells in a blood sample from a person, Virchow called the condition Leukämie in German, which he formed from the two Greek words leukos (λευκός), meaning "white", and haima (αἷμα), meaning "blood".
Society and culture
According to Susan Sontag, leukemia was often romanticized in 20th-century fiction, portrayed as a joy-ending, clean disease whose fair, innocent and gentle victims die young or at the wrong time. As such, it was the cultural successor to tuberculosis, which held this cultural position until it was discovered to be an infectious disease. The 1970 romance novel Love Story is an example of this romanticization of leukemia.
In the United States, around $5.4 billion is spent on treatment a year.
Research directions
Significant research into the causes, prevalence, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of leukemia is being performed. Hundreds of clinical trials are being planned or conducted at any given time. Studies may focus on effective means of treatment, better ways of treating the disease, improving the quality of life for people, or appropriate care in remission or after cures.
In general, there are two types of leukemia research: clinical or translational research and basic research. Clinical/translational research focuses on studying the disease in a defined and generally immediately applicable way, such as testing a new drug in people. By contrast, basic science research studies the disease process at a distance, such as seeing whether a suspected carcinogen can cause leukemic changes in isolated cells in the laboratory or how the DNA changes inside leukemia cells as the disease progresses. The results from basic research studies are generally less immediately useful to people with the disease.
Treatment through gene therapy is currently being pursued. One such approach used genetically modified T cells, known as chimeric antigen receptor T cells (CAR-T cells), to attack cancer cells. In 2011, a year after treatment, two of the three people with advanced chronic lymphocytic leukemia were reported to be cancer-free and in 2013, three of five subjects who had acute lymphocytic leukemia were reported to be in remission for five months to two years. Subsequent studies with a variety of CAR-T types continue to be promising. As of 2018, two CAR-T therapies have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. CAR-T treatment has significant side effects, and loss of the antigen targeted by the CAR-T cells is a common mechanism for relapse. The stem cells that cause different types of leukemia are also being researched.
Pregnancy
Leukemia is rarely associated with pregnancy, affecting only about 1 in 10,000 pregnant women. How it is handled depends primarily on the type of leukemia. Nearly all leukemias appearing in pregnant women are acute leukemias. Acute leukemias normally require prompt, aggressive treatment, despite significant risks of pregnancy loss and birth defects, especially if chemotherapy is given during the developmentally sensitive first trimester. Chronic myelogenous leukemia can be treated with relative safety at any time during pregnancy with Interferon-alpha hormones. Treatment for chronic lymphocytic leukemias, which are rare in pregnant women, can often be postponed until after the end of the pregnancy.
See also
Acute erythroid leukemia
Antileukemic drugs, medications used to kill leukemia cells
Cancer-related fatigue
Hematologic diseases, the large class of blood-related disorders, including leukemia
Multiple myeloma
References
External links
Leukaemia information from Cancer Research UK
Lymphatic vessel diseases
Wikipedia medicine articles ready to translate
Articles containing video clips |
18542 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Length | Length | Length is a measure of distance. In the International System of Quantities, length is a quantity with dimension distance. In most systems of measurement a base unit for length is chosen, from which all other units are derived. In the International System of Units (SI) system the base unit for length is the metre.
Length is commonly understood to mean the most extended dimension of a fixed object. However, this is not always the case and may depend on the position the object is in.
Various terms for the length of a fixed object are used, and these include height, which is vertical length or vertical extent, and width, breadth or depth. Height is used when there is a base from which vertical measurements can be taken. Width or breadth usually refer to a shorter dimension when length is the longest one. Depth is used for the third dimension of a three dimensional object.
Length is the measure of one spatial dimension, whereas area is a measure of two dimensions (length squared) and volume is a measure of three dimensions (length cubed).
History
Measurement has been important ever since humans settled from nomadic lifestyles and started using building materials, occupying land and trading with neighbours. As trade between different places increased, the need for standard units of length increased. And later, as society has become more technologically oriented, much higher accuracy of measurement is required in an increasingly diverse set of fields, from micro-electronics to interplanetary ranging.
Under Einstein's special relativity, length can no longer be thought of as being constant in all reference frames. Thus a ruler that is one metre long in one frame of reference will not be one metre long in a reference frame that is moving relative to the first frame. This means the length of an object varies depending on the speed of the observer.
Use in mathematics
Euclidean geometry
In Euclidean geometry, length is measured along straight lines unless otherwise specified and refers to segments on them. Pythagoras's theorem relating the length of the sides of a right triangle is one of many applications in Euclidean geometry. Length may also be measured along other types of curves and is referred to as arclength.
In a triangle, the length of an altitude, a line segment drawn from a vertex perpendicular to the side not passing through the vertex (referred to as a base of the triangle), is called the height of the triangle.
The area of a rectangle is defined to be length × width of the rectangle. If a long thin rectangle is stood up on its short side then its area could also be described as its height × width.
The volume of a solid rectangular box (such as a plank of wood) is often described as length × height × depth.
The perimeter of a polygon is the sum of the lengths of its sides.
The circumference of a circular disk is the length of the boundary (a circle) of that disk.
Other geometries
In other geometries, length may be measured along possibly curved paths, called geodesics. The Riemannian geometry used in general relativity is an example of such a geometry. In spherical geometry, length is measured along the great circles on the sphere and the distance between two points on the sphere is the shorter of the two lengths on the great circle, which is determined by the plane through the two points and the center of the sphere.
Graph theory
In an unweighted graph, the length of a cycle, path, or walk is the number of edges it uses. In a weighted graph, it may instead be the sum of the weights of the edges that it uses.
Length is used to define the shortest path, girth (shortest cycle length), and longest path between two vertices in a graph.
Measure theory
In measure theory, length is most often generalized to general sets of via the Lebesgue measure. In the one-dimensional case, the Lebesgue outer measure of a set is defined in terms of the lengths of open intervals. Concretely, the length of an open interval is first defined as
so that the Lebesgue outer measure of a general set may then be defined as
Units
In the physical sciences and engineering, when one speaks of , the word is synonymous with distance. There are several units that are used to measure length. Historically, units of length may have been derived from the lengths of human body parts, the distance traveled in a number of paces, the distance between landmarks or places on the Earth, or arbitrarily on the length of some common object.
In the International System of Units (SI), the base unit of length is the metre (symbol, m) and is now defined in terms of the speed of light (about 300 million metres per second). The millimetre (mm), centimetre (cm) and the kilometre (km), derived from the metre, are also commonly used units. In U.S. customary units, English or Imperial system of units, commonly used units of length are the inch (in), the foot (ft), the yard (yd), and the mile (mi). A unit of length used in navigation is the nautical mile (nmi).
Units used to denote distances in the vastness of space, as in astronomy, are much longer than those typically used on Earth (metre or centimetre) and include the astronomical unit (au), the light-year, and the parsec (pc).
Units used to denote sub-atomic distances, as in nuclear physics, are much smaller than the centimetre. Examples include the dalton and the fermi.
See also
Conversion of units
Humorous units of length
Length measurement
Metric system
Metric units
Orders of magnitude (length)
Reciprocal length
References
Physical quantities
SI base quantities |
18543 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis%20Ginzberg | Louis Ginzberg | Louis Ginzberg (, Levy Gintzburg; , Levy Ginzberg; November 28, 1873 – November 11, 1953) was a Russian-born American rabbi and Talmudic scholar of Lithuanian-Jewish descent, contributing editor to numerous articles of The Jewish Encyclopedia (1906), and leading figure in the Conservative movement of Judaism during the early 20th century. He was born in Kaunas, Vilna Governorate (then called Kovno) and died in New York City.
Biographical background
Ginzberg was born into a religious Lithuanian-Jewish family whose piety and erudition was well known. The family traced its lineage back to the revered Talmudist, halakhic scholar, and kabbalist master Gaon of Vilna. Ginzberg sought to emulate the Vilna Gaon's intermingling of "academic knowledge" in Torah studies under the label "historical Judaism"; for example, in his book Students, Scholars and Saints, Ginzberg quotes the Vilna Gaon's instruction, "Do not regard the views of the Shulchan Aruch as binding if you think that they are not in agreement with those of the Talmud."
He wrote in his memoirs that he felt saddened that he had grieved his father, as he recognized that his pious father was disappointed that his son had chosen a more liberal path with regards to Jewish law in contrast to those of his forefathers. Ginzberg first arrived in America in 1899, unsure where he belonged or what he should pursue. Almost immediately, he accepted a position at Hebrew Union College and subsequently wrote articles for the Jewish Encyclopedia. Still, he had not found his niche.
Judaism studied in a historical context
In 1903, he began teaching at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS) in New York City, where he taught until his death. Throughout his life, all of his works were infused with the belief that Judaism and Jewish history could not be understood properly without a firm grasp of Jewish law. Instead of just studying the halakha, Louis Ginzberg wrote responsa, i.e. formal responses to questions of Jewish law.
Many of Ginzberg's Orthodox Jewish peers had deep reservations about his choice to work at JTS. The seminary explicitly encouraged its faculty and students to study rabbinical literature within its social and historical context; this was sometimes known as Wissenschaft des Judentums, or the "scientific study of Judaism." As a result of this, most Orthodox Jews viewed his works as unacceptable, and virtually none refer to them, much less rely on them, today.
On account of his impressive scholarship in Jewish studies, Ginzberg was one of sixty scholars honored with a doctorate by Harvard University in celebration of its tercentenary. Ginzberg's knowledge made him the expert to defend Judaism both in national and international affairs. In 1906, he defended the Jewish community against anti-Semitic accusations that Jews ritually slaughtered Gentiles. In 1913, Louis Marshall requested that Ginzberg refute a blood libel charge in Kiev based on Jewish sources.
Legacy at the Jewish Theological Seminary
Ginzberg began teaching the Talmud at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS) from its reorganization in 1902 until his death in 1953. For fifty years he trained two generations of future Conservative rabbis. During his era, Ginzberg influenced almost every rabbi of the Conservative movement in a personal way. For some, Louis Ginzberg serves as a role model even today. Today's leading Conservative posek in Israel, rabbi David Golinkin, has written profusely on Louis Ginzberg. Golinkin has recently published a collection of responsa containing 93 questions answered by Ginzberg.
In the opening address, Ginzberg spoke of the need to keep Conservative Jewry under the rubric of halakha. The conception that in religious matters anyone, however ignorant, can judge for himself, is the direct denial of the old Jewish maxim, 'The ignorant cannot be pious' (Avot 2:5)… The majority vote of a Board of Directors of a synagogue is, after all, a negligible quantity when it is in opposition to the vote of historical Judaism with its myriad of Saints and thousands of Sages…The sorting, distributing, selecting, harmonizing and completing can only be done by experienced hands. Ginzberg's initiative to base halakhic decisions on law committees and not laymen is the method the Conservative movement describes as its present one till today.
In 1918, at the Sixth Annual Convention, Ginzberg, as the acting president, declared that United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism stood for 'historical Judaism' and thus elaborates:
"Now let us understand the exact meaning of the expression historical Judaism…Looking at Judaism from a historical point of view, we become convinced that there is no one aspect deep enough to exhaust the content of such a complex phenomenon as Judaism…Accordingly, Torah-less Judaism… would be an entirely new thing and not the continuation of something given…
Responsa on wine during Prohibition
One of his responsa concerns the use of wine in the Jewish community during the Prohibition Era. The Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified on January 16, 1920, declared that "the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within... the United States... for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited." The subsequent Volstead Act defined "intoxicating liquors" and provided for several exceptions, one of which as for sacramental use. The Christian Church was able to successfully regulate the use of ceremonial wine. The clergy could easily monitor the nominal amount of sacramental wine that each worshipper drank, especially because it was usually drunk only in Church and only on Sundays (for the communion or Eucharist ceremony).
This was not the case for the Jews. Jews needed a greater quantity of wine per person. Furthermore, the wine was drunk in the privacy of the home on Shabbat, Jewish holidays, weddings, and brit milah (circumcision ceremonies). This alone would have made the regulation of ceremonial wine complicated. It was not difficult for crooks to rig illegal "wine synagogues" to trick the government to receive their wine which would then be bootlegged.
While contemporary Orthodox Jewish authorities are generally permissive of grape juice as a wine substitute, Orthodox rabbis of the 1920s soundly rejected its use. The Reform movement in 1920 proclaimed that grape juice be used instead of wine to eliminate future complaints. Shortly afterwards, on January 24, 1922, the Conservative movement publicized the 71-page response written by Ginzberg tackling the halakhic aspects of drinking grape juice instead of wine in light of the historical circumstances. Besides Ginzberg's well-grounded decision to permit grape juice, he includes meta-halakhic reasoning:
"…The decision of the author of Magen Abraham that the commandment is honored best by the use of old wine is rejected. Even this authority would admit that it is better to pronounce the Kiddush over new wine than to desecrate the Divine Name and to disgrace the Jewish people, and we well know the damage caused the Jewish people by the trafficking in sacramental wine."
At the time of Ginzburg's responsum, the Orthodox rabbinate had exclusive authority to sanction sacramental wine for Jews, and the responsum was thought by the Orthodox community to be tainted by self-interest.
Works
Ginzberg was the author of a number of scholarly Jewish works, including a commentary on Talmud Yerushalmi (the Jerusalem Talmud) and his six-volume (plus a one-volume index) The Legends of the Jews, (1909) which combined hundreds of legends and parables from a lifetime of midrash research.
Legends of the Jews is an original synthesis of a vast amount of aggadah from all of classical rabbinic literature, as well as apocryphal, pseudopigraphical and even early Christian literature, with legends ranging from the creation of the world and the fall of Adam, through a huge collection of legends on Moses, and ending with the story of Esther and the Jews in Persia. Ginzberg had an encyclopedic knowledge of all rabbinic literature, and his masterwork included a massive array of aggadot. However he did not create an anthology which showed these aggadot distinctly. Rather, he paraphrased them and rewrote them into one continuous narrative that covered four volumes, followed by two volumes of footnotes that give specific sources. See Jewish folklore and Aggadah.
Apart from Legends of the Jews, perhaps his best known scholarly work was his Geonica (1909), an account of the Babylonian Geonim containing lengthy extracts from their responsa, as discovered in the form of fragments in the Cairo Genizah. This work was continued by him in the similar collection entitled Ginze Schechter (1929).
Professor Ginzberg wrote 406 articles and several monograph-length entries for the Jewish Encyclopedia (Levy 2002), some later collected in his Legend and Lore. He was an important halakhic authority of the Conservative movement in North America; for a period of ten years (1917–1927), he was virtually the halakhic authority of this movement. He was also founder and president of the American Academy of Jewish Research.
Many of his halakhic responsa are collected in The Responsa of Professor Louis Ginzberg, ed. David Golinkin, NY: JTS, 1996.
Personal life
Ginzberg had a long term platonic relationship with Henrietta Szold, who was his editor at JPS. She was in love with him, but was 13 years older than him.
Ginzberg visited Berlin in 1908 and became engaged to Adele Katzenstein while he was there. Katzestein was about 22 at the time. They had two children. Son Eli Ginzberg (1911-2002) was a professor of economics at Columbia University. The second child was a daughter, Sophie Ginzberg Gould (1914-1985).
References
External links
Excerpts from The Responsa of Professor Louis Ginzberg
Loeb Family Tree
19th-century American rabbis
19th-century Jewish theologians
19th-century Lithuanian Jews
20th-century American rabbis
20th-century Jewish theologians
20th-century Lithuanian Jews
1873 births
1953 deaths
American Conservative rabbis
American Jewish theologians
American people of Lithuanian-Jewish descent
Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United States
Jewish Theological Seminary of America people
Lithuanian rabbis
Rabbis of Kaunas
Talmudists
Writers from Kaunas |
18544 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-arm%20unorthodox%20spin | Left-arm unorthodox spin | Left-arm unorthodox spin, also known as slow left-arm wrist-spin, is a type of spin bowling in the sport of cricket. Left-arm unorthodox spin bowlers use wrist spin to spin the ball, and make it deviate, or 'turn' from left to right after pitching. The direction of turn is the same as that of a traditional right-handed off spin bowler, although the ball will usually turn more sharply due to the spin being imparted predominantly by the wrist.
Some left-arm unorthodox bowlers also bowl the equivalent of a googly, or 'wrong'un', which turns from right to left on the pitch. The ball turns away from the right-handed batsman, as if the bowler were an orthodox left-arm spinner. The delivery was sometimes historically called a chinaman.
Notable left-arm unorthodox spin bowlers
The first cricketer known to bowl the style of delivery was 19th-century South African bowler Charlie Llewellyn. Llewellyn toured North America with Bernard Bosanquet, the originator of the googly delivery, and it is likely that Llewellyn learned the googly-style of delivery from him, bowling it with his left-arm. Chuck Fleetwood-Smith, an ambidextrous Australian bowler, notably used the delivery in the 1930s, including in his 10 Test matches.
Among noted players who have bowled the delivery are Denis Compton, who originally bowled orthodox slow-left arm deliveries but developed left-arm wrist spin, taking most of his 622 first-class wickets using the delivery. Although better known for fast bowling and orthodox slow left-arm, Garfield Sobers could also use it to good effect. In cricket's modern era, Australian Brad Hogg brought the delivery to wider notice and had one of the most well-disguised wrong'uns. Kuldeep Yadav, who debuted for India in March 2017, bowls left-arm wrist spin, and Paul Adams played 45 Test matches for South Africa between 1995 and 2004 using the delivery.
Historical use of the name Chinaman
Historically the term "chinaman" was sometimes used to describe the googly delivery or other unusual deliveries, whether bowled by right or left-arm bowlers. The left-arm wrist spinner's delivery that is the equivalent of the googly eventually became known as the "chinaman".
The origin of the term is unclear, although it is known to have been in use in Yorkshire during the 1920s and may have been first used in reference to Roy Kilner. It is possible that it is a guarded reference to Charlie Llewelyn, the first left-arm bowler to bowl the equivalent of the googly. It is first known to have been used in print in The Guardian in 1926 in reference to the possibility of Yorkshire bowler George Macaulay bowling a googly, but the term became more widely used after a Test match between England and West Indies at Old Trafford in 1933. Ellis Achong, a player of Chinese origin who bowled slow left-arm orthodox spin, had Walter Robins stumped off a surprise delivery that spun into the right-hander from outside the off stump. As he walked back to the pavilion, Robins reportedly said to the umpire, "fancy being done by a bloody Chinaman!", leading to the more wide-spread use of the term.
In 2017, Australian journalist Andrew Wu, who is of Chinese descent, raised concerns about the use of the term as "racially offensive", arguing the term itself "has historically been used in a contemptuous manner to describe the Chinese". Wisden formally changed their wording of the term to slow left-arm wrist-spin in the 2018 edition of the Almanack, describing chinaman as "no longer appropriate". CricInfo followed suit in 2021, noting that although some argued that its use in cricket "was not meant to be derogatory", that its continued use was inappropriate. Some writers continue to use the term.
Notes
References
Cricket and Race by Jack Williams
Wisden, 1968, 1987 and 2018 editions
Cricket terminology
Bowling (cricket) |
18546 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists%20of%20newspapers | Lists of newspapers | Below are lists of newspapers organized by continent.
Africa
Asia
Europe
North America
Oceania
South America
See also |
18549 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis%20IX%20of%20France | Louis IX of France | Louis IX (25 April 1214 – 25 August 1270), commonly known as Saint Louis or Louis the Saint, was King of France from 1226 to 1270, and the most illustrious of the Direct Capetians. He was crowned in Reims at the age of 12, following the death of his father Louis VIII. His mother, Blanche of Castile, ruled the kingdom as regent until he reached maturity, and then remained his valued adviser until her death. During Louis' childhood, Blanche dealt with the opposition of rebellious vassals and secured Capetian success in the Albigensian Crusade, which had started 20 years earlier.
As an adult, Louis IX faced recurring conflicts with some of his realm's most powerful nobles, such as Hugh X of Lusignan and Peter of Dreux. Simultaneously, Henry III of England attempted to restore the Angevin continental possessions, but was promptly routed at the Battle of Taillebourg. Louis annexed several provinces, notably parts of Aquitaine, Maine and Provence.
Louis IX enjoyed immense prestige throughout Christendom and was one of the most notable European monarchs of the Middle Ages. His reign is remembered as a medieval golden age in which the Kingdom of France reached an economic as well as political peak. His fellow European rulers esteemed him highly for his skill at arms, the power and unmatched wealth of his kingdom, but also for his reputation for fairness and moral integrity; he was often asked to arbitrate their disputes.
He was a reformer and developed a process of French royal justice in which the king was the supreme judge to whom anyone could in theory appeal for the amendment of a judgment. He banned trials by ordeal, tried to end the scourge of private wars, and introduced the presumption of innocence to criminal procedures. To enforce his new legal system, Louis IX created provosts and bailiffs.
Honoring a vow he had made while praying for recovery during a serious illness, Louis IX led the ill-fated Seventh Crusade and Eighth Crusade against the Muslim dynasties that ruled North Africa, Egypt and the Holy Land in the 13th century. He was captured in the first and ransomed, and he died from dysentery during the latter. He was succeeded by his son Philip III.
His admirers through the centuries have regarded Louis IX as the ideal Christian ruler. He was a splendid knight whose kindness and engaging manner made him popular, though contemporaries occasionally rebuked him as a "monk king". He was seen as inspired by Christian zeal and Catholic devotion. Enforcing strict Catholic orthodoxy, his laws punished blasphemy by mutilation of the tongue and lips, and he ordered the burning of some 12,000 manuscript copies of the Talmud and other important Jewish books after the Disputation of Paris of 1240. He is the only canonized king of France, and there are consequently many places named after him.
Sources
Much of what is known of Louis's life comes from Jean de Joinville's famous Life of Saint Louis. Joinville was a close friend, confidant, and counselor to the king. He participated as a witness in the papal inquest into Louis's life that resulted in his canonisation in 1297 by Pope Boniface VIII.
Two other important biographies were written by the king's confessor, Geoffrey of Beaulieu, and his chaplain, William of Chartres. While several individuals wrote biographies in the decades following the king's death, only Jean of Joinville, Geoffrey of Beaulieu, and William of Chartres wrote from personal knowledge of the king and of the events they describe, and all three are biased favorably to the king. The fourth important source of information is William of Saint-Parthus's 19th-century biography, which he wrote using material from the papal inquest mentioned above.
Early life
Louis was born on 25 April 1214 at Poissy, near Paris, the son of Louis the Lion and Blanche of Castile, and was baptised there in La Collégiale Notre-Dame church. His grandfather on his father's side was Philip II, king of France; while his grandfather on his mother's side was Alfonso VIII, king of Castile. Tutors of Blanche's choosing taught him most of what a king was expected to know—Latin, public speaking, writing, military arts, and government. He was nine years old when his grandfather Philip II died and his father ascended as Louis VIII.
Louis was 12 years old when his father died on 8 November 1226. He was crowned king within the month at Reims Cathedral. Because of Louis's youth, his mother ruled France as regent during his minority. Louis's mother trained him to be a great leader and a good Christian. She used to say:
His younger brother Charles I of Sicily (1227–85) was created count of Anjou, thus founding the Capetian Angevin dynasty.
No date is given for the beginning of Louis's personal rule. His contemporaries viewed his reign as co-rule between the king and his mother, though historians generally view the year 1234 as the year in which Louis began ruling personally, with his mother assuming a more advisory role. She continued to have a strong influence on the king until her death in 1252.
Marriage
On 27 May 1234, Louis married Margaret of Provence (1221 – 21 December 1295); she was crowned in the cathedral of Sens the next day. Louis's marriage had political connections, as his wife was sister to Eleanor of Provence, who later married Henry III of England. The new queen's religious zeal made her a well-suited partner for the king. He enjoyed her company, and was pleased to show her the many public works he was making in Paris, both for its defence and for its health. They enjoyed riding together, reading, and listening to music. His attention to Margaret aroused a certain amount of jealousy in his mother, who tried to keep the couple apart as much as she could.
The Crusades of Saint Louis
When Louis was 15, his mother brought an end to the Albigensian Crusade in 1229. She signed an agreement with Raymond VII of Toulouse, which cleared his father of wrongdoing. Raymond VI of Toulouse had been suspected of ordering the assassination of Pierre de Castelnau a Roman Catholic preacher who was on a mission to convert the Cathars.
Louis went on two crusades: the Seventh Crusade in 1248 and the Eighth Crusade in 1270.
Seventh Crusade
Louis and his followers landed in Egypt on 4 or 5 June 1249 and began their campaign with the rapid capture of the port of Damietta. This attack caused some disruption in the Muslim Ayyubid empire, especially as the current sultan, Al-Malik as-Salih Najm al-Din Ayyub, was on his deathbed. However, the march of Europeans from Damietta toward Cairo through the Nile River Delta went slowly. The seasonal rising of the Nile and the summer heat made it impossible for them to advance and follow up on their success. During this time, the Ayyubid sultan died, and the sultan's wife Shajar al-Durr set in motion a sudden power shift that would make her Queen and eventually place the Egyptian army of the Mamluks in power.
On 8 February 1250 Louis lost his army at the Battle of Al Mansurah and was captured by the Egyptians. His release was eventually negotiated in return for a ransom of 400,000 livres tournois and the surrender of the city of Damietta.
Four years in the Kingdom of Jerusalem
Following his release from Egyptian captivity, Louis spent four years in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, namely in Acre, Caesarea, and Jaffa. He used his wealth to assist the Crusaders in rebuilding their defences and conducted diplomacy with the Islamic powers of Syria and Egypt. In the spring of 1254 he and his surviving army returned to France.
Louis exchanged multiple letters and emissaries with Mongol rulers of the period. During his first crusade in 1248, Louis was approached by envoys from Eljigidei, the Mongol military commander stationed in Armenia and Persia. Eljigidei suggested that King Louis should land in Egypt, while Eljigidei attacked Baghdad, to prevent the Saracens of Egypt and those of Syria from joining forces. Louis sent André de Longjumeau, a Dominican priest, as an emissary to the Great Khan Güyük Khan (r. 1246–48) in Mongolia. Güyük died before the emissary arrived at his court, however, and no action was taken by the two parties. Instead Güyük's queen and now regent, Oghul Qaimish, politely turned down the diplomatic offer.
Louis dispatched another envoy to the Mongol court, the Franciscan William of Rubruck, who visited the Great Khan Möngke (1251–1259) in Mongolia. He spent several years at the Mongol court. In 1259, Berke, the ruler of the Golden Horde, westernmost part of the Mongolian Empire, demanded the submission of Louis. By contrast, Mongolian emperors Möngke and Khubilai's brother, the Ilkhan Hulegu, sent a letter to the king of France seeking his military assistance, but the letter never reached France.
Eighth Crusade
In a parliament held at Paris, 24 March 1267, Louis and his three sons "took the cross." On hearing the reports of the missionaries, Louis resolved to land at Tunis, and he ordered his younger brother, Charles of Anjou, to join him there. The crusaders, among whom was the English prince Edward Longshanks, landed at Carthage 17 July 1270, but disease broke out in the camp. Many died of dysentery, and on 25 August, Louis himself died.
Patron of arts and arbiter of Europe
Louis's patronage of the arts inspired much innovation in Gothic art and architecture. The style of his court was influential throughout Europe, both because of artwork purchased from Parisian masters for export, and by the marriage of the king's daughters and other female relatives to foreigners. They became emissaries of Parisian models and styles elsewhere. Louis's personal chapel, the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, which was known for its intricate stained-glass windows, was copied more than once by his descendants elsewhere. Louis is believed to have ordered the production of the Morgan Bible and the Arsenal Bible, both deluxe illuminated manuscripts.
During the so-called "golden century of Saint Louis", the kingdom of France was at its height in Europe, both politically and economically. Saint Louis was regarded as "primus inter pares", first among equals, among the kings and rulers of the continent. He commanded the largest army and ruled the largest and wealthiest kingdom, the European centre of arts and intellectual thought at the time. The foundations for the notable college of theology, later known as the Sorbonne, were laid in Paris about the year 1257.
The prestige and respect felt by Europeans for King Louis IX were due more to the appeal of his personality than to military domination. For his contemporaries, he was the quintessential example of the Christian prince and embodied the whole of Christendom in his person. His reputation for fairness and even saintliness was already well established while he was alive, and on many occasions he was chosen as an arbiter in quarrels among the rulers of Europe.
Shortly before 1256, Enguerrand IV, Lord of Coucy, arrested and without trial hanged three young squires of Laon, whom he accused of poaching in his forest. In 1256 Louis had the lord arrested and brought to the Louvre by his sergeants. Enguerrand demanded judgment by his peers and trial by battle, which the king refused because he thought it obsolete. Enguerrand was tried, sentenced, and ordered to pay 12,000 livres. Part of the money was to pay for masses to be said in perpetuity for the souls of the men he had hanged.
In 1258, Louis and James I of Aragon signed the Treaty of Corbeil to end areas of contention between them. By this treaty, Louis renounced his feudal overlordship over the County of Barcelona and Roussillon, which was held by the King of Aragon. James in turn renounced his feudal overlordship over several counties in southern France, including Provence and Languedoc. In 1259 Louis signed the Treaty of Paris, by which Henry III of England was confirmed in his possession of territories in southwestern France, and Louis received the provinces of Anjou, Normandy (Normandie), Poitou, Maine, and Touraine.
Religious nature
The perception of Louis IX by his contemporaries as the exemplary Christian prince was reinforced by his religious zeal. Louis was an extremely devout Catholic, and he built the Sainte-Chapelle ("Holy Chapel"), located within the royal palace complex (now the Paris Hall of Justice), on the Île de la Cité in the centre of Paris. The Sainte Chapelle, a prime example of the Rayonnant style of Gothic architecture, was erected as a shrine for what Louis believed to be the Crown of Thorns and a fragment of the True Cross, supposed precious relics of the Passion of Christ. He acquired these in 1239–41 from Emperor Baldwin II of the Latin Empire of Constantinople by agreeing to pay off to Niccolo Quirino, a wealthy Venetian merchant, the imperial debt for which Baldwin had pledged the Crown of Thorns as collateral. Louis IX paid the exorbitant sum of 135,000 livres to clear this debt (the construction of the chapel, for comparison, cost only 60,000 livres).
Louis IX took very seriously his mission as "lieutenant of God on Earth", with which he had been invested when he was crowned in Reims. To fulfill this duty, he conducted two crusades. They contributed to his prestige, even though both ended disastrously. Everything he did was for what he saw as the glory of God and the good of his people. He protected the poor and was never heard to speak ill of anyone. He excelled in penance, leaving a hair shirt and a scourge which he had used in private practice. He had a great love for the Church. He was merciful even to rebels. When he was urged to execute a prince who had followed his father in rebellion, he refused, saying: "A son cannot refuse to obey his father."
In 1230 the King forbade all forms of usury, defined at the time as any taking of interest and therefore covering most banking activities. When the original borrowers from Jewish and Lombard lenders could not be found, Louis exacted from those lenders a contribution toward the crusade which Pope Gregory was trying to launch. At the urging of Pope Gregory IX, following the Disputation of Paris in 1240, Louis ordered in 1243 the burning in Paris of some 12,000 manuscript copies of the Talmud and other Jewish books. The edict against the Talmud was eventually overturned by Gregory IX's successor, Innocent IV.
Louis also expanded the scope of the Inquisition in France. He set the punishment for blasphemy to mutilation of the tongue and lips. The area most affected by this expansion was southern France, where the Cathar sect had been strongest. The rate of confiscation of property from the Cathars and others reached its highest levels in the years before his first crusade, and slowed upon his return to France in 1254.
In 1250, Louis headed a crusade to Egypt and was taken prisoner. During his captivity, he recited the Divine Office every day. After his release against ransom, he visited the Holy Land before returning to France. In these deeds, Louis IX tried to fulfill what he considered the duty of France as "the eldest daughter of the Church" (la fille aînée de l'Église), a tradition of protector of the Church going back to the Franks and Charlemagne, who had been crowned by Pope Leo III in Rome in 800. The kings of France were known in the Church by the title "most Christian king" (Rex Christianissimus). The relationship between France and the papacy was at its peak in the 12th and 13th centuries. The popes called for most of the crusades from French soil.
Louis was renowned for his charity. Beggars were fed from his table: he ate their leavings; washed their feet; ministered to the wants of lepers, who were generally ostracized; and daily fed over one hundred poor. He founded many hospitals and houses: the House of the Filles-Dieu for reformed prostitutes; the Quinze-Vingt for 300 blind men (1254), and hospitals at Pontoise, Vernon, and Compiégne.
St. Louis installed a house of the Trinitarian Order at Fontainebleau, his chateau and estate near Paris. He chose Trinitarians as his chaplains, and was accompanied by them on his crusades. In his spiritual testament he wrote: "My dearest son, you should permit yourself to be tormented by every kind of martyrdom before you would allow yourself to commit a mortal sin."
Louis authored and sent the Enseignements, or teachings, to his son Philip III. The letter outlined how Philip should be a moral person and leader, following Christ's example. The letter is estimated to have been written in 1267, 3 years before his death.
Children
Blanche (12 July/4 December 1240 – 29 April 1244), died in infancy.
Isabella (2 March 1241 – 28 January 1271), married Theobald II of Navarre.
Louis (23 September 1243/24 February 1244 – 11 January/2 February 1260). Betrothed to Berengaria of Castile in Paris on 20 August 1255.
Philip III (1 May 1245 – 5 October 1285), married firstly to Isabella of Aragon in 1262 and secondly to Maria of Brabant in 1274.
John (1246/1247 – 10 March 1248), died in infancy.
John Tristan (8 April 1250 – 3 August 1270), Count of Valois, married Yolande II, Countess of Nevers.
Peter (1251 – 6/7 April 1284), Count of Perche and Alençon, married Joanne of Châtillon.
Blanche (early 1253 – 17 June 1320), married Ferdinand de la Cerda, Infante of Castile.
Margaret (early 1255 – July 1271), married John I, Duke of Brabant.
Robert (1256 – 7 February 1317), Count of Clermont, married Beatrice of Burgundy. The French crown devolved upon his male-line descendant, Henry IV, when the legitimate male line of Philip III died out in 1589.
Agnes (1260 – 19/20 December 1327), married Robert II, Duke of Burgundy.
Louis and Margaret's two children who died in infancy were first buried at the Cistercian abbey of Royaumont. In 1820 they were transferred and reinterred to Saint-Denis Basilica.
Death and legacy
During his second crusade, Louis died at Tunis on 25 August 1270, in an epidemic of dysentery that swept through his army. According to European custom, his body was subjected to the process known as mos Teutonicus prior to his remains being returned to France. (This was a postmortem funerary custom used in medieval Europe whereby the flesh was boiled from the body, so that the bones of the deceased could be transported hygienically from distant lands back home). This was not the common practice for Muslim burials. Louis was succeeded by his son, Philip III.
Louis's younger brother, Charles I of Naples, preserved his heart and intestines, and conveyed them for burial in the cathedral of Monreale near Palermo. Louis's bones were carried overland in a lengthy processional across Sicily, Italy, the Alps, and France, until they were interred in the royal necropolis at Saint-Denis in May 1271. Charles and Philip II later dispersed a number of relics to promote his veneration.
Ancestry
Veneration as a saint
Pope Boniface VIII proclaimed the canonisation of Louis in 1297; he is the only French king to be declared a saint. Louis IX is often considered the model of the ideal Christian monarch. The influence of his canonization was so great that many of his successors were named Louis after him.
Named in his honour, the Sisters of Charity of St. Louis is a Roman Catholic religious order founded in Vannes, France, in 1803. A similar order, the Sisters of St Louis, was founded in Juilly in 1842.
He is honoured as co-patron of the Third Order of St. Francis, which claims him as a member of the Order. Even in childhood, his compassion for the poor and suffering people was known to those who were close to him. When he became king, over a hundred poor people were served meals in his house on ordinary days. Often the king served these guests himself. Such acts of charity, coupled with Louis's devout religious practices, gave rise to the legend that he joined the Third Order of St. Francis. Though it is unlikely that Louis did join the order, his life and actions proclaimed him as one of them in spirit.
Things named after Saint Louis
The French royal Order of Saint Louis (1693–1790 and 1814–1830)
Places
Many countries in which French speakers and Catholicism were prevalent named places after King Louis:
San Luis Province in Argentina;
San Luis Potosí in Mexico;
Multiple locations in the United States
St. Louis, Missouri, named by French colonists
Multiple locations in France
Île Saint-Louis, an island in the river Seine, Paris, France
Saint-Louis, New Caledonia
Multiple locations in Canada
Saint-Louis, Senegal;
São Luís, Maranhão in Brazil
The Philippines
San Luis, Aurora in the Philippines
San Luis, Pampanga in the Philippines
San Luis, Batangas in the Philippines
Buildings
France
A hospital in the 10th arrondissement of Paris
The Cathédrale Saint-Louis de Versailles in Versailles
United States
The Basilica of St. Louis, King of France, completed in 1834 in St. Louis, Missouri
The Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis, completed in 1914 in St. Louis, Missouri
The St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans
Saint Louis Catholic High School, in Lake Charles, Louisiana
Mission San Luis Rey de Francia, Oceanside, California, founded June 12, 1798
The national church of France in Rome: San Luigi dei Francesi in Italian, or Saint Louis of France in English.
The Cathedral of St Louis in Plovdiv, Bulgaria
The Cathedral of St Louis in Carthage, Tunisia, so named because Louis IX died at that approximate location in 1270
The Church of St Louis in Moscow, Russia
Rue Saint Louis of Pondicherry, India.
Notable portraits
United States
A bas-relief of St. Louis is one of the carved portraits of historic lawmakers that adorns the chamber of the United States House of Representatives.
Saint Louis is also portrayed on a frieze depicting a timeline of important lawgivers throughout world history, on the North Wall of the Courtroom at the Supreme Court of the United States.
A statue of St. Louis by the sculptor John Donoghue stands on the roofline of the New York State Appellate Division Court at 27 Madison Avenue in New York City.
The Apotheosis of St. Louis is an equestrian statue of the saint, by Charles Henry Niehaus, that stands in front of the Saint Louis Art Museum in Forest Park.
A heroic portrait by Baron Charles de Steuben hangs in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Baltimore. An 1821 gift of King Louis XVIII of France, it depicts St. Louis burying his plague-stricken troops before the siege of Tunis at the beginning of the Eighth Crusade in 1270.
In fiction
Davis, William Stearns, "Falaise of the Blessed Voice" aka "The White Queen". New York, NY: Macmillan, 1904
Peter Berling, The Children of the Grail
Jules Verne, "To the Sun?/Off on a Comet!" A comet takes several bits of the Earth away when it grazes the Earth. Some people, taken up at the same time, find the Tomb of Saint Louis is one of the bits, as they explore the comet.
Adam Gidwitz, The Inquisitor's Tale
Music
Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Motet for Saint Louis, H.320, for 1 voice, 2 treble instruments (?) and continuo 1675.
Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Motet In honorem santi Ludovici Regis Galliae canticum tribus vocibus cum symphonia, H.323, for 3 voices, 2 treble instruments and continuo (1678 ?)
Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Motet In honorem Sancti Ludovici regis Galliae, H.332, for 3 voices, 2 treble instruments and continuo 1683)
Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Motet In honorem Sancti Ludovici regis Galliae canticum, H.365 & H.365 a, for soloists, chorus, woodwinds, strings and continuo (1690)
Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Motet In honorem Sancti Ludovici regis Galliae, H.418, for soloists, chorus, 2 flutes, 2 violins and continuo (1692–93)
References
Bibliography
External links
John de Joinville. Memoirs of Louis IX, King of France. Chronicle, 1309.
Saint Louis in Medieval History of Navarre
Site about The Saintonge War between Louis IX of France and Henry III of England.
Account of the first Crusade of Saint Louis from the perspective of the Arabs..
A letter from Guy, a knight, concerning the capture of Damietta on the sixth Crusade with a speech delivered by Saint Louis to his men.
Etext full version of the Memoirs of the Lord of Joinville, a biography of Saint Louis written by one of his knights
"St. Lewis, King of France", Butler's Lives of the Saints
"Man of the Middle Ages, Saint Louis, King of France", Archdiocese of St. Louis, MO
1214 births
1270 deaths
13th-century kings of France
People from Poissy
Burials at the Basilica of Saint-Denis
French Roman Catholic saints
House of Capet
People of the Albigensian Crusade
Christians of the Seventh Crusade
Christians of the Eighth Crusade
Medieval child rulers
13th-century Christian saints
Pre-Reformation Anglican saints
Roman Catholic royal saints
Deaths from dysentery
Patron saints of France
Children of Louis VIII of France
Sons of kings
French art patrons
Monarchs taken prisoner in wartime |
18551 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear%20B | Linear B | Linear B is a syllabic script that was used for writing Mycenaean Greek, the earliest attested form of Greek. The script predates the Greek alphabet by several centuries. The oldest Mycenaean writing dates to about 1450 BC. It is descended from the older Linear A, an undeciphered earlier script used for writing the Minoan language, as is the later Cypriot syllabary, which also recorded Greek. Linear B, found mainly in the palace archives at Knossos, Cydonia, Pylos, Thebes and Mycenae, disappeared with the fall of Mycenaean civilization during the Late Bronze Age collapse. The succeeding period, known as the Greek Dark Ages, provides no evidence of the use of writing. Linear B, deciphered by English architect and self-taught linguist Michael Ventris—based on the research of American Classicist Alice Kober—is the only Bronze Age Aegean script to have thus far been deciphered.
Linear B consists of around 87 syllabic signs and over 100 ideographic signs. These ideograms or "signifying" signs symbolize objects or commodities. They have no phonetic value and are never used as word signs in writing a sentence.
The application of Linear B appears to have been confined to administrative contexts. In all the thousands of clay tablets, a relatively small number of different "hands" have been detected: 45 in Pylos (west coast of the Peloponnese, in southern Greece) and 66 in Knossos (Crete). It is possible that the script was used only by a guild of professional scribes who served the central palaces. Once the palaces were destroyed, the script disappeared.
Script
Linear B has roughly 200 signs, divided into syllabic signs with phonetic values and ideograms with semantic values. The representations and naming of these signs have been standardized by a series of international colloquia starting with the first in Paris in 1956. After the third meeting in 1961 at the Wingspread Conference Center in Racine, Wisconsin, a standard proposed primarily by Emmett L. Bennett, Jr., became known as the Wingspread Convention, which was adopted by a new organization, the Comité International Permanent des Études Mycéniennes (CIPEM), affiliated in 1970 by the fifth colloquium with UNESCO. Colloquia continue: the 13th occurred in 2010 in Paris.
Many of the signs are identical or similar to those in Linear A; however, Linear A encodes an as-yet unknown language, and it is uncertain whether similar signs had the same phonetic values.
Syllabic signs
The grid developed during decipherment by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick of phonetic values for syllabic signs is shown below. (Note that "q" represents the labialized velar stops [ɡʷ, kʷ, kʷʰ], not a uvular stop of IPA.)
Initial consonants are in the leftmost column; vowels are in the top row beneath the title. The transcription of the syllable, which may not have been pronounced that way, is listed next to the sign along with Bennett's identifying number for the sign preceded by an asterisk (as was Ventris' and Chadwick's convention). If the transcription of the sign remains uncertain, Bennett's number serves to identify the sign. The signs on the tablets and sealings often show considerable variation from each other and from the representations below. Discovery of the reasons for the variation and possible semantic differences is a topic of ongoing debate in Mycenaean studies.
Special and unknown signs
In addition to the grid, the first edition of Documents in Mycenaean Greek contained a number of other signs termed "homophones" because they appeared at that time to resemble the sounds of other syllables and were transcribed accordingly: pa2 and pa3 were presumed homophonous to pa. Many of these were identified by the second edition and are shown in the "special values" below. The second edition relates: "It may be taken as axiomatic that there are no true homophones." The unconfirmed identifications of *34 and *35 as ai2 and ai3 were removed. pa2 became qa.
Other values remain unknown, mainly because of scarcity of evidence concerning them. Note that *34 and *35 are mirror images of each other, but whether this graphic relationship indicates a phonetic one remains unconfirmed.
In recent times, CIPEM inherited the former authority of Bennett and the Wingspread convention in deciding what signs are "confirmed" and how to officially represent the various sign categories. In editions of Mycenaean texts, the signs whose values have not been confirmed by CIPEM are always transcribed as numbers preceded by an asterisk (e.g., *64). CIPEM also allocates the numerical identifiers, and until such allocation, new signs (or obscured or mutilated signs) are transcribed as a bullet-point enclosed in square brackets: [•].
Spelling and pronunciation
The signs are approximations since each may be used to represent a variety of about 70 distinct combinations of sounds within rules and conventions. The grid presents a system of monosyllabic signs of the type V/CV. Clarification of the 14 or so special values tested the limits of the grid model, but Chadwick eventually concluded that even with the ramifications, the syllabic signs can unexceptionally be considered monosyllabic.
Possible exceptions, Chadwick goes on to explain, include the two diphthongs, (ai) and (au), as in , ai-ku-pi-ti-jo, for Aiguptios (, "Egyptian") and , au-ke-wa, for Augewās ( "Augeas"). However, a diphthong is by definition two vowels united into a single sound and therefore might be typed as just V. Thus (rai), as in , e-rai-wo, for elaiwon (), is of the type CV. Diphthongs are otherwise treated as two monosyllables: , a-ro-u-ra, for arourans (accusative plural of , "tamarisk trees"), of the types CV and V. Lengths of vowels and accents are not marked.
(Twe), (two), (dwe), (dwo), (nwa) and the more doubtful (swi) and (swa) may be regarded as beginning with labialized consonants, rather than two consonants, even though they may alternate with a two-sign form: o-da-twe-ta and o-da-tu-we-ta for Odatwenta; a-si-wi-jo and a-swi-jo for Aswios (). Similarly, (rya), (ryo) and (tya) begin with palatalized consonants rather than two consonants: -ti-ri-ja for -trja (-).
The one sign Chadwick tags as the exception to the monosyllabic rule is (pte), but this he attributes to a development pte<*pje as in kleptei<*klep-jei.
Linear B does not consistently distinguish between voiced and unvoiced stop consonants (except in the dental series) and between aspirated and unaspirated stops even when these distinctions are phonemic in Mycenaean Greek. For example, pa-te is patēr (), pa-si is phāsi (); p on the other hand some times does not represent (like in the beginning of the following word) ("basileus", meaning in this period "court official or local chieftain") is qa-si-re-u); ko-ru is korus (, "helmet"), ka-ra-we is grāwes (plural of ), ko-no is skhoinos ("rope"). Exceptionally, however, the dentals are represented by a t-series and a d-series for unvoiced and voiced: to-so for tosos ( or ) but do-ra for dōra (plural of , "gift"). Aspiration, however, is not marked: to-ra-ke for thōrākes (plural of , "breastplate"). In other cases aspiration can be marked but is optional: pu-te for phutēr ("planter", from ), but phu-te-re for phutēres ("planters"). Initial aspiration may be marked only in the case of initial a and rarely: ha-te-ro for hateron (masculine ), and yet a-ni-ja for hāniai ().
The j-series represents the semivowel equivalent to English "y", and is used word-initially and as an intervocalic glide after a syllable ending in i: -a-jo for (-aios); a-te-mi-ti-jo for (Artemitios). The w-series similarly are semivowels used word-initially and intervocalically after a syllable ending in u: ku-wa-no for kuanos (, "blue").
The r-series includes both the /r/ and /l/ phonemes: ti-ri-po for tripos (, i.e. ) and tu-ri-so for Tulisos ().
The q-series is used for monosyllables beginning with a class of consonants that disappeared from classical Greek by regular phonetic change: the labialized velar consonants (see under Mycenaean Greek). These had entered the language from various sources: inheritance from Proto-Indo-European, assimilation, borrowing of foreign words, especially names. In Mycenaean they are /kʷ/, /gʷ/, and rarely /kʷh/ in names and a few words: a-pi-qo-ro for amphiquoloi (); qo-u-ko-ro for guoukoloi (. "cowherders"); -qo-i-ta for -.
Some consonants in some contexts are not written (but are understood to be present), such as word-initial s- and -w before a consonant, as in pe-ma for sperma (, "seed"). The pe-, which was primarily used as its value pe of grid class CV, is here being used for sper-. This was not an innovative or exceptional use, but followed the stated rules. Syllable-final -l, -m, -n, -r and -s are also not written out, and only word-final velars are notated by plene writing: a-to-ro-qo for anthrōquos (, "human being, person"). Here a, being primarily of grid class V, is being used as an- and could be used for al, am, ar, and so on.
In the case of clusters of two or three consonants that do not follow the initial s- and -w rule or the double consonants: (ks or x), (ps) and qus (which later did not exist in classical Greek), each consonant in the cluster is represented by a type CV sign that shares its consonant value: ko-no-so for Knōsos, or ku-ru-so for khrusos (, "gold"). The vowels of these signs have been called "empty", "null", "extra", "dead" and other terms by various writers as they represent no sound. There were rules though, that governed the selection of the "empty" vowel and therefore determined which sign was to be used. The vowel had to be the same as the one of the first syllable following the cluster or, if at the end of the word, preceding: ti-ri-po with ti- (instead of ta-, te- and so on) to match -ri-. A rare exception occurs in words formed from wa-na-ka, wanax (ϝάναξ, Homeric and Classical ἄναξ): wa-na-ka-te for wanaktei (dative), and wa-na-ka-te-ro for wanakteros, the adjectival form. This exception may not have applied to all contexts, as an example of wa-na-ka that follows standard rules has emerged in Ayios Vasileios in Laconia. The text reads wa-na-ko-to (genitive) and is written on a sealing nodule dating to the late 14th or early 13th century, slightly earlier than other Linear B texts found on mainland Greece.
Ideograms
Linear B also uses a large number of ideograms. They express:
the type of object concerned (e.g. a cow, wool, a spear),
a unit of measure.
They have no phonetic value and are never used as word signs in writing a sentence, unlike Japanese kanji. Ideograms are typically at the end of a line before a number and appear to signify to which object the number applies. Many of the values remain unknown or disputed. Some commodities such as cloth and containers are divided into many different categories represented by distinct ideograms. Livestock may be marked with respect to sex.
The numerical references for the ideograms were originally devised by Ventris and Bennett and divided into functional groups corresponding to the breakdown of Bennett's index. The groups are numbered beginning 100, 110, 120 etc., with some provision of spare numbers for future additions; the official CIPEM numberings used today are based on Ventris and Bennett's numbering, with the provision that three or four letter codes (written in small capitals), based on Latin words that seemed relevant at the time, are used where the meanings are known and agreed. Unicode (as of version 5.0) encodes 123 Linear B ideograms.
The ideograms are symbols, not pictures of the objects in question; for example, one tablet records a tripod with missing legs, but the ideogram used is of a tripod with three legs. In modern transcriptions of Linear B tablets, it is typically convenient to represent an ideogram by its Latin or English name or by an abbreviation of the Latin name. Ventris and Chadwick generally used English; Bennett, Latin. Neither the English nor the Latin can be relied upon as an accurate name of the object; in fact, the identification of some of the more obscure objects is a matter of exegesis.
Archives
Corpus
Inscriptions in Linear B have been found on tablets and vases or other objects; they are catalogued and classified by, inter alia, the location of the excavation they were found in.
Another 170 inscriptions in Linear B have been found on various vessels, for a total of some 6,058 known inscriptions.
The oldest Linear B tablets are probably those from the Room of Chariot Tablets at Knossos, and date to the latter half of the 15th century BC. The Kafkania pebble, though from an earlier context, is not genuine. The earliest inscription from the mainland is an inscribed clay tablet found at Iklaina dating to between 1400 and 1350 BC.
It is claimed that a Linear B inscription is attested on an amber bead found at Bernstorf, in Germany.
Some of the tablet fragments have now been joined.
Chronology
Timeline of Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean scripts
The Aegean is responsible for many of the early Greek language words that have to do with daily life such as words for tools and items that are seen every day. The sequence and the geographical spread of Cretan hieroglyphs, Linear A, and Linear B, the three overlapping, but distinct, writing systems on Bronze Age Crete, the Aegean islands, and mainland Greece are summarized as follows:
Timeline of Linear B
The main archives for Linear B are associated with these stages of Late Minoan and Helladic pottery:
Controversy on the date of the Knossos tablets
The Knossos archive was dated by Arthur Evans to the destruction by conflagration of about 1400 BC, which would have baked and preserved the clay tablets. He dated this event to the LM II period. This view stood until Carl Blegen excavated the site of ancient Pylos in 1939 and uncovered tablets inscribed in Linear B. They were fired in the conflagration that destroyed Pylos about 1200 BC, at the end of LHIIIB. With the decipherment of Linear B by Michael Ventris in 1952, serious questions about Evans's date began to be considered. Most notably, Blegen said that the inscribed stirrup jars, which are oil flasks with stirrup-shaped handles, imported from Crete around 1200 were of the same type as those dated by Evans to the destruction of 1400. Blegen found a number of similarities between 1200 BC Pylos and 1400 BC Knossos and suggested the Knossian evidence be reexamined, as he was sure of the 1200 Pylian date.
The examination uncovered a number of difficulties. The Knossos tablets had been found at various locations in the palace. Evans had not kept exact records. Recourse was had to the day books of Evans's assistant, Duncan Mackenzie, who had conducted the day-to-day excavations. There were discrepancies between the notes in the day books and Evans's excavation reports. Moreover, the two men had disagreed over the location and strata of the tablets. The results of the reinvestigation were eventually published by Palmer and Boardman, On the Knossos Tablets. It contains two works, Leonard Robert Palmer's The Find-Places of the Knossos Tablets and John Boardman's The Date of the Knossos Tablets, representing Blegen's and Evans's views respectively. Consequently, the dispute was known for a time as "the Palmer–Boardman dispute". There has been no generally accepted resolution to it yet.
Contents
The major cities and palaces used Linear B for records of disbursements of goods. Wool, sheep, and grain were some common items, often given to groups of religious people and to groups of "men watching the coastline".
The tablets were kept in groups in baskets on shelves, judging by impressions left in the clay from the weaving of the baskets. When the buildings they were housed in were destroyed by fires, many of the tablets were fired.
Discovery and decipherment
Ancient Greece
The Greeks of the historical era were unable to decipher Linear B, but its ideograms are sometimes mentioned by ancient authors. For example, Plutarch gives an account of the Spartan king Agesilaus II (r. 400–360 BC) sending a bronze tablet with "many letters marvellously old, for nothing could be made of them" to Egyptian priests in the hope they could understand them.
Arthur J. Evans's classification of scripts
The British archaeologist Arthur Evans, keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, was presented by Greville Chester in 1886 with a sealstone from Crete engraved with a writing he took to be Mycenaean. Heinrich Schliemann had encountered signs similar to these, but had never identified the signs clearly as writing, relating in his major work on Mycenae that "of combinations of signs resembling inscriptions I have hitherto only found three or four ...." In 1893 Evans purchased more sealstones in Athens, verifying from the antiquarian dealers that the stones came from Crete. During the next year he noticed the script on other artefacts in the Ashmolean. In 1894 he embarked for Crete in search of the script. Soon after arrival, at Knossos he saw the sign of the double axe on an excavated wall, considering this the source of the script. Subsequently, he found more stones from the various ruins being worn by Cretan women as amulets called "milk-stones", thought to encourage the production of breast milk.
Starting in 1894, Evans published his theories that the signs evidenced various phases in the development of a writing system in The Journal of Hellenic Studies, the first article being "Primitive Pictographs and a Prae-Phoenician Script from Crete". In these articles Evans distinguished between "pictographic writing" and "a linear system of writing". He did not explicitly define these terms, causing some confusion among subsequent writers concerning what he meant, but in 1898 he wrote "These linear forms indeed consist of simple geometrical figures which unlike the more complicated pictorial class were little susceptible to modification," and "That the linear or quasi-alphabetic signs ... were in the main ultimately derived from the rudely scratched line pictures belonging to the infancy of art can hardly be doubted."
Meanwhile, Evans began to negotiate for the land purchase of the Knossos site. He established the Cretan Exploration Fund, with only his own money at first, and by 1896 the fund had purchased one-fourth of Kephala Hill, on which the ruins were located, with first option to buy the rest. However, he could not obtain a firman excavation permit from the Ottoman government. He returned to Britain. In January 1897, the Christian population of Crete staged its final insurrection against the Ottoman Empire. The last Ottoman troops were ferried off the island by the British fleet on 5 December 1898. In that year also, Evans and his friends returned to complete purchase of the site. By this time, the Fund had other contributors as well. In 1899, the Constitution of a new Cretan Republic went into effect. Once Arthur had received permission to excavate from the local authorities, excavation on the hill began on 23 March 1900.
According to Evans's report to the British School at Athens for that year, on 5 April, the excavators discovered the first large cache ever of Linear B tablets among the remains of a wooden box in a disused terracotta bathtub. Subsequently, caches turned up at multiple locations, including the Room of the Chariot Tablets, where over 350 pieces from four boxes were found. The tablets were to long by to wide and were scored with horizontal lines over which text was written in about 70 characters. Even in this earliest excavation report, Evans could tell that "a certain number of quasi-pictorial characters also occur which seem to have an ideographic or determinative meaning."
The excavation was over for that year by 2 June. Evans reported: "only a comparatively small proportion of the tablets were preserved in their entirety," the causes of destruction being rainfall through the roof of the storage room, crumbling of small pieces, and being thrown away by workmen who failed to identify them. A report on 6 September to the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland began to use some of the concepts characteristic of Evans's later thought: "palace of Knossos" and "palace of Minos". Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1900, notes that Evans took up Stillman's theme that the palace was the labyrinth of mythology in which the half-bovine son of King Minos lurked. In the report, the tablets are now called a "linear script" as opposed to the "hieroglyphic or conventionalized pictographic script". The linear script has characters that are "of a free, upright, European character" and "seem to have been for the most part syllabic". Evans reasserts the ideographic idea: "a certain number are unquestionably ideographic or determinative."
The years after 1900 were consumed by excavations at Knossos and the discovery and study by Evans of tablets, with a projected comprehensive work on Cretan scripts to be called Scripta Minoa. A year before the publication of volume I, he began to drop hints that he now believed the linear script was two scripts, to be presented in the forthcoming book.
In Scripta Minoa I, which appeared in 1909, he explained that the discovery of the Phaistos Disc in July 1908 had caused him to pull the book from the presses so that he could include the disk by permission, as it had not yet been published. On the next page he mentioned that he was also including by permission of Federico Halbherr of the Italian Mission in Crete unpublished tablets from Hagia Triada written in a linear script of "Class A". To what degree if any Halbherr was responsible for Evans's division of the "linear script" into "Class A" and "Class B" is not stated. The Knossos tablets were of Class B, so that Evans could have perceived Class A only in tablets from elsewhere, and so recently that he needed permission to include the examples.
Evans summarized the differences between the two scripts as "type" or "form of script;' that is, varieties in the formation and arrangement of the characters. For example, he says "the clay documents belonging to Class A show a certain approximation in their forms to those presenting the hieroglyphic inscriptions ... the system of numerals is also in some respects intermediate between that of the hieroglyphic documents and that of the linear Class B."
The first volume covered "the Hieroglyphic and Primitive Linear Classes" in three parts: the "pre-Phoenician Scripts of Crete", the "Pictorial Script" and "the Phaistos Disk". One or two more volumes publishing the Linear A and Linear B tablets were planned, but Evans ran out of time; the project required more than one man could bring to it. For a good many of the years left to him, he was deeply enmeshed in war and politics in the Balkans. When he did return to Knossos, completion and publication of the palace excavations took priority. His greatest work, Palace of Minos, came out in 1935. It did include scattered descriptions of tablets. He died in 1941, soon after Nazi forces invaded Crete.
The Knossos tablets had remained in the museum at Irakleion, Crete, where many of them now were missing. The unpublished second volume consisted of notes by Evans and plates and fonts created by Clarendon Press. In 1939, Carl Blegen had uncovered the Pylos Tablets; pressure was mounting to finish Scripta Minoa II. After Evans's death, Alice Kober, assistant to John Myres and a major transcriber of the Knossos tablets, prompted Myres to come back from retirement and finish the work. Emmett L. Bennett, Jr. added more transcriptions. The second volume came out in 1952 with Evans cited as author and Myres as editor, just before the discovery that Linear B writes an early form of Greek. An impatient Ventris and Chadwick declared: "Two generations of scholars had been cheated of the opportunity to work constructively on the problem."
Early attempts
Despite the limited source materials, during this time there were efforts to decipher the newly discovered Cretan script. Australian classicist Florence Stawell published an interpretation of the Phaistos Disc in the April 1911 issue of The Burlington Magazine. She followed this with the book A Clue to the Cretan Scripts, published in 1931. Stawell declared all three Cretan script forms to represent early Homeric Greek, and offered her attempts at translations. Also in 1931, F. G. Gordon's Through Basque to Minoan was published by the Oxford University Press. Gordon attempted to prove a close link between the Basque language and Linear B, without lasting success.
In 1949, Bedřich Hrozný published Les Inscriptions Crétoises, Essai de déchiffrement, a proposed decipherment of the Cretan scripts. Hrozny was internationally renowned as the translator of Hittite cuneiform decades previously. His Minoan translations into academic French, though, proved to be considerably subjective, and incorrect.
From the 1930s to 1950s there was correspondence between, and papers published by, various international academic figures. These included Johannes Sundwall, K. D. Ktistopoulos, Ernst Sittig and V. I. Georgiev. None of them succeeded with decipherment, yet they added to knowledge and debate.
Alice Kober's triplets
About the same time, Alice Kober studied Linear B and managed to construct grids, linking similar symbols in groups of threes. Kober noticed that a number of Linear B words had common roots and suffixes. This led her to believe that Linear B represented an inflected language, with nouns changing their endings depending on their case. However, some characters in the middle of the words seemed to correspond with neither a root nor a suffix. Because this effect was found in other known languages, Kober surmised that the odd characters were bridging syllables, with the beginning of the syllable belonging to the root and the end belonging to the suffix. This was a reasonable assumption, since Linear B had far too many characters to be considered alphabetic and too few to be logographic; therefore, each character should represent a syllable. Kober's systematic approach allowed her to demonstrate the existence of three grammatical cases and identify several pairs of signs that shared vowels or consonants with one another.
Kober also showed that the two symbol word for 'total' at the end of livestock and personnel lists, had a different symbol for gender. This gender change with one letter, usually a vowel, is most frequent in Indo-European languages. Kober had rejected any speculation on the language represented, preferring painstaking cataloguing and analysis of the actual symbols, though she did believe it likely that Linear A and Linear B represented different languages.
Emmett L. Bennett's transcription conventions
The convention for numbering the symbols still in use today was first devised by Emmett L. Bennett Jr. Working alongside fellow academic Alice Kober, by 1950 Bennett had deciphered the metrical system, based on his intensive study of Linear B tablets unearthed at Pylos. He concluded that those tablets contained exactly the same script as the Linear B found at Knossos, and he classified and assigned identification numbers to the Linear B signs as he prepared a publication on the Pylos tablets. Like Kober, Bennett was also an early proponent of the idea that Linear A and B represented different languages. His book The Pylos Tablets became a crucial resource for Michael Ventris, who later described it as "a wonderful piece of work".
Michael Ventris' identification as Greek
In 1935, the British School at Athens was celebrating its fiftieth anniversary with an exhibition at Burlington House, London. Among the speakers was Arthur Evans, then eighty-four years old. A teenage Michael Ventris was present in the audience. In 1940, the 18-year-old Ventris had an article Introducing the Minoan Language published in the American Journal of Archaeology.
After wartime service as a navigator with RAF Bomber Command, and a post-war year in Occupied Germany, he returned to civilian life, and completed qualification as an architect. Despite having no university qualification, Ventris continued with his amateur interest in Linear B, corresponding with known scholars, who usually but not always replied.
Michael Ventris and John Chadwick performed the bulk of the decipherment of Linear B between 1951 and 1953. At first Ventris chose his own numbering method, but later switched to Bennett's system. His initial decipherment was achieved using Kober's classification tables, to which he applied his own theories. Some Linear B tablets had been discovered on the Greek mainland. Noticing that certain symbol combinations appeared only on the tablets found in Crete, he conjectured that these might be names of places on the island. This proved to be correct. Working with the symbols he could decipher from this, Ventris soon unlocked much text and determined that the underlying language of Linear B was in fact Greek. This contradicted general scientific views of the time, and indeed Ventris himself had previously agreed with Evans's hypothesis that Linear B was not Greek.
Ventris' discovery was of significance in demonstrating a Greek-speaking Minoan-Mycenaean culture on Crete, and thus presenting Greek in writing centuries earlier than had been previously accepted.
Chadwick, a university lecturer in Ancient Greek philology, helped Ventris develop his decipherment of the text and discover the vocabulary and grammar of Mycenaean Greek. He noted:
That any Linear B tablets are written in a language other than Greek still remains to be demonstrated; but that words and usages not exactly paralleled in later Greek occur is both certain and to be expected. But we must not resort to "non-Greek" whenever we come up against an insoluble problem.
The first edition of their book, Documents in Mycenaean Greek, was published in 1956, shortly after Ventris's death in an automobile accident.
Unicode
Linear B was added to the Unicode Standard in April, 2003 with the release of version 4.0.
The Linear B Syllabary block is U+10000–U+1007F.
The Linear B Ideograms block is U+10080–U+100FF.
The Unicode block for the related Aegean Numbers is U+10100–U+1013F.
See also
Aegean civilizations
Aegean numerals
Linear A
Cypro-Minoan syllabary
Cypriot syllabary
Proto-Greek language
Notes
References
Citations
Sources
Carpenter, Rhys (1957). "Linear B", Phoenix, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Summer, 1957), pp. 47–62.
has the Enkomi clay tablet, circa 1500 BCE., examples of Linear B tablets, and translated, the basic Linear B syllabary, the Cypriot syllabary and discussions thereof, and short sections on Linear A, and the Phaistos Disk.
Palaima, Thomas G., "Unlocking the Secrets of Ancient Writing: The Parallel Lives of Michael Ventris and Linda Schele and the Decipherment of Mycenaean and Mayan Writing", University of Texas at Austin, Eleventh International Mycenological Colloquium, 2000.
Chapter 6, Linear B, pp. 108–119: discusses Arthur Evans, his work, the Cypriot clues, the syllabary, Alice Kober, the "Grid", and a sample tablet transliterated, and translated into English.
Robinson, Andrew The Man Who Deciphered Linear B: the story of Michael Ventris (2002) Thames & Hudson
for a general outline of the Linear B deciphering story, from Schliemann to Chadwick.
Ventris, Michael; Chadwick, John (1953) "Evidence for Greek Dialect in the Mycenaean Archives", The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 73, (1953), pp. 84–103.
Further reading
Bakker, Egbert J., ed. 2010. A companion to the Ancient Greek language. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Chadwick, John. 1958. The decipherment of Linear B. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Christidis, Anastasios-Phoivos, ed. 2007. A history of Ancient Greek: From the beginnings to Late Antiquity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Colvin, Stephen C. 2007. A historical Greek reader: Mycenaean to the koiné. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fox, Margalit. "The Riddle of the Labyrinth". HarperCollins Publishers Inc. New York, NY.
Hooker, J. T. 1980. Linear B: An introduction. Bristol, UK: Bristol Classical Press.
Horrocks, Geoffrey. 2010. Greek: A history of the language and its speakers. 2nd ed. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Judson, Anna P. 2020. "The Undeciphered Signs of Linear B: Interpretation and Scribal Practices". Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Morpurgo Davies, Anna, and Yves Duhoux, eds. 1985. Linear B: A 1984 survey. Louvain, Belgium: Peeters.
––––. 2008. A companion to Linear B: Mycenaean Greek texts and their world. Vol. 1. Louvain, Belgium: Peeters.
Palaima, Thomas G. 1988. "The development of the Mycenaean writing system". In Texts, tablets and scribes. Edited by J. P. Olivier and T. G. Palaima, 269–342. Suplementos a "Minos" 10. Salamanca, Spain: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.
Palmer, Leonard R. 1980. The Greek language. London: Faber & Faber.
Ventris, Michael, and John Chadwick. 2008. Documents in Mycenaean Greek. 2nd ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
External links
Linear B online transliterator
Linear B Explorer
Palaeolexicon –
Palaima, Thomas G, A Linear B Tablet from Heidelberg , Université de Liège
Mycenaean Greek
Clay tablets
Hellenic scripts
Syllabary writing systems
Bronze Age writing systems
Aegean languages in the Bronze Age
Mycenaean Crete
1900 archaeological discoveries
Obsolete writing systems
History of the Greek language |
18552 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larousse%20Gastronomique | Larousse Gastronomique | Larousse Gastronomique () is an encyclopedia of gastronomy. The majority of the book is about French cuisine, and contains recipes for French dishes and cooking techniques. The first edition included few non-French dishes and ingredients; later editions include many more. The book was originally published by Éditions Larousse in Paris in 1938.
Background
The first edition (1938) was edited by Prosper Montagné, with the collaboration of Dr Alfred Gottschalk, with prefaces by each of author-chefs Georges Auguste Escoffier and Philéas Gilbert (1857-1942). Gilbert was a collaborator in the creation of this book as well as Le Guide Culinaire (1903) with Escoffier, leading to some cross-over with the two books. It caused Escoffier to note when he was asked to write the preface that he could "see with my own eyes," and "Montagné cannot hide from me the fact that he has used Le Guide as a basis for his new book, and certainly used numerous recipes."
The third English edition (2001), which runs to approximately 1,350 pages, has been modernized and includes additional material on other cuisines. It is also available in a concise edition (2003). A new, updated and revised edition was released in October 2009, published by Hamlyn in the UK.
Bibliography
Larousse Gastronomique, Prosper Montagné, maître cuisinier, avec la collaboration du docteur Gottschalk, Paris, Editions Larousse, 1938.
2001 2nd edition, , with assistance from a gastronomic committee chaired by Joël Robuchon
James, Kenneth. Escoffier: The King of Chefs. Hambledon and London: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
English translations
Montagné, Prosper. Larousse gastronomique: the encyclopedia of food, wine & cookery, Ed. Charlotte Turgeon and Nina Froud. New York, Crown Publishers, 1961. The English translation of the 1938 edition.
Montagné, Prosper. Larousse Gastronomique: The New American Edition of the World's Greatest Culinary Encyclopedia. Edited by Jennifer Harvey Lang. New York: Crown, 1988. Second English edition.
Montagné, Prosper. Larousse Gastronomique: The New American Edition of the World's Greatest Culinary Encyclopedia, Ed. Jenifer Harvey Lang. New York, Crown Publishers, 1998.
Montagné, Prosper. Larousse Gastronomique: The World's Greatest Culinary Encyclopedia. Edited by Jennifer Harvey Lang. New York: Clarkson Potter, 2001. Third English edition.
References
French cookbooks
French encyclopedias
1938 non-fiction books
Encyclopedias of culture and ethnicity
20th-century encyclopedias
21st-century encyclopedias |
18553 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis%20XIV | Louis XIV | Louis XIV (Louis Dieudonné; 5 September 16381 September 1715), also known as Louis the Great () or the Sun King (), was King of France from 14 May 1643 until his death in 1715. His reign of 72 years and 110 days is the longest recorded of any monarch of a sovereign country in history. His was succeeded by his great-grandson Louis XV (at age 5). Louis XIV's France was emblematic of the age of absolutism in Europe. The King surrounded himself with a variety of significant political, military, and cultural figures, such as Mazarin, Colbert, Louvois, the Grand Condé, Turenne, Vauban, Boulle, Molière, Racine, Boileau, La Fontaine, Lully, Charpentier, Marais, Le Brun, Rigaud, Bossuet, Le Vau, Mansart, Charles Perrault, Claude Perrault, and Le Nôtre.
Louis began his personal rule of France in 1661, after the death of his chief minister, the Cardinal Mazarin. An adherent of the concept of the divine right of kings, Louis continued his predecessors' work of creating a centralised state governed from the capital. He sought to eliminate the remnants of feudalism persisting in parts of France and, by compelling many members of the nobility to inhabit his lavish Palace of Versailles, succeeded in pacifying the aristocracy, many members of which had participated in the Fronde rebellion during his minority. By these means he became one of the most powerful French monarchs and consolidated a system of absolute monarchy in France that endured until the French Revolution. He also enforced uniformity of religion under the Gallican Catholic Church. His revocation of the Edict of Nantes abolished the rights of the Huguenot Protestant minority and subjected them to a wave of dragonnades, effectively forcing Huguenots to emigrate or convert, and virtually destroying the French Protestant community.
During Louis' long reign, France emerged as the leading European power and regularly asserted its military strength. A conflict with Spain marked his entire childhood, while during his reign, the kingdom took part in three major continental conflicts, each against powerful foreign alliances: the Franco-Dutch War, the War of the League of Augsburg, and the War of the Spanish Succession. In addition, France also contested shorter wars, such as the War of Devolution and the War of the Reunions. Warfare defined Louis's foreign policy and his personality shaped his approach. Impelled by "a mix of commerce, revenge, and pique", he sensed that war was the ideal way to enhance his glory. In peacetime he concentrated on preparing for the next war. He taught his diplomats that their job was to create tactical and strategic advantages for the French military.
Significant achievements during his reign which would go on to have a wide influence on the Early Modern Era well into the Industrial Revolution and up to today, include the construction of the Canal du Midi, the creation of the Palace and Gardens of Versailles, the sponsorship and patronage of such artists and composers as Jean-Baptiste de Lully, Molière, and Hyacinthe Rigaud, as well as the founding of the French Academy of Sciences, among others.
Early years
Louis XIV was born on 5 September 1638 in the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, to Louis XIII and Anne of Austria. He was named Louis Dieudonné (Louis the God-given) and bore the traditional title of French heirs apparent: Dauphin. At the time of his birth, his parents had been married for 23 years. His mother had experienced four stillbirths between 1619 and 1631. Leading contemporaries thus regarded him as a divine gift and his birth a miracle of God.
Louis' relationship with his mother was uncommonly affectionate for the time. Contemporaries and eyewitnesses claimed that the Queen would spend all her time with Louis. Both were greatly interested in food and theatre, and it is highly likely that Louis developed these interests through his close relationship with his mother. This long-lasting and loving relationship can be evidenced by excerpts in Louis' journal entries, such as:
"Nature was responsible for the first knots which tied me to my mother. But attachments formed later by shared qualities of the spirit are far more difficult to break than those formed merely by blood."
It was his mother who gave Louis his belief in the absolute and divine power of his monarchical rule.
During his childhood, he was taken care of by the governesses Françoise de Lansac and Marie-Catherine de Senecey. In 1646, Nicolas V de Villeroy became the young king's tutor. Louis XIV became friends with Villeroy's young children, particularly François de Villeroy, and divided his time between the Palais-Royal and the nearby Hotel de Villeroy.
Minority and the Fronde
Accession
Sensing imminent death, Louis XIII decided to put his affairs in order in the spring of 1643, when Louis XIV was four years old. In defiance of custom, which would have made Queen Anne the sole Regent of France, the king decreed that a regency council would rule on his son's behalf. His lack of faith in Queen Anne's political abilities was his primary rationale. He did, however, make the concession of appointing her head of the council.
Louis XIII died on 14 May 1643, and on 18 May, Queen Anne had her husband's will annulled by the Parlement de Paris (a judicial body comprising mostly nobles and high clergymen). This action abolished the regency council and made Anne sole Regent of France. Anne exiled some of her husband's ministers (Chavigny, Bouthilier), and she nominated Brienne as her minister of foreign affairs.
Anne kept the direction of religious policy strongly in her hand until 1661; her most important political decisions were to nominate Cardinal Mazarin as her chief minister and the continuation of her late husband's and Cardinal Richelieu's policy, despite their persecution of her, for the sake of her son. Anne wanted to give her son absolute authority and a victorious kingdom. Her rationales for choosing Mazarin were mainly his ability and his total dependence on her, at least until 1653 when she was no longer regent. Anne protected Mazarin by arresting and exiling her followers who conspired against him in 1643: the Duke of Beaufort and Marie de Rohan. She left the direction of the daily administration of policy to Cardinal Mazarin.
The best example of Anne's statesmanship and the partial change in her heart towards her native Spain is seen in her keeping of one of Richelieu's men, the Chancellor of France Pierre Séguier, in his post. Séguier was the person who had interrogated Anne in 1637, treating her like a "common criminal" as she described her treatment following the discovery that she was giving military secrets and information to Spain. Anne was virtually under house arrest for a number of years during her husband's rule. By keeping him in his post, Anne was giving a sign that the interests of France and her son Louis were the guiding spirit of all her political and legal actions. Though not necessarily opposed to Spain, she sought to end the war with a French victory, in order to establish a lasting peace between the Catholic nations.
The Queen also gave a partial Catholic orientation to French foreign policy. This was felt by the Netherlands, France's Protestant ally, which negotiated a separate peace with Spain in 1648.
In 1648, Anne and Mazarin successfully negotiated the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years' War. Its terms ensured Dutch independence from Spain, awarded some autonomy to the various German princes of the Holy Roman Empire, and granted Sweden seats on the Imperial Diet and territories to control the mouths of the Oder, Elbe, and Weser rivers. France, however, profited most from the settlement. Austria, ruled by the Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand III, ceded all Habsburg lands and claims in Alsace to France and acknowledged her de facto sovereignty over the Three Bishoprics of Metz, Verdun, and Toul. Moreover, eager to emancipate themselves from Habsburg domination, petty German states sought French protection. This anticipated the formation of the 1658 League of the Rhine, leading to the further diminution of Imperial power.
Early acts
As the Thirty Years' War came to an end, a civil war known as the (after the slings used to smash windows) erupted in France. It effectively checked France's ability to exploit the Peace of Westphalia. Anne and Mazarin had largely pursued the policies of Cardinal Richelieu, augmenting the Crown's power at the expense of the nobility and the . Anne interfered much more in internal policy than foreign affairs; she was a very proud queen who insisted on the divine rights of the King of France.
All this led her to advocate a forceful policy in all matters relating to the King's authority, in a manner that was much more radical than the one proposed by Mazarin. The Cardinal depended totally on Anne's support and had to use all his influence on the Queen to temper some of her radical actions. Anne imprisoned any aristocrat or member of parliament who challenged her will; her main aim was to transfer to her son an absolute authority in the matters of finance and justice. One of the leaders of the Parlement of Paris, whom she had jailed, died in prison.
The , political heirs of the disaffected feudal aristocracy, sought to protect their traditional feudal privileges from the increasingly centralized royal government. Furthermore, they believed their traditional influence and authority was being usurped by the recently ennobled bureaucrats (the , or "nobility of the robe"), who administered the kingdom and on whom the monarchy increasingly began to rely. This belief intensified the nobles' resentment.
In 1648, Anne and Mazarin attempted to tax members of the . The members refused to comply and ordered all of the king's earlier financial edicts burned. Buoyed by the victory of (later known as ) at the Battle of Lens, Mazarin, on Queen Anne's insistence, arrested certain members in a show of force. The most important arrest, from Anne's point of view, concerned Pierre Broussel, one of the most important leaders in the .
People in France were complaining about the expansion of royal authority, the high rate of taxation, and the reduction of the authority of the Parlement de Paris and other regional representative entities. Paris erupted in rioting as a result, and Anne was forced, under intense pressure, to free Broussel. Moreover, on the night of 9–10 February 1651, when Louis was twelve, a mob of angry Parisians broke into the royal palace and demanded to see their king. Led into the royal bed-chamber, they gazed upon Louis, who was feigning sleep, were appeased, and then quietly departed. The threat to the royal family prompted Anne to flee Paris with the king and his courtiers.
Shortly thereafter, the conclusion of the Peace of Westphalia allowed Condé's army to return to aid Louis and his court. Condé's family was close to Anne at that time, and he agreed to help her attempt to restore the king's authority. The queen's army, headed by Condé, attacked the rebels in Paris; the rebels were under the political control of Anne's old friend Marie de Rohan. Beaufort, who had escaped from the prison where Anne had incarcerated him five years before, was the military leader in Paris, under the nominal control of Conti. After a few battles, a political compromise was reached; the Peace of Rueil was signed, and the court returned to Paris.
Unfortunately for Anne, her partial victory depended on Condé, who wanted to control the queen and destroy Mazarin's influence. It was Condé's sister who pushed him to turn against the queen. After striking a deal with her old friend Marie de Rohan, who was able to impose the nomination of as minister of justice, Anne arrested Condé, his brother Armand de Bourbon, Prince of Conti, and the husband of their sister Anne Genevieve de Bourbon, duchess of Longueville. This situation did not last long, and Mazarin's unpopularity led to the creation of a coalition headed mainly by Marie de Rohan and the duchess of Longueville. This aristocratic coalition was strong enough to liberate the princes, exile Mazarin, and impose a condition of virtual house arrest on Queen Anne.
All these events were witnessed by Louis and largely explained his later distrust of Paris and the higher aristocracy. "In one sense, Louis' childhood came to an end with the outbreak of the Fronde. It was not only that life became insecure and unpleasant – a fate meted out to many children in all ages – but that Louis had to be taken into the confidence of his mother and Mazarin on political and military matters of which he could have no deep understanding". "The family home became at times a near-prison when Paris had to be abandoned, not in carefree outings to other chateaux but in humiliating flights". The royal family was driven out of Paris twice in this manner, and at one point Louis XIV and Anne were held under virtual arrest in the royal palace in Paris. The Fronde years planted in Louis a hatred of Paris and a consequent determination to move out of the ancient capital as soon as possible, never to return.
Just as the first (the of 1648–1649) ended, a second one (the of 1650–1653) began. Unlike that which preceded it, tales of sordid intrigue and half-hearted warfare characterized this second phase of upper-class insurrection. To the aristocracy, this rebellion represented a protest for the reversal of their political demotion from vassals to courtiers. It was headed by the highest-ranking French nobles, among them Louis' uncle Gaston, Duke of Orléans and first cousin Anne Marie Louise d'Orléans, Duchess of Montpensier, known as ; Princes of the Blood such as Condé, his brother Armand de Bourbon, Prince of Conti, and their sister the Duchess of Longueville; dukes of legitimised royal descent, such as Henri, Duke of Longueville, and François, Duke of Beaufort; so-called "foreign princes" such as Frédéric Maurice, Duke of Bouillon, his brother Marshal Turenne, and Marie de Rohan, Duchess of Chevreuse; and scions of France's oldest families, such as François de La Rochefoucauld.
Queen Anne played the most important role in defeating the Fronde because she wanted to transfer absolute authority to her son. In addition, most of the princes refused to deal with Mazarin, who went into exile for a number of years. The claimed to act on Louis' behalf, and in his real interest, against his mother and Mazarin.
Queen Anne had a very close relationship with the Cardinal, and many observers believed that Mazarin became Louis XIV's stepfather by a secret marriage to Queen Anne. However, Louis' coming-of-age and subsequent coronation deprived them of the pretext for revolt. The thus gradually lost steam and ended in 1653, when Mazarin returned triumphantly from exile. From that time until his death, Mazarin was in charge of foreign and financial policy without the daily supervision of Anne, who was no longer regent.
During this period, Louis fell in love with Mazarin's niece Marie Mancini, but Anne and Mazarin ended the king's infatuation by sending Mancini away from court to be married in Italy. While Mazarin might have been tempted for a short period of time to marry his niece to the King of France, Queen Anne was absolutely against this; she wanted to marry her son to the daughter of her brother, Philip IV of Spain, for both dynastic and political reasons. Mazarin soon supported the Queen's position because he knew that her support for his power and his foreign policy depended on making peace with Spain from a strong position and on the Spanish marriage. Additionally, Mazarin's relations with Marie Mancini were not good, and he did not trust her to support his position. All of Louis' tears and his supplications to his mother did not make her change her mind. The Spanish marriage would be very important both for its role in ending the war between France and Spain, because many of the claims and objectives of Louis' foreign policy for the next 50 years would be based upon this marriage, and because it was through this marriage that the Spanish throne would ultimately be delivered to the House of Bourbon (which holds it to this day).
Personal reign and reforms
Coming of age and early reforms
Louis XIV was declared to have reached the age of majority on 7 September 1651. On the death of Mazarin, in March 1661, Louis assumed personal control of the reins of government and astonished his court by declaring that he would rule without a chief minister: "Up to this moment I have been pleased to entrust the government of my affairs to the late Cardinal. It is now time that I govern them myself. You [he was talking to the secretaries and ministers of state] will assist me with your counsels when I ask for them. I request and order you to seal no orders except by my command . . . I order you not to sign anything, not even a passport . . . without my command; to render account to me personally each day and to favor no one". Louis was able to capitalize on the widespread public yearning for law and order, that resulted from prolonged foreign wars and domestic civil strife, to further consolidate central political authority and reform at the expense of the feudal aristocracy. Praising his ability to choose and encourage men of talent, the historian Chateaubriand noted: "it is the voice of genius of all kinds which sounds from the tomb of Louis".
Louis began his personal reign with administrative and fiscal reforms. In 1661, the treasury verged on bankruptcy. To rectify the situation, Louis chose Jean-Baptiste Colbert as Controller-General of Finances in 1665. However, Louis first had to neutralize Nicolas Fouquet, the Superintendent of Finances, in order to give Colbert a free hand. Although Fouquet's financial indiscretions were not very different from Mazarin's before him or Colbert's after him, his ambition was worrying to Louis. He had, for example, built an opulent château at Vaux-le-Vicomte where he entertained Louis and his court ostentatiously, as if he were wealthier than the king himself. The court was left with the impression that the vast sums of money needed to support his lifestyle could only have been obtained through embezzlement of government funds.
Fouquet appeared eager to succeed Mazarin and Richelieu in assuming power, and he indiscreetly purchased and privately fortified the remote island of Belle Île. These acts sealed his doom. Fouquet was charged with embezzlement. The Parlement found him guilty and sentenced him to exile. However, Louis altered the sentence to life-imprisonment and abolished Fouquet's post.
With Fouquet dismissed, Colbert reduced the national debt through more efficient taxation. The principal taxes included the aides and douanes (both customs duties), the gabelle (a tax on salt), and the taille (a tax on land). The taille was reduced at first; financial officials were forced to keep regular accounts, auctioning certain taxes instead of selling them privately to a favoured few, revising inventories and removing unauthorized exemptions (for example, in 1661 only 10 per cent from the royal domain reached the King). Reform proved difficult because the taille was levied by officers of the Crown who had purchased their post at a high price: punishment of abuses necessarily lowered the value of the post. Nevertheless, excellent results were achieved: the deficit of 1661 turned into a surplus in 1666. The interest on the debt was reduced from 52 million to 24 million livres. The taille was reduced to 42 million in 1661 and 35 million in 1665; finally the revenue from indirect taxation progressed from 26 million to 55 million. The revenues of the royal domain were raised from 80,000 livres in 1661 to 5.5 million livres in 1671. In 1661, the receipts were equivalent to 26 million British pounds, of which 10 million reached the treasury. The expenditure was around 18 million pounds, leaving a deficit of 8 million. In 1667, the net receipts had risen to 20 million pounds sterling, while expenditure had fallen to 11 million, leaving a surplus of 9 million pounds.
To support the reorganized and enlarged army, the panoply of Versailles, and the growing civil administration, the king needed a good deal of money. Finance had always been the weak spot in the French monarchy: methods of collecting taxes were costly and inefficient; direct taxes passed through the hands of many intermediate officials; and indirect taxes were collected by private concessionaries, called tax farmers, who made a substantial profit. Consequently, the state always received far less than what the taxpayers actually paid.
The main weakness arose from an old bargain between the French crown and nobility: the king might raise taxes without consent if only he refrained from taxing the nobles. Only the "unprivileged" classes paid direct taxes, and this term came to mean the peasants only, since many bourgeois, in one way or another, obtained exemptions.
The system was outrageously unjust in throwing a heavy tax burden on the poor and helpless. Later, after 1700, the French ministers who were supported by Louis' secret wife Madame De Maintenon, were able to convince the king to change his fiscal policy. Louis was willing enough to tax the nobles but was unwilling to fall under their control, and only towards the close of his reign, under extreme stress of war, was he able, for the first time in French history, to impose direct taxes on the aristocratic elements of the population. This was a step toward equality before the law and toward sound public finance, but so many concessions and exemptions were won by nobles and bourgeois that the reform lost much of its value.
Louis and Colbert also had wide-ranging plans to bolster French commerce and trade. Colbert's mercantilist administration established new industries and encouraged manufacturers and inventors, such as the Lyon silk manufacturers and the Gobelins manufactory, a producer of tapestries. He invited manufacturers and artisans from all over Europe to France, such as Murano glassmakers, Swedish ironworkers, and Dutch shipbuilders. In this way, he aimed to decrease foreign imports while increasing French exports, hence reducing the net outflow of precious metals from France.
Louis instituted reforms in military administration through Michel le Tellier and the latter's son François-Michel le Tellier, Marquis de Louvois. They helped to curb the independent spirit of the nobility, imposing order on them at court and in the army. Gone were the days when generals protracted war at the frontiers while bickering over precedence and ignoring orders from the capital and the larger politico-diplomatic picture. The old military aristocracy (the Noblesse d'épée, or "nobility of the sword") ceased to have a monopoly over senior military positions and rank. Louvois, in particular, pledged to modernize the army and re-organize it into a professional, disciplined, well-trained force. He was devoted to the soldiers' material well-being and morale, and even tried to direct campaigns.
Relations with the major colonies
Legal matters did not escape Louis' attention, as is reflected in the numerous "Great Ordinances" he enacted. Pre-revolutionary France was a patchwork of legal systems, with as many legal customs as there were provinces, and two co-existing legal traditions—customary law in the north and Roman civil law in the south. The Grande Ordonnance de Procédure Civile of 1667, also known as the Code Louis, was a comprehensive legal code attempting a uniform regulation of civil procedure throughout legally irregular France. Among other things, it prescribed baptismal, marriage and death records in the state's registers, not the church's, and it strictly regulated the right of the Parlements to remonstrate. The Code Louis played an important part in French legal history as the basis for the Napoleonic code, from which many modern legal codes are, in turn, derived.
One of Louis' more infamous decrees was the Grande Ordonnance sur les Colonies of 1685, also known as the Code Noir ("black code"). Although it sanctioned slavery, it attempted to humanise the practice by prohibiting the separation of families. Additionally, in the colonies, only Roman Catholics could own slaves, and these had to be baptised.
Louis ruled through a number of councils:
Conseil d'en haut ("High Council", concerning the most important matters of state)—composed of the king, the crown prince, the controller-general of finances, and the secretaries of state in charge of various departments. The members of that council were called ministers of state.
Conseil des dépêches ("Council of Messages", concerning notices and administrative reports from the provinces).
Conseil de Conscience ("Council of Conscience", concerning religious affairs and episcopal appointments).
Conseil royal des finances ("Royal Council of Finances") who was headed by the "chef du conseil des finances" (an honorary post in most cases)—this was one of the few posts in the council that was opened to the high aristocracy.
Early wars in the Low Countries
Spain
The death of his maternal uncle King Philip IV of Spain, in 1665, precipitated the War of Devolution. In 1660, Louis had married Philip IV's eldest daughter, Maria Theresa, as one of the provisions of the 1659 Treaty of the Pyrenees. The marriage treaty specified that Maria Theresa was to renounce all claims to Spanish territory for herself and all her descendants. Mazarin and Lionne, however, made the renunciation conditional on the full payment of a Spanish dowry of 500,000 écus. The dowry was never paid and would later play a part persuading his maternal first cousin Charles II of Spain to leave his empire to Philip, Duke of Anjou (later Philip V of Spain), the grandson of Louis XIV and Maria Theresa.
The War of Devolution did not focus on the payment of the dowry; rather, the lack of payment was what Louis XIV used as a pretext for nullifying Maria Theresa's renunciation of her claims, allowing the land to "devolve" to him. In Brabant (the location of the land in dispute), children of first marriages traditionally were not disadvantaged by their parents' remarriages and still inherited property. Louis' wife was Philip IV's daughter by his first marriage, while the new king of Spain, Charles II, was his son by a subsequent marriage. Thus, Brabant allegedly "devolved" to Maria Theresa, giving France a justification to attack the Spanish Netherlands.
Relations with the Dutch
During the Eighty Years' War with Spain, France supported the Dutch Republic as part of a general policy of opposing Habsburg power. Johan de Witt, Dutch Grand Pensionary from 1653 to 1672, viewed them as crucial for Dutch security and against his domestic Orangist opponents. Louis provided support in the 1665-1667 Second Anglo-Dutch War but used the opportunity to launch the War of Devolution in 1667. This captured Franche-Comté and much of the Spanish Netherlands; French expansion in this area was a direct threat to Dutch economic interests.
The Dutch opened talks with Charles II of England on a common diplomatic front against France, leading to the Triple Alliance, between England, the Dutch and Sweden. The threat of an escalation and a secret treaty to divide Spanish possessions with Emperor Leopold, the other major claimant to the throne of Spain, led Louis to relinquish many of his gains in the 1668 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.
Louis placed little reliance on his agreement with Leopold and as it was now clear French and Dutch aims were in direct conflict, he decided to first defeat the Republic, then seize the Spanish Netherlands. This required breaking up the Triple Alliance; he paid Sweden to remain neutral and signed the 1670 Secret Treaty of Dover with Charles, an Anglo-French alliance against the Dutch Republic. In May 1672, France invaded the Republic, supported by Münster and the Electorate of Cologne.
Rapid French advance led to a coup that toppled De Witt and brought William III to power. Leopold viewed French expansion into the Rhineland as an increasing threat, especially after their seizure of the strategic Duchy of Lorraine in 1670. The prospect of Dutch defeat led Leopold to an alliance with Brandenburg-Prussia on 23 June, followed by another with the Republic on 25th. Although Brandenburg was forced out of the war by the June 1673 Treaty of Vossem, in August an anti-French alliance was formed by the Dutch, Spain, Emperor Leopold and the Duke of Lorraine.
The French alliance was deeply unpopular in England, who made peace with the Dutch in the February 1674 Treaty of Westminster. However, French armies held significant advantages over their opponents; an undivided command, talented generals like Turenne, Condé and Luxembourg and vastly superior logistics. Reforms introduced by Louvois, the Secretary of War, helped maintain large field armies that could be mobilised much more quickly, allowing them to mount offensives in early spring before their opponents were ready.
The French were forced to retreat from the Dutch Republic but these advantages allowed them to hold their ground in Alsace and the Spanish Netherlands while retaking Franche-Comté. By 1678, mutual exhaustion led to the Treaty of Nijmegen, which was generally settled in France's favour and allowed Louis to intervene in the Scanian War. Despite military defeat, his ally Sweden regained much of what they had lost under the 1679 treaties of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Fontainebleau and Lund imposed on Denmark-Norway and Brandenburg.
Louis was at the height of his power, but at the cost of uniting his opponents; this increased as he continued his expansion. In 1679, he dismissed his foreign minister Simon Arnauld, marquis de Pomponne, because he was seen as having compromised too much with the allies. Louis maintained the strength of his army, but in his next series of territorial claims avoided using military force alone. Rather, he combined it with legal pretexts in his efforts to augment the boundaries of his kingdom. Contemporary treaties were intentionally phrased ambiguously. Louis established the Chambers of Reunion to determine the full extent of his rights and obligations under those treaties.
Cities and territories, such as Luxembourg and Casale, were prized for their strategic positions on the frontier and access to important waterways. Louis also sought Strasbourg, an important strategic crossing on the left bank of the Rhine and theretofore a Free Imperial City of the Holy Roman Empire, annexing it and other territories in 1681. Although a part of Alsace, Strasbourg was not part of Habsburg-ruled Alsace and was thus not ceded to France in the Peace of Westphalia.
Following these annexations, Spain declared war, precipitating the War of the Reunions. However, the Spanish were rapidly defeated because the Emperor (distracted by the Great Turkish War) abandoned them, and the Dutch only supported them minimally. By the Truce of Ratisbon, in 1684, Spain was forced to acquiesce in the French occupation of most of the conquered territories, for 20 years.
Louis' policy of the Réunions may have raised France to its greatest size and power during his reign, but it alienated much of Europe. This poor public opinion was compounded by French actions off the Barbary Coast and at Genoa. First, Louis had Algiers and Tripoli, two Barbary pirate strongholds, bombarded to obtain a favourable treaty and the liberation of Christian slaves. Next, in 1684, a punitive mission was launched against Genoa in retaliation for its support for Spain in previous wars. Although the Genoese submitted, and the Doge led an official mission of apology to Versailles, France gained a reputation for brutality and arrogance. European apprehension at growing French might and the realisation of the extent of the dragonnades' effect (discussed below) led many states to abandon their alliances with France. Accordingly, by the late 1680s, France became increasingly isolated in Europe.
Non-European relations and the colonies
French colonies multiplied in Africa, the Americas, and Asia during Louis' reign, and French explorers made important discoveries in North America. In 1673, Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette discovered the Mississippi River. In 1682, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, followed the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico and claimed the vast Mississippi basin in Louis' name, calling it Louisiane. French trading posts were also established in India, at Chandernagore and Pondicherry, and in the Indian Ocean at Île Bourbon. Throughout these regions Louis and Colbert embarked on an extensive program of architecture and urbanism meant to reflect the styles of Versailles and Paris and the 'gloire' of the realm.
Meanwhile, diplomatic relations were initiated with distant countries. In 1669, Suleiman Aga led an Ottoman embassy to revive the old Franco-Ottoman alliance. Then, in 1682, after the reception of the Moroccan embassy of Mohammed Tenim in France, Moulay Ismail, Sultan of Morocco, allowed French consular and commercial establishments in his country. In 1699, Louis once again received a Moroccan ambassador, Abdallah bin Aisha, and in 1715, he received a Persian embassy led by Mohammad Reza Beg.
From farther afield, Siam dispatched an embassy in 1684, reciprocated by the French magnificently the next year under Alexandre, Chevalier de Chaumont. This, in turn, was succeeded by another Siamese embassy under Kosa Pan, superbly received at Versailles in 1686. Louis then sent another embassy in 1687, under Simon de la Loubère, and French influence grew at the Siamese court, which granted Mergui as a naval base to France. However, the death of Narai, King of Ayutthaya, the execution of his pro-French minister Constantine Phaulkon, and the Siege of Bangkok in 1688 ended this era of French influence.
France also attempted to participate actively in Jesuit missions to China. To break the Portuguese dominance there, Louis sent Jesuit missionaries to the court of the Kangxi Emperor in 1685: Jean de Fontaney, Joachim Bouvet, Jean-François Gerbillon, Louis Le Comte, and Claude de Visdelou. Louis also received a Chinese Jesuit, Michael Shen Fu-Tsung, at Versailles in 1684. Furthermore, Louis' librarian and translator Arcadio Huang was Chinese.
Height of power
Centralisation of power
By the early 1680s, Louis had greatly augmented French influence in the world. Domestically, he successfully increased the influence of the crown and its authority over the church and aristocracy, thus consolidating absolute monarchy in France.
Louis initially supported traditional Gallicanism, which limited papal authority in France, and convened an Assembly of the French clergy in November 1681. Before its dissolution eight months later, the Assembly had accepted the Declaration of the Clergy of France, which increased royal authority at the expense of papal power. Without royal approval, bishops could not leave France, and appeals could not be made to the Pope. Additionally, government officials could not be excommunicated for acts committed in pursuance of their duties. Although the king could not make ecclesiastical law, all papal regulations without royal assent were invalid in France. Unsurprisingly, the pope repudiated the Declaration.
By attaching nobles to his court at Versailles, Louis achieved increased control over the French aristocracy. According to historian Philip Mansel, the king turned the palace into:
an irresistible combination of marriage market, employment agency and entertainment capital of aristocratic Europe, boasting the best theatre, opera, music, gambling, sex and (most important) hunting.
Apartments were built to house those willing to pay court to the king. However, the pensions and privileges necessary to live in a style appropriate to their rank were only possible by waiting constantly on Louis. For this purpose, an elaborate court ritual was created wherein the king became the centre of attention and was observed throughout the day by the public. With his excellent memory, Louis could then see who attended him at court and who was absent, facilitating the subsequent distribution of favours and positions. Another tool Louis used to control his nobility was censorship, which often involved the opening of letters to discern their author's opinion of the government and king. Moreover, by entertaining, impressing, and domesticating them with extravagant luxury and other distractions, Louis not only cultivated public opinion of him, but he also ensured the aristocracy remained under his scrutiny.
Louis's extravagance at Versailles extended far beyond the scope of elaborate court rituals. He took delivery of an African elephant as a gift from the king of Portugal. He encouraged leading nobles to live at Versailles. This, along with the prohibition of private armies, prevented them from passing time on their own estates and in their regional power bases, from which they historically waged local wars and plotted resistance to royal authority. Louis thus compelled and seduced the old military aristocracy (the "nobility of the sword") into becoming his ceremonial courtiers, further weakening their power. In their place, he raised commoners or the more recently ennobled bureaucratic aristocracy (the "nobility of the robe"). He judged that royal authority thrived more surely by filling high executive and administrative positions with these men because they could be more easily dismissed than nobles of ancient lineage, with entrenched influence. It is believed that Louis's policies were rooted in his experiences during the Fronde, when men of high birth readily took up the rebel cause against their king, who was actually the kinsman of some. This victory over the nobility may thus have ensured the end of major civil wars in France until the French Revolution about a century later.
France as the pivot of warfare
Under Louis, France was the leading European power, and most wars pivoted around its aggressiveness. No European state exceeded it in population, and no one could match its wealth, central location, and very strong professional army. It had largely avoided the devastation of the Thirty Years' War. Its weaknesses included an inefficient financial system that was hard-pressed to pay for its military adventures, and the tendency of most other powers to gang up against it.
During Louis's reign, France fought three major wars: the Franco-Dutch War, the War of the League of Augsburg, and the War of the Spanish Succession. There were also two lesser conflicts: the War of Devolution and the War of the Reunions. The wars were very expensive but defined Louis XIV's foreign policy, and his personality shaped his approach. Impelled "by a mix of commerce, revenge, and pique," Louis sensed that war was the ideal way to enhance his glory. In peacetime he concentrated on preparing for the next war. He taught his diplomats that their job was to create tactical and strategic advantages for the French military. By 1695, France retained much of its dominance but had lost control of the seas to England and Holland, and most countries, both Protestant and Catholic, were in alliance against it. Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, France's leading military strategist, warned Louis in 1689 that a hostile "Alliance" was too powerful at sea. He recommended that France fight back by licensing French merchants ships to privateer and seize enemy merchant ships while avoiding its navies:
France has its declared enemies Germany and all the states that it embraces; Spain with all its dependencies in Europe, Asia, Africa and America; the Duke of Savoy [in Italy], England, Scotland, Ireland, and all their colonies in the East and West Indies; and Holland with all its possessions in the four corners of the world where it has great establishments. France has ... undeclared enemies, indirectly hostile, hostile, and envious of its greatness, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Portugal, Venice, Genoa, and part of the Swiss Confederation, all of which states secretly aid France's enemies by the troops that they hire to them, the money they lend them and by protecting and covering their trade.
Vauban was pessimistic about France's so-called friends and allies:
For lukewarm, useless, or impotent friends, France has the Pope, who is indifferent; the King of England [James II] expelled from his country; the Grand Duke of Tuscany; the Dukes of Mantua, Modena, and Parma [all in Italy]; and the other faction of the Swiss. Some of these are sunk in the softness that comes of years of peace, the others are cool in their affections....The English and Dutch are the main pillars of the Alliance; they support it by making war against us in concert with the other powers, and they keep it going by means of the money that they pay every year to... Allies.... We must therefore fall back on privateering as the method of conducting war which is most feasible, simple, cheap, and safe, and which will cost least to the state, the more so since any losses will not be felt by the King, who risks virtually nothing....It will enrich the country, train many good officers for the King, and in a short time force his enemies to sue for peace.
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes
Louis decided to persecute Protestants and revoke the 1598 Edict of Nantes, which awarded Huguenots political and religious freedom. He saw the persistence of Protestantism as a disgraceful reminder of royal powerlessness. After all, the Edict was the pragmatic concession of his grandfather Henry IV to end the longstanding French Wars of Religion. An additional factor in Louis' thinking was the prevailing contemporary European principle to assure socio-political stability, cuius regio, eius religio ("whose realm, his religion"), the idea that the religion of the ruler should be the religion of the realm (as originally confirmed in central Europe in the Peace of Augsburg of 1555).
Responding to petitions, Louis initially excluded Protestants from office, constrained the meeting of synods, closed churches outside of Edict-stipulated areas, banned Protestant outdoor preachers, and prohibited domestic Protestant migration. He also disallowed Protestant-Catholic intermarriages to which third parties objected, encouraged missions to the Protestants, and rewarded converts to Catholicism. This discrimination did not encounter much Protestant resistance, and a steady conversion of Protestants occurred, especially among the noble elites.
In 1681, Louis dramatically increased his persecution of Protestants. The principle of cuius regio, eius religio generally had also meant that subjects who refused to convert could emigrate, but Louis banned emigration and effectively insisted that all Protestants must be converted. Secondly, following the proposal of René de Marillac and the Marquis of Louvois, he began quartering dragoons in Protestant homes. Although this was within his legal rights, the dragonnades inflicted severe financial strain on Protestants and atrocious abuse. Between 300,000 and 400,000 Huguenots converted, as this entailed financial rewards and exemption from the dragonnades.
On 15 October 1685, Louis issued the Edict of Fontainebleau, which cited the redundancy of privileges for Protestants given their scarcity after the extensive conversions. The Edict of Fontainebleau revoked the Edict of Nantes and repealed all the privileges that arose therefrom. By his edict, Louis no longer tolerated the existence of Protestant groups, pastors, or churches in France. No further churches were to be constructed, and those already existing were to be demolished. Pastors could choose either exile or a secular life. Those Protestants who had resisted conversion were now to be baptised forcibly into the established church.
Historians have debated Louis' reasons for issuing the Edict of Fontainebleau. He may have been seeking to placate Pope Innocent XI, with whom relations were tense and whose aid was necessary to determine the outcome of a succession crisis in the Electorate of Cologne. He may also have acted to upstage Emperor Leopold I and regain international prestige after the latter defeated the Turks without Louis' help. Otherwise, he may simply have desired to end the remaining divisions in French society dating to the Wars of Religion by fulfilling his coronation oath to eradicate heresy.
Many historians have condemned the Edict of Fontainebleau as gravely harmful to France. In support, they cite the emigration of about 200,000 highly skilled Huguenots (roughly one-fourth of the Protestant population, or 1% of the French population) who defied royal decrees and fled France for various Protestant states, weakening the French economy and enriching that of Protestant states. On the other hand, there are historians who view this as an exaggeration. They argue that most of France's preeminent Protestant businessmen and industrialists converted to Catholicism and remained.
What is certain is that reaction to the Edict was mixed. Even while French Catholic leaders exulted, Pope Innocent XI still argued with Louis over Gallicanism and criticized the use of violence. Protestants across Europe were horrified at the treatment of their co-religionists, but most Catholics in France applauded the move. Nonetheless, it is indisputable that Louis' public image in most of Europe, especially in Protestant regions, was dealt a severe blow.
In the end, however, despite renewed tensions with the Camisards of south-central France at the end of his reign, Louis may have helped ensure that his successor would experience fewer instances of the religion-based disturbances that had plagued his forebears. French society would sufficiently change by the time of his descendant, Louis XVI, to welcome tolerance in the form of the 1787 Edict of Versailles, also known as the Edict of Tolerance. This restored to non-Catholics their civil rights and the freedom to worship openly. With the advent of the French Revolution in 1789, Protestants were granted equal rights with their Roman Catholic counterparts.
League of Augsburg
Causes and conduct of the war
The War of the League of Augsburg, which lasted from 1688 to 1697, initiated a period of decline in Louis's political and diplomatic fortunes. It arose from two events in the Rhineland. First, in 1685, the Elector Palatine Charles II died. All that remained of his immediate family was Louis's sister-in-law, Elizabeth Charlotte. German law ostensibly barred her from succeeding to her brother's lands and electoral dignity, but it was unclear enough for arguments in favour of Elizabeth Charlotte to have a chance of success. Conversely, the princess was clearly entitled to a division of the family's personal property. Louis pressed her claims to land and chattels, hoping the latter, at least, would be given to her. Then, in 1688, Maximilian Henry of Bavaria, Archbishop of Cologne, an ally of France, died. The archbishopric had traditionally been held by the Wittelsbachs of Bavaria, but the Bavarian claimant to replace Maximilian Henry, Prince Joseph Clemens of Bavaria, was at that time not more than 17 years old and not even ordained. Louis sought instead to install his own candidate, Wilhelm Egon von Fürstenberg, to ensure the key Rhenish state remained an ally.
In light of his foreign and domestic policies during the early 1680s, which were perceived as aggressive, Louis's actions, fostered by the succession crises of the late 1680s, created concern and alarm in much of Europe. This led to the formation of the 1686 League of Augsburg by the Holy Roman Emperor, Spain, Sweden, Saxony, and Bavaria. Their stated intention was to return France to at least the borders agreed to in the Treaty of Nijmegen. Emperor Leopold I's persistent refusal to convert the Truce of Ratisbon into a permanent treaty fed Louis's fears that the Emperor would turn on France and attack the Reunions after settling his affairs in the Balkans.
Another event Louis found threatening was England's Glorious Revolution of 1688. Although King James II was Catholic, his two Anglican daughters, Mary and Anne, ensured the English people a Protestant succession. But when James II's son James Francis Edward Stuart was born, he took precedence in succession over his sisters. This seemed to herald an era of Catholic monarchs in England. Protestant lords called on the Dutch Prince William III of Orange, grandson of Charles I of England, to come to their aid. He sailed for England with troops despite Louis's warning that France would regard it as a provocation. Witnessing numerous desertions and defections, even among those closest to him, James II fled England. Parliament declared the throne vacant, and offered it to James's daughter Mary II and his son-in-law and nephew William. Vehemently anti-French, William (now William III of England) pushed his new kingdoms into war, thus transforming the League of Augsburg into the Grand Alliance. Before this happened, Louis expected William's expedition to England to absorb his energies and those of his allies, so he dispatched troops to the Rhineland after the expiry of his ultimatum to the German princes requiring confirmation of the Truce of Ratisbon and acceptance of his demands about the succession crises. This military manoeuvre was also intended to protect his eastern provinces from Imperial invasion by depriving the enemy army of sustenance, thus explaining the preemptive scorched earth policy pursued in much of southwestern Germany (the "Devastation of the Palatinate").
French armies were generally victorious throughout the war because of Imperial commitments in the Balkans, French logistical superiority, and the quality of French generals such as Condé's famous pupil, François Henri de Montmorency-Bouteville, duc de Luxembourg. His triumphs at the Battles of Fleurus in 1690, Steenkerque in 1692, and Landen in 1693 preserved northern France from invasion.
Although an attempt to restore James II failed at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, France accumulated a string of victories from Flanders in the north, Germany in the east, and Italy and Spain in the south, to the high seas and the colonies. Louis personally supervised the captures of Mons in 1691 and Namur in 1692. Luxembourg gave France the defensive line of the Sambre by capturing Charleroi in 1693. France also overran most of the Duchy of Savoy after the battles of Marsaglia and Staffarde in 1693. While naval stalemate ensued after the French victory at the Battle of Beachy Head in 1690 and the Allied victory at Barfleur-La Hougue in 1692, the Battle of Torroella in 1694 exposed Catalonia to French invasion, culminating in the capture of Barcelona. The Dutch captured Pondichéry in 1693, but a 1697 French raid on the Spanish treasure port of Cartagena, Spain, yielded a fortune of 10,000,000 livres.
In July 1695, the city of Namur, occupied for three years by the French, was besieged by an allied army led by William III. Louis XIV ordered the surprise destruction of a Flemish city to divert the attention of these troops. This led to the bombardment of Brussels, in which more than 4,000 buildings were destroyed, including the entire city centre. The strategy failed, as Namur fell three weeks later, but harmed Louis XIV's reputation: a century later, Napoleon deemed the bombardment "as barbarous as it was useless."
Peace was broached by Sweden in 1690. By 1692, both sides evidently wanted peace, and secret bilateral talks began, but to no avail. Louis tried to break up the alliance against him by dealing with individual opponents but did not achieve his aim until 1696 when the Savoyards agreed to the Treaty of Turin and switched sides. Thereafter, members of the League of Augsburg rushed to the peace table, and negotiations for a general peace began in earnest, culminating in the Treaty of Ryswick of 1697.
Treaty of Ryswick
The Treaty of Ryswick ended the War of the League of Augsburg and disbanded the Grand Alliance. By manipulating their rivalries and suspicions, Louis divided his enemies and broke their power.
The treaty yielded many benefits for France. Louis secured permanent French sovereignty over all of Alsace, including Strasbourg, and established the Rhine as the Franco-German border (as it is to this day). Pondichéry and Acadia were returned to France, and Louis's de facto possession of Saint-Domingue was recognised as lawful. However, he returned Catalonia and most of the Reunions.
French military superiority might have allowed him to press for more advantageous terms. Thus, his generosity to Spain with regard to Catalonia has been read as a concession to foster pro-French sentiment and may ultimately have induced King Charles II to name Louis's grandson Philip, Duke of Anjou, heir to the Spanish throne. In exchange for financial compensation, France renounced its interests in the Electorate of Cologne and the Palatinate. Lorraine, which had been occupied by the French since 1670, was returned to its rightful Duke Leopold, albeit with a right of way to the French military. William and Mary were recognised as joint sovereigns of the British Isles, and Louis withdrew support for James II. The Dutch were given the right to garrison forts in the Spanish Netherlands that acted as a protective barrier against possible French aggression. Though in some respects the Treaty of Ryswick may appear a diplomatic defeat for Louis since he failed to place client rulers in control of the Palatinate or the Electorate of Cologne, he did in fact fulfil many of the aims laid down in his 1688 ultimatum. In any case, peace in 1697 was desirable to Louis, since France was exhausted from the costs of the war.
War of the Spanish Succession
Causes and build-up to the war
By the time of the Treaty of Ryswick, the Spanish succession had been a source of concern to European leaders for well over forty years. King Charles II ruled a vast empire comprising Spain, Naples, Sicily, Milan, the Spanish Netherlands, and numerous Spanish colonies. He produced no children, however, and consequently had no direct heirs.
The principal claimants to the throne of Spain belonged to the ruling families of France and Austria. The French claim derived from Louis XIV's mother Anne of Austria (the older sister of Philip IV of Spain) and his wife Maria Theresa (Philip IV's eldest daughter). Based on the laws of primogeniture, France had the better claim as it originated from the eldest daughters in two generations. However, their renunciation of succession rights complicated matters. In the case of Maria Theresa, nonetheless, the renunciation was considered null and void owing to Spain's breach of her marriage contract with Louis. In contrast, no renunciations tainted the claims of Emperor Leopold I's son Charles, Archduke of Austria, who was a grandson of Philip III's youngest daughter Maria Anna. The English and Dutch feared that a French or Austrian-born Spanish king would threaten the balance of power and thus preferred the Bavarian Prince Joseph Ferdinand, a grandson of Leopold I through his first wife Margaret Theresa of Spain (the younger daughter of Philip IV).
In an attempt to avoid war, Louis signed the Treaty of the Hague with William III of England in 1698. This agreement divided Spain's Italian territories between Louis's son le Grand Dauphin and Archduke Charles, with the rest of the empire awarded to Joseph Ferdinand. William III consented to permitting the Dauphin's new territories to become part of France when the latter succeeded to his father's throne. The signatories, however, omitted to consult the ruler of these lands, and Charles II was passionately opposed to the dismemberment of his empire. In 1699, he re-confirmed his 1693 will that named Joseph Ferdinand as his sole successor.
Six months later, Joseph Ferdinand died. Therefore, in 1700, Louis and William III concluded a fresh partitioning agreement, the Treaty of London. This allocated Spain, the Low Countries, and the Spanish colonies to the Archduke. The Dauphin would receive all of Spain's Italian territories. Charles II acknowledged that his empire could only remain undivided by bequeathing it entirely to a Frenchman or an Austrian. Under pressure from his German wife, Maria Anna of Neuburg, Charles II named Archduke Charles as his sole heir.
Acceptance of the will of Charles II and consequences
On his deathbed in 1700, Charles II of Spain unexpectedly changed his will. The clear demonstration of French military superiority for many decades before this time, the pro-French faction at the court of Spain, and even Pope Innocent XII convinced him that France was more likely to preserve his empire intact. He thus offered the entire empire to the Dauphin's second son Philip, Duke of Anjou, provided it remained undivided. Anjou was not in the direct line of French succession, thus his accession would not cause a Franco-Spanish union. If Anjou refused, the throne would be offered to his younger brother Charles, Duke of Berry. If the Duke of Berry declined it, it would go to Archduke Charles, then to the distantly related House of Savoy if Charles declined it.
Louis was confronted with a difficult choice. He could agree to a partition of the Spanish possessions and avoid a general war, or accept Charles II's will and alienate much of Europe. He may initially have been inclined to abide by the partition treaties, but the Dauphin's insistence persuaded him otherwise. Moreover, Louis's foreign minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, marquis de Torcy, pointed out that war with the Emperor would almost certainly ensue whether Louis accepted the partition treaties or Charles II's will. He emphasised that, should it come to war, William III was unlikely to stand by France since he "made a treaty to avoid war and did not intend to go to war to implement the treaty". Indeed, in the event of war, it might be preferable to be already in control of the disputed lands. Eventually, therefore, Louis decided to accept Charles II's will. Philip, Duke of Anjou, thus became Philip V, King of Spain.
Most European rulers accepted Philip as king, some reluctantly. Depending on one's views of the war's inevitability, Louis acted reasonably or arrogantly. He confirmed that Philip V retained his French rights despite his new Spanish position. Admittedly, he may only have been hypothesising a theoretical eventuality and not attempting a Franco-Spanish union. But his actions were certainly not read as disinterested. Moreover, Louis sent troops to the Spanish Netherlands to evict Dutch garrisons and secure Dutch recognition of Philip V. In 1701, Philip transferred the asiento (the right to supply slaves to Spanish colonies) to France, as a sign of the two nation's growing connections. As tensions mounted, Louis decided to acknowledge James Stuart, the son of James II, as king of England on the latter's death, infuriating William III. These actions enraged Britain and the Dutch Republic. With the Holy Roman Emperor and the petty German states, they formed another Grand Alliance and declared war on France in 1702. French diplomacy secured Bavaria, Portugal, and Savoy as Franco-Spanish allies.
Commencement of fighting
Even before war was officially declared, hostilities began with Imperial aggression in Italy. Once finally declared, the War of the Spanish Succession lasted almost until Louis's death, at great cost to him and France.
The war began with French successes, but the talents of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, and Eugene of Savoy checked these victories and broke the myth of French invincibility. The duo allowed the Palatinate and Austria to occupy Bavaria after their victory at the Battle of Blenheim. Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria, had to flee to the Spanish Netherlands. The impact of this victory won the support of Portugal and Savoy. Later, the Battle of Ramillies delivered the Low Countries to the Allies, and the Battle of Turin forced Louis to evacuate Italy, leaving it open to Allied forces. Marlborough and Eugene met again at the Battle of Oudenarde, which enabled them to invade France.
France established contact with Francis II Rákóczi and promised support if he took up the cause of Hungarian independence.
Defeats, famine, and mounting debt greatly weakened France. Between 1693 and 1710, over two million people died in two famines, made worse as foraging armies seized food supplies from the villages. In desperation, Louis ordered a disastrous invasion of the English island of Guernsey in the autumn of 1704 with the aim of raiding their successful harvest. By the winter of 1708–09, he was willing to accept peace at nearly any cost. He agreed that the entire Spanish empire should be surrendered to Archduke Charles, and also consented to return to the frontiers of the Peace of Westphalia, giving up all the territories he had acquired over 60 years. But he could promise that Philip V would accept these terms, so the Allies demanded that Louis single-handedly attack his grandson to force these terms on him. If he could not achieve this within the year, the war would resume. Louis could not accept these terms.
Turning point
The final phases of the War of the Spanish Succession demonstrated that the Allies could not maintain Archduke Charles in Spain just as surely as France could not retain the entire Spanish inheritance for Philip V. The Allies were definitively expelled from central Spain by the Franco-Spanish victories at the Battles of Villaviciosa and Brihuega in 1710. French forces elsewhere remained obdurate despite their defeats. The Allies suffered a Pyrrhic victory at the Battle of Malplaquet with 21,000 casualties, twice that of the French. Eventually, France recovered its military pride with the decisive victory at Denain in 1712.
French military successes near the end of the war took place against the background of a changed political situation in Austria. In 1705, Emperor Leopold I died. His elder son and successor, Joseph I, followed him in 1711. His heir was none other than Archduke Charles, who secured control of all of his brother's Austrian landholdings. If the Spanish empire then fell to him, it would have resurrected a domain as vast as Holy Roman Emperor Charles V's in the 16th century. To the maritime powers of Great Britain and the Dutch Republic, this would have been as undesirable as a Franco-Spanish union.
Conclusion of peace
As a result of the fresh British perspective on the European balance of power, Anglo-French talks began, culminating in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht between Louis, Philip V of Spain, Anne, Queen of Great Britain, and the Dutch Republic. In 1714, after losing Landau and Freiburg, the Holy Roman Emperor also made peace with France in the Treaties of Rastatt and Baden.
In the general settlement, Philip V retained Spain and its colonies, while Austria received the Spanish Netherlands and divided Spanish Italy with Savoy. Britain kept Gibraltar and Menorca. Louis agreed to withdraw his support for James Stuart, son of James II and pretender to the throne of Great Britain, and ceded Newfoundland, Rupert's Land, and Acadia in the Americas to Anne. Britain gained the most from the treaty, but the final terms were much more favourable to France than those being discussed in peace negotiations in 1709 and 1710. France retained Île-Saint-Jean and Île Royale, and Louis acquired a few minor European territories, such as the Principality of Orange and the Ubaye Valley, which covered transalpine passes into Italy. Thanks to Louis, his allies the Electors of Bavaria and Cologne were restored to their prewar status and returned their lands.
Personal life
Marriages and children
Louis and his wife Maria Theresa of Spain had six children from the marriage contracted for them in 1660. However, only one child, the eldest, survived to adulthood: Louis, le Grand Dauphin, known as Monseigneur. Maria Theresa died in 1683, whereupon Louis remarked that she had never caused him unease on any other occasion.
Despite evidence of affection early on in their marriage, Louis was never faithful to Maria Theresa. He took a series of mistresses, both official and unofficial. Among the better documented are Louise de La Vallière (with whom he had five children; 1661–67), Bonne de Pons d'Heudicourt (1665), Catherine Charlotte de Gramont (1665), Françoise-Athénaïs, Marquise de Montespan (with whom he had seven children; 1667–80), Anne de Rohan-Chabot (1669–75), Claude de Vin des Œillets (one child born in 1676), Isabelle de Ludres (1675–78), and Marie Angélique de Scorailles (1679–81), who died at age 19 in childbirth. Through these liaisons, he produced numerous illegitimate children, most of whom he married to members of cadet branches of the royal family.
Louis proved relatively more faithful to his second wife, Françoise d'Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon. He first met her through her work caring for his children by Madame de Montespan, noting the care she gave to his favourite, Louis Auguste, Duke of Maine. The king was, at first, put off by her strict religious practice, but he warmed to her through her care for his children.
When he legitimized his children by Madame de Montespan on 20 December 1673, Françoise d'Aubigné became the royal governess at Saint-Germain. As governess, she was one of very few people permitted to speak to him as an equal, without limits. It is believed that they were married secretly at Versailles on or around 10 October 1683 or January 1684. This marriage, though never announced or publicly discussed, was an open secret and lasted until his death.
Piety and religion
Louis was a pious and devout king who saw himself as the head and protector of the Catholic Church in France. He made his devotions daily regardless of where he was, following the liturgical calendar regularly. Under the influence of his very religious second wife, he became much stronger in the practice of his Catholic faith. This included banning opera and comedy performances during Lent.
Towards the middle and the end of his reign, the centre for the King's religious observances was usually the Chapelle Royale at Versailles. Ostentation was a distinguishing feature of daily Mass, annual celebrations, such as those of Holy Week, and special ceremonies. Louis established the Paris Foreign Missions Society, but his informal alliance with the Ottoman Empire was criticised for undermining Christendom.
Patronage of the arts
Louis generously supported the royal court of France and those who worked under him. He brought the Académie Française under his patronage and became its "Protector". He allowed Classical French literature to flourish by protecting such writers as Molière, Racine, and La Fontaine, whose works remain influential to this day. Louis also patronised the visual arts by funding and commissioning artists such as Charles Le Brun, Pierre Mignard, Antoine Coysevox, and Hyacinthe Rigaud, whose works became famous throughout Europe. Composers and musicians such as Jean-Baptiste Lully, Jacques Champion de Chambonnières, and François Couperin thrived. In 1661, Louis founded the Académie Royale de Danse, and in 1669, the Académie d'Opéra, important driving events in the evolution of ballet. He also attracted, supported and patronized such artists as André Charles Boulle, who revolutionised marquetry with his art of inlay, today known as "Boulle Work".
Over the course of four building campaigns, Louis converted a hunting lodge built by Louis XIII into the spectacular Palace of Versailles. With the exception of the current Royal Chapel (built near the end of his reign), the palace achieved much of its current appearance after the third building campaign, which was followed by an official move of the royal court to Versailles on 6 May 1682. Versailles became a dazzling, awe-inspiring setting for state affairs and the reception of foreign dignitaries. At Versailles, the king alone commanded attention.
Several reasons have been suggested for the creation of the extravagant and stately palace, as well as the relocation of the monarchy's seat. The memoirist Saint-Simon speculated that Louis viewed Versailles as an isolated power centre where treasonous cabals could be more readily discovered and foiled. There has also been speculation that the revolt of the Fronde caused Louis to hate Paris, which he abandoned for a country retreat, but his sponsorship of many public works in Paris, such as the establishment of a police force and of street-lighting, lend little credence to this theory. As a further example of his continued care for the capital, Louis constructed the Hôtel des Invalides, a military complex and home to this day for officers and soldiers rendered infirm either by injury or old age. While pharmacology was still quite rudimentary in his day, the Invalides pioneered new treatments and set new standards for hospice treatment. The conclusion of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1668 also induced Louis to demolish Paris's northern walls in 1670 and replace them with wide tree-lined boulevards.
Louis also renovated and improved the Louvre and other royal residences. Gian Lorenzo Bernini was originally to plan additions to the Louvre; however, his plans would have meant the destruction of much of the existing structure, replacing it with an Italian summer villa in the centre of Paris. Bernini's plans were eventually shelved in favour of the elegant Louvre Colonnade designed by three Frenchmen: Louis Le Vau, Charles Le Brun, and Claude Perrault. With the relocation of the court to Versailles, the Louvre was given over to the arts and the public.
During his visit from Rome, Bernini also executed a renowned portrait bust of the king.
Image and depiction
Few rulers in world history have commemorated themselves in as grand a manner as Louis. He cultivated his image as the Sun King (le Roi Soleil), the center of the universe "without equal". Louis used court ritual and the arts to validate and augment his control over France. With his support, Colbert established from the beginning of Louis' personal reign a centralised and institutionalised system for creating and perpetuating the royal image. The King was thus portrayed largely in majesty or at war, notably against Spain. This portrayal of the monarch was to be found in numerous media of artistic expression, such as painting, sculpture, theatre, dance, music, and the almanacs that diffused royal propaganda to the population at large.
Evolution of royal portraiture
Over his lifetime, Louis commissioned numerous works of art to portray himself, among them over 300 formal portraits. The earliest portrayals of Louis already followed the pictorial conventions of the day in depicting the child king as the majestically royal incarnation of France. This idealisation of the monarch continued in later works, which avoided depictions of the effect of smallpox that Louis contracted in 1647. In the 1660s, Louis began to be shown as a Roman emperor, the god Apollo, or Alexander the Great, as can be seen in many works of Charles Le Brun, such as sculpture, paintings, and the decor of major monuments.
The depiction of the king in this manner focused on allegorical or mythological attributes, instead of attempting to produce a true likeness. As Louis aged, so too did the manner in which he was depicted. Nonetheless, there was still a disparity between realistic representation and the demands of royal propaganda. There is no better illustration of this than in Hyacinthe Rigaud's frequently-reproduced Portrait of Louis XIV of 1701, in which a 63-year-old Louis appears to stand on a set of unnaturally young legs.
Rigaud's portrait exemplified the height of royal portraiture during Louis' reign. Although Rigaud crafted a credible likeness of Louis, the portrait was neither meant as an exercise in realism nor to explore Louis' personal character. Certainly, Rigaud was concerned with detail and depicted the king's costume with great precision, down to his shoe buckle.
However, Rigaud's intention was to glorify the monarchy. Rigaud's original, now housed in the Louvre, was originally meant as a gift to Louis' grandson, Philip V of Spain. However, Louis was so pleased with the work that he kept the original and commissioned a copy to be sent to his grandson. That became the first of many copies, both in full and half-length formats, to be made by Rigaud, often with the help of his assistants. The portrait also became a model for French royal and imperial portraiture down to the time of Charles X over a century later. In his work, Rigaud proclaims Louis' exalted royal status through his elegant stance and haughty expression, the royal regalia and throne, rich ceremonial fleur-de-lys robes, as well as the upright column in the background, which, together with the draperies, serves to frame this image of majesty.
Other works of art
In addition to portraits, Louis commissioned at least 20 statues of himself in the 1680s, to stand in Paris and provincial towns as physical manifestations of his rule. He also commissioned "war artists" to follow him on campaigns to document his military triumphs. To remind the people of these triumphs, Louis erected permanent triumphal arches in Paris and the provinces for the first time since the decline of the Roman Empire.
Louis' reign marked the birth and infancy of the art of medallions. Sixteenth-century rulers had often issued medals in small numbers to commemorate the major events of their reigns. Louis, however, struck more than 300 to celebrate the story of the king in bronze, that were enshrined in thousands of households throughout France.
He also used tapestries as a medium of exalting the monarchy. Tapestries could be allegorical, depicting the elements or seasons, or realist, portraying royal residences or historical events. They were among the most significant means to spread royal propaganda prior to the construction of the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.
Ballet
Louis loved ballet and frequently danced in court ballets during the early half of his reign. In general, Louis was an eager dancer who performed 80 roles in 40 major ballets. This approaches the career of a professional ballet dancer.
His choices were strategic and varied. He danced four parts in three of Molière's comédies-ballets, which are plays accompanied by music and dance. Louis played an Egyptian in Le Mariage forcé in 1664, a Moorish gentleman in Le Sicilien in 1667, and both Neptune and Apollo in Les Amants magnifiques in 1670.
He sometimes danced leading roles that were suitably royal or godlike (such as Neptune, Apollo, or the Sun). At other times, he would adopt mundane roles before appearing at the end in the lead role. It is considered that, at all times, he provided his roles with sufficient majesty and drew the limelight with his flair for dancing. For Louis, ballet may not have merely been a tool for manipulation in his propaganda machinery. The sheer number of performances he gave as well as the diversity of roles he played may serve to indicate a deeper understanding and interest in the art form.
Ballet dancing was actually used by Louis as a political tool to hold power over his state. He integrated ballet deeply in court social functions and fixated his nobles' attention on upholding standards in ballet dancing, effectively distracting them from political activities. In 1661, The Royal Academy of Dance was founded by Louis to further his ambition. Pierre Beauchamp, his private dance instructor, was ordered by Louis to come up with a notation system to record ballet performances, which he did with great success. His work was adopted and published by Feuillet in 1700 as Choregraphie. This major development in ballet played an important role in promoting French culture and ballet throughout Europe during Louis' time.
Louis greatly emphasized etiquettes in ballet dancing, evidently seen in "La belle danse" (the French noble style). More challenging skills were required to perform this dance with movements very much resembling court behaviours, as a way to remind the nobles of the king's absolute power and their own status. All the details and rules were compressed in five positions of the bodies codified by Beauchamp.
Unofficial image
Besides the official depiction and image of Louis, his subjects also followed a non-official discourse consisting mainly of clandestine publications, popular songs, and rumours that provided an alternative interpretation of Louis and his government. They often focused on the miseries arising from poor government, but also carried the hope for a better future when Louis escaped the malignant influence of his ministers and mistresses, and took the government into his own hands. On the other hand, petitions addressed either directly to Louis or to his ministers exploited the traditional imagery and language of monarchy. These varying interpretations of Louis abounded in self-contradictions that reflected the people's amalgamation of their everyday experiences with the idea of monarchy.
In fiction
Literature
Alexandre Dumas portrayed Louis in his two sequels to his 1844 novel The Three Musketeers: first as a child in Twenty Years After (1845), then as a young man in The Vicomte de Bragelonne (1847–1850), in which he is a central character. The final part of the latter novel recounts the legend that a mysterious prisoner in an iron mask was actually Louis' twin brother and has spawned numerous film adaptations generally titled The Man in the Iron Mask.
In 1910, the American historical novelist Charles Major wrote "The Little King: A Story of the Childhood of King Louis XIV".
Louis is a major character in the 1959 historical novel Angélique et le Roy ("Angélique and the King"), part of the Angélique series. The protagonist, a strong-willed lady at Versailles, rejects the King's advances and refuses to become his mistress. A later book, the 1961 Angélique se révolte ("Angélique in Revolt"), details the dire consequences of her defying this powerful monarch.
A character based on Louis plays an important role in The Age of Unreason, a series of four alternate history novels written by American science fiction and fantasy author Gregory Keyes.
Louis features significantly in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, specifically in the 2003 novel The Confusion, the greater part of which takes place at Versailles.
In the 39 Clues series universe, it has been noted that Louis was part of the Cahill branch, Tomas.
He is called the son of Apollo in Rick Riordan's Trials of Apollo series.
Louis XIV is portrayed in Vonda N. McIntyre's 1997 novel The Moon and the Sun.
Films
The film, The Taking of Power by Louis XIV (1966), directed by Roberto Rossellini, shows Louis' rise to power after the death of Cardinal Mazarin.
The film Man in the Iron Mask (1998), directed by Randall Wallace, focused on the identity of an anonymous masked prisoner who spent decades in the Bastille and other French prisons, and his true identity remains somewhat a mystery till date. The monarch was played by Leonardo DiCaprio.
The film, Le Roi Danse (2000; translated: The King Dances), directed by Gérard Corbiau, reveals Louis through the eyes of Jean-Baptiste Lully, his court musician.
Julian Sands portrayed Louis in Roland Jaffe's Vatel (2000).
Alan Rickman directed, co-wrote, and stars as Louis XIV in the film, A Little Chaos, which centres on construction in the gardens of Versaille, at the time immediately before and after the death of Queen Maria Theresa.
The 2016 film The Death of Louis XIV, directed by Albert Serra, is set during the last two weeks of Louis XIV's life before dying of gangrene, with the monarch played by Jean-Pierre Léaud.
Television
The 15-year-old Louis XIV, as played by the Irish actor Robert Sheehan, is a major character of the short-lived historical fantasy series Young Blades from January to June 2005.
George Blagden portrays Louis XIV in the Canal+ series Versailles which aired for three seasons from 2015.
Musicals
Emmanuel Moire portrayed Louis XIV in the 2005-07 Kamel Ouali musical Le Roi Soleil.
Health and death
Despite the image of a healthy and virile king that Louis sought to project, evidence exists to suggest that his health was not very good. He had many ailments: for example, symptoms of diabetes, as confirmed in reports of suppurating periostitis in 1678, dental abscesses in 1696, along with recurring boils, fainting spells, gout, dizziness, hot flushes, and headaches.
From 1647 to 1711, the three chief physicians to the king (Antoine Vallot, Antoine d'Aquin, and Guy-Crescent Fagon) recorded all of his health problems in the Journal de Santé du Roi (Journal of the King's Health), a daily report of his health. On 18 November 1686, Louis underwent a painful operation for an anal fistula that was performed by the surgeon Charles Felix de Tassy, who prepared a specially shaped curved scalpel for the occasion. The wound took more than two months to heal.
Louis died of gangrene at Versailles on 1 September 1715, four days before his 77th birthday, after 72 years on the throne. Enduring much pain in his last days, he finally "yielded up his soul without any effort, like a candle going out", while reciting the psalm Domine, ad adjuvandum me festina (O Lord, make haste to help me). His body was laid to rest in Saint-Denis Basilica outside Paris. It remained there undisturbed for about 80 years until revolutionaries exhumed and destroyed all of the remains found in the Basilica.
Succession
Louis outlived most of his immediate legitimate family. His last surviving legitimate son, the Dauphin, died in 1711. Barely a year later, the Duke of Burgundy, the eldest of the Dauphin's three sons and then heir-apparent to Louis, followed his father. Burgundy's elder son, Louis, Duke of Brittany, joined them a few weeks later. Thus, on his deathbed, Louis' heir-apparent was his five-year-old great-grandson, Louis, Duke of Anjou, Burgundy's younger son.
Louis foresaw an underaged successor and sought to restrict the power of his nephew Philip II, Duke of Orléans, who, as his closest surviving legitimate relative in France, would likely become regent to the prospective Louis XV. Accordingly, the king created a regency council as Louis XIII had in anticipation of Louis XIV's own minority, with some power vested in his illegitimate son Louis-Auguste de Bourbon, Duke of Maine. Orléans, however, had Louis' will annulled by the Parlement of Paris after his death and made himself sole regent. He stripped Maine and his brother, Louis-Alexandre, Count of Toulouse, of the rank of Prince of the Blood, which Louis had granted them, and significantly reduced Maine's power and privileges.
Line of succession in 1715
Line of succession to the French throne upon the death of Louis XIV in 1715. Louis XIV's only surviving legitimate grandson, Philip V, was not included in the line of succession due to having renounced the French throne after the war of the Spanish Succession, which lasted for 13 years after the death of Charles II of Spain in 1700.
Louis XIII (1601–1643)
Louis XIV (1638–1715)
Louis, Grand Dauphin (1661–1711)
Louis, Duke of Burgundy (1682–1712)
Louis, Duke of Brittany (1707–1712)
(1) Louis, Duke of Anjou (1710–1774)
Philip V of Spain (1683–1746)
Charles, Duke of Berry (1686–1714)
Philippe I, Duke of Orléans (1640–1701)
(2) Philippe II, Duke of Orléans (1674–1723)
(3) Louis, Duke of Chartres (1703–1752)
Further down the French line of succession in 1715 was the House of Conde, followed by the House of Conti (a cadet branch of the House of Conde). Both of these royal houses were descended in the male line from Henri II, Prince of Conde, a second cousin of French King Louis XIII (the father of Louis XIV) in the male line.
Legacy
Reputation
According to Philippe de Dangeau's Journal, Louis on his deathbed advised his heir with these words: Do not follow the bad example which I have set you; I have often undertaken war too lightly and have sustained it for vanity. Do not imitate me, but be a peaceful prince, and may you apply yourself principally to the alleviation of the burdens of your subjects.
Some historians point out that it was a customary demonstration of piety in those days to exaggerate one's sins. Thus they do not place much emphasis on Louis' deathbed declarations in assessing his accomplishments. Rather, they focus on military and diplomatic successes, such as how he placed a French prince on the Spanish throne. This, they contend, ended the threat of an aggressive Spain that historically interfered in domestic French politics. These historians also emphasise the effect of Louis' wars in expanding France's boundaries and creating more defensible frontiers that preserved France from invasion until the Revolution.
Arguably, Louis also applied himself indirectly to "the alleviation of the burdens of [his] subjects." For example, he patronised the arts, encouraged industry, fostered trade and commerce, and sponsored the founding of an overseas empire. Moreover, the significant reduction in civil wars and aristocratic rebellions during his reign are seen by these historians as the result of Louis' consolidation of royal authority over feudal elites. In their analysis, his early reforms centralised France and marked the birth of the modern French state. They regard the political and military victories as well as numerous cultural achievements as the means by which Louis helped raise France to a preeminent position in Europe. Europe came to admire France for its military and cultural successes, power, and sophistication. Europeans generally began to emulate French manners, values, goods, and deportment. French became the universal language of the European elite.
Louis' detractors have argued that his considerable foreign, military, and domestic expenditure impoverished and bankrupted France. His supporters, however, distinguish the state, which was impoverished, from France, which was not. As supporting evidence, they cite the literature of the time, such as the social commentary in Montesquieu's Persian Letters.
Alternatively, Louis' critics attribute the social upheaval culminating in the French Revolution to his failure to reform French institutions while the monarchy was still secure. Other scholars counter that there was little reason to reform institutions that largely worked well under Louis. They also maintain that events occurring almost 80 years after his death were not reasonably foreseeable to Louis and that in any case, his successors had sufficient time to initiate reforms of their own.
Louis has often been criticised for his vanity. The memoirist Saint-Simon, who claimed that Louis slighted him, criticised him thus: There was nothing he liked so much as flattery, or, to put it more plainly, adulation; the coarser and clumsier it was, the more he relished it. For his part, Voltaire saw Louis' vanity as the cause for his bellicosity:It is certain that he passionately wanted glory, rather than the conquests themselves. In the acquisition of Alsace and half of Flanders, and of all of Franche-Comté, what he really liked was the name he made for himself.
Nonetheless, Louis has also received praise. The anti-Bourbon Napoleon described him not only as "a great king", but also as "the only King of France worthy of the name". Leibniz, the German Protestant philosopher, commended him as "one of the greatest kings that ever was". And Lord Acton admired him as "by far the ablest man who was born in modern times on the steps of a throne". The historian and philosopher Voltaire wrote: "His name can never be pronounced without respect and without summoning the image of an eternally memorable age". Voltaire's history, The Age of Louis XIV, named Louis' reign as not only one of the four great ages in which reason and culture flourished, but the greatest ever.
In 1848, at Nuneham House, a piece of Louis' mummified heart, taken from his tomb and kept in a silver locket by Lord Harcourt, Archbishop of York, was shown to the Dean of Westminster, William Buckland, who ate it.
Quotes
Numerous quotes have been attributed to Louis XIV by legend.
The well-known "I am the state" ("L'état, c'est moi.") was reported from at least the late 18th century. It was widely repeated but also denounced as apocryphal by the early 19th century.
He did say, "Every time I appoint someone to a vacant position, I make a hundred unhappy and one ungrateful." Louis is recorded by numerous eyewitnesses as having said on his deathbed: "" ("I depart, but the State shall always remain.")
Arms
Order of Saint Louis
On 5 April 1693, Louis also founded the Royal and Military Order of Saint Louis (), a military order of chivalry. He named it after Louis IX and intended it as a reward for outstanding officers. It is notable as the first decoration that could be granted to non-nobles and is roughly the forerunner of the Légion d'honneur, with which it shares the red ribbon (though the Légion d'honneur is awarded to military personnel and civilians alike).
Family
Ancestry
Patrilineal descent
Louis' patriline is the line from which he is descended father to son.
Patrilineal descent is the principle behind membership in royal houses, as it can be traced back through the generations - which means that if King Louis were to choose an historically accurate house name it would be Robertian, as all his male-line ancestors have been of that house.
Louis is a member of the House of Bourbon, a branch of the Capetian dynasty and of the Robertians.
Louis' patriline is the line from which he is descended father to son. It follows the Bourbon, Kings of France, and the Counts of Paris and Worms. This line can be traced back more than 1,200 years from Robert of Hesbaye to the present day, through Kings of France & Navarre, Spain and Two-Sicilies, Dukes of Parma and Grand-Dukes of Luxembourg, Princes of Orléans and Emperors of Brazil. It is one of the oldest in Europe.
Robert II of Worms and Rheingau (Robert of Hesbaye), 770–807
Robert III of Worms and Rheingau, 808–834
Robert IV the Strong, 820–866
Robert I of France, 866–923
Hugh the Great, 895–956
Hugh Capet, 941–996
Robert II of France, 972–1031
Henry I of France, 1008–1060
Philip I of France, 1053–1108
Louis VI of France, 1081–1137
Louis VII of France, 1120–1180
Philip II of France, 1165–1223
Louis VIII of France, 1187–1226
Louis IX of France, 1215–1270
Robert, Count of Clermont, 1256–1317
Louis I, Duke of Bourbon, 1279–1342
James I, Count of La Marche, 1319–1362
John I, Count of La Marche, 1344–1393
Louis, Count of Vendôme, 1376–1446
Jean VIII, Count of Vendôme, 1428–1478
François, Count of Vendôme, 1470–1495
Charles de Bourbon, Duke of Vendôme, 1489–1537
Antoine, King of Navarre, Duke of Vendôme, 1518–1562
Henry IV, King of France and of Navarre, 1553–1610
Louis XIII, King of France and Navarre, 1601–1643
Louis XIV, King of France and Navarre, 1638–1715
Issue
This is an incomplete list of Louis XIV's illegitimate children. He reputedly had more, but the difficulty in fully documenting all such births restricts the list only to the better-known and/or legitimised.
See also
Charles de Lorme, personal medical doctor to Louis XIV
House of France
Levée (ceremony)
List of French monarchs
Outline of France
Style Louis XIV
Notes
References
Bibliography
Mansel, Philip. King of the World: The Life of Louis XIV (U of Chicago Press, 2020) scholarly biography; online review
(Fourth edition, 2019)
Norton, Lucy (1982). The Sun King and His Loves. The Folio Society.
Roosen, William J. The Age of Louis XIV: The Rise of Modern Diplomacy (1976) online.
: a standard scholarly biography;
External links
Ranum, Orest, ed. The Century of Louis XIV (1972) documents; online
Louis XIV at History.com
Full text of marriage contract, France National Archives transcription
Le Siècle de Louis XIV by Voltaire, 1751, hosted by French Wikisource
1638 births
1715 deaths
17th-century kings of France
18th-century kings of France
17th-century Princes of Andorra
18th-century Princes of Andorra
Ancien Régime in France
Burials at the Basilica of Saint-Denis
Baroque architecture in France
Dauphins of France
Deaths from gangrene
Early Modern France
French art collectors
French military personnel of the Nine Years' War
House of Bourbon (France)
Modern child rulers
Hunters
People from Saint-Germain-en-Laye
People of the Ancien Régime
People of the Regency of Philippe d'Orléans
Princes of Andorra
Princes of France (Bourbon)
1640s in France
1650s in France
1660s in France
1670s in France
1680s in France
1690s in France
1700s in France
1710s in France
Navarrese titular monarchs |
18554 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig%20Ritter%20von%20K%C3%B6chel | Ludwig Ritter von Köchel | Ludwig Alois Friedrich Ritter von Köchel (; 14 January 1800 – 3 June 1877) was an Austrian musicologist, writer, composer, botanist and publisher. He is best known for cataloguing the works of Mozart and originating the 'KV-numbers' by which they are known (KV for Köchel-Verzeichnis).
Life
Born in the town of Stein, Lower Austria, he studied law in Vienna and graduated with a PhD in 1827. For fifteen years, he was tutor to the four sons of Archduke Charles of Austria. Köchel was rewarded with a knighthood and a generous financial settlement, permitting him to spend the rest of his life as a private scholar. Contemporary scientists were greatly impressed by his botanical researches in North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, the United Kingdom, the North Cape, and Russia. In addition to botany, he was interested in geology and mineralogy, but also loved music, and was a member of the Mozarteum Salzburg. He died of cancer at age 77 in Vienna.
Köchel catalogue
In 1862 he published the Köchel catalogue, a chronological and thematic register of the works of Mozart. This catalogue was the first on such a scale and with such a level of scholarship behind it; it has since undergone revisions. Mozart's works are often referred to by their KV-numbers (cf. opus number); for example, the "Jupiter" symphony, Symphony No. 41, KV. 551. At the same time that Köchel was writing his catalogue Otto Jahn was making a comprehensive collection of Mozart works and writing a scholarly biography of Mozart. When Jahn learned of Köchel's work he turned over his collection to him. Köchel dedicated his catalogue to Jahn.
Other works
Moreover, Köchel arranged Mozart's works into twenty-four categories, which were used by Breitkopf & Härtel when they published the first complete edition of Mozart's works from 1877 to 1910, a venture partly funded by Köchel.
He also catalogued the works of Johann Fux.
Notes
References
External links
Ludwig Ritter von Köchel Society
Austrian knights
Austrian musicologists
Mozart scholars
1800 births
1877 deaths
19th-century composers
19th-century German musicians |
18555 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEO%20%28computer%29 | LEO (computer) | The LEO I (Lyons Electronic Office I) was the first computer used for commercial business applications.
The prototype LEO I was modelled closely on the Cambridge EDSAC. Its construction was overseen by Oliver Standingford, Raymond Thompson and David Caminer of J. Lyons and Co. LEO I ran its first business application in 1951. In 1954 Lyons formed LEO Computers Ltd to market LEO I and its successors LEO II and LEO III to other companies. LEO Computers eventually became part of English Electric Company (EEL), (EELM), then English Electric Computers (EEC), where the same team developed the faster LEO 360 and even faster LEO 326 models. It then passed to International Computers Limited (ICL) and ultimately Fujitsu.
LEO series computers were still in use until 1981.
Origins and initial design
J. Lyons and Co. was one of the UK's leading catering and food manufacturing companies in the first half of the 20th century. In 1947, they sent two of its senior managers, Oliver Standingford and Raymond Thompson, to the US to look at new business methods developed during World War II. During the visit, they met Herman Goldstine who was one of the original developers of ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer. Standingford and Thompson saw the potential of computers to help solve the problem of administering a major business enterprise. They also learned from Goldstine that, back in the UK, Douglas Hartree and Maurice Wilkes were actually building another such machine, the pioneering EDSAC computer, at the University of Cambridge.
On their return to the UK, Standingford and Thompson visited Hartree and Wilkes in Cambridge and were favourably impressed with their technical expertise and vision. Hartree and Wilkes estimated that EDSAC was twelve to eighteen months from completion, but said that this timeline could be shortened if additional funding were available. Standingford and Thompson wrote a report to the Lyons' board recommending that Lyons should acquire or build a computer to meet their business needs. The board agreed that, as a first step, Lyons would provide Hartree and Wilkes with £2,500 funding (equivalent to £100,034 in 2020) for the EDSAC project, and would also provide them with the services of a Lyons electrical engineer, Ernest Lenaerts. EDSAC was completed and ran its first program in May 1949.
Following the successful completion of EDSAC, the Lyons board agreed to start the construction of their own machine, expanding on the EDSAC design. The LEO computer room, which took up around 2,500 square feet of floor space, was at Cadby Hall in Hammersmith.
The Lyons machine was christened Lyons Electronic Office, or LEO. On the recommendation of Wilkes, Lyons recruited John Pinkerton, a radar engineer and research student at Cambridge, as team leader for the project. Lenaerts returned to Lyons to work on the project, and Wilkes provided training for Lyons' engineer Derek Hemy, who would be responsible for writing LEO's programs. On 15 February 1951 the computer, carrying out a simple test program, was shown to HRH Princess Elizabeth. The first business application to be run on LEO was Bakery Valuations, which computed the costs of ingredients used in bread and cakes. This was successfully run on 5 September 1951, and LEO took over Bakery Valuations calculations completely on 29–30 November 1951.
Five files of archive material on the LEO Computer patent are held at the British Library and can be accessed through the British Library catalogue.
Technical description
LEO I's clock speed was 500 kHz, with most instructions taking about 1.5 ms to execute. To be useful for business applications, the computer had to be able to handle a number of data streams, input and output, simultaneously. Therefore, its chief designer, John Pinkerton, designed the machine to have multiple input/output buffers. In the first instance, these were linked to fast paper tape readers and punches, fast punched card readers and punches, and a 100 line a minute tabulator. Later, other devices, including magnetic tape, were added. Its ultrasonic delay-line memory based on tanks of mercury, with 2K (2048) 35-bit words (i.e., 8 kilobytes), was four times as large as that of EDSAC. The systems analysis was carried out by David Caminer.
Applications and successors
Lyons used LEO I initially for valuation jobs, but its role was extended to include payroll, inventory, and so on. One of its early tasks was the elaboration of daily orders which were phoned in every afternoon by the shops and used to calculate the overnight production requirements, assembly instructions, delivery schedules, invoices, costings, and management reports. This was the first instance of an integrated management information system. The LEO project was also a pioneer in outsourcing: in 1956, Lyons started doing the payroll calculations for Ford UK and others on the LEO I machine. The success of this led to the company dedicating one of its LEO II machines to bureau services. Later, the system was used for scientific computations as well. Met Office staff used a LEO I before the Met Office bought its own computer, a Ferranti Mercury, in 1959.
In 1954, with the decision to proceed with LEO II and interest from other commercial companies, Lyons formed LEO Computers Ltd.
LEO III
The first LEO III was completed in 1961; it was a solid-state machine with a 13.2 μs cycle time ferrite core memory. It was microprogrammed and was controlled by a multitasking "Master program" operating system, which allowed concurrent running of as many as 12 application programs.
Users of LEO computers programmed in two coding languages: Intercode, a low-level assembler type language; and CLEO (acronym: Clear Language for Expressing Orders), the COBOL equivalent.
One of the features that LEO III shared with many computers of the day was a loudspeaker connected to the central processor which enabled operators to tell whether a program was looping by the distinctive sound it made. Another quirk was that many intermittent faults were due to faulty connectors and could be temporarily fixed by briskly strumming the card handles.
Some LEO III machines purchased in the mid-to-late 1960s remained in commercial use at GPO Telephones, the forerunner of British Telecom, until 1981, primarily producing telephone bills. They were kept running using parts from redundant LEOs purchased by the GPO.
Fate of the company
In 1963, LEO Computers Ltd was merged into English Electric Company and this led to the breaking up of the team that had inspired LEO computers. The company continued to build the LEO III, and went on to build the faster LEO 360 and even faster LEO 326 models, which had been designed by the LEO team before the takeover.
English Electric LEO Computers (EEL) (1963), then English Electric Leo Marconi (EELM) (1964), later English Electric Computers (EEC) (1967), eventually merged with International Computers and Tabulators (ICT) and others to form International Computers Limited (ICL) in 1968. In the 1980s, there were still ICL 2900 mainframes running LEO programs, using an emulator written in ICL 2960 microcode at the Dalkeith development centre. At least one modern emulator has been developed which can run some original LEO III software on a modern server.
Legacy
Whether its investment in LEO actually benefited J. Lyons is unclear. Nick Pelling notes that before LEO I the company already had a proven, industry-leading system using clerks that gave it "near-real-time management information on more or less all aspects of its business", and that no jobs were lost when the system was computerized. In addition, LEO Computers lost money on many of its sales because of unrealistically low prices.
In 2018, The Centre for Computing History along with LEO Computers Society were awarded funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund for their project aiming to bring together, preserve, archive and digitise a range of LEO Computers artefacts, and documents. The Centre's museum gallery has an area dedicated to LEO, and they are also working on a LEO virtual reality project.
See also
List of vacuum-tube computers
References
Further reading
Books
Bird, P. J. (1994). LEO: The First Business Computer. Wokingham: Hasler Publishing Co. .
Campbell-Kelly, M., (1989). ICL: A Business and Technical History. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Caminer, D. T., Aris, J. B. B., Hermon, P. M. R., Land, F. F. (1996). User-Driven Innovation: The World’s First Business Computer. London: McGraw-Hill. .
Carmichael, H., editor (1996). An ICL Anthology, Chapter 6: LEO, Laidlaw Hicks, Surbiton, UK.
Hally, M. (2005). Electronic Brains: stories from the dawn of the computer age. Washington:Joseph Henry Press. Chapter 5: LEO the Lyons Computer. .
Land, F. F., (1997). LEO, the First Business Computer: A Personal Experience. In Glass, R. L., editor. In the Beginning: Recollections of Software Pioneers, pages 134–153. IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos, CA.
PEP, (1957). Three Case Studies in Automation, PEP, London.
Simmons, J. R. M., (1962). LEO and the Managers, MacDonald, London.
Articles
Aris, J. B. B. (1996). "Systems Design – Then and Now". Resurrection, Summer issue 1996.
Land, F. F. (1996). "Systems Analysis for Business Applications". Resurrection, Summer issue 1996.
Aris, J. B. B. (2000). "Inventing Systems Engineering". IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 22, No. 3, July–September, pp. 4–15
Land, F. F. (2000). "The First Business Computer: A Case Study in User-Driven Automation". IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 22, No. 3, July–September, pp. 16–26.
Caminer, D. T. (1958), "...And How to Avoid Them". The Computer Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1.
Caminer, D. T. (1997). "LEO and its Applications: The Beginning of Business Computing". The Computer Journal, Vol. 40, No. 10.
Caminer, D. T. (2003). "Behind the Curtain at LEO: A Personal Reminiscence". IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 25, No. 2, April–June, pp3–13.
Hendry, J. (1988). "The Teashop Computer Manufacturer: J. Lyons". Business History, Vol. 29, No. 8, pp. 73–102.
Land, Frank (1999). "A Historical Analysis of Implementing IS at J. Lyons." In Currie, W. G.; Galliers, R. D., editors. Rethinking Management Information Systems, pp. 310–325. Oxford University Press.
(Has information on the LEO III character set.)
External links
LEO Computers Society. Includes LEOPEDIA which is intended to be a comprehensive reference to archive, museum and media holdings and references to LEO computers, and individuals associated with them, updated periodically by Frank Land.
LEO Magnetic Data Tape Collection at The ICL Computer Museum
LEO Artefacts at The ICL Computer Museum
LEO Paperwork at The ICL Computer Museum
LEO artefacts at the Centre for Computing History
LEO Computers Collection, National Archive for the History of Computing, University of Manchester Library.
How a cake company pioneered the first office computer BBC video interview with Mary Coombs, who worked on the first LEO computer and was the first woman to become a commercial computer programmer
Oral history interview with John M. M. Pinkerton, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. Pinkerton describes his work on LEO computers. In this context he discusses the British computer firms J. Lyons and Company, English Electric, and International Computers Ltd.
About LEO – From Business Computing: the Second 50 Years, The Guildhall conference for business leaders, London, 2001. Archived in February 2012.
J. Lyons & Co. LEO Computers. Extract from Peter Bird's LEO – The First Business Computer (2002); at David Lawrence's Lyons website
BBC Science: Electronic Brains BBC Radio 4 series about early computers, 2002; programme 1 is about LEO
Hidden Histories of the Information Age BBC Radio 4 series, 2016; programme about LEO
"Developing LEO: The world's first business computer", documents from the papers of John Simmons, Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick
Early British computers
ICL mainframe computers
Vacuum tube computers
Computer-related introductions in 1951
History of software
Outsourcing
Supply chain management
University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory
Serial computers |
18557 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence%20of%20Canterbury | Laurence of Canterbury | Laurence (died 2 February 619) was the second Archbishop of Canterbury, serving from about 604 to 619. He was a member of the Gregorian mission sent from Italy to England to Christianise the Anglo-Saxons from their native Anglo-Saxon paganism, although the date of his arrival is disputed. He was consecrated archbishop by his predecessor, Augustine of Canterbury, during Augustine's lifetime, to ensure continuity in the office. While archbishop, he attempted unsuccessfully to resolve differences with the native British bishops by corresponding with them about points of dispute. Laurence faced a crisis following the death of King Æthelberht of Kent, when the king's successor abandoned Christianity; he eventually reconverted. Laurence was revered as a saint after his death in 619.
Early life
Laurence was part of the Gregorian mission originally dispatched from Rome in 595 to convert the Anglo-Saxons from their native paganism to Christianity; he landed at Thanet, Kent, with Augustine in 597, or, as some sources state, first arrived in 601 and was not a part of the first group of missionaries. He had been a monk in Rome before his travels to England, but nothing else is known of his history or background. The medieval chronicler Bede says that Augustine sent Laurence back to Pope Gregory I to report on the success of converting King Æthelberht of Kent and to carry a letter with questions for the pope. Accompanied by Peter of Canterbury, another missionary, he set off some time after July 598, and had returned by June 601. He brought back with him Gregory's replies to Augustine's questions, a document commonly known as the Libellus responsionum, that Bede incorporated in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum. Laurence is probably the Laurence referred to in the letter from Gregory to Bertha, queen of Kent. In that letter, Gregory praises Bertha for her part in the conversion of her husband, details of which Gregory says he received from Laurence the priest. It is known that Laurence returned to England with Mellitus and others of the second group of missionaries in the summer of 601, but there is no record of Peter being with them.
Archbishop
Laurence succeeded Augustine to the see of Canterbury in about 604, and ruled until his death on 2 February 619. To secure the succession, Augustine had consecrated Laurence before he died, even though that was prohibited by canon law. Augustine was afraid though that if someone did not step into the office immediately, it would damage the missionary efforts in Britain. However, Laurence never received a pallium from Rome, so he may have been considered uncanonical by the papacy. Bede makes a point of comparing Augustine's action in consecrating Laurence to Saint Peter's action of consecrating Clement as Bishop of Rome during Peter's lifetime, which the theologian J. Robert Wright believes may be Bede's way of criticising the practices of the church in his day.
In 610 Laurence received letters from Pope Boniface IV, addressed to him as archbishop and Augustine's successor. The correspondence was in response to Laurence having sent Mellitus to Rome earlier in 610, to solicit advice from the papacy on matters concerning the English Church. While in Rome Mellitus attended a synod, and brought the synodical decrees back with him to Laurence.
In 613 Laurence consecrated the monastery church built by Augustine in Canterbury, and dedicated it to saints Peter and Paul; it was later re-consecrated as St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury. Laurence also wrote to the bishops in the lands held by the Scots and by the Britons, urging them to hold Easter on the day that the Roman church celebrated it, instead of their traditional date, as part of the Easter controversy. The letter is also preserved in Bede's history. Laurence in 609 stated that Dagan, a native bishop, would not eat with Laurence or share a roof with the archbishop, due to the differences between the two Churches.
Pagan reaction
Æthelberht died in 616, during Laurence's tenure; his son Eadbald abandoned Christianity in favour of Anglo-Saxon paganism, forcing many of the Gregorian missionaries to flee the pagan backlash that followed Æthelberht's death. Among them in Gaul were Mellitus, who was Bishop of London, and Justus, who was Bishop of Rochester. Remaining in Britain, Laurence succeeded in reconverting Eadbald to Christianity. Bede relates the story that Laurence had been prepared to give up when he was visited by St Peter in a dream or vision. St Peter chastised Laurence and whipped him, and the marks of the whipping remained after the vision or dream ended. Laurence then displayed them to Eadbald, and the king was converted on the spot. Bede, however, hints that it was the death of some of the leaders of the pagan party in battle that really persuaded Laurence to stay. According to Benedicta Ward, a historian of Christianity, Bede uses the story of the whipping as an example of how suffering was a reminder of Christ's suffering for humans, and how that example could lead to conversion. Wright argues that another point Bede is making is that it is because of the intercession of St Peter himself that the mission continued. David Farmer, in the Oxford Dictionary of Saints, suggests that the whipping story may have been a blending of the Quo Vadis story with some information given by Jerome in a letter.
Modern historians have seen political overtones in the pagan reaction. The historian D. P. Kirby sees Eadbald's actions as a repudiation of his father's pro-Frankish policies. Alcuin, a later medieval writer, wrote that Laurence was "censured by apostolic authority". This may have been a letter from Pope Adeodatus I, commanding Laurence to stay in Kent. Kirby goes on to argue that it was Justus, not Laurence, who converted Eadbald, and this while Justus was archbishop, sometime around 624. Not all historians agree with this argument, however. Nicholas Brooks states that the king was converted during Laurence's archiepiscopate, within a year of him succeeding his father. The historian Barbara Yorke argues that there were two co-rulers of Kent after Æthelberht's death, Eadbald and a Æthelwald, and that Eadbald was converted by Laurence while Æthelwald was converted by Justus after his return to Rochester. Another factor in the pagan reaction was Laurence's objection to Eadbald's marriage to his father's widow, something that Christians considered to be unlawful.
All efforts to extend the church beyond Kent encountered difficulties due to the attitude of King Rædwald of East Anglia, who had become the leading king in the south after Æthelberht's death. Rædwald was converted before the death of Æthelberht, perhaps at the urging of Æthelberht, but his kingdom was not, and Rædwald seems to have converted only to the extent of placing a Christian altar in his pagan temple. It proved impossible for Mellitus to return to London as bishop, although Justus did resume his duties at Rochester.
Death and legacy
Laurence died on 2 February 619, and was buried in the abbey of St Peter and Paul in Canterbury, later renamed St Augustine's; his relics, or remains, were moved, or translated, to the new church of St Augustine's in 1091. His shrine was in the axial chapel of the abbey church, flanking the shrine of Augustine, his predecessor. Laurence came to be regarded as a saint, and was given the feast day of 3 February. The ninth century Stowe Missal commemorates his feast day, along with Mellitus and Justus. A Vita (or Life) was written about the time of his translation, by Goscelin, but it is mainly based on information in Bede. His tomb was opened in 1915. Besides his feast day, the date of his translation, 13 September, was also celebrated after his death. Laurence's tenure as archbishop is mainly remembered for his failure to secure a settlement with the Celtic church, and for his reconversion of Eadbald following Æthelbert's death. He was succeeded as archbishop by Mellitus, the Bishop of London.
See also
List of members of the Gregorian mission
Notes
Citations
References
Further reading
External links
– listing of most contemporary and close to contemporary mentions of Laurence in the primary sources. Includes some spurious charter listings.
, who travelled back to Rome, and is probably the same person
Archbishops of Canterbury
Gregorian mission
Kentish saints
619 deaths
7th-century archbishops
7th-century Christian saints
Year of birth unknown
7th-century English clergy |
18560 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaf%20by%20Niggle | Leaf by Niggle | "Leaf by Niggle" is a short story written by J. R. R. Tolkien in 1938–39 and first published in the Dublin Review in January 1945. It can be found, most notably, in Tolkien's book titled Tree and Leaf, and in other places (including the collections The Tolkien Reader, Poems & Stories, A Tolkien Miscellany, and Tales from the Perilous Realm). This is notable because the book, consisting of a seminal essay called "On Fairy-Stories" and "Leaf by Niggle", offers the underlying philosophy (Creation and Sub-Creation, see below) of much of Tolkien's fantastical writings.
"Leaf by Niggle" is often seen as an allegory of Tolkien's own creative process, and, to an extent, of his own life.
Plot summary
In this story, an artist, named Niggle, lives in a society that does not value art. Working only to please himself, he paints a canvas of a great Tree with a forest in the distance. He invests each and every leaf of his tree with obsessive attention to detail, making every leaf uniquely beautiful. Niggle ends up discarding all his other artworks, or tacks them onto the main canvas, which becomes a single vast embodiment of his vision.
However, there are many mundane chores and duties that prevent Niggle from giving his work the attention it deserves, so it remains incomplete and is not fully realised.
At the back of his head, Niggle knows that he has a great trip looming, and he must pack and prepare his bags.
Also, Niggle's next door neighbour, a gardener named Parish, frequently drops by asking for various forms of help. Parish is lame and has a sick wife and genuinely needs help. Niggle, having a good heart, takes time out to help—but he is also reluctant because he would rather work on his painting. Niggle has other pressing work duties as well that require his attention. Then Niggle himself catches a chill doing errands for Parish in the rain.
Eventually, Niggle is forced to take his trip, and cannot get out of it. He has not prepared, and as a result ends up in a kind of institution, in which he must perform menial labour each day. Back at the home to which he cannot return, Niggle's painting is abandoned, used to patch a damaged roof, and all but destroyed (except for the one perfect leaf of the story's title, which is placed in the local museum).
In time, Niggle is paroled from the institution, and he is sent to a place "for a little gentle treatment". He discovers that this new place is the country of the Tree and Forest of his great painting. This place is the true realisation of his vision, not the flawed and incomplete version in his painting.
Niggle is reunited with his old neighbour, Parish, who now proves his worth as a gardener, and together they make the Tree and Forest even more beautiful. Finally, Niggle journeys farther and deeper into the Forest, and beyond into the great Mountains that he only faintly glimpsed in his painting.
Long after both Niggle and Parish have taken their journeys, the lovely place that they created together becomes a destination for many travelers to visit before their final voyage into the Mountains, and it earns the name "Niggle's Parish".
Analysis
One religious reading of Leaf by Niggle could lead to the conclusion that the allegory of "Leaf by Niggle" is life, death, purgatory and paradise. Niggle is not prepared for his unavoidable trip, as humans often are not prepared for death. His time in the institution and subsequent discovery of his Tree represent purgatory and heaven.
But Leaf by Niggle can also be interpreted as an illustration of Tolkien's religious philosophy of creation and sub-creation. In this philosophy, true creation is the exclusive province of God, and those who aspire to creation can only make echoes (good) or mockeries (evil) of truth. The sub-creation of works that echo the true creations of God is one way that mortals honour God.
This philosophy is evident in Tolkien's other works, especially The Silmarillion—one Vala, Morgoth, creates the Orc race as a foul mockery of the elf. Another Vala, Aulë, creates the Dwarf race as an act of subcreation that honoured Eru Ilúvatar (the analog of God in Tolkien's writings), and which Eru accepted and made real, just as Niggle's Tree was made real.
Niggle's yearnings after truth and beauty (God's creations) are echoed in his great painting; after death, Niggle is rewarded with the realisation (the making-real) of his yearning. Or, if you prefer, Niggle's Tree always existed; he simply echoed it in his art. From a metanarrative viewpoint, Tolkien's Arda is itself a subcreation designed to honour the true stories of the real world. Thus, the Middle-earth legendarium, despite its lack of overt religious elements, can be interpreted as a profoundly religious work.
An autobiographical interpretation places Tolkien himself as Niggle—in mundane matters as well as spiritual ones. Tolkien was compulsive in his writing, his revision, his desire for perfection in form and in the "reality" of his invented world, its languages, its chronologies, its existence. Like Niggle, Tolkien came to abandon other projects or graft them onto his "Tree", Middle-earth. Like Niggle, Tolkien faced many chores and duties that kept him from the work he loved; and like Niggle, Tolkien was a horrible procrastinator.
Tolkien himself might have disagreed with an allegorical interpretation. He wrote, in Letter 131 of The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, "I dislike Allegory". In specific reference to Niggle, he wrote in Letter 241, "It is not really or properly an 'allegory' so much as 'mythical'." On the other hand, in Letter 153 he said, "I tried to show allegorically how [subcreation] might come to be taken up into Creation in some plane in my 'purgatorial' story Leaf by Niggle."
Footnotes
External links
Leaf by Niggle – a symbolic story about a small painter
Essay on "Leaf by Niggle"
1945 short stories
Short stories by J. R. R. Tolkien
Fantasy short stories
Metafictional works
Works originally published in Dublin Review (Catholic periodical) |
18562 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet | Leet | Leet (or "1337"), also known as eleet or leetspeak, is a system of modified spellings used primarily on the Internet. It often uses character replacements in ways that play on the similarity of their glyphs via reflection or other resemblance. Additionally, it modifies certain words based on a system of suffixes and alternate meanings. There are many dialects or linguistic varieties in different online communities.
The term "leet" is derived from the word elite, used as an adjective to describe skill or accomplishment, especially in the fields of online gaming and computer hacking. The leet lexicon includes spellings of the word as 1337 or leet.
History
Leet originated within bulletin board systems (BBS) in the 1980s, where having "elite" status on a BBS allowed a user access to file folders, games, and special chat rooms. The Cult of the Dead Cow hacker collective has been credited with the original coining of the term, in their text-files of that era. One theory is that it was developed to defeat text filters created by BBS or Internet Relay Chat system operators for message boards to discourage the discussion of forbidden topics, like cracking and hacking. Creative misspellings and ASCII-art-derived words were also a way to attempt to indicate one was knowledgeable about the culture of computer users.
Once reserved for hackers, crackers, and script kiddies, leet has since entered the mainstream. It is now also used to mock newbies, also known colloquially as n00bs, or newcomers, on websites, or in gaming communities. Some consider emoticons and ASCII art, like smiley faces, to be leet, while others maintain that leet consists of only symbolic word encryption. More obscure forms of leet, involving the use of symbol combinations and almost no letters or numbers, continue to be used for its original purpose of encrypted communication. It is also sometimes used as a scripting language. Variants of leet have been used for censorship purposes for many years; for instance "@$$" (ass) and "$#!+" (shit) are frequently seen to make a word appear censored to the untrained eye but obvious to a person familiar with leet. This enables coders and programmers especially to circumvent filters and speak about topics that would usually get banned. "Hacker" would end up as "H4x0r", for example.
Leet symbols, especially the number 1337, are Internet memes that have spilled over into popular culture. Signs that show the numbers "1337" are popular motifs for pictures and are shared widely across the Internet.
One of the earliest public examples of this substitution would be the album cover of Journey's Escape album which is stylized on the cover as "E5C4P3".
Orthography
One of the hallmarks of leet is its unique approach to orthography, using substitutions of other letters, or indeed of characters other than letters, to represent letters in a word. For more casual use of leet, the primary strategy is to use homoglyphs, symbols that closely resemble (to varying degrees) the letters for which they stand. The choice of symbol is not fixed: anything the reader can make sense of is valid. However, this practice is not extensively used in regular leet; more often it is seen in situations where the argot (i.e., secret language) characteristics of the system are required, either to exclude newbies or outsiders in general, i.e., anything that the average reader cannot make sense of is valid; a valid reader should themselves try to make sense, if deserving of the underlying message. Another use for leet orthographic substitutions is the creation of paraphrased passwords. Limitations imposed by websites on password length (usually no more than 36) and the characters permitted (e.g. alphanumeric and symbols) require less extensive forms when used in this application.
Some examples of leet include B1ff and n00b, a term for the stereotypical newbie; the l33t programming language; and the web-comics Megatokyo and Homestuck, which contain characters who speak variations of leet.
Morphology
Text rendered in leet is often characterized by distinctive, recurring forms.
-xor suffix
The meaning of this suffix is parallel with the English -er and -or suffixes (seen in hacker and lesser) in that it derives agent nouns from a verb stem. It is realized in two different forms: -xor and -zor, and , respectively. For example, the first may be seen in the word hax(x)or (H4x0r in leet) and the second in pwnzor . Additionally, this nominalization may also be inflected with all of the suffixes of regular English verbs. The letter 'o' is often replaced with the numeral 0.
-age suffix
Derivation of a noun from a verb stem is possible by attaching -age to the base form of any verb. Attested derivations are pwnage, skillage, and speakage. However, leet provides exceptions; the word leetage is acceptable, referring to actively being leet. These nouns are often used with a form of "to be" rather than "to have," e.g., "that was pwnage" rather than "he has pwnage". Either is a more emphatic way of expressing the simpler "he pwns," but the former implies that the person is embodying the trait rather than merely possessing it.
-ness suffix
Derivation of a noun from an adjective stem is done by attaching -ness to any adjective. This is entirely the same as the English form, except it is used much more often in Leet. Nouns such as lulzness and leetness are derivations using this suffix.
Words ending in -ed
When forming a past participle ending in -ed, the Leet user may replace the -e with an apostrophe, as was common in poetry of previous centuries, (e.g. "pwned" becomes "pwn'd"). Sometimes, the apostrophe is removed as well (e.g. "pwned" becomes "pwnd"). The word ending may also be substituted by -t (e.g. pwned becomes pwnt).
Use of the -& suffix
Words ending in -and, -anned, -ant, or a similar sound can sometimes be spelled with an ampersand (&) to express the ending sound (e.g. "This is the s&box", "I'm sorry, you've been b&", "&hill/&farm"). It is most commonly used with the word banned. An alternate form of "B&" is "B7", as the ampersand is with the "7" key on the standard US keyboard. It is often seen in the phrase "IBB7" (in before banned), which indicates that the poster believes that a previous poster will soon be banned from the site, channel, or board on which they are posting.
Grammar
Leet can be pronounced as a single syllable, , rhyming with eat, by way of apheresis of the initial vowel of "elite". It may also be pronounced as two syllables, . Like hacker slang, leet enjoys a looser grammar than standard English. The loose grammar, just like loose spelling, encodes some level of emphasis, ironic or otherwise. A reader must rely more on intuitive parsing of leet to determine the meaning of a sentence rather than the actual sentence structure. In particular, speakers of leet are fond of verbing nouns, turning verbs into nouns (and back again) as forms of emphasis, e.g. "Austin rocks" is weaker than "Austin roxxorz" (note spelling), which is weaker than "Au5t1N is t3h r0xx0rz" (note grammar), which is weaker than something like "0MFG D00D /\Ü571N 15 T3H l_l83Я 1337 Я0XX0ЯZ" (OMG, dude, Austin is the über-elite rocks-er!). In essence, all of these mean "Austin rocks," not necessarily the other options. Added words and misspellings add to the speaker's enjoyment. Leet, like hacker slang, employs analogy in construction of new words. For example, if haxored is the past tense of the verb "to hack" (hack → haxor → haxored), then winzored would be easily understood to be the past tense conjugation of "to win," even if the reader had not seen that particular word before.
Leet has its own colloquialisms, many of which originated as jokes based on common typing errors, habits of new computer users, or knowledge of cyberculture and history. Leet is not solely based upon one language or character set. Greek, Russian, and other languages have leet forms, and leet in one language may use characters from another where they are available. As such, while it may be referred to as a "cipher", a "dialect", or a "language", leet does not fit squarely into any of these categories. The term leet itself is often written 31337, or 1337, and many other variations. After the meaning of these became widely familiar, 10100111001 came to be used in its place, because it is the binary form of 1337 decimal, making it more of a puzzle to interpret. An increasingly common characteristic of leet is the changing of grammatical usage so as to be deliberately incorrect. The widespread popularity of deliberate misspelling is similar to the cult following of the "All your base are belong to us" phrase. Indeed, the online and computer communities have been international from their inception, so spellings and phrases typical of non-native speakers are quite common.
Vocabulary
Many words originally derived from leet have now become part of modern Internet slang, such as "pwned". The original driving forces of new vocabulary in leet were common misspellings and typing errors such as "teh" (generally considered lolspeak), and intentional misspellings, especially the "z" at the end of words ("skillz"). Another prominent example of a surviving leet expression is w00t, an exclamation of joy. w00t is sometimes used as a backronym for "We owned the other team."
New words (or corruptions thereof) may arise from a need to make one's username unique. As any given Internet service reaches more people, the number of names available to a given user is drastically reduced. While many users may wish to have the username "CatLover," for example, in many cases it is only possible for one user to have the moniker. As such, degradations of the name may evolve, such as "C@7L0vr." As the leet cipher is highly dynamic, there is a wider possibility for multiple users to share the "same" name, through combinations of spelling and transliterations.
Additionally, leet—the word itself—can be found in the screen-names and gamertags of many Internet and video games. Use of the term in such a manner announces a high level of skill, though such an announcement may be seen as baseless hubris.
Terminology and common misspellings
Warez (nominally ) is a plural shortening of "software", typically referring to cracked and redistributed software. Phreaking refers to the hacking of telephone systems and other non-Internet equipment. Teh originated as a typographical error of "the", and is sometimes spelled t3h. j00 takes the place of "you", originating from the affricate sound that occurs in place of the palatal approximant, , when you follows a word ending in an alveolar plosive consonant, such as or . Also, from German, is über, which means "over" or "above"; it usually appears as a prefix attached to adjectives, and is frequently written without the umlaut over the u.
Haxor and suxxor (suxorz)
Haxor, and derivations thereof, is leet for "hacker", and it is one of the most commonplace examples of the use of the -xor suffix. Suxxor (pronounced suck-zor) is a derogatory term which originated in warez culture and is currently used in multi-user environments such as multiplayer video games and instant messaging; it, like haxor, is one of the early leet words to use the -xor suffix. Suxxor is a modified version of "sucks" (the phrase "to suck"), and the meaning is the same as the English slang. Suxxor can be mistaken with Succer/Succker if used in the wrong context. Its negative definition essentially makes it the opposite of roxxor, and both can be used as a verb or a noun. The letters ck are often replaced with the Greek Χ (chi) in other words as well.
n00b
Within leet, the term n00b, and derivations thereof, is used extensively. The word means and derives from newbie (as in new and inexperienced or uninformed), and is used as a means of segregating them as less than the "elite," or even "normal," members of a group.
Owned and pwned
Owned and pwned (generally pronounced "poned") both refer to the domination of a player in a video game or argument (rather than just a win), or the successful hacking of a website or computer. It is a slang term derived from the verb own, meaning to appropriate or to conquer to gain ownership. As is a common characteristic of leet, the terms have also been adapted into noun and adjective forms, ownage and pwnage, which can refer to the situation of pwning or to the superiority of its subject (e.g., "He is a very good player. He is pwnage.").
The term was created accidentally by the misspelling of "own" in video game design due to the keyboard proximity of the "O" and "P" keys. It implies domination or humiliation of a rival, used primarily in the Internet-based video game culture to taunt an opponent who has just been soundly defeated (e.g., "You just got pwned!"). In 2015 Scrabble added pwn to their Official Scrabble Words list.
Pr0n
Pr0n is slang for pornography. This is a deliberately inaccurate spelling/pronunciation for porn, where a zero is often used to replace the letter O. It is sometimes used in legitimate communications (such as email discussion groups, Usenet, chat rooms, and Internet web pages) to circumvent language and content filters, which may reject messages as offensive or spam. The word also helps prevent search engines from associating commercial sites with pornography, which might result in unwelcome traffic. Pr0n is also sometimes spelled backwards (n0rp) to further obscure the meaning to potentially uninformed readers. It can also refer to ASCII art depicting pornographic images, or to photos of the internals of consumer and industrial hardware. Prawn, a spoof of the misspelling, has started to come into use, as well; in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, a pornographer films his movies on "Prawn Island". Conversely, in the RPG Kingdom of Loathing, prawn, referring to a kind of crustacean, is spelled pr0n, leading to the creation of food items such as "pr0n chow mein".
Also see porm.
See also
Calculator spelling
Faux Cyrillic
Geek Code
Jargon File, a glossary and usage dictionary of computer programmer slang
Padonkaffsky jargon
Notes
Footnotes
References
Further reading
External links
Leet Translator
Alphabets
Encodings
In-jokes
Internet culture
Internet memes
Internet slang
Latin-script representations
Nerd culture
Nonstandard spelling
Obfuscation
Social networking services
1990s slang |
18563 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lud | Lud | Lud or LUD may refer to:
Local usage details, a record of local calls made from and received by a particular phone number
Ludic language, a Finnic language spoken in Karelia
People
Lud son of Heli, a legendary British king who in Geoffrey of Monmouth's pseudohistorical Historia Regum Britanniae founded London and was buried at Ludgate
Lud, son of Shem, a grandson of Noah
Lludd Llaw Eraint, a mythical Welsh figure cognate with king Nuada Airgetlám
Lud Fiser (1908–1990), American football and baseball player and coach
Lud Gluskin (1898–1989), Russian jazz bandleader
Lud Kramer (1932–2004), American politician
Ned Ludd, founder of the Luddite movement in 18th- and 19th-century Britain
Places
Lud River, a river of New Zealand's South Island
Ludlow railway station, England
River Lud, a river of England, canalised as the Louth Navigation
Stone Lud, a standing stone in Caithness, in the Highland area of Scotland
Lud Gate, a city gate in the London area of Ludgate
Lüderitz Airport, Namibia, IATA code
Fiction
Lud (city), a city in Stephen King's Dark Tower series
Lobby Lud, a character used in British newspaper scavenger hunts in the 1920s
Lud-in-the-Mist, novel by British writer (Helen) Hope Mirrlees
See also
Ludd (disambiguation)
Lod, a city in Israel (formerly Lydda) |
18564 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lois%20Lane | Lois Lane | Lois Lane is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. Created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, she first appeared in Action Comics #1 (June 1938). Lois is an award-winning journalist for the Metropolis newspaper the Daily Planet and the primary love interest of the superhero Superman and his alter ego, Clark Kent. In DC continuity, she is also his wife and the mother of their son, Jon Kent, the newest Superboy in the DC Universe.
Lois' physical appearance was originally based on Joanne Carter, a model hired by Joe Shuster. For her character, Jerry Siegel was inspired by actress Glenda Farrell's portrayal of the fictional reporter Torchy Blane in a series of films. Siegel took her name from actress Lola Lane. She was also influenced by the real-life journalist Nellie Bly.
Depictions of the character have varied spanning the comics and other media adaptations. The original Golden Age version of Lois Lane, as well as versions of her from the 1970s onwards, portrays Lois as a dauntless journalist and intellectually equal to Superman. During the Silver Age of Comics, she was the star of Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane, a comic book series that had a light and humorous tone. Beginning in 2015, she is the protagonist in the young adult novel series, Lois Lane, by writer Gwenda Bond.
Lois has appeared in various media adaptations and is among the best-known female comic book characters. Actress Noel Neill first portrayed Lois Lane in the 1940s Superman film series and later reprised her role in the 1950s television series Adventures of Superman, replacing Phyllis Coates from season two. Margot Kidder played the character in four Superman films in the 1970s and 1980s, Kate Bosworth in the 2006 film Superman Returns, and Amy Adams in the DC Extended Universe. Teri Hatcher portrayed Lois in the 1990s television series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman and Erica Durance in the 2000s series Smallville. Elizabeth Tulloch currently plays the character in the Arrowverse television series Superman & Lois. Actresses who have voiced Lois in animated adaptations include Joan Alexander in the Fleischer Superman animated film series and Dana Delany in Superman: The Animated Series, among others.
Creation
Writer Jerry Siegel first conceived Lois Lane in 1934, when Siegel and Joe Shuster were still developing Superman. One of the major influence on Lois' characterization was actress Glenda Farrell and her portrayal of the fictional reporter Torchy Blane in a series of Warner Bros. films. The Torchy Blane movies were popular second features during the later 1930s. On the conception of Lois Lane, Siegel stated in the 1988 Time magazine:
Artist Joe Shuster based Lois' physical appearance on a model named Joanne Carter. Carter had placed an ad in the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper in the Situation Wanted column, advertising herself as a model. Shuster corresponded with her and hired her as the model for Lois Lane. Shuster's depiction of Lois was modeled on her hairstyle and facial features. "To me she was Lois Lane. She was a great inspiration for me, though. She encouraged me, she was very enthusiastic about the strip; it meant a lot to me." Shuster said about Joanne Carter.
Joanne Carter married co-creator Jerry Siegel in 1948. On working with Joe Shuster for Lois Lane, Carter said in the 1983 Nemo magazine interview: "Joe was redrawing the strip, and it was going to be more realistic, rather than cartoony. I used to model for him every Saturday until he had enough drawings. He made so many stock drawings that it got to a point where he didn't need any more. We became such good friends by that time we decided we would always stay friends."
Publication history
Lois Lane made her debut in Action Comics #1 (June 1938) the first published Superman story. Lois is the daughter of Ella and Sam Lane, in earlier comics, her parents were farmers in a town called Pittsdale. The modern comics depicts Lois as a former Army brat, born at Ramstein Air Base with Lois having been trained by her father, a US Army General, in areas such as hand-to-hand combat and the use of firearms. She has one younger sibling, her sister Lucy Lane. Lois is a journalist for the Daily Planet, one of the best investigative reporters and the best at the newspaper she works at. Lois has shown obtaining superpowers and becoming a superhero, some of her superhero identities are Superwoman and Red Tornado of Earth 2.
Aspects of Lois' personality have varied over the years, depending on the comic book writers handling of the character and American social attitudes toward women at the time. In most incarnations, she is shown to be an independent person who is smart, determined and strong-willed. Her physical appearance has varied over the years, depending either on contemporary fashion or media adaptations. In the 1990s, when the television series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman began airing Lois received a haircut that made her look more like actress Teri Hatcher, and her eyes were typically violet to match her character on Superman: The Animated Series. From the late 1980s through the 1990s she was depicted with auburn hair in the comic books.
In the 1940s, Lois had a newspaper comic strip, Lois Lane, Girl Reporter, a direct spin-off of the Superman comic strip running at the time. A similar title comic series began appearing in the Superman comic book in 1944, starting with Superman #28. In 1958, DC Comics gave Lois a comic book series, Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane. The series focuses on her solo adventures and start publication in April 1958. In the 1960s, the series was one of DC's most popular titles and was the top ten best-selling comic books in America. She had a series featured in The Superman Family comic book from 1974 to 1982. In 2015, she received her own young adult novel series written by author Gwenda Bond. Published by Switch Press the series include: Lois Lane: Fallout, Lois Lane: Double Down and Lois Lane: Triple Threat. Released in 2019, Lois Lane, a 12-issue series by writer Greg Rucka and artist Mike Perkins investigates threats and conspiracies in the DC Universe. Published by DC Comics in August 2020, Lois Lane and the Friendship Challenge by Grace Ellis and Brittney Williams is a graphic novel for young readers.
Lois is the character most commonly associated with Superman, and throughout their long history, she has always been the most prominent love interest in Clark Kent/Superman's life. In the 1990s, after Clark proposes to Lois and reveals to her that he is Superman, she married him in the comic book Superman: The Wedding Album (December 1996). The couple's biological child in DC Comics canon was born in Convergence: Superman #2 (July 2015) a son named Jonathan Samuel Kent, who eventually becomes Superboy.
Fictional character biography
Golden Age
In the Golden Age comics, Lois was an aggressive, career-minded reporter for the Daily Star (the newspaper's name was changed to the Daily Planet in Action Comics #23 in 1940). After Clark Kent joined the paper and Superman debuted around the same time, Lois found herself attracted to Superman but displeased with her new journalistic competition in the form of Kent.
Starting early as the 1940s, Lois began to suspect that Clark Kent was Superman, and started to make various attempts at uncovering his secret identity, all of which backfired because of Superman's efforts. The first such story appears in Superman #17 (July–August 1942). This theme became particularly pronounced in the 1950s and 1960s Silver Age comic books.
Lois gained her first series of stories (without Superman) starting with Superman #28 (May–June 1944), Lois Lane, Girl Reporter, running in the Superman comic book for a number of years, had Lois defeating bad guys and getting front-page stories on her own, without any help from Superman.
In the Golden Age comics, Lois had a niece named Susie Tompkins, whose main trait was getting into trouble by telling exaggerated tall tales and fibs to adults. Susie's last appearance was in Superman #95 (February 1955). Subsequent comics presented Lois' only sibling, Lucy, as single and childless.
Silver Age and Bronze Age
When the reading audience of superhero comic books became predominately young boys in the mid to late 1950s, the focus of Superman stories shifted toward science fiction inspired plots involving extraterrestrials, fantasy creatures, and bizarre plots.
Lois' main interests in various late 1950s and 1960s stories became vying with her rival Lana Lang for Superman's affections, attempting to prove Clark Kent and Superman were one and the same or otherwise getting Superman into marriage. Superman's rationale for resisting her matrimonial desires was that marrying her would put her in increased danger from his enemies and that she could not keep his secret identity hidden. Regardless, Lois married several times in the Superman stories of this era, including to a Superman impostor from Kandor, the villainous Zak-Kul and a man from the future. All these marriages were either annulled or otherwise forgotten.
Lois became more and more popular during the 1950s, and after appearing as the lead character in two issues of DC Comics' Showcase in 1957, DC created an ongoing series for Lois, titled Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane. The series ran for 137 issues, beginning in April 1958 to October 1974. Most stories were about Lois' romance with Superman, and were drawn by artist Kurt Schaffenberger. Schaffenberger's rendition of Lois became cited by many as the "definitive" version of Lois, and he was often asked by DC editor Mort Weisinger to redraw other artists' depictions of Lois Lane in other DC titles where she appeared. So many stories depicted Lois and marriage that the cover of a 1968 80-Page Giant that reprinted several such stories, the "All-Wedding Issue", described the magazine as "featuring Lois' schemes and dreams to marry Superman!".
The series Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane became one of DC's most popular titles, the third best-selling comic in 1962 and 1965. The title featured the first appearance of the Silver Age Catwoman, after an absence from the comics for over a decade.
While Lois suspicious of Superman's secret identity as early as Superman #7 (1940), her suspicions grew during the early Silver Age, with many stories in her series focusing on her attempts to prove Superman and Clark Kent were one and the same. Stories showed Superman using various means to protect his secret identity from Lois, including his Superman robots or Batman disguising himself as Clark/Superman.
By the end of the 1960s, as attitudes toward women's role in American society changed, Lois' character changed as well. In Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane #80 (Jan. 1968), the character's fashions were updated to a then more contemporary look. Stories in the 1970s depicted Lois as fully capable and less reliant on Superman. She engaged in more adventures without Superman being involved and was much less interested in discovering Superman's secret identity.
Lois had a series featured in The Superman Family (an anthology title started in the mid-1970s after the cancellation of Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane and Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen) from 1974 to 1982. In her series, Lois regularly battled criminals and often defeated them using her quick wits and considerable skill in the Kryptonian martial art of Klurkor, taught to her by Kryptonian survivors in the bottle city of Kandor. There were several cameos of the New Gods, including Desaad and Darkseid. Lois Lane was the backup series in The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl in 1982 to 1983.
During the Silver and Bronze Age, Lois' backstory became more fully fleshed out, with various stories explaining her life before becoming employed at the Daily Planet. This backstory was attributed to the Lois Lane of Earth-One.
As summarized in various stories, Lois was born to Sam and Ella Lane and grew up on their farm in the small town of Pittsdale. At the age of two, Lois suffered measles, and at the age of three, whooping cough. At an unspecified time during Lois' childhood, her younger sister Lucy Lane was born. While Lois was a toddler, she encountered a rattlesnake in the woods near the Lane family farm. The snake was scared away by one of Kal-El's baby toys which had landed nearby in one of Jor-El's experimental rockets.
During Lois' adolescence, she won a youth contest run by the Daily Planet, with the prize being a trip to Metropolis to spend a week working as a cub reporter for the newspaper. There, she first met Clark Kent of Smallville, who was the other winner of the contest. Lois found Clark dull and became more interested in asking him for information about Superboy after learning Clark came from Smallville. During the week in Metropolis, Lois made a bet with Clark to see who would get the most scoops, which turned out to be Lois, as Clark was forced to constantly go into action as Superboy. Lois met Superboy for the first time while uncovering a criminal enterprise for one of her stories. At the end of the week, Clark paid off Lois' bet (an ice cream sundae), and the two returned to their respective hometowns. Lois would meet Superboy (but not Clark Kent) again during her adolescence while attending an all-girls summer camp near Smallville. There, Lois met Lana Lang, a fellow camper, for the first time. Lois would make further attempts at landing a job with the Daily Planet during her teenage years and spent time writing for her hometown's newspaper, the Pittsdale Star.
Upon finishing high school, Lois left Pittsdale and attended Raleigh College to study journalism. While in college, Lois worked for the student newspaper, the Raleigh Review, as a reporter and eventually its co-editor. After graduating from college, Lois became permanently employed at the Daily Planet. Clark Kent and Jimmy Olsen later joined the Planets staff but Lois remained the newspaper's star reporter, winning the Pulitzer Prize. She was very dependent on Superman, however; he told her that having to rescue her so often from problems she caused prevented him from helping others. For example, when late for a deadline Lois jumped off a cliff expecting Superman to catch her "as he has done a thousand times", and fly her to her destination. When asked on a Sunday morning talk show what she would do if trapped in an underground mine with rescue impossible before the air ran out, Lois admitted that she would impatiently await Superman because "I've got a deadline to meet."
After the 1985–1986 miniseries Crisis on Infinite Earths writer John Byrne revised the Superman legend and eliminated the Silver Age version of Lois from continuity. Before this happened, a final non-canonical imaginary story Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? was written by Alan Moore, meant as a send-off for the pre-Crisis versions of the characters, including Lois. Published at the same time but in Earth-One continuity was a two-issue miniseries, Lois Lane, in which she investigates missing children.
Modern Age
Lois underwent a character alteration beginning with John Byrne's The Man of Steel miniseries, which significantly rewrote Superman's origin and history. In this modern version of events, Lois was portrayed as a tough-as-nails reporter who rarely needed rescuing. She was depicted as strong, opinionated, yet sensitive.
Lois' first real relationship in this version was with Jose Delgado, who she later came to know acted as a vigilante. José's legs are shattered in a battle with a Lexcorp cyborg/human hybrid gone amok. Delgado eventually recovered. He and Lois would have several on and off experiences together before the relationship completely disintegrated, due to Delgado accepting help from a Lexcorp subsidiary ARL.
Another major change made was that Lois did not fall in love with just Superman, although she was attracted to him. One reason was the revised nature of the Superman/Clark Kent relationship. In the original Silver Age stories, Superman had been the man who disguised himself as Clark Kent. In this newly revised concept, it was Clark Kent who lived a life in which his activity as Superman was decidedly secondary. Lois initially resented the rookie Clark Kent getting the story on Superman as his first piece when she had spent ages trying to get an interview. This sometimes ill-tempered rivalry remained the case until The Adventures of Superman #460–463 and Action Comics #650.
Following Clark's brief rampage under the influence of the Eradicator, Lois was hesitant to forgive Clark for "selling out" to Collin Thornton and running Newstime Magazine, but forgave him in a span of mere minutes when he returned to ask for his job back. Clark elected to repay Lois by finally letting go of his self-imposed inhibitions and passionately kissed her. The two became a couple, and eventually, Lois accepted a proposal of marriage. Clark shortly after revealed to her that he was Superman.
DC Comics had planned on Lois and Clark being married in 1993's Superman vol. 2 #75. With the then-upcoming television show Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, DC decided they did not want to have the two married in the comics and not married on TV. Partially as a result of this, Superman was killed in Superman #75 instead, dying in Lois' arms after a battle royal with the monster Doomsday. After a period of time, Superman returned to life, and both he and Lois resumed their relationship, though not without a few problems (such as a brief reappearance of Clark's former college girlfriend, the mermaid Lori Lemaris). Lois eventually decided to take an overseas assignment to assert her independence and not be dependent on Clark, who had begun to overprotect her. When Clark became convinced Lois was in danger, he and her father Sam allied to aid her secretly.
When Lois returned to Metropolis, she had been through several life-threatening exploits and was slightly amused when Clark informed her his powers had been depleted, and that he was her editor (due to Perry White's cancer). Upon discovering Clark still had her wedding ring within a handkerchief, Lois warmly broke down, teasing Clark and finally agreeing to become his wife.
Lois and Clark were finally married in the comic book Superman: The Wedding Album (December 1996), which featured the work of nearly every living artist who had ever worked on Superman. The issue was published during the week of October 6, 1996, coinciding with an episode of the television series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, which featured the wedding of the two characters. The Wedding Album itself spent part of its opening pages accommodating and reconciling the then-current comic storyline of Lois and Clark having broken off their engagement.
Since their marriage, Clark and Lois continue to be one of the strongest relationships in comics. In 2006, the couple took the next step in adopting a newly arrived Kryptonian boy, who they named Chris Kent. The boy is later discovered to be the son of Jor-El's foe, General Zod. Although initially uneasy about raising a super-powered child, Lois has shown immense aptitude of being 'Mommy Lois.' Following a devastating battle with Zod, Chris sacrificed himself to seal the Phantom Zone rift, trapping himself inside with Zod's forces, leaving Lois without her son.
In the second issue of Final Crisis, Lois and Perry are caught in an explosion triggered by Clayface destroying the Daily Planet and Lois is critically injured. In the third issue, it is revealed that only Clark's heat vision is keeping her heart beating. Clark is visited by a mysterious phantom who insists that he must depart Earth immediately if he is to save his wife's life. The story is continued in the 3D tie-in comic Superman Beyond, where the female Monitor Zillo Valla stops time around Lois, allowing Superman to leave her side for a while, recruiting him and several of his multiversal doppelgangers in a mission to save the entire Multiverse, promising care for Lois. After defeating the dark Monitor Mandrakk, Superman brings back a distilled drop of The Bleed and administers it to Lois through a kiss, restoring her to full health. Lois is later seen in Final Crisis #6, one of the few still free humans.
After the events of Superman: New Krypton Superman must leave Earth for an undetermined amount of time swearing off his Earthly connections in the eyes of his fellow Kryptonians to keep an eye on General Zod the New Kryptonian military commander, but he secretly tells Lois he still considers her his wife and will come back to her. In the issues of Action Comics Lois has reunited with Christopher Kent who has aged to adulthood in the past months and became the new Metropolis hero Nightwing. Supergirl and Lana visit Lois' apartment to tell her the bad news that her sister Lucy Lane was killed during a battle with Supergirl. Lois doesn't believe that her sister is dead and refuses to accept the news until she has irrefutable proof. Lois asks Supergirl for a recovered piece of Superwoman's costume.
Lois hands her exposé in and the government is after her for treason. With agents on her tail, she makes a mad dash for it. When Lois is in custody, her father Sam Lane is there to greet her in an interview room in an unnamed facility. Sam tells Lois the only reason he has been lenient with her is because she is his daughter, while he does love her the planet will always come first over his family and threatens to make her disappear forever if she continues. Lois returns to the Daily Planet under cover of night and explains all to Perry. She points out the whole paper is at risk and everyone connected to it if her exposé runs. Perry understands and though he must protect the paper he is first and foremost a good journalist and nudges Lois in the right direction; he won't run the story but noted it must get out to the people somehow. Enlightened, she quits the Daily Planet, as Lois gets her edge back. It was later revealed she never really quit the Daily Planet.
Lois learns her father's forces destroyed New Krypton. She is kidnapped by Lucy and taken to Sam's secret base. There, Lois argues with her father, countering his insistence on regarding the Kryptonians as "rabid dogs" by pointing out that they naturally regard him as a genocidal maniac after he destroyed their planet. In the war between New Krypton and Earth, Supergirl finds them and threatens to kill Sam. Lois stops her, saying her father will be judged for his war crimes. Refusing to go to trial, Sam takes a gun and commits suicide. Later, Lois visits the imprisoned Lucy. She expresses disbelief on what her sister has become. Lois says while she will not miss her father, she will miss her sister.
In Superman: Grounded, Superman begins a journey through America to reconnect with the American people, and Lois, though confused at first, supports his choice. Lois later travels to Rushmark and finds an old college friend Brian, who invites her to have dinner with him and his wife. When Lois leaves Brian's home she is met by Superman. The two reaffirm their love to each other and go to Chicago. There, Lois helps Superman arrest a violent father who has been attacking his wife and son. Later, Lois and Superman investigate a factory in Des Moines. Lois wants to publish an article, which would reveal the workers' illegal activities, but Superman forces her not to. Feeling betrayed, Lois returns to Metropolis and does not speak to Superman for a while. When Lois is kidnapped by Lisa Jennings, a woman who wants to destroy Superman, he rescues her. With the danger over. Superman apologizes to Lois about what happened in Des Moines. Lois replies that she wrote the article anyway, saying that she was a reporter before she was his wife. Knowing that his wife did the right thing, Superman kisses her. The two then return home.
The New 52
In 2011, DC Comics relaunched its titles and its main continuity was rebooted with the New 52. Lois now works for Morgan Edge heading up the media division of the Daily Planet. She views Clark as a friend and is unaware that he is Superman.
Lois investigates the story of twenty people who developed metahuman powers after being kidnapped by Brainiac. Her search leads her to a U.S. senator, who revealed to be one of the Twenty. The senator dies, but not before transferring his powers to Lois, who falls into a coma. Lois later awakes from her coma at the hospital, with Jonathan Carroll at her side. Lois manifests psychic powers and helps Superman fight the Psychic Pirate. During the fight, Lois learns that Clark is Superman but falls back into a coma. After defeating the Psychic Pirate, Superman brings Lois back to the hospital. Later, the Parasite attacks the hospital and attempts to steal Lois' powers. Superman tricks the Parasite into absorbing Lois' psionic energy. The power overwhelms the Parasite, causing him to collapse. Lois awakens from her coma but she does not seem to remember Superman's identity.
Lois is the main character in the Superman: Lois Lane #1 one-shot. In this story, Lois' sister, Lucy, asks for her help in finding her roommate Amanda Suresh, who had been kidnapped by a mysterious group called "the Cartel." According to Lucy, Amanda had been taking a drug that transformed her into a monster. As Lois investigates the Cartel, she gets captured and taken to the Cartel's headquarters. There, Lois finds out the Cartel had been capturing people who had been mutated by the drug. Lois escapes and rescues Amanda when the captured monsters cause a riot. As she returns home, Lois finds out Lucy had been taking the drug. As Lucy apologizes for putting all three in danger, Lois chooses to publish her story about the Cartel.
Some time after this, an organisation led by the mysterious 'HODOR-ROOT' learn Superman's secret identity, prompting him to share that information with Lois. When HODOR-ROOT try to analyse Clark's new 'Super-Flare' power, Lois reveals his identity to the public in the hope of removing their blackmail card, but this forces Clark to go on the run, hunted by criminals and law enforcement as some apparent side-effect of his Super-Flare has depleted his powers. Superman eventually learns that his depleted powers are due to Vandal Savage infecting him with a form of radiation that inhibits his cells' ability to absorb solar radiation, subjecting himself to kryptonite as a form of chemotherapy. With his powers restored, Clark reconciles with Lois, accepting that she exposed his identity for good reasons.
In the New 52: Futures End, set five years in the possible future of the New 52-verse. Lois is considered the most successful freelance reporter on the planet and her blog "The Fast Lane" is one of the most read and well-respected sources of news in the world.
In the miniseries Convergence, which featured many Post-Crisis DC Universe characters, including a married Superman and his pregnant wife Lois Lane, deal with the impending birth of their child, as Superman is called to protect the city. Convergence shows the birth of their son, Jon Kent.
Following Convergence, DC announced the spin-off comic book series Superman: Lois and Clark, debuting in October 2015 by Dan Jurgens and Lee Weeks. The eight-issue series is set several years after the Convergence event, where Clark and Lois and their son Jon has been living and working in the New 52 universe. The couple now lives in California and has changed their last name to White (a tribute to Perry White). Lois has become an anonymous author, publishing several critically acclaimed books under the alias name "Author X." While Clark continues his superhero duty, protecting cities and civilians quietly behind the scenes. Their son, Jonathan, eventually began to develop superpowers of his own (similar to those of his father Superman) and learned the truth about his parents' true origin.
In The Final Days of Superman, the pre-Flashpoint Superman helps his New 52 counterpart defeat a man who has become convinced that he is the 'true' Superman after exposure to some of Superman's excess energy. New 52-Lois is present when 'her' Superman expires as recent energy exposures catch up with him, after he tells her his life story for posterity.
DC Rebirth
In June 2016, DC Comics relaunched its entire line of comic book titles with DC Rebirth. The publisher once again re-established the Post-Crisis Superman as the principal Superman in DC comics, along with his wife, Lois Lane, and their son, Jonathan.
Lois began to investigate the disappearance of her New 52 counterpart, and after learning the apparent death of her other-self, she returns to the Daily Planet posing as her counterpart. Following a confrontation with Mister Mxyzptlk, Lois and Superman's essence is merged with their New 52 counterpart, creating a new DC Universe.
Released in July 2019 to July 2020, Lois stars in a 12-issue limited series Lois Lane written by Greg Rucka and art by Mike Perkins. The series sees Lois as she investigates stories of conspiracy, intrigue and murder in the DC Universe. Writer Greg Rucka intended for the series to focus on Lois' legacy as a hard-boiled journalist and the investigative world which she inhabits, with the series reflecting the state of modern journalism in the world today.
Superhero identities
Lois Lane has become a superhero and gained superpowers several times in the comics, animation, and live-action series.
Superwoman
Lois was the first person to assume the Superwoman persona and has become the superheroine on several occasions. Her first appearance as Superwoman (as well as Superwoman's first appearance in DC Comics) was in Action Comics #60 (May 1943). The story is set in a dream sequence, where, after Lois is hit by a truck, she dreams a transfusion of Superman's blood gives her superpowers and she becomes Superwoman. In Superman #45, Lois believes Hocus and Pocus—a pair of fraudulent magicians—have given her superpowers, and with Superman's help and intervention, Lois once again becomes Superwoman. In Action Comics #156, Lois actually gains superpowers from one of Lex Luthor's inventions, which launches a short-lived career as "Superwoman." In The Superman Family #207, the Earth-Two Lois gained superpowers from her husband, after Superman brought an extraterrestrial plant into their home, with Lois losing the powers after the death of the plant. Other stories have Lois transformed into Superwoman when Superman transfers some of his powers to Lois, or due to Mr. Mxyzptlk's interference. On Smallville in the episode "Prophecy," Jor-El gives Lois all of Clark's powers for one day.
In the original Crime Syndicate of America on Earth-Three, Lois Lane and Superwoman were two separate individual characters. Superwoman is a supervillain and Lois married Earth-Three's greatest champion, Alexander Luthor. The pre-Crisis version of the characters perished when Earth-Three was destroyed during the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths. In the graphic novel JLA: Earth 2, Superwoman, a member of the Crime Syndicate is the alternate version of Lois Lane. She is an Amazon by birth and the chief editor of the Daily Planet. She inhabits the same antimatter universe which contains the planet Qward. The New 52 version of Superwoman of Earth-3 is also named Lois Lane and is part of the Crime Syndicate.
In All-Star Superman, the 12-issue comic book series by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, Lois becomes a Kryptonian Superwoman for 24 hours. In the story, Superman (who believed he was dying) revealed his secret identity to her and takes Lois to his Fortress of Solitude to spend her birthday. While at his Arctic sanctuary, he presents Lois with her birthday present, a formula called "Exo-Genes" created by Superman from his own DNA, that allows Lois to have his powers for twenty-four hours. With her new Kryptonian powers and new Superwoman costume (made by Superman), the two spend the whole day together on different adventures and shared a kiss on the moon. At the end of the story, Superman proclaims his love for Lois, before he flies off into the sun to repair it. Lois later appeared as Superwoman in the animated All-Star Superman film, voiced by Christina Hendricks.
In DC Rebirth, the New 52 Lois and Lana gained superpowers due to the solar energy explosion caused by the death of the New 52 Superman. This results in both Lois and Lana becoming Superwoman, with Lois possessing all of Superman's traditional powers, while Lana has the ability to absorb solar energy and release it in other forms. Lois later dies at the hands of a female Bizarro, being overloaded with solar energy the same way Superman was killed.
Red Tornado
Following the DC relaunch, the series Earth 2 debuted in 2012, set on the parallel world of that name. It depicts a modern take on the Golden Age world, starring the Justice Society of America and superheroes of that period.
In Earth 2, Lois Lane is married to Superman. When Clark's cousin Kara arrived on earth, she stayed with Clark's parents, before moving in and living with Clark and Lois. Lois considers Kara as her daughter and Kara calls Lois mom. Five years prior to the start of the story, during the first Apokoliptian invasion of Earth 2, Lois was killed by one of Darkseid's assassins at the Daily Planet, she died in her husband's arms. Superman and many other heroes of Earth 2 perished in the war.
Five years later, as various heroes begin to rise and various gods from Apokolips begin to wreak havoc again. Lois' consciousness is revealed to have survived and was downloaded into the robot body of Red Tornado by her father Sam Lane and Robert Crane. Lois, now as Red Tornado, possessed the power of wind manipulation and cyclone generation abilities. Lois bands together with Green Lantern (Alan Scott), Batman (Thomas Wayne), Accountable (Jimmy Olsen) and the other gathered heroes to fight against the forces of Apokolips. After a protracted battle with what was thought to be a surviving brainwashed Superman, Lois realizes he is, in fact, a Bizarro, and takes advantage of his deteriorating form to disintegrate him with a cyclone blast. In the story, Lois is referred to by Doctor Fate as the "Resurrection hope".
During Superman's rampage and destruction on Earth 2, Lois is among a group that discovers Val-Zod, a Kryptonian, hidden in a cell beneath Arkham. Lois helps Val feel accepted and welcomed on Earth 2, learn to control his superpower, and overcome his agoraphobia (due to his prolonged travel in space to Earth). Val-Zod eventually becomes the new Superman of Earth 2.
In the second Apokoliptian invasion of Earth 2, Lois and Kara are reunited, after Kara and Huntress return to Earth 2 from Prime Earth. Lois, along with Kara, Val, Huntress, Batman and other heroes, fights against the armies of Apokolips and new villains appearing across Earth 2. While searching for Huntress beneath the fire pits of Earth 2 in DeSaad's cloning facility, Lois, Val, Kara and Batman found the real Superman who has been held captive for five years. He was revived by DeSaad and was used as the genetic source for the Kryptonian clones. The extraction of his DNA corrupted his body leaving him without any powers. Lois and Superman reunite briefly, before he sacrificed himself one last time, destroying the Parademon facilities using his corrupt DNA. After Superman's death, Lois gave Kara the symbol from his uniform, which was then worn by Kara in remembrance.
In the final days of Earth 2, Lois' instincts as a journalist lead her to attempt to preserve and record the history and stories of Earth 2 in her large memory bank in the hope that someday, someone will read the data and rebuild this world. After the destruction of Earth 2, Lois and the remaining civilians and heroes of Earth 2 relocated to a new world.
The writer of Earth 2, Tom Taylor, specifically resurrected Lois Lane on Earth 2 after he was told to kill off the character in the Injustice comic series. Taylor stated "bringing Lois in was quite a personal thing, because having to do such horrible, horrible things to her in Injustice, the first thing I asked when I got on the book was if I could bring back Lois. Then it was just a matter of working out exactly how." Taylor received "Women in Refrigerators" criticism for his Injustice comic stories. Bringing back Lois as Red Tornado was Taylor's way to "unfridge" Lois. As Taylor noted, in Lois' first appearance as Red Tornado, Lois literally came out of a blue refrigerator. Other reasons for bringing back Lois involve Superman, Taylor commented "While evil bastard Superman is out there killing and maiming and destroying, I wanted Lois to exist as the counterpoint to this. She's the beating heart at the center. She's the good Ying to Superman's evil Yang. Where there's Lois, there's hope."
Nicola Scott, the long-time artist on Earth 2, on drawing Red Tornado Lois, "I wanted Lois to be Lois, despite the fact that she's metal. I wanted to make sure she looked really feminine and really beautiful, so all she'd need is a flesh coating and a wig and she'd be good to go."
Other identities and powers
Green Lantern – In Tangent Comics: Tales of the Green Lantern #1, Green Lantern of Earth-9 is introduced with three different origin tales. In one origin story, Lois is an archaeologist, explorer, and adventurer hired by billionaire playboy Booster Gold to explore the underwater ruins off the coast of Florida. She discovers a community of mutated life forms known as the Sea Devils and is murdered by Booster Gold when she tries to protect the Sea Devils. Her body is taken to the underwater castle and resurrected as the Green Lantern.
Elastic Lass – Lois becomes Elastic Lass, after borrowing Jimmy Olsen's Elastic Lad serum, given to him by Professor Potter, so she can catch the Wrecker, who has been blowing up statues around Metropolis.
Isis – On the television series Smallville, Lois is possessed by the spirit of the Egyptian goddess and hero Isis while wearing the Amulet of Isis in the tenth-season episode "Isis." This was based on the character of Isis who first appeared in an eponymous 1975-77 CBS television series, later known as The Secrets of Isis. Isis was then brought into DC comics canon, both as a superhero and as a separate goddess. As Isis, Lois had super strength, speed, telekinesis, telepathy, energy projection, magic, and could fly.
Krypton Girl – In the imaginary story in Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane #47, Lois is from Krypton and takes the superhero name Krypton Girl on Earth; Clark Kent is an ordinary human.
Leopard Lady – Lois becomes the supervillain Leopard Lady and marries Lex Luthor when a machine that can bring out evil in a person is used on her.
Power Girl – In Superman #125, Lois dreams she and Clark gain superpowers and become Power-Girl and Power-Man.
Stiletto – On Smallville, Lois takes on the superhero persona of Stiletto, after saving Chloe from a carjacker in the eighth-season episode "Stiletto."
Super-Lois – The comic book Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane featured several stories in which Lois gains superpowers and becomes Super-Lois. In one, Lois gains superpower after Superman gives her a blood transfusion. In another story, Lois is invited to visit Kandor with three other accomplished women of Earth; while there, a scientist gives her superpowers. Lois uses her new superpowers to save Superman from a Kryptonite trap set by Mayhem, Inc.
Supermaid – In an imaginary story in Superman #158, Lois goes to Krypton as a child and becomes Supermaid. Lois' father sent his infant daughter to Krypton in a starship, after discovering Earth's sun would go nova and destroy the solar system. Arriving on Krypton within a power beam modifies Lois' molecular biology, giving her superpowers. Lois was adopted and raised by a zookeeper as Kandi Khan and became the Superheroine Supermaid.
Ultra Woman – On the television series Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman in the episode "Ultra Woman" Superman's powers are transferred to Lois when a red Kryptonite laser beam hit him. Martha Kent makes Lois a new costume and Clark introduces her to Metropolis as Ultra Woman.
Divine empowerment – Lois was briefly granted divine powers as the Goddess of Integrity by the war and death gods, but gave the powers up at the urging of Wonder Woman. Her powers include flight, enhanced intellect, teleportation and weather manipulation.
Psychic powers – In The New 52, Lois was given various psychic powers by Senator Hume; she has redeveloped and lost these powers numerous times. Some of her powers are telepathy and astral projection.
Earth-Two version
DC Comics instituted its multiverse system in the early 1960s for organizing its continuity and introduced the Earth-Two Superman in Justice League of America #73 (August 1969). This retcon declared the Golden Age Superman and Lois Lane stories (i.e. comics published from 1938 through the early 1950s) as having taken place on the parallel world of "Earth-Two" versus the then mainstream (Silver Age) universe of "Earth-One".
In Action Comics #484 (June 1978), a flashback story reveals Earth-Two's Lois became infatuated with Clark Kent after the latter lost his memory of his superheroic identity (thanks to a spell cast by the old Justice Society of America enemy Wizard working for Colonel Future), with the result of Clark acting more aggressive and extroverted. Clark and Lois began to date each other and were soon married. During the honeymoon, Lois discovered that Clark was indeed Superman. After recruiting the aid of Wizard, Lois restored Clark's memory and Wizard surrendered to the authorities.
The now-married Lois and Clark appeared in a series of stories in The Superman Family #195–199 and #201–222 titled Mr and Mrs Superman, which presented their further adventures early in their marriage. Susie Tompkins made a return as a recurring character. Years later, Lois and Clark acted as parental figures for Power Girl, Superman's cousin, after she arrived on Earth.
During the Crisis on Infinite Earths miniseries, the Earth-Two Lois Lane was seemingly seen for the final time, as Lois, the Earth-Two Superman, and the Superboy of Earth-Prime are, at the end of the story, taken by Earth-Three's Alexander Luthor Jr. into a paradise-like dimension. Following the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths, this version of Lois was retroactively removed from DC's continuity.
In 2005's Infinite Crisis miniseries, it was revealed that the Earth-Two Lois Lane Kent, along with Superboy, Alexander Luthor Jr., and Superman, have been watching the events of the post-Crisis DC Universe from their pocket dimension. Out of the four observers, she is the only one who still believes that the new universe is just going through a rough patch; Superboy-Prime and Alexander Luthor Jr. are convinced that Earth is utterly corrupt, and Kal-L is slowly becoming swayed to their way of thinking. This version of Lois is frail, and dying for reasons not explicitly revealed, though possibly connected to her octogenarian status. This was the main reason for Kal-L's determination to restore Earth-Two, as he believed that Lois' health would recover once back on her proper Earth. Despite the restoration of Earth-Two, Lois Lane Kent died in the arms of her husband Superman regardless of Kal-L's protests that he could not let her die. After Kal-L died at the hands of Superboy-Prime, he commented that he finally understood Lois' final words "It's... not... going..." as meaning that it would never end for them, and one day it would be understood that even the heroes who had been lost in the original Crisis were still out there somewhere. After his demise, they are shown reunited in the stars, while their bodies are buried on Earth alongside Kon-El's, who gave his life to stop Superboy-Prime's attempts to restore his Earth.
Lois later returns as a sinister Black Lantern with her husband in the Blackest Night crossover. Her first task is to kidnap Martha Kent with her spouse, and stating that she and Kal-L wish for Kal-El, Connor Kent, and Martha, to be reunited with Jonathan Kent in death. She proved unable to deal with the resourcefulness of Martha Kent, and was set ablaze by the widow, but kept regenerating until Krypto intervened, ripping the black ring out of her hand and preventing regeneration for long enough to allow Superman and Conner Kent to destroy the Black Lantern powerhouses attacking Smallville, and reaching town to aid others unhindered. Black Lantern Lois later appears to Power Girl, claiming that she has escaped the ring's corrupting influence, and needs her help. This was just a ploy to get close enough to her husband's body, which was being held in the JSA headquarters after his black ring had been removed. Black Lantern Lois "sacrifices" herself by removing her ring and giving it to Kal-L, restoring him to full undead status, and causing her own body to become inert.
In other versions
During the years 1942–1985 Editora Brasil-América and Editora Abril which published the Brazilian versions of Superman comics, Lois Lane's name was translated to "Miriam Lane" and later to "Miriam Lois Lane." In Spanish speaking countries, her name was translated to "Luisa Lane" in comics, TV series and movies.
Elseworlds imprint
Superman: Speeding Bullets, a 1993 Elseworlds story based on the concept of an amalgamation of Superman and Batman. Martha and Thomas Wayne discovered Baby Kal-El, adopt and named him Bruce. Bruce discovers his superpowers when his parents are killed and create the identity Batman to fight criminals in Gotham City. Lois relocates to Gotham City after Lex Luthor buys the Daily Planet, and soon forms a relationship with Bruce Wayne, the owner of her new job at the Gotham Gazette. She later convinces him to abandon the identity of Batman and adopt a more hopeful persona of Superman.
Superman: The Feral Man of Steel, a 1994 Elseworlds special in Superman (vol. 2) Annual #6, based on The Jungle Book stories with elements from Tarzan. Raised by wolves in 19th-century Indian Jungle and is given the name K'L'L. Lois is an American girl who falls for K'L'L.
In Superman: Kal, Lady Loisse is the daughter of the late Lord Lane in the Middle Ages. She is held captive by Baron Luthor, who hopes to make her his bride. Lois falls for Kal, a blacksmith's apprentice after he wins a contest against Luthor's best fighters. She accepts his request for her hand in marriage, as payment for him forging a suit of armour for Luthor from his rocket. After their wedding, Loisse is taken from Kal by Luthor, who subsequently killed her.
Lois is a teacher from the undercity in the 1996 series, Superman's Metropolis, modelled on Fritz Lang's classic 1927 science-fiction film Metropolis.
Superman: War of the Worlds, a Superman story adapted into the H. G. Wells novel The War of the Worlds. Set in 1938, after applying for a job at the Daily Star, Clark and Lois witness the arrival of the Martian invasion of Earth. Superman dies saving the Earth, and Lois marries Lex Luthor who becomes the Vice President.
In the 1998 series, JLA: The Nail, the Kents never found Clark, Lois is selected by Green Lantern to provide the Justice League with some positive media presentation after a recent propaganda campaign focuses on the idea that many modern metahumans are alien invaders. Tracking recent kidnapped heroes to a secret base, Lois is introduced to the Kents, who provide a safe house for various heroes after Lana Lang smuggled them out of the facility, and later discovers that the true mastermind behind the conspiracy is Jimmy Olsen, mutated into a Kryptonian through genetic experiments carried out based on DNA samples found in Kal-El's crashed and abandoned ship. Jimmy is finally defeated by Kal-El, who was here raised by an Amish couple until their deaths at Olsen's hands, with Lois writing about how Kal-El's time with the Kents helped him accept his abilities and grow into the Superman he should have been. In the sequel, JLA: Another Nail Lois helps the Kents create Kal-El's 'Clark' disguise- albeit naming him 'Carl' on impulse- to give him a chance at a normal life outside of his role as Superman, reasoning that the simplicity of the glasses will stop people paying too much attention to him, while their original plan to completely cover him with a false beard would make people suspect that Kal-El had something to hide.
John Byrne's Superman & Batman: Generations follow the life and families of Superman and Lois and their descendants over the course of three separate Elseworlds series.
Published in 1999, The Superman Monster takes elements from Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein where Superman is similar to the Frankenstein monster. Set in Gotham City in 1888, Eloise Edge is the daughter of Burgomaster Edge and the fiancé of scientist Vicktor Luthor who creates the creature, Klaus, using Kryptonian technology. Eloise develops an affection for Klaus, and after she is killed by a ricocheting bullet and revived in the same Matrix that created Klaus, she accompanies him to the Arctic to learn more about her new condition.
In the series, Son of Superman, fifteen years after the disappearance of Superman, Lois' teenage son Jon Kent begins to display superpowers and learns his father is Superman. Jon joins the rebel organization to fight against the corrupt U.S. government.
In JLA: Created Equal, all men on Earth except Superman and Lex Luthor is killed by a strange disease. When Lois become pregnant, Superman is forced to leave Earth after Luthor reveals he is still a carrier for the disease. Years later, Lois gives birth to her and Clark's son, Adam, who has various half-siblings conceived with the other females using sperm samples provided by Superman, but Adam accidentally kills his mother when he hugs her too hard.
Lois is a captain in the military in series Superman: Last Son of Earth and Superman: Last Stand on Krypton. A reverse of the Superman origin with Kal-El being sent from Earth to Krypton, discovering the Green Lantern power ring, and journeys to Earth and help its people fight against the dictator Luthor.
In Superman/Tarzan: Sons of the Jungle, Kal-El, the last survivor of Krypton crash-lands in East Africa and is raised by apes to become the Lord of the Jungle; and meet the adventurer John Greystoke, Jane Clayton and her friend Metropolis reporter Lois Lane.
In the 2003 Elseworlds series Superman: Red Son, Superman's escape rocket did not land in Smallville, but in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. Lois is married to Lex Luthor but still uses the surname Lane for her articles in the Daily Planet. Superman saves her life, and the two have an instant attraction with each other and Lois has feelings for him through the rest of the story. After the fall of Superman's Greater Soviet Union and presumed death, he attends his "funeral" wearing a suit and glasses. Superman's secret identity as Clark Kent does not exist on this alternate Earth.
Superman: True Brit, the 2004 series re-imagines the origin of Superman, where his spaceship crashed in Weston-super-Mare in England instead of the town of Smallville in America. A humorous look at Superman and the British tabloid press, it features Louisa Layne-Ferret, a hard-edged reporter. Lois herself briefly appears to offer an American perspective on Superman and invites Colin Clark to visit America.
Flashpoint
In the alternate timeline of the Flashpoint event, a young Lois Lane sneaks into the facility where her father Sam Lane is stationed to bring him a birthday cake. During a breakout, Lois briefly encounters Kal-El and Neil Sinclair. Sinclair attempts to pursue revenge against her father for the experiments that were performed on him. Sam traps Sinclair and himself in the Phantom Zone.
Years later, Lois is reporting on a fashion show in Montmartre when the Atlanteans flooded Europe. She is saved by the Amazons who take her to "New Themiscyra" (the United Kingdom). Once there, she learns that Jimmy Olsen, who dies in the flood while trying to save an old man, was an agent of Cyborg. Lois agrees to spy on the Amazons for Cyborg. When the time comes for her to undergo a near-fatal "conversion" into the Amazonian ranks, she escapes, aided by Penny Black, who is wounded by Artemis in the process.
During this time, Lois walks through the remains of the London Underground and encounters Grifter and the Resistance. Lois soon joins the Resistance. After meeting up with the recovering Penny, she uses Cyborg's device to locate her missing armor at Westminster. Lois later broadcasts a message to the world that the Amazons have imprisoned people in internment. The Amazons in Westminster attempt to kill her. Lois is then rescued by Kal-El (who comes to protect her from Sinclair who has returned). During the fight, Kal-El manages to destroy Sinclair, but Lois is caught in the blast. Before Lois dies in the arms of Kal-El, she tells him to save the people.
Injustice: Gods Among Us
In the digital prequel comic to the video game Injustice: Gods Among Us, Lois is married to Superman and is pregnant with their child. While on a story at the docks with Jimmy Olsen, she is kidnapped by The Joker and Harley Quinn and taken to a submarine where they perform surgery on her. When the Joker is captured by the Justice League, he informs them he has planted a nuclear bomb in Metropolis and wired the detonator to Lois's heart, set to go off when she dies. While under the influence of Scarecrow's kryptonite-laced fear gas, Superman mistakes Lois for Doomsday and, in an attempt to protect his family, unknowingly flies up into space with her, killing both Lois and their unborn child in the process. When she dies, a nuclear bomb obliterates Metropolis. Superman, devastated by the death of Lois and their unborn child as well as his inadvertent role in destroying Metropolis, kills the Joker and begins his campaign for world domination. Her death serves as the catalyst for Superman's new outlook, as he becomes more willing to kill to protect the world.
In Year Three of the series, Superman was put in a magic comatose sleep, where events played out differently in his dream scenario. In this dream world, Superman imagines he had broken free of the fear gas in time to save Lois and their unborn child. Batman had killed Joker to prevent the possibility of another attack on Superman and his family. Lois eventually gave birth to their daughter Lara Lane-Kent. Superman and Lois live a happy and normal life, raising their daughter Lara, who eventually develops superpowers and with her father's guidance becomes a superhero of her own. Superman is eventually awakened from his slumber by Ares and is left feeling angrier and more bitter after realizing and living the life he could've had with Lois and their child. In Year Five, in an alternate world, Lois and Clark are shown happily visiting Clark's parents, telling them that she is pregnant.
DC Comics Bombshells
DC Comics Bombshells, a comic book series set in an alternate history of World War II, Eloisa "Lois" Lane is a mixed-race 17-year-old newspaper hawker from Metropolis' Cuban district. When criminals working for Killer Frost kidnaps her, she is rescued by the Batgirls (a group of female vigilantes) and partners with them to defeat Hugo Strange, the man who crippled her mother. Later in the series, she gets a job working at the Gotham Gazette for Vicki Vale and eventually begins dating Supergirl.
Nightwing: The New Order
In an alternate reality, Nightwing activates a device ending an ongoing war between the super-powered beings and depowers ninety percent of the superhero population, and leads to a future where superpower is outlawed. Lois is a Blue Lantern and a member of the Titans, who form a resistance against the anti-metahuman government.
Superman: Secret Identity
Published in 2004, Superman: Secret Identity is a four-issue miniseries written by Kurt Busiek and art by Stuart Immonen. Set in the real world where superheroes only exist in comic books. Clark Kent, living in a small town in Kansas, discovers that he has the same powers as Superman, the fictional superhero he was named after. Years later, Clark moves to New York, working as a writer and secretly saving people with his abilities. He meets Lois Chaudhari, an Indian American designer on a blind date (set up by friends because their names resemble the fictional couple Clark Kent and Lois Lane). The two quickly fall in love, got married and had twin daughters Jane and Carol Kent, who also inherit their father's powers.
Gotham City Garage
Gotham City Garage, a digital-first comic book series written by Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing, reimagines DC superheroes and villains as bikers in a post-apocalyptic world. Governor Lex Luthor controls the modern utopia Gotham City and the rest of the continent is a wasteland. Lois Lane runs a rebel news radio station "The Frequency". When Barda ask for help, Lois and Jimmy Olsen join her in the resistance.
Tales from the Dark Multiverse
Tales from the Dark Multiverse: Death of Superman, an anthology series that explores alternate takes on classic DC stories set in a different world in the Dark Multiverse. After Superman is killed by Doomsday, filled with anger and grief, Lois merges with the Eradicator and gains Kryptonian powers so she can take revenge on the corrupt world and those who let Superman die.
Marvel Comics cameos
Lois Lane has had several (mostly cameo) appearances alongside Clark Kent in past works of Marvel Comics, namely in X-Men #98, Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man (1976), The Mighty Thor #341 (1984), Excalibur #8, Ghost Rider (vol. 3) #66 (1995), and Marvels Epilogue (September 2019).
Newspaper comic strip
Lois Lane, Girl Reporter is a newspaper comic strip featuring Lois Lane, a spin-off from the Superman comic strip and topper to the Superman Sunday strip in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Twelve comic strips were produced and originally ran between October 24, 1943, to February 27, 1944. Lois also appears in the Superman daily newspaper comic strip, distributed by McClure Syndicate which ran continuously from January 1939 to May 1966 with a separate Sunday strip added on November 5, 1939.
Books
Graphic novel
Lois Lane and the Friendship Challenge
A graphic novel by writer Grace Ellis and artist Brittney Williams, and focus on a 13-year-old Lois Lane as she navigates the confusing worlds of social media and friendship during summer break in the sleepy town of Liberty View. Scheduled for release in August 2020, it is part of DC's original graphic novels aimed at young readers.
Comic books
Lois has appeared in several self-titled miniseries, one-shots and collected editions:
Lois Lane – a two issue limited series published in August and September 1986.
Superman: Lois Lane – a one-shot published in June 1998 as part of the "Girlfrenzy!" Fifth-week event.
Flashpoint: Lois Lane and the Resistance – a three-issue limited series published August 2011-October 2011 as part of the Flashpoint crossover.
DC Archive Editions: Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane Archives Vol. 1 – a collection of Silver Age Lois Lane stories. Showcase #9-10 and Superman's Girlfriend, Lois Lane #1-8. Published in January 2012.
Lois Lane: A Celebration of 75 Years – special anniversary anthology celebrating Lois Lane's 75 years in comics. Collects material from Action Comics #1-2, 6, 484, 600, 662, Adventures of Superman #631, All Star Superman #2-3, Man of Steel #2, Showcase #9, Superman #29, 33–34, 58, 168, Superman 80-page giant #1, Superman's Girlfriend, Lois Lane #1, 5, 16, 23, 42, 106, and Wonder Woman #170. Published in November 2013, the collection compiles stories from Golden Age to Silver Age and modern adventures.
Superman: Lois Lane #1 – a one-shot published in April 2014.
Superman: Lois and Clark – an eight-issue limited series, collects #1-8 published in August 2016.
Lois Lane – a 12-issue limited series by writer Greg Rucka and artist Mike Perkins released in July 2019 to July 2020.
Novels
Lois Lane
Lois is the protagonist in the young adult novel series, Lois Lane, written by Gwenda Bond and published by Switch Press. The series follows the adventures of Lois Lane as a savvy, whip-smart, and unafraid contemporary teenage high school girl. The first book in the series, Fallout, was revealed by the author in 2014 and was released on May 1, 2015. Bond revealed the second book, Double Down, in July 2015, and the book was released on May 1, 2016.
On the series, Bond said: "Lois is an icon, of course, a superhero without any superpowers ... except her unmatched bravery and smarts. Not to mention her sense of humor and her commitment to truth and justice. She's also one of my all-time favorite characters—which is why I jumped at the chance to write a novel featuring a teen Lois, moving to Metropolis and becoming a reporter for the first time. And, most of all, to get to put Lois front and center in the starring role, obviously."
Fallout – first novel in the Lois Lane series by Gwenda Bond. The novel features a teenage Lois Lane, an Army brat, who has lived all over the world. Lois is starting a new life in Metropolis with her family. While attending a new high school, she tries to solve a mystery as a group known as the Warheads begins to tamper with people's minds via a high-tech immersive video game. Two prequel short stories: Lois Lane: A Real Work of Art and Lois Lane: Cloudy With a Chance of Destruction was also published by Switch Press. Fallout received positive reviews and was named by Kirkus Reviews one of the "Best Teen Books of 2015" in the science fiction and fantasy category.
Double Down – second Lois Lane novel by Gwenda Bond and published by Switch Press in May 2016. The book also received positive reviews. Double Down continues to follow teenage Lois Lane as she settled into her new life in Metropolis, and has a job that challenges her. Lois finds herself embroiled in a dangerous mystery that brings her closer to the dirty underbelly of Metropolis.
Triple Threat – Switch Press announced a third Lois Lane novel, Triple Threat, in August 2016. The book was released in May 2017.
Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman
Based on the ABC television series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman four original novels were published in 1996:
Heat Wave – written by author Michael Jan Friedman and published by HarperCollins.
Exile – by Michael Jan Friedman
Deadly Games – by Michael Jan Friedman
Lois & Clark: A Superman Novel – a full-length Lois and Clark novel by author C. J. Cherryh and published by Prima Lifestyles.
Non-fiction
Examining Lois Lane: The Scoop on Superman's Sweetheart – an anthology exploring Lois Lane's many incarnations and multiple adaptations from comic book to various films and television series. Analyzing the character in various media through the perspectives of feminism, gender studies, and cultural studies.
Investigating Lois Lane: The Turbulent History of the Daily Planet's Ace Reporter – an in-depth look at the character and her history in different media by comic book historian Tim Hanley.
In other media
Since her debut in the comic books in 1938, Lois has appeared in various media adaptations including radio, animations, films, television, video games and Broadway musical. Actresses who have portrayed Lois Lane include Noel Neill, Phyllis Coates, Margot Kidder, Teri Hatcher, Erica Durance, Kate Bosworth, Amy Adams, and Elizabeth Tulloch, and voiced by actresses such as Joan Alexander, Dana Delany, Anne Heche, Stana Katic, Rebecca Romijn, and numerous others.
In popular culture
The American sitcom Seinfeld made numerous references to Lois Lane over its nine-year run:
In the episode "The Outing", Jerry tells a female reporter for a college newspaper "I was attracted to you, too. You remind me of Lois Lane".
In the episode "The Marine Biologist", when Elaine accuses Jerry of helping a strange woman just so he can take her out on a date, Jerry replies that Superman is never suspected of such intentions when saving a woman's life, prompting Elaine to comment "Well, you're no Superman", to which Jerry responds, "Well, you're no Lois Lane".
The episode "The Mom & Pop Store" has Elaine tell Jerry she's been doing some snooping for him. "Ah! What'd you find out, Lois?" he replies.
In the episode "The Race," Jerry dates a woman named "Lois" and enjoys frequently using her first name and slyly making Superman-related references in her presence.
In the episode "The Face Painter". George discovers that a woman he is dating is deaf in one ear and therefore might not have heard him tell her he loves her. "Don't you see what this means?" he says. "It's like the whole thing never happened. It's like when Superman reversed the rotation of the Earth to save Lois Lane!".
The episode "The Cartoon" has Jerry make fun of Elaine's drawings, leading her to reply: "It's better than your drawings of naked Lois Lane".
In Just Jack's 2007 single "Writer's Block," the verse "I'm lovin' Mary Jane, flyin' with Lois Lane" features.
The Spin Doctors' 1991 album, Pocket Full of Kryptonite, takes its title as a reference to the album's first song, "Jimmy Olsen's Blues". The song is sung from the point of view of Daily Planet photojournalist Jimmy Olsen, who's in love with Lois Lane and jealous of Superman because of it.
In the song "I-E-A-I-A-I-O" by System of a Down, Lois Lane was mentioned in one of the tongue twisters in the song "Fighting crime, with a partner, Lois Lane, Jimmy Carter".
In the USA Network television series Monk, Adrian Monk's nurse, Sharona, reveals to a date that her job as the nurse assistant to the obsessive compulsive detective, makes her feel like Lois Lane. Later in the episode, when Sharona follows the killer they've been after, police captain Stottlemeyer snaps at Monk, "Who does Sharona think she is?" Monk answers sheepishly, "Lois Lane".
In the movie, A Time to Kill (1996) Jake Brigance consults with Ellen Roark about the case and the judge is clearly annoyed and says "If Lois Lane will let us continue".
In the movie, One Fine Day (1996) the editor of the newspaper reporter Jack Taylor (George Clooney) has a cat named after Lois Lane.
In the song "Anybody Seen the Popo's" by rapper Ice Cube, Lois Lane is mentioned in the line: "His girlfriend's Lois Lane and if you f—k with her you must smoke cocaine, brother".
In the song "Superman" by the band Peggy Sue, Lois Lane is mentioned in the line: "I'm in love with Lois Lane, but she doesn't even know my real name".
In the song "Rapper's Delight" by The Sugarhill Gang, she is mentioned in the line: "I said, "By the way, baby, what's your name?" She said, "I go by the name of Lois Lane". According to the song, the rapper Big Bank Hank tells Lois Lane why he would make a better boyfriend than Superman.
In the movie, Megamind (2010) the reporter Roxanne Ritchi is heavily based on Lois Lane.
The 1967 show Underdog is a parody of Superman and its star reporter Sweet Polly Purebred is based on Lois Lane.
Keone Madrid directed and choreography a dance video titled "Lois Lane" and features a poem by Rudy Francisco "I'm a Superman, thanks to Lois Lane" which includes the line, "Superman... The Man of steel, big Blue, the last son of Krypton, he is faster than a speeding bullet, stronger than a locomotive, he has Lasers for eyes, X-ray vision and can fly without even flapping his arms, but his most notable power... was Lois Lane, the love of an amazing woman is a phone booth, that can turn a man from a spineless news reporter into a symbol of justice, into the reason why it's safe to walk outside while the sun is sleeping."
The That's Entertainment comic shop successfully petitioned the Worcester, Massachusetts City Council to change the name of the private street running alongside the store to "Lois Lane". On December 28, 2012, the new sign was installed. A celebration at the store followed on December 30, 2012, featuring an unveiling, free sketches of Lois by Paul Ryan, and a Lois Lane lookalike contest.
Matt Groening, the co-creator of The Simpsons, originally wanted to name the Comic Book Guy, Louis Lane, and the character is both "obsessed and tormented" by Lois Lane. He was eventually named Jeff Albertson, the decision was made without Matt Groening's presence.
In The Simpsons episode "Married to the Blob," during the song "Comic Book Guy's Lament" the Simpsons' version of vintage Spider-Man and Lois Lane comics can be seen. The song, sung by Comic Book Guy includes the line "I've always been happy, to call myself single, no Mary Jane, or Lois Lane, with whom I co-mingle, you could say that I was, an unstackable pringles, I've got original, sign by Siegel and Shuster, but they don't satisfy, in the way that they use to."
On 30 Rock, in the episode "Grandmentor," Jack asks Liz if she would be interested in writing the screenplay for the greatest love story ever told, to which Liz responds, "You mean Lois Lane's love affair with journalism?"
"To Lois" a poem by Shane Koyczan is a love letter from Superman to Lois Lane, written from Clark's perspective.
In the movie, Mermaids (1990) Kate Flax (Christina Ricci) asks her sister Charlotte (Winona Ryder) if her boyfriend has ever kissed her like Superman kisses Lois Lane.
"From the Backbeat" by Lucy Hale includes the line "And my dad was a Superman stick shift driver, stay at home Lois Lane beside him."
"Superhero" by 5 Seconds of Summer includes the line "She met him on the staircase, like Kent and Lois Lane."
In the Mexican comedy TV series El Chapulín Colorado, a parody of superhero shows, Captain Hopper says his mother is Lois Lane.
"Waiting for Superman" by Daughtry includes the line "She's just watching the clouds roll by and they spell her name like Lois Lane."
"Lois Lane" a song by pop artist Noelle Bean, includes the line "I'm so happy, and now we're flying, like Superman and Lois Lane."
"Lois Lane" a song by British indie rock band Farrah from the album Moustache includes the line "If you'll be my Lois Lane, I'll be your superman."
In the TV series Women's Murder Club, the character of Cindy Thomas (Aubrey Dollar), a crime reporter, is jokingly nicknamed Lois Lane by the homicide detective Lindsay Boxer (Angie Harmon).
Mandy Moore portrayed Lois Lane in the 2012 YouTube parody short film The Death and Return of Superman, directed and narrated by Max Landis.
In the movie It (2017), Mr Keenes compares Beverly Marsh to Lois Lane when she tries his glasses after she tells him he looks like Clark Kent.
Lois Lane is also the title of an important character in the musical Kiss Me, Kate.
See also
The Dutch girl group Loïs Lane
Biblical/Greek origin of name Lois
Superman and Lois Lane
References
External links
Lois Lane at DC Comics
Lois Lane at DC Database
Lois Lane at Smallville Wiki
Characters created by Jerry Siegel
Characters created by Joe Shuster
Comics characters introduced in 1938
Lois Lane
Fictional reporters
Fictional Pulitzer Prize winners
DC Comics film characters
Superhero television characters
DC Comics female characters
Female characters in film
Female characters in television
Fictional amateur detectives
DC Comics metahumans
Superman characters |
18566 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linker%20%28computing%29 | Linker (computing) | In computing, a linker or link editor is a computer system program that takes one or more object files (generated by a compiler or an assembler) and combines them into a single executable file, library file, or another "object" file.
A simpler version that writes its output directly to memory is called the loader, though loading is typically considered a separate process.
Overview
Computer programs typically are composed of several parts or modules; these parts/modules do not need to be contained within a single object file, and in such cases refer to each other by means of symbols as addresses into other modules, which are mapped into memory addresses when linked for execution. Typically, an object file can contain three kinds of symbols:
defined "external" symbols, sometimes called "public" or "entry" symbols, which allow it to be called by other modules,
undefined "external" symbols, which reference other modules where these symbols are defined, and
local symbols, used internally within the object file to facilitate relocation.
For most compilers, each object file is the result of compiling one input source code file. When a program comprises multiple object files, the linker combines these files into a unified executable program, resolving the symbols as it goes along.
Linkers can take objects from a collection called a library or runtime library. Most linkers do not include the whole library in the output; they include only the files that are referenced by other object files or libraries. Library linking may thus be an iterative process, with some referenced modules requiring additional modules to be linked, and so on. Libraries exist for diverse purposes, and one or more system libraries are usually linked in by default.
The linker also takes care of arranging the objects in a program's address space. This may involve relocating code that assumes a specific base address into another base. Since a compiler seldom knows where an object will reside, it often assumes a fixed base location (for example, zero). Relocating machine code may involve re-targeting of absolute jumps, loads and stores.
The executable output by the linker may need another relocation pass when it is finally loaded into memory (just before execution). This pass is usually omitted on hardware offering virtual memory: every program is put into its own address space, so there is no conflict even if all programs load at the same base address. This pass may also be omitted if the executable is a position independent executable.
On some Unix variants, such as SINTRAN III, the process performed by a linker (assembling object files into a program) was called loading (as in loading executable code onto a file). Additionally, in some operating systems, the same program handles both the jobs of linking and loading a program (dynamic linking).
Dynamic linking
Many operating system environments allow dynamic linking, deferring the resolution of some undefined symbols until a program is run. That means that the executable code still contains undefined symbols, plus a list of objects or libraries that will provide definitions for these. Loading the program will load these objects/libraries as well, and perform a final linking.
This approach offers two advantages:
Often-used libraries (for example the standard system libraries) need to be stored in only one location, not duplicated in every single executable file, thus saving limited memory and disk space.
If a bug in a library function is corrected by replacing the library, all programs using it dynamically will benefit from the correction after restarting them. Programs that included this function by static linking would have to be re-linked first.
There are also disadvantages:
Known on the Windows platform as "DLL hell", an incompatible updated library will break executables that depended on the behavior of the previous version of the library if the newer version is incorrectly not backward compatible.
A program, together with the libraries it uses, might be certified (e.g. as to correctness, documentation requirements, or performance) as a package, but not if components can be replaced (this also argues against automatic OS updates in critical systems; in both cases, the OS and libraries form part of a qualified environment).
Static linking
Static linking is the result of the linker copying all library routines used in the program into the executable image. This may require more disk space and memory than dynamic linking, but is more portable, since it does not require the presence of the library on the system where it runs. Static linking also prevents "DLL hell", since each program includes exactly the versions of library routines that it requires, with no conflict with other programs. A program using just a few routines from a library does not require the entire library to be installed.
Relocation
As the compiler has no information on the layout of objects in the final output, it cannot take advantage of shorter or more efficient instructions that place a requirement on the address of another object. For example, a jump instruction can reference an absolute address or an offset from the current location, and the offset could be expressed with different lengths depending on the distance to the target. By first generating the most conservative instruction (usually the largest relative or absolute variant, depending on platform) and adding relaxation hints, it is possible to substitute shorter or more efficient instructions during the final link. In regard to jump optimizations this is also called automatic jump-sizing. This step can be performed only after all input objects have been read and assigned temporary addresses; the linker relaxation pass subsequently reassigns addresses, which may in turn allow more potential relaxations to occur. In general, the substituted sequences are shorter, which allows this process to always converge on the best solution given a fixed order of objects; if this is not the case, relaxations can conflict, and the linker needs to weigh the advantages of either option.
While instruction relaxation typically occurs at link-time, inner-module relaxation can already take place as part of the optimizing process at compile-time. In some cases, relaxation can also occur at load-time as part of the relocation process or combined with dynamic dead-code elimination techniques.
Linkage editor
In IBM System/360 mainframe environments such as OS/360, including z/OS for the z/Architecture mainframes, this type of program is known as a linkage editor. As the name implies a linkage editor has the additional capability of allowing the addition, replacement, and/or deletion of individual program sections. Operating systems such as OS/360 have format for executable load-modules containing supplementary data about the component sections of a program, so that an individual program section can be replaced, and other parts of the program updated so that relocatable addresses and other references can be corrected by the linkage editor, as part of the process.
One advantage of this is that it allows a program to be maintained without having to keep all of the intermediate object files, or without having to re-compile program sections that haven't changed. It also permits program updates to be distributed in the form of small files (originally card decks), containing only the object module to be replaced. In such systems, object code is in the form and format of 80-byte punched-card images, so that updates can be introduced into a system using that medium. In later releases of OS/360 and in subsequent systems, load-modules contain additional data about versions of components modules, to create a traceable record of updates. It also allows one to add, change, or remove an overlay structure from an already linked load module.
The term "linkage editor" should not be construed as implying that the program operates in a user-interactive mode like a text editor. It is intended for batch-mode execution, with the editing commands being supplied by the user in sequentially organized files, such as punched cards, DASD, or magnetic tape, and tapes were often used during the initial installation of the OS.
Linkage editing (IBM nomenclature) or consolidation or collection (ICL nomenclature) refers to the linkage editor's or consolidator's act of combining the various pieces into a relocatable binary, whereas the loading and relocation into an absolute binary at the target address is normally considered a separate step.
Common implementations
On Unix and Unix-like systems, the linker is known as "ld". Origins of the name "ld" are "LoaDer" and "Link eDitor". The term "loader" was used to describe the process of loading external symbols from other programs during the process of linking.
GNU linker
The GNU linker (or GNU ld) is the GNU Project's free software implementation of the Unix command ld. GNU ld runs the linker, which creates an executable file (or a library) from object files created during compilation of a software project. A linker script may be passed to GNU ld to exercise greater control over the linking process. The GNU linker is part of the GNU Binary Utilities (binutils). Two versions of ld are provided in binutils: the traditional GNU ld based on bfd, and a "streamlined" ELF-only version called gold.
The command-line and linker script syntaxes of GNU ld is the de facto standard in much of the Unix-like world. The LLVM project's linker, , is designed to be drop-in compatible, and may be used directly with the GNU compiler. Another drop-in replacement, mold, is a highly parallelized and faster alternative which is also supported by GNU tools.
See also
Binary File Descriptor library (libbfd)
Compile and go system
DLL hell
Direct binding
Dynamic binding
Dynamic dead code elimination
Dynamic dispatch
Dynamic library
Dynamic linker
Dynamic loading
Dynamic-link library
Library
Loader
Name decoration
Prelinking (prebinding)
Relocation
Smart linking
Static library
gold (linker)
References
Further reading
Code: Errata:
(19 pages)
External links
Ian Lance Justin's Linkers blog entries
Linkers and Loaders, a Linux Journal article by Sandeep Grover
Another Listing of Where to Get a Complete Collection of Free Tools for Assembly Language Development
GNU linker manual
LLD - The LLVM Linker
Compilers
Computer libraries
Programming language implementation
Utility software types |
18567 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legendre%20symbol | Legendre symbol | In number theory, the Legendre symbol is a multiplicative function with values 1, −1, 0 that is a quadratic character modulo an odd prime number p: its value at a (nonzero) quadratic residue mod p is 1 and at a non-quadratic residue (non-residue) is −1. Its value at zero is 0.
The Legendre symbol was introduced by Adrien-Marie Legendre in 1798 in the course of his attempts at proving the law of quadratic reciprocity. Generalizations of the symbol include the Jacobi symbol and Dirichlet characters of higher order. The notational convenience of the Legendre symbol inspired introduction of several other "symbols" used in algebraic number theory, such as the Hilbert symbol and the Artin symbol.
Definition
Let be an odd prime number. An integer is a quadratic residue modulo if it is congruent to a perfect square modulo and is a quadratic nonresidue modulo otherwise. The Legendre symbol is a function of and defined as
Legendre's original definition was by means of the explicit formula
By Euler's criterion, which had been discovered earlier and was known to Legendre, these two definitions are equivalent. Thus Legendre's contribution lay in introducing a convenient notation that recorded quadratic residuosity of a mod p. For the sake of comparison, Gauss used the notation aRp, aNp according to whether a is a residue or a non-residue modulo p. For typographical convenience, the Legendre symbol is sometimes written as (a | p) or (a/p). The sequence (a | p) for a equal to 0, 1, 2,... is periodic with period p and is sometimes called the Legendre sequence, with {0,1,−1} values occasionally replaced by {1,0,1} or {0,1,0}. Each row in the following table can be seen to exhibit periodicity, just as described.
Table of values
The following is a table of values of Legendre symbol with p ≤ 127, a ≤ 30, p odd prime.
Properties of the Legendre symbol
There are a number of useful properties of the Legendre symbol which, together with the law of quadratic reciprocity, can be used to compute it efficiently.
The Legendre symbol reveals the parity of a non-zero integer mod p. That is, given a generator , if then is a quadratic residue if and only if is even. This also shows that half of the non-zero elements in are quadratic residues.
If then the fact that
gives us that is the square root of the quadratic residue .
The Legendre symbol is periodic in its first (or top) argument: if a ≡ b (mod p), then
The Legendre symbol is a completely multiplicative function of its top argument:
In particular, the product of two numbers that are both quadratic residues or quadratic non-residues modulo p is a residue, whereas the product of a residue with a non-residue is a non-residue. A special case is the Legendre symbol of a square:
When viewed as a function of a, the Legendre symbol is the unique quadratic (or order 2) Dirichlet character modulo p.
The first supplement to the law of quadratic reciprocity:
The second supplement to the law of quadratic reciprocity:
Special formulas for the Legendre symbol for small values of a:
For an odd prime p ≠ 3,
For an odd prime p ≠ 5,
The Fibonacci numbers 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, … are defined by the recurrence If p is a prime number then
For example,
This result comes from the theory of Lucas sequences, which are used in primality testing. See Wall–Sun–Sun prime.
Legendre symbol and quadratic reciprocity
Let p and q be distinct odd primes. Using the Legendre symbol, the quadratic reciprocity law can be stated concisely:
Many proofs of quadratic reciprocity are based on Legendre's formula
In addition, several alternative expressions for the Legendre symbol were devised in order to produce various proofs of the quadratic reciprocity law.
Gauss introduced the quadratic Gauss sum and used the formula
in his fourth and sixth proofs of quadratic reciprocity.
Kronecker's proof first establishes that
Reversing the roles of p and q, he obtains the relation between () and ().
One of Eisenstein's proofs begins by showing that
Using certain elliptic functions instead of the sine function, Eisenstein was able to prove cubic and quartic reciprocity as well.
Related functions
The Jacobi symbol () is a generalization of the Legendre symbol that allows for a composite second (bottom) argument n, although n must still be odd and positive. This generalization provides an efficient way to compute all Legendre symbols without performing factorization along the way.
A further extension is the Kronecker symbol, in which the bottom argument may be any integer.
The power residue symbol () generalizes the Legendre symbol to higher power n. The Legendre symbol represents the power residue symbol for n = 2.
Computational example
The above properties, including the law of quadratic reciprocity, can be used to evaluate any Legendre symbol. For example:
Or using a more efficient computation:
The article Jacobi symbol has more examples of Legendre symbol manipulation.
Since no efficient factorization algorithm is known, but efficient modular exponentiation algorithms are, in general it is more efficient to use Legendre's original definition, e.g.
using repeated squaring modulo 331, reducing every value using the modulus after every operation to avoid computation with large integers.
Notes
References
External links
Jacobi symbol calculator
Modular arithmetic
Quadratic residue |
18568 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20algorithms | List of algorithms | The following is a list of algorithms along with one-line descriptions for each.
Automated planning
Combinatorial algorithms
General combinatorial algorithms
Brent's algorithm: finds a cycle in function value iterations using only two iterators
Floyd's cycle-finding algorithm: finds a cycle in function value iterations
Gale–Shapley algorithm: solves the stable marriage problem
Pseudorandom number generators (uniformly distributed—see also List of pseudorandom number generators for other PRNGs with varying degrees of convergence and varying statistical quality):
ACORN generator
Blum Blum Shub
Lagged Fibonacci generator
Linear congruential generator
Mersenne Twister
Graph algorithms
Coloring algorithm: Graph coloring algorithm.
Hopcroft–Karp algorithm: convert a bipartite graph to a maximum cardinality matching
Hungarian algorithm: algorithm for finding a perfect matching
Prüfer coding: conversion between a labeled tree and its Prüfer sequence
Tarjan's off-line lowest common ancestors algorithm: computes lowest common ancestors for pairs of nodes in a tree
Topological sort: finds linear order of nodes (e.g. jobs) based on their dependencies.
Graph drawing
Force-based algorithms (also known as force-directed algorithms or spring-based algorithm)
Spectral layout
Network theory
Network analysis
Link analysis
Girvan–Newman algorithm: detect communities in complex systems
Web link analysis
Hyperlink-Induced Topic Search (HITS) (also known as Hubs and authorities)
PageRank
TrustRank
Flow networks
Dinic's algorithm: is a strongly polynomial algorithm for computing the maximum flow in a flow network.
Edmonds–Karp algorithm: implementation of Ford–Fulkerson
Ford–Fulkerson algorithm: computes the maximum flow in a graph
Karger's algorithm: a Monte Carlo method to compute the minimum cut of a connected graph
Push–relabel algorithm: computes a maximum flow in a graph
Routing for graphs
Edmonds' algorithm (also known as Chu–Liu/Edmonds' algorithm): find maximum or minimum branchings
Euclidean minimum spanning tree: algorithms for computing the minimum spanning tree of a set of points in the plane
Longest path problem: find a simple path of maximum length in a given graph
Minimum spanning tree
Borůvka's algorithm
Kruskal's algorithm
Prim's algorithm
Reverse-delete algorithm
Nonblocking minimal spanning switch say, for a telephone exchange
Shortest path problem
Bellman–Ford algorithm: computes shortest paths in a weighted graph (where some of the edge weights may be negative)
Dijkstra's algorithm: computes shortest paths in a graph with non-negative edge weights
Floyd–Warshall algorithm: solves the all pairs shortest path problem in a weighted, directed graph
Johnson's algorithm: All pairs shortest path algorithm in sparse weighted directed graph
Transitive closure problem: find the transitive closure of a given binary relation
Traveling salesman problem
Christofides algorithm
Nearest neighbour algorithm
Warnsdorff's rule: A heuristic method for solving the Knight's tour problem.
Graph search
A*: special case of best-first search that uses heuristics to improve speed
B*: a best-first graph search algorithm that finds the least-cost path from a given initial node to any goal node (out of one or more possible goals)
Backtracking: abandons partial solutions when they are found not to satisfy a complete solution
Beam search: is a heuristic search algorithm that is an optimization of best-first search that reduces its memory requirement
Beam stack search: integrates backtracking with beam search
Best-first search: traverses a graph in the order of likely importance using a priority queue
Bidirectional search: find the shortest path from an initial vertex to a goal vertex in a directed graph
Breadth-first search: traverses a graph level by level
Brute-force search: An exhaustive and reliable search method, but computationally inefficient in many applications.
D*: an incremental heuristic search algorithm
Depth-first search: traverses a graph branch by branch
Dijkstra's algorithm: A special case of A* for which no heuristic function is used
General Problem Solver: a seminal theorem-proving algorithm intended to work as a universal problem solver machine.
Iterative deepening depth-first search (IDDFS): a state space search strategy
Jump point search: An optimization to A* which may reduce computation time by an order of magnitude using further heuristics.
Lexicographic breadth-first search (also known as Lex-BFS): a linear time algorithm for ordering the vertices of a graph
Uniform-cost search: a tree search that finds the lowest-cost route where costs vary
SSS*: state space search traversing a game tree in a best-first fashion similar to that of the A* search algorithm
F*: Special algorithm to merge the two arrays
Subgraphs
Cliques
Bron–Kerbosch algorithm: a technique for finding maximal cliques in an undirected graph
MaxCliqueDyn maximum clique algorithm: find a maximum clique in an undirected graph
Strongly connected components
Path-based strong component algorithm
Kosaraju's algorithm
Tarjan's strongly connected components algorithm
Subgraph isomorphism problem
Sequence algorithms
Approximate sequence matching
Bitap algorithm: fuzzy algorithm that determines if strings are approximately equal.
Phonetic algorithms
Daitch–Mokotoff Soundex: a Soundex refinement which allows matching of Slavic and Germanic surnames
Double Metaphone: an improvement on Metaphone
Match rating approach: a phonetic algorithm developed by Western Airlines
Metaphone: an algorithm for indexing words by their sound, when pronounced in English
NYSIIS: phonetic algorithm, improves on Soundex
Soundex: a phonetic algorithm for indexing names by sound, as pronounced in English
String metrics: computes a similarity or dissimilarity (distance) score between two pairs of text strings
Damerau–Levenshtein distance: computes a distance measure between two strings, improves on Levenshtein distance
Dice's coefficient (also known as the Dice coefficient): a similarity measure related to the Jaccard index
Hamming distance: sum number of positions which are different
Jaro–Winkler distance: is a measure of similarity between two strings
Levenshtein edit distance: computes a metric for the amount of difference between two sequences
Trigram search: search for text when the exact syntax or spelling of the target object is not precisely known
Selection algorithms
Quickselect
Introselect
Sequence search
Linear search: locates an item in an unsorted sequence
Selection algorithm: finds the kth largest item in a sequence
Ternary search: a technique for finding the minimum or maximum of a function that is either strictly increasing and then strictly decreasing or vice versa
Sorted lists
Binary search algorithm: locates an item in a sorted sequence
Fibonacci search technique: search a sorted sequence using a divide and conquer algorithm that narrows down possible locations with the aid of Fibonacci numbers
Jump search (or block search): linear search on a smaller subset of the sequence
Predictive search: binary-like search which factors in magnitude of search term versus the high and low values in the search. Sometimes called dictionary search or interpolated search.
Uniform binary search: an optimization of the classic binary search algorithm
Sequence merging
Simple merge algorithm
k-way merge algorithm
Union (merge, with elements on the output not repeated)
Sequence permutations
Fisher–Yates shuffle (also known as the Knuth shuffle): randomly shuffle a finite set
Schensted algorithm: constructs a pair of Young tableaux from a permutation
Steinhaus–Johnson–Trotter algorithm (also known as the Johnson–Trotter algorithm): generates permutations by transposing elements
Heap's permutation generation algorithm: interchange elements to generate next permutation
Sequence combinations
Sequence alignment
Dynamic time warping: measure similarity between two sequences which may vary in time or speed
Hirschberg's algorithm: finds the least cost sequence alignment between two sequences, as measured by their Levenshtein distance
Needleman–Wunsch algorithm: find global alignment between two sequences
Smith–Waterman algorithm: find local sequence alignment
Sequence sorting
Exchange sorts
Bubble sort: for each pair of indices, swap the items if out of order
Cocktail shaker sort or bidirectional bubble sort, a bubble sort traversing the list alternately from front to back and back to front
Comb sort
Gnome sort
Odd–even sort
Quicksort: divide list into two, with all items on the first list coming before all items on the second list.; then sort the two lists. Often the method of choice
Humorous or ineffective
Bogosort
Stooge sort
Hybrid
Flashsort
Introsort: begin with quicksort and switch to heapsort when the recursion depth exceeds a certain level
Timsort: adaptative algorithm derived from merge sort and insertion sort. Used in Python 2.3 and up, and Java SE 7.
Insertion sorts
Insertion sort: determine where the current item belongs in the list of sorted ones, and insert it there
Library sort
Patience sorting
Shell sort: an attempt to improve insertion sort
Tree sort (binary tree sort): build binary tree, then traverse it to create sorted list
Cycle sort: in-place with theoretically optimal number of writes
Merge sorts
Merge sort: sort the first and second half of the list separately, then merge the sorted lists
Slowsort
Strand sort
Non-comparison sorts
Bead sort
Bucket sort
Burstsort: build a compact, cache efficient burst trie and then traverse it to create sorted output
Counting sort
Pigeonhole sort
Postman sort: variant of Bucket sort which takes advantage of hierarchical structure
Radix sort: sorts strings letter by letter
Selection sorts
Heapsort: convert the list into a heap, keep removing the largest element from the heap and adding it to the end of the list
Selection sort: pick the smallest of the remaining elements, add it to the end of the sorted list
Smoothsort
Other
Bitonic sorter
Pancake sorting
Spaghetti sort
Topological sort
Unknown class
Samplesort
Subsequences
Kadane's algorithm: finds maximum sub-array of any size
Longest common subsequence problem: Find the longest subsequence common to all sequences in a set of sequences
Longest increasing subsequence problem: Find the longest increasing subsequence of a given sequence
Shortest common supersequence problem: Find the shortest supersequence that contains two or more sequences as subsequences
Substrings
Longest common substring problem: find the longest string (or strings) that is a substring (or are substrings) of two or more strings
Substring search
Aho–Corasick string matching algorithm: trie based algorithm for finding all substring matches to any of a finite set of strings
Boyer–Moore string-search algorithm: amortized linear (sublinear in most times) algorithm for substring search
Boyer–Moore–Horspool algorithm: Simplification of Boyer–Moore
Knuth–Morris–Pratt algorithm: substring search which bypasses reexamination of matched characters
Rabin–Karp string search algorithm: searches multiple patterns efficiently
Zhu–Takaoka string matching algorithm: a variant of Boyer–Moore
Ukkonen's algorithm: a linear-time, online algorithm for constructing suffix trees
Matching wildcards
Rich Salz' wildmat: a widely used open-source recursive algorithm
Krauss matching wildcards algorithm: an open-source non-recursive algorithm
Computational mathematics
Abstract algebra
Chien search: a recursive algorithm for determining roots of polynomials defined over a finite field
Schreier–Sims algorithm: computing a base and strong generating set (BSGS) of a permutation group
Todd–Coxeter algorithm: Procedure for generating cosets.
Computer algebra
Buchberger's algorithm: finds a Gröbner basis
Cantor–Zassenhaus algorithm: factor polynomials over finite fields
Faugère F4 algorithm: finds a Gröbner basis (also mentions the F5 algorithm)
Gosper's algorithm: find sums of hypergeometric terms that are themselves hypergeometric terms
Knuth–Bendix completion algorithm: for rewriting rule systems
Multivariate division algorithm: for polynomials in several indeterminates
Pollard's kangaroo algorithm (also known as Pollard's lambda algorithm ): an algorithm for solving the discrete logarithm problem
Polynomial long division: an algorithm for dividing a polynomial by another polynomial of the same or lower degree
Risch algorithm: an algorithm for the calculus operation of indefinite integration (i.e. finding antiderivatives)
Geometry
Closest pair problem: find the pair of points (from a set of points) with the smallest distance between them
Collision detection algorithms: check for the collision or intersection of two given solids
Cone algorithm: identify surface points
Convex hull algorithms: determining the convex hull of a set of points
Graham scan
Quickhull
Gift wrapping algorithm or Jarvis march
Chan's algorithm
Kirkpatrick–Seidel algorithm
Euclidean distance transform: computes the distance between every point in a grid and a discrete collection of points.
Geometric hashing: a method for efficiently finding two-dimensional objects represented by discrete points that have undergone an affine transformation
Gilbert–Johnson–Keerthi distance algorithm: determining the smallest distance between two convex shapes.
Jump-and-Walk algorithm: an algorithm for point location in triangulations
Laplacian smoothing: an algorithm to smooth a polygonal mesh
Line segment intersection: finding whether lines intersect, usually with a sweep line algorithm
Bentley–Ottmann algorithm
Shamos–Hoey algorithm
Minimum bounding box algorithms: find the oriented minimum bounding box enclosing a set of points
Nearest neighbor search: find the nearest point or points to a query point
Point in polygon algorithms: tests whether a given point lies within a given polygon
Point set registration algorithms: finds the transformation between two point sets to optimally align them.
Rotating calipers: determine all antipodal pairs of points and vertices on a convex polygon or convex hull.
Shoelace algorithm: determine the area of a polygon whose vertices are described by ordered pairs in the plane
Triangulation
Delaunay triangulation
Ruppert's algorithm (also known as Delaunay refinement): create quality Delaunay triangulations
Chew's second algorithm: create quality constrained Delaunay triangulations
Marching triangles: reconstruct two-dimensional surface geometry from an unstructured point cloud
Polygon triangulation algorithms: decompose a polygon into a set of triangles
Voronoi diagrams, geometric dual of Delaunay triangulation
Bowyer–Watson algorithm: create voronoi diagram in any number of dimensions
Fortune's Algorithm: create voronoi diagram
Quasitriangulation
Number theoretic algorithms
Binary GCD algorithm: Efficient way of calculating GCD.
Booth's multiplication algorithm
Chakravala method: a cyclic algorithm to solve indeterminate quadratic equations, including Pell's equation
Discrete logarithm:
Baby-step giant-step
Index calculus algorithm
Pollard's rho algorithm for logarithms
Pohlig–Hellman algorithm
Euclidean algorithm: computes the greatest common divisor
Extended Euclidean algorithm: Also solves the equation ax + by = c.
Integer factorization: breaking an integer into its prime factors
Congruence of squares
Dixon's algorithm
Fermat's factorization method
General number field sieve
Lenstra elliptic curve factorization
Pollard's p − 1 algorithm
Pollard's rho algorithm
prime factorization algorithm
Quadratic sieve
Shor's algorithm
Special number field sieve
Trial division
Multiplication algorithms: fast multiplication of two numbers
Karatsuba algorithm
Schönhage–Strassen algorithm
Toom–Cook multiplication
Modular square root: computing square roots modulo a prime number
Tonelli–Shanks algorithm
Cipolla's algorithm
Berlekamp's root finding algorithm
Odlyzko–Schönhage algorithm: calculates nontrivial zeroes of the Riemann zeta function
Lenstra–Lenstra–Lovász algorithm (also known as LLL algorithm): find a short, nearly orthogonal lattice basis in polynomial time
Primality tests: determining whether a given number is prime
AKS primality test
Baillie–PSW primality test
Fermat primality test
Lucas primality test
Miller–Rabin primality test
Sieve of Atkin
Sieve of Eratosthenes
Sieve of Sundaram
Numerical algorithms
Differential equation solving
Euler method
Backward Euler method
Trapezoidal rule (differential equations)
Linear multistep methods
Runge–Kutta methods
Euler integration
Multigrid methods (MG methods), a group of algorithms for solving differential equations using a hierarchy of discretizations
Partial differential equation:
Finite difference method
Crank–Nicolson method for diffusion equations
Lax–Wendroff for wave equations
Verlet integration (): integrate Newton's equations of motion
Elementary and special functions
Computation of π:
Borwein's algorithm: an algorithm to calculate the value of 1/π
Gauss–Legendre algorithm: computes the digits of pi
Chudnovsky algorithm: A fast method for calculating the digits of π
Bailey–Borwein–Plouffe formula: (BBP formula) a spigot algorithm for the computation of the nth binary digit of π
Division algorithms: for computing quotient and/or remainder of two numbers
Long division
Restoring division
Non-restoring division
SRT division
Newton–Raphson division: uses Newton's method to find the reciprocal of D, and multiply that reciprocal by N to find the final quotient Q.
Goldschmidt division
Hyperbolic and Trigonometric Functions:
BKM algorithm: computes elementary functions using a table of logarithms
CORDIC: computes hyperbolic and trigonometric functions using a table of arctangents
Exponentiation:
Addition-chain exponentiation: exponentiation by positive integer powers that requires a minimal number of multiplications
Exponentiating by squaring: an algorithm used for the fast computation of large integer powers of a number
Montgomery reduction: an algorithm that allows modular arithmetic to be performed efficiently when the modulus is large
Multiplication algorithms: fast multiplication of two numbers
Booth's multiplication algorithm: a multiplication algorithm that multiplies two signed binary numbers in two's complement notation
Fürer's algorithm: an integer multiplication algorithm for very large numbers possessing a very low asymptotic complexity
Karatsuba algorithm: an efficient procedure for multiplying large numbers
Schönhage–Strassen algorithm: an asymptotically fast multiplication algorithm for large integers
Toom–Cook multiplication: (Toom3) a multiplication algorithm for large integers
Multiplicative inverse Algorithms: for computing a number's multiplicative inverse (reciprocal).
Newton's method
Rounding functions: the classic ways to round numbers
Spigot algorithm: A way to compute the value of a mathematical constant without knowing preceding digits
Square and Nth root of a number:
Alpha max plus beta min algorithm: an approximation of the square-root of the sum of two squares
Methods of computing square roots
nth root algorithm
Shifting nth-root algorithm: digit by digit root extraction
Summation:
Binary splitting: a divide and conquer technique which speeds up the numerical evaluation of many types of series with rational terms
Kahan summation algorithm: a more accurate method of summing floating-point numbers
Unrestricted algorithm
Geometric
Filtered back-projection: efficiently computes the inverse 2-dimensional Radon transform.
Level set method (LSM): a numerical technique for tracking interfaces and shapes
Interpolation and extrapolation
Birkhoff interpolation: an extension of polynomial interpolation
Cubic interpolation
Hermite interpolation
Lagrange interpolation: interpolation using Lagrange polynomials
Linear interpolation: a method of curve fitting using linear polynomials
Monotone cubic interpolation: a variant of cubic interpolation that preserves monotonicity of the data set being interpolated.
Multivariate interpolation
Bicubic interpolation, a generalization of cubic interpolation to two dimensions
Bilinear interpolation: an extension of linear interpolation for interpolating functions of two variables on a regular grid
Lanczos resampling ("Lanzosh"): a multivariate interpolation method used to compute new values for any digitally sampled data
Nearest-neighbor interpolation
Tricubic interpolation, a generalization of cubic interpolation to three dimensions
Pareto interpolation: a method of estimating the median and other properties of a population that follows a Pareto distribution.
Polynomial interpolation
Neville's algorithm
Spline interpolation: Reduces error with Runge's phenomenon.
De Boor algorithm: B-splines
De Casteljau's algorithm: Bézier curves
Trigonometric interpolation
Linear algebra
Eigenvalue algorithms
Arnoldi iteration
Inverse iteration
Jacobi method
Lanczos iteration
Power iteration
QR algorithm
Rayleigh quotient iteration
Gram–Schmidt process: orthogonalizes a set of vectors
Matrix multiplication algorithms
Cannon's algorithm: a distributed algorithm for matrix multiplication especially suitable for computers laid out in an N × N mesh
Coppersmith–Winograd algorithm: square matrix multiplication
Freivalds' algorithm: a randomized algorithm used to verify matrix multiplication
Strassen algorithm: faster matrix multiplication
Solving systems of linear equations
Biconjugate gradient method: solves systems of linear equations
Conjugate gradient: an algorithm for the numerical solution of particular systems of linear equations
Gaussian elimination
Gauss–Jordan elimination: solves systems of linear equations
Gauss–Seidel method: solves systems of linear equations iteratively
Levinson recursion: solves equation involving a Toeplitz matrix
Stone's method: also known as the strongly implicit procedure or SIP, is an algorithm for solving a sparse linear system of equations
Successive over-relaxation (SOR): method used to speed up convergence of the Gauss–Seidel method
Tridiagonal matrix algorithm (Thomas algorithm): solves systems of tridiagonal equations
Sparse matrix algorithms
Cuthill–McKee algorithm: reduce the bandwidth of a symmetric sparse matrix
Minimum degree algorithm: permute the rows and columns of a symmetric sparse matrix before applying the Cholesky decomposition
Symbolic Cholesky decomposition: Efficient way of storing sparse matrix
Monte Carlo
Gibbs sampling: generates a sequence of samples from the joint probability distribution of two or more random variables
Hybrid Monte Carlo: generates a sequence of samples using Hamiltonian weighted Markov chain Monte Carlo, from a probability distribution which is difficult to sample directly.
Metropolis–Hastings algorithm: used to generate a sequence of samples from the probability distribution of one or more variables
Wang and Landau algorithm: an extension of Metropolis–Hastings algorithm sampling
Numerical integration
MISER algorithm: Monte Carlo simulation, numerical integration
Root finding
Bisection method
False position method: approximates roots of a function
ITP method: minmax optimal and superlinar convergence simultaneously
Newton's method: finds zeros of functions with calculus
Halley's method: uses first and second derivatives
Secant method: 2-point, 1-sided
False position method and Illinois method: 2-point, bracketing
Ridder's method: 3-point, exponential scaling
Muller's method: 3-point, quadratic interpolation
Optimization algorithms
Alpha–beta pruning: search to reduce number of nodes in minimax algorithm
Branch and bound
Bruss algorithm: see odds algorithm
Chain matrix multiplication
Combinatorial optimization: optimization problems where the set of feasible solutions is discrete
Greedy randomized adaptive search procedure (GRASP): successive constructions of a greedy randomized solution and subsequent iterative improvements of it through a local search
Hungarian method: a combinatorial optimization algorithm which solves the assignment problem in polynomial time
Constraint satisfaction
General algorithms for the constraint satisfaction
AC-3 algorithm
Difference map algorithm
Min conflicts algorithm
Chaff algorithm: an algorithm for solving instances of the boolean satisfiability problem
Davis–Putnam algorithm: check the validity of a first-order logic formula
Davis–Putnam–Logemann–Loveland algorithm (DPLL): an algorithm for deciding the satisfiability of propositional logic formula in conjunctive normal form, i.e. for solving the CNF-SAT problem
Exact cover problem
Algorithm X: a nondeterministic algorithm
Dancing Links: an efficient implementation of Algorithm X
Cross-entropy method: a general Monte Carlo approach to combinatorial and continuous multi-extremal optimization and importance sampling
Differential evolution
Dynamic Programming: problems exhibiting the properties of overlapping subproblems and optimal substructure
Ellipsoid method: is an algorithm for solving convex optimization problems
Evolutionary computation: optimization inspired by biological mechanisms of evolution
Evolution strategy
Gene expression programming
Genetic algorithms
Fitness proportionate selection – also known as roulette-wheel selection
Stochastic universal sampling
Truncation selection
Tournament selection
Memetic algorithm
Swarm intelligence
Ant colony optimization
Bees algorithm: a search algorithm which mimics the food foraging behavior of swarms of honey bees
Particle swarm
Frank-Wolfe algorithm: an iterative first-order optimization algorithm for constrained convex optimization
Golden-section search: an algorithm for finding the maximum of a real function
Gradient descent
Grid Search
Harmony search (HS): a metaheuristic algorithm mimicking the improvisation process of musicians
Interior point method
Linear programming
Benson's algorithm: an algorithm for solving linear vector optimization problems
Dantzig–Wolfe decomposition: an algorithm for solving linear programming problems with special structure
Delayed column generation
Integer linear programming: solve linear programming problems where some or all the unknowns are restricted to integer values
Branch and cut
Cutting-plane method
Karmarkar's algorithm: The first reasonably efficient algorithm that solves the linear programming problem in polynomial time.
Simplex algorithm: An algorithm for solving linear programming problems
Line search
Local search: a metaheuristic for solving computationally hard optimization problems
Random-restart hill climbing
Tabu search
Minimax used in game programming
Nearest neighbor search (NNS): find closest points in a metric space
Best Bin First: find an approximate solution to the nearest neighbor search problem in very-high-dimensional spaces
Newton's method in optimization
Nonlinear optimization
BFGS method: A nonlinear optimization algorithm
Gauss–Newton algorithm: An algorithm for solving nonlinear least squares problems.
Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm: An algorithm for solving nonlinear least squares problems.
Nelder–Mead method (downhill simplex method): A nonlinear optimization algorithm
Odds algorithm (Bruss algorithm): Finds the optimal strategy to predict a last specific event in a random sequence event
Random Search
Simulated annealing
Stochastic tunneling
Subset sum algorithm
Computational science
Astronomy
Doomsday algorithm: day of the week
Zeller's congruence is an algorithm to calculate the day of the week for any Julian or Gregorian calendar date
various Easter algorithms are used to calculate the day of Easter
Bioinformatics
Basic Local Alignment Search Tool also known as BLAST: an algorithm for comparing primary biological sequence information
Kabsch algorithm: calculate the optimal alignment of two sets of points in order to compute the root mean squared deviation between two protein structures.
Velvet: a set of algorithms manipulating de Bruijn graphs for genomic sequence assembly
Sorting by signed reversals: an algorithm for understanding genomic evolution.
Maximum parsimony (phylogenetics): an algorithm for finding the simplest phylogenetic tree to explain a given character matrix.
UPGMA: a distance-based phylogenetic tree construction algorithm.
Geoscience
Vincenty's formulae: a fast algorithm to calculate the distance between two latitude/longitude points on an ellipsoid
Geohash: a public domain algorithm that encodes a decimal latitude/longitude pair as a hash string
Linguistics
Lesk algorithm: word sense disambiguation
Stemming algorithm: a method of reducing words to their stem, base, or root form
Sukhotin's algorithm: a statistical classification algorithm for classifying characters in a text as vowels or consonants
Medicine
ESC algorithm for the diagnosis of heart failure
Manning Criteria for irritable bowel syndrome
Pulmonary embolism diagnostic algorithms
Texas Medication Algorithm Project
Physics
Constraint algorithm: a class of algorithms for satisfying constraints for bodies that obey Newton's equations of motion
Demon algorithm: a Monte Carlo method for efficiently sampling members of a microcanonical ensemble with a given energy
Featherstone's algorithm: computes the effects of forces applied to a structure of joints and links
Ground state approximation
Variational method
Ritz method
n-body problems
Barnes–Hut simulation: Solves the n-body problem in an approximate way that has the order instead of as in a direct-sum simulation.
Fast multipole method (FMM): speeds up the calculation of long-ranged forces
Rainflow-counting algorithm: Reduces a complex stress history to a count of elementary stress-reversals for use in fatigue analysis
Sweep and prune: a broad phase algorithm used during collision detection to limit the number of pairs of solids that need to be checked for collision
VEGAS algorithm: a method for reducing error in Monte Carlo simulations
Glauber dynamics: a method for simulating the Ising Model on a computer
Statistics
Algorithms for calculating variance: avoiding instability and numerical overflow
Approximate counting algorithm: Allows counting large number of events in a small register
Bayesian statistics
Nested sampling algorithm: a computational approach to the problem of comparing models in Bayesian statistics
Clustering Algorithms
Average-linkage clustering: a simple agglomerative clustering algorithm
Canopy clustering algorithm: an unsupervised pre-clustering algorithm related to the K-means algorithm
Complete-linkage clustering: a simple agglomerative clustering algorithm
DBSCAN: a density based clustering algorithm
Expectation-maximization algorithm
Fuzzy clustering: a class of clustering algorithms where each point has a degree of belonging to clusters
Fuzzy c-means
FLAME clustering (Fuzzy clustering by Local Approximation of MEmberships): define clusters in the dense parts of a dataset and perform cluster assignment solely based on the neighborhood relationships among objects
KHOPCA clustering algorithm: a local clustering algorithm, which produces hierarchical multi-hop clusters in static and mobile environments.
k-means clustering: cluster objects based on attributes into partitions
k-means++: a variation of this, using modified random seeds
k-medoids: similar to k-means, but chooses datapoints or medoids as centers
Linde–Buzo–Gray algorithm: a vector quantization algorithm to derive a good codebook
Lloyd's algorithm (Voronoi iteration or relaxation): group data points into a given number of categories, a popular algorithm for k-means clustering
OPTICS: a density based clustering algorithm with a visual evaluation method
Single-linkage clustering: a simple agglomerative clustering algorithm
SUBCLU: a subspace clustering algorithm
Ward's method: an agglomerative clustering algorithm, extended to more general Lance–Williams algorithms
WACA clustering algorithm: a local clustering algorithm with potentially multi-hop structures; for dynamic networks
Estimation Theory
Expectation-maximization algorithm A class of related algorithms for finding maximum likelihood estimates of parameters in probabilistic models
Ordered subset expectation maximization (OSEM): used in medical imaging for positron emission tomography, single-photon emission computed tomography and X-ray computed tomography.
Odds algorithm (Bruss algorithm) Optimal online search for distinguished value in sequential random input
Kalman filter: estimate the state of a linear dynamic system from a series of noisy measurements
False nearest neighbor algorithm (FNN) estimates fractal dimension
Hidden Markov model
Baum–Welch algorithm: computes maximum likelihood estimates and posterior mode estimates for the parameters of a hidden Markov model
Forward-backward algorithm: a dynamic programming algorithm for computing the probability of a particular observation sequence
Viterbi algorithm: find the most likely sequence of hidden states in a hidden Markov model
Partial least squares regression: finds a linear model describing some predicted variables in terms of other observable variables
Queuing theory
Buzen's algorithm: an algorithm for calculating the normalization constant G(K) in the Gordon–Newell theorem
RANSAC (an abbreviation for "RANdom SAmple Consensus"): an iterative method to estimate parameters of a mathematical model from a set of observed data which contains outliers
Scoring algorithm: is a form of Newton's method used to solve maximum likelihood equations numerically
Yamartino method: calculate an approximation to the standard deviation σθ of wind direction θ during a single pass through the incoming data
Ziggurat algorithm: generates random numbers from a non-uniform distribution
Computer science
Computer architecture
Tomasulo algorithm: allows sequential instructions that would normally be stalled due to certain dependencies to execute non-sequentially
Computer graphics
Clipping
Line clipping
Cohen–Sutherland
Cyrus–Beck
Fast-clipping
Liang–Barsky
Nicholl–Lee–Nicholl
Polygon clipping
Sutherland–Hodgman
Vatti
Weiler–Atherton
Contour lines and Isosurfaces
Marching cubes: extract a polygonal mesh of an isosurface from a three-dimensional scalar field (sometimes called voxels)
Marching squares: generates contour lines for a two-dimensional scalar field
Marching tetrahedrons: an alternative to Marching cubes
Discrete Green's Theorem: is an algorithm for computing double integral over a generalized rectangular domain in constant time. It is a natural extension to the summed area table algorithm
Flood fill: fills a connected region of a multi-dimensional array with a specified symbol
Global illumination algorithms: Considers direct illumination and reflection from other objects.
Ambient occlusion
Beam tracing
Cone tracing
Image-based lighting
Metropolis light transport
Path tracing
Photon mapping
Radiosity
Ray tracing
Hidden-surface removal or Visual surface determination
Newell's algorithm: eliminate polygon cycles in the depth sorting required in hidden-surface removal
Painter's algorithm: detects visible parts of a 3-dimensional scenery
Scanline rendering: constructs an image by moving an imaginary line over the image
Warnock algorithm
Line Drawing: graphical algorithm for approximating a line segment on discrete graphical media.
Bresenham's line algorithm: plots points of a 2-dimensional array to form a straight line between 2 specified points (uses decision variables)
DDA line algorithm: plots points of a 2-dimensional array to form a straight line between 2 specified points (uses floating-point math)
Xiaolin Wu's line algorithm: algorithm for line antialiasing.
Midpoint circle algorithm: an algorithm used to determine the points needed for drawing a circle
Ramer–Douglas–Peucker algorithm: Given a 'curve' composed of line segments to find a curve not too dissimilar but that has fewer points
Shading
Gouraud shading: an algorithm to simulate the differing effects of light and colour across the surface of an object in 3D computer graphics
Phong shading: an algorithm to interpolate surface normal-vectors for surface shading in 3D computer graphics
Slerp (spherical linear interpolation): quaternion interpolation for the purpose of animating 3D rotation
Summed area table (also known as an integral image): an algorithm for computing the sum of values in a rectangular subset of a grid in constant time
Cryptography
Asymmetric (public key) encryption:
ElGamal
Elliptic curve cryptography
MAE1
NTRUEncrypt
RSA
Digital signatures (asymmetric authentication):
DSA, and its variants:
ECDSA and Deterministic ECDSA
EdDSA (Ed25519)
RSA
Cryptographic hash functions (see also the section on message authentication codes):
BLAKE
MD5 – Note that there is now a method of generating collisions for MD5
RIPEMD-160
SHA-1 – Note that there is now a method of generating collisions for SHA-1
SHA-2 (SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512)
SHA-3 (SHA3-224, SHA3-256, SHA3-384, SHA3-512, SHAKE128, SHAKE256)
Tiger (TTH), usually used in Tiger tree hashes
WHIRLPOOL
Cryptographically secure pseudo-random number generators
Blum Blum Shub – based on the hardness of factorization
Fortuna, intended as an improvement on Yarrow algorithm
Linear-feedback shift register (note: many LFSR-based algorithms are weak or have been broken)
Yarrow algorithm
Key exchange
Diffie–Hellman key exchange
Elliptic-curve Diffie–Hellman (ECDH)
Key derivation functions, often used for password hashing and key stretching
bcrypt
PBKDF2
scrypt
Argon2
Message authentication codes (symmetric authentication algorithms, which take a key as a parameter):
HMAC: keyed-hash message authentication
Poly1305
SipHash
Secret sharing, Secret Splitting, Key Splitting, M of N algorithms
Blakey's Scheme
Shamir's Scheme
Symmetric (secret key) encryption:
Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), winner of NIST competition, also known as Rijndael
Blowfish
Twofish
Threefish
Data Encryption Standard (DES), sometimes DE Algorithm, winner of NBS selection competition, replaced by AES for most purposes
IDEA
RC4 (cipher)
Tiny Encryption Algorithm (TEA)
Salsa20, and its updated variant ChaCha20
Post-quantum cryptography
Proof-of-work algorithms
Digital logic
Boolean minimization
Quine–McCluskey algorithm: Also called as Q-M algorithm, programmable method for simplifying the boolean equations.
Petrick's method: Another algorithm for boolean simplification.
Espresso heuristic logic minimizer: Fast algorithm for boolean function minimization.
Machine learning and statistical classification
ALOPEX: a correlation-based machine-learning algorithm
Association rule learning: discover interesting relations between variables, used in data mining
Apriori algorithm
Eclat algorithm
FP-growth algorithm
One-attribute rule
Zero-attribute rule
Boosting (meta-algorithm): Use many weak learners to boost effectiveness
AdaBoost: adaptive boosting
BrownBoost: a boosting algorithm that may be robust to noisy datasets
LogitBoost: logistic regression boosting
LPBoost: linear programming boosting
Bootstrap aggregating (bagging): technique to improve stability and classification accuracy
Computer Vision
Grabcut based on Graph cuts
Decision Trees
C4.5 algorithm: an extension to ID3
ID3 algorithm (Iterative Dichotomiser 3): use heuristic to generate small decision trees
Clustering: a class of unsupervised learning algorithms for grouping and bucketing related input vector.
k-nearest neighbors (k-NN): a method for classifying objects based on closest training examples in the feature space
Linde–Buzo–Gray algorithm: a vector quantization algorithm used to derive a good codebook
Locality-sensitive hashing (LSH): a method of performing probabilistic dimension reduction of high-dimensional data
Neural Network
Backpropagation: A supervised learning method which requires a teacher that knows, or can calculate, the desired output for any given input
Hopfield net: a Recurrent neural network in which all connections are symmetric
Perceptron: the simplest kind of feedforward neural network: a linear classifier.
Pulse-coupled neural networks (PCNN): Neural models proposed by modeling a cat's visual cortex and developed for high-performance biomimetic image processing.
Radial basis function network: an artificial neural network that uses radial basis functions as activation functions
Self-organizing map: an unsupervised network that produces a low-dimensional representation of the input space of the training samples
Random forest: classify using many decision trees
Reinforcement learning:
Q-learning: learns an action-value function that gives the expected utility of taking a given action in a given state and following a fixed policy thereafter
State–Action–Reward–State–Action (SARSA): learn a Markov decision process policy
Temporal difference learning
Relevance-Vector Machine (RVM): similar to SVM, but provides probabilistic classification
Supervised learning: Learning by examples (labelled data-set split into training-set and test-set)
Support-Vector Machine (SVM): a set of methods which divide multidimensional data by finding a dividing hyperplane with the maximum margin between the two sets
Structured SVM: allows training of a classifier for general structured output labels.
Winnow algorithm: related to the perceptron, but uses a multiplicative weight-update scheme
Programming language theory
C3 linearization: an algorithm used primarily to obtain a consistent linearization of a multiple inheritance hierarchy in object-oriented programming
Chaitin's algorithm: a bottom-up, graph coloring register allocation algorithm that uses cost/degree as its spill metric
Hindley–Milner type inference algorithm
Rete algorithm: an efficient pattern matching algorithm for implementing production rule systems
Sethi-Ullman algorithm: generates optimal code for arithmetic expressions
Parsing
CYK algorithm: An O(n3) algorithm for parsing context-free grammars in Chomsky normal form
Earley parser: Another O(n3) algorithm for parsing any context-free grammar
GLR parser:An algorithm for parsing any context-free grammar by Masaru Tomita. It is tuned for deterministic grammars, on which it performs almost linear time and O(n3) in worst case.
Inside-outside algorithm: An O(n3) algorithm for re-estimating production probabilities in probabilistic context-free grammars
LL parser: A relatively simple linear time parsing algorithm for a limited class of context-free grammars
LR parser: A more complex linear time parsing algorithm for a larger class of context-free grammars. Variants:
Canonical LR parser
LALR (look-ahead LR) parser
Operator-precedence parser
SLR (Simple LR) parser
Simple precedence parser
Packrat parser: A linear time parsing algorithm supporting some context-free grammars and parsing expression grammars
Recursive descent parser: A top-down parser suitable for LL(k) grammars
Shunting-yard algorithm: convert an infix-notation math expression to postfix
Pratt parser
Lexical analysis
Quantum algorithms
Deutsch–Jozsa algorithm: criterion of balance for Boolean function
Grover's algorithm: provides quadratic speedup for many search problems
Shor's algorithm: provides exponential speedup (relative to currently known non-quantum algorithms) for factoring a number
Simon's algorithm: provides a provably exponential speedup (relative to any non-quantum algorithm) for a black-box problem
Theory of computation and automata
Hopcroft's algorithm, Moore's algorithm, and Brzozowski's algorithm: algorithms for minimizing the number of states in a deterministic finite automaton
Powerset construction: Algorithm to convert nondeterministic automaton to deterministic automaton.
Tarski–Kuratowski algorithm: a non-deterministic algorithm which provides an upper bound for the complexity of formulas in the arithmetical hierarchy and analytical hierarchy
Information theory and signal processing
Coding theory
Error detection and correction
BCH Codes
Berlekamp–Massey algorithm
Peterson–Gorenstein–Zierler algorithm
Reed–Solomon error correction
BCJR algorithm: decoding of error correcting codes defined on trellises (principally convolutional codes)
Forward error correction
Gray code
Hamming codes
Hamming(7,4): a Hamming code that encodes 4 bits of data into 7 bits by adding 3 parity bits
Hamming distance: sum number of positions which are different
Hamming weight (population count): find the number of 1 bits in a binary word
Redundancy checks
Adler-32
Cyclic redundancy check
Damm algorithm
Fletcher's checksum
Longitudinal redundancy check (LRC)
Luhn algorithm: a method of validating identification numbers
Luhn mod N algorithm: extension of Luhn to non-numeric characters
Parity: simple/fast error detection technique
Verhoeff algorithm
Lossless compression algorithms
Burrows–Wheeler transform: preprocessing useful for improving lossless compression
Context tree weighting
Delta encoding: aid to compression of data in which sequential data occurs frequently
Dynamic Markov compression: Compression using predictive arithmetic coding
Dictionary coders
Byte pair encoding (BPE)
Deflate
Lempel–Ziv
LZ77 and LZ78
Lempel–Ziv Jeff Bonwick (LZJB)
Lempel–Ziv–Markov chain algorithm (LZMA)
Lempel–Ziv–Oberhumer (LZO): speed oriented
Lempel–Ziv–Stac (LZS)
Lempel–Ziv–Storer–Szymanski (LZSS)
Lempel–Ziv–Welch (LZW)
LZWL: syllable-based variant
LZX
Lempel–Ziv Ross Williams (LZRW)
Entropy encoding: coding scheme that assigns codes to symbols so as to match code lengths with the probabilities of the symbols
Arithmetic coding: advanced entropy coding
Range encoding: same as arithmetic coding, but looked at in a slightly different way
Huffman coding: simple lossless compression taking advantage of relative character frequencies
Adaptive Huffman coding: adaptive coding technique based on Huffman coding
Package-merge algorithm: Optimizes Huffman coding subject to a length restriction on code strings
Shannon–Fano coding
Shannon–Fano–Elias coding: precursor to arithmetic encoding
Entropy coding with known entropy characteristics
Golomb coding: form of entropy coding that is optimal for alphabets following geometric distributions
Rice coding: form of entropy coding that is optimal for alphabets following geometric distributions
Truncated binary encoding
Unary coding: code that represents a number n with n ones followed by a zero
Universal codes: encodes positive integers into binary code words
Elias delta, gamma, and omega coding
Exponential-Golomb coding
Fibonacci coding
Levenshtein coding
Fast Efficient & Lossless Image Compression System (FELICS): a lossless image compression algorithm
Incremental encoding: delta encoding applied to sequences of strings
Prediction by partial matching (PPM): an adaptive statistical data compression technique based on context modeling and prediction
Run-length encoding: lossless data compression taking advantage of strings of repeated characters
SEQUITUR algorithm: lossless compression by incremental grammar inference on a string
Lossy compression algorithms
3Dc: a lossy data compression algorithm for normal maps
Audio and Speech compression
A-law algorithm: standard companding algorithm
Code-excited linear prediction (CELP): low bit-rate speech compression
Linear predictive coding (LPC): lossy compression by representing the spectral envelope of a digital signal of speech in compressed form
Mu-law algorithm: standard analog signal compression or companding algorithm
Warped Linear Predictive Coding (WLPC)
Image compression
Block Truncation Coding (BTC): a type of lossy image compression technique for greyscale images
Embedded Zerotree Wavelet (EZW)
Fast Cosine Transform algorithms (FCT algorithms): computes Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) efficiently
Fractal compression: method used to compress images using fractals
Set Partitioning in Hierarchical Trees (SPIHT)
Wavelet compression: form of data compression well suited for image compression (sometimes also video compression and audio compression)
Transform coding: type of data compression for "natural" data like audio signals or photographic images
Video compression
Vector quantization: technique often used in lossy data compression
Digital signal processing
Adaptive-additive algorithm (AA algorithm): find the spatial frequency phase of an observed wave source
Discrete Fourier transform: determines the frequencies contained in a (segment of a) signal
Bluestein's FFT algorithm
Bruun's FFT algorithm
Cooley–Tukey FFT algorithm
Fast Fourier transform
Prime-factor FFT algorithm
Rader's FFT algorithm
Fast folding algorithm: an efficient algorithm for the detection of approximately periodic events within time series data
Gerchberg–Saxton algorithm: Phase retrieval algorithm for optical planes
Goertzel algorithm: identify a particular frequency component in a signal. Can be used for DTMF digit decoding.
Karplus-Strong string synthesis: physical modelling synthesis to simulate the sound of a hammered or plucked string or some types of percussion
Image processing
Contrast Enhancement
Histogram equalization: use histogram to improve image contrast
Adaptive histogram equalization: histogram equalization which adapts to local changes in contrast
Connected-component labeling: find and label disjoint regions
Dithering and half-toning
Error diffusion
Floyd–Steinberg dithering
Ordered dithering
Riemersma dithering
Elser difference-map algorithm: a search algorithm for general constraint satisfaction problems. Originally used for X-Ray diffraction microscopy
Feature detection
Canny edge detector: detect a wide range of edges in images
Generalised Hough transform
Hough transform
Marr–Hildreth algorithm: an early edge detection algorithm
SIFT (Scale-invariant feature transform): is an algorithm to detect and describe local features in images.
: is a robust local feature detector, first presented by Herbert Bay et al. in 2006, that can be used in computer vision tasks like object recognition or 3D reconstruction. It is partly inspired by the SIFT descriptor. The standard version of SURF is several times faster than SIFT and claimed by its authors to be more robust against different image transformations than SIFT.
Richardson–Lucy deconvolution: image de-blurring algorithm
Blind deconvolution: image de-blurring algorithm when point spread function is unknown.
Median filtering
Seam carving: content-aware image resizing algorithm
Segmentation: partition a digital image into two or more regions
GrowCut algorithm: an interactive segmentation algorithm
Random walker algorithm
Region growing
Watershed transformation: a class of algorithms based on the watershed analogy
Software engineering
Cache algorithms
CHS conversion: converting between disk addressing systems
Double dabble: Convert binary numbers to BCD
Hash Function: convert a large, possibly variable-sized amount of data into a small datum, usually a single integer that may serve as an index into an array
Fowler–Noll–Vo hash function: fast with low collision rate
Pearson hashing: computes 8 bit value only, optimized for 8 bit computers
Zobrist hashing: used in the implementation of transposition tables
Unicode Collation Algorithm
Xor swap algorithm: swaps the values of two variables without using a buffer
Database algorithms
Algorithms for Recovery and Isolation Exploiting Semantics (ARIES): transaction recovery
Join algorithms
Block nested loop
Hash join
Nested loop join
Sort-Merge Join
Distributed systems algorithms
Clock synchronization
Berkeley algorithm
Cristian's algorithm
Intersection algorithm
Marzullo's algorithm
Consensus (computer science): agreeing on a single value or history among unreliable processors
Chandra–Toueg consensus algorithm
Paxos algorithm
Raft (computer science)
Detection of Process Termination
Dijkstra-Scholten algorithm
Huang's algorithm
Lamport ordering: a partial ordering of events based on the happened-before relation
Leader election: a method for dynamically selecting a coordinator
Bully algorithm
Mutual exclusion
Lamport's Distributed Mutual Exclusion Algorithm
Naimi-Trehel's log(n) Algorithm
Maekawa's Algorithm
Raymond's Algorithm
Ricart–Agrawala Algorithm
Snapshot algorithm: record a consistent global state for an asynchronous system
Chandy–Lamport algorithm
Vector clocks: generate a partial ordering of events in a distributed system and detect causality violations
Memory allocation and deallocation algorithms
Buddy memory allocation: Algorithm to allocate memory such that fragmentation is less.
Garbage collectors
Cheney's algorithm: An improvement on the Semi-space collector
Generational garbage collector: Fast garbage collectors that segregate memory by age
Mark-compact algorithm: a combination of the mark-sweep algorithm and Cheney's copying algorithm
Mark and sweep
Semi-space collector: An early copying collector
Reference counting
Networking
Karn's algorithm: addresses the problem of getting accurate estimates of the round-trip time for messages when using TCP
Luleå algorithm: a technique for storing and searching internet routing tables efficiently
Network congestion
Exponential backoff
Nagle's algorithm: improve the efficiency of TCP/IP networks by coalescing packets
Truncated binary exponential backoff
Operating systems algorithms
Banker's algorithm: Algorithm used for deadlock avoidance.
Page replacement algorithms: Selecting the victim page under low memory conditions.
Adaptive replacement cache: better performance than LRU
Clock with Adaptive Replacement (CAR): is a page replacement algorithm that has performance comparable to Adaptive replacement cache
Process synchronization
Dekker's algorithm
Lamport's Bakery algorithm
Peterson's algorithm
Scheduling
Earliest deadline first scheduling
Fair-share scheduling
Least slack time scheduling
List scheduling
Multi level feedback queue
Rate-monotonic scheduling
Round-robin scheduling
Shortest job next
Shortest remaining time
Top-nodes algorithm: resource calendar management
I/O scheduling
Disk scheduling
Elevator algorithm: Disk scheduling algorithm that works like an elevator.
Shortest seek first: Disk scheduling algorithm to reduce seek time.
Other
'For You' algorithm: a proprietary algorithm developed by the social media network Tik-Tok. Uploaded videos are released first to a selection of users who have been identified by the algorithm as being likely to engage with the video, based on their previous web-site viewing patterns.
See also
List of data structures
List of machine learning algorithms
List of pathfinding algorithms
List of algorithm general topics
List of terms relating to algorithms and data structures
Heuristic
References
Algorithms |
18569 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconia%20incident | Laconia incident | The Laconia incident was a series of events surrounding the sinking of a British troopship in the Atlantic Ocean on 12 September 1942, during World War II, and a subsequent aerial attack on German and Italian submarines involved in rescue attempts. , carrying 2,732 crew, passengers, soldiers and prisoners of war, was torpedoed and sunk by , a German U-boat, off the West African coast. Operating partly under the dictates of the old prize rules, the commander, Werner Hartenstein, immediately commenced rescue operations. U-156 broadcast her position on open radio channels to all Allied powers nearby, and were joined by the crews of several other U-boats in the vicinity.
After surfacing and picking up survivors, who were accommodated on the foredeck, U-156 headed on the surface under Red Cross banners to rendezvous with Vichy French ships and transfer the survivors. En route, the U-boat was spotted by a B-24 Liberator bomber of the US Army Air Forces. The aircrew, having reported the U-boat's location, intentions and the presence of survivors, were then ordered to attack the sub. The B-24 killed dozens of Laconias survivors with bombs and strafing attacks, forcing U-156 to cast into the sea the remaining survivors that she had rescued, and to crash dive to avoid being destroyed.
Rescue operations were continued by other vessels. Another U-boat, , was also attacked by US aircraft and forced to dive. A total of 1,113 crew were eventually rescued; however, 1,619 were killed, mostly Italian POWs. The event changed the general attitude of Germany's naval personnel towards rescuing stranded Allied seamen. The commanders of the were quickly issued the Laconia Order by Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, which specifically forbade any such attempt and ushered in unrestricted submarine warfare for the remainder of the war.
The B-24 pilots mistakenly reported they had sunk , and were awarded medals for bravery. Neither the US pilots nor their commander were punished or investigated, and the matter was quietly forgotten by the US military. During the later Nuremberg trials, a prosecutor attempted to cite the Laconia Order as proof of war crimes by Dönitz and his submariners. The ploy backfired and caused much embarrassment to the United States after the incident's full report had emerged to the public and the reason for the "Laconia order" was known.
RMS Laconia
was built in 1921 as a civilian ocean linerby Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson Ltd, Wallsend, Northumberland. In January 1923 Laconia began the first around-the-world cruise, which lasted 130 days and called at 22 ports.On 8 September 1925, Laconia collided with the British schooner Lucia P. Dow in the Atlantic Ocean 60 nautical miles (110 km) east of Nantucket, Massachusetts, United States. Laconia towed the schooner for 120 nautical miles (220 km) before handing the tow over to the American tug Resolute.In 1934, her code letters were changed to GJCD.[5] On 24 September 1934 Laconia was involved in a collision off the US coast, while travelling from Boston to New York in dense fog. It rammed into the port side of Pan Royal, a US freighter.[6] Both ships suffered serious damage but were able to proceed under their own steam. Laconia returned to New York for repairs, and resumed cruising in 1935. During World War II she was requisitioned for the war effort, and by 1942 had been converted into a troopship. At the time of the incident she was transporting mostly Italian prisoners of war from Cape Town to Freetown, under the command of Captain Rudolph Sharp. The ship was carrying 463 officers and crew, 87 civilians, 286 British soldiers, 1,793 Italian prisoners and 103 Polish soldiers acting as guards of the prisoners.
Sharp had previously commanded , which had been sunk by German bombs on 17 June 1940, off the French port of Saint-Nazaire, while taking part in Operation Aerial, the evacuation of British nationals and troops from France, two weeks after the Dunkirk evacuation.
Events
Attack on Laconia
At 10 p.m., on 12 September 1942, was on patrol off the coast of western Africa, midway between Liberia and Ascension Island. The submarine's commanding officer, Werner Hartenstein, spotted the large British ship sailing alone and attacked it. Armed ships, which meant most merchantmen and troop transport, constituted legitimate targets for attack without warning. Armed as such, the Laconia fell into this category, and at 10:22 p.m. she transmitted a message on the 600 m (500 kHz) band: "SSS SSS 0434 South / 1125 West Laconia torpedoed." "SSS" was the code signifying "under attack by submarine". Additional messages were transmitted, but there is no record these were received by any other vessel or station.
Although there were sufficient lifeboats for the entire ship's complement, including the Italian prisoners, heavy listing prevented half from being launched until the vessel had settled. The prisoners were abandoned in the locked cargo holds as the ship sank, but most managed to escape by breaking down hatches or climbing up ventilation shafts. Several were shot when a group of prisoners rushed a lifeboat, and a large number were bayoneted to death to prevent their boarding of one of the few lifeboats available. The Polish guards were armed with rifles with fixed bayonets; however, they were not loaded and the guards carried no ammunition. Witnesses indicate that few of the prisoners were shot. Instead, most of the casualties were bayoneted.
By the time the last lifeboats were launched most survivors had already entered the water, so some lifeboats had few passengers. Only one life raft left the ship with prisoners on board; the rest jumped into the ocean. Survivors later recounted how Italians in the water were either shot or had their hands severed by axes if they tried to climb into a lifeboat. The blood soon attracted sharks. Corporal Dino Monte, one of the few Italian survivors, stated "... sharks darted among us. Grabbing an arm, biting a leg. Other larger beasts swallowed entire bodies." As Laconia was going under, U-156 surfaced to capture the ship's surviving senior officers. To their surprise, they saw over 2,000 people struggling in the water.
Rescue operation
Realising that the passengers were primarily POWs and civilians, Hartenstein immediately began rescue operations whilst flying the Red Cross flag. Laconia sank at 11:23 p.m., over an hour after the attack. At 1:25 a.m. on 13 September, Hartenstein sent a coded radio message to the alerting them to the situation. It read: "Sunk by Hartenstein, British Laconia, Qu FF7721, 310 deg. Unfortunately with 1,500 Italian POWs; 90 fished out of the water so far. Request orders."
The head of submarine operations, Admiral Karl Dönitz, immediately ordered seven U-boats from the wolfpack Eisbär, which had been gathering to take part in a planned surprise attack on Cape Town to divert to the scene to pick up survivors. Dönitz then informed Berlin of the situation and actions he had taken. Hitler was furious and ordered that the rescue be abandoned. Admiral Erich Raeder ordered Dönitz to disengage the Eisbär boats, which included Hartenstein's U-156, and send them to Cape Town as per the original plan. Raeder then ordered , commanded by Erich Würdemann, , under Korvettenkapitän Harro Schacht, and the Italian submarine to intercept Hartenstein to take on his survivors and then to proceed to the Laconia site and rescue any Italians they could find. Raeder also requested the Vichy French to send warships from Dakar and Ivory Coast to collect the Italian survivors from the three submarines.
The Vichy French, in response, sent the 7,600-ton cruiser from Dakar, and two sloops, the fast 660-ton Annamite and the slower 2,000-ton , from Conakry, French Guinea, and Cotonou, Dahomey, respectively. Dönitz disengaged the Eisbär boats and informed Hartenstein of Raeder's orders, but he substituted Kapitänleutnant Helmut Witte's for U-156 in the Eisbär group and sent the order: "All boats, including Hartenstein, only take as many men into the boat as will allow it to be fully ready for action when submerged."
U-156 was soon crammed above and below decks with nearly 200 survivors, including five women, and had another 200 in tow aboard four lifeboats. At 6 a.m. on 13 September, Hartenstein broadcast a message on the band in English—not in code—to all shipping in the area, giving his position, requesting assistance with the rescue effort, and promising not to attack. It read: "If any ship will assist the shipwrecked Laconia crew I will not attack her, providing I am not being attacked by ship or air force. I picked up 193 men. 4°-53" South, 11°-26" West. – German submarine."
The British in Freetown intercepted this message but, believing it might be a ruse of war, refused to credit it. Two days later, on 15 September, a message was passed to the Americans that Laconia had been torpedoed and the British merchant ship was en route to pick up survivors. The "poorly composed message" implied that Laconia had only been sunk that day and made no mention that the Germans were involved in a rescue attempt under a cease-fire or that neutral French ships were also en route.
U-156 remained on the surface at the scene for the next two-and-a-half days. At 11:30 a.m. on 15 September, she was joined by U-506, and a few hours later by both and the Comandante Cappellini. The four submarines, with lifeboats in tow and hundreds of survivors standing on their decks, headed for the African coastline and a rendezvous with the Vichy French surface warships that had set out from Senegal and Dahomey.
First American attack
During the night the submarines became separated. On 16 September at 11:25 a.m., U-156 was spotted by an American B-24 Liberator bomber flying from a secret airbase on Ascension. The submarine was travelling with a Red Cross flag draped across her gun deck. Hartenstein signalled to the pilot in both Morse code and English requesting assistance. A British officer also messaged the aircraft: "RAF officer speaking from German submarine, Laconia survivors on board, soldiers, civilians, women, children."
Lieutenant James D. Harden of the US Army Air Forces did not respond to the messages; turning away, he notified his base of the situation. The senior officer on duty that day, Captain Robert C. Richardson III, who claimed that he did not know that this was a Red Cross-sanctioned German rescue operation, ordered the B-24 to "sink the sub". Richardson later claimed he believed that the rules of war at the time did not permit a combat ship to fly Red Cross flags. He feared that the German submarine would attack the two Allied freighters diverted by the British to the site. He assumed that the German submarine was rescuing only the Italian POWs. In his tactical assessment, he believed that the submarine might discover and shell the secret Ascension airfield and fuel tanks, thus cutting off a critical Allied resupply air route to British forces in Egypt and Soviet forces in Russia.
Harden flew back to the scene of the rescue effort and, at 12:32 p.m., attacked with bombs and depth charges. One landed among the lifeboats in tow behind U-156, killing dozens of survivors, while others straddled the submarine itself, causing minor damage. Hartenstein cast adrift those lifeboats still afloat and ordered the survivors on his deck into the water. The submarine submerged slowly to give those still on the deck a chance to get into the water and escape. According to Harden's report, he made four runs at the submarine. On the first three the depth charges and bombs failed to release, on the fourth he dropped two bombs. The crew of the Liberator were later awarded medals for the alleged sinking of U-156, when they had in fact only sunk two lifeboats.
Ignoring "Commander" Hartenstein's request that they stay in the area to be rescued by the Vichy French, two lifeboats decided to head for Africa. One, which began the journey with 68 people on board, reached the African coast 27 days later with only 16 survivors. The other was rescued by a British trawler after 40 days at sea. Only four of its 52 occupants were still alive.
Unaware of the attack, U-507, U-506, and Cappellini continued to pick up survivors. The following morning Commander Revedin of Cappellini found that he was rescuing survivors who had been set adrift by U-156. At 11:30 a.m. Revedin received the following message: "Bordeaux to Cappellini: Reporting attack already undergone by other submarines. Be ready to submerge for action against the enemy. Put shipwrecked on rafts except women, children, and Italians, and make for minor grid-square 56 of grid-square 0971 where you will land remainder shipwrecked on to French ships. Keep British prisoners. Keep strictest watch enemy planes and submarines. End of message."
U-507 and U-506 received confirmation from headquarters of the attack on U-156 and were asked for the number of survivors rescued. Commander Schacht of U-507 replied that he had 491, of whom 15 were women and 16 were children. Commander Wurdemann of U-506 confirmed 151, including nine women and children. The next message from headquarters ordered them to cast adrift all the British and Polish survivors, mark their positions and instruct them to remain exactly where they were, then proceed with all haste to the rescue rendezvous. The respective commanders chose not to cast any survivors adrift.
The order given by Richardson and the resulting attack by Harden have been called Allied war crimes. Under the conventions of war at sea, ships—including submarines—engaged in rescue operations are held to be immune from attack.
Second American attack
Five B-25s from Ascension's permanent squadron and Hardin's B-24 continued to search for submarines from dawn till dusk. On 17 September, one B-25 sighted Laconias lifeboats and informed Empire Haven of their position. Hardin's B-24 sighted U-506, which had 151 survivors on board including nine women and children, and attacked. On the first run the bombs failed to drop, U-506 crash dived and on the second run the B-24 dropped two bombs and two depth charges but they caused no damage.
That same day, the British at Freetown sent an ambiguous message to Ascension informing them that three French ships from Dakar were en route. Captain Richardson assumed the French intended to invade Ascension so the submarine hunting was cancelled in order to prepare for an invasion.
The French cruiser picked up 52 survivors, all British, while still from the rendezvous point. Gloire then met with the sloop Annamite with both meeting U-507 and U-506 at the rendezvous point at a little after 2 p.m. on 17 September. With the exception of two British officers kept aboard U-507, the survivors were all transferred to the rescue ships. Gloire sailed off on her own and within four hours rescued another 11 lifeboats. At 10 p.m., Gloire found another lifeboat and proceeded to a planned rendezvous with Annamite.
At 1 a.m., a lookout spotted a light on the horizon, which was investigated despite this meaning Gloire would not be able to make the rendezvous, and a further 84 survivors were rescued. A new rendezvous was arranged, the ships meeting at 9:30 a.m. with Annamite transferring her survivors to Gloire. A count was then taken: 373 Italians, 70 Poles and 597 British who included 48 women and children. Gloire arrived at Dakar on 21 September to resupply before sailing for Casablanca, arriving there on 25 September. On arrival, Colonel Baldwin, on behalf of all the British survivors, presented the captain of Cappellini with a letter that read as follows:
The submarine Cappellini had been unable to find the French warships so radioed for instructions and awaited a response. The French sloop Dumont-d’Urville was sent to rendezvous with Cappellini and by chance rescued a lifeboat from the British cargo ship Trevilley, which had been torpedoed on 12 September. After searching for other Trevilley survivors without luck, Dumont-d’Urville met Cappellini on 20 September. With the exception of six Italians and two British officers, the remaining survivors were transferred to Dumont-d’Urville, which later transferred the Italians to Annamite, which transported them to Dakar on 24 September. Of Laconia’s original complement of 2,732, only 1,113 survived. Of the 1,619 who died, 1,420 were Italian POWs.
Conclusion
From Casablanca, most of the survivors were taken to Mediouna to await transport to a prison camp in Germany. On 8 November, the Allied invasion of North Africa began liberating the survivors, who were taken aboard the ship Anton which landed them in the United States.
One of the survivors, Gladys Foster, wrote a detailed description of the sinking, the rescue and then subsequent two-month internment in Africa. Gladys was the wife of Chaplain to the Forces the Rev. Denis Beauchamp Lisle Foster, who was stationed in Malta. She was on board the ship with her 14-year-old daughter, Elizabeth Barbara Foster, travelling back to Britain. During the mayhem of the sinking the two were separated and it was not until days later that Gladys discovered her daughter had survived and was on another raft. She was urged to write her recollection not long after landing back in London.
Doris Hawkins, a missionary nurse, survived the Laconia incident and spent 27 days adrift in Lifeboat Nine, finally coming ashore on the coast of Liberia. She was returning to England after five years in Palestine with 14-month-old Sally Kay Readman, who was lost to the sea as they were transferred into the lifeboat.
Doris Hawkins wrote a pamphlet entitled "Atlantic Torpedo" after her eventual return to England, published by Victor Gollancz in 1943. In it she writes of the moments when Sally was lost: "We found ourselves on top of the arms and legs of a panic-stricken mass of humanity. The lifeboat, filled to capacity with men, women and children, was leaking badly and rapidly filling with water; at the same time it was crashing against the ship’s side. Just as Sally was passed over to me, the boat filled completely and capsized, flinging us all into the water. I lost her. I did not hear her cry even then, and I am sure that God took her immediately to Himself without suffering. I never saw her again."
Doris Hawkins was one of 16 survivors (out of 69 in the lifeboat when it was cast adrift from the U-boat). She spent the remaining war years personally visiting the families of people who perished in the lifeboat, returning mementos entrusted to her by them in their dying moments. In Doris's words, "It is impossible to imagine why I should have been chosen to survive when so many did not. I have been reluctant to write the story of our experiences, but in answer to many requests I have done so; and if it strengthens someone’s faith, if it is an inspiration to any, if it brings home to others, hitherto untouched, all that 'those who go down to the sea in ships' face for our sakes, hour by hour, day by day, year in and year out—it will not have been written in vain".
Survivor Jim McLoughlin states in One Common Enemy that after the incident Hartenstein asked him if he was in the Royal Navy, which he was, then why a passenger ship was armed, stating, "If it wasn't armed, I would not have attacked." McLoughlin believes this indicates Hartenstein had thought it was a troop transport rather than a passenger ship; by signalling to the Royal Navy, Laconia was acting as a auxiliary ship.
Aftermath
The Laconia incident had far-reaching consequences. Up until that point, it was common for U-boats to assist torpedoed survivors with food, water, simple medical care for the wounded, and a compass bearing to the nearest landmass. It was extremely rare for survivors to be brought on board as space on a U-boat was barely enough for its own crew. On 17 September 1942, in response to the incident, Admiral Karl Dönitz issued an order named Triton Null, later known as the Laconia Order. In it, Dönitz prohibited U-boat crews from attempting rescues; survivors were to be left in the sea. Even afterwards, U-boats still occasionally provided aid for survivors.
At the Nuremberg trials held by the Allies in 1946, Dönitz was indicted for war crimes. The issuance of the Laconia Order was the centrepiece of the prosecution case, a decision that backfired badly. Its introduction allowed the defence to recount at length the numerous instances in which German submariners acted with humanity where in similar situations the Allies behaved callously. Dönitz pointed out that the order itself was a direct result of this callousness and the attack on a rescue operation by US aircraft.
The Americans had also practised unrestricted submarine warfare, under their own equivalent to the Laconia Order, which had been in force since they entered the war. Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, the wartime commander-in-chief of the US Pacific Fleet, provided unapologetic written testimony on Dönitz's behalf at his trial that the US Navy had waged unrestricted submarine warfare in the Pacific from the very first day the United States entered the war. This testimony led the Nuremberg Tribunal to not impose a sentence upon Dönitz for this breach of law, even though he was convicted of the count.
The Naval War College series International Law Studies covers interpretations of international law during armed conflicts and how these laws were applied by each party. In volume 65, Targeting Enemy Merchant Shipping, chapter three contains an examination of the Laconia incident in the context of the application of international law to World War II submarine warfare:
Notes
Works cited
Bibliography
Other sources
External links
The Laconia incident on Uboat.net
The Laconia incident on Uboataces.com
Battle of the Atlantic
Maritime incidents in September 1942
Military history of Germany during World War II
RMS Laconia (1921)
Saint Helena and Dependencies in World War II
War crimes by the United States during World War II
World War II crimes |
18571 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon%20Theremin | Leon Theremin | Leon Theremin (born Lev Sergeyevich Termen ; – 3 November 1993) was a Russian and Soviet inventor, most famous for his invention of the theremin, one of the first electronic musical instruments and the first to be mass-produced. He also worked on early television research. His listening device, "The Thing", hung for seven years in plain view in the United States Ambassador's Moscow office and enabled Soviet agents to eavesdrop on secret conversations.
Early life
Leon Theremin was born in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire in 1896. His father was Sergei Emilievich Theremin of French Huguenot descent. His mother was Yevgenia Antonova Orzhinskaya and of German ancestry. He had a sister named Helena.
In the seventh class of his high school before an audience of students and parents he demonstrated various optical effects using electricity.
By the age of 17, when he was in his last year of high school, he had his own laboratory at home for experimenting with high-frequency circuits, optics and magnetic fields. His cousin, Kirill Fedorovich Nesturkh, then a young physicist, invited him to attend the defense of the dissertation of Abram Fedorovich Ioffe. Physics lecturer Vladimir Konstantinovich Lebedinskiy had explained to Theremin the dispute over Ioffe's work on the electron. On 9 May 1913 Theremin and his cousin attended Ioffe's dissertation defense. Ioffe's subject was on the elementary photoelectric effect, the magnetic field of cathode rays and related investigations. In 1917 Theremin wrote that Ioffe talked of electrons, the photoelectric effect and magnetic fields as parts of an objective reality that surrounds us every day, unlike others that talked more of somewhat abstract formulae and symbols. Theremin wrote that he found this explanation revelatory and that it fit a scientific – not abstract – view of the world, different scales of magnitude, and matter. From then on Theremin endeavoured to study the microcosm, in the same way he had studied the macrocosm with his hand-built telescope. Later, Kyrill introduced Theremin to Ioffe as a young experimenter and physicist, and future student of the university.
Theremin recalled that while still in his last year of school, he had built a million-volt Tesla coil and noticed a strong glow associated with his attempts to ionise the air. He then wished to further investigate the effects using university resources. A chance meeting with Abram Fedorovich Ioffe led to a recommendation to see Karl Karlovich Baumgart, who was in charge of the physics laboratory equipment. Karl then reserved a room and equipment for Theremin's experiments. Abram Fedorovich suggested Theremin also look at methods of creating gas fluorescence under different conditions and of examining the resulting light's spectra. However, during these investigations Theremin was called up for World War I military service.
World War I and Russian Civil War
Although only in his second academic year, the deanery of the Faculty of Physics and Astronomy recommended that Theremin go to the Nikolayevska Military Engineering School in Petrograd (previously Saint Petersburg), which usually only accepted students in their fourth year. Theremin recalled that Ioffe reassured him that the war would not last long and that military experience would be useful for scientific applications.
Beginning his military service in 1916, Theremin finished the Military Engineering School in six months, progressed through the Graduate Electronic School for Officers, and attained the military radio-engineer diploma in the same year. In the course of the next three and a half years he oversaw the construction of a radio station in Saratov to connect the Volga area with Moscow, graduated from Petrograd University, became deputy leader of the new Military Radiotechnical Laboratory in Moscow, and finished as the broadcast supervisor of the radio transmitter at Tsarskoye Selo near Petrograd (then renamed Detskoye Selo).
During the Russian civil war, in October 1919 White Army commander Nikolai Nikolayevich Yudenich advanced on Petrograd from the side of Detskoye Selo, apparently intending to capture the radio station to announce a victory over the Bolsheviks. Theremin and others evacuated the station, sending equipment east on rail cars. Theremin then detonated explosives to destroy the 120-meter-high antennae mast before traveling to Petrograd to set up an international listening station. There he also trained radio specialists but reported difficulties obtaining food and working with foreign experts whom he described as narrow-minded pessimists.
Theremin recalled that on an evening when his hopes of overcoming these obstructing experts reached a low ebb, Abram Fedorovich Ioffe telephoned him. Ioffe asked Theremin to come to his newly founded Physical Technical Institute in Petrograd, and the next day he invited him to start work at developing measuring methods for high-frequency electrical oscillations.
Under Ioffe
The day after Ioffe's invitation, Theremin started at the institute. He worked in diverse fields: applying the Laue effect to the new field of X-ray analysis of crystals; using hypnosis to improve measurement-reading accuracy; working with Ivan Pavlov's laboratory; and using gas-filled lamps as measuring devices. He built a high-frequency oscillator to measure the dielectric constant of gases with high precision; Ioffe then urged him to look for other applications using this method, and shortly made the first motion detector for use as a "radio watchman".
While adapting the dielectric device by adding circuitry to generate an audio tone, Theremin noticed that the pitch changed when his hand moved around. In October 1920 he first demonstrated this to Ioffe who called in other professors and students to hear. Theremin recalled trying to find the notes for tunes he remembered from when he played the cello, such as the Swan by Saint-Saëns. By November 1920 Theremin had given his first public concert with the instrument, now modified with a horizontal volume antenna replacing the earlier foot-operated volume control. He named it the "etherphone", to be known as the Терменвокс (Termenvox) in the Soviet Union, as the Thereminvox in Germany, and later as the "theremin" in the United States.
On 24 May 1924 Theremin married 20-year-old Katia (Ekaterina Pavlovna) Konstantinova, and they lived together in his parents' apartment on Marat street.
In 1925 Theremin went to Germany to sell both the radio watchman and Termenvox patents to the German firm Goldberg and Sons. According to Glinsky, this was the Soviet's "decoy for capitalists" to obtain both Western profits from sales and technical knowledge.
During this time Theremin was also working on a wireless television with 16 scan lines in 1925, improving to 32 scan lines and then 64 using interlacing in 1926, and he demonstrated moving, if blurry, images on 7 June 1927. His device was the first functioning television apparatus in Russia.
United States
After being sent on a lengthy tour of Europe starting 1927 – including London, Paris and towns in Germany – during which he demonstrated his invention to full audiences, Theremin went to the United States, arriving on 30 December 1927 with his first wife Katia. He performed the theremin with the New York Philharmonic in 1928. He patented his invention in the United States in 1928 and subsequently granted commercial production rights to RCA.
Theremin set up a laboratory in New York in the 1930s, where he further refined the theremin and experimented with other inventions and new electronic musical instruments. These included the Rhythmicon, commissioned by the Russian composer and theorist Joseph Schillinger.
In 1930, ten thereminists performed on stage at Carnegie Hall. Two years later, Theremin conducted the first-ever electronic orchestra, featuring the theremin and other electronic instruments including a "fingerboard" theremin which resembled a cello in use (Theremin was a cellist).
In 1931, he worked with composer Joseph Schillinger to build an instrument called the rhythmicon. They were lucky to have gotten it to market as quickly as they did as brothers Otto and Benjamin Miessner had almost completed a similar instrument with the same name.
Theremin's mentors during this time were some of society's foremost scientists, composers, and musical theorists, including composer Joseph Schillinger and physicist (and amateur violinist) Albert Einstein.
At this time, Theremin worked closely with fellow Soviet émigré and theremin virtuoso Clara Rockmore (née Reisenberg). Theremin had several times
proposed to her, but she chose to marry attorney Robert Rockmore, and thereafter used his name professionally.
Federal Bureau of Prisons hired Theremin to build a metal detector for Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary.
Theremin was interested in a role for the theremin in dance music. He developed performance locations that could automatically react to dancers' movements with varied patterns of sound and light.
The Soviet consulate had apparently demanded he divorce Katia. Afterwards, while working with the American Negro Ballet Company, the inventor married a young African-American prima ballerina Lavinia Williams. Their marriage caused shock and disapproval in his social circles, but the ostracized couple remained together.
Return to the Soviet Union
Theremin abruptly returned to the Soviet Union in 1938. At the time, the reasons for his return were unclear; some claimed that he was homesick, while others believed that he had been kidnapped by Soviet officials. Beryl Campbell, one of Theremin's dancers, said his wife Lavinia "called to say that he had been kidnapped from his studio" and that "some Russians had come in" and that she felt that he was going to be spirited out of the country.
Many years later, it was revealed that Theremin had returned to his native land due to tax and financial difficulties in the United States. However, Theremin himself once told Bulat Galeyev that he decided to leave himself because he was anxious about the approaching war. Shortly after he returned he was imprisoned in the Butyrka prison and later sent to work in the Kolyma gold mines. Although rumors of his execution were widely circulated and published, Theremin was put to work in a sharashka (a secret laboratory in the Gulag camp system), together with Andrei Tupolev, Sergei Korolev and other well-known scientists and engineers. The Soviet Union rehabilitated him in 1956.
Espionage
During his work at the sharashka, where he was put in charge of other workers, Theremin created the Buran eavesdropping system. A precursor to the modern laser microphone, it worked by using a low-power infrared beam from a distance to detect sound vibrations in glass windows. Lavrentiy Beria, the head of the secret police organization NKVD (the predecessor of the KGB), used the Buran device to spy on the British, French and US embassies in Moscow. According to Galeyev, Beria also spied on Stalin; Theremin kept some of the tapes in his flat. In 1947, Theremin was awarded the Stalin prize for inventing this advance in Soviet espionage technology.
Theremin invented another listening device called The Thing, hidden in a replica of the Great Seal of the United States carved in wood. In 1945, Soviet school children presented the concealed bug to the U.S. Ambassador as a "gesture of friendship" to the USSR's World War II ally. It hung in the ambassador’s residential office in Moscow and intercepted confidential conversations there during the first seven years of the Cold War, until it was accidentally discovered in 1952.
Later life
After his release from the sharashka in 1947, Theremin volunteered to remain working with the KGB until 1966. By 1947 Theremin had remarried, to Maria Guschina, his third wife, and they had two children: Lena and Natalia.
Theremin worked at the Moscow Conservatory of Music for 10 years where he taught, and built theremins, electronic cellos and some terpsitones (another invention of Theremin). There he was discovered by Harold Schonberg, the chief music critic of The New York Times, who was visiting the Conservatory. But when an article by Schonberg appeared mentioning Theremin, the Conservatory's Managing Director declared that "electricity is not good for music; electricity is to be used for electrocution" and had his instruments removed from the Conservatory. Further electronic music projects were banned, and Theremin was summarily dismissed.
In the 1970s, Leon Theremin was a Professor of Physics at Moscow State University (Department of Acoustics) developing his inventions and supervising graduate students.
After 51 years in the Soviet Union Theremin started travelling, first visiting France in June 1989 and then the United States in 1991, each time accompanied by his daughter Natalia. Theremin was brought to New York by filmmaker Steven M. Martin where he was reunited with Clara Rockmore. He also made a demonstration concert at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague in early 1993 before dying in Moscow on Wednesday 3 November 1993 at the age of 97.
Family
Katia (Ekaterina Pavlovna) Konstantinova, first spouse
Lavinia Williams, second spouse (no children)
Maria Gushina, third spouse
Elena "Lena" Theremin - daughter;
Natalia Theremin - daughter;
Maria "Masha" Alekseyevna Theremin - granddaughter;
Olga Theremin - granddaughter;
Peter Theremin - great-grandson.
Media
The feature-length documentary film, Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey was released in 1993.
His life story and his Great Seal bug invention were featured in a 2012 episode of the Dark Matters: Twisted But True.
In 2000, University of Illinois Press published Theremin: Ether Music and Espionage by Albert Glinsky, with a foreword by Robert Moog.
In 2014, Canadian writer Sean Michaels published the novel Us Conductors, which was inspired by the relationship between Leon Theremin and Clara Rockmore. The novel won the 2014 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Inventions
Theremin (1920)
Burglar alarm, or "Signalling Apparatus" which used the Theremin effect (1920s).
Electromechanical television – Nipkow disk with mirrors instead of slots (ca. 1925).
Terpsitone – platform that converts dance movements into tones (1932).
Theremin cello – an electronic cello with no strings and no bow, using a plastic fingerboard, a handle for volume and two knobs for sound shaping (ca. 1930).
Keyboard theremin (ca. 1930), a small keyboard "with hornlike tones".
Rhythmicon – world's first drum machine (1931).
The Buran eavesdropping device (1947 or earlier).
The Great Seal bug, also known as "The Thing" – one of the first passive covert listening devices; first used by the USSR for spying (1945 or earlier). It is considered a predecessor of RFID technology.
See also
Spharophon, a Theremin-like instrument made by Jörg Mager around 1921
Lee de Forest, inventor of the amplifying vacuum tube
The Trautonium, an early electronic instrument contemporary with the theremin invented by Friedrich Trautwein and later developed by Oskar Sala
Maurice Martenot, inventor of the Ondes Martenot, a keyboard-based instrument using the heterodyning method
Robert Moog
Raymond Scott
Notes
References
Sources
Linked from LMJ 6
copied here Theremin Vox - An Interview with Leon Theremin
Sections translated by Felix Eder from the Russian originals in:
External links
Andrey Smirnov – theremin sensors workshop (selected demonstrations of Theremin sensors and laser bugging.) Retrieved 2009-09-11
Theremin Centre, Moscow, holds Lev Sergeivitch Termen archives (Russian only)
1896 births
1993 deaths
Soviet engineers
Soviet inventors
Soviet musicians
Inventors of musical instruments
T
Sharashka inmates
Stalin Prize winners
Moscow State University faculty
Russian people of French descent
Russian people of German descent
People from Saint Petersburg
Burials at Kuntsevo Cemetery
20th-century Russian musicians
Soviet expatriates in the United States |
18572 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear%20prediction | Linear prediction | Linear prediction is a mathematical operation where future values of a discrete-time signal are estimated as a linear function of previous samples.
In digital signal processing, linear prediction is often called linear predictive coding (LPC) and can thus be viewed as a subset of filter theory. In system analysis, a subfield of mathematics, linear prediction can be viewed as a part of mathematical modelling or optimization.
The prediction model
The most common representation is
where is the predicted signal value, the previous observed values, with , and the predictor coefficients. The error generated by this estimate is
where is the true signal value.
These equations are valid for all types of (one-dimensional) linear prediction. The differences are found in the way the predictor coefficients are chosen.
For multi-dimensional signals the error metric is often defined as
where is a suitable chosen vector norm. Predictions such as are routinely used within Kalman filters and smoothers to estimate current and past signal values, respectively.
Estimating the parameters
The most common choice in optimization of parameters is the root mean square criterion which is also called the autocorrelation criterion. In this method we minimize the expected value of the squared error , which yields the equation
for 1 ≤ j ≤ p, where R is the autocorrelation of signal xn, defined as
,
and E is the expected value. In the multi-dimensional case this corresponds to minimizing the L2 norm.
The above equations are called the normal equations or Yule-Walker equations. In matrix form the equations can be equivalently written as
where the autocorrelation matrix is a symmetric, Toeplitz matrix with elements , the vector is the autocorrelation vector , and , the parameter vector.
Another, more general, approach is to minimize the sum of squares of the errors defined in the form
where the optimisation problem searching over all must now be constrained with .
On the other hand, if the mean square prediction error is constrained to be unity and the prediction error equation is included on top of the normal equations, the augmented set of equations is obtained as
where the index ranges from 0 to , and is a matrix.
Specification of the parameters of the linear predictor is a wide topic and a large number of other approaches have been proposed. In fact, the autocorrelation method is the most common and it is used, for example, for speech coding in the GSM standard.
Solution of the matrix equation is computationally a relatively expensive process. The Gaussian elimination for matrix inversion is probably the oldest solution but this approach does not efficiently use the symmetry of . A faster algorithm is the Levinson recursion proposed by Norman Levinson in 1947, which recursively calculates the solution. In particular, the autocorrelation equations above may be more efficiently solved by the Durbin algorithm.
In 1986, Philippe Delsarte and Y.V. Genin proposed an improvement to this algorithm called the split Levinson recursion, which requires about half the number of multiplications and divisions. It uses a special symmetrical property of parameter vectors on subsequent recursion levels. That is, calculations for the optimal predictor containing terms make use of similar calculations for the optimal predictor containing terms.
Another way of identifying model parameters is to iteratively calculate state estimates using Kalman filters and obtaining maximum likelihood estimates within expectation–maximization algorithms.
For equally-spaced values, a polynomial interpolation is a linear combination of the known values. If the discrete time signal is estimated to obey a polynomial of degree then the predictor coefficients are given by the corresponding row of the triangle of binomial transform coefficients. This estimate might be suitable for a slowly varying signal with low noise. The predictions for the first few values of are
See also
Autoregressive model
Linear predictive analysis
Minimum mean square error
Prediction interval
Rasta filtering
References
Further reading
External links
PLP and RASTA (and MFCC, and inversion) in Matlab
Signal estimation
Statistical forecasting |
18574 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leto | Leto | In Greek mythology, Leto ( Lētṓ; Λατώ, Lātṓ in Doric Greek) is the mother of Apollo and Artemis. She is the daughter of the Titans Coeus and Phoebe, and the sister of Asteria.
In the Olympian scheme, Zeus is the father of her twins, Apollo and Artemis, which Leto conceived after her hidden beauty accidentally caught the eye of Zeus. Classical Greek myths record little about Leto other than her pregnancy and search for a place where she could give birth to Apollo and Artemis, since Hera in her jealousy caused all lands to shun her. She eventually found an island that was not attached to the ocean floor, therefore it was not considered land and she could give birth. Once Apollo and Artemis are grown, Leto withdraws, to remain a matronly figure upon Olympus, her part already played.
In Roman mythology, Leto's Roman equivalent is Latona, a Latinization of her name, influenced by Etruscan Letun.
Etymology
There are several explanations for the origin of the goddess and the meaning of her name. Older sources speculated that the name is related to the Greek λήθη lḗthē (lethe, oblivion) and λωτός lotus (the fruit that brings oblivion to those who eat it). It would thus mean "the hidden one".
In 20th-century sources Leto is traditionally derived from Lycian lada, "wife", as her earliest cult was centered in Lycia. Lycian lada may also be the origin of the Greek name Λήδα Leda. Other scholars (Paul Kretschmer, Erich Bethe, Pierre Chantraine and R. S. P. Beekes) have suggested a Pre-Greek origin.
Origins
Leto was identified from the fourth century onwards as the principal local mother goddess of Anatolian Lycia, as the region became Hellenized. In Greek inscriptions, the children of Leto are referred to as the "national gods" of the country. Her sanctuary, the Letoon near Xanthos, predated Hellenic influence in the region, however, united the Lycian confederacy of city-states. The Hellenes of Kos also claimed Leto as their own. Another sanctuary, more recently identified, was at Oenoanda in the north of Lycia. There was a further Letoon at Delos.
Worship
Lycian Letoon
Leto was intensely worshipped in Lycia, Anatolia, where worship was particularly strong and widespread. In Delos and Athens she was worshipped primarily as an adjunct to her children. Herodotus reported a temple to her in Egypt supposedly attached to a floating island called "Khemmis" in Buto, which also included a temple to an Egyptian god Greeks identified by interpretatio graeca as Apollo. There, Herodotus was given to understand, the goddess whom Greeks recognised as Leto was worshipped in the form of Wadjet, the cobra-headed goddess of Lower Egypt.
Mainland Greece
Leto had a temple in Attica as well as an altar, along with her children Apollo and Artemis in the village Zoster. Pausanias also described statues of Leto and her twins in Megara. Leto was worshipped in Boeotia in her children's temples. In Phocis, she was revered in Delphi, sacred to her son Apollo. She also had a temple in Cirrha. In Argolis, Leto had a sanctuary with statues made by Praxiteles in Argos, and images of her were also found on the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia, near Argos. Leto was also revered in Sparta and the rest of Laconia. Leto also had a sanctuary in Mantineia, Arcadia.
Aegean Islands
Leto was usually not worshipped on her own account, but in conjunction with her children, especially in the island Delos, her chief center of worship and birthplace of her son Apollo as well as his sacred island, where she was represented in temple by a shapeless wooden image, in a Letoum situated in a plain. Sacrifices to Artemis and Apollo were also made in Leto's name as well. Poseidon agreed with Leto that she would have Delos, while he got to keep the island of Kelauria. Leto was also worshipped in the island of Rhodes. She might have had a cult center in Lesbos as well. Leto was also worshipped in Crete, whether one of "certain Cretan goddesses, or Greek goddesses in their Cretan form, influenced by the Minoan goddess". Veneration of a local Leto is attested at Phaistos (where it is purported that she gave birth to Apollo and Artemis at the islands known today as the Paximadia (also known as Letoai in ancient Crete) and at Lato, which bore her name. As Leto Phytia she was a mother-deity.
Epithets
Pindar calls the goddess Leto Chryselakatos, an epithet that was attached to her daughter Artemis as early as Homer. "The conception of a goddess enthroned like a queen and equipped with a spindle seems to have originated in Asiatic worship of the Great Mother", O. Brendel notes, but a lucky survival of an inscribed inventory of her temple on Delos, where she was the central figures of the Delian trinity, records her cult image as sitting on a wooden throne, clothed in a linen chiton and a linen himation.
Mythology
Family and attributes
Leto is the daughter of the Titans Phoebe and Coeus.
Her sister is Asteria, who is, by the Titan Perses, the mother of Hecate.
Leto is also sometimes called the daughter of Coeus with no mother specified. The island of Kos is claimed to be her birthplace. However, Diodorus Siculus states clearly that Leto was born in Hyperborea and not in Kos.
Hesiod describes Leto as "always mild, kind to men and to the deathless gods, mild from the beginning," the gentlest goddess in all Olympus. Plato also makes references to Leto's softness when trying to link etymologically her name to the word ἐθελήμονα ("willing", i.e. to assist those asking for her help), as well as λεῖον ("mild"). Next to Demeter, Leto was the most celebrated mother of the ancient world.
Hesiod describes Leto as "dark-gowned" and the Orphic Hymn 35 to Leto describes her as "dark-veiled" and "goddess who gave birth to twins" (θεός διδυμοτόκος). In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, she is described as golden-haired.
Birth of Artemis and Apollo
Childbirth
According to Hyginus, when Hera, the goddess of marriage and family, and the wife of Zeus, discovered that Leto was pregnant by Zeus, Hera banned Leto from giving birth on "terra firma", the mainland, any island at sea, or any place under the sun. But Poseidon brought the island of Ortygia up to a higher position; it was later called the island of Delos. There Leto, clinging to an olive tree, bore Apollo and Artemis after four days.
According to the Bibliotheca, "But Latona for her intrigue with Zeus was hunted by Hera over the whole earth, till she came to Delos and brought forth first Artemis, by the help of whose midwifery she afterwards gave birth to Apollo."
Antoninus Liberalis hints that Leto came down from Hyperborea in the guise of a she-wolf, or that she sought out the "wolf-country" of Lycia, formerly called Tremilis, which she renamed to honour wolves that had befriended her. Another late source, Aelian, also links Leto with wolves and Hyperboreans:
Wolves are not easily delivered of their young, only after twelve days and twelve nights, for the people of Delos maintain that this was the length of time that it took Leto to travel from the Hyperboreoi to Delos.
Leto found the barren floating island of Delos, still bearing its archaic name of Asterios, which was neither mainland nor a real island and gave birth there, promising the island wealth from the worshippers who would flock to the obscure birthplace of the splendid god who was to come. As a gesture of gratitude, Delos was secured with four pillars and later became sacred to Apollo.
Callimachus wrote that it is remarkable that Leto brought forth Artemis, the elder twin, without travail.
According to the Homeric Hymn 3 to Delian Apollo, Leto, having arrived at Delos, labored for nine nights and nine days, in the presence of Dione, Rhea, Ichnaea, Themis and the sea-goddess Amphitrite. Only Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, was not present; she, unaware of the situation, was with jealous Hera on Olympus. Her absence, which was preventing Leto from giving birth, kept her in labor for nine days. On the ninth day, Eileithyia was sent for by the messenger goddess Iris, who persuaded her with a necklace and brought her to Delos. As soon as Eileithyia arrived, Apollo was born, and was given ambrosia and nectar by Themis, rather than breastmilk.
According to the Homeric Hymn and the Orphic Hymn 35 to Leto, Artemis was born on the island of Ortygia before Apollo was on Delos. Stephanus of Byzantium also states that Artemis was born before Apollo, however he claims that she was born at Corissus.
Witnesses at the birth of Apollo
According to the Homeric hymn, the goddesses who assembled to witness the birth of Apollo were responding to a public occasion in the rites of a dynasty, where the authenticity of the child must be established beyond doubt from the first moment. The dynastic rite of the witnessed birth must have been familiar to the hymn's hearers. The dynasty that is so concerned about being authenticated in this myth is the new dynasty of Zeus and the Olympian Pantheon, and the goddesses at Delos who bear witness to the rightness of the birth are the great goddesses of the old order. Demeter was not present and Aphrodite was not either, but Rhea attended. The goddess Dione (her name simply means "divine" or "she-Zeus") is sometimes taken by later mythographers as a mere feminine form of Zeus (see entry Dodona). If that was the case, she would not have assembled there.
Chthonic assailants
Leto was threatened and assailed in her wanderings by chthonic monsters of the ancient earth and old ways, and these became the enemies of Apollo and Artemis. One was the giant Tityos, a phallic being who grew so vast that he split his mother's womb and had to be carried to term by Gaia herself. He attempted to rape Leto near Delphi under the orders of Hera, but was laid low by the arrows of Apollo and/or Artemis, as Pindar recalled in a Pythian ode.
Another ancient earth creature that had to be overcome was the dragon Python, which lived in a cleft of the mother-rock beneath Delphi and beside the Castalian Spring. Apollo slew it but had to do penance and be cleansed afterward, since though Python was a child of Gaia, it was necessary that the ancient Delphic Oracle passed to the protection of the new god.
Involvement in wars
Leto took part in the Trojan War, on the Trojans' side, along with her children Apollo and Artemis. When Apollo saved Aeneas, he brought him to one of his own temples in Pergamus, where he was healed by Artemis and Leto. Later, when the gods battle each other, Leto supports the Trojans, standing opposite of Hermes. After witnessing Hera beat Artemis with her own bow, and Artemis fleeing in tears, Hermes refuses to challenge Leto, encouraging her to simply tell everyone she beat him fair and square. Leto picks up Artemis' bow and arrows and runs after her crying daughter. A scholium on the Iliad claims to report Theagenes' interpretation of the gods' battle. According to the scholium, Hermes here represents reason, rationality (λόγος, "logos") as opposed to Leto, who stands in for forgetfulness (λήθη, "lethe", perhaps a wordplay on Leto's name).
Leto fought alongside the other gods during the Gigantomachy, as evidenced from her depiction on the east frieze of the Pergamon Altar, fighting a Giant between her children Artemis and Apollo; None of the other Gigantomachy depictions includes Leto, although her presence is conjectured in a missing section of the Siphnian frieze.
When the giant Typhon attacked Olympus, all the gods transformed into animals and fled to Egypt terrified, or alternatively Typhon attacked them once they had assembled in Egypt in great numbers. Leto turned into a shrew mouse.
Favour myths
After Orion's sight was restored, he met with Artemis and Leto and joined them in hunting, where he bragged about being such a great hunter he could kill every animal on earth, angering Gaia who sent a giant scorpion to kill him. In one version, Orion dies after pushing Leto out of the scorpion's way. Afterwards, Leto (and Artemis) placed Orion among the stars (the constellation Orion).
Clinis was a rich Babylonian man who deeply respected Apollo. Having witnessed the Hyperboreans sacrifice donkeys to Apollo, he meant to do the same, only to be prohibited by the god himself under pain of death. Clinis obeyed and sent the donkeys away, but two of his sons proceeded with the sacrifice. Apollo, enraged, drove the donkeys mad which then began to devour the entire family. Leto and Artemis felt sorry for Clinis, his third son and his daughter, who had done nothing to deserve that. Apollo allowed his mother and sister to save those three by changing them into birds before they could be killed.
In Crete lived a couple, Galatea and Lamprus. When Galatea fell pregnant, Lamprus warned her that if the child turned out to be female, he would expose it. When Galatea gave birth, it proved indeed to be a girl. Galatea, fearing her husband, lied to him, telling him it was a boy she named Leucippus. But as years passed, Leucippus grew to be an exceptional beautiful girl, and her true sex could not be concealed. Galatea fled to the temple of Leto, and prayed to the goddess. Leto took pity in mother and child, and changed Leucippus into a boy. To celebrate this, the people at Phaestus sacrificed to Leto Phytia.
In one version, Leto, along with her daughter Artemis, stood before Zeus with tearful eyes while her son Apollo pleaded with him to release Prometheus (the god who had stolen fire from the gods, give them to humans, and was subsequently chained in the Caucasus with an eagle feasting on his liver each day for punishment) from his eternal torment. Zeus, moved by Artemis and Leto's tears and Apollo's words, agreed instantly and commanded Heracles to free Prometheus.
When Apollo killed the Cyclopes in revenge for Zeus slaying his son Asclepius, a gifted healer who could bring the dead back to life, with a thunderbolt, Zeus was about to punish Apollo by throwing him into Tartarus, but Leto interceded for him, and Apollo became bondman to a mortal instead.
Praxilla wrote that Carneus was a son of Zeus and Europa, and that he was brought up by Apollo and Leto.
Wrath myths
Leto's introduction into Lycia was met with resistance. There, according to Ovid's Metamorphoses, when Leto was wandering the earth after giving birth to Apollo and Artemis, she attempted to drink water from a pond in Lycia. The peasants there refused to allow her to do so by stirring the mud at the bottom of the pond. Leto turned them into frogs for their inhospitality, forever doomed to swim in the murky waters of ponds and rivers.
Niobe was a queen of Thebes and wife of Amphion of whom Sappho wrote that "Lato and Niobe were most dear friends", although she is most famous for boasting of her superiority to Leto because she had fourteen children (Niobids), seven sons and seven daughters, while Leto had only two. For her hubris, Apollo killed her sons as they practiced athletics, and Artemis killed her daughters. Apollo and Artemis used poisoned arrows to kill them, though according to some versions a number of the Niobids were spared. Other sources say that Artemis spared one of the girls (Chloris, usually). Amphion, at the sight of his dead sons, either killed himself or was killed by Zeus after swearing revenge. A devastated Niobe fled to Mount Sipylus in Asia Minor and either turned to stone as she wept or killed herself. Her tears formed the river Achelous. Zeus had turned all the people of Thebes to stone so no one buried the Niobids until the ninth day after their death when the gods themselves entombed them. The Niobe narrative appears in Ovid's Metamorphoses where Leto has demanded the women of Thebes to go to her temple and burn incense. Niobe, queen of Thebes, enters in the midst of the worship and insults the goddess, claiming that having beauty, better parentage and more children than Leto, she is more fit to be worshipped than the goddess. To punish this insolence, Leto begs Apollo and Artemis to avenge her against Niobe and to uphold her honor. Obedient to their mother, the twins slay Niobe's seven sons and seven daughters, leaving her childless, and her husband Amphion kills himself. Niobe is unable to move from grief and seemingly turns to marble, though she continues to weep, and her body is transported to a high mountain peak in her native land.
Other Works
Aelian writes that the rooster is Leto's sacred animal as he was by her side when she gave birth to her twins; this is why ancient women would have a rooster at hand while delivering their children, believing the bird to promote an easy childbirth.
Satirical author Lucian of Samosata featured Leto in one of his Dialogues of the Gods. There, Hera mocks Leto over the children she gave Zeus, downplaying Artemis and Apollo's importance while bringing up their flaws (such as the flaying of Marsyas, or the killing of the Niobids). Leto calmly tells Hera that she might feel confident belittling everyone due to her status as queen of the gods as the wife of Zeus, but she will cry and sob all the same the next time he'll abandon her for the love of some mortal woman.
In one of his Idylls, poet Theocritus asks Leto to bless the newlyweds Menelaus and Helen with children.
In Orphism, there were several "theogonies" which, similar to Hesiod's Theogony, told myths explaining and describing the origin of the world and the gods.
These texts, though now no longer extant in their entirety, survive in fragments.
One of these works, the "Rhapsodic Theogony", or Rhapsodies, (first century BC/AD) apparently called Leto the mother of Hecate.
A fragment of Aeschylus possibly has Leto as the mother of the moon goddess Selene.
Art
In ancient art, Leto was a common subject in vase painting, but she was hard to distinguish due to not having any special attributes. Her capture by Tityus and subsequent rescue by Artemis and Apollo was also a very popular subject.
This scene, usually called Latona and the Lycian Peasants or Latona and the Frogs, was popular in Northern Mannerist art, allowing a combination of mythology with landscape painting and peasant scenes, thus combining history painting and genre painting. It is represented in the central fountain, the Bassin de Latone, in the garden terrace of Versailles. In later art, this scene with the Lycian frogs is exclusively the one Leto appeared in.
In Crete, at the city of Dreros, Spyridon Marinatos uncovered an eighth-century post-Minoan hearth house temple in which there were found three unique figures of Apollo, Artemis and Leto made of brass sheeting hammered over a shaped core (sphyrelata). Walter Burkert notes that in Phaistos she appears in connection with an initiation cult.
Legacy
The asteroid 68 Leto
The minor planet 639 Latona were named after this Greek goddess.
Genealogy
Notes
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Homer, The Iliad with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, Ph.D. in two volumes. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Hesiod, Theogony, with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Cambridge, MA.,Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. Homeric Hymns. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914.
Hymn to Apollo (3), in "The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Hymn to Hermes (4), in The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Aeschylus, Persians. Seven against Thebes. Suppliants. Prometheus Bound. Edited and translated by Alan H. Sommerstein. Loeb Classical Library No. 145. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. . Online version at Harvard University Press.
Aeschylus, The Eumenides in Aeschylus, with an English translation by Herbert Weir Smyth, Ph. D. in two volumes, Vol 2, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1926, Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Herodotus, Histories, A. D. Godley (translator), Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1920; . Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Plato, Cratylus in Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 12 translated by Harold N. Fowler, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1925. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Plato, Critias in Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 9 translated by W.R.M. Lamb, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1925. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Theocritus in Greek Bucolic Poets. Edited and translated by Neil Hopkinson. Loeb Classical Library 28. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1912. Online text available at theoi.com.
Callimachus. Hymns, translated by Alexander William Mair (1875–1928). London: William Heinemann; New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons. 1921. Online version at the Topos Text Project.
Antoninus Liberalis, The Metamorphoses of Antoninus Liberalis translated by Francis Celoria (Routledge 1992). Online version at the Topos Text Project.
Apollodorus, Apollodorus, The Library, Ed. & Trans. by Sir James George Frazer, Loeb Classical Library, No. 121–122, 2 vols. (London: W. Heinemann, 1921). Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, Volume III: Books 4.59-8, translated by C. H. Oldfather, Loeb Classical Library No. 340. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1939. . Online version at Harvard University Press. Online version by Bill Thayer.
Pausanias, Pausanias Description of Greece with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Strabo, The Geography of Strabo. Edition by H.L. Jones. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Ovid, Ovid's Fasti: With an English translation by Sir James George Frazer, London: W. Heinemann LTD; Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1959. Internet Archive.
Ovid, Metamorphoses translated by Brookes More (1859–1942). Boston, Cornhill Publishing Co. 1922. Online version at the Topos Text Project.
Hyginus, Fabulae from The Myths of Hyginus translated and edited by Mary Grant. University of Kansas Publications in Humanistic Studies. Online version at the Topos Text Project.
Gaius Julius Hyginus, Astronomica from The Myths of Hyginus translated and edited by Mary Grant. University of Kansas Publications in Humanistic Studies. Online version at the Topos Text Project.
Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica translated by Mozley, J H. Loeb Classical Library Volume 286. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1928. Online version at Theoi.com.
Aelian, On Animals, Volume I: Books 1-5. Translated by A. F. Scholfield. Loeb Classical Library 446. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958.
Lucian, Dialogues of the Gods; translated by Fowler, H W and F G. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. 1905.
Secondary Sources
Athanassakis, Apostolos N., and Benjamin M. Wolkow, The Orphic Hymns, Johns Hopkins University Press; owlerirst Printing edition (May 29, 2013). . Google Books.
Barker, Andrew, Greek musical writings: I, The Musician and his Art, Cambridge University Press, 1984, .
Bell, Robert E., Women of Classical Mythology: A Biographical Dictionary, ABC-CLIO 1991, . Internet Archive.
Caldwell, Richard, Hesiod's Theogony, Focus Publishing/R. Pullins Company (June 1, 1987). .
Campbell, David A., Greek Lyric, Volume IV: Bacchylides, Corinna, Loeb Classical Library No. 461. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1992. . Online version at Harvard University Press.
Fontenrose, Joseph Eddy, Python: A Study of Delphic Myth and Its Origins, University of California Press, 1959. .
Gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, Two volumes: (Vol. 1), (Vol. 2).
Grimal, Pierre, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Wiley-Blackwell, 1996. .
Hard, Robin, The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H.J. Rose's "Handbook of Greek Mythology", Psychology Press, 2004, . Google Books.
Johnston, Sarah I., "20. Hecate, Leto's Daughter, in OF 317", in Tracing Orpheus: Studies of Orphic Fragments, edited by de Jáuregui, Miguel Herrero, et al. De Gruyter, 2012. . Online version at De Gruyter. Google Books.
Kerényi, Karl (1951), The Gods of the Greeks, Thames and Hudson, London, 1951.
Kern, Otto. Orphicorum Fragmenta, Berlin, 1922. Internet Archive.
Littleton, C. Scott, Gods, Goddesses and Mythology, vol. 6, Marshall Cavendish 2005, . Google books.
Meisner, Dwayne A., Orphic Tradition and the Birth of the Gods, Oxford University Press, 2018. .
Ridgway, Brunilde Sismondo, Hellenistic Sculpture II: The Styles of ca. 200-100 B.C., University of Wisconsin Press, 2000. . Google Books.
Sommerstein, Alan H., Aeschylus: Fragments, Edited and translated by Alan H. Sommerstein, Loeb Classical Library No. 505. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2009. . Online version at Harvard University Press.
Smith, William, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London (1873). Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Trevelyan, R. C., A Translation Of The Idylls Of Theocritus, Cambridge University Press 1947. Internet Archive.
Tripp, Edward, Crowell's Handbook of Classical Mythology, Thomas Y. Crowell Co; First edition (June 1970). .
West, M. L. (1983), The Orphic Poems'', Clarendon Press Oxford, 1983. .
External links
LETO on The Theoi Project
LETO on Greek Mythology Link
LETO from greekmythology.com
Pictures of the sanctuary for Leto at Letoum
Greek goddesses
Mother goddesses
Titans (mythology)
Divine women of Zeus
Metamorphoses characters
Deities in the Iliad
Characters in Greek mythology
Deeds of Poseidon
Deeds of Zeus
Women in Greek mythology
Deeds of Apollo
Deeds of Artemis
Childhood goddesses |
18576 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La%20Malinche | La Malinche | Marina or Malintzin ( 1500 – 1529), more popularly known as La Malinche , a Nahua woman from the Mexican Gulf Coast, became known for contributing to the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire (1519–1521), by acting as an interpreter, advisor, and intermediary for the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés.
She was one of 20 enslaved women given to the Spaniards in 1519 by the natives of Tabasco. Cortés chose her as a consort, and she later gave birth to his first son, Martín – one of the first Mestizos (people of mixed European and Indigenous American ancestry).
La Malinche's reputation has shifted over the centuries, as various peoples evaluate her role against their own societies' changing social and political perspectives. Especially after the Mexican War of Independence, which led to Mexico's independence from Spain in 1821, dramas, novels and paintings portrayed her as an evil or scheming temptress. In Mexico today, La Malinche remains a powerful icon - understood in various and often conflicting aspects as the embodiment of treachery, the quintessential victim, or the symbolic mother of the new Mexican people. The term malinchista refers to a disloyal compatriot, especially in Mexico.
Name
Malinche is known by many names. She was baptized as a Catholic by the Spaniards and then named "Marina", and was referred to as such by the Spaniards, often preceded with honorific . The Nahua called her 'Malintzin', derived from 'Malina' (a Nahuatl rendering of her Spanish name) and the honorific suffix . According to historian Camilla Townsend, the vocative suffix is sometimes added at the end of the name, giving the form Malintzine, which would be shortened to 'Malintze', and heard by the Spaniards as 'Malinche'. Another possibility is that the Spaniards simply did not hear the 'whispered' of the name Malintzin.
Her name at birth is unknown. Since at least the 19th century, she is believed to have originally been named 'Malinalli' (Nahuatl for 'grass'), after the day sign on which she was supposedly born. Accordingly, Marina was chosen as her Christian name because of its phonetic similarity. Modern historians have rejected such mythic suggestions. They note that the Nahua associate the day sign 'Malinalli' with bad or 'evil' connotations, and they are known to avoid using such day signs as personal names. Moreover, there would be little reason for the Spaniards to ask the natives what their personal names were before they were christened with new Catholic saints' names.
The title 'Tenepal' was often assumed to be part of her name. In the annotation made by Nahua historian Chimalpahin on his copy of Gómara's biography of Cortés, 'Malintzin Tenepal' is used repeatedly in reference to Malinche. According to linguist and historian Frances Karttunen, Tenepal is probably derived from the Nahuatl root , which means “lip-possessor, one who speaks vigorously”, or “one who has a facility with words”, and postposition , which means “by means of”. Historian James Lockhart, however, suggests that 'Tenepal' might be derived from or "somebody's tongue". In any case, 'Malintzin Tenepal' appears to have been intended as a calque of Spanish , with ("the interpreter", literally "the tongue") being her Spanish sobriquet.
Life
Background
Malinche's birthdate is unknown, but it is estimated to be around 1500, and likely no later than 1505. She was born in an that was either a part or a tributary of a Mesoamerican state whose center was located on the bank of the Coatzacoalcos River to the east of the Aztec Empire. Records disagree about the exact name of the where she was born. In three unrelated legal proceedings that occurred not long after her death, various witnesses who claimed to have known her personally, including her daughter, said that she was born in Olutla. The of her grandson also mentioned Olutla as her birthplace. Her daughter added that the of Olutla was related to Tetiquipaque, although the nature of this relationship is unclear. In the Florentine Codex, Malinche's homeland is mentioned as "Teticpac", which is most likely the singular form of Tetiquipaque. Gómara writes that she came from "Uiluta" (presumably a variant of Olutla). He departs from other sources by writing that it was in the region of Jalisco. Díaz, on the other hand, gives "Painalla" as her birthplace.
Her family is reported to have been of noble background; Gómara writes that her father was related to a local ruler, while Díaz recounts that her parents were rulers. Townsend notes that while Olutla at the time probably had a Popoluca majority, the ruling elite, which Malinche supposedly belonged to, would have been Nahuatl-speaking. Another hint that supports her noble origin is her apparent ability to understand the courtly language of (“lordly speech”), a Nahuatl register that is significantly different from the commoner's speech and has to be learned. The fact that she was often referred to as a , at the time a term not commonly used in Spain, indicates that she was viewed as a noblewoman. But she may have been given this honorific by the Spanish because of recognition of her important role in the conquest.
Malinche was probably between the ages of 8 and 12 when she was either sold or kidnapped into slavery. Díaz wrote that after her father's death, she was given away to merchants by her mother and stepfather so that their son (Malinche's stepbrother) would have the rights of heir. Scholars, historians and literary critics alike, have cast doubt upon Díaz's account of her origin, in large part due to his strong emphasis on Catholicism throughout his narration of the events.
In particular, historian Sonia Rose de Fuggle analyzes Díaz's over-reliance on polysyndeton (which mimics the sentence structure of a number of Biblical stories) as well as his overarching portrayal of Malinche as an ideal Christian woman. But Townsend believes that it was likely that some of her people were complicit in trafficking her, regardless of the reason. Malinche was taken to Xicalango, a major port city in the region. She was later purchased by a group of Chontal Maya who brought her to the town of Potonchán. It was here that Malinche started to learn the Chontal Maya language, and perhaps also Yucatec Maya. Her acquisition of the language later enabled her to communicate with Jerónimo de Aguilar, another interpreter for Cortes who also spoke Yucatec Maya, as well as his native Spanish.
The Conquest of Mexico
Early in his expedition to Mexico, Cortés was confronted by the Maya at Potonchán. In the ensuing battle, the Mayas suffered significant loss of lives and asked for peace. In the following days, they presented the Spaniards with gifts of food and gold, as well as twenty enslaved women, including Malinche. The women were baptized and distributed among Cortés's men, who expected to use them as servants and sexual objects. Malinche was given to Alonso Hernández Puertocarrero, one of Cortés's captains. He was a first cousin to the count of Cortés's hometown, Medellín.
Malinche's language skills were discovered when the Spaniards encountered the Nahuatl-speaking people at San Juan de Ulúa. Moctezuma's emissaries had come to inspect the peoples, but Aguilar could not understand them. Historian Gómara wrote that, when Cortés realized that Malinche could talk with the emissaries, he promised her “more than liberty” if she would help him find and communicate with Moctezuma. Cortés took Malinche from Puertocarrero. He was later given another Indigenous woman before he returned to Spain.
Aided by Aguilar and Malinche, Cortés talked with Moctezuma's emissaries. The emissaries also brought artists to make paintings of Malinche, Cortés, and the rest of the group, as well as their ships and weapons, to be sent as records for Moctezuma. Díaz later said that the Nahua addressed Cortés as "Malinche"; they apparently took her as a point of reference for the group.
From then on, Malinche worked with Aguilar to bridge communication between the Spaniards and the Nahua; Cortés would speak Spanish with Aguilar, who translated into Yucatec Maya for Malinche, who in turn translated into Nahuatl, before reversing the process. The translation chain grew even longer when, after the emissaries left, the Spaniards met the Totonac, whose language was not understood by either Malinche or Aguilar. There, Malinche asked for Nahuatl interpreters. Karttunen remarks that "it is a wonder any communication was accomplished at all", for Cortés's Spanish words had to be translated into Maya, Nahuatl, and Totonac before reaching the locals, whose answers went back through the same chain. Meeting with the Totonac was how the Spaniards first learned of opponents to Moctezuma.
After founding the town of Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz in order to be freed from the legal restriction of what was supposed to be an exploratory mission, the Spaniards stayed for two months in a nearby Totonac settlement. They secured a formal alliance with the Totonac and prepared for a march toward Tenochtitlan.
The first major polity that they encountered on the way to Tenochtitlan was Tlaxcala. Although the Tlaxcaltec were initially hostile to the Spaniards and their allies, they later permitted the Spaniards to enter the city. The Tlaxcalans negotiated an alliance with the Spaniards through Malinche and Aguilar. Later Tlaxcalan visual records of this meeting feature Malinche as a prominent figure. She appears to bridge communication between the two sides, as the Tlaxcalan presented the Spaniards with gifts of food and noblewomen to cement the alliance. After several days in Tlaxcala, Cortés continued the journey to Tenochtitlan by the way of Cholula. By then he was accompanied by a large number of Tlaxcalan soldiers.
The Spaniards were received at Cholula and housed for several days. The explorers claimed that the Cholulans stopped giving them food, dug secret pits, built a barricade around the city, and hid a large Aztec army in the outskirts to prepare for an attack against the Spaniards. Somehow, the Europeans learned of this and, in a preemptive strike, assembled and massacred the Cholulans. Later accounts claimed that Malinche had uncovered the plot. According to Díaz, she was approached by a Cholulan noblewoman who promised her a marriage to the woman's son if she were to switch sides. Pretending to go along with the suggestion, Malinche was told about the plot, and later reported all the details to Cortés.
In later centuries, this story has often been cited as an example of Malinche's “betrayal” of her people. But modern historians such as Hassig and Townsend have suggested that Malinche's "heroic" discovery of the purported plot was likely already a fabricated story intended to provide Cortés with political justification for his actions, to distant Spanish authorities. In particular, Hassig suggests that Cortés, seeking stronger native alliances leading to the invasion of Tenochtitlan, worked with the Tlaxcalans to coordinate the massacre. Cholula had supported Tlaxcala before joining the Aztec Empire one or two years prior, and losing them as an ally had been a severe blow to the Tlaxcalans. Their state was now completely encircled by the Aztecs. Hassig and other historians assert that Tlaxcalans considered the attack on the Cholulans as a "litmus test" of the Spanish commitment to them.
The combined forces reached Tenochtitlan in early November 1519, where they were met by Moctezuma on a causeway leading to the city. Malinche was in the middle of this event, translating the conversation between Cortés and Moctezuma. Gomara writes that Moctezuma was "speaking through Malinche and Aguilar", although other records indicate that Malinche was already translating directly, as she had quickly learned some Spanish herself. Moctezuma's flowery speech, delivered through Malinche at the meeting, has been claimed by the Spaniards to represent a submission, but this interpretation is not followed by modern historians. The deferential nature of the speech can be explained by Moctezuma's usage of , a Nahuatl register known for its indirection and complex set of reverential affixes. Despite Malinche's apparent ability to understand , it is possible that some nuances were lost in translation. The Spaniards, deliberately or not, may have misinterpreted Moctezuma's words.
Tenochtitlán fell in late 1521 and Marina's son by Cortes, Martín Cortés was born in 1522. During this time Malinche or Marina stayed in a house Cortés built for her in the town of Coyoacán, eight miles south of Tenochtitlán. The Aztec capital city was being redeveloped to serve as Spanish-controlled Mexico City. Cortés took Marina to help quell a rebellion in Honduras in 1524–1526, when she again served as interpreter (she may have known Maya dialects beyond Chontal and Yucatán). While in the mountain town of Orizaba in central Mexico, she married Juan Jaramillo, a Spanish hidalgo. Some contemporary scholars have estimated that she died less than a decade after the conquest of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, at some point before February 1529. She was survived by her son Don Martín, who would be raised primarily by his father's family, and a daughter Doña María, who would be raised by Jaramillo and his second wife Doña Beatriz de Andrada.
Although Martín was Cortés's first-born son and eventual heir, his relation to Marina was poorly documented by prominent Spanish historians such as Francisco López de Gómara. He never referred to Marina by name, even in her work as Cortés's translator. Even during Marina's lifetime, she spent little time with Martín. But many scholars and historians have marked her multiracial child with Cortés as the symbolic beginning of the large mestizo population that developed in Mesoamerica.
Role in the conquest of Mexico
For the conquistadores, having a reliable interpreter was important enough, but there is evidence that Marina's role and influence were larger still. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, a soldier who, as an old man, produced the most comprehensive of the eye-witness accounts, the Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España ("True Story of the Conquest of New Spain"), speaks repeatedly and reverentially of the "great lady" Doña Marina (always using the honorific title Doña). "Without the help of Doña Marina", he writes, "we would not have understood the language of New Spain and Mexico." Rodríguez de Ocaña, another conquistador, relates Cortés' assertion that after God, Marina was the main reason for his success.
The evidence from Indigenous sources is even more interesting, both in the commentaries about her role, and in her prominence in the codex drawings made of conquest events. Although to some Marina may be known as a traitor, she was not viewed as such by all the Tlaxcalan. In some depictions they portrayed her as "larger than life," sometimes larger than Cortés, in rich clothing, and an alliance is shown between her and the Tlaxcalan instead of them and the Spaniards. They respected and trusted her and portrayed her in this light generations after the Spanish conquest.
In the Lienzo de Tlaxcala (History of Tlaxcala), for example, not only is Cortés rarely portrayed without Marina poised by his side, but she is shown at times on her own, seemingly directing events as an independent authority. If she had been trained for court life, as in Díaz's account, her relationship to Cortés may have followed the familiar pattern of marriage among native elite classes. The role of the Nahua wife acquired through an alliance would have been to assist her husband achieve his military and diplomatic objectives.
Today's historians give great credit to Marina's diplomatic skills, with some "almost tempted to think of her as the real conqueror of Mexico." In fact, old conquistadors on various occasions recalled that one of her greatest skills had been her ability to convince other Indians of what she could perceive, that it was useless in the long run to stand against Spanish metal (arms) and Spanish ships. In contrast to earlier parts of Díaz del Castillo's account, after Marina began assisting Cortés, the Spanish were forced into combat on one more occasion.
Had La Malinche not been part of the Conquest of Mexico for her language skills, communication between the Spanish and the Indigenous peoples would have been much harder. La Malinche knew how to speak in different registers and tones among certain Indigenous tribes and classes of people. For the Nahua audiences, she spoke rhetorically, formally, and high-handedly. This shift into formality gave the Nahua the impression that she was a noblewoman who knew what she was talking about.
Image in contemporary Mexico
Malinche's image has become a mythical archetype that Hispanic American artists have represented in various forms of art. Her figure permeates historical, cultural, and social dimensions of Hispanic American cultures. In modern times and in several genres, she is compared with the La Llorona (folklore story of the woman weeping for lost children), and the Mexican soldaderas (women who fought beside men during the Mexican Revolution) for their brave actions.
La Malinche's legacy is one of myth mixed with legend, and the opposing opinions of the Mexican people about the legendary woman. Some see her as a founding figure of the Mexican nation, while others continue to see her as a traitor—as may be assumed from a legend that she had a twin sister who went North, and from the pejorative nickname La Chingada associated with her twin.
Feminist interventions into the figure of Malinche began in 1960s. The work of Rosario Castellanos was particularly significant; Chicanas began to refer to her as a "mother" as they adopted her as symbolism for duality and complex identity. Castellanos's subsequent poem "La Mallinche" recast her not as a traitor but as a victim. Mexican feminists defended Malinche as a woman caught between cultures, forced to make complex decisions, who ultimately served as a mother of a new race.
Today in Mexican Spanish, the words malinchismo and malinchista are used to denounce Mexicans who are perceived as denying their own cultural heritage by preferring foreign cultural expressions.
Some historians believe that La Malinche saved her people from the Aztecs, who held a hegemony throughout the territory and demanded tribute from its inhabitants. Some Mexicans also credit her with having brought Christianity to the New World from Europe, and for having influenced Cortés to be more humane than he would otherwise have been. It is argued, however, that without her help, Cortés would not have been successful in conquering the Aztecs as quickly, giving the Aztec people enough time to adapt to new technology and methods of warfare. From that viewpoint, she is seen as one who betrayed the Indigenous people by siding with the Spaniards. Recently a number of feminist Latinas have decried such a categorization as scapegoating.
President José López Portillo commissioned a sculpture of Cortés, Doña Marina, and their son Martín, which was placed in front of Cortés' house in the Coyoacan section of Mexico City. Once López Portillo left office, the sculpture was removed to an obscure park in the capital.
In popular culture
A reference to La Malinche as Marina is made in the novel The Manuscript Found in Saragossa by the Polish author Jan Potocki, in which she is cursed for yielding her "heart and her country to the hateful Cortez, chief of the sea-brigands."
La Malinche appears in the adventure novel Montezuma's Daughter (1893) by H. Rider Haggard.
Doña Marina appears in the Henry King film adventure Captain from Castile (1947) played Estela Inda.
La Malinche is portrayed as a Christian and protector of her fellow native Mexicans in the novel Tlaloc Weeps for Mexico (1939) by László Passuth, and is the main protagonist in such works as the novels The Golden Princess (1954) by Alexander Baron and Feathered Serpent: A Novel of the Mexican Conquest (2002) by Colin Falconer. In contrast, she is portrayed as a duplicitous traitor in Gary Jennings' novel Aztec (1980). A novel published in 2006 by Laura Esquivel portrays the main character as a pawn of history who becomes Malinche.
In 1949, choreographer José Limón premiered the dance trio "La Milanche" to music by Norman Lloyd. It was the first work created by Limón for his own company, and was based on his memories as a child of Mexican fiestas.
The story of La Malinche is told in Cortez and Marina (1963) by Edison Marshall.
In the 1973 Mexican film Leyendas macabras de la colonia, La Malinche's mummy is in the possession of Luisa, her daughter by Hernán Cortés, while her spirit inhabits a cursed painting.
La Malinche is referred to in the songs "Cortez the Killer" from the 1975 album Zuma by Neil Young, and "La Malinche" by the French band Feu! Chatterton from their 2015 album Ici le jour (a tout enseveli)
In the animated television series The Mysterious Cities of Gold (1982), which chronicles the adventures of a Spanish boy and his companions traveling throughout South America in 1532 to seek the lost city of El Dorado, a woman called Marinche becomes a dangerous adversary. The series was originally produced in Japan, and then translated into English.
In the fictional Star Trek universe, a starship, the USS Malinche, was named for La Malinche, and appeared in the 1997 "For the Uniform" episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. This was done by Hans Beimler, a native of Mexico City, who together with friend Robert Hewitt Wolfe later wrote a screenplay based on La Malinche called The Serpent and the Eagle.
La Malinche is a key character in the opera La Conquista (2005) by Italian composer Lorenzo Ferrero.
Malinalli is the main character in a 2011 historical novel by Helen Heightsman Gordon, Malinalli of the Fifth Sun: The Slave Girl Who Changed the Fate of Mexico and Spain.
Author Octavio Paz traces the root of mestizo and Mexican culture to La Malinche's child with Cortés in The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950). He uses her relation to Cortés symbolically to represent Mexican culture as originating from rape and violation, but also holds Malinche accountable for her "betrayal" of the indigenous population, which Paz claims "the Mexican people have not forgiven."
Malinal is a character in Graham Hancock's series of novels War God: Nights of the Witch (2013) and War God: Return of the Plumed Serpent (2014), which is a fictional story describing the events related to the Hernan Cortés' expedition to Mexico and the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire.
Malinche is a character in Edward Rickford's The Serpent and the Eagle, referred to variously as Dona Marina and Malintze. The depiction of her character was praised by historical novelists and bloggers.
La Malinche appears in the biographical Mexican series Malinche in 2018, where she is portrayed by María Mercedes Coroy.
La Malinche appears in the Amazon Prime series Hernán. She is portrayed by Ishbel Bautista.
Malintzin: The Story of an Enigma. Documentary of 2019 based on the life of La Malinche.
See also
Felipillo
History of Mexico
Pocahontas – a Powhatan woman notable for her interaction as an interpreter for the English colonists of Jamestown, Virginia.
Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire
Women in Mexico
Notes
References
Citations
Bibliography
Further reading
External links
"Cortés girlfriend is not forgiven". The New York Times. accessed 10 June 2019
Hernando Cortés on the Web : Malinche / Doña Marina (resources)
in defense of Malinche
Making Herself Indispensable, Condemned for Surviving: Doña Marina (Part 1)
Making Herself Indispensable, Condemned for Surviving: Doña Marina (Part 2)
La Malinche, an ambivalent interpreter from the past
Leyenda y nacionalismo: alegorías de la derrota en La Malinche y Florinda "La Cava", Spanish-language article by Juan F. Maura comparing La Cava and Mexican Malinche.
1490s births
1500s births
1520s deaths
1550s deaths
16th-century indigenous people of the Americas
16th-century Mexican people
16th-century Mexican women
History of the Aztecs
Indigenous Mexicans
Interpreters
Mexican folklore
National symbols of Mexico
Native American women in warfare
Mexican slaves
Women in 16th-century warfare
Women in the Conquest of Mexico
16th-century slaves |
18577 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lusitania | Lusitania | Lusitania (; ) or Hispania Lusitana was an ancient Iberian Roman province located where modern Portugal (south of the Douro river) and part of western Spain (the present autonomous community of Extremadura and a part of the province of Salamanca) lie. It was named after the Lusitani or Lusitanian people (an Indo-European people).
Its capital was Emerita Augusta (currently Mérida, Spain), and it was initially part of the Roman Republic province of Hispania Ulterior, before becoming a province of its own in the Roman Empire. Romans first came to the territory around the mid-2nd century BC. A war with Lusitanian tribes followed, from 155 to 139 BC. In 27 BC, the province was created.
Lusitania was and is often used as an alternative name for Portugal.
Origin of the name
The etymology of the name of the Lusitani (who gave the Roman province their name) remains unclear. Popular etymology connected the name to a supposed Roman demigod Lusus, whereas some early-modern scholars suggested that Lus was a form of the Celtic Lugus followed by another (unattested) root *tan-, supposed to mean "tribe", while others derived the name from Lucis, an ancient people mentioned in Avienius' Ora Maritima (4th century AD) and from tan (-stan in Iranian), or from tain, meaning "a region" or implying "a country of waters", a root word that formerly meant a prince or sovereign governor of a region.
Ancient Romans, such as Pliny the Elder (Natural History, 3.5) and Varro (116 – 27 BC, cited by Pliny), speculated that the name Lusitania had Roman origins, as when Pliny says "lusum enim Liberi Patris aut lyssam cum eo bacchantium nomen dedisse Lusitaniae et Pana praefectum eius universae" [Lusitania takes its name from the Lusus associated with Bacchus and the Lyssa of his Bacchantes, and Pan is its governor].
Lusus is usually translated as "game" or "play", while lyssa is a borrowing from the Greek λυσσα, "frenzy" or "rage", and sometimes Rage personified; for later poets, Lusus and Lyssa become flesh-and-blood companions (even children) of Bacchus. Luís de Camões' epic Os Lusíadas (1572), which portrays Lusus as the founder of Lusitania, extends these ideas, which have no connection with modern etymology.
In his work, Geography, the classical geographer Strabo (died ca. 24 AD) suggests a change had occurred in the use of the name "Lusitanian". He mentions a group who had once been called "Lusitanians" living north of the Douro river but were called in his day "Callacans".
Lusitanians
The Lusitani, who were Indo-European speakers, established themselves in the region in the 6th century BC, but historians and archeologists are still undecided about their ethnogenesis. Some modern authors consider them to be an indigenous people who were Celticized culturally and possibly also through intermarriage.
The archeologist Scarlat Lambrino defended the position that the Lusitanians were a tribal group of Celtic origin related to the Lusones (a tribe that inhabited the east of Iberia). Some have claimed that both tribes came from the Swiss mountains. Others argue that the evidence points to the Lusitanians being a native Iberian tribe, resulting from intermarriage between different local tribes.
The first area colonized by the Lusitani was probably the Douro valley and the region of Beira Alta (present day Portugal); in Beira, they stayed until they defeated the Celtici and other tribes, then they expanded to cover a territory that reached Estremadura before the arrival of the Romans.
War against Rome
The Lusitani are mentioned for the first time in Livy (218 BC) and are described as fighting for the Carthaginians; they are reported as fighting against Rome in 194 BC, sometimes allied with Celtiberian tribes.
In 179 BC, the praetor Lucius Postumius Albinus celebrated a triumph over the Lusitani, but in 155 BC, on the command of Punicus (Πουνίκου, perhaps a Carthaginian) first and Caesarus (Καίσαρος) after, the Lusitani reached Gibraltar. Here they were defeated by the praetor Lucius Mummius.
From 152 BC onwards, the Roman Republic had difficulties in recruiting soldiers for the wars in Hispania, deemed particularly brutal. In 150 BC, Servius Sulpicius Galba organised a false armistice. While the Lusitani celebrated this new alliance, he massacred them, selling the survivors as slaves; this caused a new rebellion led by Viriathus, who was after many attempts killed by traitors paid by the Romans in 139 BC, after having led a successful guerrilla campaign against Rome and their local allies. Two years after, in 137 BC Decimus Junius Brutus Callaicus led a successful campaign against the Lusitani, reaching as far north as the Minho river.
Romans scored other victories with proconsul Decimus Junius Brutus Callaicus and Gaius Marius (elected in 113 BC), but still the Lusitani resisted with a long guerilla war; they later joined Sertorius' (a renegade Roman General) troops (around 80 BC) and Julius Caesar conducted a successful campaign against them in 61-60 BC, but they were not finally defeated until the reign of Augustus (around 28-24 BC).
Roman province
Division under Augustus (25–20 BC)
With Lusitania (and Asturia and Gallaecia), Rome had completed the conquest of the Iberian peninsula, which was then divided by Augustus (25–20 BC or 16-13 BC) into the eastern and northern Hispania Tarraconensis, the southwestern Hispania Baetica and the western Provincia Lusitana. Originally, Lusitania included the territories of Asturia and Gallaecia, but these were later ceded to the jurisdiction of the new Provincia Tarraconensis and the former remained as Provincia Lusitania et Vettones. Its northern border was along the Douro river, while on its eastern side its border passed through Salmantica (Salamanca) and Caesarobriga (Talavera de la Reina) to the Anas (Guadiana) river.
Between 28 and 24 BC Augustus' military campaigns pacified all Hispania under Roman rule, with the foundation of Roman cities like Asturica Augusta (Astorga) and Bracara Augusta (Braga) to the north, and to the south Emerita Augusta (Mérida) (settled with the emeriti of the Legio V Alaudae and Legio X Gemina legions).
Between the time of Augustus and Claudius, the province was divided into three conventus iuridicus, territorial units presided by capital cities with a court of justice and joint Roman/indigenous people assemblies (conventus), that counseled the Governor:
Conventus Emeritensis, with capital in Emerita Augusta (Mérida, Spain)
Conventus Scalabitanus, with capital in Scalabis Iulia (Santarém, Portugal)
Conventus Pacensis, with capital in Pax Iulia (Beja, Portugal)
The conventus ruled of a total of 46 populis, 5 being Roman colonies (Emerita Augusta (Mérida, Spain), Pax Iulia (Beja), Scalabis (Santarém), Norba Caesarina and Metellinum). Felicitas Iulia Olisipo (Lisbon, which was a Roman law municipality) and 3 other towns had the old Latin status (Ebora (Évora), Myrtilis Iulia (Mértola) and Salacia (Alcácer do Sal). The other 37 were of stipendiarii class, among which Aeminium (Coimbra), Balsa (Tavira), or Mirobriga (Santiago do Cacém). Other cities include Ossonoba (Faro), Cetobriga (Tróia, Setúbal), Collippo (Leiria) or Arabriga (Alenquer).
Division under Diocletian
Under Diocletian, Lusitania kept its borders and was ruled by a praeses, later by a consularis; finally, in 298 AD, it was united with the other provinces to form the Diocesis Hispaniarum ("Diocese of the Hispanias").
Governors
Quintus Acutius Faienanus, legatus Augusti pro praetore between 19 and 1 BC.
Quintus Articuleius Regulus, between 2 BC and AD 14.
Gaius Ummidius Durmius Quadratus, c. 37
Lucius Calventius Vetus Carminius, legatus Augusti pro praetore 44-45
Marcus Salvius Otho Caesar Augustus Governor 58-68
Gaius Catellius Celer 75/76-77/78
? Gaius Calpurnius Flaccus 119/120-120/121
Gaius Oppius Sabinus Julius Nepos Manius Vibius Sollemnis Severus (under Hadrian)
Lucius Roscius Maecius Celer Postumus Mamilianus Vergilius Staberianus (under Hadrian)
Gaius Javolenus Calvinus (between 138 and 140)
Aulus Avillius Urinatius Quadratus c.151-c.154
? Cornelius Repentinus c. 185 - c. 188
Publius Septimius Geta c. 188 - c. 191
Gaius Caesonius Macer Rufinianus 193/194 - 197
Gaius Junius Faustinus [Pl]a[cidus] Postumianus c. 197 - c. 200
Decimus Jun[ius? ...] Coelianus between 198 and 209
Sextus Furnius Julianus c. 211
Rutilius Pudens Crispinus around 225 - 227.
Vettius Agorius Praetextatus (4th century)
Coloniae and Municipia
Colonia Metellinum (Medellín, Badajoz)
Colonia Norba Caesarina (Cáceres)
Colonia Augusta Emerita (Mérida), provincial capital.
Colonia Civitas Pacensis (Beja, Portugal)
Colonia Scalabis Praesidium Iulium (Santarém, Portugal)
Municipium Caesarobriga (Talavera de la Reina, Toledo)
Municipium Augustobriga (Talavera la Vieja, Cáceres)
Municipium Aeminium (Coimbra, Portugal)
Municipium Conímbriga (Condeixa-a-Nova, Portugal)
Municipium Salmantica (Salamanca)
Municipium Caurium (Coria, Cáceres)
Municipium Turgalium (Trujillo, Cáceres)
Municipium Capara (Cáparra, Cáceres)
Municipium Olisipo (Lisboa, Portugal)
Municipium Egitandiorum (Idanha-a-Velha, Portugal)
Municipium Regina Turdulorum (Casas de Reina, Badajoz)
Municipium Lacobriga (Lagos, Portugal)
Notable Lusitanians
Viriathus
Gaius Appuleius Diocles
Legacy of the name
As with the Roman names of many European countries, Lusitania was and is often used as an alternative name for Portugal, especially in formal or literary and poetic contexts. The 16th-century colony that would eventually become Brazil was initially founded as "New Lusitania". In common use are such terms as Lusophone, meaning Portuguese-speaking, and Lusitanic, referring to the Community of Portuguese Language Countries—once Portugal's colonies and presently independent countries still sharing some common heritage. Prior to his invasion in 1807, Napoleon Bonaparte proposed the establishment of a French-backed puppet Kingdom of Northern Lusitania as one of the successor states to Portugal under the assumption that such a campaign would result in an easy French victory.
The province was also the namesake of the North Atlantic Ocean liner RMS Lusitania infamous for being torpedoed by a German U-boat in 1915. The ship's owners the Cunard Line commonly named their vessels after Roman provinces with the Lusitania so being called after the Roman Iberian province to the north of the Strait of Gibraltar while her sister ship RMS Mauretania was named after the Roman North African province on the south side of the strait.
See also
Lusitanians
Lusitanian mythology
Lusitanian language
National Archaeology Museum (Portugal)
Emerita Augusta
Ophiussa
History of Portugal
Timeline of Portuguese history
History of Spain
Timeline of Spanish history
Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula
Romanization of Hispania
Balsa (Roman town)
References
An etymological lexicon of Proto-Celtic
External links
Lusitania, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography
Detailed map of the Pre-Roman Peoples of Iberia (around 200 BC)
Southern Star Article: Crewman's strange foreboding of disaster
.L
Roman provinces in Hispania
Provinces of the Roman Empire
History of Portugal by polity
Ancient Portugal
Medieval Portugal
States and territories established in the 1st century BC
States and territories disestablished in the 9th century
1st-century BC establishments in the Roman Republic
9th-century disestablishments in Portugal
1st millennium in Portugal |
18578 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited-stop | Limited-stop | In public transit, particularly bus, tram, or train transportation, a limited-stop (or sometimes referred to as semi-fast) service is a trip pattern that stops less frequently than a local service. Many limited-stop or semi-fast services are a combination of commuter rail and express train.
The term is normally used on routes with a mixture of fast and slow services, and can differ in meaning, depending on how it is used by different transit agencies. The main benefits of limited-stop or semi-fast services is the ability to utilise skip-stop calling pattern to maximise capacity along the line, as opposed to a commuter service stopping at every station which slows trailing express trains down.
Railways
On railways, the layout of the tracks and number and length of platforms at stations normally limit the extent to which a blend of fast/semi-fast/slow services can be operated.
Australia
In Australia, particularly in Brisbane and Sydney, limited stop services are formed by commuter trains that run as limited stops or express services from the city centre to the edge of the suburban area and then as all stops in the interurban area (an example of such an express pattern can be seen on the Gold Coast line). The same occurs in Helsinki, Finland, by VR commuter rail.
United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, some railway stations have tracks for which there are no platforms, allowing a larger number of fast trains to pass them without stopping. They may go down the middle of the station or down the side such as at , , and (the middle track at Totnes is used only in the summer by Great Western Railway services between and ).
United States
In the United States, some railway stations have tracks for which there are no platforms. For instance, various commuter rail services run along the same tracks as Amtrak's Acela Express and Northeast Corridor routes with four rails, two in the middle for Amtrak, and two on either side for the commuter rail. There are also Express services within those, as at many smaller stations, the Northeast Corridor trains will split off onto the commuter rail tracks to make a stop, and the Acela trains will continue.
Subways
The United States also uniquely has subways that use this method. In New York City, they are numbered as separate lines, which are often part-express, part-local, while others are only express at certain times of day. In Philadelphia, they are considered the same line, but with a few different types of services. The Broad Street Line has the local, which makes all stops; the express, which has an early Southern terminus in the city center; the spur, which makes a few more stops than the express but less than the local, and then branches out to service two other stations), and the special, which is run only during sporting events, and runs as the express but then continues nonstop down to the southern terminus of the local, sharing tracks with the local.
Buses
Traditionally, limited-stop bus services usually operate on an identical or similar route to one or more local bus routes, only serving primary stops, and skipping the others served by local routes. Typically, the stops that are served by limited stop routes are chosen so that stops are evenly spaced or are transfer points, major intersections, or popular destinations. Within downtowns, limited-stop services may stop more frequently. Depending on the transit agency, this can sometimes be referred to as express service. For example, Chicago Transit Authority refers to both this type and non-stop services as express.
Limited-stop bus service is a core component of bus rapid transit (BRT), but differs by not sharing most of the common features of bus rapid transit such as unique route branding, off-vehicle fare collection, signal preemption, frequent all-day service, and dedicated right-of-way. For example, the RapidRide lines in Seattle, Washington are existing local King County Metro routes but with fewer stops and some BRT features being adopted at some stations. In other cities, such as Hong Kong, limited stop bus service currently uses the same branding and has the same features (except stopping less frequently) as regular bus routes.
Other forms of limited-stop bus service other than the traditional type characterized by serving only some of the stops. Some bus routes with portions of the route are non-stop are referred to as limited stop by the transit agency that operates the route.
One form is a route that operates partially on a highway. It is more similar to an express bus route than the traditional limited stop route. However, the non-stop portion of the route is typically shorter than that of an express route, and the fare structure of the transit agency cause a limited stop route to have a lower fare than an express route.
One example of this type of route would be Metro Transit Route 114 in Minneapolis, MN. The route originates at the University of Minnesota campus in Minneapolis, then it travels several miles on Interstates 35W and 94, before it begins to operate as local service through the Uptown area of Minneapolis.
Another form of limited stop bus service includes local routes that may operate certain trips with limited or non-stop sections. For example, to aid commute times for downtown workers, Metro Transit Route 12 in Minneapolis operates during peak hours as non-stop for approximately eight blocks between Franklin Avenue and Uptown Transit Station, but the route serves all stops along that section at other times.
See also
Bus rapid transit
Express bus service
Express train
Limited express
Skip-stop
References
Passenger rail transport |
18581 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limburg | Limburg | Limburg or Limbourg may refer to:
Regions
Limburg (Belgium), a province since 1839 in the Flanders region of Belgium
Limburg (Netherlands), a province since 1839 in the south of the Netherlands
Diocese of Limburg, Roman Catholic Diocese in Germany
Province of Limburg (1815–1839), a former province of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands
Duchy of Limburg (1065–1794), a state in the Holy Roman Empire
Duchy of Limburg (1839–1867), a part of the German Confederation
Limburg of the States (1633–1685), one of the Generality Lands, a dependent territory of the United Provinces of the Netherlands
Other places
Limbourg, a town in Liège, Wallonia, Belgium
Limburg (Weilheim an der Teck), a mountain in Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Limburg an der Lahn, a city, the district seat of Limburg-Weilburg, Hesse, Germany
Limburg an der Lenne, now called Hagen-Hohenlimburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, the former chief town of the county of Limburg-Hohenlimburg
Limburg, a castle in Sasbach am Kaiserstuhl, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Limburg Abbey, a ruined abbey near Bad Dürkheim, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany
Limburg Airfield, an abandoned World War II military airfield near Limburg an der Lahn, Hessen, Germany
People
Limbourg brothers (fl. 1385–1416), Dutch painters Herman, Paul, and Johan
Various members of the German higher nobility and mediatised House of Limburg-Stirum
Baermann of Limburg, German writer
Helge Limburg (born 1982), German politician
Olga Limburg (1881–1970), German actor
Other uses
Limburg (tanker), a French oil tanker bombed off Yemen
HNLMS Limburg (D814), a destroyer of the Dutch navy
See also
Limberg (disambiguation)
Limburg-Weilburg, a Kreis (district) in the west of Hesse, Germany
Limburgish, a language |
18582 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limburg%20%28Netherlands%29 | Limburg (Netherlands) | Limburg () is the southernmost of the 12 provinces of the Netherlands. The province is bordered by the province of Gelderland to the north and by North Brabant to its west. Its long eastern boundary forms the international border with the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. To the west is the international border with the similarly named Belgian province of Limburg, part of which is delineated by the river Meuse. The Vaalserberg is on the extreme south-eastern point, marking the tripoint of the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium.
Limburg's major cities are the provincial capital Maastricht (pop. 121,565), as well as Venlo (pop. 101,603) in the Northeast, and Sittard-Geleen (pop. 92,661) and Heerlen (pop. 86,832) in the south. More than half of the population, approximately 650,000 people, live in the south of Limburg, which corresponds to roughly one-third of the province's area proper. In South Limburg, most people live in the urban agglomerations of Maastricht, Parkstad and Sittard-Geleen.
Name
Limburg's name derives from the Belgian fortified town of the same name, Limbourg-sur-Vesdre, now in the nearby Liège Province, immediately south of Limburg. The name of Limbourg-sur-Vesdre was important to the region because it had been the seat of the medieval Duchy of Limburg.
There are several proposals concerning the etymology of Limbourg. The second part, "bourg" or "burg" is common in placenames, and refers to a fortified town. The first part is often suggested to refer to lime or linden trees (species of Tilia). The historian Jean-Louis Kupper has proposed that its founder Frederick, Duke of Lower Lorraine named it after Limburg Abbey in Germany. He favours a derivation from a Germanic word "lint" meaning "dragon".
Ironically the area under the direct lordship of the old Duchy did not overlap at all with the modern Belgian and Dutch provinces named after it today, though the medieval Duchy was a high status title in the region. On the other hand, while the Duchy's effective power was limited, the Duchy and what is now South Limburg (referred to as Overmaas) did have a long history of connection under the lordship of the Dukes of Brabant. During this long period, from the Middle Ages until the French Revolution, they were sometimes referred to collectively under one name (Overmaas or Limburg).
After 1794, it was the French Republic which unified the region, along with Belgian Limburg, and removed all ties to the old feudal society (the ancien regime). The new name, as with all the names of the départements, was based on natural features such as rivers, in this case Meuse-Inférieure or Neder-Maas ("Lower Meuse").
After the defeat of Napoleon the newly-created United Kingdom of the Netherlands desired a new name for this province. It was decided that the historic connection to the duchy of Limburg was to be restored, albeit only in name.
History
The current province Limburg of the Netherlands only came into existence in 1839, after the finalization of the separation of Belgium from the Netherlands which had begun in 1830. The two Limburgs had been brought together under French revolutionary administration some decades earlier, but they and the surrounding region shared much of their history. For long periods of history however, the region was not united under the same rule.
For centuries, the strategic location of the current province, stretching along the Maas river route, made it a much-coveted region among Europe's major powers. Romans, Carolingians, Habsburg Spaniards, Prussians, Habsburg Austrians and France have all ruled parts of Limburg.
The first inhabitants of whom traces have been found were Neanderthals who camped in South Limburg. In Neolithic times, flint was mined in underground mines.
Roman era
In 53 BC, Julius Caesar conquered the area, and wrote that he had extinguished the name of the Eburones, the inhabitants of most of the area of current Limburg, as a punishment for their revolt under Ambiorix.
The north-south route along the Maas was crossed by the Via Belgica, a road crossing South Limburg and connecting the two local capitals of Tongeren and Cologne. Mosa Trajectum (Maastricht) and Coriovallum (Heerlen) were founded by the Romans upon this route. The area became strongly Romanized. Bishop Servatius introduced Christianity in Roman Maastricht, where he died in 384. Maastricht appears to have taken over from Tongeren for some time as regional capital for the Romanized and Christian population, before the bishopric was re-established in Liège, 25 km south of Maastricht.
Medieval era
As Roman authority in the area weakened, Franks took over from the Romans, but the area came to flourish under their rule, with Cologne continuing to be the most important local capital. The Maas valley, especially the middle and southern part of the current province, formed an important part of the heartland of Merovingian Austrasia.
With the rise of the Carolingian dynasty, who were themselves from this region, the Maas valley became more culturally and politically one of the most important regions in Europe. In 714 Susteren Abbey was founded, as far as is known the first proprietary abbey in the current Netherlands. The main benefactor was Plectrude, the consort of Pepin of Herstal. Charles Martel was born in nearby Herstal. Charlemagne made Aachen, today a German city which has suburban sprawl stretching into South Limburg, the capital of the Frankish empire.
After the death of Charlemagne, the Frankish dominions were again split between kings. While the Austrasian lands remained a separate "Middle Kingdom", sometimes now referred to as Lotharingia, in the treaties of Verdun (843), and Prüm (855), in the 870 Treaty of Meerssen, signed in South Limburg itself, Lotharingia was divided. The river Meuse became the border between the Western- and Eastern Frankish kingdoms, placing most of the current Dutch province of Limburg on the western boundary of the Eastern Frankish kingdom, with Belgian Limburg in the Western Kingdom. In the Treaty of Ribemont of 888, the Eastern Kingdom was granted control of the whole of Lotharingia, including all of the modern Netherlands and Luxembourg, and most of modern Belgium.
During the period of West Frankish control under the Treaty of Meerssen, effective Frankish power in the area of the current Netherlands more or less collapsed. For two or more years a large Viking army, operating from a place on or near the Meuse called Ascloa (or Hasloa or Haslon), wrought havoc in the neighbourhood. The damage was such that the emperor, Charles the Fat was forced to assemble a large multinational army, that in 882 unsuccessfully besieged this island.
In the 10th century, the Eastern kingdom consolidated its control of Lotharingia and became the Holy Roman Empire. In the first decades of this empire the founding imperial family has close ties to areas in current northern Limburg. The emperor Otto III for instance was born in 980 in Kessel, practically on the current border between Limburg and North Rhine-Westphalia, just east from Gennep. In 1080 in Genneperhuis, just north of Gennep, Norbert of Gennep was born as a son of the count of Gennep. He was the founder of the order of the Premonstratensians.
South Limburg in the early Middle Ages was mainly made up of the lordships of Valkenburg, Dalhem, and Herzogenrath. All of these lands were however united with the Duchy of Limburg, under the rule of the Duchy of Brabant, when they were known collectively as the Lands of Overmaas.
The Duchy of Limburg and its dependencies first came under Brabantian control in 1288, as a result of the Battle of Worringen, then in the 15th century under the Duchy of Burgundy. By 1473, the Lands of Overmaas and the Duchy of Limburg formed one unified delegation to the States General of the Burgundian Netherlands. Both the terms Overmaas and Limburg came to be used loosely to refer to this sparsely populated province of the so-called Seventeen Provinces. Maastricht was never part of this polity: as a condominium, sovereignty over this city was held jointly by the Prince-Bishopric of Liège and the Duchy of Brabant. Also, the central and northern part of present-day Limburg belonged to different political entities, notably the Duchy of Jülich and the Duchy of Guelders.
By the late Middle Ages, most of the present day territory of Limburg had been partitioned to the Duchy of Brabant, the Duchy of Gelderland, the Duchy of Jülich, the Prince-Bishopric of Liège or the Electorate of Cologne. These dukes, prince-bihops and prince-electors were nominal subordinates of the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, but in practice acted as independent sovereigns who were often at war with each other. These conflicts were often fought in and over Limburg, contributing to its fragmentation and a loss of economic importance.
Limburg was the scene of many bloody battles during the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648), in which the Dutch Republic threw off Habsburg Spanish rule. At the Battle of Mookerheyde (14 April 1574), two brothers of Prince William of Orange-Nassau and thousands of "Dutch" mercenaries lost their lives. Most Limburgians fought on the Spanish side, being Catholics and being opposed to the Calvinist Hollanders.
Early modern era
In the early modern era, Limburg was largely divided between Spain (and its successor, Austria), Prussia, the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands, the Prince-Bishopric of Liège and many independent small fiefs.
In 1673, Louis XIV personally commanded the siege of Maastricht by French troops. During the siege, one of his brigadiers, Charles de Batz-Castelmore d'Artagnan, perished. He subsequently became known as a major character in The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, père (1802–1870).
19th century
The modern boundaries of Dutch Limburg, along with its neighbour, Belgian Limburg, were basically set during the period after the French revolution, which erased much of the "ancien regime" of Europe, with all its old boundaries and titles. These two provinces were part of a new French département, named (like many départements) after the river running through it, "Meuse-Inférieure", meaning simply "lower Maas".
Following the Napoleonic Era, the great powers (the United Kingdom, Prussia, the Austrian Empire, the Russian Empire and France) united the region with the new Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815. A new province was formed which was to receive the name "Maastricht" after its capital. The first king, William I, who did not want the medieval name to be lost, insisted that it be changed to "Province of Limburg". As such, the name of the new province was derived from the old Duchy of Limburg that had existed until 1795 on the southern borders of the new province.
When the Catholic and French-speaking Belgians split away from the mainly Calvinist northern Netherlands in the Belgian Revolution of 1830, the Province of Limburg was at first almost entirely under Belgian rule. However, by the 1839 Treaty of London, the province was divided in two, with the eastern part going to the Netherlands and the western part to Belgium, a division that remains today.
With the Treaty of London, what is now the Belgian Province of Luxembourg was handed over to Belgium and removed from the German Confederation. To appease Prussia, which had also lost access to the Meuse after the Congress of Vienna, the Dutch province of Limburg (but not the cities of Maastricht and Venlo because without them Limburg's population equalled that of the Province of Luxembourg, 150,000 ), was joined to the German Confederation between September 5, 1839 and August 23, 1866 as Duchy of Limburg. On 11 May 1867, the Duchy, which from 1839 on had been de jure a separate polity in personal union with the Kingdom of the Netherlands, was reincorporated into the latter with the 1867 Treaty of London, though the term "Duchy of Limburg" remained in some official use until February 1907. Another idiosyncrasy survives today: the head of the province, referred to as the "King's Commissioner" in other provinces, is addressed as "Governor" in Limburg.
20th century
The Second World War cost the lives of many civilians in Limburg, and a large number of towns and villages were destroyed by bombings and artillery battles. Various cemeteries, too, bear witness to this dark chapter in Limburg's history. Almost 8,500 American soldiers, who perished during the liberation of the Netherlands, lie buried at the Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial in Margraten. Other big war cemeteries are to be found at Overloon (British soldiers) and the Ysselsteyn German war cemetery was constructed in the Municipality of Venray for the 31,000 German soldiers who lost their lives.
According to the research of Herman van Rens, the residents of Limburg were especially active in hiding local and refugee Jews during the Holocaust, to the extent that the Jewish population even increased during the war. Jews in hiding were three times as likely to survive in Limburg as in Amsterdam.
In December 1991, the European Community (now European Union) held a summit in Maastricht. At that summit, the "Treaty on European Union" or so-called Maastricht Treaty was signed by the European Community member states. With that treaty, the European Union came into existence.
Anthem
Limburg mijn Vaderland (Limburg my Fatherland) is the official anthem of both Belgian and Dutch Limburg.
Language
Although standard Dutch is the official language, and the language most-used, Limburg has its own dialect which is sometimes considered a language, called Limburgish (Dutch: Limburgs). It has been an official regional language since 1997 and it receives moderate protection under Chapter 2 of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. The German and Belgian governments do not recognise it as an official language. Before the 20th century, most newspapers were in French or in German, schools in Maastricht taught French, as the city has historic ties with the Belgian city of Liège. Other parts of the province taught German.
Limburgish is spoken by an estimated 1.6 million people in Dutch Limburg, Belgian Limburg, and Germany. There are many different dialects of Limburgish; almost every town and village has its own. A lot of isoglosses cross through Limburg. No single dialect can fully represent Limburgish as a whole. Dialects in the north, nearby Venray and Gennep, are classified as South Guelderish and are closely connected to the dialects in the northeast of Brabant (Land van Cuijk) and the region of Nijmegen. Dialects in the southeast (near Aachen) are closer to Ripuarian and are sometimes classified as Southeast Limburgish. Dialects in the western part of Limburg, surrounding Weert, are influenced by the neighbouring dialects of southeast Brabant, which means that the tone is more Brabantic than in the rest of Limburg.
Politics
The provincial council (States-Provincial - Provinciale Staten) has 47 seats, and is headed by a King's Commissioner (Commissaris van de Koning) who unofficially is called the Governor. While the provincial council is elected by the inhabitants, the King's Commissioner is appointed by the King and the cabinet of the Netherlands. Since December 2021 Emile Roemer (SP) has been holding the office of 'Governor'.
Since the 2011 elections the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) was the largest party in the council, although the Party for Freedom (PVV) won the most votes during the election. However, two members of the PVV left the party, taking their seats with them, which lost the PVV their number one status.
Since the 2015 elections the CDA (11 seats) has again been the largest party, followed by the PVV (9 seats) and the Socialist Party (SP) (8 seats).
The province's daily affairs are taken care of by the Provincial-Executive (Gedeputeerde Staten), which are also headed by the King's Commissioner; its members (gedeputeerden) can be compared with ministers.
States-Provincial
Results of the elections for the States-Provincial:
See also: States of Limburg (more information)
Provincial-Executive
The Provincial-Executive 2015-2019 consists of the following parties: CDA, SP, VVD, D66 and PvdA.
Geography
Limburg is a salient of the Netherlands into Belgium.
Compared to the rest of the Netherlands the southern part of Limburg is less flat, slightly undulated. The highest point in the continental Netherlands is the Vaalserberg (meaning 'mountain' of Vaals) with a height of 322.4 metres (1,058 ft) above NAP, rising approximately 110 metres above the village Vaals, where three countries (Netherlands, Belgium and Germany) border each other at the so-called "Three-country-point".
Limburg's main river is the Meuse, which passes through the province's entire length from south to north.
Limburg's surface is largely formed by deposits from the Meuse, consisting of river clay, fertile loessial soil and large deposits of pebblestone, currently being quarried for the construction industry. In the north of the province, further away from the riverbed, the soil primarily consists of sand and peat.
Limburg makes up one region of the International Organization for Standardization world region code system, having the code ISO 3166-2:NL-LI.
Municipalities
The province of Limburg has 31 municipalities.
North Limburg COROP group
Beesel
Bergen
Gennep
Horst aan de Maas
Mook en Middelaar
Peel en Maas
Venlo
Venray
Mid Limburg COROP group
Echt-Susteren
Leudal
Maasgouw
Nederweert
Roerdalen
Roermond
Weert
South Limburg COROP group
Beek
Beekdaelen
Brunssum
Eijsden-Margraten
Gulpen-Wittem
Heerlen
Kerkrade
Landgraaf
Maastricht
Meerssen
Simpelveld
Sittard-Geleen
Stein
Vaals
Valkenburg aan de Geul
Voerendaal
Cities
From North to South: Gennep, Venray, Venlo, Weert, Roermond, Sittard, Geleen, Heerlen, Valkenburg, Kerkrade, Maastricht, Vaals.
Economy
The Gross domestic product (GDP) of the province was 44.5 billion € in 2018, accounting for 5.7% of the Netherlands economic output. GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power was 34,700 € or 115% of the EU27 average in the same year.
In the past peat and coal were mined in Limburg. In 1965–75 the coal mines were finally closed. As a result, 60,000 people lost their jobs in the two coal mining areas, Heerlen-Kerkrade-Brunssum and Sittard-Geleen. A difficult period of economic readjustment started. The Dutch government partly eased the pain by moving several government offices (including Stichting Pensioenfonds ABP and CBS Statistics Netherlands) to Heerlen.
The state-owned corporation that once mined in Limburg, DSM, is now a major chemical company, still operating in Limburg. In 2002 DSM sold its petrochemical division (naphtha crackers and polyolefin plants) to SABIC of Saudi Arabia. In 2010, the agro and melamine business groups were sold to OCI Nitrogen. SABIC is located on the Chemelot campus in Sittard-Geleen, which is bounded by the Chemelot Industrial Park, one of Western Europe's biggest industrial sites. At this moment 8000 people work at Chemelot, of which 1000 are active at the Campus. The innovation and licensing division Stamicarbon of DSM was sold in 2009 to Maire Tecnimont, the parent company of an engineering, main contracting and licensing group that operates worldwide in the oil, gas & petrochemicals, power, infrastructure and civil engineering sectors. Stamicarbon is based in Sittard-Geleen.
VDL Nedcar in Born (Sittard-Geleen) is the only large-scale car manufacturer in the Netherlands, currently manufacturing MINI's and BMW X1's. Other industries include Rockwool in Roermond, Océ copiers and printers manufacturers in Venlo and a paper factory in Maastricht. There are four large beer breweries in Limburg.
Southern Limburg has long been one of the country's two main fruit growing areas, but over the last four decades, many fruit growing areas have been replaced by water as a result of gravel quarrying near the Meuse.
Limburg is one of the most important provinces when it comes to Dutch wine production. South Limburg has the highest concentration of vineyards in the Netherlands. Limburg's wine regions have 3 Appellations: Maasvallei, Mergelland and Vijlen. Voerendaalse bergen is expected to be recognized somewhere in 2021.
Tourism is an essential sector of the economy, especially in the hilly southern part of the province. The town of Valkenburg is the main centre.
In 2005, the two provincial newspapers, De Limburger and Limburgs Dagblad, merged.
Culture
Essential elements in Limburgian culture are
Music;
Religion (predominantly Roman Catholic);
Folklore (in especially the southern part of the province);
Carnival;
Sports, of which especially bicycle racing and soccer are most popular;
Art (architecture, among others).
Music
Choral singing is popular in Limburg. One of its best-known choruses is the Mastreechter Staar (Maastricht Star), which performs nationally and internationally.
Every four years the World Music Contest, a competition for professional, amateur and military band sometimes called the Olympic Games of brass band music is held in Kerkrade.
In 2013 and 2009 the winner in the World Concert Division was the Koninklijke Harmonie Sainte Cécile, from Eijsden (Limburg)
Also held in Kerkrade (situated on the German border) is the Schlagerfestival, a nationally broadcast event presenting singers of German-language pop music called Schlagers.
Since 1969 yearly on the Pentecost weekend an international pop music festival called Pinkpop Festival takes place in the southern part of Limburg; initially at Geleen, since 1988 at Schaesberg.
More nationally or internationally known musicians from this province are mentioned hereunder in section "Famous Limburgians".
The Limburg Symphony Orchestra, that resided and rehearsed in Maastricht, and was the oldest symphony orchestra of the Netherlands (founded in 1883) following elimination of government grants merged with Het Brabants Orkest to form a single ensemble with the new name of the philharmonie zuidnederland, as of April 2013.
Folklore
Many places in both Netherlands' and Belgian Limburg still have their own (by now folkloristic) schutterij. Yearly there's a festival, in which all 160 of them compete for the highest honours to be gained, in the "OLS" (Oud Limburgs Schuttersfeest), which is held in either a place in Belgian or Netherlands' Limburg.
Sports
Football
In Limburg there are currently four professional Football clubs; Roda JC Kerkrade, VVV-Venlo, MVV Maastricht and Fortuna Sittard. Fortuna Sittard competes in the highest Dutch division, the Eredivisie. The others compete in the second highest division.
Cycling
The annual bike classic Amstel Gold Race is run in the southern part of Limburg. The area has also staged the UCI Road World Championships six times, once hosted by Heerlen and five times by Valkenburg.
Handball
Team handball is the third most popular sport in Limburg. The women's team, HV Swift Roermond, has won the national championship in the highest division 19 times. The male teams, Sittardia (Sittard), Vlug en Lenig (Geleen) and BFC (Beek), which in 2008 merged as the Limburg Lions, have in total won the national championship 25 times.
Religion
Famous Limburgians
Politics, science, religion
Louis Beel - Politician, former Prime Minister
Jo Cals - Politician, former Prime Minister
Pierre Cuypers (1827–1921) - Architect (designer of a.o. Amsterdam Rijksmuseum)
Peter 'Pie' Debye (1884–1966) - Physicist, Nobel prize winner
Eugène Dubois - Anatomist
Camiel Eurlings - Politician
Maria van der Hoeven - Politician
Rene van der Linden - Politician
Pierre Lardinois - Politician
Gerd Leers - Politician, former Minister of Immigration and Asylum
Jan Pieter Minckeleers (1748–1824) - Physician, inventor
Charles of Mount Argus (1821–1893) - Priest, saint
Ria Oomen-Ruijten - Politician and member of the European Parliament
Charles Ruijs de Beerenbrouck - Politician, Former Prime Minister
Frans Schraven - Bishop in China
Frans Timmermans (1961) - Politician, current First Vice President of the European Commission and former Minister of Foreign Affairs
Jac. P. Thijsse (1865–1945) - Biologist, ecologist
Maxime Verhagen (1956) - Politician, former Minister of Economic Affairs
Geert Wilders (1963) - Politician
Entertainment, arts
Jo Coenen - Architect and urban planner
Mike van Diem - Film director
- Sculptor
Carach Angren - Band
Charles Eijck (1897-1983) - Artist
Epica - Band
Koen Heldens - mixing engineer
Toon Hermans - comedian, singer and writer
Marjon Lambriks (1949) - Soprano singer
Benny Neyman (1951–2008) - Singer
Connie Palmen (1955) - Writer
Frits Peutz (1896-1974) - Architect
Guido Pieters (1948) - Film director
Pussycat - Band
André Rieu (1949) - Musician, bandleader
Frank Scheffer (1956) - Documentary film producer
Willy Schobben - Trompettist
Heintje Simons - Singer and actor
Jan Smeets (1945) - Pinkpop festival director
Johann Friedrich August Tischbein (1750–1812) - Painter
Huub Stapel (1954) - Actor
Sports
Gerard Bergholtz (1939) - Former soccerplayer
Eddy Beugels - Former cyclist
Rens Blom (1977) - Athlete
Jo Bonfrère - Soccerplayer/-coach
Bart Brentjens - Former cyclist
Willy Brokamp (1946, Kerkrade) - Former soccer player
Annemarie Cox (Anna Wood) - Canoer
Willy Dullens (1945) - Former soccer player
Tom Dumoulin - Cyclist
Mia Gommers (1939) - Athlete
Gene Hanssen (1959, Kerkrade) - Former soccer player
Ger Harings (1948) - Former cyclist
Jan Harings (1945) - Former cyclist
Leo Horn (1916–1995) - Soccer referee
Jan Hugens (1939) - Former cyclist
Guus Hupperts - (1992, Heerlen) - Soccer player
Sjef Janssen - Former Cyclist
Jan Krekels (1947) - Former cyclist
René Lotz - Former Cyclist
Jo Maas (1954, Eijsden) - Former cyclist
Leon Melchior - Horse jumping stable owning building contractor
Danny Nelissen - Former cyclist
Jean Nelissen (1936–2010) - Sports journalist
Jan Nolten - Former Cyclist
Jan Notermans (1933) - Former soccer player
Rob Noortman (1946–2007) - Arts trader
Maartje Paumen - Hockey player
Fred Rompelberg (1945) - Over 60 years old professional cyclist
Sjeng Schalken - Former professional tennis player
Wim Schepers - Former cyclist
Jeu Sprengers - KNVB soccer chairman
Harrie Stevens (Elsloo) - Former cyclist
Huub Stevens (1953) - Soccer player and -coach
Wilbert Suvrijn - Former soccer player
Stan Valckx (1963) - Soccer player
Mark van Bommel (1977) - Soccer player
Max van Heeswijk - Former cyclist
Arnold Vanderlyde - Boxing
Jos Verstappen - Racing driver
Ad Wijnands (1959) - Former cyclist
Peter Winnen - Former cyclist
Boudewijn Zenden (1976) - Soccer player
(List of famous Belgian Limburgians: Famous Limburgians (Belgium)'')
Nature
In 2012, from April 5 to October 7 the ten yearly world horticulture expo "Floriade" was held in Venlo.
Nationally and internationally known are nature films and nature television series produced by filmdirector Maurice Nijsten and nature protector Jo Erkens.
See also
Buckriders
Campine (De Kempen)
Peel (De Peel)
Salient
References
External links
Province of Limburg (in Dutch and English)
Limburg Tourist Information (in English)
Coal mining regions in the Netherlands
NUTS 2 statistical regions of the European Union
Provinces of the Netherlands
Regions of Europe with multiple official languages |
18585 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon | Leon | Leon, Léon (French) or León (Spanish) may refer to:
Places
Europe
León, Spain, capital city of the Province of León
Province of León, Spain
Kingdom of León, an independent state in the Iberian Peninsula from 910 to 1230 and again from 1296 to 1301
León (historical region), composed of the Spanish provinces León, Salamanca, and Zamora
Viscounty of Léon, a feudal state in France during the 11th to 13th centuries
Saint-Pol-de-Léon, a commune in Brittany, France
Léon, Landes, a commune in Aquitaine, France
Isla de León, a Spanish island
Leon (Souda Bay), an islet in Souda Bay, Chania, on the island of Crete
North America
León, Guanajuato, Mexico, a large city
Leon, California, United States, a ghost town
Leon, Iowa, United States
Leon, Kansas, United States
Leon, New York, United States
Leon, Oklahoma, United States
Leon, Virginia, United States
Leon, West Virginia, United States
Leon, Wisconsin (disambiguation), United States, several places
New Kingdom of León, a territory of Spain (1582-1821) in Mexico, roughly corresponding in area to modern Nuevo León
Leon County, Florida
Leon County, Texas
Leon Township, Clearwater County, Minnesota
Leon Township, Goodhue County, Minnesota
Leon River, Texas
Central America
León Department, Nicaragua
León, Nicaragua, capital city of the León Department
Other places
Leon, Iloilo, Philippines, a 2nd class municipality
Leon, Togo, a village
Leon River (Colombia)
People
People with the nickname or stage name
Leon (Japanese wrestler), (born 1980), Japanese professional wrestler
Leon Robinson (born 1962), African-American actor and singer usually credited as "Leon"
Leon (German singer) (born 1969), German performer in the 1996 Eurovision Song Contest
Léon (Swedish singer) (born 1993), Swedish singer
El León, (born 1975), Puerto Rican professional wrestler
Frère León (1871–1955), Franco-Cuban botanist, born Joseph Sylvestre Sauget, known by the botanical author abbreviation León
Leon Russell (1942–2016), American singer and songwriter
People with the name
Leon (given name), people whose first name is Leon
Leon (surname)
Arts and entertainment
Fictional characters
Leon (Dead or Alive)
Leon (Squirrel Boy)
Leon, a character on The Andy Griffith Show
Leon, from the game Pokémon Sword and Shield
Leon, from the Supercell game Brawl Stars
Leon, from the game Rune Factory 4
Léon, a young male cyclops created by Annie Groovie
Leon, a Battle Arena Toshinden character
Leon Garcia de Asturias, on Trinity Blood
Leon Belmont, a Castlevania character
Leon Elliott, a Black Cat character
Leon D. Geeste, a Star Ocean 2 character
Leon Jefferson III, in Baby Driver
Leon Karp, a Roseanne character
Leon S. Kennedy, a Resident Evil character
Leon Kowalski, a Blade Runner character
Leon Kuwata, from the game Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Squall Leonhart, aka Leon, a Final Fantasy character
Leon Magnus, a Tales of Destiny character
Leone "Léon" Montana, the titular protagonist of Léon: The Professional
Leon Powalski, a Star Fox character
Leon Raymond, a protagonist from the anime
Works
Leon (TV series), an animated TV series for children
Léon: The Professional, a 1994 thriller film directed by Luc Besson
"Leon", a track on the album Oui Oui Si Si Ja Ja Da Da by Madness
Businesses
Léon & Lévy, French maker of stereoscopic views and postcards, founded 1864
Leon Restaurants, fast food chain based in the United Kingdom
Ships
Greek destroyer Leon (1912)
Greek destroyer Leon (D54) (1951–1992)
, a World War II attack transport
Sports clubs
Club León, Mexican professional football club from León, Guanajuato
León de Huánuco, Peruvian professional football club from Huánuco, Huánuco Region
Technology
Leon (software), a vocal for Vocaloid software
LEON, a microprocessor
SEAT León, a car from the Spanish manufacturer SEAT
See also
De León (disambiguation)
Leon Airport (disambiguation)
Winter Storm Leon
Kings of Leon, American rock band
Leonard (disambiguation)
Leno (disambiguation) |
18589 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligand | Ligand | In coordination chemistry, a ligand is an ion or molecule (functional group) that binds to a central metal atom to form a coordination complex. The bonding with the metal generally involves formal donation of one or more of the ligand's electron pairs often through Lewis Bases. The nature of metal–ligand bonding can range from covalent to ionic. Furthermore, the metal–ligand bond order can range from one to three. Ligands are viewed as Lewis bases, although rare cases are known to involve Lewis acidic "ligands".
Metals and metalloids are bound to ligands in almost all circumstances, although gaseous "naked" metal ions can be generated in a high vacuum. Ligands in a complex dictate the reactivity of the central atom, including ligand substitution rates, the reactivity of the ligands themselves, and redox. Ligand selection is a critical consideration in many practical areas, including bioinorganic and medicinal chemistry, homogeneous catalysis, and environmental chemistry.
Ligands are classified in many ways, including: charge, size (bulk), the identity of the coordinating atom(s), and the number of electrons donated to the metal (denticity or hapticity). The size of a ligand is indicated by its cone angle.
History
The composition of coordination complexes have been known since the early 1800s, such as Prussian blue and copper vitriol. The key breakthrough occurred when Alfred Werner reconciled formulas and isomers. He showed, among other things, that the formulas of many cobalt(III) and chromium(III) compounds can be understood if the metal has six ligands in an octahedral geometry. The first to use the term "ligand" were Alfred Werner and Carl Somiesky, in relation to silicon chemistry. The theory allows one to understand the difference between coordinated and ionic chloride in the cobalt ammine chlorides and to explain many of the previously inexplicable isomers. He resolved the first coordination complex called hexol into optical isomers, overthrowing the theory that chirality was necessarily associated with carbon compounds.
Strong field and weak field ligands
In general, ligands are viewed as electron donors and the metals as electron acceptors, i.e., respectively, Lewis bases and Lewis acids. This description has been semi-quantified in many ways, e.g. ECW model. Bonding is often described using the formalisms of molecular orbital theory.
Ligands and metal ions can be ordered in many ways; one ranking system focuses on ligand 'hardness' (see also hard/soft acid/base theory). Metal ions preferentially bind certain ligands. In general, 'hard' metal ions prefer weak field ligands, whereas 'soft' metal ions prefer strong field ligands. According to the molecular orbital theory, the HOMO (Highest Occupied Molecular Orbital) of the ligand should have an energy that overlaps with the LUMO (Lowest Unoccupied Molecular Orbital) of the metal preferential. Metal ions bound to strong-field ligands follow the Aufbau principle, whereas complexes bound to weak-field ligands follow Hund's rule.
Binding of the metal with the ligands results in a set of molecular orbitals, where the metal can be identified with a new HOMO and LUMO (the orbitals defining the properties and reactivity of the resulting complex) and a certain ordering of the 5 d-orbitals (which may be filled, or partially filled with electrons). In an octahedral environment, the 5 otherwise degenerate d-orbitals split in sets of 2 and 3 orbitals (for a more in depth explanation, see crystal field theory).
3 orbitals of low energy: dxy, dxz and dyz
2 of high energy: dz2 and dx2−y2
The energy difference between these 2 sets of d-orbitals is called the splitting parameter, Δo. The magnitude of Δo is determined by the field-strength of the ligand: strong field ligands, by definition, increase Δo more than weak field ligands. Ligands can now be sorted according to the magnitude of Δo (see the table below). This ordering of ligands is almost invariable for all metal ions and is called spectrochemical series.
For complexes with a tetrahedral surrounding, the d-orbitals again split into two sets, but this time in reverse order.
2 orbitals of low energy: dz2 and dx2−y2
3 orbitals of high energy: dxy, dxz and dyz
The energy difference between these 2 sets of d-orbitals is now called Δt. The magnitude of Δt is smaller than for Δo, because in a tetrahedral complex only 4 ligands influence the d-orbitals, whereas in an octahedral complex the d-orbitals are influenced by 6 ligands. When the coordination number is neither octahedral nor tetrahedral, the splitting becomes correspondingly more complex. For the purposes of ranking ligands, however, the properties of the octahedral complexes and the resulting Δo has been of primary interest.
The arrangement of the d-orbitals on the central atom (as determined by the 'strength' of the ligand), has a strong effect on virtually all the properties of the resulting complexes. E.g., the energy differences in the d-orbitals has a strong effect in the optical absorption spectra of metal complexes. It turns out that valence electrons occupying orbitals with significant 3 d-orbital character absorb in the 400–800 nm region of the spectrum (UV–visible range). The absorption of light (what we perceive as the color) by these electrons (that is, excitation of electrons from one orbital to another orbital under influence of light) can be correlated to the ground state of the metal complex, which reflects the bonding properties of the ligands. The relative change in (relative) energy of the d-orbitals as a function of the field-strength of the ligands is described in Tanabe–Sugano diagrams.
In cases where the ligand has low energy LUMO, such orbitals also participate in the bonding. The metal–ligand bond can be further stabilised by a formal donation of electron density back to the ligand in a process known as back-bonding. In this case a filled, central-atom-based orbital donates density into the LUMO of the (coordinated) ligand. Carbon monoxide is the preeminent example a ligand that engages metals via back-donation. Complementarily, ligands with low-energy filled orbitals of pi-symmetry can serve as pi-donor.
Classification of ligands as L and X
Especially in the area of organometallic chemistry, ligands are classified as L and X (or combinations of the two). The classification scheme – the "CBC Method" for Covalent Bond Classification – was popularized by M.L.H. Green and "is based on the notion that there are three basic types [of ligands]... represented by the symbols L, X, and Z, which correspond respectively to 2-electron, 1-electron and 0-electron neutral ligands." Another type of ligand worthy of consideration is the LX ligand which as expected from the used conventional representation will donate three electrons if NVE (Number of Valence Electrons) required. Example is alkoxy ligands( which is regularly known as X ligand too). L ligands are derived from charge-neutral precursors and are represented by amines, phosphines, CO, N2, and alkenes. X ligands typically are derived from anionic precursors such as chloride but includes ligands where salts of anion do not really exist such as hydride and alkyl. Thus, the complex IrCl(CO)(PPh3)2 is classified as an MXL3 complex, since CO and the two PPh3 ligands are classified as Ls. The oxidative addition of H2 to IrCl(CO)(PPh3)2 gives an 18e− ML3X3 product, IrClH2(CO)(PPh3)2. EDTA4− is classified as an L2X4 ligand, as it features four anions and two neutral donor sites. Cp is classified as an L2X ligand.
Polydentate and polyhapto ligand motifs and nomenclature
Denticity
Denticity (represented by κ) refers to the number of times a ligand bonds to a metal through noncontiguous donor sites. Many ligands are capable of binding metal ions through multiple sites, usually because the ligands have lone pairs on more than one atom. Ligands that bind via more than one atom are often termed chelating. A ligand that binds through two sites is classified as bidentate, and three sites as tridentate. The "bite angle" refers to the angle between the two bonds of a bidentate chelate. Chelating ligands are commonly formed by linking donor groups via organic linkers. A classic bidentate ligand is ethylenediamine, which is derived by the linking of two ammonia groups with an ethylene (−CH2CH2−) linker. A classic example of a polydentate ligand is the hexadentate chelating agent EDTA, which is able to bond through six sites, completely surrounding some metals. The number of times a polydentate ligand binds to a metal centre is symbolized by "κn", where n indicates the number of sites by which a ligand attaches to a metal. EDTA4−, when it is hexidentate, binds as a κ6-ligand, the amines and the carboxylate oxygen atoms are not contiguous. In practice, the n value of a ligand is not indicated explicitly but rather assumed. The binding affinity of a chelating system depends on the chelating angle or bite angle.
Complexes of polydentate ligands are called chelate complexes. They tend to be more stable than complexes derived from monodentate ligands. This enhanced stability, the chelate effect, is usually attributed to effects of entropy, which favors the displacement of many ligands by one polydentate ligand. When the chelating ligand forms a large ring that at least partially surrounds the central atom and bonds to it, leaving the central atom at the centre of a large ring. The more rigid and the higher its denticity, the more inert will be the macrocyclic complex. Heme is a good example: the iron atom is at the centre of a porphyrin macrocycle, being bound to four nitrogen atoms of the tetrapyrrole macrocycle. The very stable dimethylglyoximate complex of nickel is a synthetic macrocycle derived from the anion of dimethylglyoxime.
Hapticity
Hapticity (represented by η) refers to the number of contiguous atoms that comprise a donor site and attach to a metal center. Butadiene forms both η2 and η4 complexes depending on the number of carbon atoms that are bonded to the metal.
Ligand motifs
Trans-spanning ligands
Trans-spanning ligands are bidentate ligands that can span coordination positions on opposite sides of a coordination complex.
Ambidentate ligand
Unlike polydentate ligands, ambidentate ligands can attach to the central atom in two places. A good example of this is thiocyanate, SCN−, which can attach at either the sulfur atom or the nitrogen atom. Such compounds give rise to linkage isomerism. Polyfunctional ligands, see especially proteins, can bond to a metal center through different ligand atoms to form various isomers.
Bridging ligand
A bridging ligand links two or more metal centers. Virtually all inorganic solids with simple formulas are coordination polymers, consisting of metal ion centres linked by bridging ligands. This group of materials includes all anhydrous binary metal ion halides and pseudohalides. Bridging ligands also persist in solution. Polyatomic ligands such as carbonate are ambidentate and thus are found to often bind to two or three metals simultaneously. Atoms that bridge metals are sometimes indicated with the prefix "μ". Most inorganic solids are polymers by virtue of the presence of multiple bridging ligands. Bridging ligands, capable of coordinating multiple metal ions, have been attracting considerable interest because of their potential use as building blocks for the fabrication of functional multimetallic assemblies.
Binucleating ligand
Binucleating ligands bind two metal ions. Usually binucleating ligands feature bridging ligands, such as phenoxide, pyrazolate, or pyrazine, as well as other donor groups that bind to only one of the two metal ions.
Metal–ligand multiple bond
Some ligands can bond to a metal center through the same atom but with a different number of lone pairs. The bond order of the metal ligand bond can be in part distinguished through the metal ligand bond angle (M−X−R). This bond angle is often referred to as being linear or bent with further discussion concerning the degree to which the angle is bent. For example, an imido ligand in the ionic form has three lone pairs. One lone pair is used as a sigma X donor, the other two lone pairs are available as L-type pi donors. If both lone pairs are used in pi bonds then the M−N−R geometry is linear. However, if one or both these lone pairs is nonbonding then the M−N−R bond is bent and the extent of the bend speaks to how much pi bonding there may be. η1-Nitric oxide can coordinate to a metal center in linear or bent manner.
Spectator ligand
A spectator ligand is a tightly coordinating polydentate ligand that does not participate in chemical reactions but removes active sites on a metal. Spectator ligands influence the reactivity of the metal center to which they are bound.
Bulky ligands
Bulky ligands are used to control the steric properties of a metal center. They are used for many reasons, both practical and academic. On the practical side, they influence the selectivity of metal catalysts, e.g., in hydroformylation. Of academic interest, bulky ligands stabilize unusual coordination sites, e.g., reactive coligands or low coordination numbers. Often bulky ligands are employed to simulate the steric protection afforded by proteins to metal-containing active sites. Of course excessive steric bulk can prevent the coordination of certain ligands.
Chiral ligands
Chiral ligands are useful for inducing asymmetry within the coordination sphere. Often the ligand is employed as an optically pure group. In some cases, such as secondary amines, the asymmetry arises upon coordination. Chiral ligands are used in homogeneous catalysis, such as asymmetric hydrogenation.
Hemilabile ligands
Hemilabile ligands contain at least two electronically different coordinating groups and form complexes where one of these is easily displaced from the metal center while the other remains firmly bound, a behaviour which has been found to increase the reactivity of catalysts when compared to the use of more traditional ligands.
Non-innocent ligand
Non-innocent ligands bond with metals in such a manner that the distribution of electron density between the metal center and ligand is unclear. Describing the bonding of non-innocent ligands often involves writing multiple resonance forms that have partial contributions to the overall state.
Common ligands
Virtually every molecule and every ion can serve as a ligand for (or "coordinate to") metals. Monodentate ligands include virtually all anions and all simple Lewis bases. Thus, the halides and pseudohalides are important anionic ligands whereas ammonia, carbon monoxide, and water are particularly common charge-neutral ligands. Simple organic species are also very common, be they anionic (RO− and ) or neutral (R2O, R2S, R3−xNHx, and R3P). The steric properties of some ligands are evaluated in terms of their cone angles.
Beyond the classical Lewis bases and anions, all unsaturated molecules are also ligands, utilizing their pi electrons in forming the coordinate bond. Also, metals can bind to the σ bonds in for example silanes, hydrocarbons, and dihydrogen (see also: Agostic interaction).
In complexes of non-innocent ligands, the ligand is bonded to metals via conventional bonds, but the ligand is also redox-active.
Examples of common ligands (by field strength)
In the following table the ligands are sorted by field strength (weak field ligands first):
The entries in the table are sorted by field strength, binding through the stated atom (i.e. as a terminal ligand). The 'strength' of the ligand changes when the ligand binds in an alternative binding mode (e.g., when it bridges between metals) or when the conformation of the ligand gets distorted (e.g., a linear ligand that is forced through steric interactions to bind in a nonlinear fashion).
Other generally encountered ligands (alphabetical)
In this table other common ligands are listed in alphabetical order.
Ligand exchange
A ligand exchange (also ligand substitution) is a type of chemical reaction in which a ligand in a compound is replaced by another. One type of pathway for substitution is the ligand dependent pathway. In organometallic chemistry this can take place via associative substitution or by dissociative substitution.
Ligand–protein binding database
BioLiP is a comprehensive ligand–protein interaction database, with the 3D structure of the ligand–protein interactions taken from the Protein Data Bank. MANORAA is a webserver for analyzing conserved and differential molecular interaction of the ligand in complex with protein structure homologs from the Protein Data Bank. It provides the linkage to protein targets such as its location in the biochemical pathways, SNPs and protein/RNA baseline expression in target organ.
See also
Bridging carbonyl
Coordination complex
Crystal field theory
DNA binding ligand
Inorganic chemistry
Josiphos ligands
Ligand dependent pathway
Ligand field theory
Ligand isomerism
Spectrochemical series
Tanabe–Sugano diagram
Explanatory notes
References
External links
See the modeling of ligand–receptor–ligand binding in Vu-Quoc, L., Configuration integral (statistical mechanics), 2008. This wiki site is down; see this article in the Internet Archive from 2012 April 28.
Chelating agents
Chemical bonding
Coordination chemistry |
18591 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincos%20language | Lincos language | Lincos (an abbreviation of the Latin phrase lingua cosmica) is a constructed language first described in 1960 by Dr. Hans Freudenthal in his book Lincos: Design of a Language for Cosmic Intercourse, Part 1. It is a language designed to be understandable by any possible intelligent extraterrestrial life form, for use in interstellar radio transmissions. Freudenthal considered that such a language should be easily understood by beings not acquainted with any Earthling syntax or language. Lincos was designed to be capable of encapsulating "the whole bulk of our knowledge."
Concepts and range
The Lincos "dictionary" is intended to be transmitted first before any additional messages. It teaches natural numbers by a series of repeated pulses, separated by pauses. It then teaches >, <, =, +, -, by examples such as . . . . . > . . . There would need to be more pause than he shows around > to show an alien that > is a new separate symbol. Otherwise the alien can think the whole pattern is a new symbol of unknown meaning. Having introduced =, he shows binary notation for numbers . = 1, . . = 2 and so on. He goes on to multiplication, division, variables and constants, then propositional logic, set theory and first-order logic. He tries to introduce questions by leaving mathematical expressions unsolved: ? x x + 101 = 11
The next section of the Lincos dictionary introduces a word for second, "Sec," by playing pulses of various lengths, followed by Sec, and the number of seconds, "until the receiver may be expected to remark that the numbers... are proportional to the durations," thus teaching both that Sec is a unit of time, and exactly how long it is. He then introduces means for measuring durations, referring to moments in time, and talking about past and future events.
The third section is perhaps the most complex, and attempts to convey the concepts and language necessary to describe behavior and conversation between individuals. It uses examples to introduce actors speaking to each other, asking questions, disapproving, quoting other people, knowing and wanting things, promising, and playing. The first steps (since he has introduced sets of numbers and questions) are to introduce some new symbols (distinctive patterns of pulses), say they are NOT numbers, and transmit sequences showing two of these new symbols separated by the word "Inq," and followed by a question about an equation, then the symbols reversed, followed by the answer (example below). He expects that after many repetitions, the recipient will decide these new symbols are entities asking and answering the questions, rather than some other context for the questions.
Finally, the fourth section describes the concepts and language relating to mass, space, and motion. This last section goes so far as to describe physical features of human beings and of the Solar System.
A second book was planned but never written that would have added four more sections to the dictionary: "Matter", "Earth", "Life" and "Behavior 2". Other researchers have since extended the language somewhat on their own. One example is CosmicOS. Another is a second-generation Lingua Cosmica developed by the Dutch-Swedish astronomer and mathematician Alexander Ollongren of Leiden University, using constructive logic.
Freudenthal's book on Lincos discusses it with many technical words from linguistic and logical theory, usually without defining them, which may have reduced its general interest, though the main chapters can be understood without these technical terms: appellatives, binding, formalization, function, lexicology, logistical, ostensive, quasi-general, semantics, syntax, variables, etc.
Use
For decades, no actual transmissions were made using Lincos; it remained largely a theoretical exercise, until Canadian astrophysicists Yvan Dutil and Stéphane Dumas, working at the Canadian Defense Research Establishment, created a noise-resistant coding system for messages aimed at communicating with extraterrestrial civilizations. In 1999, the astrophysicists encoded a message in Lincos and used the Yevpatoria RT-70 radio telescope in Ukraine to beam it towards close stars. This is known as Cosmic Call. The experiment was repeated (using other close stars as target) in 2003. The message was a series of pages describing some basic mathematics, physics and astronomy. The Dutil–Dumas experiment was promoted by an organization called Encounter 2001.
Some researchers have explored the similar issues in communicating with intelligent animals such as cetaceans. Lincos messages (even if sent by pulses of sound rather than radio) are complex and need to reach the most patient, logically oriented members of the target species. A far simpler approach aimed at average members of a species can cover numbers, >, <, =, +, -, and time.
Examples
An example of Lincos from section 3 of Freudenthal's book, showing one individual asking another individual questions:
Note the difference between "good" and "bad" as compared to "true" and "false"; 10/4 is a true answer to the question, so Ver ("true") would be a valid response, but since it wasn't reduced to lowest terms, it wasn't what Ha wanted and so he responded Mal ("bad") instead. The book separately teaches Ver and Fal for true and false.
Another example, showing meta-conversation:
Popular culture
In the motion picture Contact (1997), SETI astronomers receive a radio transmission from space that has a Lincos-like dictionary embedded in the message.
In the Stanisław Lem novel His Master's Voice, Lincos is mentioned together with Loglan.
Olivia, a character in Asobi Asobase, was the subject of a classroom rumor that she was fluent in Lincos.
See also
Alien language
SETI
References
External links
Were it Perfect, Would it Work Better? Survey of a Language for Cosmic Intercourse (Bruno Bassi)
Constructed languages
Engineered languages
Interstellar messages
Knowledge representation languages
Search for extraterrestrial intelligence
1960 introductions
Constructed languages introduced in the 1960s |
18594 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascaux | Lascaux | Lascaux ( , ; , "Lascaux Cave") is a network of caves near the village of Montignac, in the department of Dordogne in southwestern France. Over 600 parietal wall paintings cover the interior walls and ceilings of the cave. The paintings represent primarily large animals, typical local contemporary fauna that correspond with the fossil record of the Upper Paleolithic in the area. They are the combined effort of many generations and, with continued debate, the age of the paintings is now usually estimated at around 17,000 years (early Magdalenian). Because of the outstanding prehistoric art in the cave, Lascaux was inducted into the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1979, as an element of the Prehistoric Sites and Decorated Caves of the Vézère Valley.
The original caves have been closed to the public since 1963, as their condition was deteriorating, but there are now a number of replicas.
History since rediscovery
On 12 September 1940, the entrance to the Lascaux Cave was discovered by 18-year-old Marcel Ravidat when his dog, Robot, fell in a hole. Ravidat returned to the scene with three friends, Jacques Marsal, Georges Agnel, and Simon Coencas. They entered the cave through a shaft that they believed might be a legendary secret passage to the nearby Lascaux Manor. The teenagers discovered that the cave walls were covered with depictions of animals. Galleries that suggest continuity, context or simply represent a cavern were given names. Those include the Hall of the Bulls, the Passageway, the Shaft, the Nave, the Apse, and the Chamber of Felines. They returned along with the Abbé Henri Breuil on 21 September 1940; Breuil would make many sketches of the cave, some of which are used as study material today due to the extreme degradation of many of the paintings. Breuil was accompanied by Denis Peyrony, curator of Les eyzies (Prehistory Museum) at Les Eyzies, Jean Bouyssonie and Dr Cheynier.
The cave complex was opened to the public on 14 July 1948, and initial archaeological investigations began a year later, focusing on the Shaft. By 1955, carbon dioxide, heat, humidity, and other contaminants produced by 1,200 visitors per day had visibly damaged the paintings. As air condition deteriorated, fungi and lichen increasingly infested the walls. Consequently, the cave was closed to the public in 1963, the paintings were restored to their original state, and a monitoring system on a daily basis was introduced.
Replicas
Conservation problems in the original cave have made the creation of replicas more important.
Lascaux II
Lascaux II, an exact copy of the Great Hall of the Bulls and the Painted Gallery was displayed at the Grand Palais in Paris, before being displayed from 1983 in the cave's vicinity (about away from the original cave), a compromise and attempt to present an impression of the paintings' scale and composition for the public without harming the originals. A full range of Lascaux's parietal art is presented a few kilometres from the site at the Centre of Prehistoric Art, Le Parc du Thot, where there are also live animals representing ice-age fauna.
The paintings for this site were duplicated with the same type of materials such as iron oxide, charcoal and ochre which were believed to be used 19 thousand years ago. Other facsimiles of Lascaux have also been produced over the years.
Lascaux III
Lascaux III is a series of five exact reproductions of the cave art (the Nave and Shaft) that, since 2012, have traveled around the world allowing knowledge of Lascaux to be shared far from the original.
Lascaux IV
Lascaux IV is a new copy of all the painted areas of the cave that forms part of the International Centre for Parietal Art (Centre International de l'Art Pariétal). Since December 2016 this larger and more accurate replica which integrates digital technology into the display is presented in a new museum built by Snøhetta inside the hill overlooking Montignac.
Pottery & Prints
French pottery from the region – decorated with images of the Lascaux paintings – were once produced and sold in abundance within the surrounding regions as objet d'art and souvenirs, are now difficult to find as the images have been copyrighted. Prints of the images are only available for purchase through the Lascaux museum store.
Geographic setting
In its sedimentary composition, the Vézère drainage basin covers one fourth of the département of the Dordogne, the northernmost region of the Black Périgord. Before joining the Dordogne River near Limeuil, the Vézère flows in a south-westerly direction. At its centre point, the river's course is marked by a series of meanders flanked by high limestone cliffs that determine the landscape. Upstream from this steep-sloped relief, near Montignac and in the vicinity of Lascaux, the contours of the land soften considerably; the valley floor widens, and the banks of the river lose their steepness.
The Lascaux valley is located some distance from the major concentrations of decorated caves and inhabited sites, most of which were discovered further downstream. In the environs of the village of Eyzies-de-Tayac Sireuil, there are no fewer than 37 decorated caves and shelters, as well as an even greater number of habitation sites from the Upper Paleolithic, located in the open, beneath a sheltering overhang, or at the entrance to one of the area's karst cavities. This is the highest concentration in Europe.
Images
The cave contains nearly 6,000 figures, which can be grouped into three main categories: animals, human figures, and abstract signs. The paintings contain no images of the surrounding landscape or the vegetation of the time. Most of the major images have been painted onto the walls using red, yellow, and black colours from a complex multiplicity of mineral pigments including iron compounds such as iron oxide (ochre), hematite, and goethite, as well as manganese-containing pigments. Charcoal may also have been used but seemingly to a sparing extent. On some of the cave walls, the colour may have been applied as a suspension of pigment in either animal fat or calcium-rich cave groundwater or clay, making paint, that was swabbed or blotted on, rather than applied by brush. In other areas, the colour was applied by spraying the pigments by blowing the mixture through a tube. Where the rock surface is softer, some designs have been incised into the stone. Many images are too faint to discern, and others have deteriorated entirely.
Over 900 can be identified as animals, and 605 of these have been precisely identified. Out of these images, there are 364 paintings of equines as well as 90 paintings of stags. Also represented are cattle and bison, each representing 4 to 5% of the images. A smattering of other images includes seven felines, a bird, a bear, a rhinoceros, and a human. There are no images of reindeer, even though that was the principal source of food for the artists. Geometric images have also been found on the walls.
The most famous section of the cave is The Hall of the Bulls where bulls, equines, aurochs, stags and the only bear in the cave are depicted. The four black bulls, or aurochs, are the dominant figures among the 36 animals represented here. One of the bulls is long, the largest animal discovered so far in cave art. Additionally, the bulls appear to be in motion.
A painting referred to as "The Crossed Bison", found in the chamber called the Nave, is often submitted as an example of the skill of the Paleolithic cave painters. The crossed hind legs create the illusion that one leg is closer to the viewer than the other. This visual depth in the scene demonstrates a primitive form of perspective which was particularly advanced for the time.
Parietal representation
The Hall of the Bulls presents the most spectacular composition of Lascaux. Its calcite walls are not suitable for engraving, so it is only decorated with paintings, often of impressive dimensions: some are up to five metres long.
Two rows of aurochs face each other, two on one side and three on the other. The two aurochs on the north side are accompanied by about ten horses and a large enigmatic animal, with two straight lines on its forehead that earned it the nickname "unicorn". On the south side, three large aurochs are next to three smaller ones, painted red, as well as six small deer and the only bear in the cave, superimposed on the belly of an aurochs and difficult to read.
The Axial Diverticulum is also decorated with cattle and horses accompanied by deer and ibex. A drawing of a fleeing horse was brushed with manganese pencil 2.50 metres above the ground. Some animals are painted on the ceiling and seem to roll from one wall to the other. These representations, which required the use of scaffolding, are intertwined with many signs (sticks, dots and rectangular signs).
The Passage has a highly degraded decoration, notably through air circulation.
The Nave has four groups of figures: the Empreinte panel, the Black Cow panel, the Deer swimming panel and the Crossed Buffalo panel. These works are accompanied by many enigmatic geometric signs, including coloured checkers that H. Breuil called "coats of arms".
The Feline Diverticulum owes its name to a group of felines, one of which seems to urinate to mark its territory. Very difficult to access, one can see there engravings of wild animals of a rather naive style. There are also other animals associated with signs, including a representation of a horse seen from the front, exceptional in Paleolithic art where animals are generally represented in profiles or from a "twisted perspective".
The apse contains more than a thousand engravings, some of which are superimposed on paintings, corresponding to animals and signs. There is the only reindeer represented in Lascaux.
The Well presents the most enigmatic scene of Lascaux: an ithyphallic man with a bird's head seems to lie on the ground, perhaps knocked down by a buffalo gutted by a spear; at his side is represented an elongated object surmounted by a bird, on the left a rhinoceros moves away. Various interpretations of what is represented have been offered. A horse is also present on the opposite wall. Two groups of signs are to be noted in this composition:
between man and rhinos, three pairs of digitized punctuation marks found at the bottom of the Cat Diverticulum, in the most remote part of the cave;
under man and bison, a complex barbed sign that can be found almost identically on other walls of the cave, and also on paddle points and on the sandstone lamp found nearby.
Interpretation
The interpretation of Palaeolithic Art is problematic, as it can be influenced by our own prejudices and beliefs. Some anthropologists and art historians theorize the paintings could be an account of past hunting success, or could represent a mystical ritual in order to improve future hunting endeavors. The latter theory is supported by the overlapping images of one group of animals in the same cave location as another group of animals, suggesting that one area of the cave was more successful for predicting a plentiful hunting excursion.
Applying the iconographic method of analysis to the Lascaux paintings (studying position, direction and size of the figures; organization of the composition; painting technique; distribution of the color planes; research of the image center), Thérèse Guiot-Houdart attempted to comprehend the symbolic function of the animals, to identify the theme of each image and finally to reconstitute the canvas of the myth illustrated on the rock walls.
Julien d'Huy and Jean-Loïc Le Quellec showed that certain angular or barbed signs of Lascaux may be analysed as "weapon" or "wounds". These signs affect dangerous animals—big cats, aurochs, and bison—more than others and may be explained by a fear of the animation of the image. Another finding supports the hypothesis of half-alive images. At Lascaux, bison, aurochs and ibex are not represented side by side. Conversely, one can note a bison-horses-lions system and an aurochs-horses-deer-bears system, these animals being frequently associated. Such a distribution may show the relationship between the species pictured and their environmental conditions. Aurochs and bison fight one against the other, and horses and deer are very social with other animals. Bison and lions live in open plains areas; aurochs, deer and bears are associated with forests and marshes; ibex habitat is rocky areas, and horses are highly adaptive for all these areas. The Lascaux paintings' disposition may be explained by a belief in the real life of the pictured species, wherein the artists tried to respect their real environmental conditions.
Less known is the image area called the Abside (Apse), a roundish, semi-spherical chamber similar to an apse in a Romanesque basilica. It is approximately 4.5 metres in diameter (about 5 yards) and covered on every wall surface (including the ceiling) with thousands of entangled, overlapping, engraved drawings. The ceiling of the Apse, which ranges from 1.6 to 2.7 metres high (about 5.2 to 8.9 feet) as measured from the original floor height, is so completely decorated with such engravings that it indicates that the prehistoric people who executed them first constructed a scaffold to do so.
According to David Lewis-Williams and Jean Clottes who both studied presumably similar art of the San people of Southern Africa, this type of art is spiritual in nature relating to visions experienced during ritualistic trance-dancing. These trance visions are a function of the human brain and so are independent of geographical location. Nigel Spivey, a professor of classical art and archeology at the University of Cambridge, has further postulated in his series, How Art Made the World, that dot and lattice patterns overlapping the representational images of animals are very similar to hallucinations provoked by sensory-deprivation. He further postulates that the connections between culturally important animals and these hallucinations led to the invention of image-making, or the art of drawing.
André Leroi-Gourhan studied the cave from the 1960s; his observation of the associations of animals and the distribution of species within the cave led him to develop a Structuralist theory that posited the existence of a genuine organization of the graphic space in Palaeolithic sanctuaries. This model is based on a masculine/feminine duality – which can be particularly observed in the bison/horse and aurochs/horse pairs – identifiable in both the signs and the animal representations. He also defined an ongoing evolution through four consecutive styles, from the Aurignacian to the Late Magdalenian. Leroi-Gourhan did not publish a detailed analysis of the cave's figures. In his work Préhistoire de l'art occidental, published in 1965, he nonetheless put forward an analysis of certain signs and applied his explanatory model to the understanding of other decorated caves.
Threats
The opening of Lascaux Cave after World War II changed the cave environment. The exhalations of 1,200 visitors per day, presence of light, and changes in air circulation have created a number of problems. Lichens and crystals began to appear on the walls in the late 1950s, leading to closure of the caves in 1963. This led to restriction of access to the real caves to a few visitors every week, and the creation of a replica cave for visitors to Lascaux. In 2001, the authorities in charge of Lascaux changed the air conditioning system which resulted in regulation of the temperature and humidity. When the system had been established, an infestation of Fusarium solani, a white mold, began spreading rapidly across the cave ceiling and walls. The mold is considered to have been present in the cave soil and exposed by the work of tradesmen, leading to the spread of the fungus which was treated with quicklime. In 2007, a new fungus, which has created grey and black blemishes, began spreading in the real cave.
As of 2008, the cave contained black mold. In January 2008, authorities closed the cave for three months, even to scientists and preservationists. A single individual was allowed to enter the cave for twenty minutes once a week to monitor climatic conditions. Now only a few scientific experts are allowed to work inside the cave and just for a few days a month, but the efforts to remove the mold have taken a toll, leaving dark patches and damaging the pigments on the walls. In 2009 the mold problem was pronounced stable. In 2011 the fungus seemed to be in retreat after the introduction of an additional, even stricter conservation program. Two research programs have been instigated at the CIAP concerning how to best treat the problem, and the cave also now possesses a climatisation system designed to reduce the introduction of bacteria.
Organized through the initiative of the French Ministry of Culture, an international symposium titled "Lascaux and Preservation Issues in Subterranean Environments" was held in Paris on 26 and 27 February 2009, under the chairmanship of Jean Clottes. It brought together nearly three hundred participants from seventeen countries with the goal of confronting research and interventions conducted in Lascaux Cave since 2001 with the experiences gained in other countries in the domain of preservation in subterranean environments. The proceedings of this symposium were published in 2011. Seventy-four specialists in fields as varied as biology, biochemistry, botany, hydrology, climatology, geology, fluid mechanics, archaeology, anthropology, restoration and conservation, from numerous countries (France, United States, Portugal, Spain, Japan, and others) contributed to this publication.
In May 2018 Ochroconis lascauxensis, a species of fungus of the Ascomycota phylum, was officially described and named after the place of its first emergence and isolation, the Lascaux cave. This followed on from the discovery of another closely related species Ochroconis anomala, first observed inside the cave in 2000. The following year black spots began to appear among the cave paintings. No official announcement on the effect or progress of attempted treatments has ever been made.
The problem is ongoing, as are efforts to control the microbial and fungal growths in the cave. The fungal infection crises have led to the establishment of an International Scientific Committee for Lascaux and to rethinking how, and how much, human access should be permitted in caves containing prehistoric art.
See also
Art of the Upper Paleolithic
Cave of Altamira
Chauvet Cave
Cave painting
List of archaeological sites by country
List of caves
List of Stone Age art
Prehistoric art
The Thread of Art, 2012 and 2015 book
References
Further reading
— (1980) Prehistoric Painting: Lascaux or the Birth of Art. Trans. Austryn Wainhouse. Geneva: Skira [first published, 1955].
Joseph Nechvatal, Immersive Excess in the Apse of Lascaux, Technonoetic Arts 3, no3. 2005
B.et G. Delluc (dir.), Le Livre du Jubilé de Lascaux 1940–1990, Société historique et archéologique du Périgord, supplément au tome CXVII, 1990, 155 p., ill.
B. et G. Delluc, 2003: Lascaux retrouvé. Les recherches de l'abbé André Glory, Pilote 24 édition, 368 p., ill.
B. et G. Delluc, 2006: Discovering Lascaux, Sud Ouest, nouvelle édition entièrement revue et très augmentée, 80 p., ill. plans et coupe.
B. et G. Delluc, 2008: Dictionnaire de Lascaux, Sud Ouest, Bordeaux. Plus de 600 entrées et illustrations. Bibliographie (450 références). .
B. et G. Delluc, 2010: Lascaux et la guerre. Une galerie de portraits, Bull. de la Soc. historique et arch. du Périgord, CXXXVI, 2e livraison, 40 p., ill., bibliographie.
A. Glory, 2008: Les recherches à Lascaux (1952–1963). Documents recueillis et présentés par B. et G. Delluc, XXXIXe suppl. à Gallia-Préhistoire, CNRS, Paris.
Joseph Nechvatal, 2011: Immersion into Noise, University of Michigan Library's Scholarly Publishing Office. Ann Arbor.
External links
The microbiology of Lascaux Cave
http://archeologie.culture.fr/lascaux/en Lascaux resources website by French Ministry of Culture and written by researchers
http://archeologie.culture.fr/lascaux/en/visit-cave Virtual tour of Lascaux Cave via 3d model by French Ministry of Culture
Lascaux Cave Official Lascaux Web site, from the French Ministry of Culture
Lascaux Cave Art Symposium The Bradshaw Foundation
Human Timeline (Interactive) – Smithsonian, National Museum of Natural History (August 2016).
Discussion of paintings by Janina Ramirez and Alice Roberts: Art Detective Podcast, 08 Feb 2017
1940 archaeological discoveries
Stone Age sites in France
Caves containing pictograms in France
Caves of Dordogne
Tourist attractions in Dordogne
World Heritage Sites in France
Prehistoric Sites and Decorated Caves of the Vézère Valley |
18595 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex%20Luthor | Lex Luthor | Alexander Joseph "Lex" Luthor () is a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. The character was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Lex Luthor originally appeared in Action Comics #23 (cover dated: April 1940). He has since endured as the archnemesis of Superman.
Lex Luthor was originally depicted as a narcissistic and egotistical mad scientist from the 1960s to the early 1980s. Since the late 1980s, he has more often been portrayed as the power-mad CEO of LexCorp. He wishes to rid the world of Superman, ostensibly because he views Superman as a threat to humanity, but in reality envies Superman's popularity and influence. Given his high profile as a supervillain, however, he has often come into conflict with Batman and other superheroes in the DC Universe. Lex Luthor is physically an ordinary human and has no natural superpowers, but has above-average intelligence, a genius for inventions and a high command of science and technology. He occasionally wears his Warsuit, a suit of mechanized armor that gives him enhanced strength, flight, advanced weaponry, and other capabilities. While Lex is primarily depicted as a supervillain allied with other villains in the likes of Metallo, Parasite and Bizarro, and frequently leading DC supervillain teams such as the Legion of Doom, he has also been portrayed as an antihero who will ally himself with Superman and other heroes when situation calls for it.
The character was ranked 4th on IGN's list of the Top 100 Comic Book Villains of All Time and as the 8th Greatest Villain by Wizard on its 100 Greatest Villains of All Time list. Luthor is one of a few genre-crossing villains whose adventures take place "in a world in which the ordinary laws of nature are slightly suspended". Scott James Wells, Sherman Howard, John Shea, Michael Rosenbaum and Jon Cryer have portrayed the character in television series, while Lyle Talbot, Gene Hackman, Kevin Spacey, and Jesse Eisenberg have portrayed the character in films. Several actors have provided Luthor's voice in animated adaptations, including Clancy Brown, Mark Rolston, James Marsters and Giancarlo Esposito.
Publication history
Creation and development
In his first story appearance, Action Comics #23 (April 1940), Luthor is depicted as a diabolical genius and is referred to only by his surname. He resides in a flying city suspended by a dirigible and plots to provoke a war between two European nations. Lois Lane and Clark Kent investigate, which results in Lois being kidnapped. Luthor battles Superman with a green ray but he is ultimately defeated, and Lois is rescued. Superman destroys Luthor's dirigible with him still on it, implying Luthor may have died. Stories ending with Luthor's apparent death become common in his earliest appearances, with him turning up alive later on.
Luthor returns in Superman #4 and steals a weapon from the U.S. Army capable of causing earthquakes. Superman battles and defeats Luthor, then destroys the earthquake device. The scientist who made the device commits suicide to prevent its reinvention. In a story in the same issue, Luthor creates a city on the sunken Lost continent of Pacifo and populates it with recreated prehistoric monsters he plans to unleash upon the world. Superman thwarts his plans and Luthor is seemingly killed by the dinosaurs he created. Luthor returns in Superman #5 with a plan to place hypnotic gas in the offices of influential people so he can throw the nation into a depression with the help of corrupt financier Moseley. The story ends with Superman defeating him.
In these early stories, Luthor's schemes are centered around financial gain or megalomaniacal ambitions; unlike most later incarnations, he demonstrates no strong animosity toward Superman beyond inevitable resentment of the hero's constant interference with his plans. Luthor's obsessive hatred of Superman came later in the character's development.
In Luthor's earliest appearances, he is shown as a middle-aged man with a full head of red hair. Less than a year later however, an artistic mistake resulted in Luthor being depicted as completely bald in a newspaper strip. The original error is attributed to Leo Nowak, a studio artist who illustrated for the Superman dailies during this period. One hypothesis is that Nowak mistook Luthor for the Ultra-Humanite, a recurring mad scientist foe of Superman who, in his Golden Age incarnation, resembled a balding, elderly man. Other evidence suggests Luthor's design was confused with that of a stockier, bald henchman in Superman #4 (Spring 1940); Luthor's next appearance occurs in Superman #10 (May 1941), in which Nowak depicted him as significantly heavier, with visible jowls. The character's abrupt hair loss has been made reference to several times over the course of his history. In 1960, writer Jerry Siegel altered Luthor's backstory to incorporate his hair loss into his origin.
During World War II, the War Department asked for dailies of the Superman comic strip to be pulled. The strips in question were created in April 1945 and depicted Lex Luthor bombarding Superman with the radiation from a cyclotron. This violated wartime voluntary censorship guidelines meant to help conceal the Manhattan Project.
Luthor vanished for a long time, coming back in Superboy #59 (September 1957), in a story called "Superboy meets Amazing Man". A flying costumed bald man probably in his forties appears in Smallville and starts helping people using his fantastic inventions. He later moves his operations to the nearby town of Hadley. Superboy finds he is using his inventions to set the town up so he can rob their bank and stops him. In the last panel, Amazing Man is in jail and he tells Superboy he will regret it as sure as his name is Luthor and Superboy thinks that he will be Superman by the time Luthor gets out and that Luthor's talents might make him an archenemy.
Silver Age Lex Luthor
In 1956, DC Comics reimagined the Flash with a new secret identity, costume and origin. This led to the new Silver Age of Comics and the first DC Comics reboot, with characters across the board being reimagined or having their histories and nature redefined. The earlier Golden Age stories of Superman and Batman were later said to have taken place on Earth-Two, a parallel universe that was part of the larger DC Multiverse.
The Silver Age version of Luthor was introduced in Adventure Comics #271 (April 1960), now given the first name "Lex" (later said to be short for Alexander) and an origin story. Originally hero-worshiping Superboy, teenage Lex Luthor of Smallville is determined to prove he is Earth's greatest scientist by creating artificial life. His recklessness and inexperience causes a fire in his lab and he calls on Superboy to save him. The Boy of Steel puts out the fire but in the process accidentally destroys the artificial life form and the years of research notes that led to its creation, while fumes from the chemical fire cause Luthor's hair to fall out. Unwilling to hold himself responsible for the lab fire and the destruction of his own life's work, Luthor decides that Superboy was jealous of his intellect and caused the fire himself. Believing he's been betrayed by his hero and friend, Lex swears revenge.
This revised origin makes Luthor's fight with Superman a personal one and suggests that if events had unfolded differently, Luthor might have grown to be a more noble person. Luthor's ego preventing him from personal growth and the tragedy that he and Clark could have been a force for good together are played up in various stories throughout the 1970s and 1980s, particularly in Elliot S. Maggin's novels Last Son of Krypton and Miracle Monday.
The Golden Age version of Luthor appears again as a villain still alive and well on Earth-Two. To distinguish him from the modern-day Lex Luthor, the original incarnation is shown as having kept his red hair and is retroactively given the first name Alexei. In DC Comics Presents Annual #1 (1982), Alexei Luthor of Earth-Two and Lex Luthor of Earth-One team up. It is shown that Alexei is arguable colder and more villainous, perfectly willing to destroy all of Earth in order to prove his superiority, whereas Lex hesitates to do so because he had no desire to rule a lifeless world and doesn't want his sister to die.
Years later, Lex Luthor and the villain Brainiac recruit an army of super-villains during Crisis on Infinite Earths, including Alexei Luthor from Earth-Two. When Alexei argues that this army doesn't need two Luthors, Brainiac agrees and executes him.
Post-Crisis reboot
Following Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985-1986), DC reboots its universe yet again, creating the "Post-Crisis" reality. In the 1986 limited series The Man of Steel, John Byrne redesigned Lex Luthor from scratch, intending to make him a villain that the 1980s would recognize: an evil corporate executive. Byrne intentionally chose to base this new depiction of Luthor on businessmen Donald Trump and Ted Turner. Initially brutish and overweight, the character later evolved into a sleeker, more athletic version of his old self. Luthor is no longer recounted as having lost his hair in a chemical fire; rather, his hairline is shown to be receding naturally over time. Marv Wolfman, a writer on Action Comics who had one conversation with Byrne prior to Luthor's reboot recalled:
As originally presented in the Post-Crisis version of the DC Comics Universe, Lex Luthor is a product of child abuse and early poverty. Born in the Suicide Slum district of Metropolis, he is instilled with a desire to become a self-made man of great power and influence. As a teenager, he takes out a large life insurance policy on his parents without their knowledge, then sabotages their car's brakes, causing their deaths. Upon graduating from MIT, Luthor founds his own business, LexCorp, which grows to dominate much of Metropolis.
Luthor does not fully appear in The Man of Steel mini-series until the fourth issue, which takes place over a year after Superman's arrival in Metropolis. Terrorists seize Luthor's yacht, forcing Superman to intervene. Satisfied at the hero's performance, Luthor attempts to hire him, admitting he knew about the incoming attack and allowed it to occur so he could see how Superman responded (assuming that the Man of Steel would arrive in time). Enraged, the Mayor deputizes Superman to arrest Luthor for reckless endangerment. Although Luthor is released from jail quickly and has the charges dropped, the humiliation of being publicly arrested and processed, coupled with indignation that Superman refused to work for him, results in the villain pledging to destroy Superman simply to prove his power.
Despite general acceptance of Byrne's characterization, which led to its influence in media adaptations, DC Comics writers began bringing back his quality of being a scientific genius in the 1990s in stories such as The Final Night. By 2000, it was said that Luthor's genuine accomplishments in several scientific fields is what helped create LexCorp and make it so successful so quickly (in early Post-Crisis stories, Byrne suggested that Luthor was recognised as a brilliant inventor and great scientific mind, but had largely withdrawn from his laboratory in favour of the boardroom). Regarding the character being a corrupt billionaire rather than a mad scientist, author Neil Gaiman commented:
Luthor's romantic aspirations toward Lois Lane, established early on in the series, become a focal point of the stories immediately following it. He is shown making repeated attempts to court her during The Man of Steel, though Lois plainly does not return his feelings.
In the Superman Adventures comic line based on the TV series of the same name, Luthor's backstory is identical to that of the Post-Crisis origin with slight changes. Luthor is shown originating in Suicide Slum, his intelligence outshining other children, fueling his ambition to have all Metropolis look up to him one day. Luthor's baldness is never explained, save for a brief depiction of him with blond hair in childhood; it is assumed the hair loss was natural. Luthor's parents die during his teenage years, however their deaths are indeed accidental. Lex uses the insurance to pay for his tuition to MIT and then founds LexCorp. His hatred of Superman is explained as the citizens of Metropolis have admired the Man of Steel more than him.
Modern depictions
Superman: Birthright, a limited series written by Mark Waid in 2004, offers an alternate look at Luthor's history, including his youth in Smallville, and his first encounter with Superman. The story has similarities to the 2001 television series Smallville, which follows Clark Kent's life as a teenager and into early adulthood. One plot element shared by the comic and the show is the problematic relationship between Lex and his father Lionel. Along with this, Birthright restores the Silver Age concept of Luthor befriending Clark Kent as a young man. The two find a kinship in both feeling like outsider and sharing a wish to explore outer space and discover alien alife, despite one resenting humanity and the other hoping to understand and be accepted by it. Lex discovers kryptonite samples in Smallville and uses them as a power source for a machine he hopes will pierce space and time so he can communicate with Krypton. When Clark falls ill approaching the machine, Lex mistakes his reaction as doubt in the young scientist's ability and sanity. Feeling betrayed, Lex continues the experiment but an explosion erupts, the radiation blast causing his hair to fall out. Luthor leaves Metropolis and years later his scientific work, largely based on his ideas about alien life, results in a fortune he uses to create LexCorp. When Superman appears, Lex is angry at the powerful alien, the kind of companion he'd often hoped for, looks on him with disapproval and openly disrespects him in front of the media. For this and his interference with Luthor's criminal operations, the scientist businessman decides to humiliate and destroy the alien.
Waid's original intention was to jettison the notion of Lex Luthor being an evil businessman, restoring his status as a mad scientist. He ultimately conceded, however, that the CEO Luthor would be easier for readers to recognize. In Birthright, Luthor remains a wealthy corporate magnate; in contrast to Byrne's characterization, however, LexCorp is founded upon Luthor's study of extraterrestrial life, thereby providing a link between him and Superman.Waid, Mark (w), Yu, Leinil Francis (p, i). Superman: Birthright #6 (2004), DC Comics In the retrospective section of the Superman: Birthright trade paperback, Waid explains:
Birthright was initially intended to establish a new origin for Superman and Luthor. Immediately, the Superman comics and the series Superman/Batman made references to the canonicity of the new origin series. But after Infinite Crisis ended in 2006, new stories discredited parts of it and it was officially replaced by the 2009–2010 series Superman: Secret Origin. Superman: Secret Origin revised Lex's backstory so that he now again had a sister Lena. While he knew Clark as a teenager in Smallville, he rejected the other boy's attempts to form a friendship. Resentful toward his alcoholic and abusive father, Lex arranges his parents to die in a car accident and uses the insurance money to leave Smallville and start a better life. After studying under the villains Ra's al Ghul and Darkseid, he founds LexCorp and uses his PR, resources, and media control to set himself up as a near-savior in Metropolis. The Daily Planet opposes Luthor and he retaliates in ways that leave the newspaper almost bankrupt. Superman's arrival challenges Luthor's image and brings renewed interest to the Planet when he does exclusive interviews with their staff. Clark Kent, Jimmy Olsen, and Lois Lane work together to oppose Luthor's power and Superman tells the public they should strive to achieve great things themselves and not wait for others to be their saviors. Angry at Superman's interference and blaming him for losing the love of the public, Luthor swears vengeance.
Following changes to continuity in 2016's DC Rebirth, the history from Superman: Secret Origin is still largely intact, though it has also been revealed that for a time Lionel Luthor worked as a scientist for Vandal Savage and that this led to a brief friendship between Lex and J'onn J'onzz, the Martian Manhunter, when both were children.
Fictional character biography
Whether he is a mad scientist, corrupt businessman, or both, Luthor's ego is a defining trait in all his incarnations; he believes he is entitled to both popularity and power. While each incarnation initially wants the adoration of others and control over either Smallville or Metropolis, the goal eventually rises to control over Earth and possibly universal domination. Luthor's other defining trait is his obsession to destroy Superman and humiliate the alien hero, either by displaying his own superiority by achieving victory without the benefit of superpowers or to prove the Man of Steel is motivated by selfish desire rather than altruism. Many times, Luthor has claimed he could create a better way of life for the entire human race if not for Superman's interference with his work; he has even argued that the Man of Tomorrow's presence not only invites danger, it actually encourages human society not to strive for greatness because a powerful alien is around to protect them and solve problems. During the Blackest Night crossover, Wonder Woman restrains Luthor with her magic lasso and under its spell of truth he confesses he secretly wants to be Superman, revealing that beneath all his blustering, Luthor covets Superman's powers for himself. When Superman was out of sight for a year, Luthor used the time to create the "Everyman" project intending to create new superheroes to replace the Kryptonian, then later attacks Metropolis with a long-buried Kryptonian warship. Returning to action, Superman points out that Luthor had a year to prove his old argument that he could help others and improve Earth if Superman didn't interfere with his life, but instead of curing disease or making technological breakthroughs, all he did was focus on increasing his power and finding "a big destructive machine so [he] could break things." In the storyline "The Black Ring", Luthor is endowed with cosmic powers that could enable him to bring peace and bliss to the entire universe and therefore achieve his dream of being more respected than Superman, but he ultimately chooses to renounce his new powers when he realizes that his greatest enemy would never suffer again if he used them.
At times, Lex has been shown evidence that Clark Kent is Superman and almost always he denies this possibility, unable to imagine a man of such power spending half his time pretending to be average since in his mind, such a possibility would be too humiliating to bear. In stories appearing in JLA and 52 by Grant Morrison, Luthor cannot bring himself to believe Superman is truly altruistic and deeply cares about a planet that is not his native world, concluding the hero's good deeds are often actually passive-aggressive ways of flaunting his power and popularity to Lex. When the hero joins forces with others to form a new, powerful version of the Justice League of America, Lex decides this is Superman's direct challenge to his own power, and establishes an "Injustice League" composed of various supervillains to rival them.
Silver Age
While the Golden Age Luthor (later named Alexei Luthor) is simply an amoral and brilliant man driven by a simple desire for power, the Silver Age incarnation was given a more developed personality and backstory. Teenage Lex Luthor is an aspiring scientist who resides in Smallville and greatly admires its local hero Superboy. After Lex saves him from kryptonite, the Boy of Steel builds him a private laboratory in gratitude. After "thousands of experiments," the young scientist creates an artificial life-form of "primitive protoplasm." Overjoyed, he accidentally causes a chemical fire in the lab. Superboy puts out the fire, inadvertently spilling other chemicals, destroying the artificial life-form and the accumulated research notes that led to its creation. The chemical fumes also cause Lex's hair to completely fall out. Enraged he has lost years of research but unwilling to accept responsibility for the fire, Luthor concludes Superboy intentionally sabotaged his work, jealous of the young scientist's achievements, and swears revenge.
Luthor creates grandiose engineering projects to prove his superiority over the superhero, but each one fails and causes problems that Superboy then solves. Luthor then makes his first attempt to murder the Last Son of Krypton and fails. Instead of bringing him to the authorities, Superboy declares they are even now and expresses hope Lex will "straighten out" and use his intelligence to help humanity rather than try to prove his superiority or waste time seeking power and vengeance.
Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane #23 (1961) reveals the Silver Age Lex Luthor parents are Jules and Arlene and that he has a younger sister Lena. When Lex becomes a criminal, the family moves away from Smallville and changes its name to Thorul (an anagram) to start a new life free of him. Lena Thorul is a toddler at the time and grows up not remembering her real last name, while her parents say her older brother died in a mountain climbing accident. Lex later watches over the adult Lena, making sure she does not discover her connection to one of Earth's greatest villains.
As an adult, Lex Luthor's driving ambitions are to kill Superman and rule Earth, a stepping stone to dominating the universe, believing a man of his intellect deserves such power. On several occasions he joins forces with Superman's enemy Brainiac (though the two often betray each other as well). Lex is repeatedly imprisoned, but his genius allows him to routinely escape. He also makes it a point to be out of prison on the birthday of Albert Einstein, regarding it as a holiday. A famous non-canonical "imaginary story" from 1961 entitled "The Death of Superman" has Luthor finally succeed in killing Superman after pretending to reform and befriend him.
On a distant arid planet orbiting a red star, Luthor challenges Superman to a fight since Kryptonians lose power when exposed to red sun radiation. Befriending the planet's inhabitants, Luthor aids them in rediscovering lost technology that restores the water supply and helps the society rebuild. As a result, Luthor becomes a hero in the eyes of the planet, whereas his enemy Superman is detested as a villain. The people rename the planet Lexor and it becomes a regular home base and retreat for Luthor in-between his efforts to fight Superman and take over Earth. He later meets a local woman named Ardora (first called "Tharla" but renamed "Ardora" in later stories as well as the reprint of her first appearance). The two eventually fall in love and marry.
Bronze Age
Deciding to retire permanently, Luthor returns to Lexor and learns he has fathered a son by Ardora, Lex Luthor Jr. He spends the next several weeks with his new family before discovering Lexor suffers from the same planetary instability that destroyed Krypton. While creating a "Neutrarod" tower to stabilize the planetary core, Luthor's pathological hatred for Superman resurfaces and he reflects on feeling unsatisfied in life without their conflict. The villain then unearths an ancient underground laboratory of great technology, a relic from Lexor's lost age. After one of Luthor's still-active satellites threatens the people of Earth, he concludes Superman will soon come to Lexor to take him back to Earth authorities. With the underground lab's resources, he spends weeks creating a highly destructive, flight-capable "war-suit" (later simply called a "warsuit") to finally match the Kryptonian in physical combat and counter his powers. To test the suit, Luthor performs several acts of destruction on Lexor, feigning ignorance when he hears about the "mystery marauder" and telling Ardora he has no knowledge of the armored man.
When Superman arrives, Luthor dons his warsuit and attacks, now obsessed with the need to best the hero in combat and prove his superiority. The people of Lexor are shocked to realize he is the mystery marauder and does not care about the harm he has caused them. During the battle, Luthor releases an energy salvo that accidentally overloads the Neutrarod, resulting in the complete destruction of the planet Lexor and all its inhabitants, including Ardora and Lex Jr. Similar to how he reacted after the destruction of his lab in Smallville, Lex is unable to process his grief and accept his responsibility for Lexor's destruction. He psychologically blocks part of his own memory to convince himself Superman is at fault, renewing his need for vengeance. In his subsequent stories, he regularly uses the Lexorian warsuit. The warsuit was designed by George Pérez as part of the Super Powers toyline in the early 1980s before being introduced into the comics in 1983. The suit vanished in 1986 after Crisis on Infinite Earths rebooted DC Comics continuity, but was reintroduced in 2004, now said to be built with a combination of Earth and alien technology (including tech from the other-dimensional world Apokolips) and armed with different forms of kryptonite in the gauntlet.
Lex Luthor of Earth-One team up with Alexei Luthor of Earth-Two. It is shown that Alexei is arguable colder and more villainous, perfectly willing to destroy all of Earth in order to prove his superiority, whereas Lex hesitates to do so because he had no desire to rule a lifeless world and doesn't want his sister to die. They even extend their alliance to Ultraman when Earth-Three's Lex Luthor is a good guy. All three villains were defeated by Superman of Earth-One, Superman of Earth-Two, and Lex Luthor of Earth-Three.
During the 12-issue limited series Crisis on Infinite Earths, Luthor allies himself with fellow Superman foe Brainiac to recruit an army of supervillains spanning the DC Multiverse. Alexei Luthor is present and complains this army does not need two Luthors; Brainiac kills Alexei in response. At the conclusion of the series, reality is altered so that each of the different universes converge into one. Luthor is subsequently returned to prison with all his memories of the Crisis forgotten.
This incarnation of Lex Luthor met his end in the non-canonical two-part story "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" that closed out the Pre-Crisis Superman continuity of the Silver and Bronze Age. Luthor finds Brainiac's robotic head, hoping to revive the villain for a new team-up. Instead, Brainiac takes control of Luthor's body, forcing him to be a host as he attempts to destroy Superman. Luthor later begs a superpowered Lana Lang to kill him, who does so. Brainiac retains control of the body for a short period of time before rigor mortis sets in, then abandons it, running out of power shortly afterward.
Post-Crisis
As part of the continuity changes which followed The Man of Steel and Superman: Secret Origin, Alexander "Lex" Joseph Luthor is corrupt businessman profiting from many hidden criminal operations. This Luthor grew up a poor child alongside Perry White, later causing his parents' death via a car accident so he can inherit their life insurance and create a better life for himself, creating LexCorp. He marries and divorces several times and desires a romance with Lois Lane. When Superman appears, Luthor takes advantage of a terrorist attack to see the hero in action and then attempts to make him an employee. But the Man of Steel, acting as a special deputy of Metropolis, arrests him for endangering people by not warning authorities of the impending terrorist attack. Humiliated, Luthor swears revenge, repeatedly letting Superman know about his criminal schemes but never leaving him enough evidence to bring the man to justice again. Luthor becomes obsessed with Superman and gathers all information on him and his associates, leading a computer analysis to conclude Clark Kent and Superman are the same person. Unable to believe someone as powerful as Superman regularly hide that power and pretend to be average, as that is something he would never do himself, Luthor dismisses the computer's findings and concludes both the machine and its programmer are at fault.
As a nod to the previous continuity, Luthor has his lab create high-tech armor that resembles the Lexorian warsuit. Rather than act directly, he has an employee don the armor and attack Superman for him. The man is defeated and cannot testify against Luthor because the armor's neural control unit destroys his mind. Along with this, Luthor participates in the creation of two Superman villains, Parasite (indirectly) and Bizarro (a failed attempt by Luthor's scientists to clone Superman).
When Superman fights the cyborg Metallo, Luthor intervenes. In Superman (vol. 2) #2, discovering Metallo is powered by a 'heart' of kryptonite that can hurt and potentially kill Superman, Luthor steals it and a creates a kryptonite ring for himself. He wears the radioactive ore around his finger as a symbol that he is untouchable, causing the Man of Tomorrow pain and weakness whenever he approaches. Not realizing humans can be affected by severe or long-term meteoric radiation exposure, Luthor eventually suffers from Kryptonite poisoning. Having his right hand amputated to prevent the cancer's spread, later on said kryptonite ring, which he kept in cold storage prior to surgery, would be stolen not long afterwards. Eventually coming into the possession of Superman, who in turn entrusts it to Batman, tasking the Dark Knight to use it if the Man of Steel ever becomes corrupt or falls under the control of another. But removing the tainted limb was a mere half measure, as his affliction had already metastasized rendering Lex's condition terminal.
Luthor fakes his death in a plane crash in the Andes and secretly has his brain transferred to a cloned body, one younger, taller, with full hair, and more physically fit. With aid from trusted assistants, the now physically 21-year-old Luthor presents himself to the world as his own hitherto unknown, illegitimate son and heir from Australia, Lex Luthor II, who only wishes to do good and can't be judged by the actions of his father. He quickly manipulates and recruits the new Supergirl (a protoplasmic being), who falls in love with him due to his resemblance to her lost love and creator, the Luthor of a parallel Earth. When Superman is seemingly killed by the living weapon Doomsday, the genetic research facility Project Cadmus creates a seeming clone of the hero called Superboy (Kon-El). As Earth science cannot perfectly replicate Kryptonian DNA, Superboy is created by genetic manipulation, essentially giving him 50% Superman's DNA and 50% DNA of a human being, revealed years later to be Luthor himself.
Luthor's clone body eventually begins to deteriorate, causing him to lose his hair and age at an accelerated rate, a side-effect of a disease affecting all clones. Lois Lane discovers proof of Luthor's clone harvesting and false identity and exposes him with help from Superman. Desperate to evade arrest, Luthor activates technology left on Earth by Brainiac, destroying large sections of Metropolis in the process. In the end, Luthor becomes a prisoner in his own body, unable to move or even blink, internally swearing vengeance on Superman. During the crossover Underworld Unleashed, the demon lord Neron offers Luthor full health and vitality in exchange for services and his soul. Not believing in the existence of souls, Lex agrees and is restored, regaining the physical fitness of his Lex II body but again lacking head and facial hair, and is physically approximately in his true age. His soul is later restored after Neron is defeated by Captain Marvel and the Trickster. Returning to Metropolis, Luthor submits to a trial. He claims all his crimes were committed by a violent clone created by renegade scientists from Cadmus Labs who secretly held the true Luthor hostage. Luthor is acquitted of all charges. He later arranges to reacquire his old kryptonite ring.
When Superman and others form a new, powerful version of the Justice League of America, Lex decides this is Superman's direct challenge to his own power, so he creates a new Injustice Gang in response. Along with his new teammates, Lex acquires a powerful artifact known as the Worlogog, which can warp space and time. The Injustice Gang kills several people while attacking the League then lures the heroes into a trap, but then is defeated. The Joker gains control of the Worlogog, but is then telepathically attacked, becoming temporarily sane and remorseful. Before the killer's mind reverts, Luthor has Joker use the Worlogog to revise history so that those killed no longer died. With the deaths removed and little physical evidence linking him to any wrongdoing, Luthor is free to go. While Batman concludes Luthor simply used Joker to avoid murder charges, Superman believes it is a sign Luthor does not truly desire the deaths of innocents and still has the potential to be a good man.
Luthor marries Contessa Erica Alexanda Del Portenza, a near-immortal and formidable woman with her own agenda. After the birth of their daughter Lena, Luthor attempts to raise the girl without her interference. After several clashes, Luthor has the Contessa seemingly killed by a missile barrage. Later on, the time-traveling villain Brainiac 13 infuses Metropolis with technology from the future while his ancestor Brainiac, in need of a new physical vessel, mentally inhabits young Lena's body. Brainiac 13 offers Luthor control over of the technology if he turns over Brainiac and Luthor hands over his daughter. He later tells Superman that he has a "kingdom" now as a result of his deal, adding "As for my princess... I can always make another."
President of the United States
Deciding to turn to politics, Luthor becomes President of the United States, winning the election on a platform of promoting technological progress. His first action as president is to take a proposed moratorium on fossil-based fuels to the U.S. Congress. On the night of the election, Batman threatens that Luthor can keep the kryptonite ring or the White House but not both. Later on, Superman, Batman and Lois Lane seemingly try to steal the ring only to be thwarted. In actuality, they manipulated Luthor into retrieving a fake while Batman keeps the actual ring. Superman, upon learning that Lex Luthor was about to be elected President, flew off in a fit of rage and split one of Saturn's small moons in half with one fly through.
Before he takes office in the White House, Luthor cuts ties with his own company LexCorp, turning over leadership to Talia Head (pronounced "Heed"), daughter of international terrorist cult leader Ra's al Ghul, one of Batman's greatest enemies. Luthor's popularity is assisted by the extreme unpopularity of the previous administration's mishandling of the Gotham City earthquake crisis (as depicted in the No Man's Land storyline in the Batman titles), and his own seemingly heroic efforts to rebuild Gotham before it rejoins the United States. Batman learns Luthor attempted to take control of Gotham by forging deeds for its lands in his own name. This results in Bruce Wayne severing all commercial ties between the U.S. government and his company, Wayne Enterprises. In response to Wayne Enterprises severing ties with his government, Luthor arranges the murder of Wayne's lover, Vesper Fairchild, and frames Wayne for the murder (as seen in Bruce Wayne: Fugitive), the plan being more successful than Luthor anticipated when his chosen assassin of David Cain realized Wayne's identity as Batman and set up a complex frame.
Soon after Luthor discovers evidence that leads him to conclude Clark Kent is Superman, the 2001 Our Worlds at War saga begins, in which Topeka, Kansas is destroyed in an attack by the alien Imperiex. Luthor is warned of the impending attack beforehand but alerts no one so Earth can enter a great war and he can prove his leadership to the world. Luthor coordinates the U.S. Army, Earth's superheroes, and a number of untrustworthy alien forces to battle the main villain of the story arc. Although Lex Luthor is able to devise a plan to destroy Imperiex's body, the plan is subsequently hijacked by Brainiac 13, requiring Superman to propose a new plan where Darkseid and Luthor coordinate their efforts to defeat Imperiex by sending him back in time. Following the battle, Superman retrieves Lena and returns her to Lex, advising Luthor to stop trying to be a god and just be a man. Soon afterward, Superman's confronts the telepathic Manchester Black. Realizing Superman is a true hero and therefore true heroism is possible, Black decides to make up for his actions against the Man of Steel and Lois Lane by removing Lex Luthor's knowledge that the Man of Steel is Clark Kent.
Presidential appointees
Cabinet officials
Other appointments
Revised backstory and removal from office
Following the publication of Superman: Birthright in 2003-2004, Luthor's history is altered (and the new canon is quickly referenced in both Superman comics and the series Superman/Batman that begins in 2004). In the new history, Luthor is only a few years older than Clark Kent and his family moves to Smallville when he is a teenager. Possibly abused by his father Lionel, and alienated from others by his intelligence and his ignorance of certain social cues and behaviors (he does not understand why gifts are given on birthdays without a promise of payment of some kind), Lex only finds friendship with Clark, impressed by the young man's knowledge though also finding him naive. Luthor discovers kryptonite meteors in Smallville and uses the radioactive mineral as a power source for his experiments. When Clark sees the machine and feels ill from proximity to kryptonite, Luthor mistakes his reaction to mean the young man doesn't believe in the experiment, that he also thinks Lex is lying or "crazy" as others do. The machine then explodes and Luthor survives but loses his hair as a result of radiation. Years later, his scientific research, largely based on his ideas about alien life, results in a small fortune that he uses to create LexCorp. When Superman appears in Metropolis, Lex is angered the man won't bow to his control and takes it very personally that a powerful alien, the kind of companion Luthor had often hoped for and believed would see him as a peer, instead looks on him with disapproval and moral judgment. This, along with Superman interfering with his criminal agenda and openly disrespecting Luthor in front of the media, motivates Lex to humiliate and destroy the alien hero.
The initial story arc of the Superman/Batman ongoing series depicts the fall of Luthor's reign as U.S. President before he finishes his first term of office. In "The World's Finest" (more commonly referred to as "Public Enemies"), a kryptonite asteroid threatens Earth with its incoming impact and intense radiation. Luthor has been secretly injecting himself with a new version of the "super-steroid" Venom (a chemical associated with the Batman villain Bane) mixed with liquified synthetic kryptonite of his own design. While increasing his physical strength and speed, it starts making him irrational and more prone to aggression. Seeing an opportunity with the appearance of the asteroid, Luthor decides to finally end Superman and tells the media that he has evidence the Man of Steel himself is drawing the deadly radioactive rock towards Earth. He offers a billion-dollar reward for the Last Son of Krypton's capture. As these efforts fail and the meteorite is destroyed, an enraged Luthor decides to fight Superman directly, injecting himself with more of the synthetic kryptonite-laced Venom and donning a high-tech warsuit.
Maddened by the Venom, Luthor admits during the battle that he has no real proof Superman is the cause of the deadly asteroid heading to Earth and reveals he traded the creature Doomsday, a living weapon of mass destruction, to Darkseid in return for weapons during the Our Worlds at War crisis and Apokoliptian technology to create a new warsuit, a deal that was done illegally and would be considered immoral by many. After Superman damages his warsuit, Luthor retreats to LexCorp HQ only to discover that Talia Head has sold the entire company to the Wayne Foundation. Without resources and realize his confession to crime and conspiracy with a hostile power was recorded and broadcast, Luthor flees, now a wanted fugitive. Vice President Pete Ross briefly assumes his place as President. While on the run, Luthor takes a renewed interest in his "son" Superboy, hoping to corrupt the young Kon-El into being his soldier.
In 2009, the story of Luthor's rise and fall as U.S. President was adapted as a direct-to-video animated film entitled Superman/Batman: Public Enemies.
Infinite Crisis
Alexander Luthor, Jr. (the son of Earth-Three's version of Luthor) returns to the DC Universe along with other survivors from Crisis on Infinite Earths as part of a scheme to replace it with a perfect Earth. He masquerades as the mainstream Lex Luthor and creates a new Secret Society of Super Villains. In response, the real Luthor takes on the identity of Mockingbird and forms the third incarnation of the Secret Six to counter the Society. The two have a confrontation during the main Infinite Crisis story and the mainstream Lex Luthor helps Earth's heroes locate young Alexander Jr. After Infinite Crisis ends, Luthor oversees Alexander's execution at the hands of the Joker in Crime Alley.
52
In the 2006 – 2007 series 52, Lex takes advantage of the presence of Alexander Jr.'s body. He convinces the public that it was not him who committed crimes and fled the White House but rather this man, a Luthor from a parallel Earth who masqueraded as him. While some in the public don't believe this, it is enough to provide reasonable doubt and clear Lex of all charges again. With Superman now missing (due to losing his powers at the end of Infinite Crisis), Luthor pursues a new agenda. He creates the Luthoran Church and becomes spokesman for the Everyman Project, which offers superpowers to ordinary citizens through artificial metagene treatment. With several Everyman volunteers (including Natasha Irons, niece of John Henry Irons), Luthor forms his own team of superheroes, the new Infinity Inc. When the team battles the villain Blockbuster (whom Luthor empowered as well), Lex demonstrates he can 'shut off' the powers of any of his Everyman agents; this results in the death of his speedster, Trajectory.
At the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve, Luthor sets in motion a calculated plot to discredit Supernova, a new hero defending Metropolis in Superman's absence. Luthor triggers a mass-shutdown of the powers of everyone who has undertaken the Everyman program, except for the members of Infinity Inc, causing widespread death, injury, and millions of dollars worth of damage. Luthor's plot ultimately fails when Supernova is able to minimize the disaster with a spectacular rescue.
While investigating Luthor, Natasha Irons discovers he has experimented on himself with artificial metagene treatment. After developing nearly all of Superman's powers himself, Luthor considers conquering Earth and renaming it Lexor. However, Natasha triggers an electromagnetic pulse which shuts down the synthetic metagene and her uncle Steel to knocks Lex out. Publicly disgraced, Lex faces indictment for over 120 criminal counts relating to what is now called "the New Year's Eve massacre", ranging from malfeasance to first-degree murder. The full nature of his crimes are brought to public attention through various articles written by Clark Kent.
One Year Later and Countdown
One year after the events of "Infinite Crisis", weeks after the New Year's Eve Massacre, Luthor is cleared of all criminal charges in the "One Year Later" storyline. Despite this, his public image is ruined and, thanks to the machinations of the villain Doctor Sivana, he has lost most of his wealth and had no control over the newly reformed LexCorp, now being run by Lana Lang. He blames Clark Kent for swaying public opinion and pledges vengeance on Metropolis after an angry mob jeers him. Amassing large quantities of kryptonite and kidnapping the super-villains Metallo and the Kryptonite Man, Lex uses them to power a Kryptonian warship controlled through a "sunstone" crystal. Having recently regained his powers, Superman destroys the kryptonite-powered ship and confronts Lex with the fact that, despite his claims that Superman is what prevents him from helping humanity, the only thing he accomplished during the Man of Steel's absence was to cause pain and acquire a machine that could cause more destruction. Enraged, Lex manages to escape custody yet again.
Lex Luthor continues his open campaigns against Superman and Earth's heroes, working with Bizarro, a new Revenge Squad, and the Kryptonian General Zod. Alongside Joker and Cheetah III, Luthor (once again wearing his warsuit) organizes a new Injustice League to help destroy the reformed Justice League. During this period, he creates the third Shaggy Man and the third Blockbuster.
Luthor plays a large role in the Countdown to Final Crisis tie-in series Salvation Run. Exiled to a distant planet along with many of Earth's villains, Lex quickly assumes command and convinces many to follow him as he finds a way home. He is opposed by those who join forces with Joker and Gorilla Grodd. Eventually, the villains are attacked by Darkseid's shock troopers the Parademons. Luthor manages to get the villains off the planet with a makeshift teleporter, using the villains Neutron, Heatmonger, Plasmus, Warp, and Thunder and Lightning as unwilling power sources. When called a "monster" by Thunder, Luthor claims the ones who exiled them are the real monsters and he is the hero. He sets the teleporter to self-destruct after he uses it, killing the Parademons as well as his living batteries.
Final Crisis
In the Final Crisis crossover, Luthor joins the Inner Circle of Libra's Secret Society of Super Villains. After learning Libra is a prophet of Darkseid, Lex Luthor opposes him, unwilling to be a mindless slave while Earth is largely destroyed. Working with Doctor Sivana, Luthor seemingly destroys Libra and overrides the will-destroying Anti-Life Equation being broadcast into the helmets of the Justifiers, humans forced to obey Darkseid. Luthor subsequently assists Superman in leading the assault against Darkseid's forces, noting that Superman can consider this a legendary first team-up between "good" and "bad." Luthor joins those assisting Superman and his remaining allies in constructing a new wish-granting Miracle Machine, which is later used to reset the universe without Darkseid's presence.
New Krypton
Luthor is finally found guilty for his crimes. Rather than spend life in prison, he is recruited by General Sam Lane to serve out his sentence by working for the secretive Project 7734, accessing the knowledge stored within the captured Brainiac. Luthor successfully accesses Brainiac's brain, using it to activate the villain's ship and robotic drones. Luthor is then tasked with studying the genetic potential of the seemingly dead body of Doomsday.
Luthor later manages to use Brainiac's ship to kill the soldiers assigned to watch him. Brainiac frees himself from Luthor's control and the two make their escape. Forming an alliance, Brainiac promises Luthor can have Earth when he is done with it. Lex returns to Smallville, where it is revealed his sister Lena is alive, physically and mentally handicapped, and living with her daughter Lori. In an effort to prove his abilities to Superboy, Lex manages to counter Lena's disabilities, allowing her to walk and regain greater mental awareness, then quickly reverses the process, leaving her completely catatonic. Luthor then informs Superboy that so long as Superman is alive, he will never reveal how he helped Lena. Seeing Superboy now as a failed experiment due to having 50% "wrong alien DNA", Luthor and Brainiac create another binary clone with their own genetics.
Last Stand of New Krypton and War of the Supermen
As part of his participation in Project 7734, Luthor sends a robot double of himself with Brainiac on a mission to attack New Krypton. While there, the Luthor robot tampers with the body chemistry of the previously captured villain Reactron. Reactron then kills himself, initiating a chain reaction which destroys New Krypton and all but a handful of its 100,000 Kryptonian inhabitants. Supergirl's mother Alura is among the casualties. Since Earth is at war with New Krypton at the time, Luthor is praised for this action and receives a presidential pardon for all his past crimes.
Blackest Night
During the Blackest Night storyline, when the public learned that everyone who has died are rising as undead Black Lanterns, Luthor isolates himself in his safehouse in fear that all the people he has murdered over the years will reanimate and seek revenge. Several victims, including his deceased father, arrive but he escapes after receiving a power ring fueled by the orange light of avarice, becoming an Orange Lantern deputy. Luthor arrives at Coast City and joins the battle against the Black Lantern Corps, fighting Black Lantern versions of Superman and Superboy. Luthor is quickly overwhelmed by his greed and sets out to steal the rings of his fellow inducted Lanterns, taking Scarecrow's yellow fear-powered ring before being held back. Wonder Woman restrains Luthor with her magic lasso and under its spell of truth he confesses he secretly wants to be Superman. When Nekron is defeated, Larfleeze the Orange Lantern takes Luthor's ring, as there can only be one avarice-powered ring.
Still craving the power of the orange light, Luthor recovers and operates on the remains of Black Lanterns. He is visited by Larfleeze, who demands to know what is important to the people of Earth. Luthor responds with "power" (which Larfleeze already possesses) and "land" (which intrigues the alien).
Superman: Secret Origin Revision
The 2009-2010 mini-series Superman: Secret Origin alters Lex's history again. He now grows up in Smallville with his younger sister Lena and abusive, alcoholic father. He meets Clark Kent on a few occasions but is defensive and insulted when he realizes Clark desires a friendship. While in high school, Lex arranges for his parents to die in a car accident, after which he uses the money to travel the world. Action Comics Annual #13 in 2011 reveals that after leaving Smallville, Lex spent some time studying under Ra's al Ghul and later spent time working as a weapons maker for Darkseid, learning the technology of Apokolips.
Lex's scientific work and other factors lead him to create a fortune and found LexCorp. Luthor's public relations paints him as a savior to Metropolis, which suffers greatly from crime, and he makes a display of regularly granting good fortune to a random citizen. When Superman appears, Luthor's secret criminal operations are threatened and Luthor is no longer considered a great savior or power in the city, particularly after the hero tells the public that they should look to themselves to be heroes and not look to others to be their saviors. Luthor begins a quest for vengeance, aiding (indirectly and directly) in the origins of Parasite and Metallo.
"The Black Ring"
After the conclusion of the New Krypton event, Luthor became the lead character in Action Comics and until issue No. 900. Written by Paul Cornell, the first storyline "The Black Ring" explores Luthor's new desire to locate the energy of the Black Lantern Corps. Aiding him in this quest is a robot duplicate of Lois Lane. To distract Superman and his closest allies from interrupting him, Luthor releases several Doomsday duplicates.
Luthor's quest involves a conversation with Death herself and finally leads him to face a powerful and deadly entity released from the Phantom Zone. Luthor infuses himself with Kryptonian technology and grapples with the creature. The two fuse and Luthor learns it evolved in the Phantom Zone and now seeks to escape, driven mad by sensing the grief and anger of the Zone prisoners. With the creature's power at his command, Luthor draws out Superman to him and attempts to drive the hero mad by forcing him to experience real human emotions, believing the Last Son of Krypton only fakes humanity in order to be trusted. The ploy fails and Luthor's new abilities reveal that Superman is really Clark Kent, a well-meaning man raised by Earth people who loved him and who still mourns the loss of his beloved human father Jonathan Kent. Luthor is enraged by how this upbringing and emotional nature clashes with his own motivations, unhappy childhood and anger towards his father.
It becomes clear that the Phantom Zone entity has the power to create a feeling of peace and bliss throughout the entire universe, at the cost of never allowing him to cause any harm to another being. Superman appeals to Luthor to make this a reality, thus giving the universe a gift and achieving something beyond the Man of Steel's abilities. Unwilling to create a universe of bliss when it would mean Superman would also be rewarded instead of suffering, Luthor loses his connection to the entity and its power, as well as his memory of everything he learned merged with it. The entity departs for another reality and Lex falls into a Phantom Zone portal. Shortly afterward, the Flashpoint timeline is created and afterward the DC Universe is replaced by the New 52 reality.
The New 52
In 2011, DC Comics implemented The New 52, a relaunch of its titles and a reboot of its fictional continuity. In the new reality, Lex Luthor has no childhood association with Smallville or Clark Kent. As an adult in Metropolis with the resources of LexCorp, he sets up himself as a scientific troubleshooter for the military, working with government scientist John Henry Irons to create high-tech armor called "Metal-Zero" (which is later used to create the villain Metallo). When Superman appears in Metropolis and clashes with local authorities, Luthor works with the military to bring in the superhuman being, arguing that alien vigilante is an inherent threat since history has shown that introducing new life forms into other environments often causes the local environment to destabilize and suffer. Luthor tortures Superman to test his power, justifying his actions by looking at the hero as an alien rather than a human being whose well being should be considered. Superman laughs at Lex, infuriating the scientist, then escapes. Insulted by Superman's mocking laughter and his failure to contain the alien, and determined to learn more secrets from the Kryptonian's biology and technology, Luthor becomes determined to best the Man of Steel.
Unknown to the U.S. military, Lex Luthor has been in contact with the "Collector of Worlds" (a version of Brainiac) and makes a deal with the alien, who wishes to collect specimens from Earth for his collection of inhabitants and artifacts from different planets. Luthor intends to increases his power in Metropolis and to aid this he also supplies social justice blogger and journalist Clark Kent with information regarding the corrupt activities of powerful media mogul Glen Glennmorgan of Galaxy Inc. Clark is unaware his informant is Luthor, knowing him only as "Icarus."
After the Collector attacks Metropolis and Luthor's deal with the villain is exposed, Luthor is fired as a consultant to the U.S. military by General Sam Lane himself. He is later instrumental in the creation of the New 52 version of the Kryptonite Man, known in this world primarily as the K-Man. A few years later, Luthor's schemes against Superman and some of his crimes are exposed. He is arrested and imprisoned in a special U.S. government prison.
In the "Forever Evil" storyline, Luthor plays a major role in opposing the Crime Syndicate, an evil version of the Justice League from a parallel Earth. He founds the New 52 incarnation of the Injustice League, helping Batman to free their world from the Syndicate's control and saving Superman's life from a kryptonite attack by Syndicate member Atomica. Public opinion of Lex Luthor becomes favorable. After learning an entity destroyed the Crime Syndicate's Earth, Luthor wants to prepare for the possibility that his Earth could be threatened next. To aid him in this and continue his new role as a hero, he requests Justice League membership. The Justice League are not sure about his altruism but decides his membership would make it easier to monitor him. While a Leaguer, Luthor helps against several threats, wearing a high-tech warsuit created by reverse-engineering Kryptonian technology, and builds a new Watchtower for the team.
When the New God Darkseid is seemingly killed, his "Omega Effect" is contained in Lex Luthor, temporarily turning him into a God of Apokolips.
The New 52 Superman's identity is revealed to the world and the hero subsequently loses most of his powers. Superman consults Luthor for help, but the villain cannot believe that someone as powerful as Superman would pretend to be someone as ordinary as Clark Kent. He decides that Superman's loss of power is a convenient lie to hide the fact that Clark Kent is not really the Man of Steel, that he is only dressing like him and has found a way to acquire limited powers of his own. Luthor asks Clark to tell him the truth of why he and Superman are lying to the world, but the Man of Steel has no answers for him.
DC Rebirth
Following the death of the New 52 Superman, Luthor creates a new warsuit decorated by Superman's S-shield, deciding he is the new protector of Metropolis. He is confronted by the Pre-Flashpoint version of Superman, who refuses to believe Luthor's intentions are noble. In DC's 2016 line-wide relaunch DC Rebirth, large parts of the New 52 canon are removed (later said to have occurred in a different timeline) while large parts of the Post-Crisis canon are restored to the DC Universe. Eventually, this affects the Superman comics as well, in the wake of the 2017 storyline "Superman Reborn" Luthor's backstory from Superman: Secret Origin and large parts of his Post-Crisis continuity are restored, while the New 52 events are largely removed. The canon says that Luthor still served in the Justice League for a time.
In the Watchmen sequel Doomsday Clock, Luthor is approached by Adrian Veidt, who attempts to enlist his aid in finding Doctor Manhattan. He is then attacked by a seemingly-revived Comedian. After recovering from surgery, he reveals he has been investigating claims that many heroes and villains did not gain their powers from accidents, but were actually the results of government experiments. He later provides Lois Lane with footage of the Justice Society of America, who in the new canon were not the publicly known superheroes of World War II, but were clandestine heroes whose existence was largely denied. Doomsday Clock ends with Luthor considering utilizing and improving Veidt's methods for his own personal use. It is also revealed the New 52 Luthor and history still exist in a parallel universe.
Year of the Villain
Lex Luthor's childhood is fleshed our further in the pages of Justice League. Before he ever met Clark Kent, it is said his father Lionel Luthor was a scientist working with the Legionnaires Club, an organization created by the immortal villain Vandal Savage to unlock the secrets of the universe. At one point, Lionel is able to reach through space and time to bring a Martian child named J'onn J'onzz to Earth. Lex and J'onn form a brief friendship. When the heroic Blackhawks attacks the operations of the Legionnaires' Club, Lex sends J'onn back home to Mars to protect him. Many years later, he will meet J'onn again when the alien operates on Earth as the Martian Manhunter. To protect his secrets, Vandal Savage has Lionel's memories altered. As a result of this psychological trauma, Lionel becomes a "broken man" and an alcoholic. Lex comes to hate his father and only feels family love for his sister Lena, who is increasingly ill and whom he wishes to help.
After the universal barrier known as the Source Wall is broken during the events of "No Justice," Luthor forms a new Legion Of Doom to track down the secrets that were once pursued by the Legionnaires' Club, discovering they are connected to the god-like Perpetua, Mother of Forgers. In the Year of the Villain special, Luthor commits suicide to gain favor with Perpetua, who resurrects him as her acolyte/child, becoming a powerful Martian/human hybrid called Apex Lex. He then offers power to many DC Universe villains.
Relationships and family
Pre-Crisis continuity
In the Pre-Crisis continuity, Luthor is shown as having very few personal attachments. Shamed by his crimes, his parents Jules and Arlene disown him, move away and cut off all ties to Smallville, and change their name to the anagram "Thorul." Jules and Arlene take their younger child Lena with them, who is only a toddler at the time and later does not remember her real last name. Lena Thorul is told her older brother died in a mountain climbing accident. Not long after their departure from Smallville, Jules and Arlene die in a car accident, leaving Lena to grow up alone. Like her brother, she attends Regis High School and then later becomes a librarian. Lena meets Lois Lane, who plans to mention the young woman in a story but is then warned not to by Lex Luthor. Superman and Lois discover the truth but agree to Lex's request that Lena not learn about their connection. Later on, Lena moves to Midvale and befriends Superman's cousin Supergirl, who also winds up helping to make sure Lena doesn't learn the truth about her brother.
Exposure to one of Luthor's inventions later grants Lena ESP, making her an empath. Lena Thorul marries FBI agent Jeff Colby (who had once arrested Lex) and they have a son, Val Colby. Jeff Colby dies some time later. After Lena has brain surgery, the decision is made to reveal the truth about Luthor to her. Luthor then discovers he was an unwitting party to a conspiracy against Lena masterminded by his own cellmate "Sam", who wanted revenge against Colby. Deeply remorseful about this, he apologizes to Lena and the two attempt to make amends with each other.
The Pre-Crisis Luthor also has a niece named Nasthalthia Luthor, the child of an older unnamed sister of Lex's who had run away and eloped in Europe when she was a teenager. "Nasty" Luthor is an occasional thorn in Supergirl's side, at one point forming a gang called Nasty's Nasties. Nasthalthia is removed from canon following the reboot of Crisis on Infinite Earths, but does appear in the critically acclaimed All-Star Superman.
Lex Luthor himself later marries Ardora of the planet Lexor and, in Action Comics #544 (June 1983), learns he has an infant son by Ardora, Lex Luthor, Jr.. Almost two months later, Luthor accidentally causes the destruction of Lexor, and Ardora and Lex, Jr. die as a direct result.
Post-Crisis continuity
In the Post-Crisis continuity, Lena is the name of Lex's adopted sister when he was living in a foster home. She is accidentally killed by their foster father when she refuses to try to trick Lex out of his inheritance. Lex later names his baby daughter after her.
Following the events of the Infinite Crisis, Luthor's history was again altered, re-introducing Lena as his blood sister. Unlike the Pre-Crisis version, Lena is well aware of her history with Lex, having grown up alongside him, with only an abusive father. Lex and Lena's mother is named Letitia and is presumed deceased. She has no empathic abilities, and is a paraplegic with a teenaged daughter, Lori, both of whom still live in Smallville. Unlike his Pre-Crisis version, Lex has little love for his sister, having abandoned her with an unnamed aunt after their father dies of a heart attack. Lex even goes so far as to cure Lena's illness, and then immediately undoes the process, leaving her completely catatonic, solely to make a mocking point to Superboy and Superman. Lena is currently under the care of the best doctors from Wayne Enterprises, hired by Red Robin.
In the post-The Man of Steel continuity, Luthor is childhood friends with Perry White and it is revealed Luthor is the biological father of Perry's son Jerry White, conceived during a period when Perry was believed dead. Luthor, Perry and Alice only learned the truth shortly before Jerry was killed by a gang war that Luthor had triggered. Post-Crisis Lex Luthor has been married eight times, though the first seven marriages occurred off-panel in Luthor's past. His eighth marriage to Contessa Erica Alexandra Del Portenza (a.k.a. the "Contessa") is based on mutual greed; the Contessa buys controlling interest in LexCorp after Luthor is indicted, compelling him to marry her in order to regain control of his company. The Contessa becomes pregnant and starts using the unborn child to dominate Lex into doing her bidding. Luthor's response is to imprison her while she is drugged during childbirth, keeping her in a permanently unconscious state. The Contessa later escapes to an island mansion, but upon being elected President, Luthor targets her home with a barrage of missiles and destroys it. Luthor's daughter Lena was the avatar of The Tech, the remnant cyberware of Metropolis after Brainiac 13's advancing the city to a futuristic state was undone.
James D. Hudnall's Lex Luthor: The Unauthorized Biography further expands on Luthor's origin. The story details how Luthor was sent to live with a foster family following the sabotage of his parents' car. His foster parents, Casey and Emily Griggs, conspire to embezzle his insurance and coerce their daughter, Lena, into seducing Lex to learn the location of the money. Due to her genuine romantic feelings toward Lex, Lena refuses and is beaten to death by her father. Lex is absent from the home at the time of the murder, having been talked into going to a football game by his schoolmate Perry White. Once he has established his preeminence in Metropolis, Luthor takes vengeance on Griggs, secretly hiring him to assassinate Frank Berkowitz, the city's popular four-term mayor, who refuses to knuckle under to Luthor's dominance, then personally killing him once the deed is done.
As an adult, Perry's unwitting 'role' in Lena's death motivates Luthor to have an affair with Perry's wife, Alice, during a period when Perry is missing and assumed dead. Alice becomes pregnant shortly afterward, though the timing of the conception means an equal possibility of either Luthor or White being the father. The child, Jerry White, later learns his true parentage during his late teens, shortly before being killed by a local street gang he is associated with. The loss of a potential heir weighs heavily on Luthor's mind, particularly when he is dying of cancer; while mulling over his fate, Luthor visits Jerry's gravesite.
Luthor has shown an unusual level of compassion for Conner Kent, a hybrid clone created from the DNA of Superman and Luthor himself. After Conner's death at the conclusion of the Infinite Crisis, Luthor is shown visiting a memorial statue of Conner in Metropolis and placing flowers there. More than once Luthor addresses Conner as his son. Following Conner's resurrection, Luthor is shocked and decides to locate him. When Brainiac accuses him of showing paternal feelings for Conner though, Luthor denies it, saying that he only wants his property back, and has no fatherly feelings towards Superboy. After Superboy and Luthor visit Lena, Luthor makes it clear he now sees Kon-El as an inherently "failed experiment" due to having 50% "wrong alien DNA." Luthor then works with Brainiac to create a binary clone with their own genetics, a possible threat to Superboy.
In the alternate future timeline of Titans Tomorrow, Conner becomes an uncompromising and dictatorial successor to Superman, while Luthor acts as a caring, father figure to him.
During the "Blackest Night" storyline, Lex Luthor's father Lionel Luthor was featured where it was revealed that he died of an allergic reaction to his medicine during Clark Kent's days as Superboy. He is reanimated as a member of the Black Lantern Corps where he is amongst its members that try to attack Lex Luthor. After the events of "Blackest Night'", Luthor went on to build a gynoid version of Lois Lane using Brainiac technology. His primary purpose for creating her was to have a companion who would voice honest opinions and provide an extra voice of reason to counsel him on his obsessive quest for the Black Lantern energy. Luthor also had a pseudo-romantic relationship with the "Loisbot", and regularly slept with it.
Powers and abilities
Lex Luthor has the physical capabilities of a normal adult human with no metahuman abilities. However, for virtually his entire publication history, he has been depicted as the most intelligent human in the DC Universe, and one of the most intelligent beings of any planet. He possesses an eidetic memory and has mastered seemingly every known form of science, including space travel, extra-dimensional travel, biochemistry, robotics, computers, synthetic polymers, communications, mutations, transportation, holography, energy generation, spectral analysis, and time travel. With the exception of the extraterrestrial entity known as Brainiac, and occasionally Batman, Luthor does not view any other being as an intellectual peer. His exceptional intellectual gifts act as his "superpowers", allowing him to craft advanced weapons and equipment, outthink opponents much stronger and more powerful than himself, and manipulate others into doing his bidding.
His genius also extends to business (he is one of the world's wealthiest people) and politics (he was elected U.S. President, and he is often the leader of super-villain groups he has belonged to). Luthor has been trained in hand-to-hand combat, specifically Karate. He has also been occasionally trained by the Amazons of Themyscira.
Weaponry
Over the years, Luthor has created (either on his own, using alien technology he acquires, or with the resources of LexCorp and the military) many highly advanced weapons, machines, and robots to carry out his plans or destroy his enemies. He has made liberal use of kryptonite weapons capable of injuring Superman and other Kryptonians, and he has often created synthetic kryptonite (not as lethal as real green kryptonite but still capable of weakening a Kryptonian). Since the Bronze Age, he has also utilized various high-tech "war-suits" in many stories. The first warsuit, introduced in 1983, was a product of lost science from an earlier age in the planet Lexor's history when technology was highly advanced. Its Lexorian materials can withstand several attacks by Superman before sustaining damage and its force field offers further protection still. Wearing it grants Lex great superhuman strength, not equal to Superman but still enough to overpower many of Earth's heroes. The suit can deliver powerful energy blasts and a molecular sheath capable of blocking Superman's body from absorbing energy from solar radiation, meaning his powers will weaken over time. Powered by red solar radiation, the suit can also deliver red solar beams to directly weaken Superman. The suit has other features including advanced sensor systems, a hypnotism weapon, and illusion casting technology.
The warsuit introduced in 2004 is built with technology from Apokolips, granting greater superhuman strength and resistance to injury, a powerful force field, flight, electrical weapons, and a variety of kryptonite-based weaponry such as energy cannons, axes, and a collapsible sword. Its power is great enough that Luthor could fly for several days without interruption. The gauntlets hold different forms of kryptonite stones. After reality is altered by Flashpoint, Luthor uses a new warsuit similar to the 2004 one but slimmer and built by reverse-engineering Kryptonian technology. When he temporarily attempts to act as a hero and works alongside the Justice League, Luthor uses a similar warsuit with non-lethal weaponry and no kryptonite-based features.
Luthor often wore a kryptonite ring on his right hand in Post-Crisis stories, but abandoned this tactic after prolonged exposure to its radiation resulted in cancer, requiring him to transplant his brain into a cloned body to survive. While masquerading as his own son Lex Luthor II, Lex occasionally wore high-tech "LX-20 body armor." During the Blackest Night crossover, he wore an orange power ring of avarice created by Ganthet, a former member of the Guardians of the Universe.
Alternate versions
DC Comics often depicts its stories as taking place in a wide multiverse, with many parallel realities where familiar characters have slightly or drastically different lives. Likewise, there are some comics published under the Elseworlds label, meaning it is a story that is outside of canon and does not necessarily have a specific universe designation (such as "Earth-3" or "Earth-X"). The point of Elseworlds stories is to reimagine familiar characters in new settings. While many versions of Luthor are similar to the mainstream one, simply existing in different settings, some significant, famous and/or recurring alternate versions of the character include:
Earth-Three
Earth-Three was introduced during the Silver Age of Comics as a mirror version of the DC Comics Earth where Americans colonized Europe and actor Abraham Lincoln shot President John Wilkes Booth. An evil version of the Justice League known as the Crime Syndicate of America terrorizes this world. Eventually, a heroic scientist named Alexander Luthor opposes them, donning a high-tech red, yellow and blue "supersuit." During his initial adventure, he is aided by the Supermen of Earth-1 and Earth-2, as well as Earth-3's noble reporter Lois Lane. Later, Alex and Lois marry and have a child, Alexander Luthor Jr., who aids Earth's heroes during the Crisis on Infinite Earths and then opposes them in the crossover Infinite Crisis.
The New 52 timeline introduced its own version of Earth-3 in the crossover Forever Evil (2014). The Alexander Luthor of this Earth-3 is his world's version of Shazam. Called Mazahs, he takes the superpowers of those he kills and is the father of the villain Superwoman's child. He is later killed by the New 52 version of Lex Luthor.
Following the reboot of the Multiverse at the end of "Dark Nights: Death Metal" as seen during the "Infinite Frontier, Earth-3 is recreated with a new version of Alexander Luthor. This version is a non-superpowered African-American man who wears a suit of high-tech armour. He is the sworn enemy of Ultraman, the self-appointed ruler and "protector" of Metropolis, and one of the few people with the courage to defy him directly. He is depicted as well intentioned and compassionate but largely ineffectual. He is horrified when Earth-3's evil metahumans are hailed as heroes for defeating the invading Starros. Aided by former Emerald Knight Thaal Sinestro and a New God named Lonar, he begins recruiting good metahumans into a Legion of Justice.
Anti-Matter Earth
The anti-matter universe is a dark, often opposite reflection of the mainstream DC Universe that is similar to Earth-Three. Armed with a green and purple high-tech warsuit, the Alexander Luthor of this reality regularly opposes the Crime Syndicate of Amerika, a group of villains who rule over his Earth through fear and coercion. At one point, this Luthor journeys to the mainstream DC Comics Earth (which he decides to call "Earth 2") in hopes that the Justice League can save his world. The team tries, but realize that they cannot win for long on the anti-matter Earth, because evil holds sway in this universe (metaphysically because Lucifer defeated archangel Michael) and thus wins more often, meaning heroes are fated to ultimately fail or die. This idea, presented in the graphic novel JLA: Earth 2, was a meta-commentary by writer Grant Morrison on the fact that in the main DC Universe, it is accepted by readers that good tends to triumph over evil.
Bizarro Luthor
In multiple versions of DC Comics canon, Superman's imperfect duplicate Bizarro (sometimes called Bizarro #1) creates an entire Bizarro World ("Htrae") populated by imperfect and backwards thinking duplicates of the people of Earth. One such duplicate is Bizarro Luthor.
Another version of Bizarro Luthor is said to exist on Earth-29, a parallel reality called the "Bizarroverse."
Earth-47
Introduced in Year of the Villain: Lex Luthor #1 (2019), this Lex Luthor studies and uses the Black Mercy, an alien plant that feeds off an organism's psychic energy while distracting them with an illusion of the life they want. Through repeated use, Lex experiences multiple scenarios where he acquires the great power and/or superpowers he always wanted, but finds he is never satisfied. Realizing his ambitions are based on ego, while Superman regularly considers how his actions will affect or benefit others, this Luthor spends the rest of his life creating new ways for people to heal and live better lives.
Amalgam Comics
During the crossover DC vs. Marvel, the realities of DC Comics and Marvel Comics temporarily merged, resulting in the Amalgam Comics universe. In this reality, Lex Luthor's person and history merged with that of the Red Skull, creating the Green Skull. A war profiteer during World War II, this Lex Luthor later injects himself with a chemical agent derived from a radioactive green meteorite, extending his lifespan while giving him green skin and his head a skull-like appearance. In multiple Amalgam Comics stories, he opposes Super-Soldier (a combination of Superman and Captain America).
Earth C Minus
There is a version of Lex Luthor who is a villainous lemur that inhabits Earth C Minus (or Earth C-), a parallel world populated by anthropomorphic animals and protected by Super-Squirrel.
Pocket Universe version
Inhabiting a "pocket universe" created by the villainous Time Trapper, this young Luthor never loses his hair and admires the exploits of Superboy (a teenage Clark Kent) on his world. After Superboy's death, Luthor explores the hero's lab and accidentally frees three pocket universe Kryptonian villains from the Phantom Zone. To help the situation, Luthor creates an artificial life form out of a "pseudo-plasm matrix", based on the physical traits of Lana Lang. The life form is called Supergirl. After the Kryptonian villains kill Luthor and all other life forms on Earth, the pocket universe Supergirl makes a new home on the mainstream DC Comics Earth, where she becomes a hero.
Superman: Earth One
In the second of the Superman: Earth One graphic novels, Dr. Alexandra Luthor and her husband Dr. Alexander Luthor are a pair of brilliant scientists who refer to themselves as Lex2 Incorporated. While working with the military, Alexandra researches ways of killing Superman as an intellectual exercise, while Alexander is more compassionate and questions the ethics of developing weapons to harm a man who has not given cause to be feared. In the third installment, Alexander sacrifices himself to help Superman battle Zod. Alexandra is consumed by grief, blaming the Man of Steel and vowing to destroy him. Claiming the "old Alexandra" died alongside her husband, she adopts the new name "Lex."
Elseworlds
Versions of Lex Luthor have appeared in different Elseworlds stories:
In the Elseworlds graphic novel Speeding Bullets, Kal-El is adopted by Thomas and Martha Wayne, who have no other son and name him Bruce. Years after witnessing his parents' murder, Bruce becomes a super-powered Batman in Gotham City, while Lex Luthor operates without interference in Metropolis, acquiring great power and influence. An accident at a chemical plant leads Luthor to acquire chalk-white skin and blood-red lips. Initially hiding his disfigurement, he later reveals his new appearance and adopts the name the Joker. A similar character, simply called Lex Joker, appears in a dream-reality where familiar DC characters are combined with each other.
A four-issue Elsewords miniseries titled "Kingdom Come" is later said to take place on Earth-22. After a rise of violent anti-heroes and vigilantes is embraced by the public, Superman and many other traditional heroes retire or leave. Later, when Superman and many of his former allies return to action, now acting more authoritative and militaristic, an older Lex Luthor argues this is the first step towards superhumans ruling Earth. He gathers the Mankind Liberation Front to oppose Superman's Justice League. To protect himself from enemies, Luthor brainwashes the hero Captain Marvel into becoming his bodyguard.
A three-issue Elseworlds miniseries titled "Superman: Red Son" is later said to take place on Earth-30. Kal-L's vessel lands in the Ukraine in 1938 and he later becomes Premier of the Soviet Union. He is opposed by Lex Luthor, a respected scientific prodigy in America who is married to Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane-Luthor. This Superman acts as a powerful political figure on his world, while Luthor is increasingly convinced that the Kryptonian's presence is halting human progress. He engineers several schemes to destroy the Man of Steel, all of which fail, before finally convincing Superman that he has no right to interfere in human affairs. Superman fakes his death to live as a normal man and Luthor turns his attention to advancing the human race, ultimately becoming mankind's greatest mind and savior.
In other media
References
Further reading
Daniels, Les. Superman: The Complete History: The Life and Times of the Man of Steel. Chronicle Books, 1998.
External links
DCComics.com – Origin of Lex Luthor
Lex Luthor chronology index
Superman Homepage – Lex Luthor biography
The Justice League Watchtower – Lex Luthor
Luthor (1940) at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. from the original on November 16, 2015.
Lex Luthor (1986) at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. from the original on October 25, 2015.
Animated series villains
Characters created by Jerry Siegel
Characters created by Joe Shuster
Comics characters introduced in 1940
DC Comics film characters
DC Comics martial artists
DC Comics superheroes
Fictional business executives
Fictional chemists
Fictional commanders
Fictional crime bosses
Fictional dictators
Fictional engineers
Fictional inventors
Fictional mad scientists
Fictional mass murderers
Fictional members of secret societies
Fictional characters based on real people
Fictional characters with eidetic memory
Fictional physicists
Fictional presidents of the United States
Fictional roboticists
Fictional scientists
Fictional torturers
Fictional white-collar criminals
Fictional victims of domestic abuse
Golden Age supervillains
Male film villains
Psychopathy in fiction
DC Comics male supervillains
Superhero television characters
Superman characters
Fictional philanthropists
Supervillains with their own comic book titles
Video game bosses
Action film villains |
18596 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lute | Lute | A lute ( or ) is any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. It may be either fretted or unfretted.
More specifically, the term "lute" can refer to an instrument from the family of European lutes. The term also refers generally to any string instrument having the strings running in a plane parallel to the sound table (in the Hornbostel–Sachs system).
The strings are attached to pegs or posts at the end of the neck, which have some type of turning mechanism to enable the player to tighten the tension on the string or loosen the tension before playing (which respectively raise or lower the pitch of a string), so that each string is tuned to a specific pitch (or note). The lute is plucked or strummed with one hand while the other hand "frets" (presses down) the strings on the neck's fingerboard. By pressing the strings on different places of the fingerboard, the player can shorten or lengthen the part of the string that is vibrating, thus producing higher or lower pitches (notes).
The European lute and the modern Near-Eastern oud descend from a common ancestor via diverging evolutionary paths. The lute is used in a great variety of instrumental music from the Medieval to the late Baroque eras and was the most important instrument for secular music in the Renaissance. During the Baroque music era, the lute was used as one of the instruments which played the basso continuo accompaniment parts. It is also an accompanying instrument in vocal works. The lute player either improvises ("realizes") a chordal accompaniment based on the figured bass part, or plays a written-out accompaniment (both music notation and tablature ("tab") are used for lute). As a small instrument, the lute produces a relatively quiet sound. The player of a lute is called a lutenist, lutanist or lutist, and a maker of lutes (or any similar string instrument, or violin family instruments) is referred to as a luthier.
History and evolution of the lute
First lutes
Curt Sachs defined the word lute in the terminology section of The History of Musical Instruments as "composed of a body, and of a neck which serves both as a handle and as a means of stretching the strings beyond the body". His definition focused on body and neck characteristics and not on the way the strings were sounded, so the fiddle counted as a "bowed lute". Sachs also distinguished between the "long-necked lute" and the short-necked variety. The short-necked variety contained most of our modern instruments, "lutes, guitars, hurdy-gurdies and the entire family of viols and violins".
The long lutes were the more ancient lutes; the "Arabic tanbūr ... faithfully preserved the outer appearance of the ancient lutes of Babylonia and Egypt". He further categorized long lutes with a "pierced lute" and "long neck lute". The pierced lute had a neck made from a stick that pierced the body (as in the ancient Egyptian long-neck lutes, and the modern African gunbrī). The long lute had an attached neck, and included the sitar, tanbur and tar (dutār 2 strings, setār 3 strings, čārtār 4 strings, pančtār 5 strings).
Sachs's book is from 1941, and the archaeological evidence available to him placed the early lutes at about 2000 BC. Discoveries since then have pushed the existence of the lute back to c. 3100 BC.
Musicologist Richard Dumbrill today uses the word lute more categorically to discuss instruments that existed millennia before the term "lute" was coined. Dumbrill documented more than 3,000 years of iconographic evidence of the lutes in Mesopotamia, in his book The Archaeomusicology of the Ancient Near East. According to Dumbrill, the lute family included instruments in Mesopotamia before 3000 BC. He points to a cylinder seal as evidence; dating from about 3100 BC or earlier and now in the possession of the British Museum, the seal depicts on one side what is thought to be a woman playing a stick "lute". Like Sachs, Dumbrill saw length as distinguishing lutes, dividing the Mesopotamian lutes into a long variety and a short. His book does not cover the shorter instruments that became the European lute, beyond showing examples of shorter lutes in the ancient world. He focuses on the longer lutes of Mesopotamia, various types of necked chordophones that developed throughout the ancient world: Greek, Egyptian (in the Middle Kingdom), Iranian (Elamite and others), Jewish/Israelite, Hittite, Roman, Bulgar, Turkic, Indian, Chinese, Armenian/Cilician cultures. He names among the long lutes, the pandura and the tanbur
The line of short-necked lutes was further developed to the east of Mesopotamia, in Bactria and Gandhara, into a short, almond-shaped lute. Curt Sachs talked about the depictions of Gandharan lutes in art, where they are presented in a mix of "Northwest Indian art" under "strong Greek influences". The short-necked lutes in these Gandhara artworks were "the venerable ancestor of the Islamic, the Sino-Japanese and the European lute families". He described the Gandhara lutes as having a "pear-shaped body tapering towards the short neck, a frontal stringholder, lateral pegs, and either four or five strings".
Persian barbat, Arab oud
Bactria and Gandhara became part of the Sasanian Empire (224–651). Under the Sasanians, a short almond-shaped lute from Bactria came to be called the barbat or barbud, which was developed into the later Islamic world's oud or ud. When the Moors conquered Andalusia in 711, they brought their ud or quitra along, into a country that had already known a lute tradition under the Romans, the pandura.
During the 8th and 9th centuries, many musicians and artists from across the Islamic world flocked to Iberia. Among them was Abu l-Hasan 'Ali Ibn Nafi' (789–857), a prominent musician, who had trained under Ishaq al-Mawsili (d. 850) in Baghdad and was exiled to Andalusia before 833. He taught and has been credited with adding a fifth string to his oud and with establishing one of the first schools of music in Córdoba.
By the 11th century, Muslim Iberia had become a center for the manufacture of instruments. These goods spread gradually to Provence, influencing French troubadours and trouvères and eventually reaching the rest of Europe. While Europe developed the lute, the oud remained a central part of Arab music, and broader Ottoman music, undergoing a range of transformations.
Beside the introduction of the lute to Spain (Andalusia) by the Moors, another important point of transfer of the lute from Arabian to European culture was Sicily, where it was brought either by Byzantine or later by Muslim musicians. There were singer-lutenists at the court in Palermo after the Norman conquest of the island from the Muslims, and the lute is depicted extensively in the ceiling paintings in the Palermo's royal Cappella Palatina, dedicated by the Norman King Roger II of Sicily in 1140. His Hohenstaufen grandson Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor (1194–1250) continued integrating Muslims into his court, including Moorish musicians. Frederick II made visits to the Lech valley and Bavaria between 1218 and 1237 with a "Moorish Sicilian retinue". By the 14th century, lutes had spread throughout Italy and, probably because of the cultural influence of the Hohenstaufen kings and emperor, based in Palermo, the lute had also made significant inroads into the German-speaking lands. By 1500, the valley and Füssen had several lute-making families, and in the next two centuries the area hosted "famous names of 16th and 17th century lutemaking".
Although the major entry of the short lute was in western Europe, leading to a variety of lute styles, the short lute entered Europe in the East as well; as early as the sixth century, the Bulgars brought the short-necked variety of the instrument called komuz to the Balkans.
From Middle Ages to Baroque
Medieval lutes were four- and five-course instruments, plucked with a quill as a plectrum. There were several sizes and, by the end of the Renaissance, seven sizes (up to the great octave bass) are documented. Song accompaniment was probably the lute's primary function in the Middle Ages, but very little music securely attributable to the lute survives from before 1500. Medieval and early-Renaissance song accompaniments were probably mostly improvised, hence the lack of written records.
In the last few decades of the fifteenth century, to play Renaissance polyphony on a single instrument, lutenists gradually abandoned the quill in favor of plucking the instrument with the fingers. The number of courses grew to six and beyond. The lute was the premier solo instrument of the sixteenth century, but continued to accompany singers as well.
About 1500, many Iberian lutenists adopted vihuela de mano, a viol-shaped instrument tuned like the lute; both instruments continued in coexistence. This instrument also found its way to parts of Italy that were under Spanish domination (especially Sicily and the papal states under the Borgia pope Alexander VI who brought many Catalan musicians to Italy), where it was known as the viola da mano.
By the end of the Renaissance, the number of courses had grown to ten, and during the Baroque era the number continued to grow until it reached 14 (and occasionally as many as 19). These instruments, with up to 35 strings, required innovations in the structure of the lute. At the end of the lute's evolution the archlute, theorbo and torban had long extensions attached to the main tuning head to provide a greater resonating length for the bass strings, and since human fingers are not long enough to stop strings across a neck wide enough to hold 14 courses, the bass strings were placed outside the fretboard, and were played open, i.e., without pressing them against the fingerboard with the left hand.
Over the course of the Baroque era, the lute was increasingly relegated to the continuo accompaniment, and was eventually superseded in that role by keyboard instruments. The lute almost fell out of use after 1800. Some sorts of lute were still used for some time in Germany, Sweden, and Ukraine.
Etymology
The words lute and oud possibly derive from Arabic al-ʿoud (- literally means "the wood"). It may refer to the wooden plectrum traditionally used for playing the oud, to the thin strips of wood used for the back, or to the wooden soundboard that distinguished it from similar instruments with skin-faced bodies.
Many theories have been proposed for the origin of the Arabic name. Music scholar Eckhard Neubauer suggested that oud may be an Arabic borrowing from the Persian word rōd or rūd, which meant string. Another researcher, archaeomusicologist Richard J. Dumbrill, suggests that rud came from the Sanskrit rudrī (रुद्री, meaning "string instrument") and transferred to Arabic and European languages by way of a Semitic language. However, another theory according to Semitic language scholars, is that the Arabic ʿoud is derived from Syriac ʿoud-a, meaning "wooden stick" and "burning wood"—cognate to Biblical Hebrew ūḏ, referring to a stick used to stir logs in a fire. Henry George Farmer notes the similarity between and al-ʿawda ("the return" – of bliss).
Construction
Soundboard
Lutes are made almost entirely of wood. The soundboard is a teardrop-shaped thin flat plate of resonant wood (typically spruce). In all lutes the soundboard has a single (sometimes triple) decorated sound hole under the strings called the rose. The sound hole is not open, but rather covered with a grille in the form of an intertwining vine or a decorative knot, carved directly out of the wood of the soundboard.
The geometry of the lute soundboard is relatively complex, involving a system of barring that places braces perpendicular to the strings at specific lengths along the overall length of the belly, the ends of which are angled to abut the ribs on either side for structural reasons. Robert Lundberg, in his book Historical Lute Construction, suggests ancient builders placed bars according to whole-number ratios of the scale length and belly length. He further suggests the inward bend of the soundboard (the "belly scoop") is a deliberate adaptation by ancient builders to afford the lutenist's right hand more space between the strings and soundboard.
Soundboard thickness varies, but generally hovers between . Some luthiers tune the belly as they build, removing mass and adapting bracing to produce desirable sonic results. The lute belly is almost never finished, but in some cases the luthier may size the top with a very thin coat of shellac or glair to help keep it clean. The belly joins directly to the rib, without a lining glued to the sides, and a cap and counter cap are glued to the inside and outside of the bottom end of the bowl to provide rigidity and increased gluing surface.
After joining the top to the sides, a half-binding is usually installed around the edge of the soundboard. The half-binding is approximately half the thickness of the soundboard and is usually made of a contrasting color wood. The rebate for the half-binding must be extremely precise to avoid compromising structural integrity.
Back
The back or the shell is assembled from thin strips of hardwood (maple, cherry, ebony, rosewood, gran, wood and/or other tonewoods) called ribs, joined (with glue) edge to edge to form a deep rounded body for the instrument. There are braces inside on the soundboard to give it strength.
Neck
The neck is made of light wood, with a veneer of hardwood (usually ebony) to provide durability for the fretboard beneath the strings. Unlike most modern stringed instruments, the lute's fretboard is mounted flush with the top. The pegbox for lutes before the Baroque era was angled back from the neck at almost 90° (see image), presumably to help hold the low-tension strings firmly against the nut which, traditionally, is not glued in place but is held in place by string pressure only. The tuning pegs are simple pegs of hardwood, somewhat tapered, that are held in place by friction in holes drilled through the pegbox.
As with other instruments that use friction pegs, the wood for the pegs is crucial. As the wood suffers dimensional changes through age and loss of humidity, it must retain a reasonably circular cross-section to function properly—as there are no gears or other mechanical aids for tuning the instrument. Often pegs were made from suitable fruitwoods such as European pearwood, or equally dimensionally stable analogues. Matheson, 1720, said, "If a lute-player has lived eighty years, he has surely spent sixty years tuning."
Bridge
The bridge, sometimes made of a fruitwood, is attached to the soundboard typically between a fifth and a seventh of the belly length. It does not have a separate saddle but has holes bored into it to which the strings attach directly. The bridge is made so that it tapers in height and length, with the small end holding the trebles and the higher and wider end carrying the basses. Bridges are often colored black with carbon black in a binder, often shellac and often have inscribed decoration. The scrolls or other decoration on the ends of lute bridges are integral to the bridge, and are not added afterwards as on some Renaissance guitars (cf Joachim Tielke's guitars).
Frets
The frets are made of loops of gut tied around the neck. They fray with use, and must be replaced from time to time. A few additional partial frets of wood are usually glued to the body of the instrument, to allow stopping the highest-pitched courses up to a full octave higher than the open string, though these are considered anachronistic by some (though John Dowland and Thomas Robinson describe the practice of gluing wooden frets onto the soundboard). Given the choice between nylon and gut, many luthiers prefer to use gut, as it conforms more readily to the sharp angle at the edge of the fingerboard.
Strings
Strings were historically made of animal gut, usually from the small intestine of sheep (sometimes in combination with metal) and are still made of gut or a synthetic substitute, with metal windings on the lower-pitched strings. Modern manufacturers make both gut and nylon strings, and both are in common use. Gut is more authentic for playing period pieces, though unfortunately it is also more susceptible to irregularity and pitch instability due to changes in humidity. Nylon offers greater tuning stability, but is seen as anachronistic by purists, as its timbre differs from the sound of earlier gut strings. Such concerns are moot when more recent compositions for the lute are performed.
Of note are the catlines used as basses on historical instruments. Catlines are several gut strings wound together and soaked in heavy metal solutions to increase the string mass. Catlines can be quite large in diameter compared to wound nylon strings of the same pitch. They produce a bass that differs somewhat in timbre from nylon basses.
The lute's strings are arranged in courses, of two strings each, though the highest-pitched course usually consists of only a single string, called the chanterelle. In later Baroque lutes two upper courses are single. The courses are numbered sequentially, counting from the highest pitched, so that the chanterelle is the first course, the next pair of strings is the second course, etc. Thus an 8-course Renaissance lute usually has 15 strings, and a 13-course Baroque lute has 24.
The courses are tuned in unison for high and intermediate pitches, but for lower pitches one of the two strings is tuned an octave higher (the course where this split starts changed over the history of the lute). The two strings of a course are virtually always stopped and plucked together, as if a single string—but in rare cases, a piece requires that the two strings of a course be stopped or plucked separately. The tuning of a lute is a complicated issue, described in a section of its own below. The lute's design makes it extremely light for its size.
Lute in the modern world
The lute enjoyed a revival with the awakening of interest in historical music around 1900 and throughout the century. That revival was further boosted by the early music movement in the twentieth century. Important pioneers in lute revival were Julian Bream, Hans Neemann, Walter Gerwig, Suzanne Bloch and Diana Poulton. Lute performances are now not uncommon; there are many professional lutenists, especially in Europe where the most employment is found, and new compositions for the instrument are being produced by composers.
During the early days of the early music movement, many lutes were constructed by available luthiers, whose specialty was often classical guitars. Such lutes were heavily built with construction similar to classical guitars, with fan bracing, heavy tops, fixed frets, and lined sides, all of which are anachronistic to historical lutes. As lutherie scholarship increased, makers began constructing instruments based on historical models, which have proven lighter and more responsive instruments.
Lutes built at present are invariably replicas or near copies of those surviving historical instruments that are in museums or private collections. Many are custom-built, but there is a growing number of luthiers who build lutes for general sale, and there is a fairly strong, if small, second-hand market. Due to this fairly limited market, lutes are generally more expensive than mass-produced modern instruments: factory-made guitars and violins, for example, can be purchased more cheaply than low-end lutes, but at the highest level of modern instruments, guitars and violins tend to command higher prices than lutes.
Unlike in the past, there are many types of lutes encountered today: 5-course medieval lutes, renaissance lutes of 6 to 10 courses in many pitches for solo and ensemble performance of Renaissance works, the archlute of Baroque works, 11-course lutes in d-minor tuning for 17th-century French, German and Czech music, 13/14-course d-minor tuned German Baroque Lutes for later High Baroque and Classical music, theorbo for basso continuo parts in Baroque ensembles, gallichons/mandoras, bandoras, orpharions and others.
Lutenistic practice has reached considerable heights in recent years, thanks to a growing number of world-class lutenists: Rolf Lislevand, Hopkinson Smith, Paul O'Dette, Christopher Wilke, Andreas Martin, Robert Barto, Eduardo Egüez, Edin Karamazov, Nigel North, Christopher Wilson, Luca Pianca, Yasunori Imamura, Anthony Bailes, Peter Croton, Xavier Diaz-Latorre. Singer-songwriter Sting has also played lute and archlute, in and out of his collaborations with Edin Karamazov, and Jan Akkerman released two albums of lute music in the 1970s while he was a guitarist in the Dutch rock band Focus. Lutenist/Composer Jozef van Wissem composed the soundtrack to the Jim Jarmusch film Only Lovers Left Alive.
Lutes of several regional types are also common in Greece: laouto, and outi.
Repertoire
Lutes were in widespread use in Europe at least since the 13th century, and documents mention numerous early performers and composers. However, the earliest surviving lute music dates from the late 15th century. Lute music flourished during the 16th and 17th centuries: numerous composers published collections of their music, and modern scholars have uncovered a vast number of manuscripts from the era—however, much of the music is still lost. In the second half of the 17th century lutes, vihuelas and similar instruments started losing popularity, and little music was written for the instrument after 1750. The interest in lute music was revived only in the second half of the 20th century.
Improvisation (making up music on the spot) was, apparently, an important aspect of lute performance, so much of the repertoire was probably never written down. Furthermore, it was only around 1500 that lute players began to transition from plectrum to plucking. That change facilitated complex polyphony, which required that they develop notation. In the next hundred years, three schools of tablature notation gradually developed: Italian (also used in Spain), German, and French. Only the last survived into the late 17th century. The earliest known tablatures are for a six-stringed instrument, though evidence of earlier four- and five-stringed lutes exists. Tablature notation depends on the actual instrument the music is written for. To read it, a musician must know the instrument's tuning, number of strings, etc.
Renaissance and Baroque forms of lute music are similar to keyboard music of the periods. Intabulations of vocal works were very common, as well as various dances, some of which disappeared during the 17th century, such as the piva and the saltarello. The advent of polyphony brought about fantasias: complex, intricate pieces with much use of imitative counterpoint. The improvisatory element, present to some degree in most lute pieces, is particularly evident in the early ricercares (not imitative as their later namesakes, but completely free), as well as in numerous preludial forms: preludes, tastar de corde ("testing the strings"), etc. During the 17th century keyboard and lute music went hand in hand, and by 1700 lutenists were writing suites of dances quite akin to those of keyboard composers. The lute was also used throughout its history as an ensemble instrument—most frequently in songs for voice and lute, which were particularly popular in Italy (see frottola) and England.
The earliest surviving lute music is Italian, from a late 15th-century manuscript. The early 16th century saw Petrucci's publications of lute music by Francesco Spinacino ( 1507) and Joan Ambrosio Dalza ( 1508); together with the so-called Capirola Lutebook, these represent the earliest stage of written lute music in Italy. The leader of the next generation of Italian lutenists, Francesco Canova da Milano (1497–1543), is now acknowledged as one of the most famous lute composers in history. The bigger part of his output consists of pieces called fantasias or ricercares, in which he makes extensive use of imitation and sequence, expanding the scope of lute polyphony. In the early 17th century Johannes Hieronymus Kapsberger ( 1580–1651) and Alessandro Piccinini (1566–1638) revolutionized the instrument's technique and Kapsberger, possibly, influenced the keyboard music of Frescobaldi.
French written lute music began, as far as we know, with Pierre Attaingnant's ( 1494 – 1551) prints, which comprised preludes, dances and intabulations. Particularly important was the Italian composer Albert de Rippe (1500–1551), who worked in France and composed polyphonic fantasias of considerable complexity. His work was published posthumously by his pupil, Guillaume de Morlaye (born 1510), who, however, did not pick up the complex polyphony of de Rippe. French lute music declined during the second part of the 16th century; however, various changes to the instrument (the increase of diapason strings, new tunings, etc.) prompted an important change in style that led, during the early Baroque, to the celebrated style brisé: broken, arpeggiated textures that influenced Johann Jakob Froberger's suites. The French Baroque school is exemplified by composers such as Ennemond Gaultier (1575–1651), Denis Gaultier (1597/1603–1672), François Dufaut (before 1604 – before 1672) and many others. The last stage of French lute music is exemplified by Robert de Visée ( 1655–1732/3), whose suites exploit the instrument's possibilities to the fullest.
The history of German written lute music started with Arnolt Schlick ( 1460–after 1521), who, in 1513, published a collection of pieces that included 14 voice and lute songs, and three solo lute pieces, alongside organ works. He was not the first important German lutenist, because contemporaries credited Conrad Paumann ( 1410–1473) with the invention of German lute tablature, though this claim remains unproven, and no lute works by Paumann survive. After Schlick, a string of composers developed German lute music: Hans Judenkünig ( 1445/50 – 1526), the Neusidler family (particularly Hans Neusidler ( 1508/09 – 1563)) and others. During the second half of the 16th century, German tablature and German repertoire were gradually replaced by Italian and French tablature and international repertoire, respectively, and the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) effectively stopped publications for half a century. German lute music was revived much later by composers such as Esaias Reusner ( 1670), however, a distinctly German style came only after 1700 in the works of Silvius Leopold Weiss (1686–1750), one of the greatest lute composers, some of whose works were transcribed for keyboard by none other than Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), who composed a few pieces for the lute himself (though it is unclear whether they were really intended for the lute, rather than another plucked string instrument or the lautenwerk).
Of other European countries, particularly important are England and Spain. English-written lute music began only around 1540; however, the country produced numerous lutenists, of which John Dowland (1563–1626) is perhaps the most famous. His influence spread very far: variations on his themes were written by keyboard composers in Germany decades after his death. Dowland's predecessors and colleagues, such as Anthony Holborne ( 1545–1602) and Daniel Bacheler (1572–1619), were less known. Spanish composers wrote mostly for the vihuela; their main genres were polyphonic fantasias and (variations). Luys Milan (c. 1500 – after 1560) and Luys de Narváez ( 1526–1549) were particularly important for their contributions to the development of lute polyphony in Spain.
Finally, perhaps the most influential European lute composer was the Hungarian Bálint Bakfark ( 1526/30–1576), whose contrapuntal fantasias were much more difficult and tighter than those of his Western European contemporaries.
Ottorino Respighi's famous orchestral suites called Ancient Airs and Dances are drawn from various books and articles on 16th- and 17th-century lute music transcribed by the musicologist Oscar Chilesotti, including eight pieces from a German manuscript Da un Codice Lauten-Buch, now in a private library in northern Italy.
20th century revival and composers
The revival of lute-playing in the 20th century has its roots in the pioneering work of Arnold Dolmetsch (1858–1940); whose research into early music and instruments started the movement for authenticity. The revival of the lute gave composers an opportunity to create new works for it.
One of the first such composers was Johann Nepomuk David in Germany. Composer Vladimir Vavilov was a pioneer of the lute revival in the USSR, he was also the author of numerous musical hoaxes. Sandor Kallos and Toyohiko Satoh applied modernist idiom to the lute, Elena Kats-Chernin, Jozef van Wissem and Alexandre Danilevsky minimalist and post-minimalist idiom, Roman Turovsky-Savchuk, Paulo Galvão, Robert MacKillop historicist idiom, and Ronn McFarlane New Age. This active movement by early music specialists has inspired composers in different fields; for example, in 1980, Akira Ifukube, a classical and film composer best known for the Godzilla's theme, wrote the Fantasia for Baroque Lute with the historical tablature notation, rather than the modern staff one.
Tuning conventions
Lutes were made in a large variety of sizes, with varying numbers of strings/courses, and with no permanent standard for tuning. However, the following seems to have been generally true of the Renaissance lute.
A 6-course Renaissance tenor lute would be tuned to the same intervals as a tenor viol, with intervals of a perfect fourth between all the courses except the third and fourth, which differed only by a major third. The tenor lute was usually tuned nominally "in G" (there was no pitch standard before the 20th century), named after the pitch of the highest course, yielding the pattern from the lowest course to the highest. (Much renaissance lute music can be played on a guitar by tuning the guitar's third string down by a half tone.)
For lutes with more than six courses, the extra courses would be added on the low end. Because of the large number of strings, lutes have very wide necks, and it is difficult to stop strings beyond the sixth course, so additional courses were usually tuned to pitches useful as bass notes rather than continuing the regular pattern of fourths, and these lower courses are most often played without stopping. Thus an 8-course tenor Renaissance lute would be tuned to , and a 10-course to .
However, none of these patterns were de rigueur, and a modern lutenist occasionally retunes one or more courses between pieces. Manuscripts bear instructions for the player, e.g., 7e chœur en fa = "seventh course in fa" (= F in the standard C scale).
The first part of the seventeenth century was a period of considerable diversity in the tuning of the lute, particularly in France. However, by around 1670 the scheme known today as the "Baroque" or "D minor" tuning became the norm, at least in France and in northern and central Europe. In this case, the first six courses outline a d-minor triad, and an additional five to seven courses are tuned generally scalewise below them. Thus the 13-course lute played by composer Sylvius Leopold Weiss would have been tuned or with sharps or flats on the lower 7 courses appropriate to the key of the piece.
Modern lutenists tune to a variety of pitch standards, ranging from A = 392 to 470 Hz, depending on the type of instrument they are playing, the repertory, the pitch of other instruments in an ensemble and other performing expediencies. No attempt at a universal pitch standard existed during the period of the lute's historical popularity. The standards varied over time and from place to place.
See also
String instruments
Stringed instrument tunings
Turkish music
Greek music
Cretan music
Early music
Medieval music
Tablature
Renaissance music
Baroque music
Classical music
Instruments
European Lutes:
Angélique
Archlute
Bouzouki
Cobza
Kobza
Mandola
Mandolin
Mandore
Mandora or Gallichon
Swedish lute
Torban
Theorbo
Vihuela
African Lutes:
Kwitra
Masenqo
Ngoni
Xalam
Akonting
Asian Lutes:
Barbat
Bipa
Biwa
Dombra
Dutar
Dramyin
Komuz
Kutiyapi
Oud
Panduri
Pipa
Qinqin
Rubab
Sanshin
Sanxian
Sapeh
Setar
Shamisen
Sitar
Swarabat
Tanbur
Tar
Veena
Yueqin
Players
Robert Barto
Timothy Burris
François de Chancy
Xavier Díaz-Latorre
Thomas Dunford
Eduardo Eguez
Johann Georg Hamann
Lutz Kirchhof
Rolf Lislevand
Nigel North
Paul O'Dette
Hopkinson Smith
Christopher Wilke
Jozef van Wissem
Makers
Cezar Mateus
Stephen Murphy
David Rubio
Andrew Rutherford
Antonio Stradivari
Tieffenbrucker
Joachim Tielke
Notes
Bibliography
Articles in Journal of the Lute Society of America (1968–), The Lute (1958–), and other journals published by the various national lute societies.
The Lute Corner
Lute Society of America
External links
Societies
The Lute Society of America (America)
The Belgian Lute Society (Belgium)
The French Lute Society (France)
The German Lute Society (Germany)
The Lute Society of Japan (Japan)
The Lute and Early Guitar Society (Japan, Founded by Toyohiko Satoh)
The Dutch Lute Society (the Netherlands)
The Lute Society (UK)
Online music and other useful resources
reneszanszlant.lap.hu collection of many useful links: luthiers/lute makers, lute players, tablatures, etc. (in English and Hungarian)
ABC Classic FM presents: Lute Project videos Watch Tommie Andersson play the theorbo, 7-course & 10-course lutes.
Wayne Cripps' lute pages
Joachim Tielke The website for the great Hamburg lute maker Joachim Tielke
Musick's Handmade Facsimiles/Scans (Dowland, etc.) and pdfs - by Alain Veylit
Sarge Gerbode's Lute Page 7000+ lute solo and ensemble pieces by 300+ composers in midi, PDF, TAB, and Fronimo formats
Another Lute Website Categorized view on youtube videos of over 250 lute composers
Contemporary and Modern Lute Music Modern (post 1815) and Contemporary Lute Music. A list of modern lute music written after 1815
Music Collection in Cambridge Digital Library. One of the most important collections of manuscript music in Cambridge University Library is the group of nine lute manuscripts copied by Mathew Holmes in the early years of the seventeenth century.
Le Luth Doré Urtext music editions The most important collection of modern Urtext music editions for lute.
Photos of historic instruments
Photos of historic lutes at the Cité de la Musique in Paris
Instruments et oeuvres d'art – search-phrase: Mot-clé(s) : luthFacteurs d'instruments – search-phrase: Instrument fabriqué : luthPhotothèque – search-phrase: Instrument de musique, ville ou pays : luth''
Lutes at the Metropolitan Museum of ArtArticles and resources'''
Pioneers of the Lute Revival by Jo Van Herck (Belgian Lute Academy)
Original: Over de pioniers van de luitrevival; Luthinerie / Geluit no. 15 (September 2001) and no. 16 (December 2001)
Photos and Paintings
French Lutenists and French Lute Music in Sweden
La Rhétorique des Dieux
Lautenweltadressbuch: A List of Extant Historical Lutes from Lute Society of America
Baroque instruments
Lute family instruments
Basso continuo instruments
Renaissance instruments
Orchestral instruments
Classical music instruments
Arab inventions
Egyptian inventions
Iranian inventions |
18597 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little%20Boy | Little Boy | "Little Boy" was the codename for the type of atomic bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 during World War II. It was the first nuclear weapon used in warfare. The bomb was dropped by the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, Jr., commander of the 509th Composite Group of the United States Army Air Forces and Captain Robert A. Lewis. It exploded with an energy of approximately and caused widespread death and destruction throughout the city. The Hiroshima bombing was the second man-made nuclear explosion in history, after the Trinity nuclear test.
Little Boy was developed by Lieutenant Commander Francis Birch's group at the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II, a reworking of their unsuccessful Thin Man nuclear bomb. Like Thin Man, it was a gun-type fission weapon, but it derived its explosive power from the nuclear fission of uranium-235, whereas Thin Man was based on fission of plutonium-239. Fission was accomplished by shooting a hollow cylinder (the "bullet") onto a solid cylinder of the same material (the "target") by means of a charge of nitrocellulose propellant powder. It contained of highly enriched uranium, although less than a kilogram underwent nuclear fission. Its components were fabricated at three different plants so that no one would have a copy of the complete design.
After the war ended, it was not expected that the inefficient Little Boy design would ever again be required, and many plans and diagrams were destroyed. However, by mid-1946, the Hanford Site reactors began suffering badly from the Wigner effect, the dislocation of atoms in a solid caused by neutron radiation, and plutonium became scarce, so six Little Boy assemblies were produced at Sandia Base. The Navy Bureau of Ordnance built another 25 Little Boy assemblies in 1947 for use by the Lockheed P2V Neptune nuclear strike aircraft which could be launched from the Midway-class aircraft carriers. All the Little Boy units were withdrawn from service by the end of January 1951.
Naming
Physicist Robert Serber named the first two atomic bomb designs during World War II based on their shapes: Thin Man and Fat Man. The "Thin Man" was a long, thin device and its name came from the Dashiell Hammett detective novel and series of movies about The Thin Man. The "Fat Man" was round and fat so it was named after Kasper Gutman, a rotund character in Hammett's 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon, played by Sydney Greenstreet in the 1941 film version. Little Boy was named by others as an allusion to Thin Man since it was based on its design.
Development
Because uranium-235 was known to be fissionable, it was the first material pursued in the approach to bomb development. As the first design developed (as well as the first deployed for combat), it is sometimes known as the Mark I. The vast majority of the work came in the form of the isotope enrichment of the uranium necessary for the weapon, since uranium-235 makes up only 1 part in 140 of natural uranium. Enrichment was performed at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where the electromagnetic separation plant, known as Y-12, became fully operational in March 1944. The first shipments of highly enriched uranium were sent to the Los Alamos Laboratory in June 1944.
Most of the uranium necessary for the production of the bomb came from the Shinkolobwe mine in the Belgian Congo, and was made available thanks to the foresight of the CEO of the High Katanga Mining Union, Edgar Sengier, who had approximately of uranium ore transported to a warehouse in Staten Island, New York in 1940. At least part of the in addition to the uranium ore and uranium oxide captured by the Alsos Mission in 1944 and 1945 went to Oak Ridge for enrichment, as did of uranium oxide captured on the Japan-bound after Germany's surrender in May 1945.
Little Boy was a simplification of Thin Man, the previous gun-type fission weapon design. Thin Man, long, was designed to use plutonium, so it was also more than capable of using enriched uranium. The Thin Man design was abandoned after experiments by Emilio G. Segrè and his P-5 Group at Los Alamos on the newly reactor-produced plutonium from Oak Ridge and the Hanford site showed that it contained impurities in the form of the isotope plutonium-240. This has a far higher spontaneous fission rate and radioactivity than the cyclotron-produced plutonium on which the original measurements had been made, and its inclusion in reactor-bred plutonium (needed for bomb-making due to the quantities required) appeared unavoidable. This meant that the background fission rate of the plutonium was so high that it would be highly likely the plutonium would predetonate and blow itself apart in the initial forming of a critical mass.
In July 1944, almost all research at Los Alamos was redirected to the implosion-type plutonium weapon. Overall responsibility for the uranium gun-type weapon was assigned to Captain William S. Parsons's Ordnance (O) Division. All the design, development, and technical work at Los Alamos was consolidated under Lieutenant Commander Francis Birch's group. In contrast to the plutonium implosion-type nuclear weapon and the plutonium gun-type fission weapon, the uranium gun-type weapon was straightforward if not trivial to design. The concept was pursued so that in case of a failure to develop a plutonium bomb, it would still be possible to use the gun principle. The gun-type design henceforth had to work with enriched uranium only, and this allowed the Thin Man design to be greatly simplified. A high-velocity gun was no longer required, and a simpler weapon could be substituted. The simplified weapon was short enough to fit into a B-29 bomb bay.
The design specifications were completed in February 1945, and contracts were let to build the components. Three different plants were used so that no one would have a copy of the complete design. The gun and breech were made by the Naval Gun Factory in Washington, D.C.; the target case and some other components by the Naval Ordnance Plant in Center Line, Michigan; and the tail fairing and mounting brackets by the Expert Tool and Die Company in Detroit, Michigan. The bomb, except for the uranium payload, was ready at the beginning of May 1945. Manhattan District Engineer Kenneth Nichols expected on 1 May 1945 to have enriched uranium "for one weapon before August 1 and a second one sometime in December", assuming the second weapon would be a gun-type; designing an implosion bomb for enriched uranium was considered, and this would increase the production rate. The enriched uranium projectile was completed on 15 June, and the target on 24 July. The target and bomb pre-assemblies (partly assembled bombs without the fissile components) left Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, California, on 16 July aboard the heavy cruiser , arriving on 26 July. The target inserts followed by air on 30 July.
Although all of its components had been tested, no full test of a gun-type nuclear weapon occurred before the Little Boy was dropped over Hiroshima. The only test explosion of a nuclear weapon concept had been of an implosion-type device employing plutonium as its fissile material, and took place on 16 July 1945 at the Trinity nuclear test. There were several reasons for not testing a Little Boy type of device. Primarily, there was little enriched uranium as compared with the relatively large amount of plutonium which, it was expected, could be produced by the Hanford Site reactors. Additionally, the weapon design was simple enough that it was only deemed necessary to do laboratory tests with the gun-type assembly. Unlike the implosion design, which required sophisticated coordination of shaped explosive charges, the gun-type design was considered almost certain to work.
Though Little Boy incorporated various safety mechanisms, an accidental detonation was nonetheless possible. For example, should the bomber carrying the device crash then the hollow "bullet" could be driven into the "target" cylinder, detonating the bomb or at least releasing massive amounts of radiation; tests showed that this would require a highly unlikely impact of 500 times the force of gravity. Another concern was that a crash and fire could trigger the explosives. If immersed in water, the uranium components were subject to a neutron moderator effect, which would not cause an explosion but would release radioactive contamination. For this reason, pilots were advised to crash on land rather than at sea.
Design
The Little Boy was in length, in diameter and weighed approximately . The design used the gun method to explosively force a hollow sub-critical mass of enriched uranium and a solid target cylinder together into a super-critical mass, initiating a nuclear chain reaction. This was accomplished by shooting one piece of the uranium onto the other by means of four cylindrical silk bags of cordite powder. This was a widely used smokeless propellant consisting of a mixture of 65 percent nitrocellulose, 30 percent nitroglycerine, 3 percent petroleum jelly, and 2 percent carbamite that was extruded into tubular granules. This gave it a high surface area and a rapid burning area, and could attain pressures of up to . Cordite for the wartime Little Boy was sourced from Canada; propellant for post-war Little Boys was obtained from the Picatinny Arsenal. The bomb contained of enriched uranium. Most was enriched to 89% but some was only 50% uranium-235, for an average enrichment of 80%. Less than a kilogram of uranium underwent nuclear fission, and of this mass only was transformed into several forms of energy, mostly kinetic energy, but also heat and radiation.
Assembly details
Inside the weapon, the uranium-235 material was divided into two parts, following the gun principle: the "projectile" and the "target". The projectile was a hollow cylinder with 60% of the total mass (). It consisted of a stack of nine uranium rings, each in diameter with a bore in the center, and a total length of , pressed together into the front end of a thin-walled projectile long. Filling in the remainder of the space behind these rings in the projectile was a tungsten carbide disc with a steel back. At ignition, the projectile slug was pushed along the long, smooth-bore gun barrel. The slug "insert" was a cylinder, in length with a axial hole. The slug comprised 40% of the total fissile mass (). The insert was a stack of six washer-like uranium discs somewhat thicker than the projectile rings that were slid over a rod. This rod then extended forward through the tungsten carbide tamper plug, impact-absorbing anvil, and nose plug backstop, eventually protruding out of the front of the bomb casing. This entire target assembly was secured at both ends with locknuts.
When the hollow-front projectile reached the target and slid over the target insert, the assembled super-critical mass of uranium would be completely surrounded by a tamper and neutron reflector of tungsten carbide and steel, both materials having a combined mass of . Neutron initiators at the base of the projectile were activated by the impact.
Counter-intuitive design
For the first fifty years after 1945, every published description and drawing of the Little Boy mechanism assumed that a small, solid projectile was fired into the center of a larger, stationary target. However, critical mass considerations dictated that in Little Boy the larger, hollow piece would be the projectile. The assembled fissile core had more than two critical masses of uranium-235. This required one of the two pieces to have more than one critical mass, with the larger piece avoiding criticality prior to assembly by means of shape and minimal contact with the neutron-reflecting tungsten carbide tamper.
A hole in the center of the larger piece dispersed the mass and increased the surface area, allowing more fission neutrons to escape, thus preventing a premature chain reaction. But, for this larger, hollow piece to have minimal contact with the tamper, it must be the projectile, since only the projectile's back end was in contact with the tamper prior to detonation. The rest of the tungsten carbide surrounded the sub-critical mass target cylinder (called the "insert" by the designers) with air space between it and the insert. This arrangement packs the maximum amount of fissile material into a gun-assembly design.
Fuze system
The fuzing system was designed to trigger at the most destructive altitude, which calculations suggested was . It employed a three-stage interlock system:
A timer ensured that the bomb would not explode until at least fifteen seconds after release, one-quarter of the predicted fall time, to ensure the safety of the aircraft. The timer was activated when the electrical pull-out plugs connecting it to the airplane pulled loose as the bomb fell, switching it to its internal 24–volt battery and starting the timer. At the end of the 15 seconds, the bomb would be from the aircraft, and the radar altimeters were powered up and responsibility was passed to the barometric stage.
The purpose of the barometric stage was to delay activating the radar altimeter firing command circuit until near detonation altitude. A thin metallic membrane enclosing a vacuum chamber (a similar design is still used today in old-fashioned wall barometers) gradually deformed as ambient air pressure increased during descent. The barometric fuze was not considered accurate enough to detonate the bomb at the precise ignition height, because air pressure varies with local conditions. When the bomb reached the design height for this stage (reportedly ), the membrane closed a circuit, activating the radar altimeters. The barometric stage was added because of a worry that external radar signals might detonate the bomb too early.
Two or more redundant radar altimeters were used to reliably detect final altitude. When the altimeters sensed the correct height, the firing switch closed, igniting the three BuOrd Mk15, Mod 1 Navy gun primers in the breech plug, which set off the charge consisting of four silk powder bags each containing of WM slotted-tube cordite. This launched the uranium projectile towards the opposite end of the gun barrel at an eventual muzzle velocity of . Approximately 10 milliseconds later the chain reaction occurred, lasting less than 1 microsecond. The radar altimeters used were modified U.S. Army Air Corps APS-13 tail warning radars, nicknamed "Archie", normally used to warn a fighter pilot of another plane approaching from behind.
Rehearsals
The Little Boy pre-assemblies were designated L-1, L-2, L-3, L-4, L-5, L-6, L-7, and L-11. L-1, L-2, L-5, and L-6 were expended in test drops. The first drop test was conducted with L-1 on 23 July 1945. It was dropped over the sea near Tinian in order to test the radar altimeter by the B-29 later known as Big Stink, piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, the commander of the 509th Composite Group. Two more drop tests over the sea were made on 24 and 25 July, using the L-2 and L-5 units in order to test all components. Tibbets was the pilot for both missions, but this time the bomber used was the one subsequently known as Jabit. L-6 was used as a dress rehearsal on 29 July. The B-29 Next Objective, piloted by Major Charles W. Sweeney, flew to Iwo Jima, where emergency procedures for loading the bomb onto a standby aircraft were practiced. This rehearsal was repeated on 31 July, but this time L-6 was reloaded onto a different B-29, Enola Gay, piloted by Tibbets, and the bomb was test dropped near Tinian. L-11 was the assembly used for the Hiroshima bomb.
Bombing of Hiroshima
Parsons, the Enola Gays weaponeer, was concerned about the possibility of an accidental detonation if the plane crashed on takeoff, so he decided not to load the four cordite powder bags into the gun breech until the aircraft was in flight. After takeoff, Parsons and his assistant, Second Lieutenant Morris R. Jeppson, made their way into the bomb bay along the narrow catwalk on the port side. Jeppson held a flashlight while Parsons disconnected the primer wires, removed the breech plug, inserted the powder bags, replaced the breech plug, and reconnected the wires. Before climbing to altitude on approach to the target, Jeppson switched the three safety plugs between the electrical connectors of the internal battery and the firing mechanism from green to red. The bomb was then fully armed. Jeppson monitored the bomb's circuits.
The bomb was dropped at approximately 08:15 (JST) on 6 August 1945. After falling for 44.4 seconds, the time and barometric triggers started the firing mechanism. The detonation happened at an altitude of . It was less powerful than the Fat Man, which was dropped on Nagasaki, but the damage and the number of victims at Hiroshima were much higher, as Hiroshima was on flat terrain, while the hypocenter of Nagasaki lay in a small valley. According to figures published in 1945, 66,000 people were killed as a direct result of the Hiroshima blast, and 69,000 were injured to varying degrees. Of those deaths, 20,000 were members of the Imperial Japanese Army.
The exact measurement of the yield was problematic since the weapon had never been tested. President Harry S. Truman officially announced that the yield was . This was based on Parsons's visual assessment that the blast was greater than what he had seen at the Trinity nuclear test. Since that had been estimated at , speech writers rounded up to 20 kilotons. Further discussion was then suppressed, for fear of lessening the impact of the bomb on the Japanese. Data had been collected by Luis Alvarez, Harold Agnew, and Lawrence H. Johnston on the instrument plane, The Great Artiste, but this was not used to calculate the yield at the time.
After hostilities ended, a survey team from the Manhattan Project that included William Penney, Robert Serber, and George T. Reynolds was sent to Hiroshima to evaluate the effects of the blast. From evaluating the effects on objects and structures, Penney concluded that the yield was 12 ± 1 kilotons. Later calculations based on charring pointed to a yield of 13 to 14 kilotons. In 1953, Frederick Reines calculated the yield as . This figure became the official yield.
Project Ichiban
In 1962, scientists at Los Alamos created a mockup of Little Boy known as "Project Ichiban" in order to answer some of the unanswered questions, but it failed to clear up all the issues. In 1982, Los Alamos created a replica Little Boy from the original drawings and specifications. This was then tested with enriched uranium but in a safe configuration that would not cause a nuclear explosion. A hydraulic lift was used to move the projectile, and experiments were run to assess neutron emission. Based on this and the data from The Great Artiste, the yield was estimated at 16.6 ± 0.3 kilotons. After considering many estimation methods, a 1985 report concluded that the yield was ± 20%.
Physical effects
After being selected in April 1945, Hiroshima was spared conventional bombing to serve as a pristine target, where the effects of a nuclear bomb on an undamaged city could be observed. While damage could be studied later, the energy yield of the untested Little Boy design could be determined only at the moment of detonation, using instruments dropped by parachute from a plane flying in formation with the one that dropped the bomb. Radio-transmitted data from these instruments indicated a yield of about 15 kilotons.
Comparing this yield to the observed damage produced a rule of thumb called the lethal area rule. Approximately all the people inside the area where the shock wave carried such an overpressure or greater would be killed. At Hiroshima, that area was in diameter.
The damage came from three main effects: blast, fire, and radiation.
Blast
The blast from a nuclear bomb is the result of X-ray-heated air (the fireball) sending a shock wave or pressure wave in all directions, initially at a velocity greater than the speed of sound, analogous to thunder generated by lightning. Knowledge about urban blast destruction is based largely on studies of Little Boy at Hiroshima. Nagasaki buildings suffered similar damage at similar distances, but the Nagasaki bomb detonated from the city center over hilly terrain that was partially bare of buildings.
In Hiroshima, almost everything within of the point directly under the explosion was completely destroyed, except for about 50 heavily reinforced, earthquake-resistant concrete buildings, only the shells of which remained standing. Most were completely gutted, with their windows, doors, sashes, and frames ripped out. The perimeter of severe blast damage approximately followed the contour at .
Later test explosions of nuclear weapons with houses and other test structures nearby confirmed the 5 psi overpressure threshold. Ordinary urban buildings experiencing it were crushed, toppled, or gutted by the force of air pressure. The picture at right shows the effects of a nuclear-bomb-generated 5 psi pressure wave on a test structure in Nevada in 1953.
A major effect of this kind of structural damage was that it created fuel for fires that were started simultaneously throughout the severe destruction region.
Fire
The first effect of the explosion was blinding light, accompanied by radiant heat from the fireball. The Hiroshima fireball was in diameter, with a surface temperature of , about the same temperature as at the surface of the sun. Near ground zero, everything flammable burst into flame. One famous, anonymous Hiroshima victim, sitting on stone steps from the hypocenter, left only a shadow, having absorbed the fireball heat that permanently bleached the surrounding stone. Simultaneous fires were started throughout the blast-damaged area by fireball heat and by overturned stoves and furnaces, electrical shorts, etc. Twenty minutes after the detonation, these fires had merged into a firestorm, pulling in surface air from all directions to feed an inferno which consumed everything flammable.
The Hiroshima firestorm was roughly in diameter, corresponding closely to the severe blast damage zone. (See the USSBS map, right.) Blast-damaged buildings provided fuel for the fire. Structural lumber and furniture were splintered and scattered about. Debris-choked roads obstructed firefighters. Broken gas pipes fueled the fire, and broken water pipes rendered hydrants useless. At Nagasaki, the fires failed to merge into a single firestorm, and the fire-damaged area was only one fourth as great as at Hiroshima, due in part to a southwest wind that pushed the fires away from the city.
As the map shows, the Hiroshima firestorm jumped natural firebreaks (river channels), as well as prepared firebreaks. The spread of fire stopped only when it reached the edge of the blast-damaged area, encountering less available fuel. The Manhattan Project report on Hiroshima estimated that 60% of immediate deaths were caused by fire, but with the caveat that "many persons near the center of explosion suffered fatal injuries from more than one of the bomb effects."
Radiation
Local fallout is dust and ash from a bomb crater, contaminated with radioactive fission products. It falls to earth downwind of the crater and can produce, with radiation alone, a lethal area much larger than that from blast and fire. With an air burst, the fission products rise into the stratosphere, where they dissipate and become part of the global environment. Because Little Boy was an air burst above the ground, there was no bomb crater and no local radioactive fallout.
However, a burst of intense neutron and gamma radiation came directly from the fission of the uranium. Its lethal radius was approximately , covering about half of the firestorm area. An estimated 30% of immediate fatalities were people who received lethal doses of this direct radiation, but died in the firestorm before their radiation injuries would have become apparent. Over 6,000 people survived the blast and fire, but died of radiation injuries. Among injured survivors, 30% had radiation injuries from which they recovered, but with a lifelong increase in cancer risk. To date, no radiation-related evidence of heritable diseases has been observed among the survivors' children.
Conventional weapon equivalent
Although Little Boy exploded with the energy equivalent of 16,000 tons of TNT, the Strategic Bombing Survey estimated that the same blast and fire effect could have been caused by 2,100 tons of conventional bombs: "220 B-29s carrying 1,200 tons of incendiary bombs, 400 tons of high-explosive bombs, and 500 tons of anti-personnel fragmentation bombs." Since the target was spread across a two-dimensional plane, the vertical component of a single spherical nuclear explosion was largely wasted. A cluster bomb pattern of smaller explosions would have been a more energy-efficient match to the target.
Post-war
When the war ended, it was not expected that the inefficient Little Boy design would ever again be required, and many plans and diagrams were destroyed. However, by mid-1946 the Hanford Site reactors were suffering badly from the Wigner effect. Faced with the prospect of no more plutonium for new cores and no more polonium for the initiators for the cores that had already been produced, the Director of the Manhattan Project, Major General Leslie R. Groves, ordered that some Little Boys be prepared as an interim measure until a cure could be found. No Little Boy assemblies were available, and no comprehensive set of diagrams of the Little Boy could be found, although there were drawings of the various components, and stocks of spare parts.
At Sandia Base, three Army officers, Captains Albert Bethel, Richard Meyer, and Bobbie Griffin attempted to re-create the Little Boy. They were supervised by Harlow W. Russ, an expert on Little Boy who served with Project Alberta on Tinian, and was now leader of the Z-11 Group of the Los Alamos Laboratory's Z Division at Sandia. Gradually, they managed to locate the correct drawings and parts, and figured out how they went together. Eventually, they built six Little Boy assemblies. Although the casings, barrels, and components were tested, no enriched uranium was supplied for the bombs. By early 1947, the problem caused by the Wigner effect was on its way to solution, and the three officers were reassigned.
The Navy Bureau of Ordnance built 25 Little Boy assemblies in 1947 for use by the nuclear-capable Lockheed P2V Neptune aircraft carrier aircraft (which could be launched from but not land on the Midway-class aircraft carriers). Components were produced by the Naval Ordnance Plants in Pocatello, Idaho, and Louisville, Kentucky. Enough fissionable material was available by 1948 to build ten projectiles and targets, although there were only enough initiators for six. All the Little Boy units were withdrawn from service by the end of January 1951.
The Smithsonian Institution displayed a Little Boy (complete, except for enriched uranium), until 1986. The Department of Energy took the weapon from the museum to remove its inner components, so the bombs could not be stolen and detonated with fissile material. The government returned the emptied casing to the Smithsonian in 1993. Three other disarmed bombs are on display in the United States; another is at the Imperial War Museum in London.
Notes
References
This report can also be found here and here.
This report can also be found here.
External links
Little Boy description at Carey Sublette's NuclearWeaponArchive.org
Nuclear Files.org Definition and explanation of 'Little Boy'
The Nuclear Weapon Archive
Simulation of "Little Boy" an interactive simulation of "Little Boy"
Little Boy 3D Model
Hiroshima & Nagasaki Remembered information about preparation and dropping the Little Boy bomb
Little boy Nuclear Bomb at Imperial War museum London UK (jpg)
History of the Manhattan Project
Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Gun-type nuclear bombs
World War II weapons of the United States
Code names
Nuclear bombs of the United States
Cold War aerial bombs of the United States
Lockheed Corporation
Articles containing video clips
World War II aerial bombs of the United States
Military equipment introduced in the 1940s |
18599 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanon%20War | Lebanon War | The term Lebanon War can refer to any of the following wars, fought in Lebanon:
Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990)
Hundred Days' War 1978 (part of the Lebanese Civil War)
1982 Lebanon War (part of the Lebanese Civil War, also known as the First Lebanon War)
Mountain War (Lebanon) 1983–1984 (part of the Lebanese Civil War)
War of the Camps 1984–1989 (part of the Lebanese Civil War)
South Lebanon conflict (1985–2000)
2006 Lebanon War (also known as the Second Lebanon War)
2007 Lebanon conflict
2008 conflict in Lebanon
Syrian Civil War spillover in Lebanon
See also
1860 civil conflict in Mount Lebanon and Damascus |
18602 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lester%20Bangs | Lester Bangs | Leslie Conway "Lester" Bangs (December 14, 1948 – April 30, 1982) was an American music journalist, critic, author, and musician. He wrote for Creem and Rolling Stone magazines, and was known for his leading influence in rock music criticism. The music critic Jim DeRogatis called him "America's greatest rock critic".
Early life
Bangs was born in Escondido, California. He was the son of Norma Belle (née Clifton) and Conway Leslie Bangs, a truck driver. Both of his parents were from Texas: his father from Enloe and his mother from Pecos County. Norma Belle was a devout Jehovah's Witness. Conway died in a fire when his son was young. When Bangs was 11, he moved with his mother to El Cajon, also in San Diego County. His early interests and influences ranged from the Beats (particularly William S. Burroughs) and jazz musicians John Coltrane and Miles Davis, to comic books and science fiction. He had a connection with The San Diego Door, an underground newspaper of the late 1960s.
Career
Rolling Stone magazine
Bangs became a freelance writer in 1969, after reading an ad in Rolling Stone soliciting readers' reviews. His first accepted piece was a negative review of the MC5 album Kick Out the Jams, which he sent to Rolling Stone with a note requesting, if the magazine were to decline to publish the review, that he be given a reason for the decision; no reply was forthcoming, as the magazine did indeed publish the review.
His 1970 review of Black Sabbath's first album in Rolling Stone was scathing, rating them as imitators of the band Cream:
Bangs wrote about the death of Janis Joplin in 1970 from a drug overdose: "It's not just that this kind of early death has become a fact of life that has become disturbing, but that it's been accepted as a given so quickly."
In 1973, Jann Wenner fired Bangs from Rolling Stone for "disrespecting musicians" after a particularly harsh review of the group Canned Heat.
Creem magazine
Bangs began freelancing for Detroit-based Creem in 1970. In 1971, he wrote a feature for Creem on Alice Cooper, and soon afterward he moved to Detroit. Named Creem's editor in 1971, Bangs fell in love with Detroit, calling it "rock's only hope", and remained there for five years.
During the early 1970s, Bangs and some other writers at Creem began using the term punk rock to designate the genre of 1960s garage bands and more contemporary acts, such as MC5 and Iggy and the Stooges. Their writings would provide some of the conceptual framework for the later punk and new wave movements that emerged in New York, London, and elsewhere later in the decade. They would be quick to pick up on these new movements at their inception and provide extensive coverage of the phenomenon. Bangs was enamored of the noise music of Lou Reed, and Creem gave significant exposure to artists such as Reed, David Bowie, Roxy Music, Captain Beefheart, Blondie, Brian Eno, and the New York Dolls years earlier than the mainstream press. Bangs wrote the essay/interview "Let Us Now Praise Famous Death Dwarves" about Reed in 1975. Creem was also among the earliest publications to give sizable coverage to hard rock and metal artists such as Motörhead, Kiss, Judas Priest, and Van Halen.
Subsequent career
After leaving Creem in 1976, he wrote for The Village Voice, Penthouse, Playboy, New Musical Express, and many other publications.
Death
Bangs died in New York City on April 30, 1982, at the age of 33; he was self-medicating a bad case of the flu and accidentally overdosed on dextropropoxyphene (an opioid analgesic), diazepam (a benzodiazepine), and NyQuil.
At the time of his death, Bangs appeared to be listening to music. Earlier that day he had bought a copy of Dare by the English synth-pop band The Human League, according to Jim DeRogatis's well-sourced biography Let It Blurt. Later that night, Bangs's friend found him unresponsive, lying on a couch in his apartment. "Dare was spinning on the turntable, and the needle was stuck on the end groove", DeRogatis wrote.
Writing style and cultural commentary
Bangs's criticism was filled with cultural references, not only to rock music but also to literature and philosophy. His radical and confrontational style influenced others in the punk rock and related social and political movements. In a 1982 interview, he said,
A performer with his own band, he also appeared on stage with others at times. On one occasion, while the J. Geils Band were playing in concert, Bangs climbed onto the stage, typewriter in hand, and proceeded to type a supposed review of the event, in full view of the audience, banging the keys in rhythm with the music.
In 1979, writing for The Village Voice, Bangs wrote a painful and personal piece about racism in the punk music scene, called "The White Noise Supremacists", wherein he re-examined his own actions and words, and those of his peers, in light of some bands using Nazi symbology, and other racist speech and imagery, "for shock value". He came to the conclusion that generating outrage for attention wasn't worth the harm it was causing fellow members of the community, and expressed his personal shame and embarrassment about having engaged in these racist behaviors himself. He praised the efforts of activist groups like Rock Against Racism and Rock Against Sexism as "an attempt at simple decency by a lot of people whom one would think too young and naive to begin to appreciate the contradictions."
Music
Bangs was also a musician. In 1976, he and Peter Laughner recorded an acoustic improvisation in the Creem office. The recording included covers/parodies of songs like "Sister Ray" and "Pale Blue Eyes", both by the Velvet Underground.
In 1977, Bangs recorded, as a solo artist, a 7" vinyl single named "Let It Blurt/Live", mixed by John Cale and released in 1979.
In 1977, at the famous New York City nightclub, CBGB, while Bangs was talking to guitarist Mickey Leigh, Joey Ramone's brother, the idea for a band named "Birdland" came to fruition. Although they both had their roots in jazz, the two wanted to create an old school rock & roll group. Leigh brought in his post-punk band, The Rattlers (David Merrill on bass; Matty Quick on drums), and cut "Birdland with Lester Bangs". The recording took place at the under renovation Electric Lady Studios. Bassist David Merrill, who was working on the construction of the studio, had the keys to the building and they snuck the band in on April Fool's Day, 1979 for an impromptu and late night recording session. The result was a completely uncut and un-dubbed recording that displayed raw music. Birdland broke up within two months of this rare recording (in which the cassette tape from the session became the master, mixed by Ed Stasium and released by Leigh only in 1986).
Reviewing the 1986 LP "Birdland" with Lester Bangs, Robert Christgau gave it a B-plus and said, "musically he always had the instincts, and words were no problem."
In 1980 Lester Bangs traveled to Austin, Texas, where he met a surf/punk rock group, "The Delinquents". In early December of the same year, they recorded an album as "Lester Bangs and the Delinquents", titled Jook Savages on the Brazos, released the following year.
In 1990 the Mekons released the EP F.U.N. 90 with Bangs's declamation in the song "One Horse Town".
In popular culture
Bangs is the subject of the song by Scott B. Sympathy "Lester Bangs Stereo Ghost" on the 1992 album Drinking With The Poet.
Excerpts from an interview with Lester Bangs appeared in the last two episodes of Tony Palmer's seventeen-episode television documentary All You Need Is Love: The Story of Popular Music.
In the 2000 movie Almost Famous, directed by Cameron Crowe (himself a former writer for Rolling Stone), Bangs is portrayed by actor Philip Seymour Hoffman as a mentor to the film's protagonist William Miller. Hoffman himself had a drug-related death. Bangs is also a major character in the 2019 stage musical version.
The 2013 documentary A Box Full of Rocks: The El Cajon Years of Lester Bangs, directed by Raul Sandelin, discusses Bangs's childhood and formative writing career.
In 2018 an Off-Broadway play about Bangs, How to Be a Rock Critic, premiered and was performed at several venues around the U.S. It starred Erik Jensen as Bangs, and was directed by Jessica Blank, with music by Steve Earle.
Selected works
By Lester Bangs
Review of The MC5's debut album, Kick Out The Jams – Bangs's first piece for Rolling Stone
"How Long Will We Care?" Elvis Presley obituary. The Village Voice, August 29, 1977
"The Greatest Album Ever Made", Creem magazine (1976) — about the 1975 Lou Reed album Metal Machine Music
"Stranded", (1979) — about the 1968 album Astral Weeks, by Van Morrison
Blondie, Fireside Book, 1980. ISBN 0-671-25540-1, 91 p.
Rod Stewart, Paul Nelson & Lester Bangs, Putnam Group, 1981. ISBN 0-933-38808-7, 159 p.
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic, collected writings, Greil Marcus, ed. Anchor Press, 1988. ()
Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader, collected writings, John Morthland, ed. Anchor Press, 2003. ()
About Lester Bangs
Let it Blurt: The Life and Times of Lester Bangs, America's Greatest Rock Critic, biography, Jim Derogatis. Broadway Books, 2000. ().
How To Be A Rock Critic, play, Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen. Kirk Douglas Theater, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Public Theater, more; 2015–2018.
Works citing Lester Bangs
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, biography, Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. Penguin Books, 1997. ().
See also
Jeffrey Morgan
Greil Marcus
Dave Marsh
Greg Shaw
Lenny Kaye
Robert Christgau
Jann Wenner
Ellen Willis
References
Notes
Sources
External links
by Jeffrey Morgan of Creem.
1980 interview with Bangs posted at rockcritics.com
May 13, 1980 Interview with Lester Bangs by Sue Mathews of ABC Radio (Australia) Complete transcript plus MP3 stream of the interview.
Richard Hell remembers Lester Bangs in The Village Voice, August 7, 2003
American music critics
American music journalists
Rock critics
1948 births
1982 deaths
American male journalists
Journalists from California
Rolling Stone people
People from El Cajon, California
People from Escondido, California
Drug-related deaths in New York City
20th-century American journalists |
18603 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lydia%20Kavina | Lydia Kavina | Lydia Yevgenyevna Kavina (; born 8 September 1967) is a Russian-British theremin player.
The granddaughter of Léon Theremin's first cousin, Soviet anthropologist and primatologist Mikhail Nesturkh, Kavina was born in Moscow and began studying the instrument under the direction of Léon Theremin when she was nine years old. Five years later, she gave her first theremin concert, which marked the beginning of a musical career that has led to numerous concert, theatre, radio and television performances around the world.
Kavina has appeared as a solo performer at such prestigious venues as the Bolshoi Zal (Great Hall) of the Moscow Conservatory, Moscow International Art Centre with National Philarmonic of Russia under Vladimir Spivakov and Bellevue Palace in Berlin, the residence of the German President. She has also performed at leading festivals, including Caramoor with the Orchestra St. Luke's, New York's Lincoln Center Festival, Holland Music Festival, Martinu Festival, Electronic Music Festival in Burge and Moscow “Avantgarde”.
Kavina performs most of the classical theremin repertoire, including popular works for theremin by Bohuslav Martinů, Joseph Schillinger, and Spellbound by Miklos Rozsa, as well as Equatorial by Edgard Varèse and the lesser known Testament by Nicolas Obouchov.
In addition to giving concerts, Kavina is a composer of music for theremin and teaches the instrument in Western Europe, Russia and the United States. Carolina Eyck was one of her students. Together with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, she played theremin for Howard Shore's soundtrack of the Oscar-winning film Ed Wood, as well as for eXistenZ (also by Shore) and The Machinist. Additionally, Kavina has recorded several compact discs and is the subject of an instructional video from the theremin manufacturer Moog Music. She was also featured in stage productions such as Alice and The Black Rider (both conceived and directed by Robert Wilson, with music by Tom Waits) at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, and in collaboration with the Russian experimental surf band Messer Chups.
Lydia Kavina is an active promoter of new experimental music for the theremin. Her recent project "Nicht zu fassen" for theremin and accordion, together with Roman Yusipey, includes works by S.Gubaidulina, J.Cage, V.Poleva, as well as Kavina's compositions, it was performed in Germany and Ukraine. In collaboration with Barbara Buchholz and Kamerensemble Neue Musik Berlin, Kavina performed a number of concerts of contemporary works for theremin in Germany in 2005–2007 as part of the Touch! Don't Touch! – Music for Theremin project.
The most notable project of her recent career is her theremin solo in The Little Mermaid, a ballet by Lera Auerbach, choreographed by John Neumeier in Copenhagen New Opera Haus(2005), Hamburg State Opera (2007-2015) and The National Ballet of China in Beijing(2012). Kavina also played the solo in Danny Elfman's UK concert tour with BBC concert orchestra and London Concert orchestra (2013-2014).
Kavina has completed a number of her own compositions for theremin including a Concerto for Theremin and Symphony Orchestra, first performed by the Boston Modern Orchestra under the direction of Gil Rose.
Lydia Kavina is based in Oxfordshire, UK. Kavina holds a degree in composition from The Moscow Conservatory, where she also completed a postgraduate assistantship program.
CDs
Music from the Ether, Mode records, 1999
Concerto per Theremin. Live in Italy, Teleura, 2000
Touch! Don't Touch! – Music for Theremin with Barbara Buchholz, Wergo, 2006
Spellbound!, Mode records, 2008
Collaborations
Music for Films III Music by Brian Eno, Opal Records, 1988
Ed Wood: Original Soundtrack Recording Music by Howard Shore, Hollywood Records, 1994
eXistenZ, Soundtrack Music by Howard Shore, RCA Victor, 1999
Black Black Magic Music by Messer Chups, Solnze Records, 2002
Crazy Price Music by Messer Chups, Solnze Records, 2003
Vamp Babes, Upgrade Version Music by Messer Chups, Solnze Records, 2004
Baehlamms Fest Music by Olga Neuwirth, Kairos, 2003
The Machinist, Soundtrack Music by Roque Baños, Melodramma Records, 2005
Videos
Mastering the Theremin, Big Briar, 1995
Concerto per Theremin. Live in Italy, Teleura, 2001
''Making the Steamroller Fly, 1997, as herself.
References
External links
Official website
LYDIA KAVINA PLAYS THEREMIN Channel on YouTube
An interview with Lydia Kavina
Lydia Kavina at Mode Records
Concerto per Theremin: the Live CD from Lydia Kavina
Lydia Kavina performing Debussy's "Claire de Lune" on YouTube
Theremin players
1967 births
Living people
Musicians from Moscow
Moscow Conservatory alumni
Women in electronic music
Russian expatriates in England |
18606 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation%20Tigers%20of%20Tamil%20Eelam | Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam | The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) (, , also known as the Tamil Tigers) was a Tamil militant organization that was based in northeastern Sri Lanka. Its aim was to secure an independent state of Tamil Eelam in the north and east in response to the state policies of successive Sri Lankan governments that were widely considered to be discriminatory towards the minority Sri Lankan Tamils, as well as the oppressive actions—including anti-Tamil pogroms in 1956 and 1958—carried out by the majority Sinhalese.
Founded in May 1976 by Velupillai Prabhakaran, the LTTE was involved in armed clashes against the Sri Lankan government and armed forces. Oppression against Sri Lankan Tamils continued by Sinhalese mobs, notably during the 1977 anti-Tamil pogrom and the 1981 burning of the Jaffna Public Library. Following the week-long July 1983 anti-Tamil pogrom carried out by Sinhalese mobs that came to be known as Black July, the LTTE's escalation of intermittent conflict into a full-scale nationalist insurgency began, which started the Sri Lankan Civil War. By this time, the LTTE was widely regarded as the most dominant Tamil militant group in Sri Lanka and among the most feared guerrilla forces in the world, while Prabhakaran's status as a freedom guerrilla fighter led to comparisons to revolutionary Che Guevara by global media, though Prabhakaran's actions were also widely viewed as terroristic.
The LTTE has been designated as a terrorist organisation by 33 countries, including the European Union, Canada, the United States, and India.
LTTE is noted by many academics for the popularization of the suicide vest as a weapon. Though the group did not invent suicide bombing, they perfected the use of suicide vest attacks, which are now used by many current terrorist organisations.
Initially starting out as a guerrilla force, the LTTE increasingly came to resemble that of a conventional fighting force with a well-developed military wing that included a navy, an airborne unit, an intelligence wing, and a specialised suicide attack unit. In particular, India's relationship with the LTTE was complex, as it went from initially supporting the organisation to engaging it in direct combat through the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF), owing to changes in the former's foreign policy during the phase of the conflict. The LTTE gained global notoriety for using women and children in combat and carrying out a number of high-profile assassinations, including former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 and Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993.
Over the course of the conflict, the LTTE frequently exchanged control of territory in the north-east with the Sri Lankan military, with the two sides engaging in intense military confrontations. It was involved in four unsuccessful rounds of peace talks with the Sri Lankan government and at its peak in 2000, the LTTE was in control of 76% of the landmass in the Northern and Eastern provinces of Sri Lanka. Prabhakaran headed the organisation from its inception until his death in 2009. Between 1983 and 2009, more than 80,000 were killed in the civil war, of which many were Sri Lankan Tamils. 800,000 Sri Lankan Tamils also left Sri Lanka for various destinations, including Europe, North America, and Asia.
History
Background
Historical inter-ethnic imbalances between the Sinhalese and Tamil populations are alleged to have created the background of the LTTE. Post independent Sri Lankan governments attempted to reduce the increased presence of the Tamil minority in government jobs, which led to ethnic discrimination, seeded hatred and division policies including the "Sinhala Only Act" and gave rise to separatist ideologies among many Tamil leaders. By the 1970s, initial non-violent political struggle for an independent Tamil state was used as justification for a violent secessionist insurgency led by the LTTE.
In the early 1970s, United Front government of Sirimavo Bandaranaike introduced the policy of standardisation to curtail the number of Tamil students selected for certain faculties in the universities. In 1972, the government added a district quota as a parameter within each language. A student named Satiyaseelan formed Tamil Manavar Peravai (Tamil Students League) to counter this. This group comprised Tamil youth who advocated the rights of students to have fair enrolment. Inspired by the failed 1971 insurrection of Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, it was the first Tamil insurgent group of its kind. It consisted of around 40 Tamil youth, including Ponnuthurai Sivakumaran (later, the leader of the Sivakumaran group), K. Pathmanaba (one of the founder members of EROS) and Velupillai Prabhakaran, an 18-year-old youth from single caste-oriented Valvettithurai (VVT).
In 1972, Prabhakaran teamed up with Chetti Thanabalasingam, Jaffna to form the Tamil New Tigers (TNT), with Thanabalasingham as its leader. After he was killed, Prabhakaran took over. At the same time, Nadarajah Thangathurai and Selvarajah Yogachandran (better known by his nom de guerre Kuttimani) were also involved in discussions about an insurgency. They would later (in 1979) create a separate organisation named Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO) to campaign for the establishment of an independent Tamil Eelam. These groups, along with another prominent figure of the armed struggle, Ponnuthurai Sivakumaran, were involved in several hit-and-run operations against pro-government Tamil politicians, Sri Lanka Police and civil administration during the early 1970s. These attacks included throwing bombs at the residence and the car of SLFP Jaffna Mayor, Alfred Duraiyappah, placing a bomb at a carnival held in the stadium of Jaffna city (now "Duraiyappah stadium") and Neervely bank robbery. The 1974 Tamil conference incident during which intervention by Sri Lankan police resulted in 11 dead also sparked the anger of these militant groups. Both Sivakumaran and Prabhakaran attempted to assassinate Duraiyappah in revenge for the incident. Sivakumaran committed suicide on 5 June 1974, to evade capture by Police. On 27 July 1975, Prabhakaran assassinated Duraiyappah, who was branded as a "traitor" by TULF and the insurgents alike. Prabhakaran shot and killed the Mayor when he was visiting the Krishnan temple at Ponnalai.
Founding and rise to power
The LTTE was founded on 5 May 1976 as the successor to the Tamil New Tigers. Uma Maheswaran became its leader, and Prabhakaran its military commander. A five-member committee was also appointed. It has been stated that Prabhakaran sought to "refashion the old TNT/new LTTE into an elite, ruthlessly efficient, and highly professional fighting force", by the terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna. Prabhakaran kept the numbers of the group small and maintained a high standard of training. The LTTE carried out low-key attacks against various government targets, including policemen and local politicians.
TULF support
Tamil United Liberation Front leader Appapillai Amirthalingam, who was in 1977 elected as the Opposition leader of Sri Lanka Parliament, clandestinely supported the LTTE. Amirthalingam believed that if he could exercise control over the Tamil insurgent groups, it would enhance his political position and pressure the government to agree to grant political autonomy to Tamils. Thus, he provided letters of reference to the LTTE and to other Tamil insurgent groups to raise funds. Both Uma Maheswaran (a former surveyor) and Urmila Kandiah, the first female member of the LTTE, were prominent members of the TULF youth wing. Maheswaran was the secretary of TULF Tamil Youth Forum, Colombo branch. Amirthalingam introduced Prabhakaran to N. S. Krishnan, who later became the first international representative of LTTE. It was Krishnan who introduced Prabhakaran to Anton Balasingham, who later became the chief political strategist and chief negotiator of LTTE, which split for the first time in 1979. Uma Maheswaran was found to be having a love affair with Urmila Kandiah, which was against the code of conduct of LTTE. Prabhakaran ordered him to leave the organisation. Uma Maheswaran left LTTE and formed People's Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE) in 1980.
In 1980, Junius Richard Jayewardene's government agreed to devolve power by the means of District Development Councils upon the request of TULF. By this time, LTTE and other insurgent groups wanted a separate state. They had no faith in any sort of political solution. Thus the TULF and other Tamil political parties were steadily marginalised and insurgent groups emerged as the major force in the north. During this period of time, several other insurgent groups came into the arena, such as EROS (1975), TELO (1979), PLOTE (1980), EPRLF (1980) and TELA (1982). LTTE ordered civilians to boycott the local government elections of 1983 in which TULF contested. Voter turnout became as low as 10%. Thereafter, Tamil political parties were largely unable to represent Tamil people as insurgent groups took over their position.
Thirunelveli attack, 1983
The LTTE carried out its first major attack on 23 July 1983, when they ambushed Sri Lanka Army patrol Four Four Bravo at Thirunelveli, Jaffna. Thirteen Sri Lankan servicemen were killed in the attack, leading to the Black July pogrom where up to 3000 Tamil civilians were killed across the island.
Many consider Black July to be a planned rampage against the Tamil community of Sri Lanka, in which sections of the government were implicated.
Thousands of outraged Tamil youths joined Tamil militant groups to fight the Sri Lankan government, in what is considered a major catalyst to the insurgency in Sri Lanka.
Indian support
In reaction to various geo-political (see Indian intervention in the Sri Lankan Civil War) and economic factors, from August 1983 to May 1987, India, through its intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), provided arms, training and monetary support to six Sri Lankan Tamil insurgent groups including the LTTE. During that period, 32 camps were set up in India to train these 495 LTTE insurgents, including 90 women who were trained in 10 batches. The first batch of Tigers were trained in Establishment 22 based in Chakrata, Uttarakhand. The second batch, including LTTE intelligence chief Pottu Amman, trained in Himachal Pradesh. Prabakaran visited the first and the second batch of Tamil Tigers to see them training. Eight other batches of LTTE were trained in Tamil Nadu. Thenmozhi Rajaratnam alias Dhanu, who carried out the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and Sivarasan—the key conspirator were among the militants trained by RAW, in Nainital, India.
In April 1984, the LTTE formally joined a common militant front, the Eelam National Liberation Front (ENLF), a union between LTTE, the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO), the Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students (EROS), the People's Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE) and the Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF).
Clashes with other insurgent groups
TELO usually held the Indian view of problems and pushed for India's view during peace talks with Sri Lanka and other groups. LTTE denounced the TELO view and claimed that India was only acting on its own interest. As a result, the LTTE broke from the ENLF in 1986. Soon fighting broke out between the TELO and the LTTE and clashes occurred over the next few months. As a result, almost the entire TELO leadership and at least 400 TELO militants were killed by the LTTE. The LTTE attacked training camps of the EPRLF a few months later, forcing it to withdraw from the Jaffna peninsula. Notices were issued to the effect that all remaining Tamil insurgents join the LTTE in Jaffna and in Madras, where the Tamil groups were headquartered. With the major groups including the TELO and EPRLF eliminated, the remaining 20 or so Tamil insurgent groups were then absorbed into the LTTE, making Jaffna an LTTE-dominated city.
Another practice that increased support by Tamil people was LTTE's members taking an oath of loyalty which stated LTTE's goal of establishing a state for the Sri Lankan Tamils. In 1987 LTTE established the Black Tigers, a unit responsible for conducting suicide attacks against political, economic, and military targets, and launched its first suicide attack against a Sri Lankan Army camp, killing 40 soldiers. LTTE members were prohibited from smoking cigarettes and consuming alcohol in any form. LTTE members were required to avoid their family members and avoid communication with them. Initially, LTTE members were prohibited from having love affairs or sexual relationships as it could deter their prime motive, but this policy changed after Prabhakaran married Mathivathani Erambu in October 1984.
IPKF period
In July 1987, faced with growing anger among its own Tamils and a flood of refugees, India intervened directly in the conflict for the first time by initially airdropping food parcels into Jaffna. After negotiations, India and Sri Lanka entered into the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord. Though the conflict was between the Tamil and Sinhalese people, India and Sri Lanka signed the peace accord instead of India influencing both parties to sign a peace accord among themselves. The peace accord assigned a certain degree of regional autonomy in the Tamil areas, with Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF) controlling the regional council and called for the Tamil militant groups to surrender. India was to send a peacekeeping force, named the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF), part of the Indian Army, to Sri Lanka to enforce the disarmament and to watch over the regional council.
War against IPKF
Although the Tamil militant organizations did not have a role in the Indo-Lanka agreement, most groups, including EPRLF, TELO, EROS, and PLOTE, accepted it. LTTE rejected the accord because they opposed EPRLF's Varadaraja Perumal as the chief ministerial candidate for the merged North Eastern Province. The LTTE named three alternate candidates for the position, which India rejected. The LTTE subsequently refused to hand over their weapons to the IPKF. After three months of tensions, LTTE declared war on IPKF on 7 October 1987.
Thus LTTE engaged in military conflict with the Indian Army, and launched its first attack on an Indian army rations truck on 8 October, killing five Indian para-commandos who were on board by strapping burning tires around their necks. The government of India stated that the IPKF should disarm the LTTE by force. The Indian Army launched assaults on the LTTE, including a month-long campaign, Operation Pawan to win control of the Jaffna Peninsula. The ruthlessness of this campaign, and the Indian army's subsequent anti-LTTE operations, which included civilian massacres and rapes made it extremely unpopular among many Tamils in Sri Lanka.
Premadasa government support
The Indian intervention was also unpopular among the Sinhalese majority. Prime Minister Ranasinghe Premadasa pledged to withdraw IPKF as soon as he is elected president during his presidential election campaign in 1988. After being elected, in April 1989, he started negotiations with LTTE. President Premadasa ordered the Sri Lanka Army to clandestinely hand over arms consignments to the LTTE to fight the IPKF and its proxy, the Tamil National Army (TNA). These consignments included RPGs, mortars, self-loading rifles, Type 81 assault rifle, T56 automatic rifles, pistols, hand grenades, ammunition, and communications sets. Moreover, millions of dollars were also passed on to the LTTE.
After IPKF
The last members of the IPKF, which was estimated to have had a strength of well over 100,000 at its peak, left the country in March 1990 upon the request of President Premadasa. Unstable peace initially held between the government and the LTTE, and peace talks progressed towards providing devolution for Tamils in the north and east of the country. A ceasefire held between LTTE and the government from June 1989 to June 1990, but broke down as LTTE massacred 600 police officers in the Eastern Province.
Fighting continued throughout the 1990s, and was marked by two key assassinations carried out by the LTTE: those of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, and Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993, using suicide bombers on both occasions. The fighting briefly halted in 1994 following the election of Chandrika Kumaratunga as President of Sri Lanka and the onset of peace talks, but fighting resumed after LTTE sank two Sri Lanka Navy Fast Attack Craft in April 1995. In a series of military operations that followed, the Sri Lanka Armed Forces recaptured the Jaffna Peninsula. Further offensives followed over the next three years, and the military captured large areas in the north of the country from the LTTE, including areas in the Vanni region, the town of Kilinochchi, and many smaller towns. From 1998 onward, the LTTE regained control of these areas, which culminated in the capture in April 2000 of the strategically important Elephant Pass base complex, located at the entrance of the Jaffna Peninsula, after prolonged fighting against the Sri Lanka Army.
Mahattaya, a one-time deputy leader of LTTE, was accused of treason by the LTTE and killed in 1994. He is said to have collaborated with the Indian Research and Analysis Wing to remove Prabhakaran from the LTTE leadership.
2002 ceasefire
In 2002, the LTTE dropped its demand for a separate state, instead demanding a form of regional autonomy. Following the landslide election defeat of Kumaratunga and Ranil Wickramasinghe coming to power in December 2001, the LTTE declared a unilateral ceasefire. The Sri Lankan Government agreed to the ceasefire, and in March 2002 the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) was signed. As part of the agreement, Norway and other Nordic countries agreed to jointly monitor the ceasefire through the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission.
Six rounds of peace talks between the Government of Sri Lanka and LTTE were held, but they were temporarily suspended after the LTTE pulled out of the talks in 2003 claiming "certain critical issues relating to the ongoing peace process". In 2003 the LTTE proposed an Interim Self Governing Authority (ISGA). This move was approved of by the international community but rejected by the Sri Lankan President. The LTTE boycotted the presidential election in December 2005. While LTTE claimed that the people under its control were free to vote, it is alleged that they used threats to prevent the population from voting. The United States condemned this.
The new government of Sri Lanka came into power in 2006 and demanded to abrogate the ceasefire agreement, stating that the ethnic conflict could only have a military solution, and that the only way to achieve this was by eliminating the LTTE. Further peace talks were scheduled in Oslo, Norway, on 8 and 9 June 2006, but cancelled when the LTTE refused to meet directly with the government delegation, stating its fighters were not being allowed safe passage to travel to the talks. Norwegian mediator Erik Solheim told journalists that the LTTE should take direct responsibility for the collapse of the talks. Rifts grew between the government and LTTE, and resulted in a number of ceasefire agreement violations by both sides during 2006. Suicide attacks, military skirmishes, and air raids took place during the latter part of 2006. Between February 2002 to May 2007, the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission documented 3,830 ceasefire violations by the LTTE, with respect to 351 by the security forces. Military confrontation continued into 2007 and 2008. In January 2008 the government officially pulled out of the Cease Fire Agreement.
Dissension
In the most significant show of dissent from within the organisation, a senior LTTE commander named Colonel Karuna (nom de guerre of Vinayagamoorthi Muralitharan) broke away from the LTTE in March 2004 and formed the TamilEela Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (later Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal), amid allegations that the northern commanders were overlooking the needs of the eastern Tamils. The LTTE leadership accused him of mishandling funds and questioned him about his recent personal behaviour. He tried to take control of the eastern province from the LTTE, which caused clashes between the LTTE and TMVP. The LTTE has suggested that TMVP was backed by the government, and the Nordic SLMM monitors corroborated this. It was later revealed that UNP Member of Parliament Seyed Ali Zahir Moulana had played an important role in the defection of Colonel Karuna from the LTTE to the Government.
Military defeat
Mahinda Rajapaksa was elected as the president of Sri Lanka in 2005. After a brief period of negotiations, LTTE pulled out of peace talks indefinitely. Sporadic violence had continued and on 25 April 2006, LTTE tried to assassinate Sri Lankan Army Commander Lieutenant General Sarath Fonseka. Following the attack, the European Union proscribed the LTTE as a terrorist organisation. A new crisis leading to the first large-scale fighting since signing of the ceasefire occurred when the LTTE closed the sluice gates of the Mavil Oya (Mavil Aru) reservoir on 21 July 2006, and cut the water supply to 15,000 villages in government controlled areas. This dispute developed into a full-scale war by August 2006.
After the breakdown of the peace process in 2006, the Sri Lankan military launched a major offensive against the Tigers, defeating the LTTE militarily and bringing the entire country under its control. Human rights groups criticised the nature of the victory which included the internment of Tamil civilians in concentration camps with little or no access to outside agencies. Victory over the Tigers was declared by Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on 16 May 2009, and the LTTE admitted defeat on 17 May 2009. Prabhakaran was killed by government forces on 19 May 2009. Selvarasa Pathmanathan succeeded Prabhakaran as leader of the LTTE, but he was later arrested in Malaysia and handed over to the Sri Lankan government in August 2009.
Defeat in the East
Eelam War IV had commenced in the East. Mavil Aru came under the control of the Sri Lanka Army by 15 August 2006. Systematically, Sampoor, Vakarai, Kanjikudichchi Aru and Batticaloa also came under military control. The military then captured Thoppigala, the Tiger stronghold in Eastern Province on 11 July 2007. IPKF had failed to capture it from LTTE during its offensive in 1988.
Defeat in the North
Sporadic fighting had been happening in the North for months, but the intensity of the clashes increased after September 2007. Gradually, the defence lines of the LTTE began to fall. The advancing military confined the LTTE into rapidly diminishing areas in the North. Prabhakaran was seriously injured during air strikes carried out by the Sri Lanka Air Force on a bunker complex in Jayanthinagar on 26 November 2007. Earlier, on 2 November 2007, S. P. Thamilselvan, who was the head of the rebels' political wing, was killed during another government air raid. On 2 January 2008, the Sri Lankan government officially abandoned the ceasefire agreement. By 2 August 2008, LTTE lost the Mannar District following the fall of Vellankulam town. Troops captured Pooneryn and Mankulam during the final months of 2008.
On 2 January 2009, the President of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa, announced that the Sri Lankan troops had captured Kilinochchi, the city which the LTTE had used for over a decade as its de facto administrative capital. On the same day, President Rajapaksa called upon LTTE to surrender. It was stated that the loss of Kilinochchi had caused substantial damage to the LTTE's public image, and that the LTTE was likely to collapse under military pressure on multiple fronts. As of 8 January 2009, the LTTE abandoned its positions on the Jaffna peninsula to make a last stand in the jungles of Mullaitivu, their last main base. The Jaffna Peninsula was captured by the Sri Lankan Army by 14 January. On 25 January 2009, SLA troops "completely captured" Mullaitivu town, the last major LTTE stronghold.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa declared military victory over the Tamil Tigers on 16 May 2009, after 26 years of conflict. The rebels offered to lay down their weapons in return for a guarantee of safety. On 17 May 2009, LTTE's head of the Department of International Relations, Selvarasa Pathmanathan conceded defeat, saying in an email statement, "this battle has reached its bitter end".
Aftermath
With the end of the hostilities, 11,664 LTTE members, including 595 child soldiers surrendered to the Sri Lankan military. Approximately 150 hardcore LTTE cadres and 1,000 mid-level cadres escaped to India. The government took action to rehabilitate the surrendered cadres under a National Action Plan for the Re-integration of Ex-combatants while allegations of torture, rape, and murder were reported by international human rights bodies. They were divided into three categories; hardcore, non-combatants, and those who were forcibly recruited (including child soldiers). Twenty-four rehabilitation centres were set up in Jaffna, Batticaloa, and Vavuniya. Among the apprehended cadres, there had been about 700 hardcore members. Some of these cadres were integrated into the State Intelligence Service to tackle the internal and external networks of LTTE. By August 2011, government had released more than 8,000 cadres, and 2,879 remained.
Continued operations
After the death of LTTE leader Prabhakaran and the most powerful members of the organisation, Selvarasa Pathmanathan (alias KP) was its sole first generation leader left alive. He assumed duty as the new leader of LTTE on 21 July 2009. A statement was issued, allegedly from the executive committee of the LTTE, stating that Pathmanathan had been appointed leader of the LTTE. 15 days after the announcement, on 5 August 2009, a Sri Lankan military intelligence unit, with the collaboration of local authorities, captured Pathmanathan in the Tune Hotel, in downtown Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Sri Lanka Ministry of Defence alleges that Perinpanayagam Sivaparan alias Nediyavan of the Tamil Eelam People's Alliance (TEPA) in Norway, Suren Surendiran of British Tamils Forum (BTF), Father S. J. Emmanuel of Global Tamil Forum (GTF), Visvanathan Rudrakumaran of Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) and Sekarapillai Vinayagamoorthy alias Kathirgamathamby Arivazhagan alias Vinayagam, a former senior intelligence leader are trying to revive the organisation among the Tamil diaspora. Subsequently, in May 2011, Nediyavan, who advocates an armed struggle against the Sri Lankan state, was arrested and released on bail in Norway, pending further investigation.
Divisions
The LTTE was viewed as a disciplined and militarised group with a leader of significant military and organisational skills. Three major divisions of the LTTE were the military, intelligence and political wings.
The military wing consisted of at least 11 separate divisions including the conventional fighting forces, Charles Anthony Brigade and Jeyanthan Brigade; the suicide wing called the Black Tigers; naval wing Sea Tigers, air-wing Air Tigers, LTTE leader Prabhakaran's personal security divisions, Imran Pandian regiment and Ratha regiment; auxiliary military units such as Kittu artillery brigade, Kutti Sri mortar brigade, Ponnamman mining unit and hit-and-run squads like Pistol gang. Charles Anthony brigade was the first conventional fighting formation created by LTTE. Sea Tiger division was founded in 1984, under the leadership of Thillaiyampalam Sivanesan alias Soosai. LTTE acquired its first light aircraft in the late 1990s. Vaithilingam Sornalingam alias Shankar was instrumental in creating the Air Tigers. It carried out 9 air attacks since 2007, including a suicide air raid targeting Sri Lanka Air Force headquarters, Colombo in February 2009. LTTE is the only terrorist-proscribed organisation to acquire aircraft. LTTE intelligence wing consisted of Tiger Organisation Security Intelligence Service aka TOSIS, run by Pottu Amman, and a separate military intelligence division. It was forbidden for the LTTE members to consume tobacco and alcohol. Illicit sex was also prohibited. Each member carried a cyanide capsule with orders to use it if captured.
The LTTE operated a systematic and powerful political wing, which functioned like a separate state in the LTTE controlled area. In 1989, it established a political party named People's Front of Liberation Tigers, under Gopalaswamy Mahendraraja alias Mahattaya. It was abandoned soon after. Later, S. P. Thamilselvan was appointed the head of the political wing. He was also a member of the LTTE delegation for Norwegian brokered peace talks. After the death of Thamilselvan in November 2007, Balasingham Nadesan was appointed as its leader. Major sections within the political wing include International peace secretariat, led by Pulidevan, LTTE Police, LTTE court, Bank of Tamil Eelam, Sports division and the "Voice of Tigers" radio broadcasting station of LTTE.
LTTE used female cadres for military engagements. Its women's wing consisted of Malathi and Sothiya Brigades.
The LTTE also controlled a powerful international wing called the "KP branch", controlled by Selvarasa Pathmanathan, "Castro branch", controlled by Veerakathy Manivannam alias Castro, and "Aiyannah group" led by Ponniah Anandaraja alias Aiyannah.
Governance
During its active years, the LTTE had established and administered a de facto state under its control, named Tamil Eelam with Kilinochchi as its administrative capital, and had managed a government in its territory, providing state functions such as courts, a police force, a human rights organisation, and a humanitarian assistance board, a health board, and an education board. However, the court system, composed of young judges with little or no legal training had operated without codified or defined legal authority, and essentially operated as agents of the LTTE rather than as an independent judiciary. It ran a bank (Bank of Tamil Eelam), a radio station (Voice of Tigers) and a television station (National Television of Tamil Eelam). In the LTTE-controlled areas, women reported lower levels of domestic violence because "the Tigers had a de facto justice system to deal with domestic violence." The United States Department of State Human Rights Reports have described LTTE's governance as an authoritarian military rule, denying the people under its authority the right to change their government, infringing on their privacy rights, routinely violating their civil liberties, operating an unfair court system, restricting freedom of movement and severely discriminating against ethnic and religious minorities.
In 2003, the LTTE issued a proposal to establish an Interim Self Governing Authority in the 8 districts of the North and East which it controlled. The ISGA was to be entrusted with powers such as the right to impose law, collect taxes and oversee the rehabilitation process until a favourable solution was reached after which elections would be held. The ISGA would consist of members representing the LTTE, GoSL and the Muslim community. According to the proposal, this LTTE administration intended to be a secular one with principal emphasis on prohibition of discrimination and protection of all communities.
Local perception and support
Due to its military victories, policies, call for national self-determination and constructive Tamil nationalist platform, the LTTE was supported by major sections of the Tamil community. A survey carried out in 2002 from a sample of 89 Sri Lankan Tamils found that 89% regarded the LTTE as their sole representatives. However, University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) claimed that "by combination of internal terror and narrow nationalist ideology the LTTE succeeded in atomising the community. It took away not only the right to oppose but even the right to evaluate, as a community, the course they were taking. This gives a semblance of illusion that the whole society is behind the LTTE."
Ideology
The LTTE was a self-styled national liberation organisation with the primary goal of establishing an independent Tamil state. Tamil nationalism was the primary basis of its ideology. The LTTE was influenced by Indian freedom fighters such as Subhas Chandra Bose. The organisation denied being a separatist movement and saw itself as fighting for self-determination and restoration of sovereignty in what it recognised as its homeland. Although most Tigers were Hindus, the LTTE was an avowedly secular organisation; religion did not play any significant part in its ideology. Leader Velupillai Prabhakaran criticised what he saw as the oppressive features of traditional Hindu Tamil society, such as the caste system and gender inequality. The LTTE presented itself as a revolutionary movement seeking widespread change within Tamil society, not just independence from the Sri Lankan state. Therefore, its ideology called for the removal of caste discrimination and support for women's liberation. Prabhakaran described his political philosophy as "revolutionary socialism", with the goal of creating an "egalitarian society". When asked about the LTTE's economic policy, Velupillai Pirabaharan said an "open market economy." But he pointed out that: "We can only think about a proper economic structure when the ethnic problem is resolved. ... What form and what structure this economic system is to be instituted in can only be worked when we have a permanent settlement or independent state."
LTTE claims to strive for a democratic, secular state that is based on socialism.
Global network
LTTE had developed a large international network since the days of N. S. Krishnan, who served as its first international representative. In the late 1970s, TULF parliamentarian and opposition leader A. Amirthalingam provided letters of reference for fundraising, and V. N. Navaratnam, who was an executive committee member of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), introduced many influential and wealthy Tamils living overseas to Tamil insurgent leaders. Navaratnam also introduced LTTE members to the members of Polisario Front, a national liberation movement in Morocco, at a meeting held in Oslo, Norway. In 1978, during the world tour of Amirthalingam (with London-based Eelam activist S. K. Vaikundavasan), he formed the World Tamil Coordinating Committee (WTCC), which was later found to be an LTTE front organisation. The global contacts of LTTE grew steadily since then. At the height of its power, LTTE had 42 offices worldwide. The international network of LTTE engages in propaganda, fundraising, arms procurement, and shipping.
There were three types of organisations that engage in propaganda and fund raising—Front, Cover, and Sympathetic. Prior to the ethnic riots of 1983, attempts to raise funds for a sustaining military campaign were not realised. It was the mass exodus of Tamil civilians to India and western countries following the Black July ethnic riots, which made this possible. As the armed conflict evolved and voluntary donations lessened, LTTE used force and threats to collect money. LTTE was worth US$200–300 million at its peak. The group's global network owned numerous business ventures in various countries. These include investment in real estate, shipping, grocery stores, gold and jewellery stores, gas stations, restaurants, production of films, mass media organisations (TV, radio, print), and industries. It was also in control of numerous charitable organisations including Tamils Rehabilitation Organisation, which was banned and had its funds frozen by the United States Treasury in 2007 for covertly financing terrorism.
Arms Procurement and shipping activities of LTTE were largely clandestine. Prior to 1983, it procured weapons mainly from Afghanistan via the Indo-Pakistani border. Explosives were purchased from commercial markets in India. From 1983 to 1987, LTTE acquired a substantial amount of weapons from RAW and from Lebanon, Cyprus, Singapore, and Malaysia-based arms dealers. LTTE received its first consignment of arms from Singapore in 1984 on board the MV Cholan, the first ship owned by the organisation. Funds were received and cargo cleared at Chennai Port with the assistance of M. G. Ramachandran, the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. In November 1994, the LTTE was able to purchase 60 tonnes of explosives (50 tonnes of TNT and 10 tonnes of RDX) from Rubezone Chemical plant in Ukraine, providing a forged Bangladeshi Ministry of Defense end-user certificate. Payments for the explosives were made from a Citibank account in Singapore held by Selvarasa Pathmanathan. Consignment was transported on board MV Sewne. The same explosives were used for the Central Bank bombing in 1996. Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia and Indonesia remained the most trusted outposts of LTTE, after India alienated it after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.
Since late 1997, North Korea became the principal country to provide arms, ammunition, and explosives to the LTTE. The deal with North Korean government was carried out by Ponniah Anandaraja alias Aiyannah, a member of World Tamil Coordinating Committee of the United States and later, the accountant of LTTE. He worked at the North Korean embassy in Bangkok since late 1997. LTTE had nearly 20-second-hand ships, which were purchased in Japan, and registered in Panama and other Latin American countries. These ships mostly transported general cargo, including paddy, sugar, timber, glass, and fertilizer. But when an arms deal was finalized, they travelled to North Korea, loaded the cargo and brought it to the equator, where the ships were based. Then on board merchant tankers, weapons were transferred to the sea of Alampil, just outside the territorial waters in Sri Lanka's exclusive economic zone. After that, small teams of Sea Tigers brought the cargo ashore. The Sri Lanka Navy, during 2005–08 destroyed at least 11 of these cargo ships belonged to LTTE in the international waters.
LTTE's last shipment of weapons was in March 2009, towards the end of the war. The merchant vessel Princess Iswari went from Indonesia to North Korea under captain Kamalraj Kandasamy alias Vinod, loaded the weapons and came back to international waters beyond Sri Lanka. But due to the heavy naval blockades set up by the Sri Lankan Navy, it could not deliver the arms consignment. Thus it dumped the weapons in the sea. The same ship, after changing its name to MV Ocean Lady, arrived in Vancouver with 76 migrants, in October 2009. In December 2009, The Sri Lankan Navy apprehended a merchant vessel belonging to LTTE, "Princess Chrisanta" in Indonesia and brought it back to Sri Lanka.
The United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations (USSFRC) and Ethiopian based Jimma Times claimed that the Eritrean government had provided direct military assistance, including light aircraft to LTTE, during the 2002–03 period when the LTTE was negotiating with the Sri Lankan government via the Norwegian mediators. It was also alleged that Erik Solheim, the chief Norwegian facilitator, helped LTTE to establish this relationship. None of these claims have since been verified. These allegations and a suspicion from within the Sri Lankan armed forces, that LTTE had considerable connections and assets in Eritrea and that its leader Prabhakaran may try to flee to Eritrea in the final stages of war, prompted the Sri Lankan government to establish diplomatic relations with Eritrea in 2009. None of the allegations have since been verified.
Proscription as a terrorist group
33 countries currently list the LTTE as a terrorist organization. As of October 2019, these include:
India (since 1992)
United States (designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations by the Department of State since 8 October 1997. Named as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) since 2 November 2001)
United Kingdom (designated a Proscribed Terrorist Group under the Terrorism Act 2000 since 29 March 2001)
European Union (since 2006; 27 countries)
Canada (since 2006) Canada does not grant residency to LTTE members on the grounds that they have participated in crimes against humanity.
Sri Lanka (from January 1998 to 4 September 2002, and again from 7 January 2009)
Malaysia (since 2014)
The first country to ban the LTTE was its brief one-time ally, India. The Indian change of policy came gradually, starting with the IPKF-LTTE conflict, and culminating with the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. India opposes the new state Tamil Eelam that LTTE wants to establish, saying that it would lead to Tamil Nadu's separation from India, despite the leaders and common populace of Tamil Nadu considering themselves Indian. Sri Lanka itself lifted the ban on the LTTE before signing the ceasefire agreement in 2002. This was a prerequisite set by the LTTE for the signing of the agreement. The Indian Government extended the ban on LTTE considering their strong anti-India posture and threat to the security of Indian nationals.
The European Union banned LTTE as a terrorist organization on 17 May 2006. In a statement, the European Parliament said that the LTTE did not represent all Tamils and called on it to "allow for political pluralism and alternate democratic voices in the northern and eastern parts of Sri Lanka".
In October 2014, the European Court of Justice annulled the anti-terrorism sanctions and several other restrictions placed on the LTTE in 2006. The court noted that the basis of proscribing the LTTE had been based on "imputations derived from the press and the Internet" rather than on direct investigation of the group's actions, as required by law. Later, in March 2015, the EU reimposes the sanctions and restrictions.
In July 2017, the LTTE was removed from the terrorism blacklist of European Union's top court, stating that there was no evidence to show of LTTE carrying out attacks after its military defeat in 2009. However, despite the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling, the European Union stated the LTTE organization remains listed as a terrorist organization by the EU.
The LTTE leader Prabhakaran contested the terrorist designation of his organization, asserting that the international community had been influenced by the "false propaganda" of the Sri Lankan state and said that there was no coherent definition of the concept of terrorism. He also maintained that the LTTE was a national liberation organization fighting against "state terrorism" and "racist oppression". Following 9/11, in an effort to distance his organization from the "real terrorists", the LTTE leader expressed sympathy to the Western powers engaged in a war against international terrorism and urged them to provide "a clear and comprehensive definition of the concept of terrorism that would distinguish between freedom struggles based on the right to self-determination and blind terrorist acts based on fanaticism." He also expressed concern over states with human rights abuses like Sri Lanka joining the alliance in the war against terrorism as "posing a threat to the legitimate political struggles of the oppressed humanity subjected to state terror."
Karen Parker, an attorney specializing in human rights and humanitarian law, argued that the LTTE was not a terrorist organization but "an armed force in a war against the government of Sri Lanka." She characterized the war waged by the LTTE as "a war of national liberation in the exercise of the right of self-determination."
Suicide attacks
One of the main divisions of LTTE included the Black Tigers, an elite fighting wing of the movement, whose mission included carrying out suicide attacks against enemy targets. From ancient times, the Tamil civilization saw war as an honorable sacrifice, and fallen heroes were revered and worshiped in the form of a hero stone. Heroic martyrdom was glorified in ancient Tamil literature. The Tamil kings and warriors followed an honor code similar to that of the Japanese Samurai and committed suicide to preserve their honor. The Black Tigers wing of the LTTE is said to reflect some of elements of Tamil martial traditions including the practice of the worship of fallen heroes (Maaveerar Naal) and martial martyrdom. All soldiers of LTTE carried a suicide pill (Cyanide Kuppi) around their necks to escape captivity and torture by enemy forces.
According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, LTTE was the first insurgent organization to use concealed explosive belts and vests. According to the information published by the LTTE, the Black Tigers carried out 378 suicide attacks between 5 July 1987 and 20 November 2008. Out of the deceased, 274 were male and 104 were female.
Most of these attacks targeted military objectives in the north and east of the country, although civilians were killed on many occasions. The LTTE was responsible for a 1998 attack on the Buddhist shrine and UNESCO World Heritage Site Sri Dalada Maligawa in Kandy that killed eight worshippers. The attack was symbolic in that the shrine, which houses a tooth of the Buddha, is the holiest Buddhist shrine in Sri Lanka. Other Buddhist shrines have been attacked, notably the Sambuddhaloka Temple in Colombo, in which nine worshippers were killed.
The Black Tiger wing carried out attacks on various high-profile leaders both inside and outside Sri Lanka. It successfully targeted three world leaders, the only insurgent group to do so. That includes the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, the former Prime Minister of India on 21 May 1991, the assassination of Ranasinghe Premadasa, the President of Sri Lanka on 1 May 1993, and the failed assassination attempt of Chandrika Kumaratunga, the Sri Lankan President on 18 December 1999, which resulted in the loss of her right eye.
Black Tiger cadres killed in action were highly glorified and their families were given the "Maaveerar family" status, just like normal LTTE cadres. Also, these families were honored with the "Thamizheezha Maravar pathakkam" (Warrior medal of Tamil Eelam), one of the higher honors of Tamil Eelam. Black Tiger members were given a chance to have his/her last supper with the LTTE leader Prabhakaran, which was a rare honor, motivating LTTE cadres to join the Black Tiger wing.
On 28 November 2007, an LTTE suicide bomber named Sujatha Vagawanam detonated a bomb hidden inside her bra in an attempt to kill Sri Lankan minister Douglas Devananda. This was recorded in the security cameras inside Devananda's office. It is one of the few detonations of an explosive by a suicide bomber recorded on camera.
Assassinations
The LTTE has been condemned by various groups for assassinating political and military opponents. The victims include Tamil moderates who coordinated with the Sri Lanka Government and Tamil paramilitary groups assisting the Sri Lankan Army. The assassination of the Sri Lankan president Ranasinghe Premadasa is attributed to LTTE. The seventh Prime Minister of the Republic of India, Rajiv Gandhi, was assassinated by an LTTE suicide bomber Thenmozhi Rajaratnam on 21 May 1991. On 24 October 1994, LTTE detonated a bomb during a political rally in Thotalanga-Grandpass, which killed most of the prominent politicians of the United National Party, including presidential candidate Gamini Dissanayake MP, Cabinet ministers Weerasinghe Mallimarachchi and G. M. Premachandra, Ossie Abeygunasekara MP and Gamini Wijesekara MP.
LTTE sympathisers justify some of the assassinations by arguing that the people attacked were combatants or persons closely associated with Sri Lankan military intelligence. Specifically in relation to the TELO, the LTTE has said that it had to perform preemptive self-defence because the TELO was in effect functioning as a proxy for India.
Human rights violations
The United States Department of State states that its reason for banning LTTE as a proscribed terrorist group is based on allegations that LTTE does not respect human rights and that it does not adhere to the standards of conduct expected of a resistance movement or what might be called "freedom fighters". The FBI has described the LTTE as "amongst the most dangerous and deadly extremist outfits in the world". The FBI further states that "LTTE's ruthless tactics have inspired terrorist networks worldwide, including Al-Qaeda in Iraq". Other countries have also proscribed LTTE under the same rationale. Numerous countries and international organizations have accused the LTTE of attacking civilians and recruiting children. Despite the allegations of human rights abuses, the LTTE has been noted for its general lack of use of sexual violence or rape as a tactic, though there have been allegations of rape made against LTTE members. The LTTE raped Sinhalese women during a massacre of Sinhalese in October 1995. Some LTTE members accused of rape faced execution from the leadership.
Attacks on civilians
The LTTE has launched attacks on civilian targets several times. Attacks were often alleged to be carried out in revenge for attacks committed by the Sri Lankan Army, such as the Anuradhapura massacre which immediately followed the Valvettithurai massacre. Notable attacks include the Aranthalawa massacre, Anuradhapura massacre, Kattankudy mosque massacre, the Kebithigollewa massacre, and the Dehiwala train bombing. Civilians have also been killed in attacks on economic targets, such as the Central Bank bombing. Around 3,700 to 4,100 civilians were killed in LTTE attacks. The LTTE leader Prabhakaran denied allegations of killing innocent Sinhalese civilians, claiming to condemn such acts of violence; and claimed that LTTE had instead attacked armed Home Guards who were "death-squads let loose on Tamil civilians" and Sinhalese settlers who were "brought to the Tamil areas to forcibly occupy the land." The state-sponsored settlements of Sinhalese in the northern and eastern parts of the island which the LTTE considered to be the traditional homeland of Tamils became "the sites of some of the worst violence." Similarly, the LTTE denied massacring Muslims, stating that they were allies against the Sinhalese state.
According to the International Crisis Group, the Sri Lankan government implemented the military-led settlements of Sinhalese community in Tamil areas in order to create "a buffer to the expansion of LTTE control" and to "undermine Tamil nationalist claims on a contiguous north-eastern Tamil homeland." The continuous inflow of Sinhalese settlers in Tamil areas since the 1950s had become a source of inter-ethnic violence and had been one of the major grievances expressed by the LTTE. During the beginning of the war, Sinhalese settlements, some armed, were created in Weli Oya, displacing many Tamil families living in the area. As such, Weli Oya saw numerous retaliatory attacks on Sinhalese settlers by the LTTE. At the same time, the LTTE has attacked long-existing Sinhalese residents within their claimed territories. Furthermore, Amnesty International has noted that in several massacres of Sinhalese, the victims had not been home guards or armed settlers.
Child soldiers
The LTTE has been accused of recruiting and using child soldiers to fight against Sri Lankan government forces. The LTTE was accused of having up to 5,794 child soldiers in its ranks since 2001. Amid international pressure, the LTTE announced in July 2003 that it would stop conscripting child soldiers, but UNICEF and Human Rights Watch have accused it of reneging on its promises, and of conscripting Tamil children orphaned by the tsunami. On 18 June 2007, the LTTE released 135 children under 18 years of age. UNICEF, along with the United States, states that there has been a significant drop in LTTE recruitment of children, but claimed in 2007 that 506 child recruits remain under the LTTE. A report released by the LTTE's Child Protection Authority (CPA) in 2008 stated that less than 40 soldiers under age 18 remained in its forces. In 2009 a Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations said the Tamil Tigers "continue to recruit children to fight on the frontlines", and "use force to keep many civilians, including children, in harm's way". During the violent parts of the war, though some children were forcefully recruited, many voluntarily joined the LTTE after witnessing or experiencing abuses by Sri Lankan security forces, seeking to "protect their families or to avenge real or perceived abuses." However, during the ceasefire, the number of cases of forced recruitment far exceeded those of voluntary recruitment. Many children have been used in human rights violations such as the torture of political prisoners and massacres in Muslim and Sinhalese villages.
The LTTE argues that instances of child recruitment occurred mostly in the east, under the purview of former LTTE regional commander Colonel Karuna. After leaving the LTTE and forming the TMVP, it is alleged that Karuna continued to forcibly kidnap and induct child soldiers. Soon after Karuna's defection, the LTTE began an intensive campaign to re-recruit Karuna's former cadres, including child soldiers. Many of the former child soldiers were re-recruited by the LTTE, often by force.
Ethnic cleansing
The LTTE is responsible for forcibly removing, or ethnic cleansing, of Sinhalese and Muslim inhabitants from areas under its control.
In October 1987, the LTTE took advantage of communal violence in the Eastern Province. LTTE gunmen led Tamil rioters and ordered Sinhalese to leave, threatening their lives. By 4 October, 5,000 Sinhalese were made homeless. Following the suicide of the Palaly prisoners, LTTE massacres of Sinhalese civilians throughout the Eastern Province occurred. By the end of the week, about 200 Sinhalese were dead and 20,000 had fled the Eastern Province. LTTE dignitary Athimanian, who was the head of the LTTE's education unit in the Vanni, during a speech said "Our goal is to drive away Sinhalese from the North-East and establish Tamil Eelam. That is our struggle”.
The eviction of Muslim residents happened in the north in 1990, and the east in 1992. The expulsion of Muslims had more to do with disagreements over ethnic identity and politics than with religion as the Sri Lankan Muslims did not support the LTTE or the creation of an independent Tamil state and they do not identify with the ethnic Tamils despite being a Tamil-speaking people. The LTTE also saw Muslims as a threat to 'national security' as they alleged their Muslim cadres had defected from their movement to join the Sri Lankan military and paramilitary forces who were allegedly responsible for attacks on Tamil civilians.
Initially young Muslims joined the Tamil militant groups in the early years of Tamil militancy. Muslim ironmongers in Mannar fashioned weapons for the LTTE. LTTE later undertook its anti-Muslim campaigns as it began to view Muslims as outsiders, rather than a part of the Tamil nation. Local Tamil leaders were disturbed by the LTTE's call for the eviction of Muslims in 1990. In 2005, the International Federation of Tamils claimed that the Sri Lankan military purposefully stoked tensions between Tamils and Muslims, in an attempt to undermine Tamil security. As Tamils turned to the LTTE for support, the Muslims were left with the Sri Lankan state as their sole defender, and so to the LTTE, the Muslims had legitimised the role of the state, and were thus viewed as Sri Lankans.
In 2003, the LTTE formally recognised the rights of the Muslim and Sinhalese communities to be present in the north-east in their ISGA proposals.
Mistreatment of prisoners
Executions
LTTE had executed prisoners of war on a number of occasions, in spite of the declaration in 1988, that it would abide by the Geneva Conventions. One such incident was the mass murder of 600 unarmed Sri Lankan Police officers in 1990, in Eastern Province, after they surrendered to the LTTE on the request of President Ranasinghe Premadasa. In 1993, LTTE killed 200 Sri Lanka Army soldiers, captured in the naval base at Pooneryn, during the Battle of Pooneryn. Few months earlier they had executed an officer and several soldiers captured during the Battle of Janakapura. In 1996, LTTE executed 207 military officers and soldiers who had surrendered to the LTTE during Battle of Mullaitivu (1996).
The LTTE has also executed civilian Tamils accused of dissent. Various dissident sources allege that the number of Tamil dissenters and prisoners from rival armed groups clandestinely killed by the LTTE in detention or otherwise ranges from 8,000 - 20,000.
Torture
The LTTE has also tortured its prisoners. One Tamil prisoner held by the LTTE from 1992 to 1995 showed "clear signs of clear signs of burning with heated metal
on his genitals, thigh, buttocks and back". Other methods of torture included hanging the victim upside down and beating them, forcible inhalation of chili fumes, inserting pins underneath fingernails, slashing with razors, and electroshocking. The LTTE tortured suspects based on the victim's refusal to co-operate and giving information to the Sri Lankan army or IPKF. Torture was also practiced on child soldiers who attempted to flee military service. One girl was left out in the sun for two days after being caught during an attempted escape. Sri Lankan soldiers and police officers were also tortured by the LTTE after being taken prisoner. One lance corporal captured during the Battle of Janakapura was stripped naked and then beaten repeatedly all over his body for half an hour by child soldiers. LTTE prison conditions were often poor, leading to physical and mental health issues among the detainees. Many died due to infections from their wounds. Prisoners were given little food, and sometimes, rotten food was intentionally given. The LTTE used torture during interrogations, where prisoners were interrogated after sleep deprivation and tortured if there were any discrepancies in their story.
Two escapees describe how prisoners were tortured by LTTE:
First escapee:
Second escapee:
War crimes
There are allegations that war crimes were committed by the Sri Lankan military and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam during the Sri Lankan Civil War, particularly during the final months of the conflict in 2009. The alleged war crimes include attacks on civilians and civilian buildings by both sides; executions of combatants and prisoners by both sides; forced disappearances by the Sri Lankan military and paramilitary groups backed by them; acute shortages of food, medicine, and clean water for civilians trapped in the war zone; and recruitment of child soldiers by both the Tamil Tigers, and the TMVP, a Sri Lankan Army paramilitary group.
A panel of experts appointed by UN Secretary-General (UNSG) Ban Ki-moon to advise him on the issue of accountability with regard to any alleged violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during the final stages of the civil war found "credible allegations" which, if proven, indicated that war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed by the Sri Lankan military and the Tamil Tigers. The panel has called on the UNSG to conduct an independent international inquiry into the alleged violations of international law.
See also
Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism
Black July
Eelam War
2009 Tamil diaspora protests
List of assassinations of the Sri Lankan Civil War
List of attacks attributed to the LTTE
Militant use of children in Sri Lanka
Sri Lankan Tamil militant groups
Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam
Notes
References
Further reading
Bibliography
Reviews
External links
LTTE web sites
Tamilnet Pro Rebel Website
Tamil Eelam News Tamil Eelam news site
Sri Lanka Government
Humanitarian Operation – Factual Analysis, July 2006 – May 2009 A report on strength and impact of LTTE from Sri Lanka Ministry of Defense
Humanitarian Operation timeline, 1981–2009 The history of Sri Lankan armed forces operations and area controlled by LTTE
Sri Lanka Ministry of Defence LTTE in Brief An overview of LTTE by Sri Lanka Ministry of Defense
International organisations
An analysis of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam organization and operations by Federation of American Scientists
Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora After LTTE Relationship between LTTE and the Tamil diaspora, and consequences of LTTE defeat, by International Crisis Group
Background information on the Tamil Tigers by Council on Foreign Relations
Overview of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam by Anti-Defamation League
Funding the "Final War" A Human Rights Watch report on LTTE's fund raising strategies
Trapped and Mistreated Human rights violations of LTTE, a Human Rights Watch report
International press
Sri Lankan Civilians Trapped by Tamil Tigers 'Last Stand' Article appeared on The Christian Science Monitor, 3 May 2009
Guerrilla Tactics – How the Tamil Tigers Were Beaten in an 'Unwinnable' War Article appeared on The Times, 19 May 2009
Rise and Fall of the LTTE – An Overview A Sri Lanka Guardian article on characteristics of LTTE
Organizations established in 1976
Resistance movements
Left-wing militant groups
Separatism in Sri Lanka
1976 establishments in Sri Lanka
Organisations designated as terrorist by India
Organisations designated as terrorist by the European Union
Organisations designated as terrorist by the United Kingdom
Organizations designated as terrorist in Asia
2009 disestablishments in Sri Lanka
Organizations disestablished in 2009
Sri Lankan Civil War
Defunct organizations designated as terrorist in Asia
Organizations designated as terrorist by Canada
Organizations designated as terrorist by the United States
Organisations designated as terrorist by Sri Lanka |
18610 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace%20transform | Laplace transform | In mathematics, the Laplace transform, named after its inventor Pierre-Simon Laplace (), is an integral transform that converts a function of a real variable (often time) to a function of a complex variable (complex frequency). The transform has many applications in science and engineering because it is a tool for solving differential equations. In particular, it transforms linear differential equations into algebraic equations and convolution into multiplication.
For suitable functions f, the Laplace transform is the integral
History
The Laplace transform is named after mathematician and astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace, who used a similar transform in his work on probability theory. Laplace wrote extensively about the use of generating functions in Essai philosophique sur les probabilités (1814), and the integral form of the Laplace transform evolved naturally as a result.
Laplace's use of generating functions was similar to what is now known as the z-transform, and he gave little attention to the continuous variable case which was discussed by Niels Henrik Abel. The theory was further developed in the 19th and early 20th centuries by Mathias Lerch, Oliver Heaviside, and Thomas Bromwich.
The current widespread use of the transform (mainly in engineering) came about during and soon after World War II, replacing the earlier Heaviside operational calculus. The advantages of the Laplace transform had been emphasized by Gustav Doetsch, to whom the name Laplace Transform is apparently due.
From 1744, Leonhard Euler investigated integrals of the form
as solutions of differential equations, but did not pursue the matter very far. Joseph Louis Lagrange was an admirer of Euler and, in his work on integrating probability density functions, investigated expressions of the form
which some modern historians have interpreted within modern Laplace transform theory.
These types of integrals seem first to have attracted Laplace's attention in 1782, where he was following in the spirit of Euler in using the integrals themselves as solutions of equations. However, in 1785, Laplace took the critical step forward when, rather than simply looking for a solution in the form of an integral, he started to apply the transforms in the sense that was later to become popular. He used an integral of the form
akin to a Mellin transform, to transform the whole of a difference equation, in order to look for solutions of the transformed equation. He then went on to apply the Laplace transform in the same way and started to derive some of its properties, beginning to appreciate its potential power.
Laplace also recognised that Joseph Fourier's method of Fourier series for solving the diffusion equation could only apply to a limited region of space, because those solutions were periodic. In 1809, Laplace applied his transform to find solutions that diffused indefinitely in space.
Formal definition
The Laplace transform of a function , defined for all real numbers , is the function , which is a unilateral transform defined by
where s is a complex number frequency parameter
with real numbers and .
An alternate notation for the Laplace transform is instead of .
The meaning of the integral depends on types of functions of interest. A necessary condition for existence of the integral is that must be locally integrable on . For locally integrable functions that decay at infinity or are of exponential type (), the integral can be understood to be a (proper) Lebesgue integral. However, for many applications it is necessary to regard it as a conditionally convergent improper integral at . Still more generally, the integral can be understood in a weak sense, and this is dealt with below.
One can define the Laplace transform of a finite Borel measure by the Lebesgue integral
An important special case is where is a probability measure, for example, the Dirac delta function. In operational calculus, the Laplace transform of a measure is often treated as though the measure came from a probability density function . In that case, to avoid potential confusion, one often writes
where the lower limit of is shorthand notation for
This limit emphasizes that any point mass located at is entirely captured by the Laplace transform. Although with the Lebesgue integral, it is not necessary to take such a limit, it does appear more naturally in connection with the Laplace–Stieltjes transform.
Bilateral Laplace transform
When one says "the Laplace transform" without qualification, the unilateral or one-sided transform is usually intended. The Laplace transform can be alternatively defined as the bilateral Laplace transform, or two-sided Laplace transform, by extending the limits of integration to be the entire real axis. If that is done, the common unilateral transform simply becomes a special case of the bilateral transform, where the definition of the function being transformed is multiplied by the Heaviside step function.
The bilateral Laplace transform is defined as follows:
An alternate notation for the bilateral Laplace transform is , instead of .
Inverse Laplace transform
Two integrable functions have the same Laplace transform only if they differ on a set of Lebesgue measure zero. This means that, on the range of the transform, there is an inverse transform. In fact, besides integrable functions, the Laplace transform is a one-to-one mapping from one function space into another in many other function spaces as well, although there is usually no easy characterization of the range.
Typical function spaces in which this is true include the spaces of bounded continuous functions, the space , or more generally tempered distributions on . The Laplace transform is also defined and injective for suitable spaces of tempered distributions.
In these cases, the image of the Laplace transform lives in a space of analytic functions in the region of convergence. The inverse Laplace transform is given by the following complex integral, which is known by various names (the Bromwich integral, the Fourier–Mellin integral, and Mellin's inverse formula):
where is a real number so that the contour path of integration is in the region of convergence of . In most applications, the contour can be closed, allowing the use of the residue theorem. An alternative formula for the inverse Laplace transform is given by Post's inversion formula. The limit here is interpreted in the weak-* topology.
In practice, it is typically more convenient to decompose a Laplace transform into known transforms of functions obtained from a table, and construct the inverse by inspection.
Probability theory
In pure and applied probability, the Laplace transform is defined as an expected value. If is a random variable with probability density function , then the Laplace transform of is given by the expectation
By convention, this is referred to as the Laplace transform of the random variable itself. Here, replacing by gives the moment generating function of . The Laplace transform has applications throughout probability theory, including first passage times of stochastic processes such as Markov chains, and renewal theory.
Of particular use is the ability to recover the cumulative distribution function of a continuous random variable , by means of the Laplace transform as follows:
Region of convergence
If is a locally integrable function (or more generally a Borel measure locally of bounded variation), then the Laplace transform of converges provided that the limit
exists.
The Laplace transform converges absolutely if the integral
exists as a proper Lebesgue integral. The Laplace transform is usually understood as conditionally convergent, meaning that it converges in the former but not in the latter sense.
The set of values for which converges absolutely is either of the form or , where is an extended real constant with (a consequence of the dominated convergence theorem). The constant is known as the abscissa of absolute convergence, and depends on the growth behavior of . Analogously, the two-sided transform converges absolutely in a strip of the form , and possibly including the lines or . The subset of values of for which the Laplace transform converges absolutely is called the region of absolute convergence, or the domain of absolute convergence. In the two-sided case, it is sometimes called the strip of absolute convergence. The Laplace transform is analytic in the region of absolute convergence: this is a consequence of Fubini's theorem and Morera's theorem.
Similarly, the set of values for which converges (conditionally or absolutely) is known as the region of conditional convergence, or simply the region of convergence (ROC). If the Laplace transform converges (conditionally) at , then it automatically converges for all with . Therefore, the region of convergence is a half-plane of the form , possibly including some points of the boundary line .
In the region of convergence , the Laplace transform of can be expressed by integrating by parts as the integral
That is, can effectively be expressed, in the region of convergence, as the absolutely convergent Laplace transform of some other function. In particular, it is analytic.
There are several Paley–Wiener theorems concerning the relationship between the decay properties of , and the properties of the Laplace transform within the region of convergence.
In engineering applications, a function corresponding to a linear time-invariant (LTI) system is stable if every bounded input produces a bounded output. This is equivalent to the absolute convergence of the Laplace transform of the impulse response function in the region . As a result, LTI systems are stable, provided that the poles of the Laplace transform of the impulse response function have negative real part.
This ROC is used in knowing about the causality and stability of a system.
Properties and theorems
The Laplace transform has a number of properties that make it useful for analyzing linear dynamical systems. The most significant advantage is that differentiation becomes multiplication, and integration becomes division, by (reminiscent of the way logarithms change multiplication to addition of logarithms).
Because of this property, the Laplace variable is also known as operator variable in the domain: either derivative operator or (for integration operator. The transform turns integral equations and differential equations to polynomial equations, which are much easier to solve. Once solved, use of the inverse Laplace transform reverts to the original domain.
Given the functions and , and their respective Laplace transforms and ,
the following table is a list of properties of unilateral Laplace transform:
Initial value theorem
Final value theorem
, if all poles of are in the left half-plane.
The final value theorem is useful because it gives the long-term behaviour without having to perform partial fraction decompositions (or other difficult algebra). If has a pole in the right-hand plane or poles on the imaginary axis (e.g., if or ), then the behaviour of this formula is undefined.
Relation to power series
The Laplace transform can be viewed as a continuous analogue of a power series. If is a discrete function of a positive integer , then the power series associated to is the series
where is a real variable (see Z transform). Replacing summation over with integration over , a continuous version of the power series becomes
where the discrete function is replaced by the continuous one .
Changing the base of the power from to gives
For this to converge for, say, all bounded functions , it is necessary to require that . Making the substitution gives just the Laplace transform:
In other words, the Laplace transform is a continuous analog of a power series, in which the discrete parameter is replaced by the continuous parameter , and is replaced by .
Relation to moments
The quantities
are the moments of the function . If the first moments of converge absolutely, then by repeated differentiation under the integral,
This is of special significance in probability theory, where the moments of a random variable are given by the expectation values . Then, the relation holds
Computation of the Laplace transform of a function's derivative
It is often convenient to use the differentiation property of the Laplace transform to find the transform of a function's derivative. This can be derived from the basic expression for a Laplace transform as follows:
yielding
and in the bilateral case,
The general result
where denotes the th derivative of , can then be established with an inductive argument.
Evaluating integrals over the positive real axis
A useful property of the Laplace transform is the following:
under suitable assumptions on the behaviour of in a right neighbourhood of and on the decay rate of in a left neighbourhood of . The above formula is a variation of integration by parts, with the operators
and being replaced by and . Let us prove the equivalent formulation:
By plugging in the left-hand side turns into:
but assuming Fubini's theorem holds, by reversing the order of integration we get the wanted right-hand side.
This method can be used to compute integrals that would otherwise be difficult to compute using elementary methods of real calculus. For example,
Relationship to other transforms
Laplace–Stieltjes transform
The (unilateral) Laplace–Stieltjes transform of a function is defined by the Lebesgue–Stieltjes integral
The function is assumed to be of bounded variation. If is the antiderivative of :
then the Laplace–Stieltjes transform of and the Laplace transform of coincide. In general, the Laplace–Stieltjes transform is the Laplace transform of the Stieltjes measure associated to . So in practice, the only distinction between the two transforms is that the Laplace transform is thought of as operating on the density function of the measure, whereas the Laplace–Stieltjes transform is thought of as operating on its cumulative distribution function.
Fourier transform
The Laplace transform is similar to the Fourier transform. While the Fourier transform of a function is a complex function of a real variable (frequency), the Laplace transform of a function is a complex function of a complex variable. The Laplace transform is usually restricted to transformation of functions of with . A consequence of this restriction is that the Laplace transform of a function is a holomorphic function of the variable . Unlike the Fourier transform, the Laplace transform of a distribution is generally a well-behaved function. Techniques of complex variables can also be used to directly study Laplace transforms. As a holomorphic function, the Laplace transform has a power series representation. This power series expresses a function as a linear superposition of moments of the function. This perspective has applications in probability theory. The continuous Fourier transform is equivalent to evaluating the bilateral Laplace transform with imaginary argument or when the condition explained below is fulfilled,
This definition of the Fourier transform requires a prefactor of on the reverse Fourier transform. This relationship between the Laplace and Fourier transforms is often used to determine the frequency spectrum of a signal or dynamical system.
The above relation is valid as stated if and only if the region of convergence (ROC) of contains the imaginary axis, .
For example, the function has a Laplace transform whose ROC is . As is a pole of , substituting in does not yield the Fourier transform of , which is proportional to the Dirac delta-function .
However, a relation of the form
holds under much weaker conditions. For instance, this holds for the above example provided that the limit is understood as a weak limit of measures (see vague topology). General conditions relating the limit of the Laplace transform of a function on the boundary to the Fourier transform take the form of Paley–Wiener theorems.
Mellin transform
The Mellin transform and its inverse are related to the two-sided Laplace transform by a simple change of variables.
If in the Mellin transform
we set we get a two-sided Laplace transform.
Z-transform
The unilateral or one-sided Z-transform is simply the Laplace transform of an ideally sampled signal with the substitution of
where is the sampling period (in units of time e.g., seconds) and is the sampling rate (in samples per second or hertz).
Let
be a sampling impulse train (also called a Dirac comb) and
be the sampled representation of the continuous-time
The Laplace transform of the sampled signal is
This is the precise definition of the unilateral Z-transform of the discrete function
with the substitution of .
Comparing the last two equations, we find the relationship between the unilateral Z-transform and the Laplace transform of the sampled signal,
The similarity between the and Laplace transforms is expanded upon in the theory of time scale calculus.
Borel transform
The integral form of the Borel transform
is a special case of the Laplace transform for an entire function of exponential type, meaning that
for some constants and . The generalized Borel transform allows a different weighting function to be used, rather than the exponential function, to transform functions not of exponential type. Nachbin's theorem gives necessary and sufficient conditions for the Borel transform to be well defined.
Fundamental relationships
Since an ordinary Laplace transform can be written as a special case of a two-sided transform, and since the two-sided transform can be written as the sum of two one-sided transforms, the theory of the Laplace-, Fourier-, Mellin-, and Z-transforms are at bottom the same subject. However, a different point of view and different characteristic problems are associated with each of these four major integral transforms.
Table of selected Laplace transforms
The following table provides Laplace transforms for many common functions of a single variable. For definitions and explanations, see the Explanatory Notes at the end of the table.
Because the Laplace transform is a linear operator,
The Laplace transform of a sum is the sum of Laplace transforms of each term.
The Laplace transform of a multiple of a function is that multiple times the Laplace transformation of that function.
Using this linearity, and various trigonometric, hyperbolic, and complex number (etc.) properties and/or identities, some Laplace transforms can be obtained from others more quickly than by using the definition directly.
The unilateral Laplace transform takes as input a function whose time domain is the non-negative reals, which is why all of the time domain functions in the table below are multiples of the Heaviside step function, .
The entries of the table that involve a time delay are required to be causal (meaning that ). A causal system is a system where the impulse response is zero for all time prior to . In general, the region of convergence for causal systems is not the same as that of anticausal systems.
s-domain equivalent circuits and impedances
The Laplace transform is often used in circuit analysis, and simple conversions to the -domain of circuit elements can be made. Circuit elements can be transformed into impedances, very similar to phasor impedances.
Here is a summary of equivalents:
Note that the resistor is exactly the same in the time domain and the -domain. The sources are put in if there are initial conditions on the circuit elements. For example, if a capacitor has an initial voltage across it, or if the inductor has an initial current through it, the sources inserted in the -domain account for that.
The equivalents for current and voltage sources are simply derived from the transformations in the table above.
Examples and applications
The Laplace transform is used frequently in engineering and physics; the output of a linear time-invariant system can be calculated by convolving its unit impulse response with the input signal. Performing this calculation in Laplace space turns the convolution into a multiplication; the latter being easier to solve because of its algebraic form. For more information, see control theory. The Laplace transform is invertible on a large class of functions. Given a simple mathematical or functional description of an input or output to a system, the Laplace transform provides an alternative functional description that often simplifies the process of analyzing the behavior of the system, or in synthesizing a new system based on a set of specifications.
The Laplace transform can also be used to solve differential equations and is used extensively in mechanical engineering and electrical engineering. The Laplace transform reduces a linear differential equation to an algebraic equation, which can then be solved by the formal rules of algebra. The original differential equation can then be solved by applying the inverse Laplace transform. English electrical engineer Oliver Heaviside first proposed a similar scheme, although without using the Laplace transform; and the resulting operational calculus is credited as the Heaviside calculus.
Evaluating improper integrals
Let . Then (see the table above)
In the limit , one gets
provided that the interchange of limits can be justified. This is often possible as a consequence of the final value theorem. Even when the interchange cannot be justified the calculation can be suggestive. For example, with , proceeding formally one has
The validity of this identity can be proved by other means. It is an example of a Frullani integral.
Another example is Dirichlet integral.
Complex impedance of a capacitor
In the theory of electrical circuits, the current flow in a capacitor is proportional to the capacitance and rate of change in the electrical potential (in SI units). Symbolically, this is expressed by the differential equation
where is the capacitance (in farads) of the capacitor, is the electric current (in amperes) through the capacitor as a function of time, and is the voltage (in volts) across the terminals of the capacitor, also as a function of time.
Taking the Laplace transform of this equation, we obtain
where
and
Solving for we have
The definition of the complex impedance (in ohms) is the ratio of the complex voltage divided by the complex current while holding the initial state at zero:
Using this definition and the previous equation, we find:
which is the correct expression for the complex impedance of a capacitor. In addition, the Laplace transform has large applications in control theory.
Partial fraction expansion
Consider a linear time-invariant system with transfer function
The impulse response is simply the inverse Laplace transform of this transfer function:
To evaluate this inverse transform, we begin by expanding using the method of partial fraction expansion,
The unknown constants and are the residues located at the corresponding poles of the transfer function. Each residue represents the relative contribution of that singularity to the transfer function's overall shape.
By the residue theorem, the inverse Laplace transform depends only upon the poles and their residues. To find the residue , we multiply both sides of the equation by to get
Then by letting , the contribution from vanishes and all that is left is
Similarly, the residue is given by
Note that
and so the substitution of and into the expanded expression for gives
Finally, using the linearity property and the known transform for exponential decay (see Item #3 in the Table of Laplace Transforms, above), we can take the inverse Laplace transform of to obtain
which is the impulse response of the system.
Convolution
The same result can be achieved using the convolution property as if the system is a series of filters with transfer functions of and . That is, the inverse of
is
Phase delay
Starting with the Laplace transform,
we find the inverse by first rearranging terms in the fraction:
We are now able to take the inverse Laplace transform of our terms:
This is just the sine of the sum of the arguments, yielding:
We can apply similar logic to find that
Statistical mechanics
In statistical mechanics, the Laplace transform of the density of states defines the partition function. That is, the canonical partition function is given by
and the inverse is given by
Gallery
See also
Analog signal processing
Bernstein's theorem on monotone functions
Continuous-repayment mortgage
Hamburger moment problem
Hardy–Littlewood tauberian theorem
Laplace–Carson transform
Moment-generating function
Nonlocal operator
Post's inversion formula
Signal-flow graph
Notes
References
Modern
Historical
, Chapters 3–5
Further reading
.
Mathews, Jon; Walker, Robert L. (1970), Mathematical methods of physics (2nd ed.), New York: W. A. Benjamin,
- See Chapter VI. The Laplace transform.
External links
Online Computation of the transform or inverse transform, wims.unice.fr
Tables of Integral Transforms at EqWorld: The World of Mathematical Equations.
Good explanations of the initial and final value theorems
Laplace Transforms at MathPages
Computational Knowledge Engine allows to easily calculate Laplace Transforms and its inverse Transform.
Laplace Calculator to calculate Laplace Transforms online easily.
Code to visualize Laplace Transforms and many example videos.
Differential equations
Fourier analysis
Mathematical physics
Integral transforms |
18612 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal%20arts%20college | Liberal arts college | A liberal arts college or liberal arts institution of higher education is a college with an emphasis on undergraduate study in the liberal arts and sciences. Such colleges aim to impart a broad general knowledge and develop general intellectual capacities, in contrast to a professional, vocational, or technical curriculum. Students in a liberal arts college generally major in a particular discipline while receiving exposure to a wide range of academic subjects, including sciences as well as the traditional humanities subjects taught as liberal arts. Although it draws on European antecedents, the liberal arts college is strongly associated with American higher education, and most liberal arts colleges around the world draw explicitly on the American model.
There is no formal definition of liberal arts college, but one American authority defines them as schools that "emphasize undergraduate education and award at least half of their degrees in the liberal arts fields of study." Other researchers have adopted similar definitions.
Although many liberal arts colleges are exclusively undergraduate, some also offer graduate programs that lead to a master's degree or doctoral degree in subjects such as business administration, nursing, medicine, and law. Similarly, although the term "liberal arts college" most commonly refers to an independent institution, it may also sometimes refer to a university college within or affiliated with a larger university. Most liberal arts colleges outside the United States follow this model.
Distinguishing characteristics
Liberal arts colleges are distinguished from other types of higher education chiefly by their generalist curricula and small size. These attributes have various secondary effects in terms of administration as well as student experience. For example, class size is usually much lower at liberal arts colleges than at universities, and faculty at liberal arts colleges typically focus on teaching more than research.
From a student perspective, a liberal arts college typically differs from other forms of higher education in the following areas: higher overall student satisfaction, a general feeling that professors take a personal interest in the student's education, and perception of encouragement to participate in discussion. Many students select liberal arts colleges with precisely this sense of personal connection in mind.
From an administrative standpoint, the small size of liberal arts colleges contributes to their cohesion and ability to survive through difficult times. Job satisfaction is also typically higher in liberal arts colleges, for both faculty and staff. The smaller size also makes it feasible for liberal arts colleges to adopt relatively experimental or divergent approaches, such as the Great Books curriculum at St. John's or Shimer, or the radically interdisciplinary curriculum of Marlboro.
In addition, most liberal arts colleges are primarily residential, which means students live and learn away from home, often for the first time.
The distinctiveness of these attributes is somewhat eroded by the tendency of universities to adopt aspects of the liberal arts college, and vice versa. For example, several American universities, including the University of California system, have experimented with a cluster colleges model in which small liberal-arts-college-like units within a larger university form a "honeycomb of residential colleges". In addition, some universities have maintained a sub-unit that preserves many aspects of the liberal arts college, such as Columbia College within Columbia University.
Liberal arts colleges themselves sometimes cluster to offer greater curricular breadth or share other resources (for instance Colgate University and Hamilton College in New York allow cross enrollment).
Liberal arts and liberal arts college
In academia, liberal arts generally refer to subjects or skills that aim to provide general knowledge and comprise the arts, humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences (rather than professional or technical skills). Most liberal arts colleges, however, also offer courses in subjects that are not traditionally considered part of the liberal arts, such as computer science.
Globally
Liberal arts colleges are found in all parts of the world. Notwithstanding the European origins of the concept of liberal arts education, today the term is largely associated with the United States, and most self-identified liberal arts colleges worldwide are built on the American model. The Global Liberal Arts Alliance, which incorporates institutions on five continents, refers to itself as "an international, multilateral partnership of American style liberal arts institutions."
In 2009, liberal arts colleges from around the world formed the Global Liberal Arts Alliance, an international consortium and "matching service" to help liberal arts colleges in different countries deal with their shared problems.
In North America
The liberal arts college model took root in the United States in the 19th century, as institutions spread that followed the model of early schools like Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth, although none of these early American schools are regarded as liberal arts colleges today. These colleges served as a means of spreading a basically European cultural model across the new country. The model proliferated in the 19th century; some 212 small liberal arts colleges were established between 1850 and 1899. As of 1987, there were about 540 liberal arts colleges in the United States.
The oldest liberal arts college in America is considered to be Washington College, the first college chartered after American independence. Other prominent examples in the United States include the so-called Little Ivy colleges in New England, the surviving predominantly female Seven Sisters colleges along the northeastern seaboard, the Claremont Colleges in Southern California, and the Ohio Five, but similar institutions are found all over the country. Most are private institutions, but a handful of public liberal arts schools exist (such as the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia and New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho).
According to U.S. News & World Report, the top ten ranked Liberal Arts Colleges in America for 2020, by alphabetical order, are: Amherst College, Bowdoin College, Carleton College, Claremont McKenna College, Hamilton College, Middlebury College, Pomona College, Swarthmore College, the United States Naval Academy, Washington & Lee University, Wellesley College, and Williams College.
Liberal arts colleges are also found in Canada, including Acadia University, Bishop's University, Mount Allison University, Nipissing University, St. Francis Xavier University, and St. Thomas University.
In South America
The leading organization is the National Institute of Educators of Liberal Arts and Artistic Education "Instituto Nacional Superior del Profesorado" located in Buenos Aires, Argentina. From 1983 to 2013 the institute was part of the IUNA National University Institute for the Arts, and since 2014, the Ruanova Institute of Performing Arts and Higher Education became part of the UNA Universidad Nacional de las Artes, (UNA) National University of the Arts The Ministry of Culture also released a DVD on the life and artistic work of various creators including the dancer María Ruanova.
In Europe
With the exception of pioneering institutions such as Franklin University Switzerland, established as a Europe-based, US-style liberal arts college in 1969, Saint Louis University Madrid Campus, established in 1967, and Richmond, The American International University in London, established in 1972 only recently have efforts been made to import the American liberal arts college model to continental Europe.
In the Netherlands, universities have opened constituent liberal arts colleges under the terminology "university college" since the late 1990s. This trend was spearheaded by Dutch sociologist Hans Adriaansens, who was "frustrated with the large-scale climate of university education in the Netherlands". Dutch university colleges of this kind include Leiden University College The Hague, University College Utrecht, University College Maastricht, Amsterdam University College, University College Roosevelt, Erasmus University College, University College Groningen and University College Tilburg.
Other liberal arts colleges in continental Europe include Bratislava International School of Liberal Arts in Slovakia, Jacobs University Bremen, Bard College Berlin, the Leuphana University of Lüneburg with their Bachelor program Studium Individuale and the University College Freiburg in Germany. Bard College Berlin was founded in Berlin in 1999 as the European College of Liberal Arts, and in 2009 it introduced a 4-year Bachelor of Arts program in Value Studies taught in English and leading to an interdisciplinary degree in the humanities.
Although liberal arts colleges as such remain rare, liberal arts degree programs are beginning to establish themselves in Europe. For example, University College Dublin offers the degree, as does St. Marys University College Belfast, both institutions coincidentally on the island of Ireland. In 2010 the University of Winchester introduced its Modern Liberal Arts undergraduate program, the first of its kind in the UK. In 2012, University College London began its interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences BASc degree (which has kinship with the liberal arts model) with 80 students. King's College London launched the BA Liberal Arts, which has a slant towards arts, humanities and social sciences subjects. The New College of the Humanities also launched a new liberal education programme. The four-year bachelor's degree in Liberal Arts and Sciences at University College Freiburg is the first of its kind in Germany. It started in October 2012 with 78 students. The first Liberal Arts degree program in Sweden was established at Gothenburg University in 2011, followed by a Liberal Arts Bachelor Programme at Uppsala University's Campus Gotland in the autumn of 2013. Liberal arts colleges in Italy include John Cabot University and The American University of Rome in Rome. The University College of North Staffordshire, founded in 1950 in the United Kingdom, was frequently referred to as the "Keele Experiment" because of its innovative curriculum and emphasis on a scholarly community resident together on campus. The college became Keele University in 1962 and continues to reflect many features of the liberal arts college model. It has been described as the closest example of a liberal arts college in the UK. This distinctiveness will be reinforced with the opening of the new Keele Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences in 2016.
From September 2016 Chavagnes Studium, a Liberal Arts centre in France will be offering a 2-year intensive BA in the Liberal Arts with a distinctively Catholic perspective.
In Asia
Lingnan University in Hong Kong was established as a liberal arts college in the early 20th century, although it subsequently became a full-fledged university. Ginling College in Nanjing similarly followed the model of an American liberal arts college from its founding in 1915 until forced to conform with the Nationalist educational system in the 1930s. In Zhuhai City, Hong Kong Baptist University and Beijing Normal University opened United International College, which adopted the liberal arts college education system.
International Christian University in Tokyo, which opened in 1953, defines itself as "Japan's first liberal arts college."
Yale-NUS College was started in 2011 as Singapore's first liberal arts college as a collaboration between Yale University in the United States and the National University of Singapore. It attracted controversy over concerns that Yale was compromising on its liberal values by opening a college in a country where there are strong curbs on freedom of speech and assembly, with Yale faculty members expressing their "concern regarding the history of lack of respect for civil and political rights in the state of Singapore”. In response, many existing faculty and students have noted that there has been little repression of freedom of expression at the college and that it provides a great opportunity to promote the liberal arts in Asia. In August 2021, NUS announced the closure of Yale-NUS College, with the Class of 2025 being the last cohort to receive an NUS degree. It will be replaced by 'New College', a merger between Yale-NUS College and the NUS University Scholars Programme.
Kalayaan College in the Philippines is one of the best examples of a liberal arts college in the country. Located in the New Manila district of Quezon City, it was founded in 2000 by former educators from the University of the Philippines led by Dr. José Abueva, President of the University from 1987 to 1993 and current Chairman of the KC Board of Trustees. It offers the same kind of education provided by UP to qualified students who are unable to enter the country's premier state university because of its limited college quotas. The curriculum and grading system are patterned after the academic programs and the grade structure offered by the University of the Philippines and is composed of administrators and faculty members who graduated from UP, and/or are also members of the UP academic community.
Sogang University was founded as South Korea's first liberal arts college. In 1960, Jesuits founded Sogang College. Although, it became Sogang University in 1970, it is still following model of American liberal arts college in many aspects. Seoul National University in South Korea established the College of Liberal Studies in 2007, initially as an educational project. However, after being established as a proper college in the SNU, it has become the only college that allows students to create their own major.
Liberal arts colleges in South Asia include Ajeenkya DY Patil University in Pune, India, Forman Christian College in Lahore, Pakistan, Habib University in Karachi, Pakistan and FLAME University in Pune, Maharashtra, India, referred to as India's 'first college of Liberal Education'. The University is a member of the Global Liberal Arts Alliance has also recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Nuffield College, University of Oxford.
Also, Ahmedabad University, a private, non-profit university offers its students a liberal education which is focused on research and interdisciplinary learning.
Baghdad College has offered a liberal arts curriculum since the early 20th century, but despite its name it has never offered more than a high school education. Effat University in Saudi Arabia, a women's institution, is a member of the Global Liberal Arts Alliance. Israel's first liberal arts college, Shalem College, was established in 2013.
In Africa
Three institutions in Africa are members of the Global Liberal Arts Alliance: Al Akhawayn University in Morocco, American University of Cairo in Egypt, and American University of Nigeria. The Egyptian and Nigerian schools are universities with a liberal arts component, but Al Akhawayn was founded on the model of an American liberal arts college.
Ashesi University is a liberal arts college located in Berekuso, Ghana, established in 2002. The school's president, Patrick Awuah, described the school's mission as "educating a new generation of leaders in Africa who think ethically and who are problem solvers and have the ability and the desire to confront problems on the continent."
In Australia
Campion College is a Roman Catholic dedicated liberal arts college located in the western suburbs of Sydney. Founded in 2006, it is the first tertiary educational liberal arts college of its kind in Australia. Campion offers a Bachelor of Arts in the Liberal Arts as its sole undergraduate degree. The key disciplines studied are history, literature, philosophy and theology.
The Millis Institute is the School of Liberal Arts at Christian Heritage College located in Brisbane. It offers a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts in which students can choose to major in Philosophy, Theology, History or Literature.
A new School of Liberal Arts has been formed in the University of Wollongong; the new Arts course entitled 'Western Civilisation' was first offered in 2020. The interdisciplinary curriculum focuses on the classic intellectual and artistic literature of the Western tradition. Courses in the liberal arts have also been developed at the University of Sydney and University of Notre Dame.
Lists of schools
List of liberal arts colleges
List of liberal arts colleges in the United States
See also
Liberal arts education
Bachelor of Liberal Arts
College of Arts and Sciences
Liberal arts colleges in the United States
References
Works cited
Further reading
Morris, Edward. The Lindenwood Model: An Antidote for What Ails Undergraduate Education. University Press (2007)
Pfnister, Allen O. "The Role of the Liberal Arts College." The Journal of Higher Education. Vol. 55, No. 2 (March/April 1984): 145–170.
Reeves, Floyd W. "The Liberal-Arts College." The Journal of Higher Education. Vol. 1, No. 7 (1930): 373–380.
Seidel, George. "Saving the Small College." The Journal of Higher Education. Vol. 39, No. 6 (1968): 339–342.
External links
Global Liberal Arts Alliance
Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges
Consortium of Liberal Arts Colleges
How many (U.S.) colleges and universities have closed since 2016? A list maintained by Education Drive and updated in real time.
Universities and colleges in the United States
Types of university or college |
18614 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language%20acquisition | Language acquisition | Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language (in other words, gain the ability to be aware of language and to understand it), as well as to produce and use words and sentences to communicate.
Language acquisition involves structures, rules and representation. The capacity to use language successfully requires one to acquire a range of tools including phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and an extensive vocabulary. Language can be vocalized as in speech, or manual as in sign. Human language capacity is represented in the brain. Even though human language capacity is finite, one can say and understand an infinite number of sentences, which is based on a syntactic principle called recursion. Evidence suggests that every individual has three recursive mechanisms that allow sentences to go indeterminately. These three mechanisms are: relativization, complementation and coordination.
There are two main guiding principles in first-language acquisition: speech perception always precedes speech production, and the gradually evolving system by which a child learns a language is built up one step at a time, beginning with the distinction between individual phonemes.
Linguists who are interested in child language acquisition have for many years questioned how language is acquired. Lidz et al. state "The question of how these structures are acquired, then, is more properly understood as the question of how a learner takes the surface forms in the input and converts them into abstract linguistic rules and representations."
Language acquisition usually refers to first-language acquisition, which studies infants' acquisition of their native language, whether that be spoken language or signed language, though it can also refer to bilingual first language acquisition (BFLA), which refers to an infant's simultaneous acquisition of two native languages. This is distinguished from second-language acquisition, which deals with the acquisition (in both children and adults) of additional languages. In addition to speech, reading and writing a language with an entirely different script compounds the complexities of true foreign language literacy. Language acquisition is one of the quintessential human traits.
History
Some early observation-based ideas about language acquisition were proposed by Plato, who felt that word-meaning mapping in some form was innate. Additionally, Sanskrit grammarians debated for over twelve centuries whether humans' ability to recognize the meaning of words was god-given (possibly innate) or passed down by previous generations and learned from already established conventions: a child learning the word for cow by listening to trusted speakers talking about cows.
Philosophers in ancient societies were interested in how humans acquired the ability to understand and produce language well before empirical methods for testing those theories were developed, but for the most part they seemed to regard language acquisition as a subset of man's ability to acquire knowledge and learn concepts.
Empiricists, like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, argued that knowledge (and, for Locke, language) emerge ultimately from abstracted sense impressions. These arguments lean towards the "nurture" side of the argument: that language is acquired through sensory experience, which led to Rudolf Carnap's Aufbau, an attempt to learn all knowledge from sense datum, using the notion of "remembered as similar" to bind them into clusters, which would eventually map into language.
Proponents of behaviorism argued that language may be learned through a form of operant conditioning. In B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior (1957), he suggested that the successful use of a sign, such as a word or lexical unit, given a certain stimulus, reinforces its "momentary" or contextual probability. Since operant conditioning is contingent on reinforcement by rewards, a child would learn that a specific combination of sounds stands for a specific thing through repeated successful associations made between the two. A "successful" use of a sign would be one in which the child is understood (for example, a child saying "up" when they want to be picked up) and rewarded with the desired response from another person, thereby reinforcing the child's understanding of the meaning of that word and making it more likely that they will use that word in a similar situation in the future. Some empiricist theories of language acquisition include the statistical learning theory. Charles F. Hockett of language acquisition, relational frame theory, functionalist linguistics, social interactionist theory, and usage-based language acquisition.
Skinner's behaviorist idea was strongly attacked by Noam Chomsky in a review article in 1959, calling it "largely mythology" and a "serious delusion." Arguments against Skinner's idea of language acquisition through operant conditioning include the fact that children often ignore language corrections from adults. Instead, children typically follow a pattern of using an irregular form of a word correctly, making errors later on, and eventually returning to the proper use of the word. For example, a child may correctly learn the word "gave" (past tense of "give"), and later on use the word "gived". Eventually, the child will typically go back to using the correct word, "gave". Chomsky claimed the pattern is difficult to attribute to Skinner's idea of operant conditioning as the primary way that children acquire language. Chomsky argued that if language were solely acquired through behavioral conditioning, children would not likely learn the proper use of a word and suddenly use the word incorrectly. Chomsky believed that Skinner failed to account for the central role of syntactic knowledge in language competence. Chomsky also rejected the term "learning", which Skinner used to claim that children "learn" language through operant conditioning. Instead, Chomsky argued for a mathematical approach to language acquisition, based on a study of syntax.
As a typically human phenomenon
The capacity to acquire and use language is a key aspect that distinguishes humans from other beings. Although it is difficult to pin down what aspects of language are uniquely human, there are a few design features that can be found in all known forms of human language, but that are missing from forms of animal communication. For example, many animals are able to communicate with each other by signaling to the things around them, but this kind of communication lacks the arbitrariness of human vernaculars (in that there is nothing about the sound of the word "dog" that would hint at its meaning). Other forms of animal communication may utilize arbitrary sounds, but are unable to combine those sounds in different ways to create completely novel messages that can then be automatically understood by another. Hockett called this design feature of human language "productivity". It is crucial to the understanding of human language acquisition that humans are not limited to a finite set of words, but, rather, must be able to understand and utilize a complex system that allows for an infinite number of possible messages. So, while many forms of animal communication exist, they differ from human language in that they have a limited range of vocabulary tokens, and the vocabulary items are not combined syntactically to create phrases.
Herbert S. Terrace conducted a study on a chimpanzee known as Nim Chimpsky in an attempt to teach him American Sign Language. This study was an attempt to further research done with a chimpanzee named Washoe, who was reportedly able to acquire American Sign Language. However, upon further inspection, Terrace concluded that both experiments were failures. While Nim was able to acquire signs, he never acquired a knowledge of grammar, and was unable to combine signs in a meaningful way. Researchers noticed that "signs that seemed spontaneous were, in fact, cued by teachers", and not actually productive. When Terrace reviewed Project Washoe, he found similar results. He postulated that there is a fundamental difference between animals and humans in their motivation to learn language; animals, such as in Nim's case, are motivated only by physical reward, while humans learn language in order to "create a new type of communication".
In another language acquisition study, Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard attempted to teach Victor of Aveyron, a feral child, how to speak. Victor was able to learn a few words, but ultimately never fully acquired language. Slightly more successful was a study done on Genie, another child never introduced to society. She had been entirely isolated for the first thirteen years of her life by her father. Caretakers and researchers attempted to measure her ability to learn a language. She was able to acquire a large vocabulary, but never acquired grammatical knowledge. Researchers concluded that the theory of a critical period was true; Genie was too old to learn how to speak productively, although she was still able to comprehend language.
General approaches
A major debate in understanding language acquisition is how these capacities are picked up by infants from the linguistic input. Input in the linguistic context is defined as "All words, contexts, and other forms of language to which a learner is exposed, relative to acquired proficiency in first or second languages". Nativists such as Chomsky have focused on the hugely complex nature of human grammars, the finiteness and ambiguity of the input that children receive, and the relatively limited cognitive abilities of an infant. From these characteristics, they conclude that the process of language acquisition in infants must be tightly constrained and guided by the biologically given characteristics of the human brain. Otherwise, they argue, it is extremely difficult to explain how children, within the first five years of life, routinely master the complex, largely tacit grammatical rules of their native language. Additionally, the evidence of such rules in their native language is all indirect— adult speech to children cannot encompass all of what children know by the time they've acquired their native language.
Other scholars, however, have resisted the possibility that infants' routine success at acquiring the grammar of their native language requires anything more than the forms of learning seen with other cognitive skills, including such mundane motor skills as learning to ride a bike. In particular, there has been resistance to the possibility that human biology includes any form of specialization for language. This conflict is often referred to as the "nature and nurture" debate. Of course, most scholars acknowledge that certain aspects of language acquisition must result from the specific ways in which the human brain is "wired" (a "nature" component, which accounts for the failure of non-human species to acquire human languages) and that certain others are shaped by the particular language environment in which a person is raised (a "nurture" component, which accounts for the fact that humans raised in different societies acquire different languages). The as-yet unresolved question is the extent to which the specific cognitive capacities in the "nature" component are also used outside of language.
Emergentism
Emergentist theories, such as Brian MacWhinney's competition model, posit that language acquisition is a cognitive process that emerges from the interaction of biological pressures and the environment. According to these theories, neither nature nor nurture alone is sufficient to trigger language learning; both of these influences must work together in order to allow children to acquire a language. The proponents of these theories argue that general cognitive processes subserve language acquisition and that the result of these processes is language-specific phenomena, such as word learning and grammar acquisition. The findings of many empirical studies support the predictions of these theories, suggesting that language acquisition is a more complex process than many have proposed.
Empiricism
Although Chomsky's theory of a generative grammar has been enormously influential in the field of linguistics since the 1950s, many criticisms of the basic assumptions of generative theory have been put forth by cognitive-functional linguists, who argue that language structure is created through language use. These linguists argue that the concept of a language acquisition device (LAD) is unsupported by evolutionary anthropology, which tends to show a gradual adaptation of the human brain and vocal cords to the use of language, rather than a sudden appearance of a complete set of binary parameters delineating the whole spectrum of possible grammars ever to have existed and ever to exist. On the other hand, cognitive-functional theorists use this anthropological data to show how human beings have evolved the capacity for grammar and syntax to meet our demand for linguistic symbols. (Binary parameters are common to digital computers, but may not be applicable to neurological systems such as the human brain.)
Further, the generative theory has several constructs (such as movement, empty categories, complex underlying structures, and strict binary branching) that cannot possibly be acquired from any amount of linguistic input. It is unclear that human language is actually anything like the generative conception of it. Since language, as imagined by nativists, is unlearnably complex, subscribers to this theory argue that it must, therefore, be innate. Nativists hypothesize that some features of syntactic categories exist even before a child is exposed to any experience - categories on which children map words of their language as they learn their native language. A different theory of language, however, may yield different conclusions. While all theories of language acquisition posit some degree of innateness, they vary in how much value they place on this innate capacity to acquire language. Empiricism places less value on the innate knowledge, arguing instead that the input, combined with both general and language-specific learning capacities, is sufficient for acquisition.
Since 1980, linguists studying children, such as Melissa Bowerman and Asifa Majid, and psychologists following Jean Piaget, like Elizabeth Bates and Jean Mandler, came to suspect that there may indeed be many learning processes involved in the acquisition process, and that ignoring the role of learning may have been a mistake.
In recent years, the debate surrounding the nativist position has centered on whether the inborn capabilities are language-specific or domain-general, such as those that enable the infant to visually make sense of the world in terms of objects and actions. The anti-nativist view has many strands, but a frequent theme is that language emerges from usage in social contexts, using learning mechanisms that are a part of an innate general cognitive learning apparatus. This position has been championed by David M. W. Powers, Elizabeth Bates, Catherine Snow, Anat Ninio, Brian MacWhinney, Michael Tomasello, Michael Ramscar, William O'Grady, and others. Philosophers, such as Fiona Cowie and Barbara Scholz with Geoffrey Pullum have also argued against certain nativist claims in support of empiricism.
The new field of cognitive linguistics has emerged as a specific counter to Chomsky's Generative Grammar and to Nativism.
Statistical learning
Some language acquisition researchers, such as Elissa Newport, Richard Aslin, and Jenny Saffran, emphasize the possible roles of general learning mechanisms, especially statistical learning, in language acquisition. The development of connectionist models that when implemented are able to successfully learn words and syntactical conventions supports the predictions of statistical learning theories of language acquisition, as do empirical studies of children's detection of word boundaries. In a series of connectionist model simulations, Franklin Chang has demonstrated that such a domain general statistical learning mechanism could explain a wide range of language structure acquisition phenomena.
Statistical learning theory suggests that, when learning language, a learner would use the natural statistical properties of language to deduce its structure, including sound patterns, words, and the beginnings of grammar. That is, language learners are sensitive to how often syllable combinations or words occur in relation to other syllables. Infants between 21 and 23 months old are also able to use statistical learning to develop "lexical categories", such as an animal category, which infants might later map to newly learned words in the same category. These findings suggest that early experience listening to language is critical to vocabulary acquisition.
The statistical abilities are effective, but also limited by what qualifies as input, what is done with that input, and by the structure of the resulting output. One should also note that statistical learning (and more broadly, distributional learning) can be accepted as a component of language acquisition by researchers on either side of the "nature and nurture" debate. From the perspective of that debate, an important question is whether statistical learning can, by itself, serve as an alternative to nativist explanations for the grammatical constraints of human language.
Chunking
The central idea of these theories is that language development occurs through the incremental acquisition of meaningful chunks of elementary constituents, which can be words, phonemes, or syllables. Recently, this approach has been highly successful in simulating several phenomena in the acquisition of syntactic categories and the acquisition of phonological knowledge.
Chunking theories of language acquisition constitute a group of theories related to statistical learning theories, in that they assume that the input from the environment plays an essential role; however, they postulate different learning mechanisms.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology have developed a computer model analyzing early toddler conversations to predict the structure of later conversations. They showed that toddlers develop their own individual rules for speaking, with 'slots' into which they put certain kinds of words. A significant outcome of this research is that rules inferred from toddler speech were better predictors of subsequent speech than traditional grammars.
This approach has several features that make it unique: the models are implemented as computer programs, which enables clear-cut and quantitative predictions to be made; they learn from naturalistic input—actual child-directed utterances; and attempt to create their own utterances, the model was tested in languages including English, Spanish, and German. Chunking for this model was shown to be most effective in learning a first language but was able to create utterances learning a second language.
Relational frame theory
The relational frame theory (RFT) (Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, Roche, 2001), provides a wholly selectionist/learning account of the origin and development of language competence and complexity. Based upon the principles of Skinnerian behaviorism, RFT posits that children acquire language purely through interacting with the environment. RFT theorists introduced the concept of functional contextualism in language learning, which emphasizes the importance of predicting and influencing psychological events, such as thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, by focusing on manipulable variables in their own context. RFT distinguishes itself from Skinner's work by identifying and defining a particular type of operant conditioning known as derived relational responding, a learning process that, to date, appears to occur only in humans possessing a capacity for language. Empirical studies supporting the predictions of RFT suggest that children learn language through a system of inherent reinforcements, challenging the view that language acquisition is based upon innate, language-specific cognitive capacities.
Social interactionism
Social interactionist theory is an explanation of language development emphasizing the role of social interaction between the developing child and linguistically knowledgeable adults. It is based largely on the socio-cultural theories of Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky, and was made prominent in the Western world by Jerome Bruner.
Unlike other approaches, it emphasizes the role of feedback and reinforcement in language acquisition. Specifically, it asserts that much of a child's linguistic growth stems from modeling of and interaction with parents and other adults, who very frequently provide instructive correction. It is thus somewhat similar to behaviorist accounts of language learning. It differs substantially, though, in that it posits the existence of a social-cognitive model and other mental structures within children (a sharp contrast to the "black box" approach of classical behaviorism).
Another key idea within the theory of social interactionism is that of the zone of proximal development. This is a theoretical construct denoting the set of tasks a child is capable of performing with guidance but not alone. As applied to language, it describes the set of linguistic tasks (for example, proper syntax, suitable vocabulary usage) that a child cannot carry out on its own at a given time, but can learn to carry out if assisted by an able adult.
Syntax, morphology, and generative grammar
As syntax began to be studied more closely in the early 20th century in relation to language learning, it became apparent to linguists, psychologists, and philosophers that knowing a language was not merely a matter of associating words with concepts, but that a critical aspect of language involves knowledge of how to put words together; sentences are usually needed in order to communicate successfully, not just isolated words. A child will use short expressions such as Bye-bye Mummy or All-gone milk, which actually are combinations of individual nouns and an operator, before they begin to produce gradually more complex sentences. In the 1990s, within the principles and parameters framework, this hypothesis was extended into a maturation-based structure building model of child language regarding the acquisition of functional categories. In this model, children are seen as gradually building up more and more complex structures, with lexical categories (like noun and verb) being acquired before functional-syntactic categories (like determiner and complementiser). It is also often found that in acquiring a language, the most frequently used verbs are irregular verbs. In learning English, for example, young children first begin to learn the past tense of verbs individually. However, when they acquire a "rule", such as adding -ed to form the past tense, they begin to exhibit occasional overgeneralization errors (e.g. "runned", "hitted") alongside correct past tense forms. One influential proposal regarding the origin of this type of error suggests that the adult state of grammar stores each irregular verb form in memory and also includes a "block" on the use of the regular rule for forming that type of verb. In the developing child's mind, retrieval of that "block" may fail, causing the child to erroneously apply the regular rule instead of retrieving the irregular.
A Merge (linguistics)-based Theory
In Bare-Phrase structure (Minimalist Program), since theory-internal considerations define the specifier position of an internal-merge projection (phases vP and CP) as the only type of host which could serve as potential landing-sites for move-based elements displaced from lower down within the base-generated VP structure – e.g., A-movement such as passives (["The apple was eaten by [John (ate the apple)"]]), or raising ["Some work does seem to remain [(There) does seem to remain (some work)"]])—as a consequence, any strong version of a Structure building model of child language which calls for an exclusive "external-merge/argument structure stage" prior to an "internal-merge/scope-discourse related stage" would claim that young children's stage-1 utterances lack the ability to generate and host elements derived via movement operations. In terms of a Merge-based theory of language acquisition, complements and specifiers are simply notations for first-merge (= "complement-of" [head-complement]), and later second-merge (= "specifier-of" [specifier-head], with merge always forming to a head. First-merge establishes only a set {a, b} and is not an ordered pair—e.g., an {N, N}-compound of 'boat-house' would allow the ambiguous readings of either 'a kind of house' and/or 'a kind of boat'. It is only with second-merge that order is derived out of a set {a {a, b}} which yields the recursive properties of syntax—e.g., a 'house-boat' {house {house, boat}} now reads unambiguously only as a 'kind of boat'. It is this property of recursion that allows for projection and labeling of a phrase to take place; in this case, that the Noun 'boat' is the Head of the compound, and 'house' acting as a kind of specifier/modifier. External-merge (first-merge) establishes substantive 'base structure' inherent to the VP, yielding theta/argument structure, and may go beyond the lexical-category VP to involve the functional-category light verb vP. Internal-merge (second-merge) establishes more formal aspects related to edge-properties of scope and discourse-related material pegged to CP. In a Phase-based theory, this twin vP/CP distinction follows the "duality of semantics" discussed within the Minimalist Program, and is further developed into a dual distinction regarding a probe-goal relation. As a consequence, at the "external/first-merge-only" stage, young children would show an inability to interpret readings from a given ordered pair, since they would only have access to the mental parsing of a non-recursive set. (See Roeper for a full discussion of recursion in child language acquisition). In addition to word-order violations, other more ubiquitous results of a first-merge stage would show that children's initial utterances lack the recursive properties of inflectional morphology, yielding a strict Non-inflectional stage-1, consistent with an incremental Structure-building model of child language.
Generative grammar, associated especially with the work of Noam Chomsky, is currently one of the approaches to explaining children's acquisition of syntax. Its leading idea is that human biology imposes narrow constraints on the child's "hypothesis space" during language acquisition. In the principles and parameters framework, which has dominated generative syntax since Chomsky's (1980) Lectures on Government and Binding: The Pisa Lectures, the acquisition of syntax resembles ordering from a menu: the human brain comes equipped with a limited set of choices from which the child selects the correct options by imitating the parents' speech while making use of the context.
An important argument which favors the generative approach, is the poverty of the stimulus argument. The child's input (a finite number of sentences encountered by the child, together with information about the context in which they were uttered) is, in principle, compatible with an infinite number of conceivable grammars. Moreover, rarely can children rely on corrective feedback from adults when they make a grammatical error; adults generally respond and provide feedback regardless of whether a child's utterance was grammatical or not, and children have no way of discerning if a feedback response was intended to be a correction. Additionally, when children do understand that they are being corrected, they don't always reproduce accurate restatements. Yet, barring situations of medical abnormality or extreme privation, all children in a given speech-community converge on very much the same grammar by the age of about five years. An especially dramatic example is provided by children who, for medical reasons, are unable to produce speech and, therefore, can never be corrected for a grammatical error but nonetheless, converge on the same grammar as their typically developing peers, according to comprehension-based tests of grammar.
Considerations such as those have led Chomsky, Jerry Fodor, Eric Lenneberg and others to argue that the types of grammar the child needs to consider must be narrowly constrained by human biology (the nativist position). These innate constraints are sometimes referred to as universal grammar, the human "language faculty", or the "language instinct".
Representation in the brain
Recent advances in functional neuroimaging technology have allowed for a better understanding of how language acquisition is manifested physically in the brain. Language acquisition almost always occurs in children during a period of rapid increase in brain volume. At this point in development, a child has many more neural connections than he or she will have as an adult, allowing for the child to be more able to learn new things than he or she would be as an adult.
Sensitive period
Language acquisition has been studied from the perspective of developmental psychology and neuroscience, which looks at learning to use and understand language parallel to a child's brain development. It has been determined, through empirical research on developmentally normal children, as well as through some extreme cases of language deprivation, that there is a "sensitive period" of language acquisition in which human infants have the ability to learn any language. Several researchers have found that from birth until the age of six months, infants can discriminate the phonetic contrasts of all languages. Researchers believe that this gives infants the ability to acquire the language spoken around them. After this age, the child is able to perceive only the phonemes specific to the language being learned. The reduced phonemic sensitivity enables children to build phonemic categories and recognize stress patterns and sound combinations specific to the language they are acquiring. As Wilder Penfield noted, "Before the child begins to speak and to perceive, the uncommitted cortex is a blank slate on which nothing has been written. In the ensuing years much is written, and the writing is normally never erased. After the age of ten or twelve, the general functional connections have been established and fixed for the speech cortex." According to the sensitive or critical period models, the age at which a child acquires the ability to use language is a predictor of how well he or she is ultimately able to use language. However, there may be an age at which becoming a fluent and natural user of a language is no longer possible; Penfield and Roberts (1959) cap their sensitive period at nine years old. The human brain may be automatically wired to learn languages, but this ability does not last into adulthood in the same way that it exists during childhood. By around age 12, language acquisition has typically been solidified, and it becomes more difficult to learn a language in the same way a native speaker would. Just like children who speak, deaf children go through a critical period for learning language. Deaf children who acquire their first language later in life show lower performance in complex aspects of grammar. At that point, it is usually a second language that a person is trying to acquire and not a first.
Assuming that children are exposed to language during the critical period, acquiring language is almost never missed by cognitively normal children. Humans are so well-prepared to learn language that it becomes almost impossible not to. Researchers are unable to experimentally test the effects of the sensitive period of development on language acquisition, because it would be unethical to deprive children of language until this period is over. However, case studies on abused, language-deprived children show that they exhibit extreme limitations in language skills, even after instruction.
At a very young age, children can distinguish different sounds but cannot yet produce them. During infancy, children begin to babble. Deaf babies babble in the same patterns as hearing babies do, showing that babbling is not a result of babies simply imitating certain sounds, but is actually a natural part of the process of language development. Deaf babies do, however, often babble less than hearing babies, and they begin to babble later on in infancy—at approximately 11 months as compared to approximately 6 months for hearing babies.
Prelinguistic language abilities that are crucial for language acquisition have been seen even earlier than infancy. There have been many different studies examining different modes of language acquisition prior to birth. The study of language acquisition in fetuses began in the late 1980s when several researchers independently discovered that very young infants could discriminate their native language from other languages. In Mehler et al. (1988), infants underwent discrimination tests, and it was shown that infants as young as 4 days old could discriminate utterances in their native language from those in an unfamiliar language, but could not discriminate between two languages when neither was native to them. These results suggest that there are mechanisms for fetal auditory learning, and other researchers have found further behavioral evidence to support this notion. Fetus auditory learning through environmental habituation has been seen in a variety of different modes, such as fetus learning of familiar melodies (Hepper, 1988), story fragments (DeCasper & Spence, 1986), recognition of mother's voice (Kisilevsky, 2003), and other studies showing evidence of fetal adaptation to native linguistic environments (Moon, Cooper & Fifer, 1993).
Prosody is the property of speech that conveys an emotional state of the utterance, as well as the intended form of speech, for example, question, statement or command. Some researchers in the field of developmental neuroscience argue that fetal auditory learning mechanisms result solely from discrimination of prosodic elements. Although this would hold merit in an evolutionary psychology perspective (i.e. recognition of mother's voice/familiar group language from emotionally valent stimuli), some theorists argue that there is more than prosodic recognition in elements of fetal learning. Newer evidence shows that fetuses not only react to the native language differently from non-native languages, but that fetuses react differently and can accurately discriminate between native and non-native vowel sounds (Moon, Lagercrantz, & Kuhl, 2013). Furthermore, a 2016 study showed that newborn infants encode the edges of multisyllabic sequences better than the internal components of the sequence (Ferry et al., 2016). Together, these results suggest that newborn infants have learned important properties of syntactic processing in utero, as demonstrated by infant knowledge of native language vowels and the sequencing of heard multisyllabic phrases. This ability to sequence specific vowels gives newborn infants some of the fundamental mechanisms needed in order to learn the complex organization of a language.
From a neuroscientific perspective, neural correlates have been found that demonstrate human fetal learning of speech-like auditory stimuli that most other studies have been analyzing (Partanen et al., 2013). In a study conducted by Partanen et al. (2013), researchers presented fetuses with certain word variants and observed that these fetuses exhibited higher brain activity in response to certain word variants as compared to controls. In this same study, "a significant correlation existed between the amount of prenatal exposure and brain activity, with greater activity being associated with a higher amount of prenatal speech exposure," pointing to the important learning mechanisms present before birth that are fine-tuned to features in speech (Partanen et al., 2013).
Vocabulary acquisition
The capacity to acquire the ability to incorporate the pronunciation of new words depends upon many factors. First, the learner needs to be able to hear what they are attempting to pronounce. Also required is the capacity to engage in speech repetition. Children with reduced ability to repeat non-words (a marker of speech repetition abilities) show a slower rate of vocabulary expansion than children with normal ability. Several computational models of vocabulary acquisition have been proposed. Various studies have shown that the size of a child's vocabulary by the age of 24 months correlates with the child's future development and language skills. A lack of language richness by this age has detrimental and long-term effects on the child's cognitive development, which is why it is so important for parents to engage their infants in language. If a child knows fifty or fewer words by the age of 24 months, he or she is classified as a late-talker, and future language development, like vocabulary expansion and the organization of grammar, is likely to be slower and stunted.
Two more crucial elements of vocabulary acquisition are word segmentation and statistical learning (described above). Word segmentation, or the ability to break down words into syllables from fluent speech can be accomplished by eight-month-old infants. By the time infants are 17 months old, they are able to link meaning to segmented words.
Recent evidence also suggests that motor skills and experiences may influence vocabulary acquisition during infancy. Specifically, learning to sit independently between 3 and 5 months of age has been found to predict receptive vocabulary at both 10 and 14 months of age, and independent walking skills have been found to correlate with language skills at around 10 to 14 months of age. These findings show that language acquisition is an embodied process that is influenced by a child's overall motor abilities and development. Studies have also shown a correlation between socioeconomic status and vocabulary acquisition.
Meaning
Children learn, on average, ten to fifteen new word meanings each day, but only one of these can be accounted for by direct instruction. The other nine to fourteen word meanings must have been acquired in some other way. It has been proposed that children acquire these meanings through processes modeled by latent semantic analysis; that is, when they encounter an unfamiliar word, children use contextual information to guess its rough meaning correctly. A child may expand the meaning and use of certain words that are already part of its mental lexicon in order to denominate anything that is somehow related but for which it does not know the specific word. For instance, a child may broaden the use of mummy and dada in order to indicate anything that belongs to its mother or father, or perhaps every person who resembles its own parents; another example might be to say rain while meaning I don't want to go out.
There is also reason to believe that children use various heuristics to infer the meaning of words properly. Markman and others have proposed that children assume words to refer to objects with similar properties ("cow" and "pig" might both be "animals") rather than to objects that are thematically related ("cow" and "milk" are probably not both "animals"). Children also seem to adhere to the "whole object assumption" and think that a novel label refers to an entire entity rather than to one of its parts. This assumption along with other resources, such as grammar and morphological cues or lexical constraints, may help aid the child in acquiring word meaning, but conclusions based on such resources may sometimes conflict.
Genetic and neurocognitive research
According to several linguists, neurocognitive research has confirmed many standards of language learning, such as: "learning engages the entire person (cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains), the human brain seeks patterns in its searching for meaning, emotions affect all aspects of learning, retention and recall, past experience always affects new learning, the brain's working memory has a limited capacity, lecture usually results in the lowest degree of retention, rehearsal is essential for retention, practice [alone] does not make perfect, and each brain is unique" (Sousa, 2006, p. 274). In terms of genetics, the gene ROBO1 has been associated with phonological buffer integrity or length.
Genetic research has found two major factors predicting successful language acquisition and maintenance. These include inherited intelligence, and the lack of genetic anomalies that may cause speech pathologies, such as mutations in the FOXP2 gene which cause verbal dyspraxia. The role of inherited intelligence increases with age, accounting for 20% of IQ variation in infants, and for 60% in adults. It affects a vast variety of language-related abilities, from spatio-motor skills to writing fluency. There have been debates in linguistics, philosophy, psychology, and genetics, with some scholars arguing that language is fully or mostly innate, but the research evidence points to genetic factors only working in interaction with environmental ones.
Although it is difficult to determine without invasive measures which exact parts of the brain become most active and important for language acquisition, fMRI and PET technology has allowed for some conclusions to be made about where language may be centered. Kuniyoshi Sakai has proposed, based on several neuroimaging studies, that there may be a "grammar center" in the brain, whereby language is primarily processed in the left lateral premotor cortex (located near the pre central sulcus and the inferior frontal sulcus). Additionally, these studies have suggested that first language and second language acquisition may be represented differently in the cortex.
In a study conducted by Newman et al., the relationship between cognitive neuroscience and language acquisition was compared through a standardized procedure involving native speakers of English and native Spanish speakers who all had a similar length of exposure to the English language (averaging about 26 years). It was concluded that the brain does in fact process languages differently, but rather than being related to proficiency levels, language processing relates more to the function of the brain itself.
During early infancy, language processing seems to occur over many areas in the brain. However, over time, it gradually becomes concentrated into two areas – Broca's area and Wernicke's area. Broca's area is in the left frontal cortex and is primarily involved in the production of the patterns in vocal and sign language. Wernicke's area is in the left temporal cortex and is primarily involved in language comprehension. The specialization of these language centers is so extensive that damage to them can result in aphasia.
Artificial intelligence
Some algorithms for language acquisition are based on statistical machine translation. Language acquisition can be modeled as a machine learning process, which may be based on learning semantic parsers or grammar induction algorithms.
Prelingual deafness
Prelingual deafness is defined as hearing loss that occurred at birth or before an individual has learned to speak. In the United States, 2 to 3 out of every 1000 children are born deaf or hard of hearing. Even though it might be presumed that deaf children acquire language in different ways since they are not receiving the same auditory input as hearing children, many research findings indicate that deaf children acquire language in the same way that hearing children do and when given the proper language input, understand and express language just as well as their hearing peers. Babies who learn sign language produce signs or gestures that are more regular and more frequent than hearing babies acquiring spoken language. Just as hearing babies babble, deaf babies acquiring sign language will babble with their hands, otherwise known as manual babbling. Therefore, as many studies have shown, language acquisition by deaf children parallel the language acquisition of a spoken language by hearing children because humans are biologically equipped for language regardless of the modality.
Signed language acquisition
Deaf children's visual-manual language acquisition not only parallel spoken language acquisition but by the age of 30 months, most deaf children that were exposed to a visual language had a more advanced grasp with subject-pronoun copy rules than hearing children. Their vocabulary bank at the ages of 12–17 months exceed that of a hearing child's, though it does even out when they reach the two-word stage. The use of space for absent referents and the more complex handshapes in some signs prove to be difficult for children between 5 and 9 years of age because of motor development and the complexity of remembering the spatial use.
Cochlear implants
Other options besides sign language for kids with prelingual deafness include the use of hearing aids to strengthen remaining sensory cells or cochlear implants to stimulate the hearing nerve directly. Cochlear Implants are hearing devices that are placed behind the ear and contain a receiver and electrodes which are placed under the skin and inside the cochlea. Despite these developments, there is still a risk that prelingually deaf children may not develop good speech and speech reception skills. Although cochlear implants produce sounds, they are unlike typical hearing and deaf and hard of hearing people must undergo intensive therapy in order to learn how to interpret these sounds. They must also learn how to speak given the range of hearing they may or may not have. However, deaf children of deaf parents tend to do better with language, even though they are isolated from sound and speech because their language uses a different mode of communication that is accessible to them; the visual modality of language.
Although cochlear implants were initially approved for adults, now there is pressure to implant children early in order to maximize auditory skills for mainstream learning which in turn has created controversy around the topic. Due to recent advances in technology, cochlear implants allow some deaf people to acquire some sense of hearing. There are interior and exposed exterior components that are surgically implanted. Those who receive cochlear implants earlier on in life show more improvement on speech comprehension and language. Spoken language development does vary widely for those with cochlear implants though due to a number of different factors including: age at implantation, frequency, quality and type of speech training. Some evidence suggests that speech processing occurs at a more rapid pace in some prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants than those with traditional hearing aids. However, cochlear implants may not always work.
Research shows that people develop better language with a cochlear implant when they have a solid first language to rely on to understand the second language they would be learning. In the case of prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants, a signed language, like American Sign Language would be an accessible language for them to learn to help support the use of the cochlear implant as they learn a spoken language as their L2. Without a solid, accessible first language, these children run the risk of language deprivation, especially in the case that a cochlear implant fails to work. They would have no access to sound, meaning no access to the spoken language they are supposed to be learning. If a signed language was not a strong language for them to use and neither was a spoken language, they now have no access to any language and run the risk of missing their critical period.
See also
Chunking
Creole language
Evolutionary linguistics
Evolutionary psychology of language
Fis phenomenon
FOXP2
Gestures in language acquisition
Glossary of language teaching terms and ideas
Identity and language learning
KE family
Language attrition
Language transfer
List of children's speech corpora
List of language acquisition researchers
Metalinguistic awareness
Natural-language processing
Non-native speech database
Origin of language
Passive speaker (language)
Second-language attrition
Spoken language
References
Further reading
Kennison, S. (2013). Introduction to language development. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
External links
Language acquisition in American Sign Language Rich, detailed documentation of language acquisition in ASL.
Innateness and Language, Encyclopedia Entry
Beth Skwarecki, "Babies Learn to Recognize Words in the Womb", Science, 26 August 2013 |
18615 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left%20Behind | Left Behind | Left Behind is a multimedia franchise that started with a series of 16 bestselling religious novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins that dealt with Christian dispensationalist End Times: the pretribulation, premillennial, Christian eschatological interpretation of the Biblical apocalypse. The primary conflict of the series is the members of the Tribulation Force, an underground network of converts, against the NWO-esque organization “Global Community" and its leader, Nicolae Carpathia, who is also the Antichrist.
The series has been adapted into four films to date. The original series of three films are Left Behind: The Movie (2000), Left Behind II: Tribulation Force (2002), and Left Behind: World at War (2005). A reboot starring Nicolas Cage, entitled simply Left Behind, was released in 2014 through Cloud Ten Pictures. The series inspired an audio drama as well as the PC game Left Behind: Eternal Forces (2006) and its several sequels.
Books
Main series
Left Behind tells the story of the end times (set in the contemporary era), in which true believers in Christ have been "raptured" (taken instantly to heaven), leaving the world shattered and chaotic. As people scramble for answers, an obscure Romanian politician named Nicolae Jetty Carpathia rises to become secretary-general of the United Nations, promising to restore peace and stability to all nations. What most of the world does not realize is that Carpathia is actually the Antichrist foretold in the Bible. Coming to grips with the truth and becoming born-again Christians, airline pilot Rayford Steele, his daughter Chloe, their pastor Bruce Barnes, and young journalist Cameron "Buck" Williams begin their quest as the Tribulation Force to help save the lost and prepare for the coming Tribulation, in which God will rain down judgment on the world for seven years.
It is based on a dispensationalist interpretation of prophecies in the Biblical books of Revelation, Daniel, Isaiah and Ezekiel.
Characters
Influences on the authors
LaHaye and Jenkins cite the influence of Russell Doughten, an Iowa-based filmmaker who directed the Thief in the Night series, a series of four low-budget but popular feature-length films in the 1970s and 1980s about the Rapture and Second Coming, starting with 1972's A Thief in the Night. Indeed, the title Left Behind echoes the refrain of Thief early Christian rock theme song by Larry Norman, "I Wish We'd All Been Ready," in which he sings, "There's no time to change your mind, the Son has come and you've been left behind."
Reception
Multiple books in the series have been on the New York Times Bestseller List. Starting in 2000, Books 7 and 8 reached number one on the list followed by book 10, which debuted at number one.
In 2016, several books in the series were bestsellers and 65 million copies were sold in various languages.
Critical response
One reason often cited for the books' popularity is the quick pacing and action, and that they reflect the public's overall concern and fascination with the Apocalypse as portrayed in the Biblical Book of Revelation. Michelle Goldberg has written that, "On one level, the attraction of the Left Behind books isn't that much different from that of, say, Tom Clancy or Stephen King. The plotting is brisk and the characterizations Manichaean. People disappear and things blow up." The New York Times also compared the series to Clancy's works. However, those views are not universally shared. Other reviewers have called the series "almost laughably tedious" and "fatuous and boring."
Jerry Falwell said about the first book in the series: "In terms of its impact on Christianity, it's probably greater than that of any other book in modern times, outside the Bible."
Laurie Goodstein, writing in 1998 for The New York Times, placed what she called the "Left Behind phenomenon" in the calendrical context of the approaching year 2000. Goodstein noted a 'proliferation' of similarly apocalyptic texts appearing at that time, by authors such as Jim Bakker and John Hagee. Goodstein cited the opinion of University of Wisconsin historian Paul Boyer, who described such authors as "cashing in on the public preoccupation with the year 2000".
While writing that the series fulfills the norms of mass-market fiction, as mentioned above, magazine writer Michelle Goldberg characterized the books as an attack on Judaism and liberal secularism, and suggested that the near-future "end times" in which the books are set seem to reflect the actual worldview of millions of Americans, including many prominent conservative leaders.
Anti-Catholicism
The books are written from a Protestant viewpoint. As a result, some believe the books are anti-Catholic, noting that many Catholics were not raptured, concluding that no religion is free of false converts and that the new pope establishes a false religion. While the fictional Pope, John XXIV, was raptured, he is described as having embraced some of the views of the "Father of Protestantism", Martin Luther, and it is implied that he was raptured for this reason. His successor, Pope Peter II, becomes Pontifex Maximus of Enigma Babylon One World Faith, an amalgam of all remaining world faiths and religions. Catholic Answers describes the series as anti-Catholic.
The co-author of the book, Jerry B. Jenkins, as well as LaHaye, stated that their books are not anti-Catholic and that they have many faithful Catholic readers and friends. According to LaHaye, "the books don’t suggest any particular theology, but try to introduce people to a more personal relationship with Jesus".
Islamophobia
Melani McAlister criticized the character Suhail Akbar for being anti Muslim.
End-times theology
Along with some other rapture fiction novels, the Left Behind series demonstrates a specific understanding of the Gospel and the Christian life, one with which many have taken issue theologically. The books have not sold particularly well outside of the United States. Dispensationalism remains a minority view among theologians. For instance, amillennial and postmillennial Christians do not believe in the same timeline of the Second Coming as premillennialists, while preterist Christians do not interpret much of the Book of Revelation to predict future events at all. Brian McLaren of the Emergent Church compares the Left Behind series to The Da Vinci Code, and states, "What the Left Behind novels do, the way they twist scripture toward a certain theological and political end, I think [Dan] Brown is twisting scripture, just to other political ends." John Dart, writing in Christian Century, characterized the works as "beam me up theology."
Violence and war
Some practicing Christians, evangelical and otherwise, along with non-Christians have shown concern that the social perspectives promoted in the Left Behind series unduly sensationalize the death and destruction of masses of people. Harvey Cox, a professor of divinity at Harvard, says part of the appeal of the books lies in the "lip-licking anticipation of all the blood", and Lutheran theologian Barbara Rossing, author of The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation, said the books glorify violence. Additionally, Paul Nuechterlein accused the authors of re-sacralizing violence, adding that "we human beings are the ones who put our faith in superior firepower. But in the Left Behind novels, the darkness of that human, satanic violence is once again attributed to God". Time said "the nuclear frights of, say, Tom Clancy's The Sum of All Fears wouldn't fill a chapter in the Left Behind series. (Large chunks of several U.S. cities have been bombed to smithereens by page 110 of Book 3.)"
David Carlson, a Professor of Religious Studies and a member of the Greek Orthodox Church, wrote that the theology underpinning the Left Behind series promotes a "skewed view of the Christian faith that welcomes war and disaster, while dismissing peace efforts in the Middle East and elsewhere—all in the name of Christ".
Left Behind: The Kids series
Left Behind: The Kids is a series of forty novellas written for teenagers. It has the same plot as the adult series, but the main protagonists are teenagers.
Spinoff books
Williams professor Glenn Shuck has written the book Marks of the Beast: The Left Behind Novels and the Struggle for Evangelical Identity, published by NYU Press in 2005. He followed this with a collection of original essays co-edited with Jeffrey J. Kripal of Rice University on the Esalen Institute in California, published by Indiana University Press in 2005.
Starting in 2003 the series was expanded upon by Mel Odom with his Apocalypse military series and Neesa Hart with her political thriller series, both taking place concurrently with the main series
Graphic novels
In 2002, a series of graphic novels published by Tyndale House was launched that comprised the first two books in the series, Left Behind and Tribulation Force. The original idea was to release sets of 3 to 5 novels (each about 45–50 pages) for each book in the original series. However, after the fifth and final novel for Tribulation Force was released, the graphic novel series was apparently discontinued, and the novels that were released are now (as of December 2006) out of print. A compilation of the graphic novels for the first book was later released as one novel.
Film adaptations
The success of the Left Behind books has led to the release of four motion pictures based on the series so far. All four have been produced by brothers Paul & Peter LaLonde, and have been released through Cloud Ten Pictures, an independent Canadian-based Christian film studio.
The first, Left Behind: The Movie, was based on the first book of the series and was released in 2000. In a very unusual marketing scheme, the studio released the film on home video, and then theatrically. It fared poorly in theaters. The film starred former Growing Pains star Kirk Cameron as Buck Williams. Cameron, who praised the book series as "inspiring", became a practicing evangelist (and co-host with Ray Comfort on the TV show The Way of the Master).
The sequel, Left Behind II: Tribulation Force, based on the second book, Tribulation Force, was released in 2002. The film debuted at #2 on Nielson's video scan reports, behind Spider-Man, and was #1 in terms of overall sales for two days on Amazon.com.
The second sequel, World at War, was released first to churches on October 21, 2005, for church theatrical viewings and was released via home media on October 25. Much of the main cast from the previous two films, excluding Clarence Gilyard, reprised their respective roles for World at War. Gilyard, who played Bruce Barnes, was unable to return due to a scheduling conflict with a play in New York. It is based very loosely on the final 50 pages of Tribulation Force and features Louis Gossett Jr. as the President of the United States, Gerald Fitzhugh. The third installment was the least identifiable with events in any of the books. Recognizable events were the marriages of Buck with Chloe Steele, and of Rayford Steele with Amanda White; the death of Bruce Barnes; and President Fitzhugh's heading an attack, resulting in World War III, with Great Britain and Egypt fighting against the Global Community. Major parts, however, were taken from subsequent books; these events include the poisoning of Barnes by GC forces, instead of Nicolae Carpathia himself, and an attempt by Fitzhugh to assassinate Carpathia. Buck's meeting with the President in the books takes a different form in the film.
The film series have been criticized for, among other things, low production values. A Slate reviewer commented that in 2004, Cloud Ten Pictures made a deal with Sony Pictures Entertainment to release all of its pictures under their banner and has been doing so ever since.
In 2010, Cloud Ten announced that a remake of the Left Behind series was in development, with production set to begin in late 2012 for an October 2014 release date. The reboot, starring Nicolas Cage as Steele and Chad Michael Murray as Buck Williams, was released to theaters October 3, 2014. It focused mainly on the very beginnings of the first book and added much to the plot. The remake focuses on the experiences of the passengers on the plane and partially on Chloe Steele as she comes to terms with her missing family. It earned overwhelmingly negative reviews and flopped at the box office.
Video game
A video game, Left Behind: Eternal Forces, (2006) and its three sequels, Left Behind: Tribulation Forces, Left Behind 3: Rise of the Antichrist and Left Behind 4: World at War, were developed by a publicly traded company, Left Behind Games. The games are real-time strategy games wherein the player controls a "Tribulation Forces" team and allows the player to "use the power of prayer to strengthen your troops in combat and wield modern military weaponry throughout the game world." The original game was released in the United States on November 14, 2006, and received mixed reviews. Distribution was initially planned to work through churches and megachurches.
Although the original game was accused of encouraging religious violence, not all reviewers of the game or critics of the Left Behind series shared that view. Representatives of the company have responded that the game's message is pacifist, because shooting nonbelievers instead of converting them costs the player "spirit points", which can be recovered by pausing to pray. The company also responded to these criticisms in an online newsletter, stating, "There is no violence, only conflict," and, "The most successful way to fight, is through the means of spiritual warfare; PRAYER and WORSHIP. Soldiers and military weaponry are available, but once anyone plays the game, they’ll see how difficult it is to succeed by using these less effective means of warfare."
Music
People Get Ready: A Musical Collection Inspired by The Left Behind Series (1998) is "a musical collection inspired by the Left Behind series."
See also
Armageddon
Christian theology
Christian Zionism
Covenantalism
Futurism
Hal Lindsey
Historicism
Idealism
The Late, Great Planet Earth
Summary of Christian eschatological differences
Christian science fiction
References
Further reading
DeMar, Gary, Left Behind: Separating Fact from Fiction. Powder Springs, Georgia, 2009.
Eford, James M. Left Behind? What the Bible Really Says about the End Times. Macon, Georgia, Smyth & Helys, 2006.
Forbes, Bruce David and Jeanne Halgren Kilde (eds.), Rapture, Revelation, and the End Times: Exploring the Left Behind Series. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
Frykholm, Amy Johnson. Rapture Culture: Left Behind in Evangelical America. Oxford University Press, 2004.
Olson, Carl E. Will Catholics be Left Behind? San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 2003.
Standaert, Michael, 2006 Skipping Towards Armageddon: The Politics and Propaganda of the Left Behind Novels and the LaHaye Empire (Soft Skull Press)
Rossing, Barbara R., The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation, New York: Basic Books, 2004.
Shuck, Glenn W. Marks Of The Beast: The Left Behind Novels And The Struggle For Evangelical Identity. New York University Press, 2004.
Gribben, Crawford, Rapture Fiction and the Evangelical Crisis. Evangelical Press, 2006. .
Snow Flesher, LeAnn, Left Behind? The Facts Behind the Fiction. Valley Forge, Judson Press, 2006.
Tuley, Glenn, Not Left Behind: A Tribulation Survival Manual. Bedford, TX, Burkhart Books, 2015.
External links
Official website
Archive of Left Behind radio shows in RealAudio
WELS Topical Q&A: Left Behind Series (a Confessional Lutheran perspective)
Slacktivist blog analysis and critique of Left Behind
American post-apocalyptic novels
American Christian novels
American novels adapted into films
Apocalyptic fiction
Book series introduced in 1995
Christian Zionism
Dystopian novels
Imperialist works
Novel series
Tyndale House books
Rapture
pl:Dzień zagłady (utwór)
zh:末日迷蹤 |
18616 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lollardy | Lollardy | Lollardy, also known as Lollardism or the Lollard movement, was a Proto-Protestant Christian religious movement that existed from the mid-14th century until the 16th-century English Reformation. It was initially led by John Wycliffe, a Roman Catholic theologian who was dismissed from the University of Oxford in 1381 for criticism of the Roman Catholic Church. The Lollards' demands were primarily for reform of Western Christianity. They formulated their beliefs in the Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards.
Etymology
Lollard, Lollardi, or Loller was the popular derogatory nickname given to those without an academic background, educated (if at all) only in English, who were reputed to follow the teachings of John Wycliffe in particular, and were certainly considerably energized by the translation of the Bible into the English language. By the mid-15th century, "lollard" had come to mean a heretic in general.
The alternative, "Wycliffite", is generally accepted to be a more neutral term covering those of similar opinions, but having an academic background.
The term is said to have been coined by the Anglo-Irish cleric Henry Crumpe, but its origin is uncertain. The earliest official use of the name in England occurs in 1387 in a mandate of the Bishop of Worcester against five "poor preachers", nomine seu ritu Lollardorum confoederatos. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it most likely derives from Middle Dutch ("mumbler, mutterer"), from a verb lollen ("to mutter, mumble"). The word is much older than its English use; there were Lollards in the Netherlands at the beginning of the 14th century who were akin to the Fraticelli, Beghards, and other sectaries similar to the recusant Franciscans.
Originally the Dutch word was a colloquial name for a group of the harmless buriers of the dead during the Black Death, in the 14th century, known as Alexians, Alexian Brothers or Cellites. These were known colloquially as (Middle Dutch for "mumbling brothers"), or , from ("to sing softly"), from their chants for the dead. Middle English (akin to the verb loll, lull, the English cognate of Dutch lollen "to mutter, mumble") is recorded as an alternative spelling of Lollard, while its generic meaning "a lazy vagabond, an idler, a fraudulent beggar" is not recorded before 1582.
Two other possibilities for the derivation of Lollard are mentioned by the Oxford English Dictionary:
Latin , a weedy vetch (tares), supposedly a reference to the biblical Parable of the Tares (Matthew 13:24–30);
the surname “Lolhard” of an eminent Franciscan preacher in Guyenne, who converted to the Waldensian way. The region of Guyenne was at that time under English dominion, and his preaching influenced pious lay English. He was burned at Cologne in the 1370s. Earlier, another Waldensian teacher, also named “Lolhard”, was tried for heresy in Austria in 1315.
Beliefs
Lollardy was a religion of vernacular scripture. Lollards opposed many practices of the Catholic church. Anne Hudson has written that a form of sola scriptura underpinned Wycliffe's beliefs, but distinguished it from the more radical ideology that anything not permitted by scripture is forbidden. Instead, Hudson notes that Wycliffe's sola scriptura held the Bible to be "the only valid source of doctrine and the only pertinent measure of legitimacy."
With regard to the Eucharist, Lollards such as John Wycliffe, William Thorpe, and John Oldcastle, taught a view of the real presence of Christ in Holy Communion known as "consubstantiation" and did not accept the doctrine of transubstantiation, as taught by the Roman Catholic Church. The Plowman's Tale, a 16th-century Lollard poem, argues that theological debate about orthodox doctrine is less important than the Real Presence:
Wycliffite teachings on the Eucharist were declared heresy at the Blackfriars Council of 1382. William Sawtry, a priest, was reportedly burned in 1401 for his belief that "bread remains in the same nature as before" after consecration by a priest. In the early 15th century a priest named Richard Wyche was accused of false doctrine. When asked about consecration during his questioning, he repeated only his belief in the Real Presence. When asked if the host was still bread even after consecration, he answered only: "I believe that the host is the real body of Christ in the form of bread". Throughout his questioning he insisted that he was "not bound to believe otherwise than Holy Scripture says". Following the questioning, Wyche eventually recanted, after he was excommunicated and imprisoned. A suspect in 1517 summed up the Lollards' position: "Summe folys cummyn to churche thynckyng to see the good Lorde – what shulde they see there but bredde and wyne?"
Lollard teachings on the Eucharist are attested to in numerous primary source documents; it is the fourth of the Twelve Conclusions and the first of the Sixteen Points on which the Bishops accuse Lollards. It is discussed in The Testimony of William Thorpe, the Apology for Lollard Doctrines, Jack Upland, and Opus Arduum.
Simon Fish was condemned for several of the teachings in his pamphlet Supplication for the Beggars including his denial of purgatory and teachings that priestly celibacy was an invention of the Antichrist. He argued that earthly rulers have the right to strip Church properties, and that tithing was against the Gospel.
The Lollards did not believe that the church practices of baptism and confession were necessary for salvation. They considered praying to saints and honouring of their images to be a form of idolatry. Oaths, fasting and prayers for the dead were thought to have no scriptural basis. They had a poor opinion of the trappings of the Catholic Church, including holy bread, holy water, bells, organs, and church buildings. They rejected the value of papal pardons. Special vows were considered to be in conflict with the divine order established by Christ and were regarded as anathema. Sixteenth-century martyrologist John Foxe described four main beliefs of Lollardy: opposition to pilgrimages and saint worship, denial of the doctrine of transubstantiation, and a demand for English translation of the Scriptures.
One group of Lollards petitioned Parliament with The Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards by posting them on the doors of Westminster Hall in February 1395. While by no means a central statement of belief of the Lollards, the Twelve Conclusions reveal certain basic Lollard ideas. The first Conclusion rejects the acquisition of temporal wealth by Church leaders, as accumulating wealth leads them away from religious concerns and towards greed. The fourth Conclusion deals with the Lollard view that the Sacrament of the Eucharist is a debatable doctrine that is not clearly defined in the Bible. Whether the bread remains bread or becomes the literal body of Christ is not specified uniformly in the gospels. The sixth Conclusion states that officials of the Church should not concern themselves with secular matters when they hold a position of power within the Church, since this constitutes a conflict of interest between matters of the spirit and matters of the State. The eighth Conclusion points out the ludicrousness, in the minds of Lollards, of the reverence that is directed toward images of Christ's suffering. "If the cross of Christ, the nails, spear, and crown of thorns are to be honoured, then why not honour Judas's lips, if only they could be found?"
The Lollards stated that the Catholic Church had been corrupted by temporal matters and that its claim to be the true Church was not justified by its heredity. Part of this corruption involved prayers for the dead and chantries. These were seen as corrupt since they distracted priests from other work; instead, all should be prayed for equally. Lollards also had a tendency toward iconoclasm. Expensive church artwork was seen as an excess; they believed effort should be placed on helping the needy and preaching rather than working on expensive decorations. Icons were also seen as dangerous since many seemed to be worshipping the icons more fervently than they worshipped God.
Believing in a universal priesthood, the Lollards challenged the Church's authority to invest or to deny the divine authority to make a man a priest. Denying any special status to the priesthood, Lollards thought confession to a priest was unnecessary since according to them priests did not have the ability to forgive sins. Lollards challenged the practice of clerical celibacy and believed priests should not hold government positions as such temporal matters would likely interfere with their spiritual mission.
Lollards did not follow restrictions for fasting and abstinence in the Catholic Church. In heresy proceedings against Margery Baxter it was presented as evidence that a servant girl found bacon in a pot of oatmeal during the first Saturday of Lent. Non-observance of dietary restrictions was used as evidence of heresy in another Norfolk case against Thomas Mone where it was alleged that a piglet was eaten for Easter dinner when eating meat was forbidden.
History
Although Lollardy was denounced as a heresy (by the Roman Catholic Church and the early pre-reformation then Roman Catholic Church of England), initially Wycliffe and the Lollards were sheltered by John of Gaunt and other anti-clerical nobility, who may have wanted to use Lollard-advocated clerical reform to acquire new sources of revenue from England's monasteries. The University of Oxford also protected Wycliffe and similar academics on the grounds of academic freedom and, initially, allowed such persons to retain their positions despite their controversial views. Lollards first faced serious persecution after the Peasants' Revolt in 1381. While Wycliffe and other Lollards opposed the revolt, one of the peasants’ leaders, John Ball, preached Lollardy. The royalty and nobility then found Lollardy to be a threat not only to the Church, but to English society in general. The Lollards' small measure of protection evaporated. This change in status was also affected by the 1386 departure of John of Gaunt who left England to pursue the Crown of Castile.
A group of gentry active during the reign of Richard II (1377–99) were known as "Lollard Knights" either during or after their lives due to their acceptance of Wycliffe's claims. Henry Knighton, in his Chronicle, identifies the principal Lollard Knights as Thomas Latimer, John Trussell, Lewis Clifford, Sir John Peche (son of John Peche of Wormleighton), Richard Storey, and Reginald Hilton. Thomas Walsingham's Chronicle adds William Nevil and John Clanvowe to the list, and other potential members of this circle have been identified by their wills, which contain Lollard-inspired language about how their bodies are to be plainly buried and permitted to return to the soil whence they came. There is little indication that the Lollard Knights were specifically known as such during their lifetimes; they were men of discretion, and unlike Sir John Oldcastle years later, rarely gave any hint of open rebellion. However, they displayed a remarkable ability to retain important positions without falling victim to the various prosecutions of Wycliffe's followers occurring during their lifetimes.
Religious and secular authorities strongly opposed Lollardy. A primary opponent was Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, assisted by bishops like Henry le Despenser of Norwich, whom the chronicler Thomas Walsingham praised for his zeal. Paul Strohm has asked: "was the Lollard a genuine threat or a political pawn, agent of destabilising challenge, or a hapless threat of self-legitimizing Lancastrian discourse?"
As a prelude to the 16th-century Acts of Supremacy that mark the beginning of the English Reformation, De heretico comburendo was enacted in 1401 during the reign of Henry IV; traditionally heresy had been defined as an error in theological belief, but this statute equated theological heresy with sedition against political rulers.
Oldcastle Revolt and persecution
By the early 15th century, stern measures were undertaken by Church and state which drove Lollardy underground. One such measure was the 1410 burning at the stake of John Badby, a layman and craftsman who refused to renounce his Lollardy. He was the first layman to suffer capital punishment in England for the crime of heresy.
John Oldcastle, a close friend of Henry V of England and the basis for Falstaff in the Shakespearean history Henry IV, Part 1, was brought to trial in 1413 after evidence of his Lollard beliefs was uncovered. Oldcastle escaped from the Tower of London and organized an insurrection, which included an attempted kidnapping of the king. The rebellion failed, and Oldcastle was executed. Oldcastle's revolt made Lollardy seem even more threatening to the state, and persecution of Lollards became more severe.
A variety of other martyrs for the Lollard cause were executed during the next century, including the Amersham Martyrs in the early 1500s and Thomas Harding in 1532, one of the last Lollards to be made victim. A gruesome reminder of this persecution is the 'Lollards Pit' in Thorpe Wood, now Thorpe Hamlet, Norwich, Norfolk, where men are customablie burnt, including Thomas Bilney.
Subsequent events and influence
Lollards were effectively absorbed into Protestantism during the English Reformation, in which Lollardy played a role. Since Lollards had been underground for more than a hundred years, the extent of Lollardy and its ideas at the time of the Reformation is uncertain and a point of debate. Ancestors of Blanche Parry (the closest person to Elizabeth I for 56 years) and of Blanche Milborne (who raised Edward VI and Elizabeth I) had Lollard associations. However, many critics of the Reformation, including Thomas More, associated Protestants with Lollards. Leaders of the English Reformation, including Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, referred to Lollardy as well, and Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall of London called Lutheranism the "foster-child" of the Wycliffite heresy. Scholars debate whether Protestants actually drew influence from Lollardy or whether they referred to it to create a sense of tradition.
Despite the debate about the extent of Lollard influence there are ample records of the persecution of Lollards from this period. In the Diocese of London there are records of about 310 Lollards being prosecuted or forced to abjure from 1510 to 1532. In Lincoln 45 cases against Lollardy were heard in 1506–1507 and in 1521 there were 50 abjurations and 5 burnings of Lollards. In 1511 Archbishop Warham presided over the abjuration of 41 Lollards from Kent and the burning of 5.
The extent of Lollardy in the general populace at this time is unknown, but the prevalence of Protestant iconoclasm in England suggests Lollard ideas may still have had some popular influence if Huldrych Zwingli was not the source, as Lutheranism did not advocate iconoclasm. Lollards were persecuted again between 1554 and 1559 during the Revival of the Heresy Acts under the Catholic Mary I, which specifically suppressed heresy and Lollardy.
The similarity between Lollards and later English Protestant groups such as the Baptists, Puritans, and Quakers also suggests some continuation of Lollard ideas through the Reformation.
Representations in art and literature
The Roman Catholic Church used art as an anti-Lollard weapon. Lollards were represented as foxes dressed as monks or priests preaching to a flock of geese on misericords. These representations alluded to the story of the preaching fox found in popular medieval literature such as The History of Reynard the Fox and The Shifts of Raynardine. The fox lured the geese closer and closer with its words until it was able to snatch a victim to devour. The moral of this story was that foolish people are seduced by false doctrines.
See also
Margery Baxter
Ecclesiae Regimen
Euchites
General Prologue of the Wycliffe Bible
Hussites
William Langland
Nicholas Love
Thomas Netter
Piers Plowman
Piers Plowman tradition
Waldensians
Citations
General references
Arnold, John H. (2019). "Voicing Dissent: Heresy Trials in Later Medieval England". Past & Present.
.
.
.
.
.
.
External links
The Lollard Society—society dedicated to providing a forum for the study of the Lollards
"John Wyclif and the Lollards" (45 mins.; discussion); episode of In Our Time, BBC Radio 4 |
18623 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lausanne | Lausanne | Lausanne (, , , ; ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the Swiss canton of Vaud. It is a hilly city, situated on the shores of Lake Geneva, about halfway between the Jura Mountains and the Alps, and facing the French town of Évian-les-Bains across the lake. Lausanne is located northeast of Geneva, its nearest larger neighbour..
The municipality of Lausanne has a population of about 140,000, making it the fourth largest city in Switzerland after Basel, Geneva, and Zurich, with the entire agglomeration area having about 420,000 inhabitants (as of January 2019). The metropolitan area of Lausanne-Geneva (including Vevey-Montreux, Yverdon-les-Bains, Valais and foreign parts), commonly designated as Arc lémanique was over 1.3 million inhabitants in 2017 and is the fastest growing in Switzerland.
Initially a Celtic and Roman settlement on the shores of the lake, Lausanne became a town at the foot of Notre Dame, a cathedral built in the 12th century. In the 20th century, Lausanne became a focus of international sport, hosting the International Olympic Committee (which has recognized the city as the "Olympic Capital" since 1994), the Court of Arbitration for Sport and some 55 international sport associations. It lies in a noted wine-growing region. The city has a 28-station metro system, making it the smallest city in the world to have a rapid transit system. Lausanne hosted the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics.
History
The Romans built a military camp, which they called , at the site of a Celtic settlement, near the lake where Vidy and Ouchy are situated; on the hill above was a fort called or (The "-y" suffix is common to many place names of Roman origin in the region (e.g.) Prilly, Pully, Lutry, etc.). By the 2nd century AD, it was known as and in 280 as . By 400, it was , and in 990 it was mentioned as .
After the fall of the Roman Empire, insecurity forced the residents of Lausanne to move to its current centre, a hilly site that was easier to defend. The city which emerged from the camp was ruled by the Counts of Savoy and the Bishop of Lausanne.
From 888 to 1032, the initially relatively small town belonged to the kingdom of Upper Burgundy. During the 11th century, Lausanne developed into a political, economic and religious center. The city became the center of the secular rule of the bishops. In the period that followed, especially in the 12th and 13th centuries, Lausanne really flourished. Finally, in 1275, the Lausanne Cathedral was consecrated in the presence of Pope Gregory X and King Rudolf I of Germany.
It was invaded by forces from the canton of Bern and remained under their domination from 1536 to 1798. The iconoclastic Bernese stripped the Lausanne cathedral of its Roman Catholic trappings, and a number of its cultural treasures, including the hanging tapestries in the cathedral, were permanently removed. Lausanne has made repeated requests to recover them, but they never were returned.
After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, Lausanne became (along with Geneva) a place of refuge for French Huguenots. In 1729, a seminary was opened by Antoine Court and Benjamin Duplan. By 1750, 90 pastors had been sent back to France to work clandestinely; this number would rise to 400. Official persecution ended in 1787; a faculty of Protestant theology was established at Montauban in 1808, and the Lausanne seminary was finally closed on 18 April 1812. During the Napoleonic Wars, the city's status changed. In 1803, it became the capital of a newly formed Swiss canton, Vaud, under which it joined the Swiss Federation.
Modern history and heritage
In 1923 the city was the venue for the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne, which established the modern Turkish Republic. In 1964, the city played host to the Swiss National Exhibition, displaying its newly found confidence to play host to major international events.
From the 1950s to 1970s, a large number of Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese immigrated to Lausanne, settling mostly in the industrial suburb of Renens.
The city has served as a refuge for European artists. While under the care of a psychiatrist at Lausanne, T. S. Eliot composed most of his 1922 poem The Waste Land ("by the waters of Leman I sat down and wept"). Ernest Hemingway also visited from Paris with his wife during the 1920s, to holiday. In fact, many creative people – such as historian Edward Gibbon and Romantic era poets Shelley and Byron — have sojourned, lived, and worked in Lausanne or nearby.
The city has been traditionally quiet, but in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a series of demonstrations took place that exposed tensions between young people and the police. In the early 1980s, the Lôzane Bouge protests demanded the city "open an autonomous centre, lower cinema ticket prices, liberalise cannabis and end the process of keeping records on homosexuals, all accompanied by leaflets, chants, and songs in the street". Protests occurred in 2003, against the G8 meetings.
Geography
Topography
The most important geographical feature of the area surrounding Lausanne is Lake Geneva (Lac Léman in French). Lausanne is built on the southern slope of the Swiss plateau, with a difference in elevation of about between the lakeshore at Ouchy and its northern edge bordering Le Mont-sur-Lausanne and Épalinges. Lausanne boasts a dramatic panorama over the lake and the Swiss and Savoyan Alps.
In addition to its generally southward-sloping layout, the centre of the city is the site of an ancient river, the Flon, which has been covered since the 19th century. The former river forms a gorge running through the middle of the city south of the old city centre, generally following the course of the present Rue Centrale, with several bridges crossing the depression to connect the adjacent neighbourhoods. Due to the considerable differences in elevation, visitors should make a note as to which plane of elevation they are on and where they want to go, otherwise they will find themselves tens of metres below or above the street which they are trying to negotiate. The name Flon is also used for the metro station located in the gorge.
The municipality includes the villages of Vidy, Cour, Ouchy, Mornex, Chailly, La Sallaz, Vennes, Montblesson, Vers-chez-les-Blanc, Montheron and Chalet-à-Gobet () as well as the exclave of Vernand.
Lausanne is located at the limit between the extensive wine-growing regions of Lavaux (to the east) and la Côte (to the west).
Lausanne has an area, , of (depending on calculation method). Of this area, or 15.0% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 38.8% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 45.9% is settled (buildings or roads), or 0.2% is either rivers or lakes and or 0.0% is unproductive land.
Of the built-up area, industrial buildings made up 1.6% of the total area while housing and buildings made up 22.8% and transportation infrastructure made up 12.4%. Power and water infrastructure as well as other special developed areas made up 1.6% of the area while parks, green belts and sports fields made up 7.4%. Out of the forested land, all of the forested land area is covered with heavy forests. Of the agricultural land, 9.4% is used for growing crops and 4.9% is pastures. All the water in the municipality is in lakes and streams.
The municipality was part of the old Lausanne District until it was dissolved on 31 August 2006, and it became the capital of the new district of Lausanne.
Climate
Lausanne has an average of 119.7 days of rain or snow per year and on average receives of precipitation. The wettest month is May during which time Lausanne receives an average of of rain. During this month there is precipitation for an average of 12.1 days. The driest month of the year is February with an average of of precipitation over 8.8 days.
The USDA Hardiness Zone for Lausanne-Pully is 8b with an average minimum temperature of −7.0 C over the past 20 years (1997–2016).
Politics
Coat of arms
The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Gules, chief argent.
Administrative divisions
The city is divided into 18 quartiers, or districts, sometimes composed of several neighborhoods. They are: Centre (1), Maupas/Valency (2), Sébeillon/Malley (3), Montoie/Bourdonnette (4), Montriond/Cour (5), Sous-Gare/Ouchy (6), Montchoisi (7), Florimont/Chissiez (8), Mousquines/Bellevue (9), Vallon/Béthusy (10), Chailly/Rovéréaz (11), Sallaz/Vennes/Séchaud (12), Sauvabelin (13), Borde/Bellevaux (14), Vinet/Pontaise (15), Bossons/Blécherette (16), Beaulieu/Grey/Boisy (17), and Les Zones foraines (90).
Government
The municipality (la Municipalité) constitutes the executive government of the City of Lausanne and operates as a collegiate authority. It is composed of seven councilors (), each presiding over a directorate. One of the members act as mayor (syndic). In the mandate period 2021–2026 (la législature) the Municipality is presided by le Syndic Grégoire Junod. Directoral tasks, coordination measures and implementation of laws decreed by the Communal Council are carried by the Municipality. The regular election of the Municipality by any inhabitant valid to vote is held every five years. Any resident of Lausanne allowed to vote can be elected as a member of the Municipality. Since 14 April 2003, due to the constitution by canton of Vaud not only Swiss citizen have the right to vote and elect and being elected on communal level, but also foreigners with a residence permit of at least 10 years in Switzerland and 3 years in the canton of Vaud. The current mandate period is from 1 July 2016 to 30 June 2021. The delegates are elected by means of a system of Majorz. The mayor is later on elected as such by a public election as well by a system of Majorz, while the heads of the other departments are assigned by the collegiate. The executive body holds its meetings in the Town Hall (L'Hôtel de Ville), in the old city on Place de la Palud.
, Lausanne's Municipality is made up of three representatives of the PS (Social Democratic Party, of whom one is also the mayor), and two members of PES (Green Party), and one each of le Parti Ouvrier et Populaire Vaudois (POP) & gauche en mouvement (an alliance of the left parties POP (Parti Suisse du Travail – Parti Ouvrier et Populaire) and solidaritéS and indépendant.e.s), and PLR (Les Libéraux-Radicaux (PLR)), giving the left parties a very strong six out of seven seats. The last election was held in March 2021.
Simon Affolter is Town Chancellor (chancelier municipal) since for the Municipality.
Parliament
The Communal Council (Conseil communal) holds legislative power. It is made up of 100 members, with elections held every five years. The Communal Council decrees regulations and by-laws that are executed by the Municipality and the administration. The sessions of the Communal Council are public. Unlike members of the Municipality, members of the Communal Council are not politicians by profession, and they are paid a fee based on their attendance. Any resident of Lausanne allowed to vote can be elected as a member of the Communal Council. Since 14 April 2003, due to the constitution by canton of Vaud not only Swiss citizen have the right to vote and elect and being elected on communal level, but also foreigners with a residence permit of at least 10 years in Switzerland and 3 years in the canton of Vaud. The Parliament holds its meetings in the Town Hall (Hôtel de Ville), in the old city on Place de la Palud.
The last election of the Communal Council was held on 28 February 2016 for the mandate period (la législature) from 1 June 2016 to 31 May 2021. Currently the Communal Council consist of 33 members of the Social Democratic Party (PS), 21 Les Libéraux-Radicaux (PLR), 17 Green Party (PES), 12 Swiss People's Party (UDC), 11 Ensemble à Gauche (an alliance of the left parties POP (Parti Suisse du Travail – Parti Ouvrier et Populaire) and solidaritéS and indépendant.e.s), and 6 Le Centre (an alliance of Christian Democratic People's Party (PDC) and Green Liberal Party (pvl)).
Elections
National Council
In the 2019 federal election for the Swiss National Council the most popular party was the Green Party which received 27.3% (+11.4) of the vote. The next five most popular parties were the PS (26.7%, -4.2), PLR (15.1%, -3.6), the UDC (9.3%, -6), the POP/solidaritéS (9%, +1.9), the pvl (6.9%, +3.4). In the federal election a total of 26,070 votes were cast, and the voter turnout was 39.7%.
In the 2015 federal election for the Swiss National Council the most popular party was the PS which received 30.8% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the PLR (18.7%), the Green Party (15.9%), and the UDC (15.4%). In the federal election, a total of 26,116 voters were cast, and the voter turnout was 41.0%.
Twin towns and sister cities
Akhisar, Turkey
Osijek, Croatia
Pernik, Bulgaria
Demographics
Population
Lausanne has a population () of . , 42% of the population were resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (1999–2009) the population has changed at a rate of 9.9%. It has changed at a rate of 8.3% due to migration and at a rate of 2.6% due to births and deaths. The population of the greater Lausanne area (grand Lausanne) is 402,900 (as of December 2014).
Of the population in the municipality, 58% or 80,828 have a Swiss citizenship, while 16,908 or 12.1% are from Lausanne and still lived there in December 2013. There were 27,653 or 19.8% who are from somewhere else in the same canton, while 36,276 or 26.0% have a Swiss citizenship in another canton. 58,9562 or 42.0% have a foreign citizenship.
In 2000, most of the population spoke French (98,424 or 78.8%), with German being second most common (5,365 or 4.3%) and Italian being third (4,976 or 4.0%). There were 62 people who speak Romansh.
In there were 840 live births to Swiss citizens and 623 births to non-Swiss citizens, and in same time span there were 862 deaths of Swiss citizens and 127 non-Swiss citizen deaths. Ignoring immigration and emigration, the population of Swiss citizens decreased by 22 while the foreign population increased by 496. There were 9 Swiss men and 57 Swiss women who emigrated from Switzerland. At the same time, there were 2230 non-Swiss men and 1802 non-Swiss women who immigrated from another country to Switzerland. The total Swiss population change in 2008 (from all sources, including moves across municipal borders) was an increase of 883 and the non-Swiss population increased by 2221 people. This represents a population growth rate of 2.6%.
The age distribution, , in Lausanne is; 11,818 children or 9.4% of the population are between 0 and 9 years old and 12,128 or 9.7% are between 10 and 19. Of the adult population, 21,101 people or 16.8% of the population are between 20 and 29 years old. 22,158 people or 17.6% are between 30 and 39, 18,016 people or 14.4% are between 40 and 49, and 13,940 people or 11.1% are between 50 and 59. The senior population distribution is 11,041 people or 8.8% of the population are between 60 and 69 years old, 8,277 people or 6.6% are between 70 and 79, there are 5,896 people or 4.7% who are between 80 and 89, and there are 1,171 people or 0.9% who are 90 and older.
, there were 58,100 people who were single and never married in the municipality. There were 48,990 married individuals, 7,797 widows or widowers and 10,027 individuals who are divorced.
the average number of residents per living room was 0.64 which is about equal to the cantonal average of 0.61 per room. In this case, a room is defined as space of a housing unit of at least as normal bedrooms, dining rooms, living rooms, kitchens and habitable cellars and attics. About 6.5% of the total households were owner occupied, or in other words did not pay rent (though they may have a mortgage or a rent-to-own agreement).
, there were 62,258 private households in the municipality, and an average of 1.9 persons per household. There were 31,205 households that consist of only one person and 2,184 households with five or more people. Out of a total of 63,833 households that answered this question, 48.9% were households made up of just one person and there were 306 adults who lived with their parents. Of the rest of the households, there are 13,131 married couples without children and 11,603 married couples with children. There were 3,883 single parents with a child or children. There were 2,130 households that were made up of unrelated people, and 1,575 households that were made up of some sort of institution or another collective housing.
there were 1,833 single family homes (or 23.1% of the total) out of a total of 7,925 inhabited buildings. There were 3,634 multi-family buildings (45.9%), along with 1,955 multi-purpose buildings that were mostly used for housing (24.7%) and 503 other use buildings (commercial or industrial) that also had some housing (6.3%). Of the single family homes 324 were built before 1919, while 153 were built between 1990 and 2000. The greatest number of single family homes (498) were built between 1919 and 1945. The most multi-family homes (933) were built before 1919 and the next most (906) were built between 1919 and 1945. There were 180 multi-family houses built between 1996 and 2000.
there were 69,383 apartments in the municipality. The most common apartment size was 3 rooms of which there were 22,408. There were 9,579 single room apartments and 7,388 apartments with five or more rooms. Of these apartments, a total of 61,056 apartments (88.0% of the total) were permanently occupied, while 6,840 apartments (9.9%) were seasonally occupied and 1,487 apartments (2.1%) were empty. , the construction rate of new housing units was 2.1 new units per 1000 residents.
the average price to rent an average apartment in Lausanne was 1064.08 Swiss francs (CHF) per month (US$850, £480, €680 approx. exchange rate from 2003). The average rate for a one-room apartment was 597.46 CHF (US$480, £270, €380), a two-room apartment was about 792.33 CHF (US$630, £360, €510), a three-room apartment was about 1044.64 CHF (US$840, £470, €670) and a six or more room apartment cost an average of 2024.55 CHF (US$1620, £910, €1300). The average apartment price in Lausanne was 95.3% of the national average of 1116 CHF. The vacancy rate for the municipality, , was 0.17%.
Historic population
The historical population is given in the following chart:
Religion
From the Reformation in the 16th century, the city was mostly Protestant until the late 20th century, when it received substantial immigration, particularly from largely Catholic countries. Catholics now form a plurality of the city's population. The Jewish community gathers at the Synagogue of Lausanne.
From the , 47,225 people (37.8% of the population) were Roman Catholic, while 33,993 (27.2%) belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church. Of the rest of the population, there were 2,698 members of an Orthodox church (2.16%), there were 65 individuals (0.05%) who belonged to the Christian Catholic Church, and there were 4,437 individuals (3.55%) who belonged to another Christian church. There were 849 individuals (0.68%) who were Jewish, and 7,501 (6.00%) who were Muslim. There were 452 individuals who were Buddhist, 772 individuals who were Hindu and 343 individuals who belonged to another church. 21,080 (16.88%) belonged to no church, were agnostic or atheist, and 7,590 individuals (6.08%) did not answer the question.
Crime
In 2014 the crime rate, of crimes listed in the Swiss Criminal Code, in Lausanne was 167.3 per thousand residents. During the same period, the rate of drug crimes was 49.5 per thousand residents, and the rate of violations of immigration, visa and work permit laws was 21 per thousand residents.
Transport
Lausanne is served by an extensive network of local, national and international public transport. National and international passenger trains of the Swiss Federal Railways depart from Lausanne railway station, which is also the hub of the RER Vaud commuter rail system, and a stop on the city's metro. The metro and local buses are operated by Transports publics de la région lausannoise (TL), with many routes run using trolleybuses. Additional commuter trains are run by the Lausanne–Echallens–Bercher railway (LEB) from Lausanne-Flon station. Ships across Lake Geneva are provided by the Compagnie Générale de Navigation sur le lac Léman (CGN).
Lausanne became the first city in Switzerland to have a rubber-tyred metro system, with the m2 Line which opened in October 2008. The rolling stock is a shorter version of the one used on Paris Métro Line 14. Further expansion of the system is planned, as is the re-introduction of trams.
Lausanne is connected to the A1 motorway on its west side (Geneva – Zürich axis) and to the A9 on its north and east side (for transit with Italy and France); the interchange between these two motorways is on the north-west side of the city.
Lausanne Airport is located at Blécherette, and also houses a Boeing 737 Simulator. The city is also directly linked by train to the Geneva International Airport, four times an hour, in 42min.
Economy
, Lausanne had an unemployment rate of 8%. , there were 114 people employed in the primary economic sector and about 25 businesses involved in this sector. 6,348 people were employed in the secondary sector and there were 698 businesses in this sector. 83,157 people were employed in the tertiary sector, with 6,501 businesses in this sector.
There were 59,599 residents of the municipality who were employed in some capacity, of which women made up 47.4% of the workforce. the total number of full-time equivalent jobs was 75,041. The number of jobs in the primary sector was 93, of which 56 were in agriculture, 34 were in forestry or lumber production and 3 were in fishing or fisheries. The number of jobs in the secondary sector was 6,057 of which 1,515 or (25.0%) were in manufacturing, 24 or (0.4%) were in mining and 3,721 (61.4%) were in construction. The number of jobs in the tertiary sector was 68,891. In the tertiary sector; 8,520 or 12.4% were in wholesale or retail sales or the repair of motor vehicles, 2,955 or 4.3% were in the movement and storage of goods, 4,345 or 6.3% were in a hotel or restaurant, 4,671 or 6.8% were in the information industry, 6,729 or 9.8% were the insurance or financial industry, 8,213 or 11.9% were technical professionals or scientists, 5,756 or 8.4% were in education and 14,312 or 20.8% were in health care.
, there were 55,789 workers who commuted into the municipality and 19,082 workers who commuted away. The municipality is a net importer of workers, with about 2.9 workers entering the municipality for every one leaving. About 1.9% of the workforce coming into Lausanne are coming from outside Switzerland, while 0.1% of the locals commute out of Switzerland for work. Of the working population, 40.9% used public transportation to get to work, and 35.1% used a private car.
Large companies headquartered in Lausanne and its metropolitan area include:
Banque cantonale vaudoise, banking
Bata Corporation, shoe manufacturing
Bobst SA, machinery
Compangie financière Tradition, financial services
CGN, transportation
Edipresse, publishing
ELCA, IT
Eni Suisse SA, oil & gas
Kudelski Group, IT
Landolt & Cie, banking
Logitech, computer peripherals
Nespresso, coffee (an operating unit of Nestlé)
Payot, retail bookstore
Philip Morris International, a tobacco company .
Retraites Populaires, financial services
Sophia Genetics, biotechnology
Tetra Laval, packaging
Vaudoise Assurances, insurance
Education
In Lausanne about 40,118 or (32.1%) of the population have completed non-mandatory upper secondary education, and 22,934 or (18.4%) have completed additional higher education (either university or a Fachhochschule). Of the 22,934 who completed tertiary schooling, 38.7% were Swiss men, 31.3% were Swiss women, 17.1% were non-Swiss men and 12.9% were non-Swiss women.
In the 2009/2010 school year there were a total of 12,244 students in the Lausanne school district. In the Vaud cantonal school system, two years of non-obligatory pre-school are provided by the political districts. During the school year, the political district provided pre-school care for a total of 2,648 children of which 1,947 children (73.5%) received subsidized pre-school care. The canton's primary school program requires students to attend for four years. There were 6,601 students in the municipal primary school program. The obligatory lower secondary school program lasts for six years and there were 5,244 students in those schools. There were also 399 students who were home schooled or attended another non-traditional school.
Lausanne is home to a number of museums including; the Collection de l'art brut, the Espace Arlaud, the Fondation de l'Hermitage, the Musée cantonal d'archéologie et d'histoire, the Musée cantonal de géologie, the Musée cantonal de zoologie, the Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts, the Musée de l'Élysée and the Musée historique de Lausanne. In 2009 the Collection de l'art brut was visited by 27,028 visitors (the average in previous years was 33,356). The Espace Arlaud was visited by 9,222 visitors (the average in previous years was 14,206). The Fondation de l'Hermitage was visited by 89,175 visitors (the average in previous years was 74,839). The Musée cantonal d'archéologie et d'histoire was visited by 14,841 visitors (the average in previous years was 15,775). The Musée cantonal de zoologie was visited by 30,794 visitors (the average in previous years was 30,392). The Musée cantonal de géologie was visited by 28,299 visitors (the average in previous years was 24,248). The Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts was visited by 26,456 visitors (the average in previous years was 26,384). The Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts was visited by 28,554 visitors (the average in previous years was 22,879). The Musée de l'Élysée was visited by 36,775 visitors (the average in previous years was 37,757). The Musée historique de Lausanne was visited by 23,116 visitors (the average in previous years was 22,851).
, there were 12,147 students in Lausanne who came from another municipality, while 2,258 residents attended schools outside the municipality.
Libraries
Lausanne is home to eight large libraries or collections of libraries. These libraries include the Cantonal and University Library of Lausanne, the library of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), the libraries of the Réseau EPFL, the Bibliothèque municipale de Lausanne, the Haute école de travail social et de la santé (EESP), the HECV Santé, the Haute école de la santé La Source and the École cantonale d'art de Lausanne (ECAL). There was a combined total () of 3,496,260 books or other media in the libraries, and in the same year a total of 1,650,534 items were loaned out.
Tertiary education
Lausanne enjoys some world class education and research establishments (see also Lausanne campus), including private schools, attended by students from around the world.
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL)
University of Lausanne (UNIL)
HEC Lausanne, Faculty of Business and Economics of the University of Lausanne
University Hospital of Lausanne (CHUV), a hospital centre with associated research
École hôtelière de Lausanne (EHL)
École cantonale d'art de Lausanne (ECAL)
International Institute for Management Development (IMD)
Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration (IDHEAP)
AISTS ("International Academy of Sports Science and Technology")
Business School Lausanne (BSL)
The Lausanne campus of the University of the Nations
Pepperdine University maintains an international study campus in Lausanne
Primary and secondary schools
International schools
École française de Lausanne-Valmont
Lycée Pareto (Italian school)
Brillantmont International School
International School of Lausanne
Collège Champittet
Private schools
École Vinet
École Alphalif
Culture and arts
Heritage sites of national significance
There are 46 buildings or sites that are listed as Swiss heritage sites of national significance. Additionally, the entire old city of Lausanne and the Vernand-Dessus region are listed in the Inventory of Swiss Heritage Sites.
Religious Buildings: Notre-Dame Cathedral, Swiss Reformed Church of Saint-François, Swiss Reformed Church of Saint-Laurent and the Synagogue at Avenue de Florimont.
Civic Structures: Former Hôpital at Rue Mercerie 24, Former Federal Tribunal, the Former Académie at Rue Cité-Devant 7, Casino de Montbenon, St-Maire Castle, Bois-de-Vaux Cemetery, Fondation de l'Hermitage and House de maître, Railway station, Beau-Rivage Palace, City Hall, Hôtel des Postes, Administration Building of André & Cie. S.A., Administration Building of the Vaudoise Assurances, Apartment and Office Building at Rue du Grand-Chêne 8, Les Bains de Bellerive, l'Estérel House, House at Chemin de Chandolin 4, the Mon-Repos estate at Parc de Mon-Repos, Olympic Museum and Archives of the International Olympic Committee, the vessels of the CGN (La Suisse (1910), Savoie (1914), Simplon (1920), Rhône (1927)), Pont Chauderon, the Vernand-Dessus rural site, Site de l'Expo 64 avec Théatre de Vidy, the Tour Bel-Air and the University Hospital of Lausanne (CHUV).
Museums and Libraries: Former Residence of the Bishop of Lausanne which is now the Lausanne Museum of History, Bibliothèque des cèdres (former Bibliothèque des pasteurs), Beaulieu Castle and the Collection de l'art brut, Fondation Toms Pauli Collection de tapisseries and d'art textile, Galeries Saint-François, Musée de l'Élysée, Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts (MUDAC), Cantonal Botanical Museum and Gardens, the Roman Museum, the Palais de Rumine with the Musée cantonal de géologie, Cantonal Museum of Zoology, Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts, (Cabinet des médailles) and Musée cantonal d'archéologie et d'histoire.
Archives: Archives of the Banque Vaudoise, Archives of the City of Lausanne, Archives of Énergie Ouest Suisse (EOS), the Radio Suisse Romande archives and the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland with archives.
Archeological sites: The Roman era/medieval hill-top city and the prehistoric settlement and Roman era Vicus of Vidy (Lousanna).
Culture
The Orchestre de chambre de Lausanne, the Lausanne Opera and the Ensemble vocal de Lausanne provide a diverse and rich musical life. The latter has been under the direction of Michel Corboz for many years.
In January, the Prix de Lausanne, a famous dance competition, takes place at the Palais de Beaulieu (the biggest theatre in Switzerland) over a one-week period. The event attracts dancers and some of the big names in dance from all over the world.
The Swiss Film Archive is based in Lausanne and the city hosts film festivals such as the Festival cinémas d'Afrique and the Lausanne Underground Film and Music Festival. In addition to modern cinemas, the "Capitole" (in activity since 1929) is the biggest cinema in Switzerland (currently 867 seats).
The city hosted the Eurovision Song Contest 1989. Each July, the Festival de la cité is held in the old town. Other music festivals include the Bach Festival, the Festival et concours Bach de Lausanne, which follows the Nuit de musées (museums' night) in the fall season.
Lausanne is also the home of the Béjart Ballet.
Monuments
Cathedral (restored by Viollet-le-Duc)
Saint-Maire Castle (Château Saint-Maire)
Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland
Town Hall
Museums
Lausanne is also the site of many museums:
Archizoom
Musée Bolo
Olympic Museum (Musée olympique)
Musée de l'Élysée
("Hermitage Foundation")
Collection of Outsider Art (Collection de l'art brut)
Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts (Musée de design et d'arts appliqués contemporains)
(Musée historique de Lausanne)
Musée Arlaud or "Espace Arlaud"
Espace des inventions ("Science Center for Kids") at the
– Musée de la main ("Museum of the Hand")
Cantonal Botanical Museum and Gardens (Musée et jardins botaniques cantonaux)
(Musée monétaire cantonal) (formerly "Cabinet cantonal des médailles")
(Musée cantonal d'archéologie et d'histoire)
Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts (Musée cantonal des beaux-arts)
Cantonal Museum of Zoology (Musée cantonal de zoologie)
(Musée cantonal de Géologie)
Art galleries
Main contemporary art galleries
Galerie Lucy Mackintosh (closed)
Dubner Moderne
Synopsism
Espace Saint-François
Art centers or artist-run galleries
Circuit
Galerie Galerie 1m3
Doll espace d'art contemporain
Music
Contemporary composer Leonardo Balada's Symphony No. 4 is subtitled 'Lausanne'.
Igor Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat was premiered in Lausanne in September 1918.
Sports
Lausanne is home to the IOC, with water sports available on the nearby lake and mountaineering in the nearby mountains. Cycling is also a common pastime, with the vineyards in the surrounding hills providing extensive views and challenging routes. There is an annual Track and field meeting (Athletissima), road running through the city (the 20 km (12 mi) of Lausanne), the Tour de Romandie road cycling race, Marathon of Lausanne and triathlon competition, among other sports events. The two most important sports are ice hockey and football. Lausanne hosted the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics and the 2020 IIHF World Championship.
Local
Lausanne Hockey Club
Lausanne-Sport Football Club
Lausanne-Sports Aviron Rowing Club
Lausanne Sharks American Football Club
Federation of Swiss Bandy
Stade Lausanne Rugby Club
Lausanne University Club (Luc) Rugby
International
Lausanne hosts the headquarters of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), and many other international sport associations:
European Athletics Association (EAA)
International Baseball Federation (IBAF)
International Federation for Equestrian Sports (, FEI)
International Fencing Federation (, FIE)
International Golf Federation (, IGF)
International Federation of Gymnastics (, FIG)
International Hockey Federation (, FIH)
International Rowing Federation (, FISA)
International Skating Union (ISU)
International Swimming Federation (, FINA)
International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF)
International Triathlon Union (ITU)
International University Sports Federation (, FISU)
International Volleyball Federation (, FIVB)
International Wushu Federation (IWUF)
World Air Sports Federation (, FAI)
World Archery Federation (WA; , FITA)
FIDE(International Chess Federation)
International relations
In March–April 2015, the negotiations on Iran nuclear deal framework for a comprehensive agreement on the Iranian nuclear programme took place at the Beau-Rivage Palace, where the foreign ministers and delegations from the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, China, France, the European Union, Germany (P5+1) and Iran were also hosted. The final press conference, on 2 April 2015, was held at the EPFL Learning Centre.
On 24 July 1923, the Treaty of Lausanne was signed at the Beau-Rivage Palace.
Notable people
Public service, the military and the church
Pierre Viret (1511–1571), a Reformed theologian and Protestant reformer
David-Louis Constant de Rebecque (1722–1785), colonel and commandant of a Swiss regiment
Alexandre Vinet (1797–1847), a Swiss critic and theologian
Amalric-Frédéric Buscarlet (1836–1928), overseas minister of the Church of Scotland, promoted the building of the Scots Kirk, Lausanne in 1876
Major General Lionel Dunsterville CB CSI (1865–1946), a British general, who led Dunsterforce
Baron Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim (1867–1951), Finnish field marshal and president
Gustave Biéler DSO MBE (1904–1944), a Special Operations Executive agent during WWII
Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh (1914–2003), Russian Orthodox ecclesiastic
Georges-André Chevallaz (1915–2002), an historian, politician, Mayor of Lausanne 1958–1973 and member of the Swiss Federal Council 1974–1983
Jean-François Bergier (1931–2009), an historian, chaired the Bergier commission
Jean-Pascal Delamuraz (1936–1998), Swiss politician
Daniel Brélaz (born 1950), a mathematician and politician, Mayor of Lausanne 2001–2016
Simone de Montmollin (born 1968), member of the National Council, born in Lausanne
Science and architecture
Jean-Nicolas-Sébastien Allamand FRS (1716–1787), a Swiss-Dutch natural philosopher
Johann Ludwig Burckhardt (1784–1817), a traveller, geographer and orientalist
Oswald Heer (1809–1883), Swiss geologist and naturalist
Eugène Viollet-le-Duc (1814–1879), a French architect and author
Eugène Renevier (1831–1906), geologist and professor at the University of Lausanne
Léon Walras (1834–1910), Economist, Professor of Economics at University of Lausanne, co-founder of the Lausanne School of economics, together with: Vilfredo Pareto
Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923), Economist, engineer, sociologist, philosopher, Professor of Economics at University of Lausanne, co-founder of the Lausanne School of economics, together with: Léon Walras
Sir Waldemar Haffkine (1860–1930), Ukrainian bacteriologist
Auguste Piccard (1884–1962), a physicist, inventor and explorer
Michel Mayor (born 1942), an astrophysicist, winner of the 2015 Kyoto Prize
Bernard Tschumi (born 1944), an architect, writer and educator associated with deconstructivism
Writing
Jean Bagnyon (1412–1487), a lawyer, historian, political writer and translator
Jean-Pierre de Crousaz (1663–1750), a writer, theologian and philosopher
Edward Gibbon FRS (1737–1794), an English historian, writer and Member of Parliament
Benjamin Constant (1767–1830), a political activist and writer on politics and religion
Albert Chavannes (1836–1903), a Swiss-born American author, philosopher and sociologist
Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz (1878–1947), a French-speaking Swiss writer
Georges Simenon (1903–1989), a Belgian writer, created Jules Maigret
Alejo Carpentier (1904–1980), a Cuban novelist, essayist, and musicologist
Jean Anouilh (1910–1987), French dramatist
Han Suyin (1917–2012), a Chinese-born Eurasian, a physician and author of books on China
Nanos Valaoritis (born 1921), a Greek writer, poet, novelist and playwright
Albin Schram (1926–2005), collected letters by royals, scientists, writers and philosophers
Jon Steele (born 1950), an American expat author, cameraman and journalist
Acting
George Sanders (1906–1972), a British film and television actor and author
James Mason (1909–1984), an English actor
Freddy Buache (born 1924), cinema critic and director of the Swiss Film Archive 1951–1996
Capucine (1928–1990), French actress and model
Fernand Melgar (born 1961), a Swiss actor, producer, director and film editor
Vincent Perez (born 1964), film actor and director
David Bennent (born 1966), actor
Élodie Frenck (born 1974), a Peruvian-Swiss-French actress
James Thiérrée (born 1974), a circus performer, violinist, actor and director
Painting
François Bocion (1828–1890), artist and teacher, painted scenes around Lake Geneva
Eugène Grasset (1845–1917), a decorative artist, a pioneer in Art Nouveau design
Elizabeth Thompson (Lady Butler) (1846–1933), a British painter of history paintings
Théophile Steinlen (1859–1923), a French Art Nouveau painter and printmaker
Marius Borgeaud (1861–1924), a Post-Impressionist painter
Félix Vallotton (1865–1925), a Swiss/French painter and printmaker associated with Les Nabis
Alice Bailly (1872–1938), a radical painter, participated in the Dada movement
René Auberjonois (1872–1957), a post-impressionist painter
Ernest Boiceau (1881–1950), artist and designer
Aloise Corbaz (1886–1964), outsider artist
Lucienne Peiry (born 1961), PhD in the history of art, specialist in Outsider Art ("Art Brut"), an exhibition curator and lecturer
Andy Picci (born 1989), conceptual artist
Music and dancing
Karol Szymanowski (1882–1937), a Polish composer and pianist
Hélène Boschi (1917–1990), pianist
Maurice Béjart (1927–2007), dancer, choreographer and opera director, ran the Béjart Ballet
Charles Dutoit (born 1936), conductor
Manola Asensio (born 1943), a former ballet dancer
Jacques Viret (born 1943), French musicologist
Pierre Amoyal (born 1949), a French violinist, artistic director of the Conservatory of Lausanne
Rachel Kolly d'Alba (born 1981), a violinist and an honorary citizen of Asunción in Paraguay
Royalty, nobility, and the landed gentry
Pierre de Coubertin (1863–1937) French baron, founder of the International Olympic Committee
Victoria Eugenia of Battenberg (1887–1969) Queen of Spain as the wife of King Alfonso XIII
Alexandra Tegleva (1894–1955), Russian noblewoman who served as a nursemaid in the Imperial Household, lived in Lausanne after the Russian Revolution
Helen of Greece and Denmark (1896–1982) Queen mother of Romania, saved Romanian Jews in WWII
Prince Nicholas Tchkotoua (1909–1984) a Georgian writer and member of the Order of Malta
Bhumibol Adulyadej (1927–2016) late King of Thailand, educated and lived locally 1933–1945
Infante Carlos, Duke of Calabria (1938–2015) the last infante of Spain
Prince Egon von Furstenberg (1946–2004) a socialite, banker, fashion and interior designer
Princess Yasmin Aga Khan (born 1949) an American philanthropist
Princess Margareta of Romania (born 1949) daughter of King Michael I and Queen Anne of Romania
Princess Elena of Romania (born 1950) daughter of King Michael I and Queen Anne of Romania
Princess Ubol Ratana (born 1951) Thai princess
Prince Christoph of Hohenlohe-Langenburg (1956–2006) a European socialite
Archduke Sigismund, Grand Duke of Tuscany (born 1966) head of the Tuscan branch of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine
Business
Peter Carl Fabergé (1846–1920) a Russian jeweller of Fabergé eggs, founded House of Fabergé
Coco Chanel (1883–1971) a French fashion designer and business woman
Ingvar Kamprad (1926–2018) founded IKEA
Paloma Picasso (born 1949) a French and Spanish fashion designer and businesswoman
Dominique Lévy (born 1967) art dealer
Sports
André Wicky (1928–2016) racing car driver and team owner
Umberto Agnelli (1934–2004) head of Fiat and Juventus F.C.
Bertrand Piccard FRSGS (born 1958) psychiatrist and balloonist
Patrik Lörtscher (born 1960) 1998 Olympic gold medalist in curling
Stéphane Chapuisat (born 1969) footballer
Mattia Binotto (born 1969) Italian F1 designer, current team principal of Scuderia Ferrari.
Sébastien Loeb (born 1974) French professional rally, racing, and rallycross driver
Ludovic Magnin (born 1979) former footballer, 347 club caps with 63 for national side, current manager of FC Zürich
Lorik Cana (born 1983) Albanian former professional footballer, 388 club caps and 92 for national side
Stan Wawrinka (born 1985) tennis player
Stéphane Lambiel (born 1985) figure skater and coach and 2006 Winter Olympic silver medallist
Timea Bacsinszky (born 1989) tennis player
Notorious notables
Marie Manning (1821–1849) a Swiss domestic servant and, with her husband, a murderer
Serge Voronoff (1866–1951) a French quack surgeon of Russian extraction
Gaston-Armand Amaudruz (1920–2018) a neo-fascist political philosopher and Holocaust denier
Francois Genoud , (1915-1996), Swiss financier and Nazi sympathizer.
See also
Franco-Provençal language
Eurovision Song Contest 1989
International Academy of Sport Science and Technology (AISTS)
Lac de Sauvabelin, Tour de Sauvabelin
Beau-Rivage Palace
Scots Kirk, Lausanne (Church of Scotland)
List of mayors of Lausanne
Lausanne Conference, 1949
Treaty of Lausanne (1564)
Treaty of Lausanne (1912)
Treaty of Lausanne (1923)
References
Bibliography
Published in the 19th century
Published in the 20th century
External links
City of Lausanne, official site
The official tourism homepage of Lausanne
Map of public transport
Cantonal capitals of Switzerland
Cities in Switzerland
Municipalities of the canton of Vaud
Canton of Vaud
Populated places on Lake Geneva
Cultural property of national significance in the canton of Vaud |
18624 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyalty%20program | Loyalty program | A loyalty program is a marketing strategy designed to encourage customers to continue to shop at or use the services of a business associated with the program. Today, such programs cover most types of commerce, each having varying features and rewards schemes, including in banking, entertainment, hospitality, retailing and travel.
A loyalty program typically involves the operator of a particular program set up an account for a customer of a business associated with the scheme, and then issue to the customer a loyalty card (variously called rewards card, points card, advantage card, club card, or some other name) which may be a plastic or paper card, visually similar to a credit card, that identifies the cardholder as a participant in the program. Cards may have a barcode or magstripe to more easily allow for scanning, although some are chip cards or proximity cards.
By presenting a card, customers typically receive either a discount on the current purchase or an allotment of points that they can use for future purchases. Hence, the card is the visible means of implementing a type of what economists call a two-part tariff. Application forms for cards usually entail agreements by the store concerning customer privacy, typically non-disclosure (by the store) of non-aggregate data about customers. The store uses aggregate data internally (and sometimes externally) as part of its marketing research. Over time the data can reveal, for example, a given customer's favorite brand of beer, or whether they are a vegetarian. Where a customer has provided sufficient identifying information, the loyalty card may also be used to access such information to expedite verification during receipt of cheques or dispensing medical prescription preparations, or for other membership privileges such as access to an airport lounge using a frequent-flyer card. In recent years, businesses now offer these loyalty cards in the form of a loyalty app, which means users are less likely to lose their cards. Almost all major casino chains also have loyalty cards, which offer members tier credits, reward credits, comps, and other perks based on card members' "theo" from gambling, various demographic data, and spend patterns on various purchases at the casino, within the casino network, and with the casino's partners. Examples of such programs include Caesars Rewards (formerly called Total Rewards) and MGM Resorts International's Mlife.
Loyalty programs have been described as a form of centralized virtual currency, one with unidirectional cash flow, since reward points can be exchanged into a good or service but not into cash.
History
Betty Crocker's loyalty points program, introduced 1929, ended in 2006, one of the longest running loyalty programs.
By continent and country
Asia
Mainland China: The Social Credit System is a loyalty program operated by state and private businesses. Individuals with high social credit scores can get faster Internet, use high-speed trains, and take mainland flights.
Hong Kong: Octopus Rewards, MTR Corporation. Different chain stores under common ownership often share the same loyalty program, such as A.S. Watson Group's MoneyBack, which can be used at Parknshop, Watsons, and Fortress stores, as well as the corporation's retail partners. HKT's The Club also offers a similar loyalty program. Flag airline carrier Cathay Pacific operates Asia Miles, a loyalty and frequent-flyer program.
India: PAYBACK India is India's largest coalition loyalty program. German loyalty program operator Loyalty Partner took a controlling interest in i-mint in June 2010 and renamed the program PAYBACK India in July 2011. BPCL's PetroBonus fuel card program has 2 million members. Indian Oil's fleet card program XTRAPOWER and retail program XTRAREWARDS claim a combined customer base of 3 million.
Iran: The first Iranian loyalty program launched in 1996. East Credit Card Group Kish launched its loyalty program in 2005.
Malaysia: Genting Highlands Resort loyalty card, WorldCard, is valid in three countries: Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong.
Philippines: SM Supermalls and BDO Unibank offer rewards cards which are accepted by The SM Store, SM Supermarket, SM Hypermarket, ACE Hardware and Watsons Pharmacy. Robinsons Malls also offers a loyalty program through the Go Rewards app (formerly known as the Robinsons Rewards card). Others are Jollibee, (HappyPlus card), and Mercury Drug's Suki Card.
Singapore: Loyalty programs in Singapore include GrabRewards by Grab, SAFRA and Plus! from NTUC.
Europe
Austria: The two largest loyalty programs in Austria are Payback and mo. JÖ was fully launched in 2019.
Finland: The two major retail coalitions with loyalty programs are the S-Group with their S-Etukortti card) and Kesko with K-Plussa (67%).
Georgia: Georgia's biggest loyalty card program has been run by Universal Card Corporation since 2010 via UNICARD.
Germany: The largest loyalty program is Payback, launched in 2000. and the Shell ClubSmart program are next in size. was launched by Arvato in 2008. HappyDigits was disbanded by 2010.
Hungary: SuperShop and Multipoint are their main loyalty programs.
Italy: After the exit of Nectar from the market in 2015, Payback is the most popular loyalty program. Supermarkets Esselunga, Coop and Il Gigante also have loyalty programs.
Latvia: One of the largest loyalty programs in Latvia which is working as an operator for many merchants is Pins. Another is Walmoo
Norway: The largest Norwegian loyalty program is Trumf. Trumf is a «brick and mortar» loyalty program owned by NorgesGruppen, a grocery wholesaling group in Norway. KickBack.no is one of the largest online loyalty programs and cashback sites in Norway. KickBack.no is owned by Schibsted Media Group.
Republic of Ireland: Superquinn introduced its SuperClub loyalty card in 1993, the prototype for Europe. However, loyalty cards did not expand until 1997, when Tesco Ireland introduced its Clubcard scheme, shortly after its purchase of Power Supermarkets. SuperValu introduced their own loyalty club called Real Rewards. Others were:
During the late 1990s—Esso petrol program were: Tiger Miles, Maxol, Texaco and Statoil. Increasing oil prices ended these in 2005.
Game, a major computer game and hardware retailer, which merged with Electronics Boutique's programme.
Rewards From Us To You, a hotel loyalty program
Russia: MALINA, "the largest multicorporate customer loyalty program in Russia," was launched in 2006 by Loyalty Partners Vostok. Another is Mnogo.ru.
Switzerland: Loyalty programs are popular in Switzerland, with the two main supermarket chains, Migros and Coop prominent. The M-Cumulus card can be used at the Migros supermarkets, Ex Libris, SportXX, and other retailers. The Coop Supercard earns points on purchases at Coop and a variety of other associated stores. Other stores such as Interio, a furniture retailer, are also joining the market with loyalty cards and store-based incentivized credit cards. The only coalition loyalty scheme in Switzerland is Bonus Card with a network of over 300 independent retail partners. In recent years, online loyalty programs have also started to target the Swiss. First to make an offering in Switzerland was German-based Webmiles. Claiming to be Switzerland's first online bonus program, Bonuspoints was launched in early 2008 and offers incentives for shopping at 70 different online stores.
Turkey: Pegasus Airlines has a loyalty program called Pegasus Plus which gives rewards for every flight. Passengers can spend reward points as a discount without waiting to cover a full flight. Turkish Airlines has a loyalty program called Miles&Smiles.
United Kingdom: Passcard (later renamed Passkey) was in the early 1980s. Sainsbury's Homebase Spend and Save Card was another early 1980s loyalty card. A later program, Tesco's ClubCard, was criticized for not offering value for money. The Economist suggested that the real benefit of loyalty cards to UK outlets is the massive marketing research database potential they offer. Morrisons is another program. Many stores have kiosks that, with the cards, print vouchers that can be used at the till.Safeway's ABC Card was discontinued in 2000. Maximiles is an online coalition program.Formerly operated by British Airways, Airmiles was the most popular flight-related loyalty program in the UK A re-brand of the program in 2011 from Airmiles to Avios caused controversy as members were now required to pay taxes and fees on flights they used for redemption.
Co-operative Membership: the Co-op Group offers a 2% (previously 5%) refund to members on Co-op branded products with 2% also going to the cardholder's nominated charity. This is only available in Co-op Group stores. It replaced the dividend benefit previously used.
North America
Canada: Canadian Tire's Canadian Tire money is the oldest loyalty program in Canada Air Miles is Canada's largest loyalty program. The food and beverage industry also has several companies with rewards programs.
United States: In the US, loyalty cards have a long history. Some are only online. Some partner with classic credit cards. Frequent-flyer programs and, less commonly SeaMiles co-exist with programs that donate a percentage of sales to a designated charity. Some American retailers either have not implemented these cards, or eliminated them, in favor of discounts for all shoppers. Few states regulate club cards. As an example, supermarkets in California are subject to the Supermarket Club Card Disclosure Act of 1999.
Mexico: Bonvoy is a hotel-oriented loyalty program.
Oceania
Flybuys is the largest loyalty program in both Australia and New Zealand.
Australia: Contenders include Woolworths, Myer's MYER one program, the Priceline Club Card, Amcal Club, Millers Retail Club, and the BB Retail Capital Pulse Rewards program.
New Zealand: Other programs include the New Zealand Automobile Association AA Smartfuel programme and Countdown supermarket's Onecard. Kachingo was a short-lived "card free" programme.
Mobile loyalty programs
Mobile online loyalty programs
There has been a move away from traditional magnetic card, stamp, or punchcard based schemes to online and mobile online loyalty programs. While these schemes vary, the common element is a push toward eradication of a traditional card, in favour of an electronic equivalent. The choice of medium is often a QR code. Some prominent examples are Austrian based mobile-pocket established in 2009, the US-based Punchd (discontinued from June 2013,), which became part of Google in 2011. and an Australian-based loyalty card application called Stamp Me which incorporates iBeacon technology. Others, like Loopy Loyalty (HK), Loyalli (UK), Perka (US), and Whisqr Loyalty (CA), have offered similar programs. Passbook by Apple is the first attempt to standardize the format of mobile loyalty cards.
Mobile off-line loyalty programs
With the introduction of host card emulation (HCE) and near field communication (NFC) technology for mobile applications, traditional contactless smart cards for prepaid and loyalty programs are emulated in a smartphone. Google Wallet adopted these technologies for mobile off-line payment applications.
The major advantage of off-line over the online system is that the user's smartphone does not have to be online, and the transaction is fast. In addition, multiple emulated cards can be stored in a smartphone to support multi-merchant loyalty programs. Consequently, the user does not need to carry many physical cards anymore.
The term also is used regarding linking rewards for online and offline purchases.
Disloyalty cards
In three cities, some independent coffee shops have set up experimental 'disloyalty card' programs, which reward customers for visiting a variety of coffee shops.
Criticism
Some companies complain that loyalty programs discount goods to people who are buying goods anyway. Moreover, the expense of participating in these programs rarely generates a good return on investment. The Forte Consultancy Group regards loyalty programs as bribes. In the case of infrequent spenders, loyalty fees provide a means of subsidizing discounts.
A 2015 study found that most supermarket loyalty cards in the United States do not offer any real value to their customers. Furthermore, commercial use of customers' personal data – collected as part of loyalty programs – has the potential for abuse; it is highly likely that consumer purchases are tracked and used for marketing research to increase the efficiency of marketing and advertising, which is one of the purposes of offering the loyalty card. For some customers, participating in a loyalty program (even with a fake or anonymous card) funds activities that violate privacy. Consumers have also expressed concern about the integration of RFID technology into loyalty-card systems.
One may view loyalty and credit-card reward-plans as modern-day examples of kickbacks.
Employees who need to buy something (such as an airline flight or a hotel room) for a business trip, but who have discretion to decide which airline or hotel chain to use, have an incentive to choose the payment method that provides the most cash-back,
credit-card rewards or loyalty points instead of minimizing costs for their employer.
See also
Geomarketing
Identity management
Incentive
Incentive program
Loyalty marketing
Premium (marketing), e.g., "premiums"
S&H Green Stamps
Trading stamp
References
Pricing
Nudge theory |
18625 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig%20Von%20Drake | Ludwig Von Drake | Professor Ludwig Von Drake is a cartoon character created in 1961 by The Walt Disney Company. He was first introduced as the presenter (and singer of "The Spectrum Song") in the cartoon An Adventure in Color, part of the first episode of Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color on NBC. According to the episode The Hunting Instinct of that series he and Donald Duck's father are brothers. He is described as a scientist, lecturer, psychologist, and world traveler. The character displayed his "expert" knowledge on a variety of subjects in eighteen episodes of the classic anthology series, as well as on a number of Disneyland Records.
Paul Frees was the original voice of Ludwig Von Drake. After Frees retired from the role, the character was briefly voiced by Walker Edmiston. Since 1987, he has been voiced by Corey Burton. Ludwig Von Drake has also appeared in numerous Disney comics stories.
Character
Ludwig Von Drake comes from Vienna, Austria and has a fascination with knowledge. Since his youth, he has been trying to obtain as many diplomas, in any science, as possible. When he is consulted by other family members, it is a running gag that he almost invariably turns out to have a university degree relevant for whatever information they are seeking. He is often shown as having little social competence, however, and is often portrayed as being very forgetful, sometimes even somewhat senile. In the comics, Ludwig usually visits with Donald Duck and Donald's nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie. On occasion, Daisy Duck will coax (or even trick) the professor into giving lectures and tours for her ladies' club. Ludwig can play the piano and acoustic guitar, as shown in a few television specials and more.
In the Wonderful World of Color episode The Hunting Instinct, Walt Disney states Ludwig is Donald Duck's father's brother. According to Walt Disney, Donald decided to adopt his maternal surname, Duck, when he got into show business, and that is the reason why he is not popularly known as Donald Von Drake. In the comic strips by Bob Karp and Al Taliaferro, Donald and his nephews usually call Ludwig 'Uncle Ludwig', and Daisy Duck refers to him as 'sort of an uncle' of Donald's in the first Sunday strip where his name is mentioned.
In the Wonderful World of Color episode Kids is Kids, Ludwig says, "Of course, I don't need any help raising children. I'm a bachelor.". Besides, he has been shown to be a member of the Absentminded Dating Club, where he is the suitor of a duck woman called Alice. This is contradicted by Don Rosa's private (and unpublished) Duck Family tree which shows Ludwig married to Donald Duck's mother's sister Matilda McDuck. The same family tree also states this is the only relationship between Ludwig and Donald Duck; thereby contradicting Walt Disney's statement.
In the story "Duckburg, U.S.A.", published in Ludwig Von Drake #1 (November 1961), Professor Ludwig Von Drake arrives in Duckburg by train, and it is shown that Donald Duck had never seen this Austrian relative before, not even in a picture. Grandma Duck, Uncle Scrooge McDuck, Daisy Duck, Gladstone Gander, Huey, Dewey and Louie, Gus Goose, and Gyro Gearloose also appear in this same story waiting to know Ludwig at the train station, and Grandma enthusiastically exclaims, "Professor Ludwig Von Drake! Such a nice-sounding name!". In some old comic stories where Ludwig visits Grandma on her farm, it is clear that they have a close relationship, as shown in the story "Message From Space", where Grandma exclaims, "You need rest, dear boy!", after thinking he had a kind of nervous breakdown. In "Pigeon Panic" Ludwig exclaims, "Ho! You know you can depend on me!", after Grandma warned him to be careful with her smartest homer. There is an enlightening sequence of two panels in the story "The Rural Eggs-pert", where Ludwig is resting in an old chair of Grandma's house when an antique buyer asks Grandma to sell him "this fine old specimen" (the chair) and she answers, "Well, it's been in the family for years, but I could do without it!", making Ludwig astonished, since he thinks she is referring to him as if he was a livestock. He would not have reacted this way if he was not her relative. In the last panel of the story "Barn Dance Doctor", Grandma refers to Ludwig as her "cityfied cousin". Since it was stipulated by Don Rosa that her father was a Coot and her mother was a Gadwall, it is not clear if Ludwig Von Drake is related to Elvira Coot through her father or her mother. Elvira could have an Austrian ascendancy to explain her kinship to Ludwig.
In the story "The Family Tree Spree", Donald scares of seeing Ludwig's specs on the floor and thinks about them as "Uncle Ludwig's specs". In the end of this same story, it is revealed that Ludwig also appears in Donald's paternal family tree, wherein he and Donald both have an ancestor called Colombust Duck. According to Carl Barks, Donald's fathers's surname is Duck, his mother's one being McDuck. Since Humperdink Duck (aka Grandpa Duck), Grandma Duck's deceased husband and Donald's paternal grandfather, was probably almost contemporary with Ludwig Von Drake, it is possible to consider they were half-brothers, Donald being thus Ludwig's grandnephew. Ludwig reveals to Daisy and her friends in "Blown Up Genius" that he came from a long line of glass blowers. In "Winning Ways", Daisy and her friends try to prepare Ludwig's favorite dish, called Wiener Schnitzel a la Weltschmerz, whose recipe belonged to Ludwig's great grandmother. Ludwig is really excited about it because he has not eaten that dish since he left Austria and came to Duckburg to know his relatives of Donald's paternal family. In "The Big Payoff", it is revealed that he spent many months living in Donald's house since his arrival in Duckburg. Ludwig wins a TV chess challenge in this comic story, making Donald exclaim, "Yippee! He did it! Now he can pay all he's owed us (he and his nephews) for these many months!". According to the story "The Jewels of Skull Rock", Ludwig spent six months in Donald's house. In the Christmas story "The Cuckoo Clock Caper", Ludwig exclaims that he and Scrooge are "joined in good fellowship". Ludwig and Gyro Gearloose competed as to who is the greater inventor in the comic story "I.Q. Bugaboo".
Those twelve stories mentioned above were drawn by Tony Strobl, who was the cartoonist responsible for introducing Professor Ludwig into American Disney comic books. Actually, Ludwig's first comic book appearance was in a not previously mentioned story by Strobl, "The Scene Stealer", first published in October, 1961. The events showed in this one presumably happened after the ones showed in "Duckburg, U.S.A.", which was published two months later.
Filmography
Professor Ludwig Von Drake was introduced as a new character alongside Walt Disney himself in the very first episode of Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color after the series was moved to NBC in the fall of 1961. He was designed, and frequently animated, by Milt Kahl and Ward Kimball, two of Disney's Nine Old Men of animators, some animation of the character was done by Frank Thomas and Eric Larson.
Wonderful World of Color appearances (1960s)
An Adventure in Color/Mathmagicland (24 September 1961) - This show introduced Walt Disney's new character and co-host Ludwig Von Drake, who lectures on the subject of color.
The Hunting Instinct (22 October 1961) - Ludwig Von Drake sheds some light on the subject of why man hunts with his assistant Herman the Bootle Beetle.
Inside Donald Duck (5 November 1961) - Ludwig Von Drake attempts to diagnose Donald Duck's problems, deciding the cause is romance.
Kids Is Kids (10 December 1961) - Ludwig Von Drake shares his knowledge on the subject of child psychology and how to handle Huey, Dewey and Louie.
Carnival Time (4 March 1962) - Ludwig Von Drake takes a look at some major carnivals in New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro with Donald Duck and Jose Carioca.
Von Drake in Spain (8 April 1962) - Ludwig Von Drake lectures on the dances of Spain.
Man Is His Own Worst Enemy (21 October 1962) - Ludwig Von Drake explains why people are the biggest challenge facing humanity. This episode is sometimes titled Ducking Disaster with Donald and his Friends.
Three Tall Tales (6 January 1963) - Ludwig Von Drake and his sidekick Herman tell three stories including "Casey at the Bat", "The Saga of Windwagon Smith" and "Paul Bunyan."
Inside Outer Space (10 February 1963) - Ludwig Von Drake gives a lecture on outer space, using footage from Man in Space, Man and the Moon and Mars and Beyond.
A Square Peg in a Round Hole (3 March 1963) - Ludwig Von Drake has founded the Research Institute For Human Behavior.
Fly with Von Drake (13 October 1963) - Ludwig Von Drake gives a historically accurate and funny lecture on the birth of manned flight.
The Truth About Mother Goose (17 November 1963) - Ludwig Von Drake tells the stories behind Mother Goose rhymes. Including footage from Mickey and the Beanstalk. Von Drake narrates this story which was originally featured as a segment in the 1947 feature film Fun and Fancy Free, replacing the original narration. Herman makes a comeback in this episode.
Mediterranean Cruise (19 January 1964) - Ludwig Von Drake takes a trip on a Cruise liner.
In Shape with Von Drake (22 March 1964) - Ludwig Von Drake returns to explain sports and fitness. He illustrates his points through the use of several Goofy cartoons.
A Rag, a Bone, a Box of Junk (11 October 1964) - Ludwig Von Drake makes an cameo in this documentary about stop-motion animation
Music for Everybody (30 January 1966) - Ludwig Von Drake hosts this look at the importance of music in people's lives.
Nature's Strangest Oddballs (29 March 1970) - Ludwig Von Drake hosts this look at various animal species that have stayed
Theatrical
A Symposium on Popular Songs (19 December 1962) - Von Drake demonstrates examples of popular music through the years.
Inside Donald Duck
Among his many interests is psychology, and he has tried to make a psychological study of his nephew Donald Duck. Ludwig was best fleshed out in this anthology cartoon, where Donald's psychology was examined, as we got to see some of his worst temper tantrums. Ludwig however was well understood by the end of the cartoon. His Austrian German ancestry betrayed itself in his language - for example "as we say in the psychiatry" is a very typical Germanism. In comics translated into German, he sometimes speaks with an Austrian accent, like "ein bisserl" instead of "ein bisschen". He also enjoys several off color jokes, for instance "What you have here is a depressed Duck! And there is nothing worse than depressed duck...unless you like depressed duck...but the taste is sometimes...." making a pun off of the dish of pressed duck.
Cartoon appearances (1980s–present)
Von Drake has appeared on several Disney animated cartoon series: DuckTales, Raw Toonage, Bonkers, Mickey Mouse Works, Quack Pack, Disney's House of Mouse, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Mickey Mouse, Mickey and the Roadster Racers, the 2017 reboot of DuckTales, The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse, Mickey Mouse Funhouse and in numerous television specials. In all of these, Von Drake wears a pink shirt, black tie, red vest, and a lab coat.
In House of Mouse, Von Drake appears as a recurring character. In "Ask Von Drake", Mickey tries to prove that Ludwig Von Drake does not know everything. At the end, Mickey convinces him that during the headcount of all the Disney characters, he forgot himself. Also, in "House of Genius", Ludwig creates robot duplicates of Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy, Goofy, and Pluto. At the end, when Ludwig brings in a robot duplicate of himself, Mickey tells the robot to send the real Ludwig packing.
In Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, he is a major recurring character, often helping the protagonists, or asking for help himself.
Ludwig appears as a recurring character in the DuckTales reboot as the head of spy agency S.H.U.S.H.
Ludwig Von Drake in the Sing-Along Songs series
In the Disney's Sing-Along Songs series of videos, he has hosted or co-hosted these six volumes:
You Can Fly (February 5, 1988)
Fun with Music (along with Professor Owl) (October 12, 1989)
Under the Sea (August 14, 1990)
I Love to Laugh (December 28, 1990)
Colors of the Wind (July 21, 1995)
Disneyland Records discography
In 1961 Disneyland Records released the LP Professor Ludwig Von Drake. The LP had two songs from the character's debut in the An Adventure in Color episode ("The Green with Envy Blues" and "The Spectrum Song"), as well as new songs and comedy bits.
The track list for the "Ludwig Von Drake" LP:
I'm Ludwig Von Drake
The Spectrum Song
The Green with Envy Blues
It Gets You
Von Drake Variations on "The Blue Danube"
Professor Ludwig Von Drake Discourse: All About Sound Recording
An Operatic Version of a Theme from 'Cinderella'
As of February 2010, the digitally remastered LP can be downloaded exclusively at the iTunes Store.
Print appearances
The Disney studio encouraged the writers of Duck comics to introduce this new character in print, and already in September 1961, Von Drake started appearing in Al Taliaferro and Bob Karp's featured daily strips. However, aside from a solitary cameo appearance in a one-page story in Uncle Scrooge #54 (December 1964), the character was not used by leading Disney duck artist Carl Barks.
In 1961, Dell Comics launched a comic book series starring Von Drake and illustrated by Tony Strobl, but it only lasted for four issues before being discontinued. The character made subsequent appearances in other comic titles such as Walt Disney's Comics and Stories and in the Donald Duck newspaper strip.
Ludwig also appeared in a 1962 sequence of the annual Disney Christmas Story comic strip. In "Sleeping Beauty's Christmas Story", the professor helps Princess Aurora break Maleficent's spell.
Professor Ludwig has often been used by Italian cartoonists, including in some of the long sagas inspired by famous books that they usually produce with the Duck Family, such as "La storia di Marco Polo detta Il Milione" (free translation "The Million - A Story of Marco Polo") and "Paperino in: Il mondo perduto" (free translation "Donald in: The Lost World"). As a result, he has achieved quite a significant popularity in Italy (where he is known as Pico De' Paperis). He is portrayed in Italian comics as a scholar with multiple degrees in different subjects (even the more improbable ones) rather than a scientist.
Similar character
In an episode of Goof Troop, it was revealed that Goofy has an uncle named Ludwig Von Goof. Von Goof is also a scientist, whose appearance is almost identical to Von Drake, except for the fact that Ludwig Von Drake is a duck and Ludwig Von Goof is a dog.
See also
List of duck universe characters
Duck family (Disney)
References
External links
Ludwig Von Drake on IMDb
Anthropomorphic birds
Disney core universe characters
Disney comics characters
Fictional ducks
Fictional professors
Fictional psychiatrists
Fictional inventors
Fictional scientists
Fictional Austrian people
Television characters introduced in 1961
Comics characters introduced in 1961
Male characters in animation
Male characters in comics
de:Liste der Bewohner Entenhausens#Primus von Quack |
18627 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los%20Altos%2C%20California | Los Altos, California | Los Altos (; Spanish for "The Heights") is a city in Santa Clara County, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. The population was 28,976 according to the 2010 census.
Most of the city's growth occurred between 1950 and 1980. Originally an agricultural town with many summer cottages and apricot orchards, Los Altos is now an affluent bedroom community on the western edge of Silicon Valley, serving as a major source of commuters to other parts of Silicon Valley. Los Altos strictly limits commercial zones to the downtown area and small shopping and office parks lining Foothill Expressway and El Camino Real.
History
The area was originally called "Banks and Braes".
Paul Shoup, an executive of the Southern Pacific Railroad, and his colleagues formed the Altos Land Company in 1906 and started the development of Los Altos. The company acquired of land from Sarah Winchester. Shoup wanted to link Palo Alto and Los Gatos by making Los Altos a commuter town. It continued a train-a-day operation to and from San Francisco.
In 1908, Southern Pacific Railroad began running steam train service through Los Altos (April 19, 1908) with five trains per day. Two freight cars served as a train depot. Also, the first commercial building, Eschenbruecher's Hardware, was built in downtown. In 1913, the craftsman-style Los Altos train station was built at 288 First Street.
By 1949, many residents were dissatisfied with the zoning policy of Santa Clara County, and there was a constant threat of annexation by neighboring Palo Alto and Mountain View, so they decided to incorporate. Los Altos became the eleventh city in Santa Clara County on December 1, 1952.
Train service ceased operation in January 1964, and the train track became Foothill Expressway. Los Altos may have a legitimate claim to having the first scientifically designed sound baffle in 1970. Santa Clara County undertook a seminal study to calculate the effects of alternate soundwall designs along Foothill Expressway. The resulting wall brought about the predicted reduction of seven to ten decibels in noise pollution levels experienced by adjacent homes.
In 1976, Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built the first 50 Apple I computers in Jobs's garage in Los Altos.
In 2004, landlord Judy Fusco rented her Los Altos home, later known as "Casa Facebook", to Mark Zuckerberg; there, he and a few other associates scaled Facebook from 200,000 members to 2.5 million.
On April 15, 2021, Los Altos became home to the world's first consumer flying car showroom.
Earthquakes
Los Altos is near the San Andreas Fault and therefore subject to earthquakes.
1906 San Francisco earthquake – Although Los Altos was hit extremely hard (VIII on the intensity level),<ref>
{{cite web
|url=http://www.abag.ca.gov/cgi-bin/pickmapx.pl
|title=Los Altos Shake map for SF Earthquake (Choose Los Altos and then San Andreas (1906 Quake) to see map)
|access-date=2012-11-14
}}</ref> the main local effort was to help rebuild nearby Santa Cruz, which was nearly destroyed.
1989 – On October 17, Los Altos experienced the Loma Prieta earthquake, but was spared major damage. Los Altos and its churches combined efforts to clean up hard-hit areas such as Watsonville and Santa Cruz.
Geography
Los Altos is bordered by Los Altos Hills to the west, Palo Alto to the west and northwest, Mountain View to the north and northeast, Sunnyvale to the east, and Cupertino to the southeast.
Los Altos is crossed by three creeks that flow north to San Francisco Bay, Adobe Creek on its western boundary, Stevens Creek on its eastern boundary and Permanente Creek in the middle. Hale Creek is tributary to Permanente Creek, and Permanente Creek is now largely diverted to Stevens Creek by a diversion channel. All three creeks originate on the flanks of Black Mountain.
Demographics
2010s
The 2010 United States Census reported that Los Altos had a population of 28,976. The population density was people per square mile (/km2). The racial makeup of Los Altos was 20,459 (70.6%) White, 148 (0.5%) African American, 48 (0.2%) Native American, 6,815 (23.5%) Asian, 59 (0.2%) Pacific Islander, 195 (0.7%) from other races, and 1,252 (4.3%) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1,132 persons (3.9%).
The Census reported that 28,749 people (99.2% of the population) lived in households, 34 (0.1%) lived in non-institutionalized group quarters, and 193 (0.7%) were institutionalized.
There were 10,745 households, out of which 4,067 (37.9%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 7,476 (69.6%) were opposite-sex married couples living together, 599 (5.6%) had a female householder with no husband present, 228 (2.1%) had a male householder with no wife present. There were 199 (1.9%) unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 55 (0.5%) same-sex married couples or partnerships. 2,086 households (19.4%) were made up of individuals, and 1,228 (11.4%) had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.68. There were 8,303 families (77.3% of all households); the average family size was 3.08.
The age distribution of the population consisted of 7,560 people (26.1%) under the age of 18, 1,006 people (3.5%) aged 18 to 24, 5,273 people (18.2%) aged 25 to 44, 9,353 people (32.3%) aged 45 to 64, and 5,784 people (20.0%) who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 46.2 years. For every 100 females, there were 93.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 90.9 males.
There were 11,204 housing units at an average density of per square mile (/km2), of which 9,002 (83.8%) were owner-occupied, and 1,743 (16.2%) were occupied by renters. The homeowner vacancy rate was 0.7%; the rental vacancy rate was 5.0%. 24,669 people (85.1% of the population) lived in owner-occupied housing units and 4,080 people (14.1%) lived in rental housing units.
The median household income of Los Altos for 2013–2017 was $208,309. The average home listing price in 2014 was $1.96 million. In 2017, Forbes ranked Los Altos (94022 and 94024) as the 3rd and 48th most expensive ZIP codes in the United States with median home prices of $7,755,000 and $3,431,615, respectively. In 2018, data from the American Community Survey revealed that Los Altos was the fifth wealthiest city in the United States.
2000
As of the census of 2000, there were 27,693 people, 10,462 households, and 8,024 families residing in the city. The population density was people per square mile (/km2). There were 10,727 housing units at an average density of per square mile (/km2). The racial makeup of the city was 80.35% White, 15.42% Asian, 0.47% African American, 0.17% Native American, 0.16% Pacific Islander, 0.66% from other races, and 2.44% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race constituted 3.76% of the population.
Of 10,462 households, 33.6% had minor children living with them, 69.4% were married couples living together, 5.4% had a female head with no husband present, and 23.3% were non-families. 18.7% were singles including 9.8% 65 or older. The average household size was 2.61 and the average family size was 2.98.
The median age was 44 years, much higher than the 35.3 national figure. 23.7% were under 18, 3.5% from 18 to 24, 24.5% from 25 to 44, 29.1% from 45 to 64, and 19.3% were 65 years of age or older. For every 100 females, there were 93.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 91.0 males.
1930
Approximately 2,900 people would have considered themselves a resident of Los Altos.
Housing costs
Los Altos strives to maintain a semi-rural atmosphere. Los Altos has few sidewalks except in commercial zones and along arterial roads. Minimum lot size for most residential housing is one-quarter of an acre. Most streets have broad dirt shoulders and little or no street lighting. The civic center sits in the middle of an orchard, a remnant of those that once covered the area. The downtown is a triangle with arterials and collector streets on all sides that enable most through traffic to bypass Main Street.
Many Los Altos homes fetch $2 million and higher, putting the city (along with neighboring Los Altos Hills, with which it shares ZIP codes) at numbers 24 and 28 on Forbes' "Most Expensive ZIP Codes in America" list in 2007. In 2015, Forbes placed Los Altos (ZIP codes 94022 and 94024) as the 11th and 57th most expensive ZIP codes in the United States, behind such cities as Atherton, California and Sagaponack, New York. For the 94022 ZIP code, which includes parts of Los Altos Hills, California the median home price is $4.9 million with an average of 120 days on the market. For the 94024 ZIP code, the median home price is $2.8 million with an average of 36 days on the market.
Economy
Since the mid-1990s, downtown Los Altos has experienced mild economic difficulties due to competition from nearby shopping centers and chain stores, as well as its lack of a hotel or movie theater. Revitalizing downtown is a major issue in city politics.
Top employers
According to the City's 2018 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the top employers in the city are:
Government
In the California State Legislature, Los Altos is in , and in .
In the United States House of Representatives, Los Altos is in .
Education
Public
Primary and middle school students attend schools in the Los Altos School District, the Cupertino Union School District, or Bullis Charter School (K–8). The Los Altos School District has one of the highest average API scores in California and includes seven elementary schools in the Los Altos–Mountain View area.
Local residents generally attend high school in one of two public school districts: Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District or Fremont Union High School District.
All of the public schools are highly regarded, and many graduates of Los Altos-area high schools continue their education at well-known universities.
Private
Los Altos is also served by highly regarded private and religious schools. St. Nicholas School, St. Simon School, Miramonte Elementary School, (JrK–8th) Canterbury Christian School (K–6th), the Lower and Middle Campuses (K–6th) of Pinewood School, The School for Independent Learners, and the lower school campus of the Waldorf School of the Peninsula are located within city limits. Others nearby include St. Francis High School (Mountain View), Mountain View Academy, and The King's Academy (Sunnyvale). Other schools farther away with students from Los Altos include Sacred Heart Schools, Atherton, Mitty High School, Menlo School, Woodside Priory School, Castilleja School, The Harker School, and Bellarmine College Preparatory.
Public libraries
Santa Clara County Library operates the Los Altos Library and the Woodland Branch Library in Los Altos.
Parks and conservation
Adobe Creek flows through Redwood Grove, a nature preserve off University Avenue in Los Altos purchased by the city in 1974. In October 2009 Los Altos contracted with Acterra to remove non-native plants and revitalize the redwood, oak woodland, riparian and grassland ecosystems by installing native plants, improving soil conditions, and creating habitat for wildlife such as bird houses and native bee boxes. The coast redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) were transplanted by the Halsey family from a location on Summit Road in the Santa Cruz Mountains and replaced the native willows. The historic Halsey House, built in the late 1920s by Theodore and Emma Halsey, is a good example of Spanish Revival architecture. The city designated Halsey House a local landmark in 1981 and until recently it housed the Florence Fava collection of Coastanoan or Ohlone Indian artifacts from a nearby archeological excavation in Los Altos Hills (now moved to the Los Altos History House). On June 16, 2010, the Los Altos City Council finalized the purchase of of creekside property from Delbert and Marlene Beumer, who wanted to provide a safe pathway connecting Shoup Park and Redwood Grove.
Steelhead trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) occurred historically in Adobe Creek. However, tidal gates at the mouth of Adobe Creek as well as culverts at the El Camino Real and Interstate 280 overpasses probably preclude the passage of migrating salmonids, even though the reaches upstream from Hidden Villa in Los Altos Hills have been judged excellent trout habitat.
Sports
Los Altos has a variety of youth-oriented sports organizations, programs, and after-school activities. Some examples include:
The Mountain View Los Altos Soccer Club (MVLASC) has provided competitive soccer for the MVLA community since 1972. It is a member of the California Youth Soccer Association – North (Cal North Soccer) and plays in the Foothill Youth Soccer League. The club has won 14 State Championships and two National Championships.
Los Altos–Mountain View Pony Baseball is for boys and girls aged 5 to 19. It is the largest youth baseball program in the San Francisco Bay Area, and a chartered league of PONY Baseball, Inc.
West Valley Pop Warner offers cheerleading and football programs to local youth.
The El Camino YMCA Youth Basketball League teaches basic basketball skills and the YMCA's core values.
Media
The Los Altos Town Crier, a weekly, is the primary newspaper for the town, "serving the Hometown of Silicon Valley since 1947." The San Jose Mercury News is the primary daily newspaper serving the town, delivering a Peninsula Section to Los Altans and locations north in lieu of the Local section delivered to those in San Jose and other communities closer to San Jose.
Notable people
Allan Bakke, student who challenged the practice of affirmative action in the 1978 landmark Supreme Court decision Regents of the University of California v. Bakke''
Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google
Alan Cranston, former United States Senator from California, Senate Majority Whip, Senate Minority Whip, Controller of California, and member of the Keating Five
Jon M. Chu, director, producer and screenwriter. Director of 2018's Crazy Rich Asians
Dennis "Thresh" Fong, businessman and professional gamer of the Quake series
Charles Geschke, co-founder of Adobe Systems
Jesse Grant, son of the 18th President of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant
Andrew Grove, co-founder and former CEO of Intel
John Lee Hooker, world-renowned blues guitarist, died at his home in Los Altos on June 21, 2001.
Juli Inkster, LPGA golfer
Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Inc.
Andrew L. Lewis, US Navy Vice-Admiral and Commander, United States Second Fleet
Janet Lewis, author and poet, died at her home in Los Altos at the age of 99 on December 1, 1998.
William E. Moerner, 2014 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Robert Noyce, co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel Corporation
Sundar Pichai, Chief Executive Officer of Google.
Michele Raffin, writer and founder of Pandemonium Aviaries
Mary G. Ross, the first Native American female engineer
General Oliver P. Smith, served as Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps and Commanding General of the 1st Marine Division during the Inchon Landings and Chosin Reservoir Campaign of the Korean War.
Shirley Temple, famous actress and child actress
Alejandro Toledo, 63rd President of Peru
John Edward Walker, California Impressionist painter, lived in Los Altos in the 1920s.
John Warnock, co-founder of Adobe Systems
Yvor Winters, California poet, 34-year resident from 1934.
Ed Zschau, former congressman for California's 12th district
Sister cities
Los Altos had four sister cities, as designated by Sister Cities International:
Bendigo, Australia
Syktyvkar, Russia
Shilin, Taiwan
Rustington, England
The program was run by the non-profit Los Altos Sister Cities, Inc., founded in 1988. That organization later decided to cease its participation and is now dissolved. Los Altos no longer participates in the sister cities program.
References
External links
Los Altos
Los Altos
Los Altos
Populated places established in 1952
Los Altos
Los Altos |
18628 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambert%E2%80%93Eaton%20myasthenic%20syndrome | Lambert–Eaton myasthenic syndrome | Lambert–Eaton myasthenic syndrome (LEMS) is a rare autoimmune disorder characterized by muscle weakness of the limbs.
Around 60% of those with LEMS have an underlying malignancy, most commonly small-cell lung cancer; it is therefore regarded as a paraneoplastic syndrome (a condition that arises as a result of cancer elsewhere in the body). It is the result of antibodies against presynaptic voltage-gated calcium channels, and likely other nerve terminal proteins, in the neuromuscular junction (the connection between nerves and the muscle that they supply). The diagnosis is usually confirmed with electromyography and blood tests; these also distinguish it from myasthenia gravis, a related autoimmune neuromuscular disease.
If the disease is associated with cancer, direct treatment of the cancer often relieves the symptoms of LEMS. Other treatments often used are steroids, azathioprine, which suppress the immune system, intravenous immunoglobulin, which outcompetes autoreactive antibody for Fc receptors, and pyridostigmine and 3,4-diaminopyridine, which enhance the neuromuscular transmission. Occasionally, plasma exchange is required to remove the antibodies.
The condition affects about 3.4 per million people. LEMS usually occurs in people over 40 years of age, but may occur at any age.
Signs and symptoms
The weakness from LEMS typically involves the muscles of the proximal arms and legs (the muscles closer to the trunk). In contrast to myasthenia gravis, the weakness affects the legs more than the arms. This leads to difficulties climbing stairs and rising from a sitting position. Weakness is often relieved temporarily after exertion or physical exercise. High temperatures can worsen the symptoms. Weakness of the bulbar muscles (muscles of the mouth and throat) is occasionally encountered. Weakness of the eye muscles is uncommon. Some may have double vision, drooping of the eyelids and difficulty swallowing, but generally only together with leg weakness; this too distinguishes LEMS from myasthenia gravis, in which eye signs are much more common. In the advanced stages of the disease, weakness of the respiratory muscles may occur. Some may also experience problems with coordination (ataxia).
Three-quarters of people with LEMS also have disruption of the autonomic nervous system. This may be experienced as a dry mouth, constipation, blurred vision, impaired sweating, and orthostatic hypotension (falls in blood pressure on standing, potentially leading to blackouts). Some report a metallic taste in the mouth.
On neurological examination, the weakness demonstrated with normal testing of power is often less severe than would be expected on the basis of the symptoms. Strength improves further with repeated testing, e.g. improvement of power on repeated hand grip (a phenomenon known as "Lambert's sign"). At rest, reflexes are typically reduced; with muscle use, reflex strength increases. This is a characteristic feature of LEMS. The pupillary light reflex may be sluggish.
In LEMS associated with lung cancer, most have no suggestive symptoms of cancer at the time, such as cough, coughing blood, and unintentional weight loss. LEMS associated with lung cancer may be more severe.
Causes
LEMS is often associated with lung cancer (50–70%), specifically small-cell carcinoma, making LEMS a paraneoplastic syndrome. Of the people with small-cell lung cancer, 1–3% have LEMS. In most of these cases, LEMS is the first symptom of the lung cancer, and it is otherwise asymptomatic.
LEMS may also be associated with endocrine diseases, such as hypothyroidism (an underactive thyroid gland) or diabetes mellitus type 1. Myasthenia gravis, too, may happen in the presence of tumors (thymoma, a tumor of the thymus in the chest); people with MG without a tumor and people with LEMS without a tumor have similar genetic variations that seem to predispose them to these diseases. HLA-DR3-B8 (an HLA subtype), in particular, seems to predispose to LEMS.
Mechanism
In normal neuromuscular function, a nerve impulse is carried down the axon (the long projection of a nerve cell) from the spinal cord. At the nerve ending in the neuromuscular junction, where the impulse is transferred to the muscle cell, the nerve impulse leads to the opening of voltage-gated calcium channels (VGCC), the influx of calcium ions into the nerve terminal, and the calcium-dependent triggering of synaptic vesicle fusion with plasma membrane. These synaptic vesicles contain acetylcholine, which is released into the synaptic cleft and stimulates the acetylcholine receptors on the muscle. The muscle then contracts.
In LEMS, antibodies against VGCC, particularly the P/Q-type VGCC, decrease the amount of calcium that can enter the nerve ending, hence less acetylcholine can be released from the neuromuscular junction. Apart from skeletal muscle, the autonomic nervous system also requires acetylcholine neurotransmission; this explains the occurrence of autonomic symptoms in LEMS. P/Q voltage-gated calcium channels are also found in the cerebellum, explaining why some experience problems with coordination. The antibodies bind particularly to the part of the receptor known as the "domain III S5–S6 linker peptide". Antibodies may also bind other VGCCs. Some have antibodies that bind synaptotagmin, the protein sensor for calcium-regulated vesicle fusion. Many people with LEMS, both with and without VGCC antibodies, have detectable antibodies against the M1 subtype of the acetylcholine receptor; their presence may participate in a lack of compensation for the weak calcium influx.
Apart from the decreased calcium influx, a disruption of active zone vesicle release sites also occurs, which may also be antibody-dependent, since people with LEMS have antibodies to components of these active zones (including voltage-dependent calcium channels). Together, these abnormalities lead to the decrease in muscle contractility. Repeated stimuli over a period of about 10 seconds eventually lead to sufficient delivery of calcium, and an increase in muscle contraction to normal levels, which can be demonstrated using an electrodiagnostic medicine study called needle electromyography by increasing amplitude of repeated compound muscle action potentials.
The antibodies found in LEMS associated with lung cancer also bind to calcium channels in the cancer cells, and it is presumed that the antibodies originally develop as a reaction to these cells. It has been suggested that the immune reaction to the cancer cells suppresses their growth and improves the prognosis from the cancer.
Diagnosis
The diagnosis is usually made with nerve conduction study (NCS) and electromyography (EMG), which is one of the standard tests in the investigation of otherwise unexplained muscle weakness. EMG involves the insertion of small needles into the muscles. NCS involves administering small electrical impulses to the nerves, on the surface of the skin, and measuring the electrical response of the muscle in question. NCS investigation in LEMS primarily involves evaluation of compound motor action potentials (CMAPs) of effected muscles and sometimes EMG single-fiber examination can be used.
CMAPs show small amplitudes but normal latency and conduction velocities. If repeated impulses are administered (2 per second or 2 Hz), it is normal for CMAP amplitudes to become smaller as the acetylcholine in the motor end plate is depleted. In LEMS, this decrease is larger than observed normally. Eventually, stored acetylcholine is made available, and the amplitudes increase again. In LEMS, this remains insufficient to reach a level sufficient for transmission of an impulse from nerve to muscle; all can be attributed to insufficient calcium in the nerve terminal. A similar pattern is witnessed in myasthenia gravis. In LEMS, in response to exercising the muscle, the CMAP amplitude increases greatly (over 200%, often much more). This also occurs on the administration of a rapid burst of electrical stimuli (20 impulses per second for 10 seconds). This is attributed to the influx of calcium in response to these stimuli. On single-fiber examination, features may include increased jitter (seen in other diseases of neuromuscular transmission) and blocking.
Blood tests may be performed to exclude other causes of muscle disease (elevated creatine kinase may indicate a myositis, and abnormal thyroid function tests may indicate thyrotoxic myopathy). Antibodies against voltage-gated calcium channels can be identified in 85% of people with EMG-confirmed LEMS. Once LEMS is diagnosed, investigations such as a CT scan of the chest are usually performed to identify any possible underlying lung tumors. Around 50–60% of these are discovered immediately after the diagnosis of LEMS. The remainder is diagnosed later, but usually within two years and typically within four years. As a result, scans are typically repeated every six months for the first two years after diagnosis. While CT of the lungs is usually adequate, a positron emission tomography scan of the body may also be performed to search for an occult tumour, particularly of the lung.
Treatment
If LEMS is caused by an underlying cancer, treatment of the cancer usually leads to resolution of the symptoms. Treatment usually consists of chemotherapy, with radiation therapy in those with limited disease.
Immunosuppression
Some evidence supports the use of intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG). Immune suppression tends to be less effective than in other autoimmune diseases. Prednisolone (a glucocorticoid or steroid) suppresses the immune response, and the steroid-sparing agent azathioprine may replace it once therapeutic effect has been achieved. IVIG may be used with a degree of effectiveness. Plasma exchange (or plasmapheresis), the removal of plasma proteins such as antibodies and replacement with normal plasma, may provide improvement in acute severe weakness. Again, plasma exchange is less effective than in other related conditions such as myasthenia gravis, and additional immunosuppressive medication is often needed.
Other
Three other treatment modalities also aim at improving LEMS symptoms, namely pyridostigmine, 3,4-diaminopyridine (amifampridine), and guanidine. They work to improve neuromuscular transmission.
Tentative evidence supports 3,4-diaminopyridine] at least for a few weeks. The 3,4-diaminopyridine base or the water-soluble 3,4-diaminopyridine phosphate may be used. Both 3,4-diaminopyridine formulations delay the repolarization of nerve terminals after a discharge, thereby allowing more calcium to accumulate in the nerve terminal.
Pyridostigmine decreases the degradation of acetylcholine after release into the synaptic cleft, and thereby improves muscle contraction. An older agent, guanidine, causes many side effects and is not recommended. 4-Aminopyridine (dalfampridine), an agent related to 3,4-aminopyridine, causes more side effects than 3,4-DAP and is also not recommended.
History
Anderson and colleagues from St Thomas' Hospital, London, were the first to mention a case with possible clinical findings of LEMS in 1953, but Lambert, Eaton, and Rooke at the Mayo Clinic were the first physicians to substantially describe the clinical and electrophysiological findings of the disease in 1956. In 1972, the clustering of LEMS with other autoimmune diseases led to the hypothesis that it was caused by autoimmunity. Studies in the 1980s confirmed the autoimmune nature, and research in the 1990s demonstrated the link with antibodies against P/Q-type voltage-gated calcium channels.
References
External links
Myoneural junction and neuromuscular diseases
Paraneoplastic syndromes
Autoimmune diseases
Syndromes affecting muscles
Channelopathies |
18629 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liqueur | Liqueur | A liqueur (; ; ) is an alcoholic drink composed of spirits (often rectified spirit) and additional flavorings such as sugar, fruits, herbs, and spices. Often served with or after dessert, they are typically heavily sweetened and un-aged beyond a resting period during production, when necessary, for their flavors to mingle.
Liqueurs are historical descendants of herbal medicines. They were made in Italy as early as the 13th century, often prepared by monks (for example, Chartreuse). Today they are produced all over the world, commonly served neat, over ice, with coffee, in cocktails, and used in cooking.
Etymology
The French word liqueur is derived from the Latin liquifacere, which means "to dissolve".
In some parts of the United States and Canada, liqueurs may be referred to as cordials, or schnapps. This can cause confusion as in the United Kingdom a cordial would refer to a non-alcoholic concentrated fruit syrup, typically diluted to taste and consumed as a non-carbonated soft drink. Schnapps, on the other hand, can refer to any distilled beverage in Germany and aquavit in Scandinavian countries.
Legal definitions
In the United States and Canada, where spirits are often called "liquor" (), there is often confusion discerning between liqueurs and liquors, due to the many different types of flavored spirits that are available today (e.g., flavored vodka). Liqueurs generally contain a lower alcohol content (15–30% ABV) than spirits and it has sweetener mixed, while some can have an ABV as high as 55%.
Canada
Under the Food and Drug Regulations (C.R.C., c. 870), liqueurs are produced from mixing alcohol with plant materials. These materials include juices or extracts from fruits, flowers, leaves or other plant materials. The extracts are obtained by soaking, filtering or softening the plant substances. A sweetening agent should be added in an amount that is at least 2.5 percent of the finished liqueur. The alcohol percentage shall be at least 23%. It may also contain natural or artificial flavoring and color.
European Union
The European Union directive on spirit drinks provides guidelines applicable to all liqueurs. As such, a liqueur must
contain a minimum of 15% alcohol by volume,
contain at least between 70 and 100 grams of inverted sugar per liter,
be created using neutral grain alcohol and/or distillate(s) of agricultural origin,
be flavored with natural, or nature-identical, flavorings, and
be labeled with the alcohol content and a list of any food colorings.
United States
The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau regulates liqueurs similarly to Canada. Liqueurs (and also cordials) are defined as products created by mixing or redistilling distilled spirits with fruit, plant products, natural flavors. extracts, or sweeteners. These additives must be added in an amount not less than 2.5% by weight of the final product.
Preparation
Some liqueurs are prepared by infusing certain woods, fruits, or flowers in either water or alcohol and adding sugar or other items. Others are distilled from aromatic or flavoring agents.
Anise and Rakı liqueurs have the property of turning from transparent to cloudy when added to water: the oil of anise remains in solution in the presence of a high concentration of alcohol, but coalesces when the alcohol concentration is reduced; this is known as the ouzo effect.
Use
Cocktails
Liqueurs are sometimes mixed into cocktails to provide flavor.
Layered drinks
Layered drinks are made by floating different-colored liqueurs in separate layers. Each liqueur is poured slowly into a glass over the back of a spoon or down a glass rod, so that the liquids of different densities remain unmixed, creating a striped effect.
Gallery
See also
Amaro (liqueur)
Cordial (medicine)
Cream liqueur
Crème liqueur
Dessert wine
Fortified wine
Honey liqueurs and spirits (category page)
Lemon liqueur
Nalewka
Schnapps
Sloe gin
Southern Comfort
List of liqueurs
References
Further reading
External links
Liqueurs at The Cook's Thesaurus.
Distilled drinks
Alcoholic drinks |
18630 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilith | Lilith | Lilith (; ) is a female figure in Mesopotamian and Judaic mythology, alternatively the first wife of Adam and supposedly the primordial she-demon. Lilith is cited as having been "banished" from the Garden of Eden for not complying and obeying Adam. She is mentioned in Biblical Hebrew in the Book of Isaiah, and in Late Antiquity in Mandaean mythology and Jewish mythology sources from 500 CE onward. Lilith appears in historiolas (incantations incorporating a short mythic story) in various concepts and localities that give partial descriptions of her. She is mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud ( 100b, 24b, 151b, 73a), in the Book of Adam and Eve as Adam's first wife, and in the Zohar Leviticus 19a as "a hot fierytle who first cohabited with man".
The name Lilith stems from , , and ). The Akkadian word lilu is related to the Hebrew word lilith in Isaiah 34:14, which is thought to be a night bird by some modern scholars such as Judit M. Blair. In the Ancient Mesopotamian religion, found in cuneiform texts of Sumer, Assyria, and Babylonia Lilith signifies a spirit or demon.
The biblical Lilith inspired the author and first Jewish feminist theologian Judith Plaskow to write, 'The Coming of Lilith' examining patriarchal dominance in Judaism and Christianity, and the writing of 'Which Lilith' exploring the diverse identities of this historical figure by feminists including Enid Dame.
Lilith continues to serve as source material in today's popular culture, Western culture, literature, occultism, fantasy, and horror often depicted as a woman fighting for equality and striving for fairness.
History
In some Jewish folklore, such as the satirical Alphabet of Sirach (), Lilith appears as Adam's first wife, who was created at the same time (Rosh Hashanah) and from the same clay as Adam. The legend of Lilith developed extensively during the Middle Ages, in the tradition of Aggadah, the Zohar, and Jewish mysticism. For example, in the 11th-century writings of Isaac ben Jacob ha-Cohen, Lilith left Adam after she refused to become subservient to him and then would not return to the Garden of Eden after she had coupled with the archangel Samael.
Interpretations of Lilith found in later Jewish materials are plentiful, but little information has survived relating to the Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian and Babylonian view of this class of demons. While researchers almost universally agree that a connection exists, recent scholarship has disputed the relevance of two sources previously used to connect the Jewish to an Akkadian – the Gilgamesh appendix and the Arslan Tash amulets. (see below for discussion of these two problematic sources). In contrast, some scholars, such as Lowell K. Handy, hold the view that though Lilith derives from Mesopotamian demonology, evidence of the Hebrew Lilith being present in the sources frequently cited - the Sumerian Gilgamesh fragment and the Sumeroan incantation from Arshlan-Tash being two - is scant, if present at all.
In Hebrew-language texts, the term or (translated as "night creatures", "night monster", "night hag", or "screech owl") first occurs in a list of animals in Isaiah 34, either in singular or plural form according to variations in the earliest manuscripts. The Isaiah 34:14 Lilith reference does not appear in most common Bible translations such as KJV and NIV. Commentators and interpreters often envision the figure of Lilith as a dangerous demon of the night, who is sexually wanton, and who steals babies in the darkness. In the Dead Sea Scrolls 4Q510-511, the term first occurs in a list of monsters. Jewish magical inscriptions on bowls and amulets from the 6th century AD onward identify Lilith as a female demon and provide the first visual depictions of her.
Etymology
In the Akkadian language of Assyria and Babylonia, the terms and mean spirits. Some uses of are listed in the Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD, 1956, L.190), in Wolfram von Soden's Akkadisches Handwörterbuch (AHw, p. 553), and Reallexikon der Assyriologie (RLA, p. 47).
The Sumerian female demons have no etymological relation to Akkadian , "evening".
Archibald Sayce (1882) considered that Hebrew (or ) and the earlier Akkadian are derived from Proto-Semitic. Charles Fossey (1902) has this literally translating to "female night being/demon", although cuneiform inscriptions from Mesopotamia exist where Līlīt and Līlītu refers to disease-bearing wind spirits.
Mesopotamian mythology
The spirit in the tree in the Gilgamesh cycle
Samuel Noah Kramer (1932, published 1938) translated as "Lilith" in Tablet XII of the Epic of Gilgamesh dated . Tablet XII is not part of the Epic of Gilgamesh, but is a later Assyrian Akkadian translation of the latter part of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. The is associated with a serpent and a zu bird. In Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld, a huluppu tree grows in Inanna's garden in Uruk, whose wood she plans to use to build a new throne. After ten years of growth, she comes to harvest it and finds a serpent living at its base, a Zu bird raising young in its crown, and that a made a house in its trunk. Gilgamesh is said to have killed the snake, and then the zu bird flew away to the mountains with its young, while the fearfully destroys its house and runs for the forest. Identification of as Lilith is stated in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (1999). According to a new source from late antiquity, Lilith appears in a Mandaean magic story where she is considered to represent the branches of a tree with other demonic figures that form other parts of the tree, though this may also include multiple "Liliths".
Suggested translations for the Tablet XII spirit in the tree include as "sacred place", as "spirit", and as "water spirit", but also simply "owl", given that the is building a home in the trunk of the tree.
A connection between the Gilgamesh and the Jewish Lilith was rejected on textual grounds by Sergio Ribichini (1978).
The bird-footed woman in the Burney Relief
Kramer's translation of the Gilgamesh fragment was used by Henri Frankfort (1937) and Emil Kraeling (1937) to support identification of a woman with wings and bird-feet in the disputed Burney Relief as related to Lilith. Frankfort and Kraeling identified the figure in the relief with Lilith. Modern research has identified the figure as one of the main goddesses of the Mesopotamian pantheons, most probably Ereshkigal.
The Arslan Tash amulets
The Arslan Tash amulets are limestone plaques discovered in 1933 at Arslan Tash, the authenticity of which is disputed. William F. Albright, Theodor H. Gaster, and others, accepted the amulets as a pre-Jewish source which shows that the name Lilith already existed in the 7th century BC but Torczyner (1947) identified the amulets as a later Jewish source.
In the Hebrew Bible
The word (or ) only appears once in the Hebrew Bible, in a prophecy regarding the fate of Edom, while the other seven terms in the list appear more than once and thus are better documented. The reading of scholars and translators is often guided by a decision about the complete list of eight creatures as a whole. Quoting from Isaiah 34 (NAB):
Hebrew text
In the Masoretic Text:
In the Dead Sea Scrolls, among the 19 fragments of Isaiah found at Qumran, the Great Isaiah Scroll (1Q1Isa) in 34:14 renders the creature as plural (or ).
Eberhard Schrader (1875) and Moritz Abraham Levy (1855) suggest that Lilith was a demon of the night, known also by the Jewish exiles in Babylon. Schrader's and Levy's view is therefore partly dependent on a later dating of Deutero-Isaiah to the 6th century BC, and the presence of Jews in Babylon which would coincide with the possible references to the in Babylonian demonology. However, this view is challenged by some modern research such as by Judit M. Blair (2009) who considers that the context indicates unclean animals.
Greek version
The Septuagint translates both the reference to lilith and the word for jackals or "wild beasts of the island" within the same verse into Greek as , apparently assuming them as referring to the same creatures and omitting "wildcats/wild beasts of the desert" (so, instead of the wildcats or desert beasts meeting with the jackals or island beasts, the goat or "satyr" crying "to his fellow" and lilith or "screech owl" resting "there", it is the goat or "satyr", translated as "demons", and the jackals or island beasts "" meeting with each other and crying "one to the other" and the latter resting there in the translation).
Latin Bible
The early 5th-century Vulgate translated the same word as .
The translation is, "And demons shall meet with monsters, and one hairy one shall cry out to another; there the lamia has lain down and found rest for herself".
English versions
Wycliffe's Bible (1395) preserves the Latin rendering :
The Bishops' Bible of Matthew Parker (1568) from the Latin:
Douay–Rheims Bible (1582/1610) also preserves the Latin rendering :
The Geneva Bible of William Whittingham (1587) from the Hebrew:
Then the King James Version (1611):
The "screech owl" translation of the King James Version is, together with the "owl" (, probably a water bird) in 34:11 and the "great owl" (, properly a snake) of 34:15, an attempt to render the passage by choosing suitable animals for difficult to translate Hebrew words.
Later translations include:
night-owl (Young, 1898)
night spectre (Rotherham, Emphasized Bible, 1902)
night monster (ASV, 1901; JPS 1917, Good News Translation, 1992; NASB, 1995)
vampires (Moffatt Translation, 1922; Knox Bible, 1950)
night hag (Revised Standard Version, 1947)
Lilith (Jerusalem Bible, 1966)
(the) lilith (New American Bible, 1970)
Lilith (New Revised Standard Version, 1989)
(the) night-demon Lilith, evil and rapacious (The Message (Bible), Peterson, 1993)
night creature (New International Version, 1978; New King James Version, 1982; New Living Translation, 1996, Today's New International Version)
nightjar (New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, 1984)
night bird (English Standard Version, 2001)
night-bird (NASB, 2020)
nocturnal animals (New English Translation (NET Bible))
Jewish tradition
Major sources in Jewish tradition regarding Lilith in chronological order include:
c. 40–10 BC Dead Sea Scrolls – Songs for a Sage (4Q510–511)
c. 200 Mishnah – not mentioned
c. 500 Gemara of the Talmud
c. 800 The Alphabet of Ben-Sira
c. 900 Midrash Abkir
c. 1260 Treatise on the Left Emanation, Spain
c. 1280 Zohar, Spain.
Dead Sea Scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls contain one indisputable reference to Lilith in Songs of the Sage (4Q510–511) fragment 1:
And I, the Instructor, proclaim His glorious splendour so as to frighten and to te[rrify] all the spirits of the destroying angels, spirits of the bastards, demons, Lilith, howlers, and [desert dwellers] ... and those which fall upon men without warning to lead them astray from a spirit of understanding and to make their heart and their ... desolate during the present dominion of wickedness and predetermined time of humiliations for the sons of lig[ht], by the guilt of the ages of [those] smitten by iniquity – not for eternal destruction, [bu]t for an era of humiliation for transgression.
As with the Massoretic text of Isaiah 34:14, and therefore unlike the plural liliyyot (or liliyyoth) in the Isaiah scroll 34:14, lilit in 4Q510 is singular, this liturgical text both cautions against the presence of supernatural malevolence and assumes familiarity with Lilith; distinct from the biblical text, however, this passage does not function under any socio-political agenda, but instead serves in the same capacity as An Exorcism (4Q560) and Songs to Disperse Demons (11Q11). The text is thus, to a community "deeply involved in the realm of demonology", an exorcism hymn.
Joseph M. Baumgarten (1991) identified the unnamed woman of The Seductress (4Q184) as related to female demon. However, John J. Collins regards this identification as "intriguing" but that it is "safe to say" that (4Q184) is based on the strange woman of Proverbs 2, 5, 7, 9:
Early Rabbinic literature
Lilith does not occur in the Mishnah. There are five references to Lilith in the Babylonian Talmud in Gemara on three separate Tractates of the Mishnah:
"Rav Judah citing Samuel ruled: If an abortion had the likeness of Lilith, its mother is unclean by reason of the birth, for it is a child even if it has wings." (Babylonian Talmud on Tractate Nidda 24b)
"[Expounding upon the curses of womanhood] In a Baraitha it was taught: Women grow long hair like Lilith, sit when urinating like a beast, and serve as a bolster for her husband." (Babylonian Talmud on Tractate Eruvin 100b)
"For gira he should take an arrow of Lilith and place it point upwards and pour water on it and drink it. Alternatively he can take water of which a dog has drunk at night, but he must take care that it has not been exposed." (Babylonian Talmud, tractate Gittin 69b). In this particular case, the "arrow of Lilith" is most probably a scrap of meteorite or a fulgurite, colloquially known as "petrified lightning" and treated as antipyretic medicine.
"Rabbah said: I saw how Hormin the son of Lilith was running on the parapet of the wall of Mahuza, and a rider, galloping below on horseback could not overtake him. Once they saddled for him two mules which stood on two bridges of the Rognag; and he jumped from one to the other, backward and forward, holding in his hands two cups of wine, pouring alternately from one to the other, and not a drop fell to the ground." (Babylonian Talmud, tractate Bava Bathra 73a-b). Hormin who is mentioned here as the son of Lilith is most probably a result of a scribal error of the word "Hormiz" attested in some of the Talmudic manuscripts. The word itself in turn seems to be a distortion of Ormuzd, the Zendavestan deity of light and goodness. If so, it is somewhat ironic that Ormuzd becomes here the son of a nocturnal demon.
"R. Hanina said: One may not sleep in a house alone [in a lonely house], and whoever sleeps in a house alone is seized by Lilith." (Babylonian Talmud on Tractate Shabbath 151b)
The above statement by Hanina may be related to the belief that nocturnal emissions engendered the birth of demons:
"R. Jeremiah b. Eleazar further stated: In all those years [130 years after his expulsion from the Garden of Eden] during which Adam was under the ban he begot ghosts and male demons and female demons [or night demons], for it is said in Scripture: And Adam lived a hundred and thirty years and begot a son in own likeness, after his own image, from which it follows that until that time he did not beget after his own image ... When he saw that through him death was ordained as punishment he spent a hundred and thirty years in fasting, severed connection with his wife for a hundred and thirty years, and wore clothes of fig on his body for a hundred and thirty years. – That statement [of R. Jeremiah] was made in reference to the semen which he emitted accidentally." (Babylonian Talmud on Tractate Eruvin 18b)
The Midrash Rabbah collection contains two references to Lilith. The first one is present in Genesis Rabbah 22:7 and 18:4: according to Rabbi Hiyya God proceeded to create a second Eve for Adam, after Lilith had to return to dust. However, to be exact the said passages do not employ the Hebrew word lilith itself and instead speak of "the first Eve" (Heb. Chavvah ha-Rishonah, analogically to the phrase Adam ha-Rishon, i.e. the first Adam). Although in the medieval Hebrew literature and folklore, especially that reflected on the protective amulets of various kinds, Chavvah ha-Rishonah was identified with Lilith, one should remain careful in transposing this equation to the Late Antiquity.
The second mention of Lilith, this time explicit, is present in Numbers Rabbah 16:25. The midrash develops the story of Moses's plea after God expresses anger at the bad report of the spies. Moses responds to a threat by God that He will destroy the Israelite people. Moses pleads before God, that God should not be like Lilith who kills her own children. Moses said:[God,] do not do it [i.e. destroy the Israelite people], that the nations of the world may not regard you as a cruel Being and say: 'The Generation of the Flood came and He destroyed them, the Generation of the Separation came and He destroyed them, the Sodomites and the Egyptians came and He destroyed them, and these also, whom he called My son, My firstborn (Ex. IV, 22), He is now destroying! As that Lilith who, when she finds nothing else, turns upon her own children, so Because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land... He hath slain them' (Num. XIV, 16)!
Incantation bowls
An individual Lilith, along with Bagdana "king of the lilits", is one of the demons to feature prominently in protective spells in the eighty surviving Jewish occult incantation bowls from Sassanid Empire Babylon (4th–6th century AD) with influence from Iranian culture.[47] These bowls were buried upside down below the structure of the house or on the land of the house, in order to trap the demon or demoness. Almost every house was found to have such protective bowls against demons and demonesses.
The centre of the inside of the bowl depicts Lilith, or the male form, Lilit. Surrounding the image is writing in spiral form; the writing often begins at the centre and works its way to the edge. The writing is most commonly scripture or references to the Talmud. The incantation bowls which have been analysed, are inscribed in the following languages, Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, Syriac, Mandaic, Middle Persian, and Arabic. Some bowls are written in a false script which has no meaning.
The correctly worded incantation bowl was capable of warding off Lilith or Lilit from the household. Lilith had the power to transform into a woman's physical features, seduce her husband, and conceive a child. However, Lilith would become hateful toward the children born of the husband and wife and would seek to kill them. Similarly, Lilit would transform into the physical features of the husband, seduce the wife, she would give birth to a child. It would become evident that the child was not fathered by the husband, and the child would be looked down on. Lilit would seek revenge on the family by killing the children born to the husband and wife.
Key features of the depiction of Lilith or Lilit include the following. The figure is often depicted with arms and legs chained, indicating the control of the family over the demon(ess). The demon(ess) is depicted in a frontal position with the whole face showing. The eyes are very large, as well as the hands (if depicted). The demon(ess) is entirely static.
One bowl contains the following inscription commissioned from a Jewish occultist to protect a woman called Rashnoi and her husband from Lilith:
Alphabet of Ben Sira
The pseudepigraphical 8th–10th centuries Alphabet of Ben Sira is considered to be the oldest form of the story of Lilith as Adam's first wife. Whether this particular tradition is older is not known. Scholars tend to date the Alphabet between the 8th and 10th centuries AD. The work has been characterised as satirical.
In the text an amulet is inscribed with the names of three angels (Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof) and placed around the neck of newborn boys in order to protect them from the lilin until their circumcision. The amulets used against Lilith that were thought to derive from this tradition are, in fact, dated as being much older. The concept of Eve having a predecessor is not exclusive to the Alphabet, and is not a new concept, as it can be found in Genesis Rabbah. However, the idea that Lilith was the predecessor may be exclusive to the Alphabet.
The idea in the text that Adam had a wife prior to Eve may have developed from an interpretation of the Book of Genesis and its dual creation accounts; while Genesis 2:22 describes God's creation of Eve from Adam's rib, an earlier passage, 1:27, already indicates that a woman had been made: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." The Alphabet text places Lilith's creation after God's words in Genesis 2:18 that "it is not good for man to be alone"; in this text God forms Lilith out of the clay from which he made Adam but she and Adam bicker. Lilith claims that since she and Adam were created in the same way they were equal and she refuses to submit to him:
After God created Adam, who was alone, He said, "It is not good for man to be alone." He then created a woman for Adam, from the earth, as He had created Adam himself, and called her Lilith. Adam and Lilith immediately began to fight. She said, "I will not lie below," and he said, "I will not lie beneath you, but only on top. For you are fit only to be in the bottom position, while I am to be the superior one." Lilith responded, "We are equal to each other inasmuch as we were both created from the earth." But they would not listen to one another. When Lilith saw this, she pronounced the Ineffable Name and flew away into the air.
Adam stood in prayer before his Creator: "Sovereign of the universe!" he said, "the woman you gave me has run away." At once, the Holy One, blessed be He, sent these three angels Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof, to bring her back.
Said the Holy One to Adam, "If she agrees to come back, what is made is good. If not, she must permit one hundred of her children to die every day." The angels left God and pursued Lilith, whom they overtook in the midst of the sea, in the mighty waters wherein the Egyptians were destined to drown. They told her God's word, but she did not wish to return. The angels said, "We shall drown you in the sea."
"Leave me!' she said. "I was created only to cause sickness to infants. If the infant is male, I have dominion over him for eight days after his birth, and if female, for twenty days."
When the angels heard Lilith's words, they insisted she go back. But she swore to them by the name of the living and eternal God: "Whenever I see you or your names or your forms in an amulet, I will have no power over that infant." She also agreed to have one hundred of her children die every day. Accordingly, every day one hundred demons perish, and for the same reason, we write the angels' names on the amulets of young children. When Lilith sees their names, she remembers her oath, and the child recovers.
The background and purpose of The Alphabet of Ben-Sira is unclear. It is a collection of stories about heroes of the Bible and Talmud, it may have been a collection of folk-tales, a refutation of Christian, Karaite, or other separatist movements; its content seems so offensive to contemporary Jews that it was even suggested that it could be an anti-Jewish satire, although, in any case, the text was accepted by the Jewish mystics of medieval Germany. In turn, other scholars argue that the target of the Alphabet's satire is very difficult to establish exactly because of the variety of the figures and values ridiculed therein: criticism is actually directed against Adam, who turns out to be weak and ineffective in his relations with his wife. Apparently, the first man is not the only male figure who is mocked: even God cannot subjugate Lilith and needs to ask his messengers, who only manage to go as far as negotiating the conditions of the agreement.
The Alphabet of Ben-Sira is the earliest surviving source of the story, and the conception that Lilith was Adam's first wife became only widely known with the 17th century Lexicon Talmudicum of German scholar Johannes Buxtorf.
In this folk tradition that arose in the early Middle Ages Lilith, a dominant female demon, became identified with Asmodeus, King of Demons, as his queen. Asmodeus was already well known by this time because of the legends about him in the Talmud. Thus, the merging of Lilith and Asmodeus was inevitable. The second myth of Lilith grew to include legends about another world and by some accounts this other world existed side by side with this one, Yenne Velt is Yiddish for this described "Other World". In this case Asmodeus and Lilith were believed to procreate demonic offspring endlessly and spread chaos at every turn.
Two primary characteristics are seen in these legends about Lilith: Lilith as the incarnation of lust, causing men to be led astray, and Lilith as a child-killing witch, who strangles helpless neonates. These two aspects of the Lilith legend seemed to have evolved separately; there is hardly a tale where she encompasses both roles. But the aspect of the witch-like role that Lilith plays broadens her archetype of the destructive side of witchcraft. Such stories are commonly found among Jewish folklore.
The influence of the rabbinic traditions
Although the image of Lilith of the Alphabet of Ben Sira is unprecedented, some elements in her portrayal can be traced back to the talmudic and midrashic traditions that arose around Eve.
First and foremost, the very introduction of Lilith to the creation story rests on the rabbinic myth, prompted by the two separate creation accounts in Genesis 1:1–2:25, that there were two original women. A way of resolving the apparent discrepancy between these two accounts was to assume that there must have been some other first woman, apart from the one later identified with Eve. The Rabbis, noting Adam's exclamation, "this time (zot hapa‘am) [this is] bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh" (Genesis 2:23), took it as an intimation that there must already have been a "first time". According to Genesis rabah 18:4, Adam was disgusted upon seeing the first woman full of "discharge and blood", and God had to provide him with another one. The subsequent creation is performed with adequate precautions: Adam is made to sleep, so as not to witness the process itself ( Sanhedrin 39a), and Eve is adorned with fine jewellery (Genesis rabah 18:1) and brought to Adam by the angels Gabriel and Michael (ibid. 18:3). However, nowhere do the rabbis specify what happened to the first woman, leaving the matter open for further speculation. This is the gap into which the later tradition of Lilith could fit.
Second, this new woman is still met with harsh rabbinic allegations. Again playing on the Hebrew phrase zot hapa‘am, Adam, according to the same midrash, declares: "it is she [zot] who is destined to strike the bell [zog] and to speak [in strife] against me, as you read, 'a golden bell [pa‘amon] and a pomegranate' [Exodus 28:34] ... it is she who will trouble me [mefa‘amtani] all night" (Genesis Rabbah 18:4). The first woman also becomes the object of accusations ascribed to Rabbi Joshua of Siknin, according to whom Eve, despite the divine efforts, turned out to be "swelled-headed, coquette, eavesdropper, gossip, prone to jealousy, light-fingered and gadabout" (Genesis Rabbah 18:2). A similar set of charges appears in Genesis Rabbah 17:8, according to which Eve's creation from Adam's rib rather than from the earth makes her inferior to Adam and never satisfied with anything.
Third, and despite the terseness of the biblical text in this regard, the erotic iniquities attributed to Eve constitute a separate category of her shortcomings. Told in Genesis 3:16 that "your desire shall be for your husband", she is accused by the Rabbis of having an overdeveloped sexual drive (Genesis Rabhah 20:7) and constantly enticing Adam (Genesis Rabbab 23:5). However, in terms of textual popularity and dissemination, the motif of Eve copulating with the primeval serpent takes priority over her other sexual transgressions. Despite the rather unsettling picturesqueness of this account, it is conveyed in numerous places: Genesis Rabbah 18:6, and BT Sotah 9b, Shabbat 145b–146a and 156a, Yevamot 103b and Avodah Zarah 22b.
Kabbalah
Kabbalistic mysticism attempted to establish a more exact relationship between Lilith and God. With her major characteristics having been well developed by the end of the Talmudic period, after six centuries had elapsed between the Aramaic incantation texts that mention Lilith and the early Spanish Kabbalistic writings in the 13th century, she reappears, and her life history becomes known in greater mythological detail. Her creation is described in many alternative versions.
One mentions her creation as being before Adam's, on the fifth day, because the "living creatures" with whose swarms God filled the waters included Lilith. A similar version, related to the earlier Talmudic passages, recounts how Lilith was fashioned with the same substance as Adam was, shortly before. A third alternative version states that God originally created Adam and Lilith in a manner that the female creature was contained in the male. Lilith's soul was lodged in the depths of the Great Abyss. When God called her, she joined Adam. After Adam's body was created a thousand souls from the Left (evil) side attempted to attach themselves to him. However, God drove them off. Adam was left lying as a body without a soul. Then a cloud descended and God commanded the earth to produce a living soul. This God breathed into Adam, who began to spring to life and his female was attached to his side. God separated the female from Adam's side. The female side was Lilith, whereupon she flew to the Cities of the Sea and attacked humankind.
Yet another version claims that Lilith emerged as a divine entity that was born spontaneously, either out of the Great Supernal Abyss or out of the power of an aspect of God (the Gevurah of Din). This aspect of God was negative and punitive, as well as one of his ten attributes (Sefirot), at its lowest manifestation has an affinity with the realm of evil and it is out of this that Lilith merged with Samael.
An alternative story links Lilith with the creation of luminaries. The "first light", which is the light of Mercy (one of the Sefirot), appeared on the first day of creation when God said "Let there be light". This light became hidden and the Holiness became surrounded by a husk of evil. "A husk (klippa) was created around the brain" and this husk spread and brought out another husk, which was Lilith.
Midrash ABKIR
The first medieval source to depict Adam and Lilith in full was the Midrash A.B.K.I.R. (c. 10th century), which was followed by the Zohar and other Kabbalistic writings. Adam is said to be perfect until he recognises either his sin or Cain's fratricide that is the cause of bringing death into the world. He then separates from holy Eve, sleeps alone, and fasts for 130 years. During this time "Pizna", either an alternate name for Lilith or a daughter of hers, desires his beauty and seduces him against his will. She gives birth to multitudes of djinns and demons, the first of them being named Agrimas. However, they are defeated by Methuselah, who slays thousands of them with a holy sword and forces Agrimas to give him the names of the rest, after which he casts them away to the sea and the mountains.
Treatise on the Left Emanation
The mystical writing of two brothers Jacob and Isaac Hacohen, Treatise on the Left Emanation, which predates the Zohar by a few decades, states that Samael and Lilith are in the shape of an androgynous being, double-faced, born out of the emanation of the Throne of Glory and corresponding in the spiritual realm to Adam and Eve, who were likewise born as a hermaphrodite. The two twin androgynous couples resembled each other and both "were like the image of Above"; that is, that they are reproduced in a visible form of an androgynous deity.
19. In answer to your question concerning Lilith, I shall explain to you the essence of the matter. Concerning this point there is a received tradition from the ancient Sages who made use of the Secret Knowledge of the Lesser Palaces, which is the manipulation of demons and a ladder by which one ascends to the prophetic levels. In this tradition it is made clear that Samael and Lilith were born as one, similar to the form of Adam and Eve who were also born as one, reflecting what is above. This is the account of Lilith which was received by the Sages in the Secret Knowledge of the Palaces.
Another version that was also current among Kabbalistic circles in the Middle Ages establishes Lilith as the first of Samael's four wives: Lilith, Naamah, Eisheth, and Agrat bat Mahlat. Each of them are mothers of demons and have their own hosts and unclean spirits in no number. The marriage of archangel Samael and Lilith was arranged by "Blind Dragon", who is the counterpart of "the dragon that is in the sea". Blind Dragon acts as an intermediary between Lilith and Samael:
Blind Dragon rides Lilith the Sinful – may she be extirpated quickly in our days, Amen! – And this Blind Dragon brings about the union between Samael and Lilith. And just as the Dragon that is in the sea (Isa. 27:1) has no eyes, likewise Blind Dragon that is above, in the likeness of a spiritual form, is without eyes, that is to say, without colors.... (Patai 81:458) Samael is called the Slant Serpent, and Lilith is called the Tortuous Serpent.
The marriage of Samael and Lilith is known as the "Angel Satan" or the "Other God", but it was not allowed to last. To prevent Lilith and Samael's demonic children Lilin from filling the world, God castrated Samael. In many 17th century Kabbalistic books, this seems to be a reinterpretation of an old Talmudic myth where God castrated the male Leviathan and slew the female Leviathan in order to prevent them from mating and thereby destroying the Earth with their offspring. With Lilith being unable to fornicate with Samael anymore, she sought to couple with men who experience nocturnal emissions. A 15th or 16th century Kabbalah text states that God has "cooled" the female Leviathan, meaning that he has made Lilith infertile and she is a mere fornication.
The Treatise on the Left Emanation also says that there are two Liliths, the lesser being married to the great demon Asmodeus.
The Matron Lilith is the mate of Samael. Both of them were born at the same hour in the image of Adam and Eve, intertwined in each other. Asmodeus the great king of the demons has as a mate the Lesser (younger) Lilith, daughter of the king whose name is Qafsefoni. The name of his mate is Mehetabel daughter of Matred, and their daughter is Lilith.
Another passage charges Lilith as being a tempting serpent of Eve.
And the Serpent, the Woman of Harlotry, incited and seduced Eve through the husks of Light which in itself is holiness. And the Serpent seduced Holy Eve, and enough said for him who understands. And all this ruination came about because Adam the first man coupled with Eve while she was in her menstrual impurity – this is the filth and the impure seed of the Serpent who mounted Eve before Adam mounted her. Behold, here it is before you: because of the sins of Adam the first man all the things mentioned came into being. For Evil Lilith, when she saw the greatness of his corruption, became strong in her husks, and came to Adam against his will, and became hot from him and bore him many demons and spirits and Lilin. (Patai81:455f)
Zohar
References to Lilith in the Zohar include the following:
She roams at night, and goes all about the world and makes sport with men and causes them to emit seed. In every place where a man sleeps alone in a house, she visits him and grabs him and attaches herself to him and has her desire from him, and bears from him. And she also afflicts him with sickness, and he knows it not, and all this takes place when the moon is on the wane.
This passage may be related to the mention of Lilith in Talmud Shabbath 151b (see above), and also to Talmud Eruvin 18b where nocturnal emissions are connected with the begettal of demons.
According to Rapahel Patai, older sources state clearly that after Lilith's Red Sea sojourn (mentioned also in Louis Ginzberg's Legends of the Jews), she returned to Adam and begat children from him by forcing herself upon him. Before doing so, she attaches herself to Cain and bears him numerous spirits and demons. In the Zohar, however, Lilith is said to have succeeded in begetting offspring from Adam even during their short-lived sexual experience. Lilith leaves Adam in Eden, as she is not a suitable helpmate for him. Gershom Scholem proposes that the author of the Zohar, Rabbi Moses de Leon, was aware of both the folk tradition of Lilith and another conflicting version, possibly older.
The Zohar adds further that two female spirits instead of one, Lilith and Naamah, desired Adam and seduced him. The issue of these unions were demons and spirits called "the plagues of humankind", and the usual added explanation was that it was through Adam's own sin that Lilith overcame him against his will.
17th-century Hebrew magical amulets
A copy of Jean de Pauly's translation of the Zohar in the Ritman Library contains an inserted late 17th century printed Hebrew sheet for use in magical amulets where the prophet Elijah confronts Lilith.
The sheet contains two texts within borders, which are amulets, one for a male ('lazakhar'), the other one for a female ('lanekevah'). The invocations mention Adam, Eve and Lilith, 'Chavah Rishonah' (the first Eve, who is identical with Lilith), also devils or angels: Sanoy, Sansinoy, Smangeluf, Shmari'el (the guardian) and Hasdi'el (the merciful). A few lines in Yiddish are followed by the dialogue between the prophet Elijah and Lilith when he met her with her host of demons to kill the mother and take her new-born child ('to drink her blood, suck her bones and eat her flesh'). She tells Elijah that she will lose her power if someone uses her secret names, which she reveals at the end: lilith, abitu, abizu, hakash, avers hikpodu, ayalu, matrota ...
In other amulets, probably informed by The Alphabet of Ben-Sira, she is Adam's first wife. (Yalqut Reubeni, Zohar 1:34b, 3:19)
Charles Richardson's dictionary portion of the Encyclopædia Metropolitana appends to his etymological discussion of lullaby "a [manuscript] note written in a copy of Skinner" [i.e. Stephen Skinner's 1671 Etymologicon Linguæ Anglicanæ], which asserts that the word lullaby originates from Lillu abi abi, a Hebrew incantation meaning "Lilith begone" recited by Jewish mothers over an infant's cradle. Richardson did not endorse the theory and modern lexicographers consider it a false etymology.
Greco-Roman mythology
In the Latin Vulgate Book of Isaiah 34:14, Lilith is translated lamia.
According to Augustine Calmet, Lilith has connections with early views on vampires and sorcery:
According to Siegmund Hurwitz the Talmudic Lilith is connected with the Greek Lamia, who, according to Hurwitz, likewise governed a class of child stealing lamia-demons. Lamia bore the title "child killer" and was feared for her malevolence, like Lilith. She has different conflicting origins and is described as having a human upper body from the waist up and a serpentine body from the waist down. One source states simply that she is a daughter of the goddess Hecate, another, that Lamia was subsequently cursed by the goddess Hera to have stillborn children because of her association with Zeus; alternatively, Hera slew all of Lamia's children (except Scylla) in anger that Lamia slept with her husband, Zeus. The grief caused Lamia to turn into a monster that took revenge on mothers by stealing their children and devouring them. Lamia had a vicious sexual appetite that matched her cannibalistic appetite for children. She was notorious for being a vampiric spirit and loved sucking men's blood. Her gift was the "mark of a Sibyl", a gift of second sight. Zeus was said to have given her the gift of sight. However, she was "cursed" to never be able to shut her eyes so that she would forever obsess over her dead children. Taking pity on Lamia, Zeus gave her the ability to remove and replace her eyes from their sockets.
In Mandaeism
In Mandaean scriptures such as the Ginza Rabba and Qolasta, liliths () are mentioned as inhabitants of the World of Darkness.
Arabic culture
The occult writer Ahmad al-Buni (d. 1225), in his Sun of the Great Knowledge (), mentions a demon called "the mother of children" (ام الصبيان), a term also used "in one place".
Folkloric traditions recorded around 1953 tell about a jinn called Qarinah, who was rejected by Adam and mated with Iblis instead. She gave birth to a host of demons and became known as their mother. To take revenge on Adam, she pursues human children. As such, she would kill a pregnant mother's baby in the womb, causes impotence to men or attacks little children with illnesses. According to occult practises, she would be subject to the demon-king Murrah al-Abyad, which appears to be another name for Iblis used in magical writings. Stories about Qarinah and Lilith merged in early Islam.
In Western literature
In German literature
Lilith's earliest appearance in the literature of the Romantic period (1789–1832) was in Goethe's 1808 work Faust: The First Part of the Tragedy.
After Mephistopheles offers this warning to Faust, he then, quite ironically, encourages Faust to dance with "the Pretty Witch". Lilith and Faust engage in a short dialogue, where Lilith recounts the days spent in Eden.
In English literature
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which developed around 1848, were greatly influenced by Goethe's work on the theme of Lilith. In 1863, Dante Gabriel Rossetti of the Brotherhood began painting what would later be his first rendition of Lady Lilith, a painting he expected to be his "best picture hitherto". Symbols appearing in the painting allude to the "femme fatale" reputation of the Romantic Lilith: poppies (death and cold) and white roses (sterile passion). Accompanying his Lady Lilith painting from 1866, Rossetti wrote a sonnet entitled Lilith, which was first published in Swinburne's pamphlet-review (1868), Notes on the Royal Academy Exhibition.
The poem and the picture appeared together alongside Rossetti's painting Sibylla Palmifera and the sonnet Soul's Beauty. In 1881, the Lilith sonnet was renamed "Body's Beauty" in order to contrast it and Soul's Beauty. The two were placed sequentially in The House of Life collection (sonnets number 77 and 78).
Rossetti wrote in 1870:
This is in accordance with Jewish folk tradition, which associates Lilith both with long hair (a symbol of dangerous feminine seductive power in Jewish culture), and with possessing women by entering them through mirrors.
The Victorian poet Robert Browning re-envisioned Lilith in his poem "Adam, Lilith, and Eve". First published in 1883, the poem uses the traditional myths surrounding the triad of Adam, Eve, and Lilith. Browning depicts Lilith and Eve as being friendly and complicitous with each other, as they sit together on either side of Adam. Under the threat of death, Eve admits that she never loved Adam, while Lilith confesses that she always loved him:
Browning focused on Lilith's emotional attributes, rather than that of her ancient demon predecessors.
Scottish author George MacDonald also wrote a fantasy novel entitled Lilith, first published in 1895. MacDonald employed the character of Lilith in service to a spiritual drama about sin and redemption, in which Lilith finds a hard-won salvation. Many of the traditional characteristics of Lilith mythology are present in the author's depiction: Long dark hair, pale skin, a hatred and fear of children and babies, and an obsession with gazing at herself in a mirror. MacDonald's Lilith also has vampiric qualities: she bites people and sucks their blood for sustenance.
Australian poet and scholar Christopher John Brennan (1870–1932), included a section titled "Lilith" in his major work "Poems: 1913" (Sydney : G. B. Philip and Son, 1914). The "Lilith" section contains thirteen poems exploring the Lilith myth and is central to the meaning of the collection as a whole.
C. L. Moore's 1940 story Fruit of Knowledge is written from Lilith's point of view. It is a re-telling of the Fall of Man as a love triangle between Lilith, Adam and Eve – with Eve's eating the forbidden fruit being in this version the result of misguided manipulations by the jealous Lilith, who had hoped to get her rival discredited and destroyed by God and thus regain Adam's love.
British poet John Siddique's 2011 collection Full Blood has a suite of 11 poems called The Tree of Life, which features Lilith as the divine feminine aspect of God. A number of the poems feature Lilith directly, including the piece Unwritten which deals with the spiritual problem of the feminine being removed by the scribes from The Bible.
Lilith is also mentioned in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by C.S.Lewis. The character Mr. Beaver ascribes the ancestry of the main antagonist, Jadis the White Witch, to Lilith.
Lilith is a poem by Vladimir Nabokov, written in 1928. Many have connected it to Lolita, but Nabokov adamantly denies this: "Intelligent readers will abstain from examining this impersonal fantasy for any links with my later fiction."
In Western esotericism and modern occultism
The depiction of Lilith in Romanticism continues to be popular among Wiccans and in other modern Occultism. A few magical orders dedicated to the undercurrent of Lilith, featuring initiations specifically related to the arcana of the "first mother", exist. Two organisations that use initiations and magic associated with Lilith are the Ordo Antichristianus Illuminati and the Order of Phosphorus. Lilith appears as a succubus in Aleister Crowley's De Arte Magica. Lilith was also one of the middle names of Crowley's first child, Nuit Ma Ahathoor Hecate Sappho Jezebel Lilith Crowley (1904–1906), and Lilith is sometimes identified with Babalon in Thelemic writings. Many early occult writers that contributed to modern day Wicca expressed special reverence for Lilith. Charles Leland associated Aradia with Lilith: Aradia, says Leland, is Herodias, who was regarded in stregheria folklore as being associated with Diana as chief of the witches. Leland further notes that Herodias is a name that comes from west Asia, where it denoted an early form of Lilith.
Gerald Gardner asserted that there was continuous historical worship of Lilith to present day, and that her name is sometimes given to the goddess being personified in the coven by the priestess. This idea was further attested by Doreen Valiente, who cited her as a presiding goddess of the Craft: "the personification of erotic dreams, the suppressed desire for delights". In some contemporary concepts, Lilith is viewed as the embodiment of the Goddess, a designation that is thought to be shared with what these faiths believe to be her counterparts: Inanna, Ishtar, Asherah, Anath and Isis. According to one view, Lilith was originally a Sumerian, Babylonian, or Hebrew mother goddess of childbirth, children, women, and sexuality.
Raymond Buckland holds that Lilith is a dark moon goddess on par with the Hindu Kali.
Many modern theistic Satanists consider Lilith as a goddess. She is considered a goddess of independence by those Satanists and is often worshipped by women, but women are not the only people who worship her. Lilith is popular among theistic Satanists because of her association with Satan. Some Satanists believe that she is the wife of Satan and thus think of her as a mother figure. Others base their reverence for her on her history as a succubus and praise her as a sex goddess. A different approach to a Satanic Lilith holds that she was once a fertility and agricultural goddess.
The western mystery tradition associates Lilith with the Qliphoth of kabbalah. Samael Aun Weor in The Pistis Sophia Unveiled writes that homosexuals are the "henchmen of Lilith". Likewise, women who undergo wilful abortion, and those who support this practice are "seen in the sphere of Lilith". Dion Fortune writes, "The Virgin Mary is reflected in Lilith", and that Lilith is the source of "lustful dreams".
Popular culture
See also
Abyzou
Ancient Mesopotamian religion
Black Moon Lilith
Lilith Fair
Daimon
Norea
Serpent seed
Siren
Spirit spouse
Notes
References
Bibliography
Talmudic References: b. Erubin 18b; b. Erubin 100b; b. Nidda 24b; b. Shab. 151b; b. Baba Bathra 73a–b
Kabbalist References: Zohar 3:76b–77a; Zohar Sitrei Torah 1:147b–148b; Zohar 2:267b; Bacharach,'Emeq haMelekh, 19c; Zohar 3:19a; Bacharach,'Emeq haMelekh, 102d–103a; Zohar 1:54b–55a
Dead Sea Scroll References: 4QSongs of the Sage/4QShir; 4Q510 frag.11.4–6a//frag.10.1f; 11QPsAp
Lilith: The Real Story Rabbi Menachem Levine, Aish.com
Lilith Bibliography, Jewish and Christian Literature, Alan Humm ed., .
Charles Fossey, La Magie Assyrienne, Paris: 1902.
Siegmund Hurwitz, Lilith, die erste Eva: eine Studie über dunkle Aspekte des Weiblichen. Zürich: Daimon Verlag, 1980, 1993. English tr. Lilith, the First Eve: Historical and Psychological Aspects of the Dark Feminine, translated by Gela Jacobson. Einsiedeln, Switzerland: Daimon Verlag, 1992 .
Siegmund Hurwitz, Lilith Switzerland: Daminon Press, 1992. Jerusalem Bible. New York: Doubleday, 1966.
Samuel Noah Kramer, Gilgamesh and the Huluppu-Tree: A reconstructed Sumerian Text. (Kramer's Translation of the Gilgamesh Prologue), Assyriological Studies of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago 10, Chicago: 1938.
Raphael Patai, Adam ve-Adama, tr. as Man and Earth; Jerusalem: The Hebrew Press Association, 1941–1942.
Archibald Sayce, Hibbert Lectures on Babylonian Religion 1887.
Schwartz, Howard, Lilith's Cave: Jewish tales of the supernatural, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988.
R. Campbell Thompson, Semitic Magic, its Origin and Development, London: 1908.
Isaiah, chapter 34. New American Bible
Augustin Calmet, (1751) Treatise on the Apparitions of Spirits and on Vampires or Revenants of Hungary, Moravia, et al. The Complete Volumes I & II. 2016.
Jeffers, Jen (2017)
External links
Jewish Encyclopedia: Lilith
Collection of Lilith information and links by Alan Humm
International standard Bible Encyclopedia: Night-Monster
Demons in Judaism
Female legendary creatures
Kabbalah
Kabbalistic words and phrases
Mesopotamian demons
Qliphoth
Succubi
Supernatural legends
Devils |
18631 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz%20force | Lorentz force | In physics (specifically in electromagnetism) the Lorentz force (or electromagnetic force) is the combination of electric and magnetic force on a point charge due to electromagnetic fields. A particle of charge moving with a velocity in an electric field and a magnetic field experiences a force of
(in SI units). It says that the electromagnetic force on a charge is a combination of a force in the direction of the electric field proportional to the magnitude of the field and the quantity of charge, and a force at right angles to the magnetic field and the velocity of the charge, proportional to the magnitude of the field, the charge, and the velocity. Variations on this basic formula describe the magnetic force on a current-carrying wire (sometimes called Laplace force), the electromotive force in a wire loop moving through a magnetic field (an aspect of Faraday's law of induction), and the force on a moving charged particle.
Historians suggest that the law is implicit in a paper by James Clerk Maxwell, published in 1865. Hendrik Lorentz arrived at a complete derivation in 1895, identifying the contribution of the electric force a few years after Oliver Heaviside correctly identified the contribution of the magnetic force.
Lorentz force law as the definition of E and B
In many textbook treatments of classical electromagnetism, the Lorentz force law is used as the definition of the electric and magnetic fields and . To be specific, the Lorentz force is understood to be the following empirical statement:
The electromagnetic force on a test charge at a given point and time is a certain function of its charge and velocity , which can be parameterized by exactly two vectors and , in the functional form:
This is valid, even for particles approaching the speed of light (that is, magnitude of , ). So the two vector fields and are thereby defined throughout space and time, and these are called the "electric field" and "magnetic field". The fields are defined everywhere in space and time with respect to what force a test charge would receive regardless of whether a charge is present to experience the force.
As a definition of and , the Lorentz force is only a definition in principle because a real particle (as opposed to the hypothetical "test charge" of infinitesimally-small mass and charge) would generate its own finite and fields, which would alter the electromagnetic force that it experiences. In addition, if the charge experiences acceleration, as if forced into a curved trajectory, it emits radiation that causes it to lose kinetic energy. See for example Bremsstrahlung and synchrotron light. These effects occur through both a direct effect (called the radiation reaction force) and indirectly (by affecting the motion of nearby charges and currents).
Equation
Charged particle
The force acting on a particle of electric charge with instantaneous velocity , due to an external electric field and magnetic field , is given by (in SI units):
where is the vector cross product (all boldface quantities are vectors). In terms of Cartesian components, we have:
In general, the electric and magnetic fields are functions of the position and time. Therefore, explicitly, the Lorentz force can be written as:
in which is the position vector of the charged particle, is time, and the overdot is a time derivative.
A positively charged particle will be accelerated in the same linear orientation as the field, but will curve perpendicularly to both the instantaneous velocity vector and the field according to the right-hand rule (in detail, if the fingers of the right hand are extended to point in the direction of and are then curled to point in the direction of , then the extended thumb will point in the direction of ).
The term is called the electric force, while the term is called the magnetic force. According to some definitions, the term "Lorentz force" refers specifically to the formula for the magnetic force, with the total electromagnetic force (including the electric force) given some other (nonstandard) name. This article will not follow this nomenclature: In what follows, the term "Lorentz force" will refer to the expression for the total force.
The magnetic force component of the Lorentz force manifests itself as the force that acts on a current-carrying wire in a magnetic field. In that context, it is also called the Laplace force.
The Lorentz force is a force exerted by the electromagnetic field on the charged particle, that is, it is the rate at which linear momentum is transferred from the electromagnetic field to the particle. Associated with it is the power which is the rate at which energy is transferred from the electromagnetic field to the particle. That power is
Notice that the magnetic field does not contribute to the power because the magnetic force is always perpendicular to the velocity of the particle.
Continuous charge distribution
For a continuous charge distribution in motion, the Lorentz force equation becomes:
where is the force on a small piece of the charge distribution with charge . If both sides of this equation are divided by the volume of this small piece of the charge distribution , the result is:
where is the force density (force per unit volume) and is the charge density (charge per unit volume). Next, the current density corresponding to the motion of the charge continuum is
so the continuous analogue to the equation is
The total force is the volume integral over the charge distribution:
By eliminating and , using Maxwell's equations, and manipulating using the theorems of vector calculus, this form of the equation can be used to derive the Maxwell stress tensor , in turn this can be combined with the Poynting vector to obtain the electromagnetic stress–energy tensor T used in general relativity.
In terms of and , another way to write the Lorentz force (per unit volume) is
where is the speed of light and ∇· denotes the divergence of a tensor field. Rather than the amount of charge and its velocity in electric and magnetic fields, this equation relates the energy flux (flow of energy per unit time per unit distance) in the fields to the force exerted on a charge distribution. See Covariant formulation of classical electromagnetism for more details.
The density of power associated with the Lorentz force in a material medium is
If we separate the total charge and total current into their free and bound parts, we get that the density of the Lorentz force is
where: is the density of free charge; is the polarization density; is the density of free current; and is the magnetization density. In this way, the Lorentz force can explain the torque applied to a permanent magnet by the magnetic field. The density of the associated power is
Equation in cgs units
The above-mentioned formulae use SI units which are the most common. In older cgs-Gaussian units, which are somewhat more common among some theoretical physicists as well as condensed matter experimentalists, one has instead
where c is the speed of light. Although this equation looks slightly different, it is completely equivalent, since one has the following relations:
where is the vacuum permittivity and the vacuum permeability. In practice, the subscripts "cgs" and "SI" are always omitted, and the unit system has to be assessed from context.
History
Early attempts to quantitatively describe the electromagnetic force were made in the mid-18th century. It was proposed that the force on magnetic poles, by Johann Tobias Mayer and others in 1760, and electrically charged objects, by Henry Cavendish in 1762, obeyed an inverse-square law. However, in both cases the experimental proof was neither complete nor conclusive. It was not until 1784 when Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, using a torsion balance, was able to definitively show through experiment that this was true. Soon after the discovery in 1820 by Hans Christian Ørsted that a magnetic needle is acted on by a voltaic current, André-Marie Ampère that same year was able to devise through experimentation the formula for the angular dependence of the force between two current elements. In all these descriptions, the force was always described in terms of the properties of the matter involved and the distances between two masses or charges rather than in terms of electric and magnetic fields.
The modern concept of electric and magnetic fields first arose in the theories of Michael Faraday, particularly his idea of lines of force, later to be given full mathematical description by Lord Kelvin and James Clerk Maxwell. From a modern perspective it is possible to identify in Maxwell's 1865 formulation of his field equations a form of the Lorentz force equation in relation to electric currents, although in the time of Maxwell it was not evident how his equations related to the forces on moving charged objects. J. J. Thomson was the first to attempt to derive from Maxwell's field equations the electromagnetic forces on a moving charged object in terms of the object's properties and external fields. Interested in determining the electromagnetic behavior of the charged particles in cathode rays, Thomson published a paper in 1881 wherein he gave the force on the particles due to an external magnetic field as
Thomson derived the correct basic form of the formula, but, because of some miscalculations and an incomplete description of the displacement current, included an incorrect scale-factor of a half in front of the formula. Oliver Heaviside invented the modern vector notation and applied it to Maxwell's field equations; he also (in 1885 and 1889) had fixed the mistakes of Thomson's derivation and arrived at the correct form of the magnetic force on a moving charged object. Finally, in 1895, Hendrik Lorentz derived the modern form of the formula for the electromagnetic force which includes the contributions to the total force from both the electric and the magnetic fields. Lorentz began by abandoning the Maxwellian descriptions of the ether and conduction. Instead, Lorentz made a distinction between matter and the luminiferous aether and sought to apply the Maxwell equations at a microscopic scale. Using Heaviside's version of the Maxwell equations for a stationary ether and applying Lagrangian mechanics (see below), Lorentz arrived at the correct and complete form of the force law that now bears his name.
Trajectories of particles due to the Lorentz force
In many cases of practical interest, the motion in a magnetic field of an electrically charged particle (such as an electron or ion in a plasma) can be treated as the superposition of a relatively fast circular motion around a point called the guiding center and a relatively slow drift of this point. The drift speeds may differ for various species depending on their charge states, masses, or temperatures, possibly resulting in electric currents or chemical separation.
Significance of the Lorentz force
While the modern Maxwell's equations describe how electrically charged particles and currents or moving charged particles give rise to electric and magnetic fields, the Lorentz force law completes that picture by describing the force acting on a moving point charge q in the presence of electromagnetic fields. The Lorentz force law describes the effect of E and B upon a point charge, but such electromagnetic forces are not the entire picture. Charged particles are possibly coupled to other forces, notably gravity and nuclear forces. Thus, Maxwell's equations do not stand separate from other physical laws, but are coupled to them via the charge and current densities. The response of a point charge to the Lorentz law is one aspect; the generation of E and B by currents and charges is another.
In real materials the Lorentz force is inadequate to describe the collective behavior of charged particles, both in principle and as a matter of computation. The charged particles in a material medium not only respond to the E and B fields but also generate these fields. Complex transport equations must be solved to determine the time and spatial response of charges, for example, the Boltzmann equation or the Fokker–Planck equation or the Navier–Stokes equations. For example, see magnetohydrodynamics, fluid dynamics, electrohydrodynamics, superconductivity, stellar evolution. An entire physical apparatus for dealing with these matters has developed. See for example, Green–Kubo relations and Green's function (many-body theory).
Force on a current-carrying wire
When a wire carrying an electric current is placed in a magnetic field, each of the moving charges, which comprise the current, experiences the Lorentz force, and together they can create a macroscopic force on the wire (sometimes called the Laplace force). By combining the Lorentz force law above with the definition of electric current, the following equation results, in the case of a straight, stationary wire:
where is a vector whose magnitude is the length of wire, and whose direction is along the wire, aligned with the direction of conventional current charge flow .
If the wire is not straight but curved, the force on it can be computed by applying this formula to each infinitesimal segment of wire , then adding up all these forces by integration. Formally, the net force on a stationary, rigid wire carrying a steady current is
This is the net force. In addition, there will usually be torque, plus other effects if the wire is not perfectly rigid.
One application of this is Ampère's force law, which describes how two current-carrying wires can attract or repel each other, since each experiences a Lorentz force from the other's magnetic field. For more information, see the article: Ampère's force law.
EMF
The magnetic force () component of the Lorentz force is responsible for motional electromotive force (or motional EMF), the phenomenon underlying many electrical generators. When a conductor is moved through a magnetic field, the magnetic field exerts opposite forces on electrons and nuclei in the wire, and this creates the EMF. The term "motional EMF" is applied to this phenomenon, since the EMF is due to the motion of the wire.
In other electrical generators, the magnets move, while the conductors do not. In this case, the EMF is due to the electric force (qE) term in the Lorentz Force equation. The electric field in question is created by the changing magnetic field, resulting in an induced EMF, as described by the Maxwell–Faraday equation (one of the four modern Maxwell's equations).
Both of these EMFs, despite their apparently distinct origins, are described by the same equation, namely, the EMF is the rate of change of magnetic flux through the wire. (This is Faraday's law of induction, see below.) Einstein's special theory of relativity was partially motivated by the desire to better understand this link between the two effects. In fact, the electric and magnetic fields are different facets of the same electromagnetic field, and in moving from one inertial frame to another, the solenoidal vector field portion of the E-field can change in whole or in part to a B-field or vice versa.
Lorentz force and Faraday's law of induction
Given a loop of wire in a magnetic field, Faraday's law of induction states the induced electromotive force (EMF) in the wire is:
where
is the magnetic flux through the loop, B is the magnetic field, Σ(t) is a surface bounded by the closed contour ∂Σ(t), at time t, dA is an infinitesimal vector area element of Σ(t) (magnitude is the area of an infinitesimal patch of surface, direction is orthogonal to that surface patch).
The sign of the EMF is determined by Lenz's law. Note that this is valid for not only a stationary wirebut also for a moving wire.
From Faraday's law of induction (that is valid for a moving wire, for instance in a motor) and the Maxwell Equations, the Lorentz Force can be deduced. The reverse is also true, the Lorentz force and the Maxwell Equations can be used to derive the Faraday Law.
Let be the moving wire, moving together without rotation and with constant velocity v and Σ(t) be the internal surface of the wire. The EMF around the closed path ∂Σ(t) is given by:
where is the electric field and is an infinitesimal vector element of the contour .
NB: Both dℓ and dA have a sign ambiguity; to get the correct sign, the right-hand rule is used, as explained in the article Kelvin–Stokes theorem.
The above result can be compared with the version of Faraday's law of induction that appears in the modern Maxwell's equations, called here the Maxwell–Faraday equation:
The Maxwell–Faraday equation also can be written in an integral form using the Kelvin–Stokes theorem.
So we have, the Maxwell Faraday equation:
and the Faraday Law,
The two are equivalent if the wire is not moving. Using the Leibniz integral rule and that div B = 0, results in,
and using the Maxwell Faraday equation,
since this is valid for any wire position it implies that,
Faraday's law of induction holds whether the loop of wire is rigid and stationary, or in motion or in process of deformation, and it holds whether the magnetic field is constant in time or changing. However, there are cases where Faraday's law is either inadequate or difficult to use, and application of the underlying Lorentz force law is necessary. See inapplicability of Faraday's law.
If the magnetic field is fixed in time and the conducting loop moves through the field, the magnetic flux linking the loop can change in several ways. For example, if the -field varies with position, and the loop moves to a location with different -field, will change. Alternatively, if the loop changes orientation with respect to the B-field, the differential element will change because of the different angle between and , also changing . As a third example, if a portion of the circuit is swept through a uniform, time-independent -field, and another portion of the circuit is held stationary, the flux linking the entire closed circuit can change due to the shift in relative position of the circuit's component parts with time (surface time-dependent). In all three cases, Faraday's law of induction then predicts the EMF generated by the change in .
Note that the Maxwell Faraday's equation implies that the Electric Field is non conservative when the Magnetic Field varies in time, and is not expressible as the gradient of a scalar field, and not subject to the gradient theorem since its rotational is not zero.
Lorentz force in terms of potentials
The and fields can be replaced by the magnetic vector potential and (scalar) electrostatic potential by
where is the gradient, is the divergence, and is the curl.
The force becomes
Using an identity for the triple product this can be rewritten as,
(Notice that the coordinates and the velocity components should be treated as independent variables, so the del operator acts only on , not on ; thus, there is no need of using Feynman's subscript notation in the equation above). Using the chain rule, the total derivative of is:
so that the above expression becomes:
.
With , we can put the equation into the convenient Euler–Lagrange form
where and
Lorentz force and analytical mechanics
The Lagrangian for a charged particle of mass and charge in an electromagnetic field equivalently describes the dynamics of the particle in terms of its energy, rather than the force exerted on it. The classical expression is given by:
where and are the potential fields as above. The quantity can be thought as a velocity-dependent potential function. Using Lagrange's equations, the equation for the Lorentz force given above can be obtained again.
The potential energy depends on the velocity of the particle, so the force is velocity dependent, so it is not conservative.
The relativistic Lagrangian is
The action is the relativistic arclength of the path of the particle in spacetime, minus the potential energy contribution, plus an extra contribution which quantum mechanically is an extra phase a charged particle gets when it is moving along a vector potential.
Relativistic form of the Lorentz force
Covariant form of the Lorentz force
Field tensor
Using the metric signature , the Lorentz force for a charge can be written in covariant form:
where is the four-momentum, defined as
the proper time of the particle, the contravariant electromagnetic tensor
and is the covariant 4-velocity of the particle, defined as:
in which
is the Lorentz factor.
The fields are transformed to a frame moving with constant relative velocity by:
where is the Lorentz transformation tensor.
Translation to vector notation
The component (x-component) of the force is
Substituting the components of the covariant electromagnetic tensor F yields
Using the components of covariant four-velocity yields
The calculation for (force components in the and directions) yields similar results, so collecting the 3 equations into one:
and since differentials in coordinate time and proper time are related by the Lorentz factor,
so we arrive at
This is precisely the Lorentz force law, however, it is important to note that is the relativistic expression,
Lorentz force in spacetime algebra (STA)
The electric and magnetic fields are dependent on the velocity of an observer, so the relativistic form of the Lorentz force law can best be exhibited starting from a coordinate-independent expression for the electromagnetic and magnetic fields , and an arbitrary time-direction, . This can be settled through Space-Time Algebra (or the geometric algebra of space-time), a type of Clifford algebra defined on a pseudo-Euclidean space, as
and
is a space-time bivector (an oriented plane segment, just like a vector is an oriented line segment), which has six degrees of freedom corresponding to boosts (rotations in space-time planes) and rotations (rotations in space-space planes). The dot product with the vector pulls a vector (in the space algebra) from the translational part, while the wedge-product creates a trivector (in the space algebra) who is dual to a vector which is the usual magnetic field vector.
The relativistic velocity is given by the (time-like) changes in a time-position vector , where
(which shows our choice for the metric) and the velocity is
The proper (invariant is an inadequate term because no transformation has been defined) form of the Lorentz force law is simply
Note that the order is important because between a bivector and a vector the dot product is anti-symmetric. Upon a spacetime split like one can obtain the velocity, and fields as above yielding the usual expression.
Lorentz force in general relativity
In the general theory of relativity the equation of motion for a particle with mass and charge , moving in a space with metric tensor and electromagnetic field , is given as
where ( is taken along the trajectory), , and .
The equation can also be written as
where is the Christoffel symbol (of the torsion-free metric connection in general relativity), or as
where is the covariant differential in general relativity (metric, torsion-free).
Applications
The Lorentz force occurs in many devices, including:
Cyclotrons and other circular path particle accelerators
Mass spectrometers
Velocity Filters
Magnetrons
Lorentz force velocimetry
In its manifestation as the Laplace force on an electric current in a conductor, this force occurs in many devices including:
Electric motors
Railguns
Linear motors
Loudspeakers
Magnetoplasmadynamic thrusters
Electrical generators
Homopolar generators
Linear alternators
See also
Hall effect
Electromagnetism
Gravitomagnetism
Ampère's force law
Hendrik Lorentz
Maxwell's equations
Formulation of Maxwell's equations in special relativity
Moving magnet and conductor problem
Abraham–Lorentz force
Larmor formula
Cyclotron radiation
Magnetoresistance
Scalar potential
Helmholtz decomposition
Guiding center
Field line
Coulomb's law
Electromagnetic buoyancy
Footnotes
References
The numbered references refer in part to the list immediately below.
: volume 2.
External links
Lorentz force (demonstration)
Faraday's law: Tankersley and Mosca
Notes from Physics and Astronomy HyperPhysics at Georgia State University; see also home page
Interactive Java applet on the magnetic deflection of a particle beam in a homogeneous magnetic field by Wolfgang Bauer
The Lorentz force formula on a wall directly opposite Lorentz's home in downtown Leiden
Physical phenomena
Electromagnetism
Maxwell's equations
Hendrik Lorentz |
18633 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenzo%20de%27%20Medici | Lorenzo de' Medici | Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici (; 1 January 1449 – 8 April 1492) was an Italian statesman, banker, de facto ruler of the Florentine Republic and the most powerful and enthusiastic patron of Renaissance culture in Italy. Also known as Lorenzo the Magnificent (Lorenzo il Magnifico ) by contemporary Florentines, he was a magnate, diplomat, politician and patron of scholars, artists, and poets. As a patron, he is best known for his sponsorship of artists such as Botticelli and Michelangelo. He held the balance of power within the Italic League, an alliance of states that stabilized political conditions on the Italian peninsula for decades, and his life coincided with the mature phase of the Italian Renaissance and the Golden Age of Florence. On the foreign policy front, Lorenzo manifested a clear plan to stem the territorial ambitions of Pope Sixtus IV, in the name of the balance of the Italian League of 1454. For these reasons, Lorenzo was the subject of the Pazzi conspiracy (1478), in which his brother Giuliano was assassinated. The Peace of Lodi of 1454 that he helped maintain among the various Italian states collapsed with his death. He is buried in the Medici Chapel in Florence.
Youth
Lorenzo's grandfather, Cosimo de' Medici, was the first member of the Medici family to lead the Republic of Florence and run the Medici Bank simultaneously. As one of the wealthiest men in Europe, Cosimo spent a very large portion of his fortune on government and philanthropy, for example as a patron of the arts and financier of public works. Lorenzo's father, Piero di Cosimo de' Medici, was equally at the centre of Florentine civic life, chiefly as an art patron and collector, while Lorenzo's uncle, Giovanni di Cosimo de' Medici, took care of the family's business interests. Lorenzo's mother, Lucrezia Tornabuoni, was a writer of sonnets and a friend to poets and philosophers of the Medici Academy. She became her son's advisor after the deaths of his father and uncle.
Lorenzo, considered the most promising of the five children of Piero and Lucrezia, was tutored by a diplomat and bishop, Gentile de' Becchi, and the humanist philosopher Marsilio Ficino, and he was trained in Greek by John Argyropoulos. With his brother Giuliano, he participated in jousting, hawking, hunting, and horse breeding for the Palio, a horse race in Siena. In 1469, aged 20, he won first prize in a jousting tournament sponsored by the Medici. The joust was the subject of a poem written by Luigi Pulci. Niccolò Machiavelli also wrote of the occasion, perhaps sarcastically, that he won "not by way of favour, but by his own valour and skill in arms". He carried a banner painted by Verrocchio, and his horse was named Morello di Vento.
Piero sent Lorenzo on many important diplomatic missions when he was still a youth, including trips to Rome to meet the pope and other important religious and political figures.
Lorenzo was described as rather plain of appearance and of average height, having a broad frame and short legs, dark hair and eyes, a squashed nose, short-sighted eyes and a harsh voice. Giuliano, on the other hand, was regarded as handsome and a "golden boy", and was used as a model by Botticelli in his painting of Mars and Venus. Even Lorenzo's close friend Niccolo Valori described him as homely, saying, "nature had been a stepmother to him in regards to his personal appearance, although she had acted as a loving mother in all things concocted with the mind. His complexion was dark, and although his face was not handsome it was so full of dignity as to compel respect."
Politics
Lorenzo, groomed for power, assumed a leading role in the state upon the death of his father in 1469, when he was 20. Already drained by his grandfather's building projects and constantly stressed by mismanagement, wars, and political expenses, the assets of the Medici Bank reduced seriously during the course of Lorenzo's lifetime.
Lorenzo, like his grandfather, father, and son, ruled Florence indirectly through surrogates in the city councils by means of payoffs and strategic marriages. Rival Florentine families inevitably harboured resentments over the Medicis' dominance, and enemies of the Medici remained a factor in Florentine life long after Lorenzo's passing. The most notable of the rival families was the Pazzi, who nearly brought Lorenzo's reign to an end.
On Sunday, 26 April 1478, in an incident known as the Pazzi conspiracy, a group headed by Girolamo Riario, Francesco de' Pazzi, and Francesco Salviati (the archbishop of Pisa), attacked Lorenzo and his brother and co-ruler Giuliano in the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in an attempt to seize control of the Florentine government. Shockingly, Salviati acted with the blessing of his patron Pope Sixtus IV. Giuliano was killed, brutally stabbed to death, but Lorenzo escaped with only a minor wound to the neck, having been defended by the poet Poliziano. News of the conspiracy spread throughout Florence, and it was brutally put down by the populace through such measures as the lynching of the archbishop of Pisa and members of the Pazzi family who were involved in the conspiracy.
In the aftermath of the Pazzi conspiracy and the punishment of supporters of Pope Sixtus IV, the Medici and Florence earned the wrath of the Holy See, which seized all the Medici assets that Sixtus could find, excommunicated Lorenzo and the entire government of Florence, and ultimately put the entire Florentine city-state under interdict. When these moves had little effect, Sixtus formed a military alliance with King Ferdinand I of Naples, whose son, Alfonso, Duke of Calabria, led an invasion of the Florentine Republic, still ruled by Lorenzo.
Lorenzo rallied the citizens. However, with little support from the traditional Medici allies in Bologna and Milan, the war dragged on, and only diplomacy by Lorenzo, who personally traveled to Naples and became a prisoner of the king for several months, ultimately resolved the crisis. That success enabled Lorenzo to secure constitutional changes within the government of the Florentine Republic that further enhanced his own power.
Thereafter, Lorenzo, like his grandfather Cosimo de' Medici, pursued a policy of maintaining peace, balancing power between the northern Italian states and keeping major European states such as France and the Holy Roman Empire out of Italy. Lorenzo maintained good relations with Sultan Mehmed II of the Ottoman Empire, as the Florentine maritime trade with the Ottomans was a major source of wealth for the Medici.
Efforts to acquire revenue from the mining of alum in Tuscany unfortunately marred Lorenzo's reputation. Alum had been discovered by local citizens of Volterra, who turned to Florence to get backing to exploit this important natural resource. A key commodity in the glassmaking, tanning and textile industries, alum was available from only a few sources under the control of the Ottomans and monopolized by Genoa before the discovery of alum sources in Italy at Tolfa. First the Roman Curia in 1462, and then Lorenzo and the Medici Bank less than a year later, got involved in backing the mining operation, with the pope taking a two-ducat commission for each cantar quintal of alum retrieved and ensuring a monopoly against the Turkish-derived goods by prohibiting trade in alum with infidels. When they realized the value of the alum mine, the people of Volterra wanted its revenues for their municipal funds rather than having it enter the pockets of their Florentine backers. Thus began an insurrection and secession from Florence, which involved putting to death several opposing citizens. Lorenzo sent mercenaries to suppress the revolt by force, and the mercenaries ultimately sacked the city. Lorenzo hurried to Volterra to make amends, but the incident would remain a dark stain on his record.
Patronage
Lorenzo's court included artists such as Piero and Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Andrea del Verrocchio, Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio and Michelangelo Buonarroti, who were instrumental in achieving the 15th-century Renaissance. Although Lorenzo did not commission many works himself, he helped these artists to secure commissions from other patrons. Michelangelo lived with Lorenzo and his family for three years, dining at the family table and participating in discussions led by Marsilio Ficino.
Lorenzo was an artist and wrote poetry in his native Tuscan. In his poetry, he celebrates life while acknowledging with melancholy the fragility and instability of the human condition, particularly in his later works. Love, feasts and light dominate his verse.
Cosimo had started the collection of books that became the Medici Library (also called the Laurentian Library), and Lorenzo expanded it. Lorenzo's agents retrieved from the East large numbers of classical works, and he employed a large workshop to copy his books and disseminate their content across Europe. He supported the development of humanism through his circle of scholarly friends, including the philosophers Marsilio Ficino, Poliziano and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. They studied Greek philosophers and attempted to merge the ideas of Plato with Christianity.
Apart from a personal interest, Lorenzo also used the Florentine milieu of fine arts for his diplomatic efforts. An example includes the commission of Ghirlandaio, Botticelli, Pietro Perugino and Cosimo Rosselli from Rome to paint murals in the Sistine Chapel, a move that has been interpreted as sealing the alliance between Lorenzo and Pope Sixtus IV.
In 1471, Lorenzo calculated that his family had spent some 663,000 florins (about US$460 million today) on charity, buildings and taxes since 1434. He wrote, "I do not regret this for though many would consider it better to have a part of that sum in their purse, I consider it to have been a great honour to our state, and I think the money was well-expended and I am well-pleased."
From 1479 Lorenzo became a permanent member of the committee supervising the rebuild of the signoria in Florence. He created a court of artists in his sculpture garden at San Marco which allowed him to exert ‘enormous influence on the selection of artists on public projects’.
Marriage and children
Lorenzo married Clarice Orsini by proxy on 7 February 1469. The marriage in person took place in Florence on 4 June 1469. She was a daughter of Giacomo Orsini, Lord of Monterotondo and Bracciano by his wife and cousin Maddalena Orsini.
Clarice and Lorenzo had 10 children, all except Contessina Antonia born in Florence:
Lucrezia Maria Romola de' Medici (1470–1553), who married Jacopo Salviati on 10 September 1486 and had 10 children of her own, including Cardinal Giovanni Salviati, Cardinal Bernardo Salviati, Maria Salviati (mother of Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany), and Francesca Salviati (mother of Pope Leo XI)
Twins who died after birth (March 1471)
Piero di Lorenzo de' Medici (1472–1503), called "the Unfortunate", was ruler of Florence after his father's death
Maria Maddalena Romola de' Medici (1473–1528) married Franceschetto Cybo (illegitimate son of Pope Innocent VIII) on 25 February 1487 and had seven children
Contessina Beatrice de' Medici, died shortly after her birth on 23 September 1474
Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici (1475–1521), ascended to the papacy as Leo X in 1513
Luisa de' Medici (1477–1488), also called Luigia, was betrothed to Giovanni de' Medici il Popolano, but died young
Contessina Antonia Romola de' Medici (1478–1515), born in Pistoia, married Piero Ridolfi (1467–1525) in 1494 and had five children, including Cardinal Niccolò Ridolfi
Giuliano di Lorenzo de' Medici (1479–1516) was created Duke of Nemours in 1515 by Francis I of France
Lorenzo adopted his nephew Giulio di Giuliano de' Medici (1478–1534), the illegitimate son of his slain brother Giuliano. In 1523, after serving four years as ruler of Florence, Giulio ascended to the papacy as Pope Clement VII.
Later years, death, and legacy
During Lorenzo's tenure, several branches of the family bank collapsed because of bad loans, and in later years he got into financial difficulties and resorted to misappropriating trust and state funds.
Toward the end of Lorenzo's life, Florence came under the influence of Savonarola, who believed Christians had strayed too far into Greco-Roman culture. Lorenzo played a role in bringing Savonarola to Florence.
Lorenzo died during the late night of 8 April 1492, at the longtime family villa of Careggi. Savonarola visited Lorenzo on his deathbed. The rumour that Savonarola damned Lorenzo on his deathbed has been refuted in Roberto Ridolfi's book Vita di Girolamo Savonarola. Letters written by witnesses to Lorenzo's death report that he died peacefully after listening to the Gospel of the day. Many signs and portents were claimed to have taken place at the moment of his death, including the dome of Florence Cathedral being struck by lightning, ghosts appearing, and the lions kept at Via Leone fighting one another.
The Signoria and councils of Florence issued a decree:
Lorenzo was buried with his brother Giuliano in the Church of San Lorenzo in the red porphyry sarcophagus designed for Piero and Giovanni de' Medici, not, as might be expected, in the New Sacristy, designed by Michelangelo. The latter holds the two monumental tombs of Lorenzo and Giuliano's less known namesakes: Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, and Giuliano, Duke of Nemours. According to Williamson and others, the statues of the lesser Lorenzo and Giuliano were carved by Michelangelo to incorporate the essence of the famous men. In 1559, the bodies of Lorenzo de' Medici ("the Magnificent") and his brother Giuliano were interred in the New Sacristy in an unmarked tomb beneath Michelangelo's statue of the Madonna.
Lorenzo's heir was his eldest son, Piero di Lorenzo de' Medici, known as "Piero the Unfortunate". In 1494, he squandered his father's patrimony and brought down the Medici dynasty in Florence. His second son, Giovanni, who became Pope Leo X, retook the city in 1512 with the aid of a Spanish army. In 1531, Lorenzo's nephew Giulio di Giuliano – whom Lorenzo had raised as his own son, and who in 1523 became Pope Clement VII – formalized Medici rule of Florence by installing Alessandro de' Medici the city's first hereditary duke.
In popular culture
Lorenzo de' Medici is depicted as a teenager in CBBC's Leonardo, played by actor Colin Ryan.
Lorenzo de' Medici appears as a supporting character to the protagonist, Ezio Auditore da Firenze, after they help foil the Pazzi conspirators in Assassin's Creed II.
Lorenzo de' Medici is portrayed by Elliot Cowan in the 2013 TV series Da Vinci's Demons.
Lorenzo de' Medici is portrayed by Daniel Sharman in the TV series Medici: The Magnificent.
References
Further reading
Lorenzo de' Medici, The Complete Literary Works, edited and translated by Guido A. Guarino (New York: Italica Press, 2016).
Miles J. Unger, Magnifico: The Brilliant Life and Violent Times of Lorenzo de' Medici (Simon and Schuster 2008) is a vividly colorful biography of this true "renaissance man", the uncrowned ruler of Florence during its golden age.
André Chastel, Art et Humanisme à Florence au temps de Laurent le Magnifique (Paris, 1959).
Christopher Hibbert, The House of Medici: Its Rise and Fall (Morrow-Quill, 1980) is a highly readable, non-scholarly general history of the family, and covers Lorenzo's life in some detail.
F. W. Kent, Lorenzo de' Medici and the Art of Magnificence (The Johns Hopkins Symposia in Comparative History) (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004) A summary of 40 years of research with a specific theme of Il Magnifico's relationship with the visual arts.
Peter Barenboim, Michelangelo Drawings – Key to the Medici Chapel Interpretation (Moscow, Letny Sad, 2006) , is a new interpretation of Lorenzo the Magnificent' image in the Medici Chapel.
Barenboim, Peter (with Heath, Arthur). 500 years of the New Sacristy: Michelangelo in the Medici Chapel, LOOM, Moscow, 2019.
Williamson, Hugh Ross, Lorenzo the Magnificent. Michael Joseph, London. (1974)
Parks, Tim, Medici Money: Banking, Metaphysics, and Art in Fifteenth-Century Florence (W. W. Norton & Company 2005) , is a mixture of history and finance, documenting the logistics of Lorenzo and the Medici Banks
Historical novels
Robin Maxwell, Signora da Vinci (NAL Trade, 2009), a novel that follows Leonardo da Vinci's mother, Caterina, as she travels to Florence to be with her son.
External links
Lorenzo de' Medici as patron
"Info Please | Lorenzo De' Medici"
1449 births
1492 deaths
15th-century rulers in Europe
Burials at San Lorenzo, Florence
Lorenzo I
Italian Renaissance humanists
Patrons of literature
15th-century people of the Republic of Florence
Rulers of Florence
Italian art patrons |
18634 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemma%20%28mathematics%29 | Lemma (mathematics) | In mathematics, informal logic and argument mapping, a lemma (plural lemmas or lemmata) is a generally minor, proven proposition which is used as a stepping stone to a larger result. For that reason, it is also known as a "helping theorem" or an "auxiliary theorem". In many cases, a lemma derives its importance from the theorem it aims to prove, however, a lemma can also turn out to be more important than originally thought. The word "lemma" derives from the Ancient Greek ("anything which is received", such as a gift, profit, or a bribe).
Comparison with theorem
There is no formal distinction between a lemma and a theorem, only one of intention (see Theorem terminology). However, a lemma can be considered a minor result whose sole purpose is to help prove a more substantial theorem – a step in the direction of proof.
Well-known lemmas
A good stepping stone can lead to many others. Some powerful results in mathematics are known as lemmas, first named for their originally minor purpose. These include, among others:
Bézout's lemma
Dehn's lemma
Euclid's lemma
Farkas' lemma
Fatou's lemma
Gauss's lemma
Greendlinger's lemma
Itô's lemma
Jordan's lemma
Nakayama's lemma
Poincaré's lemma
Riesz's lemma
Schur's lemma
Schwarz's lemma
Sperner's lemma
Urysohn's lemma
Vitali covering lemma
Yoneda's lemma
Zorn's lemma
While these results originally seemed too simple or too technical to warrant independent interest, they have eventually turned out to be central to the theories in which they occur.
See also
Corollary
Co-premise
Fundamental lemma
Inference objection
List of lemmas
Objection
Porism
Theorem
Theorem terminology
Notes
References
External links
Doron Zeilberger, Opinion 82: A Good Lemma is Worth a Thousand Theorems
Mathematical terminology |
18639 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucrezia%20Borgia | Lucrezia Borgia | Lucrezia Borgia (; ; 18 April 1480 – 24 June 1519) was a Spanish-Italian noblewoman of the House of Borgia who was the daughter of Pope Alexander VI and Vannozza dei Cattanei. She reigned as the Governor of Spoleto, a position usually held by cardinals, in her own right.
Her family arranged several marriages for her that advanced their own political position including Giovanni Sforza, Lord of Pesaro and Gradara, Count of Catignola; Alfonso of Aragon, Duke of Bisceglie and Prince of Salerno; and Alfonso I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara. Tradition has it that Alfonso of Aragon was an illegitimate son of the King of Naples and that her brother Cesare Borgia may have had him murdered after his political value waned.
Rumors about her and her family cast Lucrezia as a femme fatale, a role in which she has been portrayed in many artworks, novels and films.
Early life
Lucrezia Borgia was born on 18 April 1480 at Subiaco, near Rome. Her mother was Vannozza dei Cattanei, one of the mistresses of Lucrezia's father, Cardinal Rodrigo de Borgia (later Pope Alexander VI). During her early life, Lucrezia Borgia's education was entrusted to Adriana Orsini de Milan, a close confidant of her father. Her education would primarily take place in the Piazza Pizzo de Merlo, a building adjacent to her father's residence. Unlike most educated women of her time, for whom convents were the primary source for knowledge, her education came from within the sphere of intellectuals in the court and close relatives, and it included a solid grounding in the Humanities, which the Catholic Church was reviving at the time. She was a thoroughly accomplished princess, fluent in Spanish, Catalan, Italian, and French, which prepared her for advantageous marriage to any European monarch or prince, and literate in both Latin and Greek. She would also become proficient in the lute, poetry, and oration. The biggest testament to her intelligence is her capability in administration, as later on in life she took care of Vatican City correspondence and governance of Ferrara.
Marriages
First marriage: Giovanni Sforza (Lord of Pesaro and Gradara)
On 26 February 1491, a matrimonial arrangement was drawn up between Lucrezia and the Lord of Val D'Ayora, in the kingdom of Valencia, Don Cherubino Joan de Centelles, which was annulled less than two months later in favour of a new contract engaging Lucrezia to Don Gaspare Aversa, count of Procida. When Rodrigo became Pope Alexander VI, he sought to be allied with powerful princely families and founding dynasties of Italy. He therefore called off Lucrezia's previous engagements and arranged for her to marry Giovanni Sforza, a member of the House of Sforza who was Lord of Pesaro and titled Count of Catignola. Giovanni was an illegitimate son of Costanzo I Sforza and a Sforza of the second rank. He married Lucrezia on 12 June 1493 in Rome.
Before long, the Borgia family no longer needed the Sforzas, and the presence of Giovanni Sforza in the papal court was superfluous. The Pope needed new, more advantageous political alliances, so he might have covertly ordered the execution of Giovanni: the generally accepted version is that Lucrezia was informed of this by her brother Cesare, and she warned her husband, who fled Rome.
Alexander asked Giovanni's uncle, Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, to persuade Giovanni to agree to an annulment of the marriage. Giovanni refused and accused Lucrezia of paternal incest. The pope asserted that his daughter's marriage had not been consummated and was thus invalid. Giovanni was offered her dowry in return for his cooperation. The Sforza family threatened to withdraw their protection should he refuse. Giovanni finally signed confessions of impotence and documents of annulment before witnesses.
Alleged affair with Perotto
There has been speculation that during the prolonged process of the annulment, Lucrezia consummated a relationship with someone, perhaps Alexander's chamberlain Pedro Calderon, also named Perotto. In any case, families hostile to the Borgias would later accuse her of being pregnant at the time her marriage was annulled for non-consummation. She is known to have retired to the convent of San Sisto in June 1497 to await the outcome of the annulment proceedings, which were finalized in December of the same year. The bodies of Pedro Calderon and a maid, Pantasilea, were found in the Tiber in February 1498. In March 1498, the Ferrarese ambassador claimed that Lucrezia had given birth, but this was denied by other sources. A child was born, however, in the Borgia household the year before Lucrezia's marriage to Alfonso of Aragon. He was named Giovanni but is known to historians as the "Infans Romanus".
In 1501, two papal bulls were issued concerning the child, Giovanni Borgia. In the first, he was recognized as Cesare's child from an affair before his marriage. The second, contradictory, bull recognized him as the son of Pope Alexander VI. Lucrezia's name is not mentioned in either, and rumours that she was his mother have never been proven. The second bull was kept secret for many years, and Giovanni was assumed to be Cesare's son. This is supported by the fact that in 1502 he became Duke of Camerino, one of Cesare's recent conquests, hence the natural inheritance of the Duke of Romagna's oldest son. Giovanni went to stay with Lucrezia in Ferrara after Alexander's death, where he was accepted as her half-brother.
Second marriage: Alfonso d'Aragon (Duke of Bisceglie and Prince of Salerno)
Following her annulment from Sforza, Lucrezia was married to the Neapolitan Alfonso of Aragon, the half-brother of Sancha of Aragon who was the wife of Lucrezia's brother Gioffre Borgia. The marriage was a short one.
They were married in 1498, making Lucrezia the Duchess consort of Bisceglie and Princess consort of Salerno. Lucrezia – not her husband – was appointed governor of Spoleto in 1499; Alfonso fled Rome shortly afterwards but returned at Lucrezia's request, only to be murdered in 1500.
It was widely rumoured that Lucrezia's brother Cesare was responsible for Alfonso's death, as he had recently allied himself (through marriage) with France against Naples. Lucrezia and Alfonso had one child, Rodrigo of Aragon, who was born in 1499 and predeceased his mother in August 1512 at the age of 12.
Third marriage: Alfonso d'Este (Duke of Ferrara)
After the death of Lucrezia's second husband, her father, Pope Alexander VI, arranged a third marriage. She then married Alfonso I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, in early 1502 in Ferrara. She had eight children during this marriage and was considered a respectable and accomplished Renaissance duchess, effectively rising above her previous reputation and surviving the fall of the Borgias following her father's death.
Neither partner was faithful: beginning in 1503, Lucrezia enjoyed a long relationship with her brother-in-law, Francesco II Gonzaga, Marquess of Mantua. Francesco's wife was the cultured intellectual Isabella d'Este, the sister of Alfonso, to whom Lucrezia had made overtures of friendship to no avail. The affair between Francesco and Lucrezia was passionate, more sexual than sentimental as can be attested in the fevered love letters the pair wrote one another. It has been claimed that the affair ended when Francesco contracted syphilis and had to end sexual relations with Lucrezia. This last assertion is problematic as Francesco had contracted syphilis before 1500 as it was known that he passed the disease onto his eldest son Federico Gonzaga who was born in 1500. Francesco did not meet Lucrezia until 1502.
Lucrezia also had a love affair with the poet Pietro Bembo during her third marriage. Their love letters were deemed "The prettiest love letters in the world" by the Romantic poet Lord Byron when he saw them in the Ambrosian Library of Milan on 15 October 1816. On the same occasion Byron claimed to have stolen a lock of Lucrezia's hair – "the prettiest and fairest imaginable" – that was also held there on display.
Lucrezia met the famed French soldier, the Chevalier Bayard while the latter was co-commanding the French allied garrison of Ferrara in 1510. According to his biographer, the Chevalier became a great admirer of Lucrezia's, considering her a "pearl on this Earth".
After a long history of complicated pregnancies and miscarriages, on 14 June 1519 Lucrezia gave birth to her tenth child, named Isabella Maria in honour of Alfonso's sister Isabella d'Este. The child was sickly and – fearing she would die unbaptised – Alfonso ordered her to be baptised straightaway with Eleonora della Mirandola and Count Alexandro Serafino as godparents.
Lucrezia had become very weak during the pregnancy and fell seriously ill after the birth. After seeming to recover for two days, she worsened again and died on 24 June the same year. She was buried in the convent of Corpus Domini.
Appearance
She is described as having heavy blonde hair that fell past her knees, a beautiful complexion, hazel eyes that changed colour, a full, high bosom, and a natural grace that made her appear to "walk on air". These physical attributes were highly appreciated in Italy during that period. Another description said, "her mouth is rather large, the teeth brilliantly white, her neck is slender and fair, and the bust is admirably proportioned."
One painting, Portrait of a Youth by Dosso Dossi at the National Gallery of Victoria, was identified as a portrait of Lucrezia in November 2008. This painting may be the only surviving formal portrait of Lucrezia Borgia; however, doubts have been cast on that attribution. Several other paintings, such as Veneto's fanciful portrait, have also been said to depict her, but none have been accepted by scholars at present.
According to Mandell Creighton in his History of the Papacy, "Lucrezia ... was personally popular through her beauty and her affability. Her long golden hair, her sweet childish face, her pleasant expression and her graceful ways, seem to have struck all who saw her."
Rumours
Several rumours have persisted throughout the years, primarily speculating as to the nature of the extravagant parties thrown by the Borgia family. One example is the Banquet of Chestnuts. Many of these concern allegations of incest, poisoning, and murder on her part; however, no historical basis for these rumours has ever been brought forward beyond allegations made by rival parties.
It is rumoured that Lucrezia was in possession of a hollow ring that she used frequently to poison drinks.
An early 20th-century painting by Frank Cadogan Cowper that hangs in the London art gallery, Tate Britain, portrays Lucrezia taking the place of her father, Pope Alexander VI, at an official Vatican meeting. This apparently documents an actual event, although the precise moment depicted (a Franciscan friar kissing Lucrezia's feet) was invented by the artist.
Issue
Lucrezia was mother to seven or eight known children:
Rodrigo of Aragon (1 November 1499 – August 1512), son by Alfonso of Aragon;
A stillborn daughter (1502), first child by d'Este;
Alessandro d'Este (1505–1505);
Ercole II d'Este, Duke of Ferrara (5 April 1508 – 3 October 1559);
Ippolito II d'Este (25 August 1509 – 1 December 1572). Archbishop of Milan and later Cardinal;
Alessandro d'Este (1514–1516);
Leonora d'Este (3 July 1515 – 15 July 1575), a nun and composer;
Francesco d'Este, Marquess of Massalombarda (1 November 1516 – 2 February 1578);
Isabella Maria d'Este (born and died on 14 June 1519). Complications at birth caused the death of Lucrezia ten days later.
Giovanni Borgia, "infans Romanus" ("Child of Rome", c. 1498–1548) had his paternity acknowledged by both Alexander and Cesare in two separate Papal bulls, but it was rumoured that he was the child of Lucrezia and Perotto. The child (identified in later life as Lucrezia's half-brother) was most likely the result of a liaison between Rodrigo Borgia (Pope Alexander VI, Lucrezia's father) and an unknown mistress and was not Lucrezia's child.
Maria Bellonci and maybe other biographers claim that Lucrezia gave birth to three more children who did not survive infancy, one by Alfonso of Aragon and two by Alfonso d'Este. She is also thought to have had at least four miscarriages.
Biographies
Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love And Death in Renaissance Italy by Sarah Bradford; Viking 2004;
Lucrezia Borgia: A Biography by Rachel Erlanger; 1978;
Lucrezia Borgia by Maria Bellonci; Phoenix 2002;
The Borgias (1971) by Michael Mallett
Lucretia Borgia (1874?) by Ferdinand Gregorovius (Author); translated in 1903 by John Leslie Garner (Translator)
The Borgias by Christopher Hibbert; Constable 2011;
The Borgias: History's Most Notorious Dynasty by Mary Hollingsworth; Quercus 2011;
In fiction
Blood And Beauty by Sarah Dunant; ; ; Harper Collins Publishers Ltd | 8 July 2013 |
The Vatican Princess by C.W. Gortner; released 9 February 2016
In the Name of the Family by Sarah Dunant; ; Virago Press 2017
The Pope’s Daughter by Dario Fo, translated from Italian by Antony Shugaar; . Translation copyright (c) 2015 by Europa Editions
The Borgia Bride by Jeanne Kalogridis; released 31 January 2005
The Family by Mario Puzo; released October 2001
Treatments and references
Literature and opera
French author Victor Hugo wrote in 1833 the stage play Lucrèce Borgia.
Victor Hugo's play was transformed into a libretto by Felice Romani for Donizetti's opera, Lucrezia Borgia (1834), first performed at La Scala, Milan, 26 December 1833.
Kathleen McGowan refers to Lucrece, as one of the many unjustly vilified women, in her book The Expected One. She refers in particular to Frank Cadogan Cowper's painting "Lucretia Borgia Reigns in the Vatican in the Absence of Pope Alexander VI" on display at the Tate Gallery in London.
F. M. Klinger's 1791 novel Fausts Leben, Thaten und Höllenfahrt features an episode in which the Borgias figure, including an affair between Faust and Lucrezia.
Rafael Sabatini wrote the 1912 non-fiction book, The Life of Cesare Borgia, that attempts to treat the Borgias historically.
The 1947 historical novel Prince of Foxes by Samuel Shellabarger describes the adventures of the fictional Andrea Orsini, a captain in the service of Cesare Borgia, during his conquest of the Romagna; it was made into a film of the same name in 1949, starring Orson Welles and Tyrone Power.
Jean Plaidy's two 1958 novels, Madonna of the Seven Hills and Light on Lucrezia, follow the story of Lucrezia and her entanglement with her father and brothers.
Lucrezia, Cesare and Alexander play key roles in Cecelia Holland's 1979 historical novel City of God: A Novel of the Borgias.
In Roberta Gellis's 2003 novel Lucrezia Borgia and the Mother of Poisons (), Alfonso d'Este of Ferrara accuses Lucrezia of murder, and she must solve the crime and expose the true murderer.
The Dutch writer Louis Couperus published a story called "Lucrezia" in 1920 and takes place between the death of her second husband and the marriage of her third.
Film and television
Lucrezia Borgia (1922) is based on the life of Lucrezia, who is played by Liane Haid. Cesare Borgia is portrayed by Conrad Veidt.
Lucrezia (Estelle Taylor) and Cesare (Warner Oland) Borgia are the major antagonists in Alan Crosland's 1926 silent film Don Juan, starring John Barrymore.
Lucrezia is the subject of Abel Gance's film Lucrezia Borgia (1935) and of a 1953 French film, played by Martine Carol.
Lucrezia is the Bride of Vengeance (1949), played by Paulette Goddard, with Macdonald Carey in the role of Cesare Borgia, and John Lund playing Alfonso d'Este (Duke of Ferrara).
In Walerian Borowczyk's 1973 feature film Immoral Tales, Lucrezia is played by Florence Bellamy.
In the Italian movie Lucrezia giovane ("Young Lucrezia") that was written and directed in 1974 by Luciano Ercoli (as André Colbert), Lucrezia was played by Simonetta Stefanelli.
In the 1981 BBC series, The Borgias, Lucrezia was played by Anne-Louise Lambert.
In the 1982 feature film The Secret Nights of Lucrezia Borgia of director Roberto Bianchi Montero, Lucrezia is played by Sirpa Lane.
She is featured as a major plot point in the 1994 TV movie The Shaggy Dog. A portrait of her, along with a display case of her rings are featured in a local museum along with a legend that she had written spells to turn her lovers into dogs. The legend is revealed to be true as the main character accidentally casts one on himself while holding one of her rings and reading its inscription.
In the pilot episode of the SyFy series Warehouse 13, a jeweled comb, purported to have been created for her by an alchemist, is used by a Iowa lawyer to hypnotize several individuals into causing acts of violence.
In the video game Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, Lucrezia is in an incestuous relationship with her brother Cesare. She is kidnapped by Ezio Auditore during the course of the story and appears near the end of the game as a much changed woman.
She is played by Holliday Grainger in the 2011–2013 Showtime/Bravo TV series The Borgias, which explores a theme of incest with Cesare, despite lack of historical evidence for such events. Her character is portrayed not as a ruthless murderer, but initially as a compassionate and sweet young girl who suffers from her family's ambitions, both struggling against and eventually aiding them.
In the Canal+ television series Borgia, Lucrezia is portrayed by German actress Isolda Dychauk.
See also
Castello Borgia
Felice della Rovere
Route of the Borgias
References
External links
Lucrezia Borgia: The Family Tree in Pictures
Lucrezia Borgia on IMDb
Diario De Los Borja Borgia
1480 births
1519 deaths
People from Subiaco, Lazio
Lucrezia Borgia
House of Sforza
Lucrezia
Italian people of Spanish descent
Italian countesses
Italian princesses
Lucrezia
Lucrezia
Lucrezia
Women and the papacy
Illegitimate children of Pope Alexander VI
Italian Renaissance people
16th-century Italian nobility
Deaths in childbirth
Burials at the Corpus Domini Monastery, Ferrara
15th-century Italian women
16th-century Italian women
Renaissance women
Italian patrons of the arts |
18640 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20Macintosh%20models%20grouped%20by%20CPU%20type | List of Macintosh models grouped by CPU type | This list of Macintosh models grouped by CPU type contains all central processing units (CPUs) used by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh computers. It is grouped by processor family, processor model, and then chronologically by Macintosh models.
Motorola 68k
Motorola 68000
The Motorola 68000 was the first Apple Macintosh processor. It had 32-bit CPU registers, a 24-bit address bus, and a 16-bit data path; Motorola referred to it as a "16–/32-bit microprocessor."
Motorola 68020
The Motorola 68020 was the first 32-bit Mac processor, first used on the Macintosh II. The 68020 had many improvements over the 68000, including an instruction cache, and was the first Mac processor to support a memory management unit, the Motorola 68851.
The Macintosh LC configured the 68020 to use a 16-bit system bus with ASICs that limited RAM to 10 MB (as opposed to the 32-bit limit of 4 GB).
Motorola 68030
The Motorola 68030 was the first Mac processor with an integrated memory management unit, allowing for virtual memory. Another improvement over the 68020 was the addition of a data cache.
Motorola 68040
The Motorola 68040 had improved per-clock performance compared to the 68030, as well as larger instruction and data caches, and was the first Mac processor with an integrated floating-point unit.
The MC68LC040 version was less expensive because it omitted the floating-point unit.
PowerPC
PowerPC 601
The PowerPC 601 was the first Mac processor to support the 32-bit PowerPC instruction set architecture.
PowerPC 603
PowerPC 604
The PowerPC 604e was the first Mac processor available in a symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) configuration.
PowerPC G3
PowerPC G4
The PowerPC 7400 was the first Mac processor to include an AltiVec vector processing unit.
The PowerPC 7455 was the first Mac processor over 1 GHz.
PowerPC G5
The PowerPC 970 was the first 64-bit Mac processor.
The PowerPC 970MP was the first dual-core Mac processor and the first to be found in a quad-core configuration. It was also the first Mac processor with partitioning and virtualization capabilities.
Intel x86
Overview
P6
Yonah was the first Mac processor to support the IA-32 instruction set architecture, in addition to the MMX, SSE, SSE2, and SSE3 extension instruction sets.
The Core Solo was a Core Duo with one of the two cores disabled.
Core
Woodcrest added support for the SSSE3 instruction set.
Merom was the first Mac processor to support the x86-64 instruction set, as well as the first 64-bit processor to appear in a Mac notebook.
Clovertown was the first quad-core Mac processor and the first to be found in an 8-core configuration.
Penryn
Penryn added support for a subset for SSE4 (SSE4.1).
Nehalem
Bloomfield and Gainestown introduced a number of notable features for the first time in any Mac processors:
Integrated memory controllers (with on-die DMI or QPI).
Simultaneous multithreading (branded as Hyper-threading).
Full support for the SSE4 instruction set (SSE4.2).
Support for Intel Turbo Boost.
Four cores on a single die rather than a multi-chip module of two dual-core dies.
Westmere
Arrandale introduced Intel HD Graphics, an on-die integrated GPU.
Sandy Bridge
Sandy Bridge added support for Intel Quick Sync Video, a dedicated on-die video encoding and decoding core. It was also the first quad-core processor to appear in a Mac notebook.
Ivy Bridge
Haswell
The Crystal Well variant used in some MacBook Pros contains an on-package L4 cache shared between the CPU and integrated graphics.
Broadwell
Skylake
Kaby Lake
Coffee Lake
Coffee Lake was the first 6-core processor to appear in a Mac notebook.
Cascade Lake
Apple silicon
M1
The M1 is a system on a chip fabricated by TSMC on the 5 nm process and contain 16 billion transistors. Its CPU cores are the first Mac processor designed by Apple and the first to use the ARM instruction set architecture.
M1 Pro and M1 Max
The M1 Pro and M1 Max SoCs are fabricated by TSMC on the 5 nm process and contain 33,7 and 57 billion transistors respectively. Both have 10 CPU cores (8 performance and 2 efficient ones) and a 16-core neural engine. The M1 Pro and M1 Max have 16-core and 32-core GPU, and a 256-bit and 512-bit LPDDR5 memory bus supporting 200 and 400 GB/s bandwith respectively. Both chips were first introduced in the MacBook Pro in October 2021.
See also
Macintosh
Timeline of Macintosh models
Comparison of Macintosh models
List of Macintosh models by case type
References
Sources
Specifications, Apple, Inc.
Ian Page and contributors, MacTracker.
Glen Sanford, Apple History, apple-history.com.
Dan Knight, Computer Profiles, LowEndMac, Cobweb Publishing, Inc.
Product Specifications, Intel, Inc.
CPU
Apple Macintosh CPU
Macintosh models grouped by CPU type |
18641 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan%20Smeeton | Jonathan Smeeton | Jonathan Smeeton is a British lighting and production designer who was active in the UK from the late 1960s, and then in the US from late 1970s up to his retirement in 2018.
Smeeton started out in the UK underground scene in the late 1960s. By 1971, he had become involved with Hawkwind, using the alias Liquid Len and the Lensmen (a reference to the Lensman space opera books), and remained with them for seven years developing his craft.
He was name-checked in the Genesis song "The Battle of Epping Forest" from Selling England by the Pound (1973), later going on to work for the band's singer Peter Gabriel:
He retired from the business in April 2018, his last official show being for Diana Ross and the LA Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl in June 2018. In 2018, he received the Parnelli Visionary Award.
List of acts he has worked for:
1970s: Bob Hope; War; Captain Beefheart; Free; Traffic; Hawkwind; Motörhead; Fairport Convention; Black Sabbath; The Commodores; Frank Zappa; Average White Band; Van Morrison; Colosseum II; Peter Gabriel.
1980s: REO Speedwagon; Al Jarreau; WHAM!; Journey; Graham Nash; Rod Stewart; The Pointer Sisters; Tina Turner; Mike Oldfield; Jefferson Airplane; Sheila E; Mike and the Mechanics; Yoko Ono; The Thompson Twins; The Pet Shop Boys; Peter Gabriel; Amnesty International; Tears for Fears; George Michael; Paul Simon; Lou Reed; Miles Davis.
1990s: Robert Gallup - Extreme Magic [Fox Television]; Sinead O'Connor; Phil Collins; Stone Roses; Barry White (video); TLC [video]; Kylie Minogue; Toni Braxton [video]; Def Leppard; Dwight Yoakam; Billy Idol; Adam Sandler [HBO]; Peter Gabriel; Jane's Addiction; The Human League; Yes; Jim Brickman; Chris Isaak; Sammy Hagar; Bryan Ferry; Richie Sambora.
2000s: ELO [PBS Television Special]; Jim Brickman [PBS Television Special]; Marilyn Manson; Jim Brickman; Chris Isaak; Deftones; 3 Doors Down; Plus One; Electric Light Orchestra; Incubus; Sammy Hagar; Miranda Lambert; Keith Urban; Jack Ingram; Great American Country Television; Joe Satriani – G3; Asia Sounds, Film and Television; Kids on Stage Summer Academy.
2010s: Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds; Gloriana; Kellie Pickler; Taylor Swift; Bridgit Mendler; Toni Braxton; MAGIC!; Yes/ARW (Jon Anderson, Trevor Rabin, Rick Wakeman); Michael McDonald; Diana Ross.
See also
Barney Bubbles
References
External links
Lighting designers
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
Psychedelia
Hawkwind |
18642 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmy | Lemmy | Ian Fraser Kilmister (24 December 1945 – 28 December 2015), better known as Lemmy, was an English musician who was the founder, lead singer, bassist and primary songwriter of the rock band Motörhead, of which he was the only continuous member.
A foundational force in the genre following the advent of the new wave of British heavy metal, Lemmy was known for his appearance, which included his signature friendly mutton chops, his military-influenced fashion sense and his gravelly rasp of a voice. It was once declared "one of the most recognisable voices in rock". He was also noted for his unique way of singing, which was once described as "looking up towards a towering microphone tilted down into his weather-beaten face". He was also known for his bass playing style and using his Rickenbacker bass to create an "overpowered, distorted rhythmic rumble". Another notable aspect of his bass sound was that he often played power chords using heavily overdriven tube stacks by Marshall.
He was also known for a large facial 'skin tag' which he chose not to remove, though he did consider getting them removed in 2002.
Lemmy was born in Stoke-on-Trent and grew up between there, the nearby towns of Newcastle-under-Lyme and Madeley, and later the Welsh village of Benllech, at a later point, Lemmy remembers living briefly at Gwrych Castle, Abergele. He was influenced by rock and roll and the early works of the Beatles, which led to him playing in several rock groups in the 1960s, such as the Rockin' Vickers. He worked as a roadie for Jimi Hendrix and The Nice before joining the space rock band Hawkwind in 1971, singing lead vocals on their hit "Silver Machine". In 1975, he was fired from Hawkwind after an arrest for drug possession. That same year, he founded Motörhead. The band's success peaked around 1980 and 1981, including the hit single "Ace of Spades" and the chart-topping live album No Sleep 'til Hammersmith.
Lemmy continued to record and tour regularly with Motörhead until his death on 28 December 2015 in Los Angeles, where he had lived since 1990. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer two days before his death. Alongside his music career, he had minor roles and cameos in film and television. He was known for his hard-living lifestyle, which included chain-smoking and daily consumption of large amounts of alcohol and amphetamine.
Early life
Lemmy was born Ian Fraser Kilmister in the Burslem area of Stoke-on-Trent on 24 December 1945. When he was three months old, his father, an ex-Royal Air Force chaplain and concert pianist, separated from his mother. He moved with his mother and grandmother to nearby Newcastle-under-Lyme, then to Madeley. When Lemmy was 10, his mother married former rugby player George L. Willis, who already had two older children from a previous marriage, Patricia and Tony, whom Lemmy disliked. They later moved to a farm in the Welsh village of Benllech, with Lemmy commenting that "funnily enough, being the only English kid among 700 Welsh ones didn't make for the happiest time, but it was interesting from an anthropological point of view". He attended Ysgol Syr Thomas Jones comprehensive school in Amlwch, where he was nicknamed "Lemmy." It was later suggested by some that the name originated from the phrase "lemmy [lend me] a quid 'til Friday" because of his alleged habit of borrowing money from people to play slot machines, although Lemmy himself said that he did not know the origin of the name. He soon started to show an interest in rock and roll, girls, and horses.
At school, Lemmy noticed a pupil who had brought a guitar to school and had been "surrounded by chicks." His mother had a guitar, which he then took to school, and was himself surrounded by girls even though he could not play. By the time he left school, he had moved with his family to Conwy. He went on to work several odd jobs, including one at the local Hotpoint electric appliance factory, while also playing guitar for local bands such as the Sundowners and spending time at a horse-riding school. He saw the Beatles perform at the Cavern Club in Liverpool when he was 16, and then learned to play along on guitar to their first album Please Please Me. He also admired the sarcastic attitude of the group, particularly that of John Lennon, and later said of the group, "Brian Epstein cleaned them up for mass consumption, but they were anything but sissies. They were from Liverpool [...] a hard, sea-farin' town, all these dockers and sailors around all the time who would beat the piss out of you if you so much as winked at them. [...] The Rolling Stones were the mummy's boys—they were all college students from the outskirts of London. [...] The Stones made great records, but they were always shit on stage, whereas the Beatles were the gear."
Career
1960–1970: Early years
In Stockport, Lemmy joined local bands the Rainmakers and then the Motown Sect who played northern clubs for three years. In 1965, he joined The Rockin' Vickers who signed a deal with CBS, released three singles and toured Europe, reportedly being the first British band to visit the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The Rockin' Vickers moved to Manchester, where they shared a flat together.
Leaving the Rockin' Vickers, Lemmy moved to London in 1967. He shared a flat with Noel Redding, bassist of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and with Neville Chesters, their road manager. He got a job as a roadie for the band. In 1968, he joined the psychedelic rock band Sam Gopal under the name Ian Willis and recorded the album Escalator which was released in 1969. After meeting Simon King at a shopping centre in Chelsea in 1969, he joined the band Opal Butterfly; but the group soon disbanded, having failed to raise enough interest with their singles.
1971–1975: Hawkwind
See also Hawkwind (1970–75: United Artists era)
In August 1971, Lemmy joined the space rock band Hawkwind, who were based in Ladbroke Grove, London, as a bassist and vocalist. He had no previous experience as a bass guitarist, and was cajoled into joining immediately before a benefit gig in Notting Hill by bandmate Michael "Dik Mik" Davies, to have two members who enjoyed amphetamine. Lemmy states that he originally auditioned for Hawkwind as a guitarist, but on the morning of the Notting Hill gig, they decided not to get another guitarist. By chance, the bass player didn't show up and left his equipment in the van. He often said, "Their bass player was pretty much saying 'please steal my gig!' So I stole his gig." Lemmy quickly developed a distinctive style that was strongly shaped by his early experience as a rhythm guitarist, often using double stops and chords rather than the single note lines preferred by most bassists. His bass work was a distinctive part of the Hawkwind sound during his tenure, perhaps best documented on the double live album Space Ritual. He also provided the lead vocals on several songs, including the band's biggest UK chart single, "Silver Machine", which reached #3 in 1972.
In May 1975, during a North American tour, Lemmy was arrested at the Canadian border in Windsor, Ontario on drug possession charges. The border police mistook the amphetamine he was carrying for cocaine and he was kept overnight in jail before being released without charge. The band and management were concerned that his arrest might stop the band from crossing back into the United States, even though he had been released without charge. They were also tired of what they saw as his erratic behaviour, so they decided to fire him.
He once said of Hawkwind: "I did like being in Hawkwind, and I believe I'd still be playing with them today if I hadn't been kicked out. It was fun onstage, not so much offstage. They didn't want to mesh with me. Musically, I loved the drummer, the guitar player. It was a great band.”
1975–2015: Motörhead
After Hawkwind, Lemmy formed a new band called "Bastard" with guitarist Larry Wallis (former member of the Pink Fairies, Steve Took's Shagrat and UFO) and drummer Lucas Fox. Lemmy and Took were friends, and Took was the stepfather to Lemmy's son Paul. When his manager informed him that a band by the name of "Bastard" would never get a slot on Top of the Pops, Lemmy changed the band's name to "Motörhead" – the title of the last song he had written for Hawkwind.
Soon after, Wallis and Fox were replaced with guitarist "Fast" Eddie Clarke and drummer Phil "Philthy Animal" Taylor and with this line-up, the band began to achieve success. Lemmy's guttural vocals were unique in rock at that time, and were copied during the time when punk rock became popular. The band's sound appealed to Lemmy's original fans and, eventually, to fans of punk. Lemmy asserted that he generally felt more kinship with punks than with metalheads; he even played with the Damned for a handful of gigs when they had no regular bassist. Motörhead's success peaked in 1980 and 1981 with several UK chart hits, including the single "Ace of Spades," which remained a crowd favourite throughout the band's career, and the UK #1 live album No Sleep 'til Hammersmith. Motörhead became one of the most influential bands in the heavy metal genre. Their – and Lemmy's – final live performance was in Berlin, Germany on 11 December 2015 during the band's 40th Anniversary Tour.
Personal life
At the age of 17, Lemmy met a holidaying girl named Cathy. He followed her to Stockport, where she gave birth to his son Sean, who was put up for adoption. In the 2010 documentary film Lemmy, he mentioned having a son whose mother had only recently reconnected with him and "hadn't got the heart to tell him who his father was." Later, during his time with The Rockin' Vickers, he slept with a woman in Manchester named Tracy; she had a son, Paul Inder, whom Lemmy met six years later. As an adult, Inder became a guitarist and occasionally joined Lemmy onstage.
Lemmy lived in Los Angeles from 1990 until his death in 2015, his last residence being a two-room apartment two blocks away from his favourite hangout, the Rainbow Bar and Grill.
In the 2005 Channel 4 documentary Motörhead: Live Fast, Die Old, it was claimed that Lemmy had slept with over 2,000 women. He later quipped, "I said more than 1,000; the magazine made 2,000 of it." Maxim had Lemmy at No. 8 on its top ten "Living Sex Legends" list, as they claimed that he had slept with around 1,200 women. He is featured in the book Sex Tips from Rock Stars by Paul Miles.
Dave Grohl, on his Probot website, describes musicians with whom he has worked. In his entry for Lemmy, he wrote:
Lemmy was well known for his alcohol abuse. The documentary Motörhead: Live Fast Die Old stated that he drank a bottle of Jack Daniel's every day and had done so since he was 30 years old. In 2013, he stopped drinking Jack Daniel's for health reasons. During his time with Hawkwind, he developed an appetite for amphetamine and LSD, particularly the former. Before joining Hawkwind, he recalled Dik Mik, a former Hawkwind sound technician, visiting his home in the middle of the night and taking amphetamine with him. They became interested in how long "you could make the human body jump about without stopping", which they did for a few months until Mik ran out of money and wanted to return to Hawkwind, taking Lemmy with him.
In November 2005, he was invited to the National Assembly for Wales as a guest speaker by Conservative member William Graham. He was asked to express his views on the detrimental effects of drugs and called for the legalization of heroin. He stated that legalization would eradicate the drug dealer from society and generate money from its taxation, however hard this would be to accept.
Lemmy collected German military regalia; he had an Iron Cross encrusted on his bass, which led to accusations of Nazi sympathies. He stated that he collected the memorabilia because he liked the way it looked, and considered himself an anarchist or libertarian. He spoke against racism several times. Lemmy said he was against religion, government, and established authority. In 2011, he identified as agnostic, saying, "I can find out when I die. I can wait. I'm not in a hurry." Jeff Hanneman, the founder of the thrash metal band Slayer, befriended Lemmy due to their shared fondness for collecting Nazi memorabilia. According to Keith Emerson's autobiography, Lemmy gave him two of his Hitler Youth knives during his time as a roadie for the Nice. Emerson used these knives many times as keyholders when playing the Hammond organ during concerts with the Nice and Emerson, Lake & Palmer before destroying them. Lemmy defended his collection by saying that if his then-girlfriend (who was black) had no problem with it, nobody else should.
Illness and death
In December 2000, Lemmy's tour was cancelled when he was hospitalised in Italy with the flu, exhaustion, and a lung infection. He was hospitalised with extreme dehydration and exhaustion in Germany in July 2005. As he grew older, he consumed less alcohol and drugs because he suffered from diabetes and hypertension. In June 2013, it was reported that he had an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator fitted. His tour was cancelled in July 2013 due to a severe haematoma. He referred to his continuing drug use as "dogged insolence in the face of mounting opposition to the contrary". Towards the end of his life, he had to use a walking stick. He had started smoking at the age of 11. In August 2015, he said he had cut down his smoking habit from two packs a day to one pack a week. He was hospitalised with a lung infection in September 2015, after having breathing problems when performing onstage.
On 28 December 2015, four days after his 70th birthday, Lemmy died at his Los Angeles apartment from prostate cancer, cardiac arrhythmia, and congestive heart failure. Motörhead announced his death on their official Facebook page later that day. According to the band, his cancer had only been diagnosed two days prior to his death.
Lemmy's manager, Todd Singerman, later revealed:
Lemmy's doctor had given him between two and six months to live. Mikael Maglieri, owner of his nearby hangout of the Rainbow Bar and Grill, subsequently had a video game machine that Lemmy was fond of playing taken from the establishment and put in Lemmy's apartment so he could continue playing it from his bedside. Although his manager had planned to keep the news private until his eventual death, Lemmy strongly encouraged him to make the diagnosis public in early 2016, but he died before a press release could be drafted.
Funeral
Lemmy's memorial service took place at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills, on 9 January 2016. The service was streamed live over YouTube with more than 230,000 people logging on to watch, while others gathered at the Rainbow. His body was cremated following the funeral. His remains were placed in a 3D-printed urn shaped like his trademark cavalry hat and emblazoned with the slogan "Born to lose, lived to win". The piece was on display during his funeral and was later interred at Forest Lawn.
In March 2021 it was revealed that Lemmy's ashes were, by his own request, put into bullets and sent to his closest friends.
Tributes
In various media, additional tributes appeared from fellow rock stars such as Rob Halford, Dave Grohl, Ozzy Osbourne, Alice Cooper, Metallica, Scott Ian of Anthrax, and Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi.
Reviewing his career after his death, The Daily Telegraph said:
In 2005, the UK magazine Classic Rock presented Lemmy with its first "Living Legend" award. In a 2013 interview with the magazine, Lemmy said he had never expected to make it to 30, but he spoke very pointedly about the future, indicating neither he nor the band was obsessing about the end:
In February 2016, the Hollywood Vampires performed at the Grammy Award ceremony as a tribute to Lemmy. On 11 June, Download Festival paid tribute to Lemmy by renaming the main stage the "Lemmy Stage", and in the slot where Motorhead were due to play, there was a video tribute to Lemmy in which they played his music and his peers talked about him. On 17 November, Metallica released a tribute song titled "Murder One", named after Lemmy's frequently used amp. The song, from their album Hardwired... to Self-Destruct, depicts Lemmy's rise to fame. On 18 January 2017, Lemmy was inducted into the Hall of Heavy Metal History for being the creator of thrash metal. In 2017, the extinct crocodile relative Lemmysuchus was named after Lemmy. On 14 November 2016, asteroid 243002 was officially named 243002 Lemmy, complementing asteroid 250840 Motorhead, named after the band in 2014.
In 2018, Hawkwind recorded a new acoustic version of Lemmy's "The Watcher" (originally recorded on Doremi Fasil Latido, 1972) on the album The Road to Utopia with production, arrangement and additional orchestrations by Mike Batt and a guest appearance from Eric Clapton.
Collaborations
Lemmy worked with several musicians, apart from his Motörhead bandmates, over the course of his career. He wrote the song "R.A.M.O.N.E.S" for the Ramones, which he played in his live sets as a tribute to the band. He also produced a Ramones EP and an album for Warfare entitled Metal Anarchy in which Wurzel guested on guitar, He was brought in as a songwriter for Ozzy Osbourne's 1991 No More Tears album, providing lyrics for the tracks "Hellraiser," (which Motörhead later recorded themselves and released as a single), "Desire," "I Don't Want to Change the World" and the single "Mama I'm Coming Home". Lemmy noted in several magazine and television interviews that he made more money from the royalties of that one song than he had in his entire time with Motörhead. After being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in 2000, for which he was hospitalized briefly, Lemmy again appeared with Motörhead at WrestleMania X-Seven playing WWE wrestler Triple H to the ring. Lemmy published his autobiography, White Line Fever, in November 2002. In 2005, Motörhead won their first Grammy in the Best Metal Performance category with their cover of Metallica's "Whiplash". In the same year he began recording an unreleased solo album titled Lemmy & Friends, which was intended to include a collaboration with Janet Jackson.
In 2014, he established his own recording label, Motorhead Music, to promote and develop new talent. Acts he signed to the label and helped develop include Barb Wire Dolls, Budderside, Others, and Phil Campbell and the Bastard Sons.
Film and television
Cameo appearances
Lemmy made appearances in film and television, including 1990 science fiction film Hardware and the 1987 comedy Eat the Rich, for which Motörhead also recorded the soundtracks including the title song. He appeared as himself in the 1986 The Comic Strip Presents... episode "More Bad News", along with fellow heavy metal musicians Ozzy Osbourne, the Scorpions and Def Leppard. In 1984, Motörhead were the musical guests on the TV show The Young Ones, in the episode "Bambi". He appears in the 1994 comedy Airheads (in which he is credited as "Lemmy von Motörhead"). Lemmy has a cameo in Ron Jeremy's 1994 pornographic film John Wayne Bobbitt Uncut as the discoverer of Bobbitt's severed penis. The appendage is thrown from the window of a moving car and lands at Lemmy's feet who exclaims: "Looks like a dick! Fucking hell! Ah well, it's not mine at least." The film's soundtrack also features the Motörhead song "Under the Knife".
He has also appeared in several movies from Troma Entertainment, including the narrator in 1996's Tromeo and Juliet and as himself in both Terror Firmer and Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV. His last role was portraying the President of the United States in Return to Nuke 'Em High. He has a cameo role in the film Down and Out with the Dolls (Kurt Voss, 2001). He appears as a lodger who lives in a closet. He appeared on Down and Dirty with Jim Norton as the series DJ, and also wrote the theme music. He appeared in a 2001 advertisement for Kit Kat, playing violin as part of a string quartet in a genteel tearoom. In 2015, Lemmy appeared as a central figure in the Björn Tagemose-directed silent film Gutterdämmerung opposite Grace Jones, Henry Rollins, Iggy Pop, Tom Araya of Slayer and Eagles of Death Metal's Jesse Hughes.
Lemmy film
The 2010 rockumentary film Lemmy was directed and produced by Greg Olliver and Wes Orshoski. It consists of a combination of 16 mm film and HD video footage, produced over three years. It features interviews with friends, peers, and admirers such as Dave Grohl, Slash, Ozzy Osbourne, James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett, and Robert Trujillo of Metallica, David Ellefson of Megadeth, Scott Ian of Anthrax, Alice Cooper, Peter Hook of Joy Division/New Order, Dee Snider, Nikki Sixx, Mick Jones of the Clash, Ice-T, Kat Von D, Henry Rollins, Lars Frederiksen of Rancid, Jim Heath of The Reverend Horton Heat, Slim Jim Phantom of the Stray Cats, Mike Inez, Joan Jett, pro skateboarder Geoff Rowley, pro wrestler Triple H, "Fast" Eddie Clarke, Jarvis Cocker, Marky Ramone, former Hawkwind bandmates Dave Brock and Stacia, and Steve Vai.
In video games
He was the main character in the 16-bit video game Motörhead, released for the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST in 1992. Lemmy also appeared as an unlockable character in the 2009 game Guitar Hero: Metallica. He also provided his voice for the 2009 video game Brütal Legend, voicing the Kill Master, a character designed and based on his surname and likeness. Lemmy was also the inspiration for the Mario game character Lemmy Koopa, who made his first appearance in Super Mario Bros. 3. In the Victor Vran Downloadable content "Motorhead Through The Ages", there is a new "Lemmy's Outfit" armour. The other Motörhead bandmates' armour is also available. As an easter egg, a holographic woman in the final level of 2020's DOOM Eternal proclaims, "Lemmy is God!". The appearance of the character King Novik from the same video game is also loosely based on facial features of Lemmy. Deep Rock Galactic features one of Lemmy's hats as a cosmetic called "The Ace of Spades" with the description "In honor of a motoring head."
Equipment
Lemmy positioned his microphone in an uncommonly high position, angled so that he appeared to be looking up at the sky rather than at the audience. He said that it was for "personal comfort, that's all. It's also one way of avoiding seeing the audience. In the days when we only had ten people and a dog, it was a way of avoiding seeing that we only had ten people and a dog."
As a member of Hawkwind, Lemmy first used a Rickenbacker belonging to Dave Anderson. When Anderson failed to show up for a charity gig, Lemmy took his place. Following the departure of Anderson, Kilmister bought a Hopf Studio bass off Hawkwind synth player Del Detmar. He used Rickenbacker basses for most of his career. In September 1996, a Rickenbacker belonging to him was a featured part of the Bang Your Head exhibition at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, US.
When asked about the appeal of the Rickenbacker instruments, Lemmy said "The shape. I'm all for the image — always. If you get one that looks good, you can always mess with the pickups if it sounds bad."
With Hawkwind Lemmy used a Selmer amplifier. With Motorhead, he got a Marshall Amplification 1992 JMP Super Bass Mark 2 bass stack from 1976, with a 4x15" and a 4x12" cabinet. In 2008, Marshall issued a model dedicated to Lemmy, the 1992LEM, which was available with the same cabinets Lemmy used.
Musical style
Lemmy described his style as "I play a lot of notes, but I also play a lot of chords. And I play a lot of open strings. I just don't play like a bass player. There are complaints about me from time to time. It's not like having a bass player; it's like having a deep guitarist.
Lemmy's unconventional playing style changed the dynamics of the group's rhythm section, Hawkwind drummer Simon King explained that "A lot of the time I play with [guitarist] Dave - he'll get into a kind of rhythmic thing and I'll follow him so you get this kind of percussion and rhythmic guitar thing going, so Lemmy can loon forward a bit because he's very much a front man and gives off a lot of energy, so he can get out front and play a sort of lead on bass which sometimes is very effective", and Motörhead drummer Taylor echoed the sentiment with "Onstage he's difficult to follow cos he's not really a bass player. There's no solid bass lines to follow. A lot of the time I play more with Eddie [Clarke] than with Lemmy, but he's out on his own because he is what he is."
Discography
For releases with Motörhead see the Motörhead discography
Member of the Rockin' Vickers
1965 – "Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart" / "Stella" (7" single)
1965 – "It's Alright" / "Stay By Me" (7" single)
1966 – "Dandy" / "I Don't Need Your Kind" (7" single)
2000 – The Complete: It's Alright (compilation)
Member of Sam Gopal
1969 – Escalator
1969 – "Horse" / "Back Door Man" (7" single)
Member of Hawkwind
1972 – "Silver Machine" / "Seven by Seven" (7" single)
1972 – Glastonbury Fayre – contains "Silver Machine" and "Welcome to the Future"
1972 – Greasy Truckers Party – contains "Born to Go" and "Master of the Universe" (10/11 Hawkwind tracks on 2007 re-release)
1972 – Doremi Fasol Latido
1973 – "Lord of Light" / "Born to Go" (7" single)
1973 – "Urban Guerrilla" / "Brainbox Pollution" (7" single)
1973 – Space Ritual
1974 – Hall of the Mountain Grill
1974 – "Psychedelic Warlords" / "It's So Easy" (7" single)
1975 – "Kings of Speed" / "Motorhead" (7" single)
1975 – Warrior on the Edge of Time
1983 – The Weird Tapes (live and out-takes, 1967–1982)
1984 – The Earth Ritual Preview EP (guest appearance as bass and backing vocals on Night of the Hawks)
1985 – Bring Me the Head of Yuri Gagarin (live 1973)
1985 – Space Ritual Volume 2 (live 1972)
1986 – Hawkwind Anthology (live and out-takes, 1967–1982)
1991 – BBC Radio 1 Live in Concert (live 1972)
1992 – The Friday Rock Show Sessions (live 1986)
1997 – The 1999 Party (live 1974)
Member of Robert Calvert's band
1974 – "Ejection" / "Catch a Falling Starfighter" (7" single)
1974 – Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters
1980 – "Lord of the Hornets" / "The Greenfly and the Rose" (7" single)
Side projects and career-spanning groups
1990 – Lemmy & The Upsetters – Blue Suede Shoes
2000 – Lemmy, Slim Jim & Danny B (aka the Head Cat) – Lemmy, Slim Jim & Danny B
2006 – The Head Cat – Fool's Paradise
2006 – The Head Cat – Rockin' the Cat Club: Live from the Sunset Strip
2006 – Lemmy – Damage Case (Compilation)
2007 – Keli Raven & Lemmy Kilmister "Bad Boyz 4 Life" (single).
2011 – The Head Cat – Walk The Walk… Talk The Talk
Band collaborations
1978 – The Doomed (one-off performance at the Electric Ballroom, 5 September 1978). Bootleg recording with Dave Vanian, Captain Sensible, and Rat Scabies. Brian James had left The Damned and took the rights to the name with him.
1979 – The Damned – "I Just Can't Be Happy Today" / "Ballroom Blitz" (with Lemmy on bass) / "Turkey Song" (7" single) – available as bonus track on the reissued Machine Gun Etiquette album
1980 – The Young & Moody Band – "Don't Do That" (7" & 12" single)
1981 – Headgirl (Motörhead & Girlschool) – St. Valentine's Day Massacre EP
1982 – Lemmy & Wendy O. Williams – Stand by Your Man EP
1985 – Producer for Warfare on the album Metal Anarchy.
Charity collaborations
1985 – Hear 'n Aid
1985 – The Crowd – You'll Never Walk Alone (Bradford City F.C. Fire Disaster)
2011 – Emergency – Livewire + Girlschool + Rudy Sarzo vocals (Haiti Appeal)
Guest appearances
1982 – Speed Queen (French band) – Speed Queen – backing vocals on "Revanche"
1984 – Albert Järvinen Band – Countdown
1986 – Boys Don't Cry – "I Wanna Be a Cowboy" (appears in the music video)
1989 – Nina Hagen – Nina Hagen – guests on "Where's the Party"
1992 – Bootsauce – Bull – guests on "Hold Tight"
1994 – Fast Eddie Clarke – It Ain't Over till It's Over – guests on "Laugh at the Devil".
1994 – Shonen Knife – Rock Animals – guests on "Tomato Head" single remix (Track 3 – "Lemmy in There Mix") – not the album track
1996 – Skew Siskin – Electric Chair Music
1996 – Ugly Kid Joe – Motel California - guest on "Little Red Man"
1996 – Myth, Dreams of the World – Stories of the Greek & Roman Gods & Goddesses
1996 – Skew Siskin – Voices from the War
1997 – Ramones – We're Outta Here! – guests on "R.A.M.O.N.E.S."
1999 – Jetboy – Lost & Found
1999 – Skew Siskin – What the Hell
1999 – A.N.I.M.A.L. – Usa Toda Tu Fuerza – guests on a version of AC/DC's "Highway to Hell"
2000 – Doro – Calling the Wild
2000 – Swing Cats – A Special Tribute to Elvis – guests on "Good Rockin' Tonight", "Trying to Get to You" and "Stuck on You"
2001 – The Pirates – Rock Bottom
2001 – Hair of the Dog – Ignite – guests on "Law"
2002 – Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Mike Batt and guests – Philharmania – guests on "Eve of Destruction"
2003 – Ace Sounds – Still Hungry
2003 – Skew Siskin – Album of the Year
2004 – Probot – Probot – guests on "Shake Your Blood"
2005 – Throw Rag – 13 Ft. and Rising – guests on "Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down"
2006 – Doro – 20 Years – A Warrior Soul – guests on "Love Me Forever" and "All We Are"
2007 – Meldrum – Blowin' Up The Machine – guests on "Miss Me When I'm Gone"
2007 – The Warriors – Genuine Sense of Outrage – guests on "Price of Punishment"
2007 – Keli Raven single "Bad Boyz 4 Life" (co-writer and guest vocalist)
2008 – Airbourne – Guest actor on Airbourne's "Runnin' Wild" Music Video
2008 – We Wish You a Metal Christmas – Run Run Rudolph
2008 – Legacy – Girlschool album – Don't Talk to Me vocals, bass, triangle and lyrics.
2009 – Guitar Hero: Metallica (video game) – "Ace of Spades" guest vocalist and unlockable playable character.
2009 – Queen V – Death or Glory – guests on "Wasted"
2009 – Brütal Legend (video game) – The Kill Master (voice)
2010 – Slash – Slash – "Doctor Alibi" (vocals and bass)
2011 – Michael Monroe – Sensory Overdrive guests on "Debauchery As A Fine Art"
2012 – Doro – Raise Your Fist guest on "It Still Hurts"
2012 – Nashville Pussy – Guest on Nashville Pussy's song "Lazy Jesus" on the re-release of the album "From Hell to Texas"
2014 – Emigrate – Guest bass and vocals on track Rock City, from their album Silent So Long
Film soundtracks, tribute, wrestling and various artists albums
1990 – Hardware: Original Soundtrack – contains "A Piece of Pipe" by Kaduta Massi with Lemmy
1990 – The Last Temptation of Elvis: Blue Suede Shoes – contains "Blue Suede Shoes" by Lemmy & The Upsetters
1994 – Airheads: Cameo on film and performing "Born to Raise Hell" on the soundtrack
1997 – Dragon Attack: A Tribute to Queen – performs on "Tie Your Mother Down"
1998 – Thunderbolt: A Tribute to AC/DC – performs on "It's a Long Way to the Top"
1998 – ECW: Extreme Music – contains a cover of Metallica's "Enter Sandman"
2000 – Bat Head Soup – Tribute to Ozzy Osbourne – performs on "Desire"
2001 – WWF The Music, Vol. 5 – "The Game"
2001 – Frezno Smooth: Original Soundtrack – contains a version of Twisted Sister's "Hardcore" by Lemmy
2001 – A Tribute to Metallica: Metallic Assault – performs on "Nothing Else Matters"
2002 – Rise Above: 24 Black Flag Songs to Benefit the West Memphis Three – performs on "Thirsty & Miserable"
2002 – Metal Brigade – performs on "Good Rockin' Tonight" by Lemmy and Johnny Ramone
2004 – Spin the Bottle – An All-Star Tribute to KISS – performs on "Shout It Out Loud"
2004 – The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie – performs "You Better Swim"
2004 – ThemeAddict: WWE The Music, Vol. 6 – "Line in the Sand"
2005 – Numbers from the Beast: An All Star Salute to Iron Maiden – performs on "The Trooper"
2005 – Metal: A Headbangers Journey
2006 – WWE Wreckless Intent – "King of Kings"
2006 – Flying High Again: The World's Greatest Tribute to Ozzy Osbourne – Performs "Desire" with Richie Kotzen
2006 – Cover Me in '80s Metal (Fantastic Price Records) – Metal artists covering the hits of others. Performs AC/DC's "It's a Long Way to the Top"
2006 – Butchering the Beatles: A Headbashing Tribute – Performs "Back in the USSR".
2009 – Flip Skateboards Presents Extremely Sorry – Performs "Stand By Me" with Baron and Dave Lombardo.
2010 – Danko Jones – Full of Regret – Stars in the music video along with Elijah Wood and Selma Blair
2011 – Foo Fighters – White Limo – Stars in the music video
2017 – Airbourne – It's All for Rock N' Roll – Videos of Lemmy appeared in the music video. Tribute to Lemmy
Videography
Video tape/laser disc
1982 Live in Toronto – Castle Hendring
1984 Another Perfect Day EP
1985 Birthday Party
1986 Deaf Not Blind
1987 More Bad News
1988 EP
1988 The Decline of Western Civilization II: The Metal Years
1990 Hardware (Lemmy was cast as a water taxi driver; and plays a recording of "Ace of Spades" for his passengers)
1991 Everything Louder than Everyone Else
DVD
1987 Eat the Rich
1994 Airheads – cameo as "The Rocker"
1997 Tromeo and Juliet – cast as Narrator, Troma pictures
1999 Terror Firmer
2001 Down and Out with the Dolls – as Joe
2001 25 & Alive Boneshaker
2001 WrestleMania X-Seven – performing Triple-H's entrance theme "The Game" live
2001 Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV – as a Tromaville citizen
2002 Motörhead EP
2002 The Best of Motörhead
2003 The Special Edition EP
2003 Charlie's Death Wish – as himself
2004 Everything Louder Than Everything Else
2005 Stage Fright – also HD DVD 2007
2005 Ringers: Lord of the Fans
2005 WrestleMania 21 – performing "The Game"
2005 Metal: A Headbanger's Journey
2006 The Head Cat Live: Rockin' the Cat Club
2006 Foo Fighters: Hyde Park
2010 Lemmy
2011 The Wörld Is Yours – bonus DVD
References
Citations
Sources
Further reading
1981 Motörhead – Author: Alan Burridge, published by Babylon Books,
1994 The Illustrated Collector's Guide to Motörhead – Authors: Alan Burridge and Mick Stevenson, published by Collector's Guide Publishing,
2002 White Line Fever – Authors: Lemmy and Janiss Garza, published by Simon & Schuster,
2002 Lemmy: In His Own Words – Author: Harry Shaw, published by Omnibus Press,
2002 Motorheadbangers Diary of the Fans Volume 1 – Author: Alan Burridge, published by e-booksonline(uk)ltd,
External links
Motörhead official website
Interview with Lemmy Kilmister in Revolutionart magazine no. 22
Profile for Lemmy's new band The Head Cat on Myspace
"Lemmy’s Last Days: How Metal Legend Celebrated 70th, Stared Down Cancer" in Rolling Stone magazine
"R.I.P. Lemmy Kilmister, Motörhead frontman dead at 70"—Obituary on Consequence of Sound
1945 births
2015 deaths
20th-century British guitarists
21st-century British writers
20th-century English male singers
21st-century English male singers
Burials at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills)
Critics of religions
The Damned (band) members
Dead Men Walking members
Deaths from cancer in California
Deaths from prostate cancer
English agnostics
English anarchists
English autobiographers
English baritones
English expatriates in the United States
English heavy metal bass guitarists
English heavy metal singers
English libertarians
English rock bass guitarists
Progressive rock bass guitarists
English rock singers
English male singer-songwriters
Guitarists from Los Angeles
Hawkwind members
Male bass guitarists
Motörhead members
People educated at Ysgol Syr Thomas Jones
People from Burslem
The Head Cat members |
18643 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose | Lactose | Lactose, a disaccharide, is a sugar composed of galactose and glucose subunits and has the molecular formula C12H22O11. Lactose makes up around 2–8% of milk (by weight). The name comes from (gen. ), the Latin word for milk, plus the suffix -ose used to name sugars. The compound is a white, water-soluble, non-hygroscopic solid with a mildly sweet taste. It is used in the food industry.
Structure and reactions
Lactose is a disaccharide derived from the condensation of galactose and glucose, which form a β-1→4 glycosidic linkage. Its systematic name is β-D-galactopyranosyl-(1→4)-D-glucose. The glucose can be in either the α-pyranose form or the β-pyranose form, whereas the galactose can only have the β-pyranose form: hence α-lactose and β-lactose refer to the anomeric form of the glucopyranose ring alone.
Detection reactions for lactose are the Woehlk- and Fearon's test. Both can be easily used in school experiments to visualise the different lactose content of different dairy products such as whole milk, lactose free milk, yogurt, buttermilk, coffee creamer, sour cream, kefir etc.
Lactose is hydrolysed to glucose and galactose, isomerised in alkaline solution to lactulose, and catalytically hydrogenated to the corresponding polyhydric alcohol, lactitol. Lactulose is a commercial product, used for treatment of constipation.
Occurrence and isolation
Lactose composes about 2–8% of milk by weight. Several million tons are produced annually as a by-product of the dairy industry.
Whey or milk plasma is the liquid remaining after milk is curdled and strained, for example in the production of cheese. Whey is made up of 6.5% solids, of which 4.8% is lactose, which is purified by crystallisation.
Industrially, lactose is produced from whey permeate – that is whey filtrated for all major proteins. The protein fraction is used in infant nutrition and sports nutrition while the permeate can be evaporated to 60–65% solids and crystallized while cooling. Lactose can also be isolated by dilution of whey with ethanol.
Dairy products such as milk yogurt and cheese contain very little lactose. Lactase is used as the bacteria used to make them consume lactose during the manufacturing process.
Metabolism
Infant mammals nurse on their mothers to drink milk, which is rich in lactose. The intestinal villi secrete the enzyme lactase (β-D-galactosidase) to digest it. This enzyme cleaves the lactose molecule into its two subunits, the simple sugars glucose and galactose, which can be absorbed. Since lactose occurs mostly in milk, in most mammals, the production of lactase gradually decreases with maturity due to a lack of continuing consumption.
Many people with ancestry in Europe, West Asia, South Asia, the Sahel belt in West Africa, East Africa and a few other parts of Central Africa maintain lactase production into adulthood. In many of these areas, milk from mammals such as cattle, goats, and sheep is used as a large source of food. Hence, it was in these regions that genes for lifelong lactase production first evolved. The genes of adult lactose tolerance have evolved independently in various ethnic groups. By descent, more than 70% of western Europeans can digest lactose as adults, compared with less than 30% of people from areas of Africa, eastern and south-eastern Asia and Oceania. In people who are lactose intolerant, lactose is not broken down and provides food for gas-producing gut flora, which can lead to diarrhea, bloating, flatulence, and other gastrointestinal symptoms.
Biological properties
The sweetness of lactose is 0.2 to 0.4, relative to 1.0 for sucrose. For comparison, the sweetness of glucose is 0.6 to 0.7, of fructose is 1.3, of galactose is 0.5 to 0.7, of maltose is 0.4 to 0.5, of sorbose is 0.4, and of xylose is 0.6 to 0.7.
When lactose is completely digested in the small intestine, its caloric value is 4 kcal/g, or the same as that of other carbohydrates. However, lactose is not always fully digested in the small intestine. Depending on ingested dose, combination with meals (either solid or liquid), and lactase activity in the intestines, the caloric value of lactose ranges from 2 to 4 kcal/g. Undigested lactose acts as dietary fiber. It also has positive effects on absorption of minerals, such as calcium and magnesium.
The glycemic index of lactose is 46 to 65. For comparison, the glycemic index of glucose is 100 to 138, of sucrose is 68 to 92, of maltose is 105, and of fructose is 19 to 27.
Lactose has relatively low cariogenicity among sugars. This is because it is not a substrate for dental plaque formation and it is not rapidly fermented by oral bacteria. The buffering capacity of milk also reduces the cariogenicity of lactose.
Applications
Its mild flavor and easy handling properties have led to its use as a carrier and stabiliser of aromas and pharmaceutical products. Lactose is not added directly to many foods, because its solubility is less than that of other sugars commonly used in food. Infant formula is a notable exception, where the addition of lactose is necessary to match the composition of human milk.
Lactose is not fermented by most yeast during brewing, which may be used to advantage. For example, lactose may be used to sweeten stout beer; the resulting beer is usually called a milk stout or a cream stout.
Yeast belonging to the genus Kluyveromyces have a unique industrial application as they are capable of fermenting lactose for ethanol production. Surplus lactose from the whey by-product of dairy operations is a potential source of alternative energy.
Another significant lactose use is in the pharmaceutical industry. Lactose is added to tablet and capsule drug products as an ingredient because of its physical and functional properties. For similar reasons it can be used to dilute illicit drugs such as cocaine or heroin.
History
The first crude isolation of lactose, by Italian physician Fabrizio Bartoletti (1576–1630), was published in 1633. In 1700, the Venetian pharmacist Lodovico Testi (1640–1707) published a booklet of testimonials to the power of milk sugar (saccharum lactis) to relieve, among other ailments, the symptoms of arthritis. In 1715, Testi's procedure for making milk sugar was published by Antonio Vallisneri. Lactose was identified as a sugar in 1780 by Carl Wilhelm Scheele.
In 1812, Heinrich Vogel (1778–1867) recognized that glucose was a product of hydrolyzing lactose. In 1856, Louis Pasteur crystallized the other component of lactose, galactose. By 1894, Emil Fischer had established the configurations of the component sugars.
Lactose was named by the French chemist Jean Baptiste André Dumas (1800–1884) in 1843.
In 1856, Louis Pasteur named galactose "lactose". In 1860, Marcellin Berthelot renamed it "galactose", and transferred the name "lactose" to what is now called lactose. It has a formula of C12H22O11 and the hydrate formula C12H22O11·H2O, making it an isomer of sucrose.
See also
Lactose intolerance
Nectar
Sugars in wine
lac operon
Lactic acid
References
External links
Disaccharides
Excipients
Sugar substitutes |
18644 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median%20lethal%20dose | Median lethal dose | In toxicology, the median lethal dose, LD50 (abbreviation for "lethal dose, 50%"), LC50 (lethal concentration, 50%) or LCt50 is a measure of the lethal dose of a toxin, radiation, or pathogen. The value of LD50 for a substance is the dose required to kill half the members of a tested population after a specified test duration. LD50 figures are frequently used as a general indicator of a substance's acute toxicity. A lower LD50 is indicative of increased toxicity.
The test was created by J.W. Trevan in 1927. The term semilethal dose is occasionally used in the same sense, in particular with translations of foreign language text, but can also refer to a sublethal dose. LD50 is usually determined by tests on animals such as laboratory mice. In 2011, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved alternative methods to LD50 for testing the cosmetic drug Botox without animal tests.
Conventions
The LD50 is usually expressed as the mass of substance administered per unit mass of test subject, typically as milligrams of substance per kilogram of body mass, sometimes also stated as nanograms (suitable for botulinum), micrograms, or grams (suitable for paracetamol) per kilogram. Stating it this way allows the relative toxicity of different substances to be compared, and normalizes for the variation in the size of the animals exposed (although toxicity does not always scale simply with body mass). For substances in the environment, such as poisonous vapors or substances in water that are toxic to fish, the concentration in the environment (per cubic metre or per litre) is used, giving a value of LC50. But in this case, the exposure time is important (see below).
The choice of 50% lethality as a benchmark avoids the potential for ambiguity of making measurements in the extremes and reduces the amount of testing required. However, this also means that LD50 is not the lethal dose for all subjects; some may be killed by much less, while others survive doses far higher than the LD50. Measures such as "LD1" and "LD99" (dosage required to kill 1% or 99%, respectively, of the test population) are occasionally used for specific purposes.
Lethal dosage often varies depending on the method of administration; for instance, many substances are less toxic when administered orally than when intravenously administered. For this reason, LD50 figures are often qualified with the mode of administration, e.g., "LD50 i.v."
The related quantities LD50/30 or LD50/60 are used to refer to a dose that without treatment will be lethal to 50% of the population within (respectively) 30 or 60 days. These measures are used more commonly within radiation health physics, as survival beyond 60 days usually results in recovery.
A comparable measurement is LCt50, which relates to lethal dosage from exposure, where C is concentration and t is time. It is often expressed in terms of mg-min/m3. ICt50 is the dose that will cause incapacitation rather than death. These measures are commonly used to indicate the comparative efficacy of chemical warfare agents, and dosages are typically qualified by rates of breathing (e.g., resting = 10 l/min) for inhalation, or degree of clothing for skin penetration. The concept of Ct was first proposed by Fritz Haber and is sometimes referred to as Haber's law, which assumes that exposure to 1 minute of 100 mg/m3 is equivalent to 10 minutes of 10 mg/m3 (1 × 100 = 100, as does 10 × 10 = 100).
Some chemicals, such as hydrogen cyanide, are rapidly detoxified by the human body, and do not follow Haber's law. So, in these cases, the lethal concentration may be given simply as LC50 and qualified by a duration of exposure (e.g., 10 minutes). The Material Safety Data Sheets for toxic substances frequently use this form of the term even if the substance does follow Haber's law.
For disease-causing organisms, there is also a measure known as the median infective dose and dosage. The median infective dose (ID50) is the number of organisms received by a person or test animal qualified by the route of administration (e.g., 1,200 org/man per oral). Because of the difficulties in counting actual organisms in a dose, infective doses may be expressed in terms of biological assay, such as the number of LD50's to some test animal. In biological warfare infective dosage is the number of infective doses per cubic metre of air times the number of minutes of exposure (e.g., ICt50 is 100 medium doses - min/m3).
Limitation
As a measure of toxicity, LD50 is somewhat unreliable and results may vary greatly between testing facilities due to factors such as the genetic characteristics of the sample population, animal species tested, environmental factors and mode of administration.
There can be wide variability between species as well; what is relatively safe for rats may very well be extremely toxic for humans (cf. paracetamol toxicity), and vice versa. For example, chocolate, comparatively harmless to humans, is known to be toxic to many animals. When used to test venom from venomous creatures, such as snakes, LD50 results may be misleading due to the physiological differences between mice, rats, and humans. Many venomous snakes are specialized predators on mice, and their venom may be adapted specifically to incapacitate mice; and mongooses may be exceptionally resistant. While most mammals have a very similar physiology, LD50 results may or may not have equal bearing upon every mammal species, such as humans, etc.
Examples
Note: Comparing substances (especially drugs) to each other by LD50 can be misleading in many cases due (in part) to differences in effective dose (ED50). Therefore, it is more useful to compare such substances by therapeutic index, which is simply the ratio of LD50 to ED50.
The following examples are listed in reference to LD50 values, in descending order, and accompanied by LC50 values, {bracketed}, when appropriate.
Poison scale
The LD50 values have a very wide range. The botulinum toxin as the most toxic substance known has an LD50 value of 1 ng/kg, while the most non-toxic substance water has an LD50 value of more than 90 g/kg. That's a difference of about 1 in 100 billion or 11 orders of magnitude. As with all measured values that differ by many orders of magnitude, a logarithmic view is advisable. Well-known examples are the indication of the earthquake strength using the Richter scale, the pH value, as a measure for the acidic or basic character of an aqueous solution or of loudness in decibels .
In this case, the negative decimal logarithm of the LD50 values, which is standardized in kg per kg body weight, is considered .
The dimensionless value found can be entered in a toxin scale. Water as the baseline substance is neatly 1 in the negative logarithmic toxin scale.
Animal rights concerns
Animal-rights and animal-welfare groups, such as Animal Rights International, have campaigned against LD50 testing on animals. Several countries, including the UK, have taken steps to ban the oral LD50, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) abolished the requirement for the oral test in 2001 (see Test Guideline 401, Trends in Pharmacological Sciences Vol 22, February 22, 2001).
See also
Animal testing
Reed-Muench method
The dose makes the poison – the toxicology adage that high quantities of any substance is lethal
Other measures of toxicity
IDLH
Certain safety factor
Therapeutic index
Protective index
Fixed Dose Procedure to estimate LD50
Median toxic dose (TD50)
Lowest published toxic concentration (TCLo)
Lowest published lethal dose (LDLo)
EC50 (half maximal effective concentration)
IC50 (half maximal inhibitory concentration)
Draize test
Indicative limit value
No-observed-adverse-effect level (NOAEL)
Lowest-observed-adverse-effect level (LOAEL)
Up-and-down procedure
Related measures
TCID50 Tissue Culture Infective Dosage
EID50 Egg Infective Dosage
ELD50 Egg Lethal Dosage
Plaque forming units (pfu)
References
External links
Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety
Animal testing
Concentration indicators
Mathematics in medicine
Toxicology |
18645 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactase | Lactase | Lactase is an enzyme produced by many organisms. It is located in the brush border of the small intestine of humans and other mammals. Lactase is essential to the complete digestion of whole milk; it breaks down lactose, a sugar which gives milk its sweetness. Lacking lactase, a person consuming dairy products may experience the symptoms of lactose intolerance. Lactase can be purchased as a food supplement, and is added to milk to produce "lactose-free" milk products.
Lactase (also known as lactase-phlorizin hydrolase, or LPH), a part of the β-galactosidase family of enzymes, is a glycoside hydrolase involved in the hydrolysis of the disaccharide lactose into constituent galactose and glucose monomers. Lactase is present predominantly along the brush border membrane of the differentiated enterocytes lining the villi of the small intestine. In humans, lactase is encoded by the LCT gene on chromosome 2.
Uses
Food use
Lactase is an enzyme that some people are unable to produce in their small intestine. Without it, they cannot break down the natural lactose in milk, leaving them with diarrhea, gas and bloating when drinking regular milk. Technology to produce lactose-free milk, ice cream and yogurt was developed by the USDA Agricultural Research Service in 1985. This technology is used to add lactase to milk, thereby hydrolyzing the lactose naturally found in milk, leaving it slightly sweet but digestible by everyone. Without lactase, lactose intolerant people pass the lactose undigested to the colon where bacteria break it down, creating carbon dioxide and that leads to bloating and flatulence.
Medical use
Lactase supplements are sometimes used to treat lactose intolerance.
Industrial use
Lactase produced commercially can be extracted both from yeasts such as Kluyveromyces fragilis and Kluyveromyces lactis and from molds, such as Aspergillus niger and Aspergillus oryzae. Its primary commercial use, in supplements and products such as those from Lacteeze and Lactaid, is to break down lactose in milk to make it suitable for people with lactose intolerance. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not independently evaluated these products.
Lactase (or a similar form of beta-galactosidase) is also used to screen for blue white colonies in the multiple cloning sites of various plasmid vectors in Escherichia coli or other bacteria.
Mechanism
The optimum temperature for human lactase is about 37 °C and the optimum pH is 6.
In metabolism, the β-glycosidic bond in D-lactose is hydrolyzed to form D-galactose and D-glucose, which can be absorbed through the intestinal walls and into the bloodstream. The overall reaction that lactase catalyzes is C12H22O11 + H2O → C6H12O6 + C6H12O6 + heat.
The catalytic mechanism of D-lactose hydrolysis retains the substrate anomeric configuration in the products. While the details of the mechanism are uncertain, the stereochemical retention is achieved off a double displacement reaction. Studies of E. coli lactase have proposed that hydrolysis is initiated when a glutamate nucleophile on the enzyme attacks from the axial side of the galactosyl carbon in the β-glycosidic bond. The removal of the D-glucose leaving group may be facilitated by Mg-dependent acid catalysis. The enzyme is liberated from the α-galactosyl moiety upon equatorial nucleophilic attack by water, which produces D-galactose.
Substrate modification studies have demonstrated that the 3′-OH and 2′-OH moieties on the galactopyranose ring are essential for enzymatic recognition and hydrolysis. The 3′-hydroxy group is involved in initial binding to the substrate while the 2′- group is not necessary for recognition but needed in subsequent steps. This is demonstrated by the fact that a 2-deoxy analog is an effective competitive inhibitor (Ki = 10mM). Elimination of specific hydroxyl groups on the glucopyranose moiety does not eliminate catalysis.
Lactase also catalyzes the conversion of phlorizin to phloretin and glucose.
Structure and biosynthesis
Preprolactase, the primary translation product, has a single polypeptide primary structure consisting of 1927 amino acids. It can be divided into five domains: (i) a 19-amino-acid cleaved signal sequence; (ii) a large prosequence domain that is not present in mature lactase; (iii) the mature lactase segment; (iv) a membrane-spanning hydrophobic anchor; and (v) a short hydrophilic carboxyl terminus. The signal sequence is cleaved in the endoplasmic reticulum, and the resulting 215-kDa pro-LPH is sent to the Golgi apparatus, where it is heavily glycosylated and proteolytically processed to its mature form. The prodomain has been shown to act as an intramolecular chaperone in the ER, preventing trypsin cleavage and allowing LPH to adopt the necessary 3-D structure to be transported to the Golgi apparatus.
Mature human lactase consists of a single 160-kDa polypeptide chain that localizes to the brush border membrane of intestinal epithelial cells. It is oriented with the N-terminus outside the cell and the C-terminus in the cytosol. LPH contains two catalytic glutamic acid sites. In the human enzyme, the lactase activity has been connected to Glu-1749, while Glu-1273 is the site of phlorizin hydrolase function.
Genetic expression and regulation
Lactase is encoded by a single genetic locus on chromosome 2. It is expressed exclusively by mammalian small intestine enterocytes and in very low levels in the colon during fetal development. Humans are born with high levels of lactase expression. In most of the world's population, lactase transcription is down-regulated after weaning, resulting in diminished lactase expression in the small intestine, which causes the common symptoms of adult-type hypolactasia, or lactose intolerance.
Some population segments exhibit lactase persistence resulting from a mutation that is postulated to have occurred 5,000–10,000 years ago, coinciding with the rise of cattle domestication. This mutation has allowed almost half of the world's population to metabolize lactose without symptoms. Studies have linked the occurrence of lactase persistence to two different single-nucleotide polymorphisms about 14 and 22 kilobases upstream of the 5’-end of the LPH gene. Both mutations, C→T at position -13910 and G→ A at position -22018, have been independently linked to lactase persistence.
The lactase promoter is 150 base pairs long and is located just upstream of the site of transcription initiation. The sequence is highly conserved in mammals, suggesting that critical cis-transcriptional regulators are located nearby. Cdx-2, HNF-1α, and GATA have been identified as transcription factors. Studies of hypolactasia onset have demonstrated that despite polymorphisms, little difference exists in lactase expression in infants, showing that the mutations become increasingly relevant during development. Developmentally regulated DNA-binding proteins may down-regulate transcription or destabilize mRNA transcripts, causing decreased LPH expression after weaning.
See also
MCM6
Lactase persistence
References
External links
The Lactase Protein
E. coli β-galactosidase:
Gene Ontology for Lactase
Making of the Fittest: Got Lactase? The Co-evolution of Genes and Culture
Lactase persistence shows indication of association with Obesity
PDBe-KB provides an overview of all the structure information available in the PDB for Human Beta-galactosidase
PDBe-KB provides an overview of all the structure information available in the PDB for Escherichia coli Beta-galactosidase
Food additives
Antiflatulents
EC 3.2.1
Genes on human chromosome 2 |
18646 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linkin%20Park | Linkin Park | Linkin Park is an American rock band from Agoura Hills, California. The band's current lineup comprises vocalist/rhythm guitarist/keyboardist Mike Shinoda, lead guitarist Brad Delson, bassist Dave Farrell, DJ/turntablist Joe Hahn and drummer Rob Bourdon, all of whom are founding members. Vocalists Mark Wakefield and Chester Bennington are former members of the band. Categorized as alternative rock, Linkin Park's earlier music spanned a fusion of heavy metal and hip hop, while their later music features more electronica and pop elements.
Formed in 1996, Linkin Park rose to international fame with their debut studio album, Hybrid Theory (2000), which became certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Released during the peak of the nu metal scene, the album's singles' heavy airplay on MTV led the singles "One Step Closer", "Crawling" and "In the End" all to chart highly on the Mainstream Rock chart; the latter crossed over to the pop chart. Their second album, Meteora (2003), continued the band's success. The band explored experimental sounds on their third album, Minutes to Midnight (2007). By the end of the decade, Linkin Park was among the most successful and popular rock acts.
The band continued to explore a wider variation of musical types on their fourth album, A Thousand Suns (2010), layering their music with more electronic sounds. The band's fifth album, Living Things (2012), combined musical elements from all of their previous records. Their sixth album, The Hunting Party (2014), returned to a heavier rock sound, and their seventh album, One More Light (2017), was their first pop-oriented record. Linkin Park went on a hiatus when longtime lead vocalist Bennington died by suicide in July 2017. In April 2020, bassist Dave Farrell revealed the band was working on new music, though they have stated they will not be touring for the foreseeable future.
Linkin Park is among the best-selling bands of the 21st century and the world's best-selling music artists, having sold over 100 million records worldwide. They have won two Grammy Awards, six American Music Awards, two Billboard Music Awards, four MTV Video Music Awards, 10 MTV Europe Music Awards and three World Music Awards. In 2003, MTV2 named Linkin Park the sixth-greatest band of the music video era and the third-best of the new millennium. Billboard ranked Linkin Park No. 19 on the Best Artists of the Decade list. In 2012, the band was voted as the greatest artist of the 2000s in a Bracket Madness poll on VH1. In 2014, the band was declared as "The Biggest Rock Band in the World Right Now" by Kerrang!.
History
1996–2000: Early years
Linkin Park was founded by three high school friends: Mike Shinoda, Rob Bourdon, and Brad Delson. The three attended Agoura High School in Agoura Hills, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. After graduating from high school, the three began to take their musical interests more seriously, recruiting Joe Hahn, Dave "Phoenix" Farrell, and Mark Wakefield to perform in their band, then called Xero. Though limited in resources, the band began recording and producing songs within Shinoda's makeshift bedroom studio in 1996, resulting in a four-track demo tape, entitled Xero. However, tensions and frustration within the band grew after they failed to land a record deal. The lack of success and stalemate in progress prompted Wakefield, at that time the band's vocalist, to leave the band in search of other projects. Farrell also left to tour with Tasty Snax, a Christian punk and ska band.
After spending a considerable time searching for Wakefield's replacement, Xero recruited Arizona vocalist Chester Bennington, who was recommended by Jeff Blue, the vice president of Zomba Music in March 1999. Bennington, formerly of a post-grunge band Grey Daze, became a standout among applicants because of the dynamic in his singing style. The band then agreed on changing their name from Xero to Hybrid Theory; the newborn vocal chemistry between Shinoda and Bennington helped revive the band, inciting them to work on new material. In 1999, the band released a self-titled extended play, which they circulated across internet chat-rooms and forums with the help of an online 'street team'.
The band still struggled to sign a record deal. They turned to Jeff Blue for additional help after facing numerous rejections from several major record labels. After failing to catch Warner Bros. Records on three previous reviews, Blue, who was now the vice president of Warner Bros. Records, helped the band sign a deal with the company as a developing artist in 1999. However, the label advised the band to change their name to avoid confusion with Hybrid. The band considered the names "Plear" and "Platinum Lotus Foundation" before deciding on "Linkin Park", a play on and homage to Santa Monica's Lincoln Park, now called Christine Emerson Reed Park. They initially wanted to use the name "Lincoln Park", however they changed it to "Linkin" to acquire the internet domain "linkinpark.com".
Bennington and Shinoda both reported that Warner Bros. Records was skeptical of Linkin Park's initial recordings. The label's A&R was not pleased with the band's hip-hop and rock-style approach. An A&R representative suggested that Bennington should demote or fire Shinoda and exclusively focus on making a rock record. Bennington supported Shinoda and refused to compromise Linkin Park's vision for the album. Farrell returned in 2000, and the band released their breakthrough album, Hybrid Theory, that same year.
2000–2002: Hybrid Theory and Reanimation
Linkin Park released Hybrid Theory on October 24, 2000. The album, which represented half a decade's worth of the band's work, was edited by Don Gilmore. Hybrid Theory was a massive commercial success; it sold more than 4.8 million copies during its debut year, earning it the status of best-selling album of 2001, while singles such as "Crawling" and "One Step Closer" established themselves as staples among alternative rock radio play lists during the year. Additionally, other singles from the album were featured in films such as Dracula 2000, Little Nicky, and Valentine. Hybrid Theory won a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance for the song "Crawling" and was nominated for two other Grammy Awards: Best New Artist and Best Rock Album. MTV awarded the band their Best Rock Video and Best Direction awards for "In the End". Through the winning of the Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance, Hybrid Theorys overall success had catapulted the band into mainstream success.
During this time, Linkin Park received many invitations to perform on many high-profile tours and concerts including Ozzfest, Family Values Tour, and KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas. The band worked with Jessica Sklar to found their official fan club and street team, "Linkin Park Underground", in November 2001. Linkin Park also formed their own tour, Projekt Revolution, which featured other notable artists such as Cypress Hill, Adema, and Snoop Dogg. Within a year's stretch, Linkin Park had performed at over 320 concerts. The experiences and performances of the precocious band were documented in their first DVD, Frat Party at the Pankake Festival, which debuted in November 2001. Now reunited with former bassist Phoenix, the band began work on a remix album, dubbed Reanimation, which would include works from Hybrid Theory and non-album tracks. Reanimation debuted on July 30, 2002, featuring the likes of Black Thought, Jonathan Davis, Aaron Lewis, and many others. Reanimation claimed the second spot on the Billboard 200, and sold nearly 270,000 copies during its debut week. Hybrid Theory is also in the RIAA's Top 100 Albums.
2002–2004: Meteora
Following the success of Hybrid Theory and Reanimation, Linkin Park spent a significant amount of time touring around the United States. The band members began to work on new material amidst their saturated schedule, spending a sliver of their free time in their tour bus' studio. The band officially announced the production of a new studio album in December 2002, revealing their new work was inspired by the rocky region of Meteora in Greece, where numerous monasteries have been built on top of the rocks. Meteora features a mixture of the band's nu metal and rap metal style with newer innovative effects, including the induction of a shakuhachi (a Japanese flute made of bamboo) and other instruments. Linkin Park's second album debuted on March 25, 2003 and instantly earned worldwide recognition, going to No. 1 in the US and UK, and No. 2 in Australia.
Meteora sold more than 800,000 copies during its first week, and it ranked as the best selling album on the Billboard charts at the time. The album's singles, including "Somewhere I Belong", "Breaking the Habit", "Faint", and "Numb", received significant radio attention. By October 2003, Meteora sold nearly three million copies. The album's success allowed Linkin Park to form another Projekt Revolution, which featured other bands and artists including Mudvayne, Blindside, and Xzibit. Additionally, Metallica invited Linkin Park to play at the Summer Sanitarium Tour 2003, which included well-known acts such as Limp Bizkit, Mudvayne and Deftones. The band released an album and DVD, titled Live in Texas, which featured some audio and video tracks from the band's performances in Texas during the tour. In early 2004, Linkin Park started a world tour titled the Meteora World Tour. Supporting bands on the tour included Hoobastank, P.O.D., Story of the Year and Pia.
Meteora earned the band multiple awards and honors. The band won the MTV awards for Best Rock Video for "Somewhere I Belong" and the Viewer's Choice Award for "Breaking the Habit". Linkin Park also received significant recognition during the 2004 Radio Music Awards, winning the Artist of the Year and Song of the Year ("Numb") awards. Although Meteora was not nearly as successful as Hybrid Theory, it was the third best selling album in the United States during 2003. The band spent the first few months of 2004 touring around the world, first with the third Projekt Revolution tour, and later several European concerts. At the same time, the band's relationship with Warner Bros. Records was deteriorating rapidly on account of several trust and financial issues. After months of feuding, the band finally negotiated a deal in December 2005.
2004–2006: Side projects
Following Meteoras success, the band worked on many side projects. Bennington appeared on DJ Lethal's "State of the Art" and other work with Dead by Sunrise, while Shinoda did work with Depeche Mode. In 2004, the band began to work with Jay-Z to produce another remix album, titled Collision Course. The album, which featured intermixed lyrics and background tracks from both artists' previous albums, debuted in November 2004. Shinoda also formed Fort Minor as a side project. With the aid of Jay-Z, Fort Minor released their debut album, The Rising Tied, to critical acclaim.
Linkin Park also participated in numerous charitable events, most notably raised money to benefit victims of Hurricane Charley in 2004 and later Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The band donated $75,000 to the Special Operations Warrior Foundation in March 2004. They also helped relief efforts for the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami victims by staging several charity concerts and setting up an additional fund called Music for Relief. Most notably, however, the band participated at Live 8, a series of charitable benefit concerts set up to raise global awareness. Alongside Jay-Z, the band performed on Live 8's stage in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to a global audience. The band would later be reunited with Jay-Z at the Grammy Award Ceremony 2006, during which they performed "Numb/Encore", en route to winning a Grammy for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration. They were joined on stage by Paul McCartney who added verses from the song "Yesterday". They would later go on to play at the 2006 Summer Sonic music festival, which was hosted by Metallica in Japan.
2006–2008: Minutes to Midnight
Linkin Park returned to the recording studios in 2006 to work on new material. To produce the album, the band chose producer Rick Rubin. Despite initially stating the album would debut sometime in 2006, the album was delayed until 2007. The band had recorded thirty to fifty songs in August 2006, when Shinoda stated the album was halfway completed. Bennington later added that the new album would stray away from their previous nu metal sound. Warner Bros. Records officially announced that the band's third studio album, titled Minutes to Midnight, would be released on May 15, 2007 in the United States. After spending fourteen months working on the album, the band members opted to further refine their album by removing five of the original seventeen tracks. The album's title, a reference to the Doomsday Clock, foreshadowed the band's new lyrical themes. Minutes to Midnight sold over 625,000 copies in its first week, making it one of the most successful debut week albums in recent years. The album also took the top spot on the Billboard Charts.
The album's first single, "What I've Done", was released on April 2, and premiered on MTV and Fuse within the same week. The single was acclaimed by listeners, becoming the top-ranked song on the Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks and Mainstream Rock Tracks charts. The song is also used in soundtrack for the 2007 action film, Transformers. Mike Shinoda was also featured on the Styles of Beyond song "Second to None", which was also included in the film. Later in the year, the band won the "Favorite Alternative Artist" in the American Music Awards. The band also saw success with the rest of the album's singles, "Bleed It Out", "Shadow of the Day", "Given Up", and "Leave Out All the Rest", which were released throughout 2007 and early 2008. The band also collaborated with Busta Rhymes on his single "We Made It", which was released on April 29.
Linkin Park embarked on a large world tour titled "Minutes to Midnight World Tour". The band promoted the album's release by forming their fourth Projekt Revolution tour in the United States which included many musical acts like My Chemical Romance, Taking Back Sunday, HIM, Placebo, and many others. They also played numerous shows in Europe, Asia, and Australia which included a performance at Live Earth Japan on July 7, 2007. and headlining Download Festival in Donington Park, England and Edgefest in Downsview Park, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The band completed touring on their fourth Projekt Revolution tour before taking up an Arena tour around the United Kingdom, visiting Nottingham, Sheffield and Manchester, before finishing on a double night at the O2 arena in London. Bennington stated that Linkin Park plans to release a follow-up album to Minutes to Midnight. However, he stated the band will first embark on a United States tour to gather inspiration for the album. Linkin Park embarked on another Projekt Revolution tour in 2008. This was the first time a Projekt Revolution tour was held in Europe with three shows in Germany and one in the United Kingdom. A Projekt Revolution tour was also held in the United States which featured Chris Cornell, The Bravery, Ashes Divide, Street Drum Corps and many others. Linkin Park finished the tour with a final show in Texas. Mike Shinoda announced a live CD/DVD titled Road to Revolution: Live at Milton Keynes, which is a live video recording from the Projekt Revolution gig at the Milton Keynes Bowl on June 29, 2008, which was officially released on November 24, 2008.
2008–2011: A Thousand Suns
In May 2009, Linkin Park announced they were working on a fourth studio album, which was planned to be released in 2010. Shinoda told IGN that the new album would be 'genre-busting,' while building off of elements in Minutes to Midnight. He also mentioned that the album would be more experimental and "hopefully more cutting-edge". Bennington also addressed the media to confirm that Rick Rubin would return to produce the new album. The band later revealed the album would be called A Thousand Suns. While working on the new album, Linkin Park worked with successful film composer Hans Zimmer to produce the score for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. The band released a single for the movie, titled "New Divide". Joe Hahn created a music video for the song, which featured clips from the film. On June 22, Linkin Park played a short set in Westwood Village after the premier of the movie. After completing work for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the band returned to the studio to finalize their album.
On April 26, the band released an app for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, a game called 8-Bit Rebellion! It featured the band as playable characters, and a new song called "Blackbirds" which was unlockable by beating the game. The song was also later released as an iTunes bonus track on A Thousand Suns.
A Thousand Suns was released on September 14. The album's first single, "The Catalyst", was released on August 2. The band promoted their new album by launching a concert tour, which started in Los Angeles on September 7. Linkin Park also relied on MySpace to promote their album, releasing two additional songs, "Waiting for the End" and "Blackout" on September 8. Furthermore, a documentary about the album's production, titled Meeting of A Thousand Suns, was available for streaming on the band's MySpace page. On August 31, 2010, it was announced that the band would perform the single live for the first time at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards on September 12, 2010. The venue of the debut live performance of the single was Griffith Observatory, an iconic location used in Hollywood movies. "Waiting for the End" was released as the second single of A Thousand Suns.
Linkin Park reached No.8 in Billboard Social 50, a chart of the most active artists on the world's leading social networking sites. In other Billboard Year-End charts, the band reached No.92 in the "Top Artists" chart, as well as A Thousand Suns reaching No.53 in the Year-End chart of the Billboard Top 200 albums and No.7 in the 2010 Year-End Rock Albums, and "The Catalyst" reaching No.40 in the Year-End Rock Songs chart.
The band was nominated for six Billboard Awards in 2011 for Top Duo or Group, Best Rock Album for A Thousand Suns, Top Rock Artist, Top Alternative Artist, Top Alternative Song for "Waiting for the End" and Top Alternative Album for A Thousand Suns, but did not win any award. The band charted in numerous Billboard Year-End charts in 2011. The band was No.39 in the Top Artists Chart, No.84 in the Billboard 200 Artists chart, No.11 in the Social 50 Chart, No.6 in the Top Rock Artists Chart, No.9 in the Rock Songs Artists Chart, No.16 in the Rock Albums Chart, No.4 in the Hard Rock Albums Chart, and No.7 in the Alternative Songs Chart.
2011–2013: Living Things and Recharged
In July 2011, Bennington told Rolling Stone that Linkin Park aims to produce a new album every eighteen months, and that he would be shocked if a new album did not come out in 2012. He later revealed in another interview in September 2011 that the band was still in the beginning phases of the next album, saying "We just kind of began. We like to keep the creative juices flowing, so we try to keep that going all the time ... we like the direction that we're going in". Later, on March 28, 2012, Shinoda confirmed that the band is filming a music video for "Burn It Down". Joe Hahn directed the video. Shinoda spoke to Co.Create about the album's art, saying that it will "blow them [the fans] away ... the average person is not going to be able to look at it and go, I understand that that's completely new, like not just the image but the way they made the image is totally new. So there's going to be that".
On April 15, 2012, Shinoda announced that Living Things would be the title of Linkin Park's fifth album. Shinoda stated that they chose the title Living Things because the album is more about people, personal interactions, and it is far more personal than their previous albums. The band promoted the album on the 2012 edition of the Honda Civic Tour, with co-headliners Incubus. The band performed "Burn It Down" at 2012 Billboard Music Awards. On May 24, the band released the music video for "Burn It Down" and debuted "Lies Greed Misery", another song from Living Things, on BBC Radio 1. "Powerless", the twelfth and closing track of the album, was featured in the closing credits of the film Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.
Living Things sold over 223,000 copies during its debut week, ranking No. 1 on the US Albums Charts. Linkin Park's single, "Castle of Glass", was nominated for 'Best Song in a Game' at the 2012 Spike Video Game Awards. The band also performed at the award ceremony on December 7, but lost the award to "Cities" by Beck. Linkin Park also played at the Soundwave music festival in Australia, where they shared the stage with Metallica, Paramore, Slayer and Sum 41.
On August 10, 2013, the band collaborated with American musician Steve Aoki to record the song "A Light That Never Comes" for Linkin Park's online puzzle-action game LP Recharge (short for Linkin Park Recharge), which was launched on Facebook and the official LP Recharge website on September 12, 2013. On the day of the game's release, Linkin Park made a post on their Facebook explaining that the song used to promote the game would be included on a new remix album, entitled Recharged, which was released on October 29, 2013 on CD, vinyl, and digital download. Similar to Reanimation, the album features remixes of ten of the songs from Living Things, with contributions from other artists, such as Ryu of Styles of Beyond, Pusha T, Datsik, KillSonik, Bun B, Money Mark, and Rick Rubin. The band also worked on the soundtrack for the film Mall, which was directed by Joe Hahn.
2013–2015: The Hunting Party
In an interview with Fuse, Shinoda confirmed that Linkin Park had begun recording their sixth studio album in May 2013. The band released the first single from their upcoming album, titled, "Guilty All the Same" on March 6, 2014 through Shazam. The single was later released on the following day by Warner Bros. Records and debut at No. 28 on the US Billboard Rock Airplay charts before peaking at No. 1 on the Mainstream Rock charts in the following weeks. Shortly after the single's release, the band revealed their sixth album would be titled The Hunting Party. The album was produced by Shinoda and Delson, who wanted to explore musical elements from Hybrid Theory and the band's earlier material. Shinoda commented the album is a "90s style of rock record". He elaborated, "It's a rock record. It's loud and it's rock, but not in the sense of what you've heard before, which is more like '90s hardcore-punk-thrash.' The album includes musical contributions from rapper Rakim, Page Hamilton of Helmet, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, and Daron Malakian of System of a Down. The Hunting Party was released on June 13, 2014, in most countries, and later released in the United States on June 17.
Linkin Park performed at Download Festival on June 14, 2014, where they played their debut album, Hybrid Theory, in its entirety. Linkin Park headlined Rock am Ring and Rock im Park in 2014, along with Metallica, Kings of Leon, and Iron Maiden. They also headlined with Iron Maiden again at the Greenfield Festival in July. On June 22, Linkin Park made an unscheduled headline appearance at the Vans Warped Tour, where they played with members of Issues, The Devil Wears Prada, A Day To Remember, Yellowcard, Breathe Carolina, Finch, and Machine Gun Kelly. In January 2015, the band embarked on a tour to promote the release of The Hunting Party, consisting of 17 concerts across the United States and Canada. The tour was canceled after only three concerts when Bennington injured his ankle. On May 9, Linkin Park performed at the first edition of Rock in Rio USA, in direct support for Metallica.
On November 9, 2014, MTV Europe named Linkin Park the "Best Rock" act of 2014 at their annual music awards ceremony. The band won the 'Best Rock Band' and 'Best Live Act' titles of 2014 on Loudwire's Music Awards. Revolver ranked The Hunting Party as the fourth best album of 2014. In an interview with AltWire on May 4, Shinoda reflected on The Hunting Party and commented on Linkin Park's future, stating; "I'm really happy with the reaction from The Hunting Party, and I think we're ready to move somewhere new on the next album, which will be coming [in 2016]".
Linkin Park collaborated with Steve Aoki on the song "Darker Than Blood" for Aoki's album Neon Future II, which was released in May 2015. The first preview of the song came during Aoki's performance on February 28, 2015 at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, Illinois. The song was debuted on Twitch on April 13 and released on April 14.
Linkin Park performed at the closing ceremony of BlizzCon 2015, Blizzard's video game convention.
2015–2017: One More Light and Bennington's death
Linkin Park began working on new material for a seventh studio album in November 2015. Chester Bennington commented on the album's direction by stating, "We've got a lot of great material that I hope challenges our fanbase as well as inspires them as much as it has us." In February 2017, Linkin Park released promotional videos on their social network accounts, which featured Shinoda and Bennington preparing new material for the album. Mike Shinoda stated the band was following a new process when producing the album. Brad Delson elaborated: "We've made so many records and we clearly know how to make a record and we definitely didn't take the easy way out this time."
The first single from the new album was revealed to be titled "Heavy" and features pop singer Kiiara, the first time the band has featured a female vocalist on an original song for a studio album. The lyrics for the song were co-written by Linkin Park with Julia Michaels and Justin Tranter. The single was released for download on February 16. As they have done in the past, Linkin Park had cryptic messages online in relation to the new album. The album cover was revealed through digital puzzles across social media; the cover features six kids playing in the ocean. The band's seventh album, One More Light, was released on May 19, 2017.
Bennington died on July 20, 2017; his death was ruled a suicide by hanging. Shinoda confirmed Bennington's death on Twitter, writing, "Shocked and heartbroken, but it's true. An official statement will come out as soon as we have one". The band had released a music video for their single "Talking to Myself" earlier that day. One day after Bennington's death, the band canceled the North American leg of their One More Light World Tour. On the morning of July 24, Linkin Park released an official statement on their website as a tribute to Bennington. On July 28, Shinoda announced that donations made to the band's Music for Relief charity would be redirected to the One More Light Fund, which had been set up in Bennington's memory. On August 4, when the band was initially scheduled to play on Good Morning America, Chris Cornell's twelve-year-old daughter Toni appeared with OneRepublic to perform "Hallelujah" as a tribute to Bennington (who was the godfather to her younger brother, Christopher) and her father. Bennington had previously performed the song at the funeral for Cornell, who had also died from a suicide by hanging two months earlier.
On August 22, Linkin Park announced plans to host a tribute concert in Los Angeles to honor Bennington. The band thanked fans for their support, stating, "The five of us are so grateful for all of your support as we heal and build the future of Linkin Park". The band later confirmed that the concert, titled Linkin Park and Friends: Celebrate Life in Honor of Chester Bennington, would take place on October 27 at the Hollywood Bowl. The event included Linkin Park's first performance following Bennington's death. The event featured multiple guests performing Linkin Park songs along with the band. The event was over three hours long and was streamed live via YouTube.
In November 2017, the band announced that a live album compiled from their final tour with Bennington, titled One More Light Live, would be released on December 15. On November 19, Linkin Park received an American Music Award for Favorite Alternative Artist and dedicated the award to Bennington.
2017–2020: Hiatus
Linkin Park remained on hiatus between Bennington's death and 2020.
During an Instagram live chat on December 17, 2017, Shinoda was asked whether Linkin Park would perform with a hologram version of Bennington in the future. He replied, "Can we not do a holographic Chester? I can't even wrap my head around the idea of a holographic Chester. I've actually heard other people outside the band suggest that, and there's absolutely no way. I cannot fuck with that."
On January 28, 2018, Shinoda replied to a tweet from a fan inquiring about his future with Linkin Park, writing "I have every intention on continuing with LP, and the guys feel the same. We have a lot of rebuilding to do, and questions to answer, so it'll take time." On March 29, however, Shinoda stated that he was uncertain of Linkin Park's future when being interviewed by Vulture. On April 17, Linkin Park was nominated for three awards at the 2018 Billboard Music Awards, but did not win any of them. The band was presented with The George and Ira Gershwin Award for Lifetime Musical Achievement at UCLA on May 18.
On February 18, 2019, Shinoda said in an interview that the band is open to the idea of continuing though what form that takes has yet to be decided. Shinoda stated "I know the other guys, they love to be onstage, they love to be in a studio, and so to not do that would be like, I don't know, almost like unhealthy." When asked about the band's future minus Bennington, Shinoda stated, "It's not my goal to look for a new singer. If it does happen, it has to happen naturally. If we find someone that is a great person and good stylistic fit, I could see trying to do some stuff with somebody. I would never want to feel like we are replacing Chester."
2020–present: Return to music
On April 28, 2020, bassist Dave Farrell revealed the band is working on new music. On August 13, the band released "She Couldn't", a track that was originally recorded in 1999, and it was included on a 20th anniversary edition of their debut album Hybrid Theory, released on October 9.
On January 8, 2021, Linkin Park released a remix of "One Step Closer" by American electronic duo 100 Gecs. The band revealed it was the first of many new remixes inspired by Reanimation to come.
On October 29, 2021, when asked about the band playing live shows again, Mike Shinoda stated that "Now is not the time [for the band’s return]. We don’t have the focus on it. We don’t have the math worked out. And I don’t mean that by financially math, I mean that like emotional and creative math.”
Philanthropy
On January 19, 2010, Linkin Park released a new song titled "Not Alone" as part of a compilation from Music for Relief called Download to Donate for Haiti in support of the Haiti Earthquake crisis. On February 10, 2010, Linkin Park released the official music video for the song on their homepage. The single itself was released on October 21, 2011.
On January 11, 2011, an updated version of Download to Donate for Haiti was launched, called Download to Donate for Haiti V2.0, with more songs to download. For the updated compilation, the band released Keaton Hashimoto's remix of "The Catalyst" from the "Linkin Park featuring YOU" contest.
Shinoda designed two T-shirts, in which the proceeds would go to Music for Relief to help the victims of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami disasters. Music for Relief released Download to Donate: Tsunami Relief Japan, another compilation of songs, in which the proceeds would go to Save the Children. The band released the song titled as "Issho Ni", meaning "we're in this together", on March 22, 2011 via Download to Donate: Tsunami Relief Japan.
In the wake of Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, Linkin Park played at Club Nokia during the "Music for Relief: Concert for the Philippines" in Los Angeles, and raised donations for victims. The show was broadcast on AXS TV on February 15. Other artists during the show included The Offspring, Bad Religion, Heart, and The Filharmonic.
Musical style and influences
Linkin Park combines elements of rock music, hip hop and electronica, and have been categorized as alternative rock, nu metal, rap rock, , , , hard rock, hip hop, rap metal, pop, and industrial rock. Despite being considered nu metal, the band never considered themselves as such.
Both Hybrid Theory and Meteora combine the alternative metal, nu metal, rap rock, rap metal, and alternative rock sound with influences and elements from hip hop, and electronica, utilizing programming and synthesizers. William Ruhlmann from AllMusic regarded it as "a Johnny-come-lately to an already overdone musical style," whereas Rolling Stone described their song "Breaking the Habit" as "risky, beautiful art".
In Minutes to Midnight the band experimented with their established sound and drew influences from a wider and more varied range of genres and styles, a process Los Angeles Times compares to a stage in U2's work. Only two songs on the album's tracklist feature rap vocals and the majority of the album can be considered alternative rock.Metacritic, Minutes To Midnight . Retrieved January 27, 2008.
The vocal interplay between Chester Bennington and Mike Shinoda plays as a major part within Linkin Park's music, with Bennington being the lead vocalist and Shinoda as the rapping vocalist. On Linkin Park's third album, Minutes to Midnight, Shinoda sings lead vocals on "In Between", "Hands Held High", and on the B-side "No Roads Left". On numerous songs from band's fourth album, A Thousand Suns, such as the album's singles ("The Catalyst", "Burning in the Skies", "Iridescent"), both Shinoda and Bennington sing. The album has been regarded as a turning point in the band's musical career, having a stronger emphasis on electronica. James Montgomery, of MTV, compared the record to Radiohead's Kid A, while Jordy Kasko of Review, Rinse, Repeat likened the album to both Kid A and Pink Floyd's landmark album The Dark Side of the Moon. Shinoda stated that he and the other band members were deeply influenced by Chuck D and Public Enemy. He elaborated: "Public Enemy were very three-dimensional with their records because although they seemed political, there was a whole lot of other stuff going on in there too. It made me think how three-dimensional I wanted our record to be without imitating them of course, and show where we were at creatively". One of the record's political elements is its samples of notable speeches by American political figures. A Thousand Suns was described as trip hop, electronic rock, ambient, alternative rock, industrial rock, experimental rock, rap rock, and progressive rock.
Their fifth album, Living Things, is also an electronic-heavy album, but includes other influences, resulting in a harder sound by comparison. The band returned to a heavier sound compared to their last three albums on The Hunting Party, which was described as an alternative metal, nu metal, hard rock, rap rock, and rap metal album. Their seventh album, One More Light, was described as pop, pop rock and electropop.
Linkin Park's influences include Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Jane's Addiction, Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Skinny Puppy, Machines of Loving Grace, Metallica, Refused, Minor Threat, Fugazi, Descendents, Misfits, Beastie Boys, Run-DMC, A Tribe Called Quest, Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock, N.W.A, Public Enemy, KRS-One, Boogie Down Productions, Led Zeppelin, Rage Against the Machine, and the Beatles.
Legacy and influence
Linkin Park has sold more than 100 million records worldwide.Linkin Park's Brad Delson talks One More Light: 'There really is a ton of guitar on this album' MusicRadar April 3, 2017. Retrieved May 9, 2017. The group's first studio album Hybrid Theory is one of the best-selling albums in the US (12 million copies shipped) and worldwide (30 million copies sold). Billboard estimates that Linkin Park earned US$5 million between May 2011 and May 2012, making them the 40th-highest-paid musical artist. 11 of the band's singles have reached the number one position on Billboard Alternative Songs chart, the second-most for any artist.
In 2003, MTV2 named Linkin Park the sixth-greatest band of the music video era and the third-best of the new millennium. Billboard ranked Linkin Park No. 19 on the Best Artists of the Decade chart. The band was recently voted as the greatest artist of the 2000s in a Bracket Madness poll on VH1. In 2014, the band was declared as the Biggest Rock Band in the World Right Now by Kerrang!.Linkin Park Are the 'Biggest Rock Band in the World Right Now' Ultimate Guitar August 28, 2014. Retrieved October 20, 2014. In 2015, Kerrang! gave "In the End" and "Final Masquerade" the top two positions on Kerrang!s Rock 100 list.
Linkin Park became the first rock band to achieve more than one billion YouTube hits.
Linkin Park also became the fifteenth most liked page on Facebook, tenth most liked artist, and most liked group followed by the Black Eyed Peas. Linkin Park's "Numb" is the third and "In the End" is the sixth "timeless song" on Spotify. The two songs making Linkin Park the only artist to have two timeless songs in top ten.
Hybrid Theory by the group is listed in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, It was also ranked at #11 on Billboard Hot 200 Albums of the Decade. In addition the album was included in Best of 2001 by Record Collector, The top 150 Albums of the Generation by Rock Sound and 50 Best Rock Albums of the 2000s by Kerrang!. The album Meteora was included in Top 200 Albums of the Decade by Billboard at No. 36. The album sold 20 million copies worldwide. The collaborative EP Collision Course with Jay-Z became the second ever EP to top the Billboard 200, going on to sell over 300,000 copies in its first week after Alice in Chains' Jar of Flies in 1994. The album Minutes to Midnight, in the United States, had the biggest first week sales of 2007 at the time, with 625,000 albums sold. In Canada, the album sold over 50,000 copies in its first week and debuted at number one on the Canadian Albums Chart. Worldwide, the album shipped over 3.3 million copies in its first four weeks of release.
The New York Times Jon Caramanica commented Linkin Park "brought the collision of hard rock and hip-hop to its commercial and aesthetic peak" at the beginning of the 2000s. Several rock and non-rock artists have cited Linkin Park as an influence, including Proyecto Eskhata, Of Mice & Men, One OK Rock, Bishop Nehru, Misono, From Ashes to New, Bring Me the Horizon, Coldrain, Red, Girl on Fire, Manafest, Silentó, 3OH!3, The Prom Kings, AJ Tracey, Kiiara, The Chainsmokers, Kevin Rudolf, Blackbear, Amber Liu, Billie Eilish, Tokio Hotel, The Weeknd, Stormzy and Imagine Dragons.
On August 20, 2020, their 20th anniversary, Linkin Park collaborated with virtual reality rhythm game Beat Saber to release 11 maps based on their songs.
Band membersCurrent members Mike Shinoda – vocals, rapping, rhythm guitar, keyboard, samples ,
Brad Delson – lead guitar , backing vocals
Dave Farrell – bass , backing vocals
Joe Hahn – turntables, samples, programming , backing vocals
Rob Bourdon – drums, percussion , occasional backing vocals Former members Mark Wakefield – lead vocals
Chester Bennington – lead vocals , occasional rhythm guitar Session and touring musicians Kyle Christner – bass
Scott Koziol – bass
Ian Hornbeck – bass TimelineDiscography
Hybrid Theory (2000)
Meteora (2003)
Minutes to Midnight (2007)
A Thousand Suns (2010)
Living Things (2012)
The Hunting Party (2014)
One More Light (2017)
Awards and nominations
Concert toursHeadlining Hybrid Theory World Tour (2001)
Projekt Revolution (2002–2008, 2011)
LP Underground Tour (2003)
Meteora World Tour (2004)
Minutes to Midnight World Tour (2007–08)
International Tour (2009)
A Thousand Suns World Tour (2010–11)
Living Things World Tour (2012–13)
The Hunting Party Tour (2014–15)
One More Light Tour (2017)
Linkin Park and Friends: Celebrate Life in Honor of Chester Bennington (2017)Co-headlining 11th Annual Honda Civic Tour (2012)
Carnivores Tour (2014)
See also
List of best-selling music artists
List of best-selling albums
List of best-selling remix albums
List of best-selling singles
List of best-selling albums in the United States
List of songs recorded by Linkin Park
List of artists who reached number one on the U.S. alternative rock chart
ReferencesWorks cited'''
Saulmon, Greg. Linkin Park. Contemporary Musicians and Their Music. New York: Rosen Pub. Group, 2007. .
Baltin, Steve. From The Inside: Linkin Park's Meteora. California: Bradson Press, 2004. .
Blue, Jeff. One Step Closer: From Xero to #1: Becoming Linkin Park''. Tennessee: Permuted Press, 2020. .
External links
musicforrelief.org
Alternative rock groups from California
American alternative metal musical groups
American pop rock music groups
American electronic rock musical groups
Nu metal musical groups from California
Rap rock groups
Rap metal musical groups
1996 establishments in California
Musical groups established in 1996
People from Agoura Hills, California
Warner Records artists
Echo (music award) winners
Grammy Award winners for rap music
Kerrang! Awards winners
MTV Europe Music Award winners
World Music Awards winners
YouTube channels launched in 2006
Musicians from Los Angeles County, California
Fusion music musicians and groups |
18650 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipper%20%28cricket%29 | Flipper (cricket) | The flipper is a particular bowling delivery used in cricket, generally by a leg spin bowler. In essence it is a back spin ball. Squeezed out of the front of the hand with the thumb and first and second fingers, it keeps deceptively low after pitching and can accordingly be very difficult to play. The flipper is comparable to a riseball in fast-pitch softball.
With backspin on the ball the Magnus effect results in air travelling over the top of the ball quickly and cleanly while air travelling under the ball is turbulent. The lift so produced causes the ball to drop slower and it travels further than a normal delivery. The slower descent also results in the ball bouncing lower.
The flipper is bowled on the opposite side from a slider, much in the same way that the top-spinner is bowled. On release, the bowler 'pinches' or clicks the thumb and forefinger, causing the ball to come out underneath the hand. There must be sufficient tension in the wrist and fingers to impart sufficient backspin. In doing so the flipper will float towards the batsman and land on a fuller length than he anticipated, often leaving him caught on the back foot when he wrongly assumes it to be a pullable or a cuttable ball. The back spin or will cause the ball to proceed with very little bounce, though this may be harder to achieve on softer wickets. A series of normal leg spinners or topspinners, with their dropping looping flight, will have the batsman used to the ball pitching on a shorter length. The batsman may wrongly assume that the flipper will drop and loop like a normal overspinning delivery, resulting in the ball pitching under the bat and going on either to hit the stumps or result in leg before wicket.
Much of the effectiveness of the flipper is attributable to the "pop", that is, the extra pace and change in trajectory that is imparted to the ball when it is squeezed out of the bowler's hand.
Occasionally, the term 'flipper' has been used to describe other types of deliveries. The Australian leg spinner Bob Holland employed a back spinning ball that he simply pushed backwards with the heel of his palm. Sometimes this form of front-hand flipper is called a "zooter". It is easier to bowl but not as effective as the amount of backspin is much less.
Bowlers of the flipper
It was reputedly invented by the Australian leg-spinner Clarrie Grimmett. Grimmett became so enamoured with the delivery that at times he bowled it almost as frequently as his stock leg break. The great Don Bradman once remarked to Grimmett that he must have forgotten how to bowl a leg break, as he bowled so many flippers. Bradman was bowled shortly thereafter at a memorial match by Grimmett who produced a perfectly pitched stock ball that turned just enough to remove Bradman's off bail. "There y'are Don, I told you I could bowl a leg break" was Grimmett's alleged response.
The flipper was the signature delivery of Anil Kumble of India and the Australian leg-spinner Shane Warne in his earlier years, until injury and later shoulder surgery restricted his ability to bowl flippers accurately. Like the googly, it may become more difficult to bowl as a bowler ages due to the flexibility and suppleness it demands from the bowler's wrist.
It is difficult to disguise the flipper entirely when bowling, as the hand action is distinctly different from a leg break. When Clarrie Grimmett first began bowling the delivery, batsmen would listen for the telltale clicking sound of his fingers; to compensate, Grimmett would often click the fingers of his non-bowling hand when not bowling the flipper to confuse the batsman.
Abdul Qadir of Pakistan achieved great success with the flipper making it one of his signature deliveries, along with him Shane Warne was also arguably the leading exponent of the flipper in more recent times. Anil Kumble of India used the flipper well to his advantage. Brad Hogg of Australia has also used the flipper with great success in limited overs cricket.
See also
Cricket terminology
Leg spin
Googly
Carrom
Doosra
Wrist spin
Top Spin
References
External links
Flipper pictured and described
Bowling (cricket)
Cricket terminology |
18653 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake%20Nicaragua | Lake Nicaragua | Lake Nicaragua or Cocibolca or Granada (, , or ) is a freshwater lake in Nicaragua. Of tectonic origin and with an area of , it is the largest lake in Central America, the 19th largest lake in the world (by area) and the tenth largest in the Americas, slightly smaller than Lake Titicaca. With an elevation of above sea level, the lake reaches a depth of . It is intermittently joined by the Tipitapa River to Lake Managua.
The lake drains to the Caribbean Sea via the San Juan River, historically making the lakeside city of Granada an Atlantic port, although Granada (as well as the entire lake) is closer to the Pacific Ocean geographically. The Pacific is near enough to be seen from the mountains of Ometepe (an island in the lake). The lake has a history of Caribbean pirates who assaulted Granada on three occasions. Before construction of the Panama Canal, a stagecoach line owned by Cornelius Vanderbilt's Accessory Transit Company connected the lake with the Pacific across the low hills of the narrow Isthmus of Rivas. Plans were made to take advantage of this route to build an interoceanic canal, the Nicaragua Canal, but the Panama Canal was built instead. In order to quell competition with the Panama Canal, the U.S. secured all rights to a canal along this route in the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty of 1916. However, since this treaty was mutually rescinded by the United States and Nicaragua in 1970, the idea of another canal in Nicaragua still periodically resurfaced, such as the Ecocanal proposal. In 2014, the government of Nicaragua offered a 50-year concession to the Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Company (HKND) to build a canal across Nicaragua at a cost of US$40 billion, with construction beginning in December 2014 and completing in 2019. Protests against the ecological and social effects of the canal as well as questions about financing have led to doubts about the project.
Lake ecology
Lake Nicaragua, despite being a freshwater lake, has sawfish, tarpon, and sharks. Initially, scientists thought the sharks in the lake were an endemic species, the Lake Nicaragua shark (Carcharhinus nicaraguensis). In 1961, following comparisons of specimens, it was synonymized with the widespread bull shark (C. leucas), a species also known for entering freshwater elsewhere around the world. It had been presumed that the sharks were trapped within the lake, but this was found to be incorrect in the late 1960s, when it was discovered that they were able to jump along the rapids of the San Juan River — which connects Lake Nicaragua with the Caribbean Sea — almost like salmon. As evidence of these movements, bull sharks tagged inside the lake have later been caught in the open ocean (and vice versa), with some taking as little as 7–11 days to complete the journey. Numerous other species of fish live in the lake, including at least 16 cichlids that are endemic to the general region. None of these are strictly endemic to Lake Nicaragua, although Amphilophus labiatus is native only to Lake Nicaragua and Lake Managua. A non-native cichlid, a tilapia, is used widely in aquaculture within the lake. Owing to the large amount of waste they produce, and the risk of introducing diseases to which the native fish species have no resistance, they are potentially a serious threat to the lake's ecosystem.
The nation's largest source of freshwater, Nicaraguans call it or (literally "Sweet Sea"; in Spanish, "freshwater" is ). The lake has sizeable waves driven by the easterly winds blowing west to the Pacific Ocean. The lake holds Ometepe and Zapatera, which are both volcanic islands, as well as the archipelago of the Solentiname Islands. The lake has a reputation for periodically powerful storms.
In the past 37 years, considerable concern has been expressed about the ecological condition of Lake Nicaragua. In 1981 the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (MARENA) conducted an environmental assessment study and found that half of the water sources sampled were seriously polluted by sewage. It was found that 32 tons (70,000 pounds) of raw sewage were being released into Lake Nicaragua daily. Industry located along the lake's shore had been dumping effluent for an extended period of time. Pennwalt Chemical Corporation was found to be the worst polluter. Nicaragua's economic situation has hampered the building of treatment facilities nationwide (see: Water supply and sanitation in Nicaragua).
The country's worst drought in 32 years took its toll on the lake in 2014; the Nicaraguan government recommended citizens to grow and eat iguanas over chickens to reduce water consumption. Also, plans for the Nicaragua Canal through the lake could lead to saltwater and other contamination during construction and operation of the canal.
See also
Piracy on Lake Nicaragua
Zapatera Archipelago
References
External links
JPL NASA: Perspective View with Landsat Overlay, Lakes Managua and Nicaragua
Nicaragua
Rivas Department
Granada Department
Río San Juan Department |
18657 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour%20law | Labour law | Labour laws (also known as labor laws or employment laws) are those that mediate the relationship between workers, employing entities, trade unions and the government. Collective labour law relates to the tripartite relationship between employee, employer and union. Individual labour law concerns employees' rights at work also through the contract for work. are social norms (in some cases also technical standards) for the minimum socially acceptable conditions under which employees or contractors are allowed to work. Government agencies (such as the former US Employment Standards Administration) enforce labour law (legislature, regulatory, or judicial).
History
Following the unification of the city-states in Assyria and Sumer by Sargon of Akkad into a single empire ruled from his home city circa 2334 BC, common Mesopotamian standards for length, area, volume, weight, and time used by artisan guilds in each city was promulgated by Naram-Sin of Akkad (c. 2254–2218 BC), Sargon's grandson, including for shekels. Code of Hammurabi Law 234 (c. 1755–1750 BC) stipulated a 2-shekel prevailing wage for each 60-gur (300-bushel) vessel constructed in an employment contract between a shipbuilder and a ship-owner. Law 275 stipulated a ferry rate of 3-gerah per day on a charterparty between a ship charterer and a shipmaster. Law 276 stipulated a 2-gerah per day freight rate on a contract of affreightment between a charterer and shipmaster, while Law 277 stipulated a -shekel per day freight rate for a 60-gur vessel. In 1816, an archeological excavation in Minya, Egypt (under an Eyalet of the Ottoman Empire) produced a Nerva–Antonine dynasty-era tablet from the ruins of the Temple of Antinous in Antinoöpolis, Aegyptus that prescribed the rules and membership dues of a burial society collegium established in Lanuvium, Italia in approximately 133 AD during the reign of Hadrian (117–138) of the Roman Empire.
A collegium was any association in ancient Rome that acted as a legal entity. Following the passage of the Lex Julia during the reign of Julius Caesar as Consul and Dictator of the Roman Republic (49–44 BC), and their reaffirmation during the reign of Caesar Augustus as Princeps senatus and Imperator of the Roman Army (27 BC–14 AD), collegia required the approval of the Roman Senate or the Emperor in order to be authorized as legal bodies. Ruins at Lambaesis date the formation of burial societies among Roman Army soldiers and Roman Navy mariners to the reign of Septimius Severus (193–211) in 198 AD. In September 2011, archeological investigations done at the site of the artificial harbour Portus in Rome revealed inscriptions in a shipyard constructed during the reign of Trajan (98–117) indicating the existence of a shipbuilders guild. Rome's La Ostia port was home to a guildhall for a corpus naviculariorum, a collegium of merchant mariners. Collegium also included fraternities of Roman priests overseeing ritual sacrifices, practicing augury, keeping scriptures, arranging festivals, and maintaining specific religious cults.
Labour law arose in parallel with the Industrial Revolution as the relationship between worker and employer changed from small-scale production studios to large-scale factories. Workers sought better conditions and the right to join a labour union, while employers sought a more predictable, flexible and less costly workforce. The state of labour law at any one time is therefore both the product of and a component of struggles between various social forces.
As England was the first country to industrialize, it was also the first to face the often appalling consequences of the industrial revolution in a less regulated economic framework. Over the course of the late 18th and early to the mid-19th century the foundation for modern labour law was slowly laid, as some of the more egregious aspects of working conditions were steadily ameliorated through legislation. This was largely achieved through the concerted pressure from social reformers, notably Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, and others.
Child labour
A serious outbreak of fever in 1784 in cotton mills near Manchester drew widespread public opinion against the use of children in dangerous conditions. A local inquiry, presided over by Dr Thomas Percival, was instituted by the justices of the peace for Lancashire, and the resulting report recommended the limitation of children's working hours. In 1802, the first major piece of labour legislation was passed − the Health and Morals of Apprentices Act. This was the first, albeit modest, step towards the protection of labour. The act limited working hours to twelve a day and abolished night work. It required the provision of a basic level of education for all apprentices, as well as adequate sleeping accommodation and clothing.
The rapid industrialisation of manufacturing at the turn of the 19th century led to a rapid increase in child employment, and public opinion was steadily made aware of the terrible conditions these children were forced to endure. The Cotton Mills and Factories Act 1819 was the outcome of the efforts of the industrialist Robert Owen and prohibited child labour under nine years of age and limited the working hours to twelve. A great milestone in labour law was reached with the Factories Act 1833, which limited the employment of children under eighteen years of age, prohibited all night work and, crucially, provided for inspectors to enforce the law. Pivotal in the campaigning for and the securing of this legislation were Michael Sadler and the Earl of Shaftesbury. This act was an important step forward, in that it mandated skilled inspection of workplaces and rigorous enforcement of the law by an independent governmental body.
A lengthy campaign to limit the working day to ten hours was led by Shaftesbury, and included support from the Anglican Church. Many committees were formed in support of the cause and some previously established groups lent their support as well. The campaign finally led to the passage of the Factory Act 1847, which restricted the working hours of women and children in British factories to effectively 10 hours per day.
Working conditions
These early efforts were principally aimed at limiting child labour. From the mid-19th century, attention was first paid to the plight of working conditions for the workforce in general. In 1850, systematic reporting of fatal accidents was made compulsory, and basic safeguards for health, life and limb in the mines were put in place from 1855. Further regulations, relating to ventilation, fencing of disused shafts, signalling standards, and proper gauges and valves for steam-boilers and related machinery were also set down.
A series of further Acts, in 1860 and 1872 extended the legal provisions and strengthened safety provisions. The steady development of the coal industry, an increasing association among miners, and increased scientific knowledge paved the way for the Coal Mines Act of 1872, which extended the legislation to similar industries. The same Act included the first comprehensive code of regulation to govern legal safeguards for health, life and limb. The presence of more certified and competent management and increased levels of inspection were also provided for.
By the end of the century, a comprehensive set of regulations was in place in England that affected all industries. A similar system (with certain national differences) was implemented in other industrializing countries in the latter part of the 19th century and the early 20th century..
Individual labour law
Employment terms
The basic feature of labour law in almost every country is that the rights and obligations of the worker and the employer are mediated through a contract of employment between the two. This has been the case since the collapse of feudalism. Many contract terms and conditions are covered by legislation or common law. In the US for example, the majority of state laws allow for employment to be "at-will", meaning the employer can terminate an employee from a position for any reason so long as the reason is not explicitly prohibited, and, conversely, an employee may quit at any time, for any reason (or for no reason), and is not required to give notice.
A major issue for any business is to understand the relationship between the worker and the master. There are two types of workers, independent contractors and employees. They are differentiated based on the level of control the master has on them. Workers provided tools and resources, closely supervised, paid regularly, etc., are considered employees of the company. Employees must act in the best interest of the employer.
One example of employment terms in many countries is the duty to provide written particulars of employment with the essentialia negotii (Latin for "essential terms") to an employee. This aims to allow the employee to know concretely what to expect and what is expected. It covers items including compensation, holiday and illness rights, notice in the event of dismissal and job description.
The contract is subject to various legal provisions. An employer may not legally offer a contract that pays the worker less than a minimum wage. An employee may not agree to a contract that allows an employer to dismiss them for illegal reasons.
Intellectual property is the vital asset of the business, employees add value to the company by creating Intellectual Property. As per Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), Intellectual Property is personal property. Intellectual property is used as competitive advantage by big companies to protect themselves from rivalry. Given the conditions, if the worker is in the agent-principal relationship, he is the employee of the company, and if the employee's invention is in the scope of employment i.e. if the employee creates a new product or process to increase the productivity and create organizations' wealth by utilizing the resources of the company, then the Intellectual property solely belongs to the company. New business products or processes are protected under Patents.
There are differing opinions on what constitutes a patentable invention. One area of disagreement is with respect to software inventions, but there have been court cases that have established some precedents. For example, in the case Diamond v. Diehr the United States Supreme Court decided that Diehr is patent- eligible because they improved the existing technological process, not because they were implemented on a computer.
Minimum wage
Many jurisdictions define the minimum amount that a worker can be paid per hour. Algeria, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Greece, Hungary, India, Ireland, Japan, South Korea, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Paraguay, Portugal, Poland, Romania, Spain, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, the United States, Vietnam, Germany (in 2015) and others have laws of this kind. The minimum wage is set usually higher than the lowest wage as determined by the forces of supply and demand in a free market and therefore acts as a price floor. Each country sets its own minimum wage laws and regulations, and while a majority of industrialized countries has a minimum wage, many developing countries do not.
Minimum wages are regulated and stipulated in some countries that lack explicit laws. In Sweden minimum wages are negotiated between the labour market parties (unions and employer organizations) through collective agreements that also cover non-union workers at workplaces with collective agreements. At workplaces without collective agreements there exist no minimum wages. Non-organized employers can sign substitute agreements directly with trade unions but far from all do. The Swedish case illustrates that in countries without statutory regulation part of the labour market may not have regulated minimum wages, as self-regulation only applies to workplaces and employees covered by collective agreements (in Sweden about 90 per cent of employees).
National minimum wage laws were first introduced in the United States in 1938, Brazil in 1940 India in 1948, France in 1950 and in the United Kingdom in 1998. In the European Union, 18 out of 28 member states have national minimum wages as of 2011.
Living wage
The living wage is higher than the minimum wage and is designed that a full-time worker would be able to support themselves and a small family at that wage.
Hours
The maximum number of hours worked per day or other time intervals are set by law in many countries. Such laws also control whether workers who work longer hours must be paid additional compensation.
Before the Industrial Revolution, the workday varied between 11 and 14 hours. With the growth of industrialism and the introduction of machinery, longer hours became far more common, reaching as high as 16 hours per day.
The eight-hour movement led to the first law on the length of a working day, passed in 1833 in England. It limited miners to 12 hours and children to 8 hours. The 10-hour day was established in 1848, and shorter hours with the same pay were gradually accepted thereafter. The 1802 Factory Act was the first labour law in the UK.
Germany was the next European country to pass labour laws; Chancellor Otto von Bismarck's main goal was to undermine the Social Democratic Party of Germany. In 1878, Bismarck instituted a variety of anti-socialist measures, but despite this, socialists continued gaining seats in the Reichstag. To appease the working class, he enacted a variety of paternalistic social reforms, which became the first type of social security. In 1883 the Health Insurance Act was passed, which entitled workers to health insurance; the worker paid two-thirds and the employer one-third of the premiums. Accident insurance was provided in 1884, while old-age pensions and disability insurance followed in 1889. Other laws restricted the employment of women and children. These efforts, however, were not entirely successful; the working class largely remained unreconciled with Bismarck's conservative government.
In France, the first labour law was voted in 1841. It limited under-age miners' hours. In the Third Republic labour law was first effectively enforced, in particular after Waldeck-Rousseau 1884 law legalising trade unions. With the Matignon Accords, the Popular Front (1936–38) enacted the laws mandating 12 days each year of paid vacations for workers and the law limiting the standard workweek to 40 hours.
Health and safety
Other labour laws involve safety concerning workers. The earliest English factory law was passed in 1802 and dealt with the safety and health of child labourers in textile mills.
Discrimination
Such laws prohibited discrimination against employees as morally unacceptable and illegal, in particular racial discrimination or gender discrimination.
Dismissal
Convention no. 158 of the International Labour Organization states that an employee "can't be fired without any legitimate motive" and "before offering him the possibility to defend himself". Thus, on April 28, 2006, after the unofficial repeal of the French First Employment Contract, the Longjumeau (Essonne) conseil des prud'hommes (labour law court) judged the New Employment Contract contrary to international law and therefore "illegitimate" and "without any juridical value". The court considered that the two-years period of "fire at will" (without any legal motive) was "unreasonable", and contrary to convention.
Child labour
Child labour was not seen as a problem throughout most of history, only disputed with the beginning of universal schooling and the concepts of labourers' and children's rights. Use of child labour was commonplace, often in factories. In England and Scotland in 1788, about two-thirds of persons working in water-powered textile factories were children. Child labour can be factory work, mining or quarrying, agriculture, helping in the parents' business, operating a small business (such as selling food), or doing odd jobs. Children work as guides for tourists, sometimes combined with bringing in business for shops and restaurants (where they may also work). Other children do jobs such as assembling boxes or polishing shoes. However, rather than in factories and sweatshops, most child labour in the twenty-first century occurs in the informal sector, "selling on the street, at work in agriculture or hidden away in houses — far from the reach of official inspectors and from media scrutiny."
Collective labour law
Collective labour law concerns the relationship between employer, employee and trade unions. Trade unions (also "labour unions" in the US) are organizations which generally aim to promote the interests of their members. This law regulates the wages, benefits, and duties of the employees, and the dispute management between the company and the trade union. Such matters are often described in a collective labour agreement (CLA).
Trade unions
Trade unions are organized groups of workers who engage in collective bargaining with employers. Some countries require unions and/or employers to follow particular procedures in pursuit of their goals. For example, some countries require that unions poll the membership to approve a strike or to approve using members' dues for political projects. Laws may govern the circumstances and procedures under which unions are formed. They may guarantee the right to join a union (banning employer discrimination), or remain silent in this respect. Some legal codes allow unions to obligate their members, such as the requirement to comply with a majority decision in a strike vote. Some restrict this, such as "right to work" legislation in parts of the United States.
In the different organization in the different countries trade union discuses with the employee on behalf of employer. At that time trade union discussed or talk with the manpower of the organization. At that time trade union perform his roles like a bridge between the employee and employer.
Workplace participation
A legally binding right for workers as a group to participate in workplace management is acknowledged in some form in most developed countries. In a majority of EU member states (for example, Germany, Sweden, and France), the workforce has a right to elect directors on the board of large corporations. This is usually called "codetermination" and currently most countries allow for the election of one-third of the board, though the workforce can have the right to elect anywhere from a single director, to just under a half in Germany.
However, German company law uses a split board system, in which a "supervisory board" appoints an "executive board". Under the Mitbestimmunggesetz 1976, shareholders and employees elect the supervisory board in equal numbers, but the head of the supervisory board with a casting vote is a shareholder representative. The first statutes to introduce board-level codetermination were in Britain, however, most of these measures, except in universities, were removed in 1948 and 1979. The oldest surviving statute is found in the United States, in the Massachusetts Laws on manufacturing corporations, introduced in 1919, however, this was always voluntary.
In the United Kingdom, similar proposals were drawn up, and a command paper produced named the Bullock Report (Industrial Democracy) was released in 1977 by the James Callaghan Labour Party government. Unions would have directly elected half of the board. An "independent" element would also be added. However, the proposal was not enacted. The European Commission offered proposals for worker participation in the "fifth company law directive", which was also not implemented.
In Sweden, participation is regulated through the "Law on board representation". The law covers all private companies with 25 or more employees. In these companies, workers (usually through unions) have a right to appoint two board members and two substitutes. If the company has more than 1,000 employees, this rises to three members and three substitutes. It is common practice to allocate them among the major union coalitions.
Information and consultation
Workplace statutes in many countries require that employers consult their workers on various issues.
Collective bargaining
Collective action
Strike action is the worker tactic most associated with industrial disputes. In most countries, strikes are legal under a circumscribed set of conditions. Among them may be that:
The strike is decided on by a prescribed democratic process (wildcat strikes are illegal).
Sympathy strikes, against a company by which workers are not directly employed, may be prohibited.
General strikes may be forbidden for example, among public safety workers, to maintain public order.
A boycott is a refusal to buy, sell, or otherwise trade with an individual or business. Other tactics include go-slow, sabotage, work-to-rule, sit-in or en-masse not reporting to work. Some labour law explicitly bans such activity, none explicitly allows it.
Picketing is often used by workers during strikes. They may congregate near the business they are striking against to make their presence felt, increase worker participation and dissuade (or prevent) strike breakers from entering the workplace. In many countries, this activity is restricted by law, by more general law restricting demonstrations, or by injunctions on particular pickets. For example, labour law may restrict secondary picketing (picketing a business connected with the company not directly with the dispute, such as a supplier), or flying pickets (mobile strikers who travel to join a picket). Laws may prohibit obstructing others from conducting lawful business; outlaw obstructive pickets allow court orders to restrict picketing locations or behaving in particular ways (shouting abuse, for example).
International labour law
The labour movement has long been concerned that economic globalization would weaken worker bargaining power, as their employers could hire workers abroad to avoid domestic labour standards. Karl Marx said:
The International Labour Organization and the World Trade Organization have been a primary focus among international bodies for regulating labour markets. Conflicts arise when people work in more than one country. EU law has a growing body of workplace rules.
International Labour Organization
Following World War I, the Treaty of Versailles contained the first constitution of a new International Labour Organization (ILO) founded on the principle that "labour is not a commodity", and for the reason that "peace can be established only if it is based upon social justice". ILO's primary role has been to coordinate international labour law by issuing Conventions. ILO members can voluntarily adopt and ratify the Conventions. For instance, the first Hours of Work (Industry) Convention, 1919 required a maximum of a 48-hour week, and has been ratified by 52 out of 185 member states. The UK ultimately refused to ratify the Convention, as did many current EU members, although the Working Time Directive adopts its principles, subject to individual opt-out. ILO's constitution comes from the 1944 Declaration of Philadelphia and under the 1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work classified eight conventions as core.
These require freedom to join a union, bargain collectively and take action (Conventions No. 87 and 98), abolition of forced labour (29 and 105), abolition of labour by children before the end of compulsory school (138 and 182), and no discrimination at work (No. 100 and 111). Member compliance with the core Conventions is obligatory, even if the country has not ratified the Convention in question. To ensure compliance, the ILO is limited to gathering evidence and reporting on member states' progress, relying on publicity to create pressure to reform. Global reports on core standards are produced yearly, while individual reports on countries who have ratified other Conventions are compiled on a bi-annual or less frequent basis.
Because the ILO's enforcement mechanisms are weak, incorporating labour standards in the World Trade Organization's (WTO) operation has been proposed. WTO oversees, primarily, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade treaty aimed at reducing customs, tariffs and other barriers to import and export of goods, services and capital between its 157 member countries. Unlike for the ILO, contravening WTO rules as recognized by the dispute settlement procedures opens a country to retaliation through trade sanctions. This could include reinstatement of targeted tariffs against the offender.
Proponents have called for a "social clause" to be inserted into the GATT agreements, for example, by amending Article XX, which provides an exception that allows imposition of sanctions for breaches of human rights. An explicit reference to core labour standards could allow comparable action where a WTO member state breaches ILO standards. Opponents argue that such an approach could undermine labour rights, because industries, and therefore workforces could be harmed with no guarantee of reform. Furthermore, it was argued in the 1996 Singapore Ministerial Declaration 1996 that "the comparative advantage of countries, particularly low-age developing countries, must in no way be put into question." Some countries want to take advantage of low wages and fewer rules as a comparative advantage to boost their economies. Another contested point is whether business moves production from high wage to low wage countries, given potential differences in worker productivity. Since GATT, most trade agreements have been bilateral. Some of these protect core labour standards. Moreover, in domestic tariff regulations, some countries give preference to countries that respect core labour rights, for example under the EC Tariff Preference Regulation, articles 7 and 8.
Work in multiple countries
Conflicts of laws (or private international law) issues arise where workers work in multiple jurisdictions. If a US worker performs part of her job in Brazil, China and Denmark (a "peripatetic" worker) an employer may seek to characterize the employment contract as governed by the law of the country where labour rights are least favourable to the worker, or seek to argue that the most favourable system of labour rights does not apply. For example, in a UK labour law case, Ravat v Halliburton Manufacturing and Services Ltd Ravat was from the UK but was employed in Libya by a German company that was part of Halliburton. He was dismissed by a supervisor based in Egypt. He was told he would be hired under UK law terms and conditions, and this was arranged by a staffing department in Aberdeen. Under the UK Employment Rights Act 1996 he would have a right to claim unfair dismissal, but the Act left open the question of the statute's territorial scope. The UK Supreme Court held that the principle would be that an expatriate worker, would be subject to UK rules if the worker could show a "close connection" to the UK, which was found in Rabat's case.
This fits within the general framework in the EU. Under EU Rome I Regulation article 8, workers have employment rights of the country where they habitually work. They may have a claim in another country if they can establish a close connection to it. The Regulation emphasises that the rules should be applied with the purpose of protecting the worker.
It is also necessary that a court has jurisdiction to hear a claim. Under the Brussels I Regulation article 19, this requires the worker habitually works in the place where the claim is brought or is engaged there.
EU law
The European Union has extensive labour laws that officially exclude (according to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union) matters around direct wage regulation (e.g. setting a minimum wage), the fairness of dismissals and collective bargaining. A series of Directives regulate almost all other issues, for instance the Working Time Directive guarantees 28 days of paid holiday, the Equality Framework Directive prohibits all forms of discrimination and the Collective Redundancies Directive requires that proper notice is given and consultation takes place on decisions about economic dismissals.
However, the European Court of Justice has recently extended the Treaties provisions via case law. Trade unions have sought to organize across borders in the same way that multinational corporations have organized production globally. Unions have sought to take collective action and strikes internationally. However, this coordination was challenged in the European Union in two controversial decisions. In Laval Ltd v Swedish Builders Union a group of Latvian workers were sent to a construction site in Sweden. The local union took industrial action to make Laval Ltd sign up to the local collective bargaining agreement. Under the Posted Workers Directive, article 3 lays down minimum standards for foreign workers so that workers receive at least the minimum rights that they would have in their home country in case their place of work has lower minimum rights. Article 3(7) says that this "shall not prevent application of terms and conditions of employment which are more favourable to workers". Most people thought this meant that more favourable conditions could be given than the minimum (e.g., in Latvian law) by the host state's legislation or a collective agreement. However the European Court of Justice (ECJ) said that only the local state could raise standards beyond its minimum for foreign workers. Any attempt by the host state, or a collective agreement (unless the collective agreement is declared universal under article 3(8)) would infringe the business' freedom under TFEU article 56. This decision was implicitly reversed by the European Union legislature in the Rome I Regulation, which makes clear in recital 34 that the host state may allow more favourable standards. However, in The Rosella, the ECJ held that a blockade by the International Transport Workers Federation against a business that was using an Estonian flag of convenience (i.e., saying it was operating under Estonian law to avoid labour standards of Finland) infringed the business' right of free establishment under TFEU article 49. The ECJ said that it recognized the workers' "right to strike" in accordance with ILO Convention 87, but said that its use must be proportionately to the right of the business' establishment.
National labour laws
Australia
The Fair Work Act of 2009 provides the regulations governing Australian workplaces and employers. Australia has a minimum wage and workplace conditions overseen by the Fair Work Commission.
Canada
In Canadian law, "labour law" refers to matters connected with unionized workplaces, while "employment law" deals with non-unionized employees.
In 2017, Premier Brad Wall announced that Saskatchewan's government is to cut 3.5 per cent from its workers and officers' wages in 2018. This salary cut includes MLA ministers and the Premier's office staff along with all people employed by the government. Unpaid days off will also be implemented as well as limiting overtime to assist the wage cut.
China
In the People's Republic of China the basic labour laws are the Labour Law of People's Republic of China (promulgated on 5 July 1994) and the Labour Contract Law of the People's Republic of China (adopted at the 28th Session of the Standing Committee of the 10th National People's Congress on June 29, 2007, effective from January 1, 2008). The administrative regulations enacted by the State Council, the ministerial rules and the judicial explanations of the Supreme People's Court stipulate detailed rules concerning various aspects of employment. The government-controlled All China Federation of Trade Unions is the sole legal labour union. Strikes are formally legal, but in practice are discouraged.
France
In France, the first labour laws were Waldeck Rousseau's laws passed in 1884. Between 1936 and 1938 the Popular Front enacted a law mandating 12 days (2 weeks) each year of paid vacation for workers, and a law limited the work week to 40 hours, excluding overtime. The Grenelle accords negotiated on May 25 and 26th in the middle of the May 1968 crisis, reduced the working week to 44 hours and created trade union sections in each enterprise. The minimum wage was increased by 25%. In 2000, Lionel Jospin's government enacted the 35-hour workweek, reduced from 39 hours. Five years later, conservative prime minister Dominique de Villepin enacted the New Employment Contract (CNE). Addressing the demands of employers asking for more flexibility in French labour laws, the CNE sparked criticism from trade unions and opponents claiming it favoured contingent work. In 2006, he then attempted to pass the First Employment Contract (CPE) through a vote by emergency procedure, but that was met by students and unions' protests. President Jacques Chirac finally had no choice but to repeal it.
India
Over fifty national and many more state-level laws govern work in India. So for instance, a permanent worker can be terminated only for proven misconduct or habitual absence. In the Uttam Nakate case, the Bombay High Court held that dismissing an employee for repeated sleeping on the factory floor was illegal – the decision was overturned by the Supreme Court of India two decades later. In 2008, the World Bank criticized the complexity, lack of modernization and flexibility in Indian regulations. In the Constitution of India from 1950, articles 14–16, 19(1)(c), 23–24, 38, and 41-43A directly concern labour rights. Article 14 states everyone should be equal before the law, article 15 specifically says the state should not discriminate against citizens, and article 16 extends a right of "equality of opportunity" for employment or appointment under the state. Article 19(1)(c) gives everyone a specific right "to form associations or unions". Article 23 prohibits all trafficking and forced labour, while article 24 prohibits child labour under 14 years old in a factory, mine or "any other hazardous employment".
Articles 38–39, and 41-43A, however, like all rights listed in Part IV of the Constitution are not enforceable by courts, rather than creating an aspirational "duty of the State to apply these principles in making laws".[3] The original justification for leaving such principles unenforceable by the courts was that democratically accountable institutions ought to be left with discretion, given the demands they could create on the state for funding from general taxation, although such views have since become controversial. Article 38(1) says that in general the state should "strive to promote the welfare of the people" with a "social order in which justice, social, economic and political, shall inform all the institutions of national life. In article 38(2) it goes on to say the state should "minimise the inequalities in income" and based on all other statuses. Article 41 creates a "right to work", which the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 attempts to put into practice. Article 42 requires the state to "make provision for securing just and human conditions of work and for maternity relief". Article 43 says workers should have the right to a living wage and "conditions of work ensuring a decent standard of life". Article 43A, inserted by the Forty-second Amendment of the Constitution of India in 1976,[4] creates a constitutional right to codetermination by requiring the state to legislate to "secure the participation of workers in the management of undertakings".
Also read: Labour Reforms by Government of India Ministry of Labour & Employment (https://labour.gov.in/labour-reforms)
Indonesia
Indonesia essentially rebuilt its labour law system in the early 2000s following regime change and with support of the ILO. These three statutes also constituted a new legislative framework for industrial relations:
1. Law No. 21 of 2000 on Trade Unions, which allowed free unionization; and
2. Law No. 13 of 2003 on Manpower, which legislated other minimum labour rights; and
3. Law No. 2 of 2004 on Industrial Relations Disputes Settlement, established a new industrial relations dispute resolution system.
Iran
Iran has not ratified the two basic Conventions of the International Labour Organization on freedom of association and collective bargaining and one abolishing child labour.
Israel
Japan
Mexico
Mexican labour law reflects the historic interrelation between the state and the Confederation of Mexican Workers. The confederation is officially aligned with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI). While the law promises workers the right to strike and to organize, in practice it is difficult or impossible for independent unions to organize.
Sweden
In Sweden many workplace issues such as working hours, minimum wage and right to overtime compensation are regulated through collective bargaining agreements in accordance with the Swedish model of self-regulation, i.e. regulation by the labour market parties themselves in contrast to state regulation (labour laws). A notable exception is the Employment Protection act which regulates employment contracts and extensive employees' rights to employment under certain conditions.
Switzerland
The labour law of Switzerland covers all standards governing the employment of some kind. The regulation of the employment by private employers is largely harmonized at the federal level, while public-sector employment still prevails a variety of cantonal laws. In particular, the civil standardization is distributed to a variety of laws. Of greater importance, particularly the new Federal Constitution of 1999, the Code of Obligations, the Labour Code as well as in the public sector, the Federal Personnel Act.
United Kingdom
The Factory Acts (first one in 1802, then 1833) and the 1823 Master and Servant Act were the first laws regulating labour relations in the United Kingdom. Most employment law before 1960 was based upon the Law of Contract. Since then there has been a significant expansion primarily due to the "equality movement" and the European Union. Laws are either Acts of Parliament called Statutes, Statutory Regulations (made by a Secretary of State under an Act of Parliament) or Case Law (developed by various courts).
The first significant expansion was the Equal Pay Act of 1970. This act was introduced to bring about pay equality for women in the workplace. Since 1997, changes in UK employment law include enhanced maternity and paternity rights, the introduction of a National Minimum Wage and the Working Time Regulations, which covers working time, rest breaks and the right to paid annual leave. Discrimination law has been tightened, with protection from discrimination now available on the grounds of age, religion or belief and sexual orientation as well as gender, race and disability.
United States
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 set the maximum standard work week to 44 hours. In 1950 this was reduced to 40 hours. A green card entitles immigrants to work, without requirement a separate work permit. Despite the 40-hour standard maximum work week, some lines of work require more than 40 hours. For example, farm workers may work over 72 hours a week, followed by at least 24 hours off. Exceptions to the break period exist for certain harvesting employees, such as those involved in harvesting grapes, tree fruits and cotton.
Professionals, clerical (administrative assistants), technical, and mechanical employees cannot be terminated for refusing to work more than 72 hours in a work week.
These ceilings, combined with a competitive job market, often motivate American workers to work more hours. American workers on average take the fewest days off of any developed country.
The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution limit the power of the federal and state governments to discriminate. The private sector is not directly constrained by the Constitution, but several laws, particularly the Civil Rights Act of 1964, limit the private sector discrimination against certain groups. The Fifth Amendment has an explicit requirement that the Federal Government not deprive individuals of "life, liberty, or property", without due process of law and an implicit guarantee that each person receive equal protection of the law. The Fourteenth Amendment explicitly prohibits states from violating an individual's rights of due process and equal protection. Equal protection limits the State and Federal governments' power to discriminate in their employment practices by treating employees, former employees, or job applicants unequally because of membership in a group, like a race, religion or sex. Due process protection requires that employees have a fair procedural process before they are terminated if the termination is related to a "liberty", like the right to free speech, or a property interest.
The National Labor Relations Act, enacted in 1935 as part of the New Deal legislation, guarantees workers the right to form unions and engage in collective bargaining.
The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 prohibits employment discrimination based on age with respect to employees 40 years of age or older.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act is the principal federal statute with regard to employment discrimination, prohibiting unlawful employment discrimination by public and private employers, labour organizations, training programmes and employment agencies based on race or colour, religion, sex and national origin. Retaliation is also prohibited by Title VII against any person for opposing any practice forbidden by statute, or for making a charge, testifying, assisting, or participating in a proceeding under the statute. The Civil Rights Act of 1991 expanded the damages available to Title VII cases and granted Title VII plaintiffs the right to jury trial.
Halakhah (Jewish religious law)
The beginnings of halakhic labour law are in the Bible, in which two commandments refer to this subject: The law against delayed wages (Lev. 19:13; Deut. 24:14–15) and the worker's right to eat the employer's crops (Deut. 23:25–26). The Talmudic law—in which labour law is called "laws of worker hiring"—elaborates on many more aspects of employment relations, mainly in Tractate Baba Metzi'a. In some issues the Talamud, following the Tosefta, refers the parties to the customary law: "All is as the custom of the region [postulates]".
Modern halakhic labour law developed very slowly. Rabbi Israel Meir Hacohen (the Hafetz Hayim) interprets the worker's right for timely payment in a tendency that clearly favours the employee over the employer, but does not refer to new questions of employment relations. Only in the 1920s we find the first halakhic authority to tackle the questions of trade unions (that could easily be anchored in Talmudic law) and the right of strike (which is quite problematic in terms of Talmudic law). Rabbis A.I Kook and B.M.H. Uziel tend to corporatist settling of labour conflicts, while Rabbi Moshe Feinstein clearly adopts the liberal democratic collective bargaining model. Since the 1940s the halakhic literature on labour law was enriched by books and articles that referred to growing range of questions and basically adopted the liberal democratic approach.
See also
Employee benefits
Profit sharing
Family economics
Family wage
Living wage
Distributism
Labor market
Maximum wage
Positive rights
Precarious work
Trade Boards Act 1909
Working poor
Employment contract
Industrial relations
Journal of Individual Employment Rights
Labour market flexibility
Labour movement
Labour inspectorate
Legal working age
Occupational licensing
Protective laws (on gender)
Right-to-work law
Union organizer
Vicarious liability
Weekends
WorkChoices
Workplace Fairness
Notes
References
Further reading
Stephen F. Befort and John W. Budd, Invisible Hands, Invisible Objectives: Bringing Workplace Law and Public Policy Into Focus (2009) Stanford University Press
E McGaughey, A Casebook on Labour Law (Hart 2019)
E McGaughey, 'Behavioural Economics and Labour Law' (2014) LSE Legal Studies Working Paper No. 20/2014
Keith Ewing, Aileen McColgan and Hugh Collins, Labour Law, Cases, Texts and Materials (2005) Hart Publishing
S Deakin, C Barnard, Z Adams and S Fraser-Butlin, Labour Law (2021) Hart Publishing
Keshawn Walker and Arn Morell, "Labor and Employment: Workplace Warzone", Georgetown University Thesis (2005)
External links
Labor relations
Social programs
Employment compensation
Working conditions
Working time
Industrial and organizational psychology |
18664 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis%20Riel | Louis Riel | Louis Riel (; ; 22 October 1844 – 16 November 1885) was a Canadian politician, a founder of the province of Manitoba, and a political leader of the Métis people. He led two resistance movements against the Government of Canada and its first prime minister, John A. Macdonald. Riel sought to defend Métis rights and identity as the Northwest Territories came progressively under the Canadian sphere of influence.
The first resistance movement led by Riel was the Red River Resistance of 1869–1870. The provisional government established by Riel ultimately negotiated the terms under which the new province of Manitoba entered the Canadian Confederation. However, while carrying out the resistance, Riel had a Canadian nationalist, Thomas Scott, executed. Riel soon fled to the United States to escape prosecution. He was elected three times as member of the House of Commons, but, fearing for his life, he could never take his seat. During these years in exile he came to believe that he was a divinely chosen leader and prophet. He married in 1881 while in exile in the Montana Territory.
In 1884 Riel was called upon by the Métis leaders in Saskatchewan to help resolve longstanding grievances with the Canadian government, which led to armed conflict with government forces, the North-West Rebellion of 1885. Defeated at the Battle of Batoche, Riel was imprisoned in Regina where he was convicted at trial of high treason. Despite protests, popular appeals and the jury's call for clemency, Riel was executed by hanging. Riel was seen as a heroic victim by French Canadians; his execution had a lasting negative impact on Canada, polarizing the new nation along ethno-religious lines. The Métis were marginalized in the Prairie provinces by the increasingly English-dominated majority. An even more important long-term impact was the bitter alienation Francophones across Canada felt, and anger against the repression by their countrymen.
Riel's historical reputation has long been polarized between portrayals as a dangerous religious fanatic and rebel opposed to the Canadian nation, and, by contrast, as a charismatic leader intent on defending his Métis people from the unfair encroachments by the federal government eager to give Orangemen-dominated Ontario settlers priority access to land. Arguably, Riel has received more formal organizational and academic scrutiny than any other figure in Canadian history. The trial and conviction of Louis Riel has been the subject of historical comment and criticism for over one hundred years.
Early life
The Red River Settlement was a Rupert's Land territory administered by the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC). At the mid-19th-century the settlement was largely inhabited by Métis people of mixed First Nations-European descent whose ancestors were for the most part Scottish and English men married to Cree women and French-Canadian men married to Saulteaux (plains Ojibwe) women.
Louis Riel was born in 1844 in his grandparents' small one-room home in St-Boniface near the fork of the Red and Seine rivers. Riel was the eldest of eleven children in a locally well-respected family. His father, who was of Franco-Chipewyan Métis descent, had gained prominence in this community by organizing a group that supported Guillaume Sayer, a Métis arrested and tried for challenging the HBC's historical trade monopoly. Sayer's eventual release due to agitations by Louis Sr.'s group effectively ended the monopoly, and the name Riel was therefore well known in the Red River area. His mother was the daughter of Jean-Baptiste Lagimodière and Marie-Anne Gaboury, one of the earliest European-descended families to settle in Red River in 1812. The Riels were noted for their devout Catholicism and strong family ties.
Riel began his schooling at age seven, and by age ten he attended St. Boniface Catholic schools, including eventually a school run by the French Christian Brothers. At age thirteen he came to the attention of Bishop Alexandre Taché who was eagerly promoting the priesthood for talented young Métis. In 1858 Taché arranged for Riel to attend the Petit Séminaire of the Collège de Montréal. Descriptions of him at the time indicate that he was a fine scholar of languages, science, and philosophy.
Following news of his father's premature death in 1864, Riel lost interest in the priesthood and withdrew from the college in March 1865. For a time, he continued his studies as a day student in the convent of the Grey Nuns, but was soon asked to leave, following breaches of discipline. He remained in Montreal for over a year, living at the home of his aunt, Lucie Riel. Impoverished by the death of his father, Riel took employment as a law clerk in the Montreal office of Rodolphe Laflamme. During this time he was involved in a failed romance with a young woman named Marie–Julie Guernon. This progressed to the point of Riel having signed a contract of marriage, but his fiancée's family opposed her involvement with a Métis, and the engagement was soon broken. Compounding this disappointment, Riel found legal work unpleasant and, by early 1866, he had resolved to leave Canada East. Some of his friends said later that he worked odd jobs in Chicago, while staying with poet Louis-Honoré Fréchette, and wrote poems himself in the manner of Lamartine, and that he was briefly employed as a clerk in Saint Paul, Minnesota, before returning to the Red River settlement on 26 July 1868.
Red River Resistance
The majority population of the Red River had historically been Métis and First Nations people. Upon his return, Riel found that religious, nationalistic, and racial tensions were exacerbated by an influx of Anglophone Protestant settlers from Ontario. The political situation was also uncertain, as ongoing negotiations for the transfer of Rupert's Land from the Hudson's Bay Company to Canada had not addressed the political terms of transfer. Bishop Taché and the HBC governor William Mactavish both warned the Macdonald government that the lack of consultation and consideration of Métis views would precipitate unrest. Finally, the Canadian minister of public works, William McDougall, ordered a survey of the area. The arrival of a survey party on 20 August 1869 increased anxiety among the Métis as the survey was being carried out as a grid system of townships (an American system) that cut across existing Métis river lots.
In late August, Riel denounced the survey in a speech, and on 11 October 1869, the survey's work was disrupted by a group of Métis that included Riel. This group organized itself as the "National Committee of the Métis" on 16 October, with Riel as secretary and John Bruce as president. When summoned by the HBC-controlled Council of Assiniboia to explain his actions, Riel declared that any attempt by Canada to assume authority would be contested unless Ottawa had first negotiated terms with the Métis. Nevertheless, the non-bilingual McDougall was appointed the lieutenant governor-designate, and attempted to enter the settlement on 2 November. McDougall's party was turned back near the Canada–US border, and on the same day, Métis led by Riel seized Fort Garry.
On 6 November, Riel invited Anglophones to attend a convention alongside Métis representatives to discuss a course of action, and on 1 December he proposed to this convention a list of rights to be demanded as a condition of union. Much of the settlement came to accept the Métis point of view, but a passionately pro-Canadian minority began organizing in opposition. Loosely constituted as the Canadian Party, this group was led by John Christian Schultz, Charles Mair, Colonel John Stoughton Dennis, and a more reticent Major Charles Boulton. McDougall attempted to assert his authority by authorizing Dennis to raise a contingent of armed men, but the Anglophone settlers largely ignored this call to arms. Schultz, however, attracted approximately fifty recruits and fortified his home and store. Riel ordered Schultz's home surrounded, and the outnumbered Canadians soon surrendered and were imprisoned in Upper Fort Garry.
Provisional government
Hearing of the unrest, Ottawa sent three emissaries to the Red River, including HBC representative Donald Alexander Smith. While they were en route, the Métis National Committee declared a provisional government on 8 December, with Riel becoming its president on 27 December.
Meetings between Riel and the Ottawa delegation took place on 5 and 6 January 1870, but when these proved fruitless, Smith chose to present his case in a public forum. After large meetings on 19 and 20 January, Riel suggested the formation of a new convention split evenly between Francophone and Anglophone settlers to consider Smith's proposals. On 7 February, a new list of rights was presented to the Ottawa delegation, and Smith and Riel agreed to send representatives to Ottawa to engage in direct negotiations on that basis. The provisional government established by Louis Riel published its own newspaper titled New Nation and established the Legislative Assembly of Assiniboia to pass laws. The Legislative Assembly of Assiniboia was the first elected government at the Red River Settlement and functioned from 9 March to 24 June 1870. The assembly had 28 elected representatives, including a president, Louis Riel, an executive council (government cabinet), adjutant general (chief of military staff), chief justice and clerk.
Execution of Thomas Scott
Despite the apparent progress on the political front, the Canadian party continued to plot against the provisional government. They attempted to recruit supporters to overthrow Riel. However, they suffered a setback on 17 February, when forty-eight men, including Boulton and Thomas Scott, were arrested near Fort Garry.
Boulton was tried by a tribunal headed by Ambroise-Dydime Lépine and sentenced to death for his interference with the provisional government. He was pardoned, but Scott interpreted this as weakness by the Métis, who he regarded with open contempt. After Scott repeatedly quarreled with his guards, they insisted that he be tried for insubordination. At his court martial he was found guilty and was sentenced to death. Riel was repeatedly entreated to commute the sentence, but Riel responded, "I have done three good things since I have commenced: I have spared Boulton's life at your instance, I pardoned Gaddy, and now I shall shoot Scott."
Scott was executed by a Metis firing squad on 4 March. Riel's motivations have been the cause of much speculation, but his own justification was that he felt it necessary to demonstrate to the Canadians that the Métis must be taken seriously. Protestant Canada did take notice, swore revenge, and set up a "Canada First" movement to mobilize their anger. Riel biographer Lewis Thomas noted that "as people then and later have said, it was Riel's one great political blunder".
Creation of Manitoba and the Wolseley expedition
The delegates representing the provisional government arrived in Ottawa in April. Although they initially met with legal difficulties arising from the execution of Scott, they soon entered into direct talks with Macdonald and George-Étienne Cartier. The parties agreed on several of the demands in the list of rights, including language, religious, and land rights (excepting ownership of public lands). This agreement formed the basis for the Manitoba Act, which formally admitted Manitoba into the Canadian confederation; the Legislative Assembly of Assiniboia unanimously supported joining. However, the negotiators could not secure a general amnesty for the provisional government; Cartier held that this was a question for the British government.
As a means of exercising Canadian authority in the settlement and dissuading American expansionists, a Canadian military expedition under Colonel Garnet Wolseley was dispatched to the Red River. Although the government described it as an "errand of peace", Riel learned that Canadian militia elements in the expedition meant to lynch him.
Intervening years
Amnesty question
It was not until 2 September 1870 that the new lieutenant-governor Adams George Archibald arrived and set about the establishment of civil government. Without an amnesty, and with the Canadian militia threatening his life, Riel fled to the safety of the St. Joseph's mission across the Canada–US border in the Dakota Territory. The results of the first provincial election in December 1870 were promising for Riel, as many of his supporters came to power. Nevertheless, stress and financial troubles precipitated a serious illness—perhaps a harbinger of his future mental afflictions—that prevented his return to Manitoba until May 1871.
The settlement now faced a possible threat, from cross-border Fenian raids coordinated by his former associate William Bernard O'Donoghue. Archibald issued a call to arms in October, and assured Riel that if he participated he would not be arrested. Riel organized several companies of Métis troops for the defense of Manitoba. When Archibald reviewed the troops in St. Boniface, he made the significant gesture of publicly shaking Riel's hand, signaling that a rapprochement had been effected.
When this news reached Ontario, Mair and members of the Canada First movement whipped up anti-Riel (and anti-Archibald) sentiment. With Federal elections coming in 1872, Macdonald could ill afford further rift in Quebec–Ontario relations and so he did not offer an amnesty. Instead he quietly arranged for Taché to offer Riel a bribe of C$1,000 to remain in voluntary exile. This was supplemented by an additional £600 from Smith for the care of Riel's family.
Nevertheless, by late June Riel was back in Manitoba and was soon persuaded to run as a member of parliament for the electoral district of Provencher. However, following the early September defeat of George-Étienne Cartier in his home riding in Quebec, Riel stood aside so that Cartier—on record as being in favour of amnesty for Riel—might secure a seat in Provencher. Cartier won by acclamation, but Riel's hopes for a swift resolution to the amnesty question were dashed following Cartier's death on 20 May 1873. In the ensuing by-election in October 1873, Riel ran unopposed as an Independent, although he had again fled, a warrant having been issued for his arrest in September. Lépine was not so lucky; he was captured and faced trial.
Riel made his way to Montreal and, fearing arrest or assassination, vacillated as to whether he should attempt to take up his seat in the House of Commons—Edward Blake, the Premier of Ontario, had announced a bounty of $5,000 for his arrest. Riel was the only Member of Parliament who was not present for the great Pacific Scandal debate of 1873 that led to the resignation of the Macdonald government in November. Liberal leader Alexander Mackenzie became the interim prime minister, and a general election was held in January 1874. Although the Liberals under Mackenzie formed the new government, Riel easily retained his seat. Formally, Riel had to sign a register book at least once upon being elected, and he did so under disguise in late January. He was nevertheless stricken from the rolls following a motion supported by Schultz, who had become the member for the electoral district of Lisgar. Riel prevailed again in the resulting by-election and was again expelled.
Exile and mental illness
During this period, Riel had been staying with the Oblate fathers in Plattsburgh, New York, who introduced him to parish priest Fabien Martin dit Barnabé in the nearby village of Keeseville. It was here that he received news of Lépine's fate: following his trial for the murder of Scott, which had begun on 13 October 1874, Lépine was found guilty and sentenced to death. This sparked outrage in the sympathetic Quebec press, and calls for amnesty for both Lépine and Riel were renewed. This presented a severe political difficulty for Mackenzie, who was hopelessly caught between the demands of Quebec and Ontario. However, a solution was forthcoming when, acting on his own initiative, the Governor General Lord Dufferin commuted Lépine's sentence in January 1875. This opened the door for Mackenzie to secure from parliament an amnesty for Riel, on the condition that he remain in exile for five years.
During his time of exile, Riel was primarily concerned with religion rather than politics. Much of these emerging religious beliefs were based on a supportive letter dated 14 July 1875 that he received from Montreal's Bishop Ignace Bourget. His mental state deteriorated, and following a violent outburst he was taken to Montreal, where he was under the care of his uncle, John Lee, for a few months. But after Riel disrupted a religious service, Lee arranged to have him committed in an asylum in Longue-Pointe on 6 March 1876 under the assumed name "Louis R. David". Fearing discovery, his doctors soon transferred him to the Beauport Asylum near Quebec City under the name "Louis Larochelle". While he suffered from sporadic irrational outbursts, he continued his religious writing, composing theological tracts with an admixture of Christian and Judaic ideas. He consequently began calling himself "Louis David Riel, Prophet, Infallible Pontiff and Priest King".
Nevertheless, he slowly recovered, and was released from the asylum on 23 January 1878 with an admonition to lead a quiet life. He returned for a time to Keeseville, where he became involved in a passionate romance with Evelina Martin dite Barnabé, sister of Father Fabien. He asked her to marry him before moving west "with the avowed intention of establishing himself" before sending for her; however, their correspondence ended abruptly.
Montana and family life
In the fall of 1878, Riel returned to St. Paul, and briefly visited his friends and family. This was a time of rapid change for the Métis of the Red River—the bison on which they depended were becoming increasingly scarce, the influx of settlers was ever-increasing, and much land was sold to unscrupulous land speculators. Like other Red River Métis who had left Manitoba, Riel headed further west to start a new life. Travelling to the Montana Territory, he became a trader and interpreter in the area surrounding Fort Benton. Observing the detrimental impact of alcohol on the Métis, he engaged in an unsuccessful attempt to curtail the whisky trade.
In Pointe-au-Loup, Fort Berthold, Dakota Territory in 1881, he married the young Métis Marguerite Monet dite Bellehumeur, according to the custom of the country (à la façon du pays), on 28 April, the marriage being solemnized on 9 March 1882. Evelina learned of this marriage from a newspaper and wrote a letter accusing Riel of "infamy". Marguerite and Louis were to have three children: Jean-Louis (1882–1908); Marie-Angélique (1883–1897); and a boy who was born and died on 21 October 1885, less than one month before Riel was hanged.
Riel soon became involved in the politics of Montana, and in 1882, actively campaigned on behalf of the Republican Party. He brought a suit against a Democrat for rigging a vote, but was then himself accused of fraudulently inducing British subjects to take part in the election. In response, Riel applied for United States citizenship and was naturalized on 16 March 1883. With two young children, he had by 1884 settled down and was teaching school at the St. Peter's Jesuit mission in the Sun River district of Montana.
North-West Rebellion
Following the Red River Resistance, Métis travelled west and settled in the Saskatchewan Valley. But by the 1880s, the rapid collapse of the buffalo herd was causing near starvation among the First Nations. This was exacerbated by a reduction in government assistance, and by a general failure of Ottawa to live up to its treaty obligations. The Métis were likewise obliged to give up the hunt and take up agriculture—but this transition was accompanied by complex issues surrounding land claims similar to those that had previously arisen in Manitoba. Moreover, settlers from Europe and the eastern provinces were also moving into the Saskatchewan territories, and they too had complaints related to the administration of the territories. Virtually all parties therefore had grievances, and by 1884 Anglophone settlers, Anglo-Métis and Métis communities were holding meetings and petitioning a largely unresponsive government for redress.
In the electoral district of Lorne, a meeting of the south branch Métis was held in the village of Batoche on 24 March, and representatives voted to ask Riel to return and represent their cause. On 6 May a joint "Settler's Union" meeting was attended by both the Métis and English-speaking representatives from Prince Albert, including William Henry Jackson, an Ontario settler sympathetic to the Métis and known to them as Honoré Jackson, and James Isbister of the Anglo-Métis. It was here resolved to send a delegation to ask Riel to return.
Return of Riel
The head of the delegation to Riel was Gabriel Dumont, a respected buffalo hunter and leader of the Saint-Laurent Métis who had known Riel in Manitoba. James Isbister was the lone Anglo-Métis delegate. Riel was easily swayed to support their cause. Riel also intended to use the new position of influence to pursue his own land claims in Manitoba.
Upon his arrival Métis and Anglophone settlers alike formed an initially favourable impression of Riel following a series of speeches in which he advocated moderation and a reasoned approach. During June 1884, the Plains Cree leaders Big Bear and Poundmaker were independently formulating their complaints, and subsequently held meetings with Riel. However, the Native grievances were quite different from those of the settlers, and nothing was then resolved.
Honoré Jackson and representatives of other communities set about drafting a petition to be sent to Ottawa. In the interim, Riel's support began to waver. As Riel's religious pronouncements became increasingly heretical the clergy distanced themselves, and father Alexis André cautioned Riel against mixing religion and politics. Also, in response to bribes by territorial lieutenant-governor and Indian commissioner Edgar Dewdney, local English-language newspapers adopted an editorial stance critical of Riel.
Nevertheless, the work continued, and on 16 December Riel forwarded the committee's petition to the government, along with the suggestion that delegates be sent to Ottawa to engage in direct negotiation. Receipt of the petition was acknowledged by Joseph-Adolphe Chapleau, Macdonald's Secretary of State, although Macdonald himself would later deny having ever seen it. By then many original followers had left; only 250 remained at Batoche when it fell in May 1885.
While Riel awaited news from Ottawa he considered returning to Montana, but had by February resolved to stay. Without a productive course of action, Riel began to engage in obsessive prayer, and was experiencing a significant relapse of his mental agitations. This led to a deterioration in his relationship with the Catholic clergy, as he publicly espoused an increasingly heretical doctrine.
On 11 February 1885, a response to the petition was received. The government proposed to take a census of the North-West Territories, and to form a commission to investigate grievances. This angered a faction of the Métis who saw it as a mere delaying tactic; they favoured taking up arms at once. Riel became the leader of this faction, but he lost the support of almost all Anglophones and Anglo-Métis, and the Catholic Church. He also lost the support of the Métis faction supporting local leader Charles Nolin. But Riel, undoubtedly influenced by his messianic delusions, became increasingly supportive of this course of action. Disenchanted with the status quo, and swayed by Riel's charisma and eloquent rhetoric, hundreds of Métis remained loyal to Riel, despite his proclamations that Bishop Ignace Bourget should be accepted as pope, and that "Rome has fallen".
Open rebellion
The Provisional Government of Saskatchewan was declared at Batoche on 19 March, with Riel as the political and spiritual leader and with Dumont assuming responsibility for military affairs. Riel formed a council called the Exovedate (a neologism meaning "those who picked from the flock"). On 21 March, Riel's emissaries demanded that Crozier surrender Fort Carlton. Scouting near Duck Lake on 26 March, a force led by Gabriel Dumont unexpectedly chanced upon a party from Fort Carlton. In the ensuing Battle of Duck Lake, the police were routed and the North-West Rebellion was begun in earnest.
The near-completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway allowed troops from eastern Canada to quickly arrive in the territory. Knowing that he could not defeat the Canadians in direct confrontation, Dumont had hoped to force the Canadians to negotiate by engaging in a long-drawn out campaign of guerrilla warfare; Dumont realized a modest success along these lines at the Battle of Fish Creek on 24 April 1885. Riel, however, insisted on concentrating forces at Batoche to defend his "city of God". The outcome of the ensuing Battle of Batoche which took place from 9 to 12 May was never in doubt, and on 15 May a disheveled Riel surrendered to Canadian forces. Although Big Bear's forces managed to hold out until the Battle of Loon Lake on 3 June, the rebellion was a dismal failure for Indigenous communities.
Trial
Several individuals closely tied to the government requested that the trial be held in Winnipeg in July 1885. Some historians contend that the trial was moved to Regina because of concerns with the possibility of an ethnically mixed and sympathetic jury. Prime Minister Macdonald ordered the trial to be convened in Regina, where Riel was tried before a jury of six Anglophone Protestants. The trial began on 20 July 1885.
Riel delivered two long speeches during his trial, defending his own actions and affirming the rights of the Métis people. He rejected his lawyers' attempt to argue that he was not guilty by reason of insanity. The jury found him guilty but recommended mercy; nonetheless, Judge Hugh Richardson sentenced him to death on 1 August 1885, with the date of his execution initially set for 18 September 1885. "We tried Riel for treason," one juror later said, "And he was hanged for the murder of Scott." Lewis Thomas notes that "the government's conduct of the case was to be a travesty of justice".
Execution
Boulton writes in his memoirs that, as the date of his execution approached, Riel regretted his opposition to the defence of insanity and vainly attempted to provide evidence that he was not sane. Requests for a retrial, petitions for a commuted sentence, and an appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in Britain were denied. John A. Macdonald, who was instrumental in upholding Riel's sentence, is famously quoted as saying "He shall hang though every dog in Quebec bark in his favour" (although the veracity of this quote is uncertain).
Before his execution, Riel received Father André as his spiritual advisor. He was also given writing materials and allowed to correspond with friends and relatives. Louis Riel was hanged for treason on 16 November 1885 at the North-West Mounted Police barracks in Regina.
Boulton writes of Riel's final moments:
Père André, after explaining to Riel that the end was at hand, asked him if he was at peace with men. Riel answered "Yes." The next question was, "Do you forgive all your enemies?" "Yes." Riel then asked him if he might speak. Father André advised him not to do so. He then received the kiss of peace from both the priests, and Father André exclaimed in French, "" meaning "So, go to heaven!"
... [Riel's] last words were to say good-bye to Dr. Jukes and thank him for his kindness, and just before the white cap was pulled over his face he said, "" meaning "Thank Mrs. Forget".
The cap was pulled down, and while he was praying the trap was pulled. Death was not instantaneous. Louis Riel's pulse ceased four minutes after the trap-door fell and during that time the rope around his neck slowly strangled and choked him to death. The body was to have been interred inside the gallows' enclosure, and the grave was commenced, but an order came from the Lieutenant-Governor to hand the body over to Sheriff Chapleau which was accordingly done that night.
Following the execution, Riel's body was returned to his mother's home in St. Vital, where it lay in state. On 12 December 1886, his remains were interred in the churchyard of the Saint-Boniface Cathedral following the celebration of a requiem mass.
The trial and execution of Riel caused a bitter and prolonged reaction which convulsed Canadian politics for decades. The execution was both supported and opposed by the provinces. For example, conservative Ontario strongly supported Riel's execution, but Quebec was vehemently opposed to it. Francophones were upset Riel was hanged because they thought his execution was a symbol of Anglophone dominance of Canada. The Orange Irish Protestant element in Ontario had demanded the execution as the punishment for Riel's treason and his execution of Thomas Scott in 1870. In Quebec the politician Honoré Mercier rose to power by mobilizing the opposition in 1886.
Historiography
Historians have debated the Riel case so often and so passionately that he is the most written-about person in Canadian history. Interpretations have varied dramatically over time. The first amateur English language histories hailed the triumph of civilization, represented by English-speaking Protestants, over savagery represented by the half-breed Métis who were Catholic and spoke French. Riel was portrayed as an insane traitor and an obstacle to the expansion of Canada to the West.
By the mid-20th century academic historians had dropped the theme of savagery versus civilization, deemphasized the Métis, and focused on Riel, presenting his execution as a major cause of the bitter division in Canada along ethnocultural and geographical lines of religion and language. W. L. Morton says of the execution that it "convulsed the course of national politics for the next decade": it was well received in Ontario, particularly among Orangemen, but francophone Quebec defended Riel as "the symbol, indeed as a hero of his race". Morton concluded that some of Riel's positions were defensible, but that "they did not present a program of practical substance which the government might have granted without betrayal of its responsibilities". J. M. Bumsted in 2000 said that for Manitoba historian James Jackson, the shooting of Scott—"perhaps the result of Riel's incipient madness—was the great blemish on Riel's achievement, depriving him of his proper role as the father of Manitoba."
The Catholic clergy had originally supported the Métis, but reversed themselves when they realized that Riel was leading a heretical movement. They made sure that he was not honored as a martyr. However the clergy lost their influence during the Quiet Revolution, and activists in Québec found in Riel the perfect hero, with the image now of a freedom fighter who stood up for his people against an oppressive government in the face of widespread racist bigotry. He was made a folk hero by Métis, French Canadian and other Canadian minorities. Activists who espoused violence embraced his image; in the 1960s, the Quebec terrorist group, the Front de libération du Québec adopted the name "Louis Riel" for one of its terrorist cells.
Across Canada there emerged a new interpretation of reality in his rebellion, holding that the Métis had major unresolved grievances; that the government was indeed unresponsive; that Riel had chosen violence only as a last resort; and he was given a questionable trial, then executed by a vengeful government. John Foster said in 1985 that "the interpretive drift of the last half-century ... has witnessed increasingly shrill though frequently uncritical condemnations of Canadian government culpability and equally uncritical identification with the "victimization" of the "innocent" Métis". However, a leading specialist Thomas Flanagan reversed his views after editing Riel's writings: he found that "the Métis grievances were at least partly of their own making", that Riel's violent approach was unnecessary given the government's response to his initial "constitutional agitation", and "that he received a surprisingly fair trial".
An article by Doug Owram appearing in the Canadian Historical Review in 1982 found that Riel had become "a Canadian folk hero", even "mythical", in English Canada, corresponding with the designation of Batoche as a national historic site and the compilation of his writings. That compilation consisted of three volumes of letters, diaries, and other prose writings; a fourth volume of his poetry; and a fifth volume which contained reference materials. Edited by George Stanley, Raymond Huel, Gilles Martel, Thomas Flanagan and Glen Campbell, this work "ma[de] it possible to think comprehensively about Riel's life and his achievements", but was also criticized for some of its editorial decisions. In a 2010 speech, Beverley McLachlin, then Chief Justice of Canada, summed up Riel as being a rebel by the standards of the time but a patriot "viewed through our modern lens".
Legacy
The Saskatchewan Métis' requested land grants were all provided by the government by the end of 1887, and the government resurveyed the Métis river lots in accordance with their wishes. However, much of the land was soon bought by speculators who later turned huge profits from it. Riel's worst fears were realized—following the failed rebellion, the French language and Roman Catholic religion faced increasing marginalization in both Saskatchewan and Manitoba, as exemplified by the controversy surrounding the Manitoba Schools Question. The Métis themselves were increasingly forced to live in shantytowns on undesirable land. Saskatchewan did not become a province until 1905.
Riel's execution and Macdonald's refusal to commute his sentence caused lasting discord in Quebec. Honoré Mercier exploited the discontent to reconstitute the Parti National. This party, which promoted Quebec nationalism, won a majority in the 1886 Quebec election. The federal election of 1887 likewise saw significant gains by the federal Liberals. This led to the victory of the Liberal party under Wilfrid Laurier in the federal election of 1896, which in turn set the stage for the domination of Canadian federal politics (particularly in Quebec) by the Liberal party in the 20th century.
Since the 1980s, numerous federal politicians have introduced private member's bills seeking to pardon Riel or recognize him as a Father of Confederation. In 1992, the House of Commons passed a resolution recognizing "the unique and historic role of Louis Riel as a founder of Manitoba and his contribution in the development of Confederation". The CBC's Greatest Canadian project ranked Riel as the 11th "Greatest Canadian" on the basis of a public vote.
Commemorations
In 2007, Manitoba's provincial government voted to recognize Louis Riel Day as a provincial holiday, observed on the third Monday of February.
Two statues of Riel are located in Winnipeg. One of these statues, the work of architect Étienne Gaboury and sculptor Marcien Lemay, depicts Riel as a naked and tortured figure. It was unveiled in 1971 and stood in the grounds of the Manitoba Legislative Building for 23 years. After much outcry (especially from the Métis community) that the statue was an undignified misrepresentation, the statue was removed and placed at the Université de Saint-Boniface. It was replaced with a statue of Louis Riel designed by Miguel Joyal depicting Riel as a dignified statesman. The unveiling ceremony was on 12 May 1996, in Winnipeg. A statue of Riel on the grounds of the Saskatchewan Legislative Building in Regina was installed and later removed for similar reasons.
In numerous communities across Canada, Riel is commemorated in the names of streets, schools, neighbourhoods, and other buildings. Examples in Winnipeg include the landmark Esplanade Riel pedestrian bridge linking old Saint-Boniface with Downtown Winnipeg, and the Louis Riel School Division. The student centre at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon is named after Riel, as is the Louis Riel Trail. There are schools named after Louis Riel in four major Canadian cities: Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa and Winnipeg.
Portrayals of Riel's role in the Red River Resistance include the 1979 CBC television film Riel and Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown's acclaimed 2003 graphic novel Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography. An opera about Riel entitled Louis Riel was commissioned for Canada's centennial celebrations in 1967; it was written by Harry Somers, with an English and French libretto by Mavor Moore and Jacques Languirand.
See also
History of Manitoba
List of Canadian First Nations leaders
Métis National Council
The Canadian Crown and Aboriginal peoples
Footnotes
References
Further reading
External links
CBC Digital Archives: Rethinking Riel
Heritage Minutes: Historica Minutes (History by the Minute): Louis Riel
Louis Riel – University of Saskatchewan library
19th-century executions of American people
1844 births
1885 deaths
Burials at Saint Boniface Cathedral
Canadian emigrants to the United States
Canadian folklore
Canadian Métis people
Canadian revolutionaries
Canadian Roman Catholics
Executed Canadian people
Executed politicians
Independent MPs in the Canadian House of Commons
Indigenous Members of the House of Commons of Canada
Members of the House of Commons of Canada from Manitoba
Métis politicians
People executed by Canada by hanging
People executed for treason against Canada
People of the North-West Rebellion
People of the Red River Rebellion
Persons of National Historic Significance (Canada)
Pre-Confederation Saskatchewan people
Refugees in the United States
Métis history |
18665 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listerine | Listerine | Listerine is an American brand of antiseptic mouthwash that is promoted with the slogan "Kills germs that cause bad breath", Named after Joseph Lister, who pioneered antiseptic surgery at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary in Scotland, Listerine was developed in 1879 by Joseph Lawrence, a chemist in St. Louis, Missouri.
Originally marketed by the Lambert Pharmacal Company (which later became Warner–Lambert), Listerine has been manufactured and distributed by Johnson & Johnson since that company's acquisition of Pfizer's consumer healthcare division on December 20, 2006.
The Listerine brand name is also used in toothpaste, chewable tablets and self-dissolving teeth-whitening strips.
In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Listerine responded to notions that mouthwash was protective by stating "Listerine is not intended to prevent or treat COVID-19".
History
Inspired by Louis Pasteur's ideas on microbial infection, the English doctor Joseph Lister demonstrated in 1865 that use of carbolic acid on surgical dressings would significantly reduce rates of post-surgical infection. Lister's work in turn inspired St. Louis-based doctor Joseph Lawrence to develop an alcohol-based formula for a surgical antiseptic which included eucalyptol, menthol, methyl salicylate, and thymol (its exact composition is a trade secret). Lawrence named his antiseptic "Listerine" in honor of Lister.
Lawrence hoped to promote Listerine's use as a general germicide as well as a surgical antiseptic, and licensed his formula to a local pharmacist named Jordan Wheat Lambert in 1881. Lambert subsequently started the Lambert Pharmacal Company, marketing Listerine. Listerine was promoted to dentists for oral care in 1895 and was the first over-the-counter mouthwash sold in the United States, in 1914. It became widely known and entered common household use after Jordan Wheat Lambert's son Gerard Lambert joined the company and promoted an aggressive marketing campaign.
According to Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner's book Freakonomics:
In 1955, Lambert Pharmacal merged with New York-based Warner-Hudnut and became Warner-Lambert Pharmaceutical Company and incorporated in Delaware with its corporate headquarters in Morris Plains, New Jersey. In 2000, Pfizer acquired Warner-Lambert. Among Lambert's assets was the original land for Lambert-St. Louis International Airport.
From 1921 until the mid-1970s, Listerine was also marketed as preventive and remedy for colds and sore throats. In 1976, the Federal Trade Commission ruled that these claims were misleading, and that Listerine had "no efficacy" at either preventing or alleviating the symptoms of sore throats and colds. Warner-Lambert was ordered to stop making the claims, and to include in the next $10.2 million worth of Listerine ads specific mention that "Listerine will not help prevent colds or sore throats or lessen their severity." The advertisement run by Listerine added the preamble "contrary to prior advertising".
For a short time, beginning in 1927, the Lambert Pharmaceutical Company marketed Listerine Cigarettes.
From the 1930s into the 1950s, advertisements claimed that applying Listerine to the scalp could prevent "infectious dandruff".
Listerine was packaged in a glass bottle inside a corrugated cardboard tube for nearly 80 years before the first revamps were made to the brand: in 1992, Cool Mint Listerine was introduced in addition to the original Listerine Antiseptic formula and, in 1994, both brands were introduced in plastic bottles for the first time. In 1995, FreshBurst was added, then in 2003 Natural Citrus. In 2006 a new addition to the "less intense" variety, Vanilla Mint, was released. Nine different kinds of Listerine are on the market in the U.S. and elsewhere: Original, Cool Mint, FreshBurst, Natural Citrus, Naturals, Soft Mint (Vanilla Mint), UltraClean (formerly Advanced Listerine), Tooth Defense (mint shield), and Whitening pre-brush rinse (clean mint). In the United Kingdom, where in recent years the only option for most residents to obtain the original Listerine was to purchase from a dwindling number of larger branches of Boots the Chemist only the flavoured products are now obtainable as Boots has removed the Original from its selection. Original is not listed on the Listerine UK website as among the Listerine products available in the United Kingdom. During the COVID-19 pandemic that started in 2020, there was baseless speculation such as by US Senator Ron Johnson, who said "Standard gargle, mouthwash, has been proven to kill the coronavirus. If you get it, you may reduce viral replication. Why not try all these things?" In response to these notions Listerine stated on their Web site that "Listerine Antiseptic is not intended to prevent or treat COVID-19 and should be used only as directed on the product label ... no evidence-based clinical conclusions can be drawn with regards to the anti-viral efficacy of Listerine Antiseptic mouthwash at this time" and that "more research is needed to understand whether the use of mouthwashes can impact viral transmission, exposure, viral entry, viral load and ultimately affect meaningful clinical outcomes."
Composition
According to the product overview, the ingredients are as following for Listerine Total Care. Similar distribution is contained in other varieties, which also list the essential oils as active ingredients.
Listerine Total Care
Active ingredient
Sodium fluoride 0.02% (0.01% w/v fluoride ion)
Inactive ingredients
Water
Sorbitol
Alcohol (21.6% v/v)
Poloxamer 407
Sodium Saccharin
Flavor
Eucalyptol
Methyl Salicylate
Thymol
Phosphoric Acid
Menthol
Disodium Phosphate
Sucralose
Red 40
Blue 1
Distributions in case of Listerine Antiseptic Mouthwash, Original-05/22/2008 for essential oils are: menthol (mint) 0.042%, thymol (thyme) 0.064%, methyl salicylate (wintergreen) 0.06%, and eucalyptol (eucalyptus) 0.092%.
Benefits
In combination all have an antiseptic effect and there is some thought that methyl salicylate may have an anti inflammatory effect as well. Ethanol, which is toxic to bacteria at concentrations of 40%, is present in concentrations of 21.6% in the flavored product and 26.9% in the original gold Listerine Antiseptic. At this concentration, the ethanol serves to dissolve the active ingredients.
Research indicates that Listerine can reduce dental plaque by 22.2% and gingivitis by 28.2% at 6 months. Dental plaque by 20.8% and gingivitis by 27.7% at 6 months, when compared with vehicle in test. Vehicle was 26.9% hydroalcoholic containing all ingredients in Listerine Antiseptic except its essential oils.
Listerine also sell a formulation called Listerine Advanced Defence Gum Treatment containing a common food preservative, ethyl lauroyl arginate (LAE) at 0.147%.
Safety
Alcohol misuse
The addition of essential oils means the ethanol is considered to be undrinkable, known as denatured alcohol, and it is therefore not regulated as an alcoholic beverage in the United States. (Specially Denatured Alcohol Formula 38-B, specified in Title 27, Code of Federal Regulations, Part 21, Subpart D) However, consumption of mouthwash to obtain intoxication does occur, especially among alcoholics and underage drinkers.
Cancer risk
There has been concern that the use of alcohol-containing mouthwash such as Listerine may increase the risk of developing oral cancer. As of 2010, seven meta-analyses have found no connection between alcohol-containing mouthwashes and oral cancer, and three have found increased risk. In January 2009, Andrew Penman, chief executive of The Cancer Council New South Wales, called for further research on the matter. In a March 2009 brief, the American Dental Association said "the available evidence does not support a connection between oral cancer and alcohol-containing mouthrinse". In 2009, Johnson and Johnson launched a new alcohol-free version of the product called Listerine Zero.
A 2020 systematic review investigated the controversial alcohol-oral cancer question (or oropharynx or other head and neck cancers), saying that for example "this risk from alcohol consumption increases ten times in heavy drinkers compared to abstainers or irregular drinkers" but there is no consensus whether it is a risk factor. The authors of the study conclude that "alcohol-based mouthwash consumption significantly increases salivary acetaldehyde levels in the first few minutes. However, no evidence exists if long-term salivary acetaldehyde levels may increase with a high frequency of mouthwash use. There is still insufficient evidence of whether the use of alcohol-based mouthwash is an independent risk factor for oral or oropharynx cancer. Nonetheless, it does increase the risk when it occurs concomitantly with other risk factors such as smoking or alcohol.
Contaminants
On April 11, 2007, McNeil-PPC disclosed that there were potentially contaminants in all Listerine Agent Cool Blue products sold since its launch in 2006, and that all bottles were being recalled. The recall affected some 4,000,000 bottles sold since that time. According to the company, Listerine Agent Cool Blue is the only product affected by the contamination and no other products in the Listerine family were under recall.
References
External links
Official Listerine Middle East Website
Dentifrices
Antiseptics
Johnson & Johnson brands
Products introduced in 1914 |
18666 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludo%20%28board%20game%29 | Ludo (board game) | Ludo (; ) is a strategy board game for two to four players, in which the players race their four from start to finish according to the rolls of a single die. Like other cross and circle games, Ludo is derived from the Indian game Pachisi. The game and its variations are popular in many countries and under various names.
History
The Mahabharata
Pachisi was created in India in the sixth century CE. The earliest evidence of this game's evolution in India is the depiction of boards on the caves of Ellora. The original version is also described in the Indian epic Mahabharata in which Shakuni uses cursed dice to beat the Pandavas, and at last after losing everything, Yudhisthira puts his wife Draupadi on stake and loses her, too. The Pandavas get all their belongings back, though, after Draupadi vows to curse the whole Kuru lineage, but stops at the intervention of Gandhari, and seeing an opportunity to still Draupadi's anger, Kuru king Dhritarashtra promises to give back to the Pandavas all that they had lost in the game.
It was also known as Chaupar in ancient times. The contemporary version was played by the Mughal emperors of India; a notable example is Akbar.
Pachisi was modified to use a cubic die with a die cup and patented as "Ludo" in England in 1896. The Royal Navy took Ludo and converted it into the board game Uckers.
Ludo board
Special areas of the Ludo board are typically coloured bright yellow, green, red, and blue. Each player is assigned a colour and has four tokens in their colour. The board is normally square with a cross-shaped , with each arm of the cross having three columns of squares, usually six per column. The middle columns usually have five squares coloured; these represent a player's home column. A sixth coloured square not on the home column is a player's starting square. At the centre of the board is a large finishing square, often composed of coloured triangles atop the players' home columns (thus depicting "arrows" pointing to the finish).
Rules
Overview
Two, three, or four can play, without partnerships. At the beginning of the game, each player's four tokens are out of play and in the player's yard (one of the large corner areas of the board in the player's colour). When able to, the players enter their tokens one per turn on their respective starting squares and proceed to race them clockwise around the board along the game track (the path of squares not part of any player's home column). When reaching the square below his home column, a player continues by moving tokens up the column to the finishing square. The rolls of a single die control the swiftness of the tokens, and entry to the finishing square requires a precise roll from the player. The first to bring all their tokens to the finish wins the game. The others often continue to play to determine second-, third-, and fourth-place finishers.
Gameplay
Each player rolls a die; the highest roller begins the game. Players alternate turns in a clockwise direction. To enter a token into play from its yard to its starting square, a player must roll a six. Players can draw a token from home every time they get a six unless home is empty or move a piece six times. The start box has two own tokens (is doubled). If the player has no tokens yet in play and rolls other than a six, the turn passes to the next player.
Players must always move a token according to the die value rolled. Once players have one or more tokens in play, they select a token and move it forwards along the track the number of squares indicated by the die. If an opponent's token is blocking the pathway, the player must land on the same space as the token to capture it. Players cannot move past that token. are not allowed; if no move is possible, the turn moves to the next player.
If the player cannot draw a token from home, rolling a six earns the player an additional or "bonus" roll in that turn. If the bonus roll results in a six again, the player earns again an additional bonus roll. If the third roll is also a six, the player may not move and the turn immediately passes to the next player.
If the advance of a token ends on a square occupied by an opponent's token, the opponent token is returned to its owner's yard. The returned token can be re-entered into play only when the owner rolls a six. If a piece lands on the same space as another piece of the same colour, the pieces are doubled and form a "block". If the advance of a block ends on an opponent’s block, the latter is captured and returned to its owner’s yard, collectively.
A player's home column squares are always safe, since no opponent may enter them. In the home column, a player cannot jump over; after one rotation is completed, the player must enter the home and roll the exact number needed to get each token onto the home triangle.
Variants
List of international variants
Ludo exists under different names and brands, and in various game derivations:
Uckers, British
Pachisi, Indian
Fia, Swedish
Eile mit Weile (Haste makes Pace), Swiss
Cờ cá ngựa, Vietnamese
Parchís, Spanish
Parqués, Colombian
Vuelta obligada (mandatory restart)
Cielo robado (stolen heaven)
De piedra en piedra (from stone to stone)
Con Policía (With Policeman)
Mensch ärgere dich nicht
Mensch ärgere dich nicht (Mate, Don't Get Angry), is a German game from 1914 and has equivalent names in Bulgarian, Croatian, Slovenian, Serbian, Macedonian, Albanian, Greek, Romanian, Turkish, Czech, and Slovak.
Mens Erger Je Niet, Dutch
Non t'arrabiare, Italian
Kızma Birader, Turkish
German specific
Verliere nicht den Kopf (Do not lose your head)
Coppit
Brändi Dog
French
Jeu des petits chevaux
Hasbro
Hasbro has multiple brand names for ludo-like games from its acquisitions including:
Aggravation
Headache
Game of Headache, British
Based on Pachisi
Parcheesi, North American
Sorry!; North American and British
Trouble, North American
Kimble, Finnish version of Trouble
Frustration, British and Irish version of Trouble
Chinese
Aeroplane chess: A Chinese cross-and-circle board game derived from Ludo, it uses aeroplanes as tokens, with additional features such as colored cells, jumps, and shortcuts.
Canadian
Tock: Players race their four tokens (or marbles) around the game board from start to finish, with the objective being to be the first to take all of one's tokens "home". Like Sorry!, it is played with playing cards rather than dice.
Differences
Ludo played in the Indian subcontinent features a safe square in each quadrant, normally the fourth square from the top in the rightmost column. These squares are usually marked with a star. In India Ludo is often played with two dice, and rolling 1 on a die also allows a token to enter active play. Thus if a player rolls a 1 and a 6, they may get a token out and move it six steps.
In Pakistan, a variation that uses two dice allows backwards movement. The dice are rolled and the die values can be used independently or in combination to move two pieces or a single piece forwards or backwards or both. (E.g., if the roll gives 1 and 4, the player can move a single piece 4 steps forwards and then 1 step backwards, or 1 step forwards and 4 steps backwards, or 1 then 4 steps forwards or backwards. Or the player can move a piece 1 step forwards or backwards, and another piece 4 steps forwards or backwards.)
To get a game started faster, some house rules allow a player with no pieces on the board to bring their first piece into play on any roll, on a 1 or a 6, or allow multiple tries to roll a 6 (with three rolls being the most popular).
If a piece lands on the same space as another piece of the same colour, the moved piece must take the preceding space.
Some variations permit doubled blocks to be passed by rolling a 6 or 1.
A block of two or more pieces can be taken by an opponent's single piece.
Doubled pieces may move half the number if an even number is thrown (e.g. move two spaces if a 4 is thrown).
A doubled piece may capture another doubled piece (like in Coppit). Three pieces together are weak and can be cut by a single piece.
A board may have only four spaces in each home column. All four of a player's pieces must finish in these spaces for the player to have finished the game. (See .)
A player must move all the numbers rolled (e.g. if a player rolls multiple 6s, they have to use all the numbers to move).
A player cannot capture or enter finish if they have numbers remaining. (E.g., if a player rolls a 6 and a 2 and they have the option to capture or enter finish with one of their pieces using the 2, they can only do so if they have another piece that can use the 6.)
To speed the game up, extra turns or bonus moves can be awarded for capturing a piece or getting a piece home; these may grant passage past a block.
In Denmark and some other countries the board has eight spaces marked with a globe and eight with a star. The globes are safe spaces where a piece cannot be captured. The exception is that a player who has not yet entered all pieces, can always enter a piece on a roll of 6. If the entry space is occupied by another player's piece, that piece is captured. Otherwise the entry spaces work like the other globe spaces. A piece which would have landed on a star instead moves to the next star.
In Vietnam, it is called "Cờ cá ngựa", where the game is modeled after a horse race with the tokens modeled as horse heads. In this variation, a 1 is given equal status to a 6 (meaning that the player can enter a token into play and can roll again). Furthermore, once a player's token reaches their home column, it can only go up each square with an exact roll. This means that a person outside the column must roll a 1 to enter the first square, a 2 afterwards to enter the second, and so forth.
African
In some parts of Africa the following rules are reportedly played:
A doubled block also blocks trailing pieces of the player who created the block, or blocks them unless they roll the exact number to land on the block; additionally, the doubled block cannot move forwards until the block that landed upon it moves off again. This reduces the tactical advantage of a block and makes the game more interesting.
If the two players sitting opposite are partners, the players can exchange numbers.
There are four safety squares on the board, like castle squares in Pachisi, as well as the safe home squares, where a piece may able to move forwards or backwards and start their turn before previous player finishes.
A piece landing on a square with an opponent's piece not only sends the opponent piece back to the starting area but also sends the landing piece to its home square.
A player cannot move their first piece into the home column unless they have captured at least one piece of any of the opponents.
If a player captures the piece of another player, they are awarded a bonus roll. If in the bonus roll, another player's piece is captured, another bonus roll is awarded and so on.
Explanatory notes
References
Citations
General bibliography
Attribution
External links
Board games introduced in the 1890s
Children's board games
Cross and circle games
Games and sports introduced in 1896
Indian inventions
Pakistani games |
18668 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus | Lotus | Lotus may refer to:
Plants
Lotus (plant), various botanical taxa commonly known as lotus
Lotus (genus), a genus of terrestrial plants in the family Fabaceae
Lotus flower, a symbolically important aquatic Asian plant also known as Indian or sacred lotus
Lotus tree, a plant in Greek and Roman mythology
Places
Lotus, California, an unincorporated community in El Dorado County, California, United States
Lotus, Indiana, an unincorporated community in Union County, Indiana, United States
Lotus, Florida, a former village in Brevard County, Florida, United States
Lotus, Kentucky, an unincorporated community in Bullitt County, Kentucky, United States
Brands
Lotus Cars, a British motor vehicle manufacturer
Lotus F1 Team, a British Formula One team that started competing in the 2012 season
Team Lotus, a British Formula One racing team that competed between 1954 and 1994
Pacific Team Lotus, the successor team that resulted from a merger with Pacific and competed in Formula One in 1995
Lotus GP, a French GP2 and GP3 racing team sponsored by Lotus Cars
Team Lotus (2010–11), a Malaysian Formula One racing team that began racing in 2010 as Lotus Racing and became the Caterham F1 Team at the end of the 2011 season
Lotus, a brand of watches, part of the Festina Group
Lotus Foods, an organic rice company
Lotus Bakeries, a Belgian bakery founded in 1932
Lotus Software, a personal computer software company, best known for:
Lotus Notes, collaborative software, personal information manager and e-mail client now known as IBM Notes
Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet application
Lotus Supercenter, an Asian supermarket chain owned by the Charoen Pokphand Group
Tesco Lotus, a hypermarket chain in Thailand, formerly owned by Lotus Supercenter
Religion
Sacred lotus in religious art
Lotus, one of the Ashtamangala (Eight Auspicious Symbols)
Lotus Sutra, an influential Mahayana sutra
Media and entertainment
Music
Lotus (guitar), an instrument manufacturer
Lotus (American band), an instrumental rock band
Lotus (Hong Kong band), a 1960s pop band
Albums
Lotus (Christina Aguilera album) (2012), by Christina Aguilera
Lotus (Elisa album) (2003), by Elisa
Lotus (Santana album) (1974), by Santana
Lotus (2009), by Haywyre
Songs
"Lotus" (Arashi song), by Arashi
"Lotus" (Dir En Grey song), a song by Dir En Grey
"Lotus" (R.E.M. song), by R.E.M.
"Lotus", a song from Cage The Elephant's debut album
”Lotus”, a song by Lil Uzi Vert on the album Lil Uzi Vert vs. the World 2
"Lotus", a song by Minus the Bear on Planet of Ice
"Lotus", a song by Susumu Hirasawa on the 1995 album Sim City
Other media
Lotus (board game), a strategy game
Lotus (magazine), a trilingual political and cultural magazine
Lotus (video game series), a videogame series based on Lotus cars
Lotus, the codename of a character in the 2009 video game Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
Vessels
Lotus (1826 ship), English ship
Lotus (motor vessel), a houseboat yacht
S.S. Lotus, a French steamship involved in the Lotus case criminal trial
S.S.S. Lotus, an American sailing vessel
Other uses
Law of the unconscious statistician (LOTUS), a statistics theorem used to calculate the expected value of a function
See also
Lotus-eaters, a Greek mythological people
Lotus position, a posture used in yoga, meditation & Zen Buddhism
Lotus Temple, Baha'i House of Worship in Delhi, India
The Blue Lotus, a Tintin book by Hergé
The White Lotus, an HBO satire comedy miniseries
Lotos (disambiguation) |
18669 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life%20expectancy | Life expectancy | Life expectancy is a statistical measure of the average time an organism is expected to live, based on the year of its birth, its current age, and other demographic factors like sex. The most commonly used measure is life expectancy at birth (LEB), which can be defined in two ways. Cohort LEB is the mean length of life of a birth cohort (all individuals born in a given year) and can be computed only for cohorts born so long ago that all their members have died. Period LEB is the mean length of life of a hypothetical cohort assumed to be exposed, from birth through death, to the mortality rates observed at a given year.
National LEB figures reported by national agencies and international organizations for human populations are estimates of period LEB. In the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, human LEB was 26 years; the 2010 world LEB was 67.2 years. In recent years, LEB in Eswatini (Swaziland) is 49, while LEB in Japan is 83. The combination of high infant mortality and deaths in young adulthood from accidents, epidemics, plagues, wars, and childbirth, before modern medicine was widely available, significantly lowers LEB. For example, a society with a LEB of 40 would have relatively few people dying at exactly 40: most will die before 30 or after 55. In populations with high infant mortality rates, LEB is highly sensitive to the rate of death in the first few years of life. Because of this sensitivity, LEB can be grossly misinterpreted, leading to the belief that a population with a low LEB would have a small proportion of older people. A different measure, such as life expectancy at age 5 (e5), can be used to exclude the effect of infant mortality to provide a simple measure of overall mortality rates other than in early childhood. Aggregate population measures such as the proportion of the population in various age groups, are also used alongside individual-based measures like formal life expectancy when analyzing population structure and dynamics. However, pre-modern societies still had universally higher mortality rates and lower life expectancies at every age for both genders, and this example was relatively rare. In societies with life expectancies of 30, for instance, a 40-year remaining timespan at age 5 may not have been uncommon, but a 60-year one was.
Until the middle of the 20th century, infant mortality was approximately 40–60% of the total mortality. Excluding child mortality, the average life expectancy during the 12th–19th centuries was approximately 55 years. If a medieval person survived childhood, they had about a 50% chance of living 50–55 years, instead of only 25–40 years.
Mathematically, life expectancy is the mean number of years of life remaining at a given age. It is denoted by , which is the mean number of subsequent years of life for someone at age , with a particular mortality. Life expectancy, longevity, and maximum lifespan are not synonymous. Longevity refers to the relatively long lifespan of some members of a population. Maximum lifespan is the age at death for the longest-lived individual of a species. Because life expectancy is an average, a particular person may die many years before or many years after the "expected" survival.
Life expectancy is also used in plant or animal ecology, and in life tables (also known as actuarial tables). The concept of life expectancy may also be used in the context of manufactured objects, though the related term shelf life is commonly used for consumer products, and the terms "mean time to breakdown" (MTTB) and "mean time between failures" (MTBF) are used in engineering.
Human patterns
Maximum
Records of human lifespan above age 100 are highly susceptible to errors. For example, the previous world-record holder for human lifespan, Carrie White, was uncovered as a simple typographic error after more than two decades. The longest verified lifespan for any human is that of Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who is verified as having lived to age 122 years, 164 days, between 21 February 1875 and 4 August 1997. This is referred to as the "maximum life span," which is the upper boundary of life, the maximum number of years any human is known to have lived. A theoretical study shows that the maximum life expectancy at birth is limited by the human life characteristic value δ, which is around 104 years. According to a study by biologists Bryan G. Hughes and Siegfried Hekimi, there is no evidence for limit on human lifespan. However, this view has been questioned on the basis of error patterns.
Variation over time
The following information is derived from the 1961 Encyclopædia Britannica and other sources, some with questionable accuracy. Unless otherwise stated, it represents estimates of the life expectancies of the world population as a whole. In many instances, life expectancy varied considerably according to class and gender.
Life expectancy at birth takes account of infant mortality and child mortality but not prenatal mortality.
Life expectancy increases with age as the individual survives the higher mortality rates associated with childhood. For instance, the table gives the life expectancy at birth among 13th-century English nobles at 30. Having survived to the age of 21, a male member of the English aristocracy in this period could expect to live:
1200–1300: to age 64
1300–1400: to age 45 (because of the bubonic plague)
1400–1500: to age 69
1500–1550: to age 71
17th-century English life expectancy was only about 35 years, largely because infant and child mortality remained high. Life expectancy was under 25 years in the early Colony of Virginia, and in seventeenth-century New England, about 40 percent died before reaching adulthood. During the Industrial Revolution, the life expectancy of children increased dramatically. The under-5 mortality rate in London decreased from 74.5% in 1730–1749 to 31.8% in 1810–1829.
Public health measures are credited with much of the recent increase in life expectancy. During the 20th century, despite a brief drop due to the 1918 flu pandemic starting around that time the average lifespan in the United States increased by more than 30 years, of which 25 years can be attributed to advances in public health.
The life expectancy for people reaching adulthood is greater, — ignoring infant and child mortality. For instance, 16th Century English and Welsh women at 15 years may have had an life expectancy of around 35 more years (50 total).
Regional variations
Human beings are expected to live on average 30–40 years in Eswatini and 82.6 years in Japan, but the latter's recorded life expectancy may have been very slightly increased by counting many infant deaths as stillborn. An analysis published in 2011 in The Lancet attributes Japanese life expectancy to equal opportunities and public health as well as diet.
There are great variations in life expectancy between different parts of the world, mostly caused by differences in public health, medical care, and diet. The impact of AIDS on life expectancy is particularly notable in many African countries. According to projections made by the United Nations (UN) in 2002, the life expectancy at birth for 2010–2015 (if HIV/AIDS did not exist) would have been:
70.7 years instead of 31.6 years, Botswana
69.9 years instead of 41.5 years, South Africa
70.5 years instead of 31.8 years, Zimbabwe
Actual life expectancy in Botswana declined from 65 in 1990 to 49 in 2000 before increasing to 66 in 2011. In South Africa, life expectancy was 63 in 1990, 57 in 2000, and 58 in 2011. And in Zimbabwe, life expectancy was 60 in 1990, 43 in 2000, and 54 in 2011.
During the last 200 years, African countries have generally not had the same improvements in mortality rates that have been enjoyed by countries in Asia, Latin America, and Europe.
In the United States, African-American people have shorter life expectancies than their European-American counterparts. For example, white Americans born in 2010 are expected to live until age 78.9, but black Americans only until age 75.1. This 3.8-year gap, however, is the lowest it has been since 1975 at the latest. The greatest difference was 7.1 years in 1993. In contrast, Asian-American women live the longest of all ethnic groups in the United States, with a life expectancy of 85.8 years. The life expectancy of Hispanic Americans is 81.2 years. According to the new government reports in the US, life expectancy in the country dropped again because of the rise in suicide and drug overdose rates. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) found nearly 70,000 more Americans died in 2017 than in 2016, with rising rates of death among 25- to 44-year-olds.
Cities also experience a wide range of life expectancy based on neighborhood breakdowns. This is largely due to economic clustering and poverty conditions that tend to associate based on geographic location. Multi-generational poverty found in struggling neighborhoods also contributes. In United States cities such as Cincinnati, the life expectancy gap between low income and high-income neighborhoods touches 20 years.
Economic circumstances
Economic circumstances also affect life expectancy. For example, in the United Kingdom, life expectancy in the wealthiest and richest areas is several years higher than in the poorest areas. This may reflect factors such as diet and lifestyle, as well as access to medical care. It may also reflect a selective effect: people with chronic life-threatening illnesses are less likely to become wealthy or to reside in affluent areas. In Glasgow, the disparity is amongst the highest in the world: life expectancy for males in the heavily deprived Calton area stands at 54, which is 28 years less than in the affluent area of Lenzie, which is the only 8 km away.
A 2013 study found a pronounced relationship between economic inequality and life expectancy. However, a study by José A. Tapia Granados and Ana Diez Roux at the University of Michigan found that life expectancy actually increased during the Great Depression, and during recessions and depressions in general. The authors suggest that when people are working at a more extreme degree during prosperous economic times, they undergo more stress, exposure to pollution, and the likelihood of injury among other longevity-limiting factors.
Life expectancy is also likely to be affected by exposure to high levels of highway air pollution or industrial air pollution. This is one way that occupation can have a major effect on life expectancy. Coal miners (and in prior generations, asbestos cutters) often have lower life expectancies than average. Other factors affecting an individual's life expectancy are genetic disorders, drug use, tobacco smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, obesity, access to health care, diet, and exercise.
Sex differences
In the present, female human life expectancy is greater than that of males, despite females having higher morbidity rates (see Health Survival paradox). There are many potential reasons for this. Traditional arguments tend to favor sociology-environmental factors: historically, men have generally consumed more tobacco, alcohol and drugs than women in most societies, and are more likely to die from many associated diseases such as lung cancer, tuberculosis and cirrhosis of the liver. Men are also more likely to die from injuries, whether unintentional (such as occupational, war or car accidents) or intentional (suicide). Men are also more likely to die from most of the leading causes of death (some already stated above) than women. Some of these in the United States include cancer of the respiratory system, motor vehicle accidents, suicide, cirrhosis of the liver, emphysema, prostate cancer, and coronary heart disease. These far outweigh the female mortality rate from breast cancer and cervical cancer. In the past, mortality rates for females in child-bearing age groups were higher than for males at the same age.
A paper from 2015 found that female fetuses have a higher mortality rate than male fetuses. This finding contradicts papers dating from 2002 and earlier that attribute the male sex to higher in-utero mortality rates. Among the smallest premature babies (those under 2 pounds or 900 g), females have a higher survival rate. At the other extreme, about 90% of individuals aged 110 are female. The difference in life expectancy between men and women in the United States dropped from 7.8 years in 1979 to 5.3 years in 2005, with women expected to live to age 80.1 in 2005. Data from the UK shows the gap in life expectancy between men and women decreasing in later life. This may be attributable to the effects of infant mortality and young adult death rates.
Some argue that shorter male life expectancy is merely another manifestation of the general rule, seen in all mammal species, that larger-sized individuals within a species tend, on average, to have shorter lives. This biological difference occurs because women have more resistance to infections and degenerative diseases.
In her extensive review of the existing literature, Kalben concluded that the fact that women live longer than men was observed at least as far back as 1750 and that, with relatively equal treatment, today males in all parts of the world experience greater mortality than females. Kallen's study, however, was restricted to data in Western Europe alone, where the demographic transition occurred relatively early. United Nations statistics from mid-twentieth century onward, show that in all parts of the world, females have a higher life expectancy at age 60 than males. Of 72 selected causes of death, only 6 yielded greater female than male age-adjusted death rates in 1998 in the United States. Except for birds, for almost all of the animal species studied, males have higher mortality than females. Evidence suggests that the sex mortality differential in people is due to both biological/genetic and environmental/behavioral risk and protective factors.
There is a recent suggestion that mitochondrial mutations that shorten lifespan continue to be expressed in males (but less so in females) because mitochondria are inherited only through the mother. By contrast, natural selection weeds out mitochondria that reduce female survival; therefore such mitochondria are less likely to be passed on to the next generation. This thus suggests that females tend to live longer than males. The authors claim that this is a partial explanation.
In March 2020 researchers reported that their review supports the unguarded X hypothesis: according to this hypothesis one reason for why the average lifespan of males isn't as long as that of females––by 18% on average according to the study––is that they have a Y chromosome which can't protect an individual from harmful genes expressed on the X chromosome, while a duplicate X chromosome, as present in female organisms, can ensure harmful genes aren't expressed.
Before the Industrial Revolution, men lived longer than women on average. In developed countries, starting around 1880, death rates decreased faster among women, leading to differences in mortality rates between males and females. Before 1880 death rates were the same. In people born after 1900, the death rate of 50- to 70-year-old men was double that of women of the same age. Men may be more vulnerable to cardiovascular disease than women, but this susceptibility was evident only after deaths from other causes, such as infections, started to decline. Most of the difference in life expectancy between the sexes is accounted for by differences in the rate of death by cardiovascular diseases among persons aged 50–70.
Genetics
The heritability of lifespan is estimated to be less than 10%, meaning the majority of variation in lifespan is attributable due to differences in environment rather than genetic variation. However, researchers have identified regions of the genome which can influence the length of life and the number of years lived in good health. For example, a genome-wide association study of 1 million lifespans found 12 genetic loci which influenced lifespan by modifying susceptibility to cardiovascular and smoking-related disease. The locus with the largest effect is APOE. Carriers of the APOE ε4 allele live approximately one year less than average (per copy of the ε4 allele), mainly due to increased risk of Alzheimer's disease.
In July 2020, scientists identified 10 genomic loci with consistent effects across multiple lifespan-related traits, including healthspan, lifespan, and longevity. The genes affected by variation in these loci highlighted haem metabolism as a promising candidate for further research within the field. This study suggests that high levels of iron in the blood likely reduce, and genes involved in metabolising iron likely increase healthy years of life in humans.
A follow-up study which investigated the genetics of frailty and self-rated health in addition to healthspan, lifespan, and longevity also highlighted haem metabolism as an important pathway, and found genetic variants which lower blood protein levels of LPA and VCAM1 were associated with increased healthy lifespan.
Text and images are available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Centenarians
In developed countries, the number of centenarians is increasing at approximately 5.5% per year, which means doubling the centenarian population every 13 years, pushing it from some 455,000 in 2009 to 4.1 million in 2050. Japan is the country with the highest ratio of centenarians (347 for every 1 million inhabitants in September 2010). Shimane Prefecture had an estimated 743 centenarians per million inhabitants.
In the United States, the number of centenarians grew from 32,194 in 1980 to 71,944 in November 2010 (232 centenarians per million inhabitants).
Mental illness
Mental illness is reported to occur in approximately 18% of the average American population.
The mentally ill have been shown to have a 10- to a 25-year reduction in life expectancy.
Generally, the reduction of lifespan in the mentally ill population compared to the mentally stable population has been studied and documented.
The greater mortality of people with mental disorders may be due to death from injury, from co-morbid conditions, or medication side effects.
For instance, psychiatric medications can increase the risk of developing diabetes. It has been shown that the psychiatric medication olanzapine can increase risk of developing agranulocytosis among other comorbidities. Psychiatric medicines also affect the gastrointestinal tract, where the mentally ill have a four times risk of gastrointestinal disease.
As of the year 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers have found an increased risk of death in the mentally ill.
Other illnesses
The life expectancy of people with diabetes, which is 9.3% of the U.S. population, is reduced by roughly ten to twenty years. People over 60 years old with Alzheimer's disease have about a 50% life expectancy of 3 to 10 years. Other demographics that tend to have a lower life expectancy than average include transplant recipients, and the obese.
Education
Education on all levels has been shown to be strongly associated with increased life expectancy. This association may be due partly to higher income, which can lead to increased life expectancy. Despite the association, there is no causal relationship between higher education and life expectancy.
According to a paper from 2015, the mortality rate for the Caucasian population in the United States from 1993 to 2001 is four times higher for those who did not complete high school compared to those who have at least 16 years of education. In fact, within the U.S. adult population, those who have less than a high school education have the shortest life expectancies.
Pre-school education also plays a large role in life expectancy. It was found that high-quality early-stage childhood education had positive effects on health. Researchers discovered this by analyzing the results of the Carolina Abecedarian Project (ABC) finding that the disadvantaged children who were randomly assigned to treatment had lower instances of risk factors for cardiovascular and metabolic diseases in their mid-30s.
Evolution and aging rate
Various species of plants and animals, including humans, have different lifespans. Evolutionary theory states that organisms that, by virtue of their defenses or lifestyle, live for long periods and avoid accidents, disease, predation, etc. are likely to have genes that code for slow aging, which often translates to good cellular repair. One theory is that if predation or accidental deaths prevent most individuals from living to an old age, there will be less natural selection to increase the intrinsic life span. That finding was supported in a classic study of opossums by Austad; however, the opposite relationship was found in an equally prominent study of guppies by Reznick.
One prominent and very popular theory states that lifespan can be lengthened by a tight budget for food energy called caloric restriction. Caloric restriction observed in many animals (most notably mice and rats) shows a near doubling of life span from a very limited calorific intake. Support for the theory has been bolstered by several new studies linking lower basal metabolic rate to increased life expectancy. That is the key to why animals like giant tortoises can live so long. Studies of humans with life spans of at least 100 have shown a link to decreased thyroid activity, resulting in their lowered metabolic rate.
In a broad survey of zoo animals, no relationship was found between investment of the animal in reproduction and its life span.
Calculation
The starting point for calculating life expectancy is the age-specific death rates of the population members. If a large amount of data is available, a statistical population can be created that allow the age-specific death rates to be simply taken as the mortality rates actually experienced at each age (the number of deaths divided by the number of years "exposed to risk" in each data cell). However, it is customary to apply smoothing to iron out, as much as possible, the random statistical fluctuations from one year of age to the next. In the past, a very simple model used for this purpose was the Gompertz function, but more sophisticated methods are now used.
These are the most common methods now used for that purpose:
to fit a mathematical formula, such as an extension of the Gompertz function, to the data.
for relatively small amounts of data, to look at an established mortality table that was previously derived for a larger population and make a simple adjustment to it (as multiply by a constant factor) to fit the data.
with a large number of data points, one looks at the mortality rates actually experienced at each age and applies to smooth (as by cubic splines).
While the data required are easily identified in the case of humans, the computation of life expectancy of industrial products and wild animals involves more indirect techniques. The life expectancy and demography of wild animals are often estimated by capturing, marking, and recapturing them. The life of a product, more often termed shelf life, is also computed using similar methods. In the case of long-lived components, such as those used in critical applications: in aircraft, methods like accelerated aging are used to model the life expectancy of a component.
The age-specific death rates are calculated separately for separate groups of data that are believed to have different mortality rates (such as males and females, and perhaps smokers and non-smokers if data are available separately for those groups) and are then used to calculate a life table from which one can calculate the probability of surviving to each age. In actuarial notation, the probability of surviving from age to age is denoted and the probability of dying during age (between ages and ) is denoted . For example, if 10% of a group of people alive at their 90th birthday die before their 91st birthday, the age-specific death probability at 90 would be 10%. That is a probability, not a mortality rate.
The expected future lifetime of a life age in whole years (the curtate expected lifetime of (x)) is denoted by the symbol . It is the conditional expected future lifetime (in whole years), assuming survival to age . If denotes the curtate future lifetime at ,
Substituting in the sum and simplifying gives the equivalent formula: If the assumption is made that on average, people live a half year in the year of death, the complete expectation of future lifetime at age is .
Life expectancy is by definition an arithmetic mean. It can also be calculated by integrating the survival curve from 0 to positive infinity (or equivalently to the maximum lifespan, sometimes called 'omega'). For an extinct or completed cohort (all people born in the year 1850, for example), it can of course simply be calculated by averaging the ages at death. For cohorts with some survivors, it is estimated by using mortality experience in recent years. The estimates are called period cohort life expectancies.
It is important to note that the statistic is usually based on past mortality experience and assumes that the same age-specific mortality rates will continue. Thus, such life expectancy figures need to be adjusted for temporal trends before calculating how long a currently living individual of a particular age is expected to live. Period life expectancy remains a commonly used statistic to summarize the current health status of a population.
However, for some purposes, such as pensions calculations, it is usual to adjust the life table used by assuming that age-specific death rates will continue to decrease over the years, as they have usually done in the past. That is often done by simply extrapolating past trends, but some models exist to account for the evolution of mortality like the Lee–Carter model.
As discussed above, on an individual basis, some factors correlate with longer life. Factors that are associated with variations in life expectancy include family history, marital status, economic status, physique, exercise, diet, drug use including smoking and alcohol consumption, disposition, education, environment, sleep, climate, and health care.
Healthy life expectancy
To assess the quality of these additional years of life, 'healthy life expectancy' has been calculated for the last 30 years. Since 2001, the World Health Organization has published statistics called Healthy life expectancy (HALE), defined as the average number of years that a person can expect to live in "full health" excluding the years lived in less than full health due to disease and/or injury. Since 2004, Eurostat publishes annual statistics called Healthy Life Years (HLY) based on reported activity limitations. The United States uses similar indicators in the framework of the national health promotion and disease prevention plan "Healthy People 2010". More and more countries are using health expectancy indicators to monitor the health of their population.
The long-standing quest for longer life led in the 2010s to a more promising focus on increasing HALE, also known as a person's "healthspan". Besides the benefits of keeping people healthier longer, a goal is to reduce health-care expenses on the many diseases associated with cellular senescence. Approaches being explored include fasting, exercise, and senolytic drugs.
Forecasting
Forecasting life expectancy and mortality form an important subdivision of demography. Future trends in life expectancy have huge implications for old-age support programs like U.S. Social Security and pension since the cash flow in these systems depends on the number of recipients who are still living (along with the rate of return on the investments or the tax rate in pay-as-you-go systems). With longer life expectancies, the systems see increased cash outflow; if the systems underestimate increases in life-expectancies, they will be unprepared for the large payments that will occur, as humans live longer and longer.
Life expectancy forecasting is usually based on two different approaches:
Forecasting the life expectancy directly, generally using ARIMA or other time-series extrapolation procedures: that has the advantage of simplicity, but it cannot account for changes in mortality at specific ages, and the forecast number cannot be used to derive other life table results. Analyses and forecasts using this approach can be done with any common statistical/mathematical software package, like EViews, R, SAS, Stata, Matlab, or SPSS.
Forecasting age-specific death rates and computing the life expectancy from the results with life table methods: that is usually more complex than simply forecasting life expectancy because the analyst must deal with correlated age-specific mortality rates, but it seems to be more robust than simple one-dimensional time series approaches. It also yields a set of age specific-rates that may be used to derive other measures, such as survival curves or life expectancies at different ages. The most important approach within this group is the Lee-Carter model, which uses the singular value decomposition on a set of transformed age-specific mortality rates to reduce their dimensionality to a single time series, forecasts that time series and then recovers a full set of age-specific mortality rates from that forecasted value. The software includes Professor Rob J. Hyndman's R package called `demography` and UC Berkeley's LCFIT system.
Policy uses
Life expectancy is one of the factors in measuring the Human Development Index (HDI) of each nation along with adult literacy, education, and standard of living.
Life expectancy is also used in describing the physical quality of life of an area or, for an individual when the value of a life settlement is determined a life insurance policy is sold for a cash asset.
Disparities in life expectancy are often cited as demonstrating the need for better medical care or increased social support. A strongly associated indirect measure is income inequality. For the top 21 industrialized countries, if each person is counted equally, life expectancy is lower in more unequal countries (r = −0.907). There is a similar relationship among states in the US (r = −0.620).
Life expectancy vs. maximum life span
Life expectancy is commonly confused with the average age an adult could expect to live. This confusion may create the expectation that an adult would be unlikely to exceed an average life expectancy, even though, with all statistical probability, an adult, who has already avoided many statistical causes of adolescent mortality, should be expected to outlive the average life expectancy calculated from birth. One must compare the life expectancy of the period after childhood, to estimate the life expectancy of an adult. Life expectancy can change dramatically after childhood, even in preindustrial times as is demonstrated by the Roman Life Expectancy table, which estimates life expectancy to be 25 years at birth, but 53 years upon reaching age 25. Studies like Plymouth Plantation; "Dead at Forty" and Life Expectancy by Age, 1850–2004 similarly show a dramatic increase in life expectancy once adulthood was reached.
Life expectancy differs from maximum life span. Life expectancy is an average for all people in the population — including those who die shortly after birth, those who die in early adulthood (e.g. childbirth, war), and those who live unimpeded until old age. Maximum lifespan is an individual-specific concept — maximum lifespan is, therefore, an upper bound rather than an average. Science author Christopher Wanjek said "has the human race increased its life span? Not at all. This is one of the biggest misconceptions about old age." The maximum life span, or oldest age a human can live, may be constant. Further, there are many examples of people living significantly longer than the average life expectancy of their time period, such as Socrates (71), Saint Anthony the Great (105), Michelangelo (88), and John Adams, 2nd president of the United States (90).
However, anthropologist John D. Hawks criticizes the popular conflation of life span (life expectancy) and maximum life span when popular science writers falsely imply that the average adult human does not live longer than their ancestors. He writes, "[a]ge-specific mortality rates have declined across the adult lifespan. A smaller fraction of adults die at 20, at 30, at 40, at 50, and so on across the lifespan. As a result, we live longer on average... In every way we can measure, human lifespans are longer today than in the immediate past, and longer today than they were 2000 years ago... age-specific mortality rates in adults really have reduced substantially."
See also
Increasing life expectancy
Notes
a. In standard actuarial notation, e refers to the expected future lifetime of (x) in whole years, while eͦ (with a ring above the e) denotes the complete expected future lifetime of (x), including the fraction.
References
Further reading
Leonid A. Gavrilov & Natalia S. Gavrilova (1991), The Biology of Life Span: A Quantitative Approach. New York: Harwood Academic Publisher,
Kochanek, Kenneth D., Elizabeth Arias, and Robert N. Anderson (2013), How Did Cause of Death Contribute to Racial Differences in Life Expectancy in the United States in 2010?. Hyattsville, Md.: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics.
External links
Charts for all countries
Our World In Data – Life Expectancy—Visualizations of how life expectancy around the world has changed historically (by Max Roser). Includes life expectancy for different age groups. Charts for all countries, world maps, and links to more data sources.
Global Agewatch has the latest internationally comparable statistics on life expectancy from 195 countries.
Rank Order—Life expectancy at birth from the CIA's World Factbook.
Annual Life Tables since 1966; Decennial Life Tables since 1890 from the US Centers for Disease Controls and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics.
Life expectancy in Roman times from the University of Texas.
Animal lifespans: Animal Lifespans from Tesarta Online (Internet Archive); The Life Span of Animals from Dr. Bob's All Creatures Site.
Actuarial science
Demographic economics
Senescence
Demography
Population |
18671 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesser%20Poland | Lesser Poland | Lesser Poland, often known by its Polish name Małopolska (), is a historical region situated in southern and south-eastern Poland. Its capital and largest city is Kraków. Throughout centuries, Lesser Poland developed a separate culture featuring diverse architecture, folk costumes, dances, cuisine, traditions and a rare Lesser Polish dialect. The region is rich in historical landmarks, monuments, castles, natural scenery and UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
The region should not be confused with the modern Lesser Poland Voivodeship, which covers only the southwestern part of Lesser Poland. Historical Lesser Poland was much larger than the current voivodeship that bears its name. It reached from Bielsko-Biała in the southwest as far as to Siedlce in the northeast. It consisted of the three voivodeships of Kraków, Sandomierz and Lublin.
It comprised almost 60,000 km2 in area; today's population in this area is about 9,000,000 inhabitants. Its landscape is mainly hilly, with the Carpathian Mountains and Tatra Mountain Range in the south; it is located in the basin of the upper Vistula river. It has been noted for its mighty aristocracy (magnateria) and wealthy nobility (szlachta).
Between the 14th and 18th century, the Lesser Poland Province of the Polish Crown also encompassed the historical region of Red Ruthenia. In the era of partitions, the southern part of Lesser Poland became known as Galicia, which was under Austrian control until Poland regained its independence in 1918. As a result of this long-lasting division, many inhabitants of the northern part of Lesser Poland (including those in such cities as Lublin, Radom, Kielce and Częstochowa) do not recognize their Lesser Polish identity.
However, while Lublin (Lubelskie) was declared an independent Voivodeship as early as 1474, it still has speakers of the Lesser Polish dialect.
Across history, many ethnic and religious minorities existed in Lesser Poland as they fled persecution from other areas or countries. Poland's once tolerant policy towards these minorities allowed them to flourish and create separate self-governing communities. Some minorities still remain, but are on the verge of extinction, most notably Wymysorys-speaking Vilamovians, Halcnovians, Gorals, Lemkos, Uplanders, and once Polish Jews and Walddeutsche Germans.
Geography and boundaries
Lesser Poland lies in the area of the upper confluence of the Vistula river and covers a large upland, including the Świętokrzyskie Mountains with the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland further west, Małopolska Upland, Sandomierz Basin, and Lublin Upland. Unlike other historical parts of the country, such as Kujawy, Mazovia, Podlachia, Pomerania, or Greater Poland, Lesser Poland is mainly hilly, with Poland's highest peak, Rysy, located within the borders of the province. Flat are northern and central areas of the province – around Tarnobrzeg, Stalowa Wola, Radom and Siedlce, also valleys of the main rivers – the Vistula, the Pilica, and the San. Apart from Rysy, there are several other peaks located in the province – Pilsko, Babia Góra, Turbacz, as well as Łysica in the Świętokrzyskie Mountains. The southern part of the province is covered by the Carpathian Mountains, which are made of smaller ranges, such as Pieniny, Tatry, and Beskidy.
Almost the whole area is located in the Vistula Basin, with the exception of the western and southern parts, belonging to the Odra and Dunaj Basins. The main rivers of the province are the Vistula, upper Warta, Soła, Skawa, Raba, Dunajec, Wisłok, Wisłoka, San, Wieprz, Przemsza, Nida, Kamienna, Radomka, and Pilica. The major lakes of the province are Lake Rożnów, Lake Czchów, Lake Dobczyce, Lake Czorsztyn, Lake Czaniec, Lake Międzybrodzie, Lake Klimkówka and Żywiec Lake. Most of them are man-made reservoirs.
Lesser Poland stretches from the Carpathians in the south to Pilica and Liwiec rivers to the north. It borders Mazovia to the north, Podlaskie to the northeast, Red Ruthenia to the east, Slovakia to the south, Silesia to the west, and Greater Poland to the northwest. Currently, the region is divided between Polish voivodeships – Lesser Poland Voivodeship (whole), Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship (whole), Silesian Voivodeship (eastern half), Podkarpackie Voivodeship (western part), Masovian Voivodeship (southern part), Łódź Voivodeship (southeastern corner), and Lublin Voivodeship (western part).
In Silesian Voivodeship, the border between Silesia and Lesser Poland is easy to draw, because, with only a few exceptions, it goes along boundaries of local counties. In the south, it goes along the western boundary of the ancient Duchy of Teschen, with the borderline along the Biała river, with Zwardoń, Milówka and Rajcza located in Lesser Poland. Bielsko-Biała is a city made up of two parts – Lesser Poland's Biala (also called Biala Krakowska), makes up the eastern half of the city, and only in 1951 was it merged with Silesian Bielsko. Further north, the border goes along the western boundaries of the cities of Jaworzno, and Sosnowiec, along the Przemsza and Brynica rivers. Then it goes northwest, leaving Czeladź, Siewierz, Koziegłowy, Blachownia, Kłobuck and Krzepice within Lesser Poland. From Krzepice, the border goes eastwards, towards Koniecpol, and along the Pilica river, with such towns as Przedborz, Opoczno, Drzewica, Białobrzegi, and Kozienice located within Lesser Poland. East of Białobrzegi, the boundary goes mainly along the Radomka river, to the Vistula. East of the Vistula, the boundary goes north of Łaskarzew and Żelechów, and south of Mazovian town of Garwolin, turning northwest. The northernmost point of the province is marked by the Liwiec river, with both Siedlce, and Łuków being part of Lesser Poland. The line then goes south, with Miedzyrzec Podlaski being part of the historical Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and Radzyń Podlaski as well as Parczew left in Lesser Poland.
Between the Vistula and the Bug Rivers, the eastern border of Lesser Poland goes west of Leczna, but east of Krasnystaw and Szczebrzeszyn, both of which historically belong to Red Ruthenia. Further south, Lesser Poland includes Frampol, and Biłgoraj, which lie in the southeastern corner on Lesser Poland's historical Lublin Voivodeship, close to the border with Red Ruthenia. The border then goes west of Biłgoraj, turning south, towards Leżajsk (which belongs to Red Ruthenia). The boundary between Lesser Poland and Red Ruthenia was described by Ukrainian historian and geographer Myron Korduba as being along the line Dukla – Krosno – Domaradz – Czudec – Krzeszów nad Sanem. The border towns of Lesser Poland were: Rudnik, Kolbuszowa, Ropczyce, Sędziszów Małopolski, Strzyżów, Jasło, Gorlice, and Biecz. The southern border of Lesser Poland goes along the Carpathian Mountains, and, except in a few cases, it has not changed for centuries. The cities of Leżajsk, Rzeszów, Sanok, Brzozów, and Krosno do not belong to historical Lesser Poland, as they are part of Red Ruthenia (Lwów Voivodeship, around today's Lviv, Ukraine).
Historically, Lesser Poland was divided into two lands - Kraków Land and Sandomierz Land, both of which emerged after the Testament of Bolesław III Krzywousty. In the 14th century, Sandomierz Voivodeship and Kraków Voivodeship were created, and in 1474, Lublin Voivodeship was carved out of three Sandomierz Voivodeship counties, located on the right bank of the Vistula. Historian Adolf Pawiński, who in the late 19th century was the director of the Polish Central Archives of Historical Records, estimated in his book "Polska XVI wieku pod względem geograficzno-statystycznym", that the size of Kraków Voivodeship was 19,028 km2. Sandomierz Voivodeship had an area of 25,762 km2, and Lublin Voivodeship had an area of 11,033 km2. Together with the Duchy of Siewierz (607 km2), and the parts of Spiš that belonged to Poland after the Treaty of Lubowla (1211 km2), the total area of Lesser Poland was 57,640 square kilometers. Apart from the three historic lands, Lesser Poland includes other smaller regions, such as Podhale, Ponidzie, and Zagłębie Dąbrowskie.
Origin of the name
Zygmunt Gloger in his work Historical geography of land of ancient Poland (Geografia historyczna ziem dawnej Polski) states that according to a Polish custom, whenever a new village was formed next to an older one, the name of the new entity was presented with an adjective little (or lesser), while the old village was described as greater. The same procedure was used in naming these two Polish provincesthe "older" one, the cradle of the Polish state, was called Greater Poland, while her "younger sister", which became part of Poland a few years later, was called Lesser Poland. The name Greater Poland (Polonia Maior) was for the first time used in 1242, by princes Boleslaw and Przemysław I, who named themselves Duces Majoris Poloniae (Princes of the Older Poland). Lesser Poland, or Polonia Minor, appeared for the first time in historical documents in 1493, in the Statutes of Piotrków, during the reign of King Jan Olbracht, to distinguish this province from Greater Poland (Polonia Maior).
History
Early period and Kingdom of Poland
In the first years of Polish statehood, southern Lesser Poland was inhabited by the West Slavic tribe of Vistulans, with two major centers in Kraków and Wiślica. Their land, which had probably been part of Great Moravia, and Bohemia, was annexed by Mieszko I of Poland some time in the late 10th century. Cosmas of Prague in his Chronicle of Bohemians wrote: "Polish prince Mieszko, a cunning man, seized by ruse the city of Kraków, killing with sword all Czechs he found there". Northern part of Lesser Poland (Lublin and Sandomierz) was probably inhabited by another tribe, the Lendians, and Dr Antoni Podraza, historian of the Jagiellonian University claims that ancient division of Lesser Poland into two major parts – Land (Duchy) of Kraków, and Land (Duchy) of Sandomierz, is based on the existence of two Slavic tribes in the area. However, exact location of the Lendians has not been determined to this day. Some historians speculate that they occupied Red Ruthenia, and their center was in Przemyśl.
Around the year 1000, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Kraków was created, and its borders covered whole area of Lesser Poland. During the reign of Casimir I the Restorer, Kraków for the first time became the capital of Poland (around 1040), since Greater Poland and Silesia, with main Polish urban centers, such as Gniezno and Poznań were ravaged by Duke Bretislaus I of Bohemia. In 1138, following the Testament of Bolesław III Krzywousty, the country was divided between his sons (see also Fragmentation of Poland). Bolesław III Wrymouth created the Seniorate Province, which, among others, consisted of Kraków. At the same time, Lesser Poland was divided into two parts, when its eastern part formed the Duchy of Sandomierz, carved by the ruler for his son Henry of Sandomierz.
During the fragmentation period, both lands of Lesser Poland were frequently ruled by the same prince. Among them were Bolesław IV the Curly, Mieszko III the Old, Casimir II the Just, Leszek I the White, Bolesław V the Chaste, Leszek II the Black, Władysław I the Elbow-high, and King of Bohemia, Wenceslaus II of Bohemia, who united Lesser Poland in 1290/1291. The province was pillaged during the Mongol invasion of Poland, when a combined army of Kraków and Sandomierz was destroyed by Baidar in the Battle of Chmielnik. The loss was so heavy that Norman Davies wrote: "At Chmielnik, the assembled nobility of Małopolska perished to a man." During their 1241, 1259, and 1287 invasions, the Mongols burned major cities of Lesser Poland, killing thousands of people. Furthermore, the province, especially its northeastern part, was often raided by the Lithuanians, Rusyns, Yotvingians, and Old Prussians. The city of Lublin suffered most frequently – among others, it was burnt by the Rusyns in 1244, the Lithuanians 1255, the Prussians in 1266, and the Yotvingians in 1282. Another center of the province, Sandomierz, was destroyed by the Tartars in 1260, and burnt by the Lithuanians in 1349.
Unlike other Polish provinces, especially Silesia, Lesser Poland did not undergo further fragmentation, and in the early 14th century became the core of the reunited nation (together with Greater Poland). The period of nation's fragmentation came to a symbolic end on 30 January 1320, when Władysław I the Elbow-high was crowned as King of Poland. The ceremony took place in Kraków's Wawel Cathedral, and the king of the reunited country decided to choose Kraków as the capital. Through 14th and 15th centuries, Lesser Poland's position as the most important province of the nation was cemented. It became visible during the reign of Casimir III the Great, who favored less known Lesser Poland's noble families, at the expense of Greater Poland's nobility. The reign of Casimir the Great was a period of growing prosperity of Lesser Poland. With high density of population, fertile soils and rich deposits of minerals (especially salt in Bochnia and Wieliczka, as well as lead in Olkusz), the province was the richest part of Poland. After annexation of Red Ruthenia, Lesser Poland lost its status of the borderland, and both regions created an economic bridge between Poland and the ports of the Black Sea. The king, who drew Jewish settlers from across Europe to his country, built several castles along western border of Lesser Poland, with the most notable ones in Skawina, Pieskowa Skała, Będzin, Lanckorona, Olkusz, Lelów, Bobolice, Krzepice, Ogrodzieniec, Ojców, Olsztyn, Bobolice, Mirów (see also Eagle Nests Trail). Furthermore, he built or strengthened castles in other parts of the province, such as Szydlow, Chęciny, Wiślica, Radom, Niedzica, Opoczno, Lublin, Sandomierz, as well as the Wawel Castle. Also, during his reign (1333–1370), Casimir the Great founded on Magdeburg rights several cities, urbanizing hitherto rural province. Among major Lesser Poland's cities founded by the King, there are:
{| class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align:center; width:90%;"
|-
! #
! City
! Founded
! Current voivodeship
|-
| 1.
| style="text-align:left;"| Kazimierz
| 1334
| now a district of Kraków
|-
| 2.
| style="text-align:left;"| Kłobuck
| 1339
| Silesian Voivodeship
|-
| 3.
| style="text-align:left;"| Dobczyce
| 1340
| Lesser Poland Voivodeship
|-
| 4.
| style="text-align:left;"| Grybów
| 1340
| Lesser Poland Voivodeship
|-
| 5.
| style="text-align:left;"| Tuchów
| 1340
|Lesser Poland Voivodeship
|-
| 6.
| style="text-align:left;"| Lelów
| 1340
| Silesian Voivodeship
|-
| 7.
| style="text-align:left;"| Myślenice
| 1342
| Lesser Poland Voivodeship
|-
| 8.
| style="text-align:left;"| Nowy Targ
| 1346
| Lesser Poland Voivodeship
|-
| 9.
| style="text-align:left;"| Biecz
| 1348
| Lesser Poland Voivodeship
|-
| 10.
| style="text-align:left;"| Krościenko nad Dunajcem
| 1348
| Lesser Poland Voivodeship
|-
| 11.
| style="text-align:left;"| Piwniczna-Zdrój
| 1348
| Lesser Poland Voivodeship
|-
| 12.
| style="text-align:left;"| Opoczno
| 1350
| Łódź Voivodeship
|-
| 13.
| style="text-align:left;"| Radom
| 1350
| Masovian Voivodeship
|-
| 14.
| style="text-align:left;"| Tymbark
| 1354
| Lesser Poland Voivodeship
|-
| 15.
| style="text-align:left;"| Pilzno
| 1354
| Subcarpathian Voivodeship
|-
| 16.
| style="text-align:left;"| Chęciny
| 1354
| Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship
|-
| 17.
| style="text-align:left;"| Proszowice
| 1358
| Lesser Poland Voivodeship
|-
| 18.
| style="text-align:left;"| Będzin
| 1358
|Silesian Voivodeship
|-
| 19.
| style="text-align:left;"| Dębica
| 1358
| Subcarpathian Voivodeship
|-
| 20.
| style="text-align:left;"| Stopnica
| 1362
| Lesser Poland Voivodeship
|-
| 21.
| style="text-align:left;"| Ropczyce
| 1362
| Subcarpathian Voivodeship
|-
| 22.
| style="text-align:left;"| Skawina
| 1364
| Lesser Poland Voivodeship
|-
| 23.
| style="text-align:left;"| Muszyna
| 1364
| Lesser Poland Voivodeship
|-
| 24.
| style="text-align:left;"| Jasło
| 1366
| Subcarpathian Voivodeship
|-
| 25.
| style="text-align:left;"| Brzostek
| 1366
| Subcarpathian Voivodeship
|-
| 26.
| style="text-align:left;"| Wojnicz
| 1369
| Lesser Poland Voivodeship
|}
In the Kingdom of Poland, Lesser Poland was made of three voivodeships – Kraków Voivodeship, Sandomierz Voivodeship, and Lublin Voivodeship, created in 1474 out of eastern part of the Sandomierz Voivodeship. Borders of the province remained unchanged until 1772. The only exception was large part of contemporary Upper Silesia (the area around Bytom, Toszek, Siewierz, and Oświęcim), which belonged to Duchy of Kraków until 1179. In that year, prince of Kraków Casimir II the Just, handed these lands to Prince of Opole Mieszko I Tanglefoot. The Duchy of Siewierz, ruled since 1443 by the Archbishop of Kraków, merged with Lesser Poland in 1790. Other Silesian realms lost in 1179, also returned to Lesser Poland – Duchy of Zator (in 1513), and Duchy of Oświęcim (1564). Both duchies merged into a Silesian County of the Kraków Voivodeship, and shared the fate of Lesser Poland. Apart from Jews, among other ethnic minorities of the province were the Walddeutsche, who settled the borderland of Lesser Poland and Red Ruthenia (14th through 17th centuries). In the Middle Ages, the Germans inhabited several cities of Lesser Poland, especially Kraków and Sandomierz (see Rebellion of wójt Albert).
In the late Middle Ages, Lesser Poland gradually became the center of Polish statehood, with Kraków being the capital of the country from the mid-11th century until 1596. Its nobility ruled Poland when Queen Jadwiga was too young to control the state, and the Union of Krewo with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was the brainchild of Lesser Poland's szlachta.
In the 15th and 16th centuries, Lesser Poland remained the most important part of the country. After the death of Casimir the Great, Lesser Poland's nobility promoted Louis I of Hungary as the new king, later supporting his daughter Jadwiga of Poland in exchange for Privilege of Koszyce. Since Jadwiga, crowned on 16 October 1384, was too young to rule the country, Poland was in fact governed by the Lesser Poland's nobility, who decided to find her a husband, Grand Duke of Lithuania, Jogaila. Consequently, unions of Poland and Lithuania at Krewo and Horodło were the brainchildren of Lesser Poland's nobility, among whom the most influential individuals were Spytek z Melsztyna, and cardinal Zbigniew Olesnicki. Other famous Lesser Poland's families are Lubomirski family, Kmita family, Tarnowski family, Potocki family, Sobieski family, Koniecpolski family, Ossolinski family, Poniatowski family.
Since Lesser Poland was the most important province of the country, several important events took place on its territory. In 1364, Casimir the Great called the Congress of Kraków, and in 1401, the Union of Vilnius and Radom was signed. In 1505 in Radom, the Sejm adopted the Nihil novi title, which forbade the King to issue laws without the consent of the nobility. In the same year, also in the same city, Polish law was codified in the Łaski's Statute, and the Crown Tribunal (the highest appeal court in the Crown of the Polish Kingdom) held its sessions in Lublin. In 1525, the Treaty of Kraków was signed, ending the Polish–Teutonic War. Lesser Poland also is home to the oldest Polish university – the Jagiellonian University, founded in 1364 by Casimir the Great, and several outstanding figures of early Polish culture were born here, such as Jan Kochanowski, Mikołaj Rej, Jan z Lublina, Mikołaj Gomółka, Maciej Miechowita, Marcin Kromer, Łukasz Górnicki, and Mikołaj Radomski.
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
In the 16th century, Lesser Poland retained its position as the most important province of the country. As no major conflicts took place on its territory, it was the center of Renaissance in Poland. The province was home to numerous scholars, writers and statesmen, and it was here where Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was created in 1569 (see Union of Lublin). In the Commonwealth, Lesser Poland proper was the base of the Province of Lesser Poland, which covered southern lands of the vast country. The province was made of Lesser Poland itself, also Red Ruthenia, Volhynia, Podolia, and Ukrainian voivodeships – Kijów Voivodeship (Kyiv), Czernihów Voivodeship (Chernihiv), and Bracław Voivodeship (Bratslav), which, until 1569, had been part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
The period in Polish history known as the Polish Golden Age was very fortunate for Lesser Poland. Kings of the Jagiellonian dynasty, especially Sigismund I the Old (himself born in Lesser Poland's Kozienice), and his son Sigismund II Augustus (born in Kraków), resided in Kraków, which was the capital of the immense Polish – Lithuanian Commonwealth. Lesser Poland's prosperity was reflected in numerous examples of Renaissance architecture complexes, built across the province. In 1499, hitherto Gothic Wawel Castle was damaged in a fire, and a few years later, Sigismund I, with help of the best native and foreign artists (such as Francesco the Florentine, Bartholomeo Berrecci or Niccolo Castiglione) refurbished the complex into a splendid Renaissance palace. Furthermore, in the early 16th century, several palaces were built in Lesser Poland – in Drzewica, Szydłowiec, Ogrodzieniec, and Pieskowa Skała. The province became rich mostly due to the grain trade, conducted along the Vistula, and among cities which prospered in the 16th century, there are Kraków, Sandomierz, Lublin, Kazimierz Dolny, Pilzno, Tarnów, Radom, Biecz. In later years of the 16th century, further palaces were built or remodelled in Baranow Sandomierski, and Niepołomice.
In the early 16th century, Protestant Reformation spread across the Commonwealth, and Lesser Poland became one of early centers of the movement, when students from Wittenberg brought the news to Cracow. In the first years of the century, professor of Jagiellonian University Jakub of Iłża (Jakub z Ilzy, died 1542) became one of the main promoters of the movement in the region. He actively supported the notions of Martin Luther, and in 1528 was called to the Bishop of Kraków's court. Convinced of heresy, he was forced to leave Poland in 1535. Reformation soon became very popular among Lesser Poland's nobility, especially Calvinism, and according to one estimate, some 20% of local szlachta converted from Roman Catholicism. They were attracted by Calvinism's democratic character, and Lesser Poland's center of the movement was set in the town of Pińczów, which came to be known as Sarmatian Athens. It was in Pińczów, where a local nobleman converted a Roman Catholic parish into a Protestant one, opened a Calvinist Academy, and published its Antitrinitarian confession in 1560 and in 1561. Several Calvinist synods took place in Lesser Poland – the first one in Słomniki (1554), Pińczów (the first united Synod of Poland and Lithuania – 1556 1561), and Kraków (1562). In 1563, also in Pińczów, the so-called Brest Bible was translated into Polish. In 1570, the Sandomierz Agreement was signed by a number of Protestant groups, with the exception of the Polish Brethren, another religious group very influential in Lesser Poland. The Brethren had their center in Lesser Poland's village of Raków, where a main Arian printing press, as well as a college, known as Akademia Rakowska (Gymnasium Bonarum Artium) founded in 1602 were located. Among distinguished European scholars associated with the school, there were Johannes Crellius, Corderius, and Valentinus Smalcius (who translated into German the Racovian Catechism).
In 1572, the Jagiellon dynasty died out, and next year, Henry III of France became first elected king of the country. After his short reign, and War of the Polish Succession (1587–88), which also took place in Lesser Poland, the new ruler was Stephen Báthory of Poland, who died in 1586. The ruler from Transylvania was followed by Sigismund III Vasa of Sweden, whose election marked gradual decline of the province. Sigismund's eyes were set on Sweden, and for many years he concentrated his efforts on a futile attempt to regain his former Swedish throne (see Polish–Swedish union, War against Sigismund). Therefore, Lesser Poland, located in southwestern corner of the Commonwealth, began to lose its importance, which was marked in 1596, when Sigismund moved his permanent residence, court and the crown headquarters to centrally-located Warsaw.
Even though first half of the 17th century was filled with wars, all major conflicts did not reach Lesser Poland, and the province continued to prosper, which was reflected in its castles and palaces, such as the enormous Krzyztopor. Apart from minor wars, such as Zebrzydowski Rebellion, and Kostka-Napierski Uprising, the province remained safe. Cossacks of the Khmelnytsky Uprising reached as far west as Zamość and Lwów, but did not enter Lesser Poland. The province did not witness other wars, such as Polish–Swedish War (1626–29), Polish–Muscovite War (1605–18), Polish–Ottoman War (1620–21), and Smolensk War. Nevertheless, Lesser Poland's nobility took active part in these conflicts – Marina Mniszech, the daughter of Voivode of Sandomierz, Jerzy Mniszech, was wife of False Dmitriy I, as well as False Dmitriy II. Furthermore, Lesser Poland's lands, especially its northeastern part, became a base for Polish troops, fighting the Cossacks, and King John II Casimir Vasa often stayed in Lublin with his court, preparing military campaigns in Ukraine. The situation changed with the outbreak of the Russo-Polish War (1654–1667). In October 1655, the Russo-Cossack armies under Ivan Vyhovsky entered eastern Lesser Poland, reaching the Vistula, and pillaging Lublin, Puławy, and Kazimierz Dolny. The invaders quickly retreated, but a few months later, Lesser Poland was flooded by the Swedes.
Swedish invasion of Poland had catastrophic consequences for the hitherto prosperous province. The attackers, supported by their allies from Transylvania, seized whole Lesser Poland, reaching as far south as Nowy Targ, Nowy Sącz, and Żywiec. All major cities were looted and burned, and some of them, like Radom, did not recover until the 19th century. The Swedes captured and pillaged Sandomierz (where they destroyed the Royal Castle, and after the invasion, the city never recovered), Opoczno, Lublin, Kazimierz Dolny Pilzno, Szydlow, Szydłowiec, Tarnów, Kielce, Kraśnik, and Kraków. The invaders seized the capital of Lesser Poland after a short siege, and their occupation of the province was confirmed after their victories in the Battle of Wojnicz, and the Battle of Golab. In those years, one of the most important and symbolic events in the history of the nation took place in Lesser Poland. It was the Siege of Jasna Góra, which, according to some accounts, turned the course of the war. Furthermore, following the Treaty of Radnot, Lesser Poland was invaded in January 1657 by George II Rákóczi, whose troops caused more destruction. Foreign armies were not chased out of Lesser Poland until 1657, Kraków itself was recaptured on 18 August 1657. After these invasions, the province was ruined, with hundreds of villages, towns and cities burned. The population decreased (the urban population by nearly half), the peasantry starved, and like other parts of the Commonwealth, Lesser Poland was devastated. The period of peace lasted for about forty years, when in 1700, another major conflict, the Great Northern War began. Lesser Poland once again became a battleground, with Battle of Kliszów taking place there in 1702, and the Sandomierz Confederation formed in 1704.
After the conflict, Lesser Poland began a recovery, which was hampered by several other factors. Province's cities frequently burned (Lublin 1719, Nowy Targ 1784, Nowy Sącz, Dukla 1758, Wieliczka 1718, Miechów 1745, Drzewica), there also were numerous outbreaks of plagues and typhus (in 1707–1708, some 20,000 died in Kraków and its area)
Lesser Poland was one of main centers of the Bar Confederation. On 21 June 1786 in Kraków, local confederation was announced, and on the same day Voievode of Kraków, Michal Czarnocki, urged his citizens to join the movement. Soon afterwards, Kraków was captured by the Russian troops, and the center of Lesser Poland's insurgency moved to the mountainous south – areas around Dukla and Nowy Sącz. During the Confederation, several battles and skirmishes took place there. In 1770, after the Battle of Iwonicz, the Russians ransacked Biecz. The movement ended in 1772, and its decline was connected with the Partitions of Poland. Another local center of the movement was Jasna Góra Monastery in Częstochowa, which was defended by Kazimierz Pulaski for almost two years (1770–1772).
Partitions of Poland (1772–1918)
The Partitions of Poland began earlier in Lesser Poland than in other provinces of the country. In 1769, Austrian Empire annexed a small territory of Spisz, and next year, the towns of Czorsztyn, Nowy Sącz and Nowy Targ. In 1771, the Russians and the Prussians agreed on the first partition of the country, and in early 1772, Austrian Emperor Maria Theresa decided to join the two powers. In the first partition of the Commonwealth, the Austrians seized the territory which would later be called Galicia, and which included southwestern corner of Lesser Poland (south of the Vistula river), with Żywiec, Tarnów, and Biecz, but without major urban centers of the province, such as Kraków, Sandomierz, Radom, Lublin, Częstochowa, and Kielce.
Second Partition of Poland (1793) did not result in significant changes of boundaries in the area, as the Austrian Empire did not participate in it. However, the Prussians moved on, and in 1793 they annexed northwestern corner of the province, together with the city of Częstochowa, and its vicinity, which became part of the newly created province of South Prussia. Therefore, in late 1793, Lesser Poland was already divided between three countries – Austrian Empire (south of the Vistula), Kingdom of Prussia (Częstochowa and northwestern corner), and still existing Commonwealth. After the Third Partition (1795), most of Lesser Poland was annexed by Austria, with all major cities. Prussia managed to seize a small, western part of the province, with the towns of Siewierz, Zawiercie, Będzin, and Myszków, calling this land New Silesia, while the Austrians decided to name newly acquired lands of northern Lesser Poland West Galicia. In 1803, West Galicia was merged with Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, but retained some autonomy. Lesser Poland was one of major centers of Polish resistance against the occupiers. On 24 March 1794 in Kraków, Tadeusz Kościuszko announced the general insurrection (see Kościuszko Uprising), mobilising all able males of Lesser Poland. Two weeks later, Battle of Racławice took place, ending with a Polish victory. The uprising was suppressed by combined Prusso – Russian forces, and among battles fought in Lesser Poland, there is Battle of Szczekociny.
During Napoleonic Wars, the Duchy of Warsaw was created by Napoleon Bonaparte out of Polish lands which had been granted to Prussia in the Partitions. In 1809, after the Polish–Austrian War, and the Treaty of Schönbrunn, the Duchy was expanded, when northern Lesser Poland was added to its territory (with Kielce, Radom, and Lublin). Following the Congress of Vienna, Duchy of Warsaw was turned into Russian-ruled Congress Poland, and historical capital of the province, Kraków, was turned into Free City of Kraków, which also included the towns of Trzebinia, Chrzanów, Jaworzno, and Krzeszowice. In Congress Poland, the lands of Lesser Poland were initially divided between four palatinates – Palatinate of Kraków (with capital in Kielce), Palatinate of Sandomierz (with capital in Radom), Palatinate of Lublin, and Palatinate of Podlasie (with capital in Siedlce), (see also Administrative division of Congress Poland). Later, the palatinates were turned into governorates. Thus, Russian part of Lesser Poland was divided into Kielce Governorate, Lublin Governorate, Radom Governorate, Siedlce Governorate, and Piotrków Governorate (western counties, with Częstochowa and industrial area of Zagłębie Dąbrowskie). Borders of these administrative units did not reflect historical boundaries of the province.
Most of the November Uprising, which began in 1830, missed Lesser Poland, as major battles took place in the area around Warsaw. In early 1831, when Russian forces advanced into Congress Poland, some skirmishes took place in northern counties of the province – at Puławy, Kurow, and Kazimierz Dolny. In early 1846, a group of Polish patriots attempted a failed uprising in the Free City of Kraków. The insurrection was quickly suppressed by the Austrian troops, and as a result, the Free City was annexed by the Austrian Empire. In the same year, Austrian part of Lesser Poland was witness to a massacre of Polish nobility by the peasantry, known as Galician slaughter. The peasants, led by Jakub Szela, murdered about 1000 nobles, and destroyed about 500 manors. These events took place in three counties – Sanok, Jasło and Tarnów.
Northern and central Lesser Poland (the part of the province which was taken by the Russian Empire) was one of the main centers of the January Uprising (1863–1864). In the first days of the insurrection, skirmishes with the Russian Army took place in such towns, as Łuków, Kraśnik, Szydłowiec, Bodzentyn, and Suchedniów. Since the Poles were poorly armed, the Russians did not have major problems with them, and soon afterwards, the insurrectionists decided to organize military camps. Among biggest camps in Lesser Poland, there were Ojców (3000 soldiers), and Wąchock, where Marian Langiewicz gathered up to 1500 people. The uprising died out by early spring of 1864, and among counties where it continued for the longest time, was the extreme northeastern corner of Lesser Poland, around Łuków, where reverend Stanisław Brzóska was active. Since Russian military supremacy was crushing, the Poles were forced to limit their actions to guerrilla warfare. Among the biggest battles which took place in Lesser Poland there are: Battle of Szydłowiec (23 January 1863); Battle of Miechów (17 February 1863); Battle of Małogoszcz (24 February 1863); Battle of Staszów (17 February 1863); Battle of Pieskowa Skała (4 March 1863); two Battles of Opatów (25 November 1863, 21 February 1864).
As a result of their support of the failed insurrection, several Lesser Poland's towns lost their charters and were turned into villages. Among them were Kraśnik, Bodzentyn, Opatów, Iłża, Małogoszcz, Wąchock, Busko-Zdrój, Jędrzejów, Cmielow, Zwoleń, Drzewica, Wierzbica, Czeladź, Kazimierz Dolny, Wolborz, Stopnica, Daleszyce, Wiślica, Pajęczno, Lipsko, Pacanów, Ożarów, Wolbrom, Proszowice, Nowe Miasto Korczyn, Włoszczowa, Przysucha, Opole Lubelskie.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Lesser Poland remained one of the centers of Polish culture, especially the city of Kraków, where Jagiellonian University was one of only two Polish-language colleges of that period (the other one was University of Lwów). Another significant center of national culture was the town of Puławy, where in the late 18th century, a local palace owned by Czartoryski family became a museum of Polish national memorabilia and a major cultural and political centre. A number of prominent artists, both representing Romanticism, and Positivism was born in Lesser Poland, including Wincenty Pol (born in Lublin), Stefan Żeromski (born near Kielce), Aleksander Świętochowski (born near Łuków in extreme northeast corner of Lesser Poland), Walery Przyborowski (born near Kielce), Piotr Michałowski, Helena Modjeska, Henryk Wieniawski (born in Lublin), Leon Wyczółkowski (born near Siedlce), Juliusz Kossak (born in Nowy Wiśnicz), Józef Szujski (born in Tarnów). In the early 20th century, Lesser Poland, especially its part which belonged to Austria-Hungary, was a center of a cultural movement called Young Poland. Many artists associated with the movement were born in Lesser Poland, with the most prominent including Władysław Orkan, Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer, Xawery Dunikowski, Jacek Malczewski, Józef Mehoffer, and Stanisław Wyspiański.
Since Austrian part of Poland enjoyed a wide autonomy, the province of Galicia, whose western part was made of Lesser Poland, became a hotbed of Polish conspirational activities. In anticipation of a future war, Galician Poles, with help of their brethren from other parts of the divided country, created several paramilitary organizations, such as Polish Rifle Squads, and Riflemen's Association. The capital of Lesser Poland, Kraków, was a key center of pro-independence movements, with such individuals, as Józef Piłsudski, being actively involved in those activities. In August 1914, after the outbreak of World War I, Pilsudski's Legions crossed the Austrian – Russian border north of Kraków, and entered Congress Poland. However, the Pilsudski and his soldiers were disappointed to see that the inhabitants of Kielce did not welcome them with joy. The division of Lesser Poland was more visible than ever.
During World War I, Lesser Poland became one of main theaters of the Eastern Front. Russian push into the territory of Austria – Hungary resulted in the Battle of Galicia. Among other major battles which took place in Lesser Poland, there are the Battle of the Vistula River, and the Gorlice-Tarnów Offensive. After Russian troops had retreated east, whole province was under control of the Austrians and the Germans, and northern Lesser Poland was part of the German-sponsored Kingdom of Poland (1916–1918). In later stages of the conflict, the divided province once again became a center of Polish independence movement. An independent Polish government was re-proclaimed in northern Lesser Poland's city of Lublin, on 7 November 1918. Soon afterwards, it formed the basis of the new government of the country. In other parts of the province, other governments were formed – Polish Liquidation Commission in Kraków, also the short-lived Republic of Tarnobrzeg.
The division of Lesser Poland along the Vistula river, which lasted from 1772 until 1918, is visible even today. For more than 100 years, southern Lesser Poland (Kraków, Tarnów, Biala Krakowska, and Nowy Sącz) was administered by Austria, while northern, larger part of the province (Częstochowa, Sosnowiec, Kielce, Radom, Lublin, Sandomierz) was forcibly part of the Russian Empire. Inhabitants of Austrian part of Poland enjoyed limited autonomy, with Polish language institutions, such as Jagiellonian University. At the same time, Russian-controlled Poland was subject to Russification. As a result of decades of this division, most inhabitants of the areas stolen by Russia are not aware of their Lesser Poland's heritage. Furthermore, current administrative boundaries of the country still reflect the defunct border between the former Russian and Austria–Hungarian Empires.
Interwar Poland (1918–1939)
In 1918, when Second Polish Republic was created, whole historical Lesser Poland became part of restored Poland. The historical area of the province was divided between four voivodeships: Kraków Voivodeship (whole), Kielce Voivodeship (whole), Lwów Voivodeship (northwestern corner), and Lublin Voivodeship (western part). Furthermore, in the counties of central Lesser Poland, another administrative unit, Sandomierz Voivodeship was planned, but due to the outbreak of World War II, it was never created. Boundaries between two major Lesser Poland voivodeships – Kraków, and Kielce, were the same as pre-1914 boundaries of Austria-Hungary, and Russia. Nevertheless, in the interbellum period, the notion of Lesser Poland was frequently associated only with former Austrian province of Galicia. Therefore, Western Galicia to the San river, was called Western Lesser Poland, while Eastern Galicia, east of the San, with the city of Lwów (Lviv), was called Eastern Lesser Poland (voivodeships of Tarnopol, Stanisławów, and Lwów). According to a Polish historian Jan Pisuliński, using the term Eastern Lesser Poland to denomine Eastern Galicia is incorrect, as it has no historical justification, being only a designation of nationalist and propaganda significance (similarly to analogous term Western Ukraine used at the same time by the Ukrainian side), which served in the 1920s and 1930s to make a stronger connection of the area between rivers of San and Zbruch with the Polish state and to emphasize the allegedly indigenously Polish nature of that region.
In late 1918, Lesser Poland emerged as one of main centers of fledgling Polish administration and independence movement. According to historian Kazimierz Banburski of Tarnów's District Museum, Tarnów was the first Polish city which became independent, after 123 years of oppression. On 31 October 1918, at 8 am, Tarnów's inhabitants began disarming demoralized Austrian soldiers, and after three hours, the city was completely in Polish hands. On 28 October 1918, Polish Liquidation Committee was created in Kraków. A few days later, socialist peasants founded the Republic of Tarnobrzeg. In the night of 6/7 November 1918, Polish People's Republic was proclaimed in Lublin, by Ignacy Daszynski and other activists. In 1919, the legislative election took place in Lesser Poland without major problems.
At that time Lesser Poland, like other provinces of the country, faced several problems. Even though major post-World War I conflicts (such as Polish–Soviet War) did not take place there, it suffered from unemployment, overpopulation, and poverty, especially in towns and countryside. Furthermore, Polish government had to connect parts of the hitherto divided country. There was no direct rail link between Kraków, and Kielce, Radom, and Lublin, and until 1934, when line from Kraków to Tunel was opened, all travelers had to go via Sosnowiec – Maczki. Lack of rail communication between former Austrian and former Russian parts of Lesser Poland is visible even today. Between Kraków and Dęblin, there are only two rail bridges along the Vistula. Residents of the province tried to improve their conditions using legal means, but when it turned out to be impossible, they took to fighting (1923 Kraków riot, 1937 peasant strike in Poland). As if to exacerbate the desperate situation, Lesser Poland witnessed a catastrophic flood in 1934, after which the government decided to construct dams on local rivers.
Even though Lesser Poland's countryside was almost exclusively Polish, its towns and cities were inhabited by numerous Jews, whose communities were very vibrant. In Kraków, Jews made 25% of the population, in Lublin – 31%, in Kielce – 30%, and in Radom – 32%. Apart from the Jews, and Gypsies scattered in the south, there were no other significant national minorities in interbellum Lesser Poland.
Since Lesser Poland was safely located in the middle of the country, away from both German and Soviet border, in the mid-1930s Polish government initiated one of the most ambitious project of the Second Polish Republic – Central Industrial Region, which was located almost exclusively in Lesser Poland. Even though the project was never completed, several plants were constructed, both in Old-Polish Industrial Region, and in other counties of the province. The brand new city of Stalowa Wola was established in dense forests, around a steel mill. In the late 1930s, Lesser Poland was quickly changing, as construction of several factories, and job opportunities caused influx of rural inhabitants to the towns. Such towns, as Dębica, Starachowice, Puławy, or Kraśnik, quickly grew, with their population rising. Earlier, in 1927, Lesser Poland's Dęblin became a major center of Polish aviation, when Polish Air Force Academy was opened there, and in Mielec, PZL Mielec was opened, which was the largest aerospace manufacturer in Poland. Central Industrial Region, however, did not affect western counties of Lesser Poland, which had already been urbanized and industrialized (Biala Krakowska, Żywiec, Kraków, Jaworzno, Zagłębie Dąbrowskie, Zawiercie, and Częstochowa). The government of Poland planned further investments, such as a major East – West rail line, linking Volhynia, and Upper Silesia, but they never materialized. Desperate situation and lack of jobs caused thousands of inhabitants of Lesser Poland (especially from its southern part) to leave their land, mostly for the United States of America, but also Brazil, and Canada.
Lesser Poland remained a center of Polish culture, with Kraków's Jagiellonian University, AGH University of Science and Technology, and Catholic University of Lublin, which was opened in 1918. Several important figures of interbellum political, military, and cultural life of Poland were born in Lesser Poland. Among them were Wincenty Witos, Władysław Sikorski, Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski, Józef Dowbor-Muśnicki, Józef Haller, Władysław Belina-Prażmowski, Tadeusz Kutrzeba, Feliks Koneczny, Stefan Żeromski, Tadeusz Peiper, Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska, Witold Gombrowicz, Jan Kiepura, Stefan Jaracz. In 1920, in Lesser Poland's town of Wadowice, Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II, was born.
World War II
On 1 September 1939, armed forces of Nazi Germany attacked Poland (see: Invasion of Poland). Lesser Poland, due to its proximity to the then-border with Germany, became a battleground on the first day of the invasion. The Germans attacked the province both in its northwest (area west of Częstochowa), and in the south (Podhale), along the border with Slovakia, which also participated in the invasion.
Lesser Poland was defended by the following Polish armies:
Karpaty Army, which covered southern, mountainous border of the province,
Kraków Army, guarding western part of the province, together with adjacent Polish part of Upper Silesia. Later in the course of war it joined the Karpaty Army, forming the Lesser Poland Army (Armia Małopolska),
Łódź Army, which protected extreme northwestern corner of the province, north of Częstochowa,
Prusy Army, which was main reserve of the Commander in Chief, and was concentrated in central and northern Lesser Poland (between Radom and Kielce),
Lublin Army, improvised after 4 September, and concentrated in the area of Lublin and Sandomierz in northeastern Lesser Poland.
After a few days the Battle of the Border was lost, and forces of German Army Group South advanced deep into Lesser Poland's territory. Polish troops resisted fiercely, and among major battles in initial stages of the war, which took place in Lesser Poland, there are Battle of Mokra, Battle of Jordanów, and Battle of Węgierska Górka. By 6 September, Polish forces were in general retreat and Marshal of Poland Edward Rydz-Śmigły ordered all troops to fall back to the secondary lines of defences at the Vistula and San Rivers. German units entered Częstochowa on 3 September (where on the next day they murdered hundreds of civilians), Kielce on 5 September, Kraków on 6 September, and Radom on 8 September (see also Battle of Radom). Within a week, almost whole Lesser Poland was under Nazi occupation. Northeastern part of the province, the area of Lublin, was held by the Poles until 17 September, but eventually, and after fierce battles (see Battle of Tomaszów Lubelski), all Lesser Poland was firmly under Nazi control. First draft of Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact stipulated that northeastern Lesser Poland (east of the Vistula river) was to be occupied by the Soviet Union, and forces of the Red Army reached the area of Lublin after 20 September, but withdrew east on 28 September.
On 12 October 1939, upon a decree of Adolf Hitler, General Government, a separate region of the Greater German Reich was created, with Hans Frank as its Governor-General. Its capital was established in Kraków, and it covered most of the area of historical Lesser Poland, except for its western counties, which were directly incorporated into Nazi Germany's Upper Silesia Province (Będzin, Sosnowiec, Zawiercie, Biała, Żywiec, Chrzanów, Olkusz).
In Lesser Poland, like in all provinces of the occupied country, the Nazis ruled with savage brutality, killing hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, both Polish and Jewish (see: World War II crimes in Poland, Occupation of Poland (1939–1945), Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland, Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles, German AB-Aktion in Poland, Sonderaktion Krakau). The Auschwitz concentration camp, located at the border of Lesser Poland and Upper Silesia, was opened on 14 June 1940, and on 1 October 1941, the Germans opened Majdanek concentration camp on the outskirts of Lublin. The third concentration camp in Lesser Poland was in Kraków's district of Płaszów. In late 1939 and early 1940, in Lesser Poland's spa of Zakopane, and in Kraków, several Gestapo–NKVD Conferences took place, during which the mutual cooperation between Nazi Germany and Soviet Union was discussed.
Anti-Nazi resistance was particularly strong in Lesser Poland, and it was in the extreme northwestern corner of the province (around Opoczno), that armed struggle against the occupiers began in late 1939 and early 1940 (see Henryk Dobrzański). Structures of the Home Army were well-developed in the region. Lesser Poland's independent areas of the Home Army were located in Kraków, Kielce-Radom, and Lublin. During Operation Tempest in mid-1944, several Lesser Poland's towns were liberated, also uprising in Kraków was prepared, but never realized. Apart from the Home Army, other resistance groups were strong in the province, such as pro-Communist Armia Ludowa, peasant's Bataliony Chłopskie, and right-wing National Armed Forces, with its Holy Cross Mountains Brigade.
In all major Lesser Poland's cities, Jewish ghettos were opened, with the biggest ones in Kraków, and Lublin. At first the Nazis were planning to create a so-called "reservation" for European Jews, located around Lesser Poland's town of Nisko (see Nisko Plan), but they changed the plan, and decided to murder all Jews. Condemned to death, Jews in Lesser Poland took to fighting (see Częstochowa Ghetto Uprising), but their efforts failed. As a result of The Holocaust in Poland, once thriving and numerous Jewish population of Lesser Poland was decimated.
In the summer of 1944, after Lvov–Sandomierz Offensive, Red Army pushed the Wehrmacht from eastern Lesser Poland. The city of Lublin was captured by the Soviets on 22 July 1944, Stalowa Wola – on 1 August, and Sandomierz, on the left bank of the Vistula – on 18 August. The front line stabilized along the Vistula for about six months (with some bridgeheads on the western bank on the Vistula – see Battle of Studzianki), and in early 1945, Soviet Vistula–Oder Offensive began, which pushed Germans to the gates of Berlin. The Soviets entered Kielce on 15 January, Częstochowa – on 17 January, and Kraków on 19 January. On 27 January, the Red Army entered Sosnowiec. In took the Soviets much longer to clear the areas in the mountains – they did not enter Żywiec until 5 April 1945.
Post-World War II
Together with the Red Army, NKVD and Soviet authorities followed, whose purpose was to make Poland a Communist country, with a puppet government, formed as Polish Committee of National Liberation. Since 1 August 1944, the provisional government was officially headquartered in Lesser Poland's Lublin. Thousands of people took to the forests, to continue their fight for free Poland (see Anti-communist resistance in Poland (1944–46)). Lesser Poland again was one of the main centers of the resistance. Several skirmishes took place in the province, including Battle of Kuryłówka. The Communists did not hesitate to kill those rebels they captured (Public execution in Dębica (1946)), and by 1947, the resistance movement was crushed. The last Polish cursed soldier, Józef Franczak, was killed in 1963 near Świdnik in northeastern Lesser Poland. Also, all victims of the 1951 Mokotów Prison execution were members of Lesser Poland's branch of Freedom and Independence. Another well-known anti-Communist fighter from Lesser Poland is Józef Kuraś, who was active in the southern region of Podhale.
In early 1945, the lands of Lesser Poland were divided between three voivodeships – those of Kraków, Lublin, and Kielce. Since summer 1945, several counties were transferred to neighboring voivodeships – eastern Lesser Poland (Dębica, Jasło, Mielec) became part of Rzeszów Voivodeship, while western counties of Będzin and Zawiercie were transferred to Katowice Voivodeship. In 1950, the city of Częstochowa became part of Katowice Voivodeship, and next year, the city of Bielsko-Biała was created out of Lesser Poland's Biala Krakowska, and Upper Silesia's Bielsko. The new city became part of Katowice Voivodeship. Lesser Poland was further divided in 1975, when territorial reform was carried out (see Voivodeships of Poland (1975–1988)). Counties were abolished, and several small voivodeships were created, in such Lesser Poland's towns and cities, as Tarnobrzeg, Tarnów, Nowy Sącz, Bielsko-Biała, Radom, Częstochowa, and Siedlce.
The government of Communist Poland invested in heavy industry, following the pre-1939 idea of Central Industrial Area. In Kraków, a new district of Nowa Huta was constructed in the 1950s. In Częstochowa and Zawiercie, the steelworks were significantly expanded, and in early 1970, the government initiated construction of Katowice Steelworks, which, despite its name, is located in Lesser Poland's Dąbrowa Górnicza. To connect Katowice Steelworks with Soviet plants, in late 1970s Broad Gauge Metallurgy Line was opened, which crossed Lesser Poland from west to east. Among other major factories, opened in Lesser Poland during Communist rule, there are:
FSC Lublin, opened in 1951,
FSC Star in Starachowice, opened in 1948, and based on earlier factory,
PZL-Świdnik, opened in 1951,
Zaklady Azotowe Puławy, opened in 1965,
Połaniec Power Station, opened in 1979,
Skawina Power Station, opened in 1957,
Nowiny Cement Plant, opened in 1960,
Kozienice Power Station, opened in 1973.
Other Lesser Poland's major plants were significantly expanded after 1945, including Żywiec Brewery, Okocim Brewery, Fablok, Łucznik Arms Factory, FŁT-Kraśnik, Jaworzno Power Station, Siersza Power Plant, Huta Stalowa Wola, Janina Coal Mine, Sobieski Coal Mine, Zakłady Azotowe Tarnów-Mościce. Furthermore, in early 1950s significant sulfur resources were discovered in Tarnobrzeg, as a result of which Siarkopol company was founded, and the city of Tarnobrzeg quickly grew. In 1975, coal was discovered northeast of Lublin, and soon afterwards, Bogdanka Coal Mine and Piaski Coal Mine were opened.
Between 1971 and 1977, Central Trunk Line was opened, which goes along western boundary of the province, and which connects Kraków and Katowice, with Warsaw. In the early 1980s, construction of a highway between Kraków and Katowice began. The 61-kilometer road is now run by Stalexport Autostrada Małopolska, and is part of A4 highway.
Residents of Lesser Poland frequently protested against Communist government. Major centers of anti-Communist resistance were in Kraków, Nowa Huta, Radom, and Lublin. Among major protests that took place in the province were 1968 Polish political crisis (with Kraków as one of major centers of protests), June 1976 protests (in Radom), Lublin 1980 strikes, 31 August 1982 demonstrations in Poland (in several locations), 1988 Polish strikes (with Stalowa Wola as one of major centers). Several anti-Nazi, and anti-Communist leaders hailed from Lesser Poland: Jan Piwnik, Emil August Fieldorf, Leopold Okulicki, Ryszard Siwiec, Stanisław Pyjas, Hieronim Dekutowski, Andrzej Gwiazda, Andrzej Czuma.
A number of key personalities of Communist government were born in Lesser Poland, including Józef Cyrankiewicz, Bolesław Bierut, Edward Gierek, Wojciech Jaruzelski, Czesław Kiszczak, Stanisław Kania, Hilary Minc, Edward Ochab, Michał Rola-Żymierski, Józef Oleksy.
Among prominent personalities of Polish cultural life of the 20th century, who were born in Lesser Poland, there are: Xawery Dunikowski, Witold Gombrowicz, Gustaw Herling-Grudziński, Sławomir Mrożek, Tadeusz Kantor, Jan Kanty Pawluśkiewicz, Marek Kondrat, Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska, Krzysztof Penderecki, Zbigniew Preisner, Leon Schiller, Jerzy Stuhr, Jan Sztaudynger, Grzegorz Turnau, Jerzy Turowicz.
Local Government Reorganization Act (1998)
In 1998, the government of Poland carried out administrative reform of the country. For the first time in history, Lesser Poland Voivodeship was created, with capital in Kraków, and area of 15,108 square kilometers. The new province covers only a small, southwestern part of historical Lesser Poland.
Today, Lesser Poland is divided between several voivodeships: whole Lesser Poland Voivodeship, whole Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, western half of Lublin Voivodeship, western part of Subcarpathian Voivodeship, eastern half of Silesian Voivodeship, southern part of Mazovian Voivodeship and southeastern corner of Łódź Voivodeship (around Opoczno).
There were suggestions that Lesser Poland voivodeship should stretch from Bielsko-Biała, to Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski and Sandomierz. Furthermore, creation of Old Poland Voivodeship was proposed, on the historical lands of northern Lesser Poland. Also, since about half of territory of current Silesian Voivodeship belongs to historical Lesser Poland, there are suggestions to rename it into Silesian – Lesser Poland Voivodeship.
Major cities and towns (by size)
The list is based on the Polish Central Statistical Office list of 100 biggest cities of Poland, as for 30 June 2008.
In the Kingdom of Poland and Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, several other locations used to be important urban centers of Lesser Poland, but in the course of the time, their significance declined. The main example is Sandomierz, which for hundreds of years was one of the most important cities of Poland, but now is a town of 25,000. Other examples of historically important places, which are now little towns or villages are:
Biecz, a town of 5,000, once the seat of a county, incorporated in 1257,
Chęciny, a village now, once the seat of a county, with a royal castle,
Czchów, a town of 2,000, incorporated before 1333, once the seat of a county,
Goraj, a village now, which used to be one of urban centers of Lublin Voivodeship,
Iłża, a town of 5,000, incorporated before 1294, with a royal castle,
Kazimierz Dolny, which enjoyed its greatest prosperity in the 16th and the first half of the 17th century,
Koprzywnica, a village now, a town in 1268–1869,
Książ Wielki, a town in 1385–1875, once the seat of a county,
Lelów, a village now, which used to be the seat of a county. Incorporated in 1314, with a royal castle,
Nowe Miasto Korczyn, a town in 1258–1869, with a royal castle, where general sejmiks of Lesser Poland took place,
Opatów, a town of 7,000, incorporated in 1282, once the seat of sejmiks,
Parczew, now a town of 10,000, once a major urban center of northeast Lesser Poland,
Pilzno, now a town of 4,000, once the seat of a county,
Sieciechów, a village now, once an important town, incorporated in 1232,
Stężyca, a village now. Once the seat of a county, which used to be a town in 1330–1869,
Szczyrzyc, a village now, which used to be the seat of a county,
Szydłowiec, a town of 12,000, with a royal castle, which in the Renaissance period was an important urban center of northern Lesser Poland,
Szydłów, a village now, which used to be a major urban center of Sandomierz Voivodeship,
Urzędów, a village now, which in 1405–1869 used to be a town and the seat of a county,
Wiślica, a village now, which was probably the capital of the Vistulans, and the seat of a county,
Wojnicz, now a town of 3,500, incorporated in 1278, used to be the seat of a county,
Zawichost, a town of 2,000, once a royal town with a castle, incorporated before 1255.
Economy and industry
History of industry in Lesser Poland goes back to prehistoric times, when in Świętokrzyskie Mountains, first bloomeries were constructed. In the Middle Ages, first plants were opened in that area, and as a result, Old-Polish Industrial Region was created, which was a major industrial region of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In the 17th century, first Polish blast furnaces were constructed in Samsonów by Italian engineer Hieronim Caccio. Apart from iron products, used for military purposes, Old-Polish Industrial Region also manufactured charcoal and glass. In 1782, in Poland there were 34 bloomeries, out of which 27 were located in Old-Polish Industrial Region. Another major industrial area of Lesser Poland is Zagłębie Dąbrowskie, where in the 16th century, lead, silver, and zinc were found. As early as in the 15th century, coal was extracted in Trzebinia – Siersza, and in the following centuries, especially in the 19th century, several coal mines and steel mills were opened in Zagłębie and in Zagłębie Krakowskie (first coal mine in Jaworzno was opened in 1792). In nearby Olkusz, the history of zinc mining dates to the 12th century when Casimir II the Just set up a mining settlement. Also, in the towns of Wieliczka and Bochnia, salt mines were established in the 12th and 13th centuries (see Bochnia Salt Mine, Wieliczka Salt Mine).
In the 20th century, natural resources were also discovered in central and eastern counties Lesser Poland.
In 1964, the world's largest open-pit sulfur mine was opened in Machów near Tarnobrzeg. Other sulfur deposits in the area of Tarnobrzeg are Jeziorko, Grzybów-Gacki, and Grębów-Wydza. The mine at Machów is now closed. In the late 1960s, eastern Lesser Poland became one of three coal basins of the country, when Lublin Basin was created. Major coal mine in the area is KWK Bogdanka near Łęczna, which is the only coal mine in Poland which has continuously generated a profit. Other Polish coal mines located in Lesser Poland are those found in western part of the province, along the boundary with Upper Silesia – KWK Janina in Jaworzno, KWK Sobieski, and also in Jaworzno. Copper and silver are extracted in Myszków (see Myszków mine).
In the late 1930s, the government of the Second Polish Republic created Central Industrial Region, which was almost exclusively located in Lesser Poland. Currently, within borders of the province, there are following industrial regions:
Bielsko Industrial Region (Bielski Okręg Przemysłowy), which includes both towns from Lesser Poland, and Upper Silesia (Andrychów, Bielsko-Biała, Cieszyn, Kęty, Pszczyna, Skoczów, Żywiec),
Częstochowa Industrial Region (Częstochowski Okręg Przemysłowy), which includes Częstochowa, Myszków, and Zawiercie.
Upper Silesian Industrial Region (Górnośląski Okręg Przemysłowy). Despite the name, it also includes cities from Lesser Poland's Zagłębie Dąbrowskie – Sosnowiec, Będzin, Czeladź, Dąbrowa Górnicza, Wojkowice,
Jaworzno – Chrzanów Industrial Region (Jaworznicko-Chrzanowski Okręg Przemysłowy), with the towns of Jaworzno, Chrzanów, Trzebinia, Libiąż, Chełmek, Bukowno, Alwernia, Krzeszowice,
Carpathian Industrial Region (Karpacki Okręg Przemysłowy), which stretches from Nowy Sącz, through Jasło and Gorlice, to Sanok,
Kraków Industrial Region (Krakowski Okręg Przemysłowy) – the city of Kraków and the towns of Wieliczka, Skawina, Myślenice, Bochnia,
Lublin Industrial Region (Lubelski Okręg Przemysłowy) – the city of Lublin and the towns of Świdnik, Puławy, Łęczna,
Tarnobrzeg Industrial Area (Tarnobrzeski Okręg Przemysłowy) – Stalowa Wola, Tarnobrzeg, Nisko, Staszów, Janów Lubelski, Gorzyce, Połaniec, Mielec,
Tarnów – Rzeszów Industrial Region (Tarnowsko-Rzeszowski Okręg Przemysłowy), which stretches from Tarnów to Rzeszów, with such towns, as Dębica, Niedomice, Sędziszów Małopolski, Ropczyce.
In 2009, Polityka weekly made its own list of 500 biggest Polish companies. According to the list, second biggest company of the country was Polska Grupa Energetyczna, which, as Polityka stated, is headquartered in Lublin. Third biggest company of Poland in 2009 was Fiat Auto Poland from Bielsko-Biała. Other Lesser Polish companies which ranked high were: BP Poland from Kraków (ranked 12th), Emperia Holding from Lublin (ranked 26th), Kolporter Holding from Kielce (ranked 43rd), and Żywiec Brewery (ranked 44th). Other major companies of Lesser Poland are Azoty Tarnów, Bank BPH, Bogdanka Coal Mine, Carlsberg Polska, Comarch, Dębica SA, Huta Częstochowa, Huta Katowice, Fablok, FŁT-Kraśnik, Huta Stalowa Wola, Instal-Lublin, Janina Coal Mine, Jaworzno Power Station, Kozienice Power Station, Łucznik Arms Factory, Nowiny Cement Plant near Kielce, Połaniec Power Station, PZL Mielec, PZL-Świdnik, Sobieski Coal Mine, Tadeusz Sendzimir Steelworks.
Since the lands of historical Lesser Poland belong now to different voivodeships, unemployment rate differs from one region to another. In January 2010, in Poland the unemployment rate was 12,7%. In Silesian Voivodeship, eastern half of which is Lesser Poland, it was 9,9%, in Lesser Poland Voivodeship – 10,5%, in Subcarpathian Voivodeship – 16,3%, in Holy Cross Voivodeship – 15,5%, in Lublin Voivodeship – 13,6%, and in Mazovian Voivodeship (southern part of which is Lesser Poland) – 9,6%. In Lesser Poland's cities, the best situation was in Kraków (as for November 2009), where 4,1% had no job. In Bielsko-Biała, the rate was 5,7%, in Lublin – 8,8%, in Siedlce – 9,1%, in Tarnów – 9,2%, in Nowy Sącz – 10%, in Kielce and Częstochowa – 10,1%, in Jaworzno – 10,2%, in Dąbrowa Górnicza – 10,3%, in Sosnowiec – 12,2%, and in Tarnobrzeg – 14,3%. The worst situation on the job market (as for November 2009) was in Radom, where unemployment rate was 20,9% (it made Radom second worst city county of the nation, only after Grudziądz).
Transport
Roads
Several European roads (see International E-road network) cross Lesser Poland. The most important one is the European route E40, which goes from west to east, across whole Europe. In Lesser Poland, the E40 goes from Jaworzno, via Kraków and Tarnów, towards eastern border of the country. Another main European road in Lesser Poland is the E77, which goes from north to south, via Radom, Kielce and Kraków, to southern border of Poland at Chyżne. Third major European road in Lesser Poland is the E30, which crosses the territory of the province in its extreme northeast corner, in Siedlce. Apart from these roads, Lesser Poland is crossed by the following European routes:
E371, which begins in Radom, and goes via Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski, Tarnobrzeg, and Rzeszów to the border crossing at Barwinek,
E372, which begins in Warsaw, and via northeastern Lesser Poland (Lublin, Świdnik), goes to Ukrainian border at Hrebenne,
E462, which goes through southwestern corner of the province, from Czech border and Bielsko-Biała, to John Paul II International Airport Kraków-Balice,
E75, which crosses western counties of Lesser Poland – from Częstochowa, through Dąbrowa Górnicza and Jaworzno, to Bielsko-Biała and Polish – Czech border.
Airports
Within borders of historical Lesser Poland, there are two airports – John Paul II International Airport Kraków – Balice, and Katowice International Airport, which is located in the village of Pyrzowice, on the border between Lesser Poland and Upper Silesia. Pyrzowice is part of Gmina Ożarowice, which after Partitions of Poland, and Congress of Vienna belonged to Będzin County of the Russian Empire. In the interbellum, the area of future airport belonged to Lesser Poland's Kielce Voivodeship, and in 1945, was transferred to Katowice Voivodeship (initially Silesian-Dąbrowa Voivodeship). In 1998, Ożarowice, together with the airport, was attached to Tarnowskie Góry County, despite the fact that it is not located in Upper Silesia
Further airports in Lesser Poland will be opened in the future – Lublin – Świdnik, Kielce – Obice, and Radom – Sadków. Also, Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport is located on eastern border of the province.
Railroads
Railroad network of Lesser Poland is very unevenly distributed. It is very dense in the west, along the border with Upper Silesia, and sparse in the east, especially along the Vistula, and around Lublin. All major cities of the province are connected with each other, however traveling from Kraków to Lublin is time-consuming, as trains have to take an extended route, via Kielce, Radom, and Dęblin. Also, there is no direct connection between Tarnów and Kielce, as these cities belonged to different countries before 1918. Underdevelopment of the railroads in northern and eastern Lesser Poland is the result of the policy of the Russian Empire. For military reasons, the Russians were not interested in construction of a dense network of lines along the border with Germany and Austria-Hungary, allowing only the construction of narrow-gauge connections. Along the Vistula, between Kraków and Dęblin (the distance of some 320 kilometers), there are only four rail bridges – in Dęblin (rebuilt after the war, in 1947), in Sandomierz (built in 1928), in Tarnobrzeg-Nagnajów (built in 1961, together with a road bridge), and in Zaduszniki (built in 1979 for the Broad Gauge Metallurgy Line). In Kraków itself, there are three rail bridges over the Vistula.
Among rail hubs of Lesser Poland, there are Bielsko-Biała, Chabówka, Częstochowa, Dąbrowa Górnicza, Dębica, Dęblin, Jaworzno-Szczakowa, Kalwaria Zebrzydowska Lanckorona, Kielce, Koniecpol, Kozłów, Kraków, Lublin, Łuków, Muszyna, Nowy Sącz, Oświęcim, Siedlce, Spytkowice, Skarżysko-Kamienna, Stalowa Wola, Stróże, Sucha Beskidzka, Radom, Tarnów, Trzebinia, Tunel, Zawiercie, and Żywiec.
In the late 1970s, the Communist government built the broad-gauge Broad Gauge Metallurgy Line, which crosses Lesser Poland from west to east along the Vistula.
Tourism and nature
The historical capital of Lesser Poland – Kraków – is regarded as the cultural capital of Poland, while Zakopane is considered the winter capital of Poland. In 1978, UNESCO placed Kraków's Old Town on the list of World Heritage Sites. From Sandomierz to Kraków goes the re-established Lesser Polish Way, one of the routes of the medieval Way of St. James. Every year, hundreds of thousands of tourists come to Lesser Poland, to see its historic cities – Sandomierz, Kazimierz Dolny, Zakopane, Biecz, Opatów, Szydłów, Lublin, and Kraków. Famous Jasna Góra Monastery in Częstochowa, spiritual capital of the country, attracts hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, as well as Auschwitz concentration camp (also placed on the UNESCO World Heritage Sites List). Lesser Poland has many museums, the city of Kraków itself has about sixty of them. Among the most famous are The Czartoryski Museum, The Galicia Jewish Museum, The National Museum, Kraków, Polish Aviation Museum, Sukiennice Museum, and Wawel Castle. There are museums in other locations of the province, such as Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Bielsko-Biała Museum, Holy Father John Paul II Family Home in Wadowice, Jacek Malczewski Museum in Radom, Lublin Museum, Museum of Częstochowa, Museum of Sandomierz Diocese, Museum of Żywiec Brewery, Museum of Zagłębie in Będzin, Przypkowscy Clock Museum, Regional Museum in Wiślica, Regional Museum in Siedlce, Tytus Chałubiński Tatra Museum in Zakopane.
Among other major places of interest of the province are: Baranów Sandomierski Castle, Będzin Castle, Chęciny Castle, Czarnolas in Zwoleń, Dunajec river castles, Kalwaria Zebrzydowska park (UNESCO World Heritage Sites List), Krzyżtopór, Lipnica Murowana, Lublin Castle, Łysa Góra, Maczuga Herkulesa, Majdanek concentration camp, Niedzica Castle, Ogrodzieniec, Pieskowa Skała, Temple of the Sibyl, Trail of the Eagles' Nests, Wieliczka Salt Mine (UNESCO World Heritage Sites List), Wooden Churches of Southern Lesser Poland (UNESCO World Heritage Sites List). Furthermore, thousands of tourists come to Radom in northern Lesser Poland, to watch the popular, biannual Radom Air Show. Lesser Poland has a number of open-air museums – Góra Birów in Kraków-Częstochowa Upland, Museum of Kielce Village in Kielce, Museum of Lublin Village in Lublin, Museum of Folk Culture in Kolbuszowa, Museum of Radom Village in Radom, Vistula River Etnographic Park in Babice, Nowy Sącz Etnographic Park in Nowy Sącz, Orawa Etnographic Park in Zubrzyca Górna, Chabówka Rolling-Stock Heritage Park in Chabówka. The Małopolska Institute of Culture, located in Kraków, promotes the activities of regional museums and smaller sites of interest.
Lesser Poland is famous for its underground waters and spas, such as Busko-Zdrój, Solec-Zdrój, Nałęczów, Muszyna, Szczawnica, Piwniczna, Wysowa-Zdrój, Rabka, Swoszowice, Żegiestów, Krzeszowice, Wieliczka, and Krynica-Zdrój. Mountains and resorts of the province make it a major center of Polish tourism – Tatra National Park is visited by around 3 million tourists every year.
The following National Parks are located in Lesser Poland:
Education
Universities
Lesser Poland is home to Poland's oldest university – Kraków's Jagiellonian University, which was established in 1364. For centuries, it was the only college of the province, and of the whole country. In December 1918, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin was opened, becoming second university of Lesser Poland. In 1944, also in Lublin, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University was established.
Technical universities
There are several technical universities in Lesser Poland – Kraków's AGH University of Science and Technology, and University of Technology, as well as University of Bielsko-Biała, Częstochowa University of Technology, Lublin University of Technology, Kazimierz Pułaski Technical University of Radom, and Kielce University of Technology.
Other colleges
Future teachers may study at Pedagogical University of Cracow, or Jan Długosz University in Częstochowa, and future physicians at Jagiellonian University Medical College, and Medical University of Lublin. Other state colleges are Jan Kochanowski University in Kielce, Pontifical University of John Paul II in Kraków, Agricultural University of Cracow, University of Life Sciences in Lublin, and Cracow University of Economics. Unique in the country is the Polish Air Force Academy, located in Dęblin. Among private colleges of Lesser Poland, there is Wyższa Szkoła Biznesu – National-Louis University in Nowy Sącz.
Regional identity and culture
Since Lesser Poland ceased to exist as a unified region in the late 18th century, during the Partitions of Poland, most of its inhabitants are not aware of their heritage. Even the residents of Jaworzno, a city which for centuries belonged to Kraków Land and only in 1975 was transferred to Katowice Voivodeship (see Voivodeships of Poland (1975–98)), are not familiar with their Lesser Polish roots. In a poll in April 2011, 57% of Jaworzno's inhabitants stated that their city is historically tied with Lesser Poland, but as many as 36% said their city is tied with Upper Silesia. Polish linguist Jan Miodek emphasizes the fact that linguistically, Będzin is closer to Myślenice than to Tarnowskie Góry, only 20 km away. Miodek wrote that even though Upper Silesia and Lesser Poland's Zagłębie Dąbrowskie are industrially and administratively tied, both regions are culturally and linguistically different from each other. Residents of Zagłębie Dąbrowskie are known for their dislike of Upper Silesians, whom they call hanysy, while the Silesians call them gorole. In recent years, more inhabitants of Zagłębie become aware of their Lesser Poland's heritage, Also, after Partitions of Poland, when Austrian province of Galicia was created, the cities of Rzeszów and Przemyśl, which are part of historical Red Ruthenia, became associated with Lesser Poland. Therefore, currently the notion of Lesser Poland most commonly applies to the two voivodeships which in the past belonged to Austrian Empire – Lesser Poland Voivodeship, and Subcarpathian Voivodeship
Among several Lesser Poland's regional organizations, one of the most important is Stowarzyszenie Gmin i Powiatów Małopolski (The Association of Villages and Counties of Lesser Poland). It publishes a magazine called Wspólnota Małopolska (Lesser Polish Community), and every year it chooses a Lesser Polish Person of the Year (among winners are John Paul II, Anna Dymna, and Stanisław Dziwisz). The Association of Villages and Counties of Lesser Poland has over 120 members from four Polish voivodeships. Among members are cities of Kraków, Częstochowa, Bielsko-Biała, Tarnów, and Przemyśl.
Arguably, the most famous product of Lesser Polish cuisine is the bagel, which was invented in Kraków. Other famous food specialties of the province are oscypek (EU Protected Geographical Status), slivovitz from the village of Łącko, bublik, papal cream cake from Wadowice, Lisiecka Sausage (EU Protected Geographical Status), and Bryndza Podhalańska. Among other popular products that are made in Lesser Poland, there are beers (Browary Lubelskie, Żywiec Beer, and Okocim Beer), pastas and snacks from Lublin's Lubella, Kielce Mayonnaise, coffee substitute beverage INKA from Skawina, chocolates from Kraków's Wawel Factory, juices from Tymbark, vodka Żołądkowa Gorzka produced in Lublin, and Chopin produced in Siedlce.
Folk costumes from Lesser Poland are widely known across the country – a dancing couple, dressed in traditional Kraków costume (Krakowiacy), is presented on the logo of renowned Żywiec beer, and Podhale is one of few Polish regions, where people regularly wear their traditional costumes. Both Kraków and Podhale folk costumes are among most popular garbs in Poland. Other folk costumes from the region are those of Zagłębie Dąbrowskie, Sandomierz, Rzeszów, Częstochowa, Kielce, Radom (regarded as the most traditional of all Polish costumes), Opoczno, Holy Cross Mountains, Nowy Sącz, and Lublin. There are several folk festivals in Lesser Poland, such as On the frontier of Lesser Poland and Mazovia (in Opoczno), Folk Festival of Józef Myszka (in Museum of Radom Village in Iłża), annual Days of Lesser Poland's Cultural Heritage, Week of the Beskidy Culture (in several locations), Wianki in Kraków, Festival of Old Music and Culture in Niepołomice, Festival of Folk Bands and Folk Singers in Kazimierz Dolny, International Folklore Meetings of Ignacy Wachowiak in Lublin, International Festival of Folklore of Mountain Lands in Zakopane, Jewish Culture Festival in Kraków. Krakowiak is one of Polish national dances, other popular Lesser Poland's folk dances are Zbójnicki from Podhale and dances from Lublin. Among Lesser Poland's customs are Lajkonik, and Kraków szopka.
Sports and entertainment
Several renowned sportspeople and entertainers come from Lesser Poland. Among them are some of the most famous personalities of contemporary Polish sports – boxer Tomasz Adamek, Formula 1 driver Robert Kubica, swimmer Paweł Korzeniowski, skier Justyna Kowalczyk, tennis player Agnieszka Radwańska, football and volleyball stars Jakub Błaszczykowski, Artur Boruc, and Piotr Gruszka. Among late and retired sports stars who were born in the region, there also are Polish Sportspersonalities of the Year: tennis player and Wimbledon finalist Jadwiga Jędrzejowska, skier Józef Łuszczek, ski jumper Stanisław Marusarz, and driver Sobiesław Zasada.
Kraków's major association football teams – KS Cracovia, and Wisła Kraków, are multiple champions of the country, also Stal Mielec won Polish championship twice (1973, 1976), and Garbarnia Kraków once (1931). Other popular football teams from Lesser Poland are Zagłębie Sosnowiec (four time Polish Cup winner), Górnik Łęczna, Korona Kielce, Motor Lublin, Radomiak Radom, Raków Częstochowa, Stal Stalowa Wola, and Sandecja Nowy Sącz.
Besides association football, Lesser Poland's teams were multiple national champions in other sports:
ice-hockey (Podhale Nowy Targ, TH Unia Oświęcim, Cracovia),
men's and women's volleyball – AZS Częstochowa, Płomień Milowice – Sosnowiec (which in 1978 won the CEV Champions League), Hutnik Kraków, Wisła Kraków, BKS Stal Bielsko-Biała, Muszynianka Muszyna,
men's and women's handball – Hutnik Kraków, Vive Targi Kielce, Cracovia, Montex Lublin,
men's and women's basketball – Zagłębie Sosnowiec, Cracovia, Wisła Kraków,
speedway – Włókniarz Częstochowa, Unia Tarnów.
Major sports venues of the province are Stadion Miejski in Kraków, Kielce City Stadium, Marshal Józef Piłsudski Stadium in Kraków, Miejski Stadion Sportowy "KSZO" w Ostrowcu Sw., Stadion Ludowy in Sosnowiec, Dębowiec Sports Arena in Bielsko-Biała, Hala Legionów in Kielce, Hala Globus in Lublin, Arena Częstochowa, Kielce Racetrack, Hala Sportowa MOSiR in Radom, Wielka Krokiew in Zakopane.
Among popular rock music bands from Lesser Poland, there are Budka Suflera, Golec uOrkiestra, Maanam, and Zakopower. From Lesser Poland hail composers Jan Kanty Pawluśkiewicz, and Krzysztof Penderecki, as well as singers Basia, Ewa Demarczyk, Justyna Steczkowska, Grzegorz Turnau, Maciej Zembaty. Major music festivals in the province are: Coke Live Music Festival in Kraków, Celtic Music Festival ZAMEK in Będzin, Film Music Festival in Kraków, Gaude Mater in Częstochowa, Boyscout's Festival of School Music in Kielce, Summer with Chopin in Busko-Zdrój, Festiwal of Shanties in Kraków, and Festival of Student Song in Kraków.
Lesser Polish dialect of Polish
Lesser Polish dialect is spoken in southeastern corner of Poland, both in lands which belong to historical Lesser Poland, and in areas which are not part of the province (around Sieradz and Łęczyca). On the other hand, as seen on the map, Lesser Polish dialect is not spoken in extreme northeast of Lesser Poland, in Siedlce and vicinity, where people rather speak Masovian dialect. Descending from the language of the Vistulans, it is the most numerous dialectal group in modern Poland. According to Wincenty Pol, it is divided into three subdivisions: Sandomierz dialect, Lublin dialect, and Sanok dialect.
In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Lesser Polish dialect, together with Greater Polish dialect, contributed to creation of standard Polish, it also greatly influenced Silesian (see Dialects of Polish), as well as dialects of Polish used in southern part of Kresy Wschodnie. Later on, however, its importance diminished and was replaced by Masovian dialect, which became the leading dialect of Polish. After Partitions of Poland, when Lesser Poland was divided between Austria and Russia, northern areas of the province took over many features of the Masovian dialect, while Lesser Polish dialect in Austrian province of Galicia was heavily influenced by German.
According to Multimedia Guide to Polish Dialects, a webpage maintained by University of Warsaw, Lesser Polish dialect is divided into the following subdialects:
Mazowsze Borderland (Pogranicze Mazowsza – around Radom and Dęblin),
Łęczyca (around Łódź, Kutno, Tomaszów Mazowiecki – this part of the country is not historical Lesser Poland),
Kielce (around Kielce),
Lasowiacy (north of Rzeszów),
East Kraków,
West Lublin,
East Lublin (this area historically belongs to Red Ruthenia),
Przemyśl (historical part of Red Ruthenia),
Biecz,
Nowy Sącz,
Podhale,
Spisz,
Orawa,
Żywiec,
Sieradz,
Sanok region, or Red-Ruthenian
Kraków, together with Zagłebie Dąbrowskie.
See also
Gorals, a group of indigenous people, found in southern Lesser Poland
Holy Cross Sermons, the oldest existing manuscripts of fine prose in Polish, which come from Lesser Poland
Lasowiacy, one of subethnic groups, which inhabits eastern Lesser Poland
Lesser Polish Gorge of the Vistula
Malopolski – Polish breed of horse, developed in Lesser Poland
Wymysorys, a West Germanic micro-language actively spoken in the small town of Wilamowice near Bielsko-Biała, on the border between Silesia and Lesser Poland
References
Bibliography
External links
Appeal of inhabitants of Western Lesser Poland against calling them Silesians
Castles of Lesser Poland on lonelyplanet
Visit Lesser Poland webpage
Lesser Poland information at University at Buffalo
Portal of citizen journalism for Małopolska region
National Parks in Lesser Poland
A Polish Radio CD with folk music of Northern Lesser Poland – areas of Radom, Opoczno, and Kielce
Western Lesser Poland. Webpage of inhabitants of eastern counties of Silesian Voivodeship, who do not wish to be associated with Silesia
Historical regions in Poland
Historical regions
History of Lesser Poland Voivodeship
History of Podkarpackie Voivodeship
History of Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship
History of Masovian Voivodeship
History of Lublin Voivodeship
History of Silesian Voivodeship |
18673 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-Term%20Capital%20Management | Long-Term Capital Management | Long-Term Capital Management L.P. (LTCM) was a highly-leveraged hedge fund which was bailed out in 1998 to the tune of $3.6 billion by a group of 14 banks, in a deal brokered and put together by the U.S. Federal Reserve.
LTCM was founded in 1994 by John Meriwether, the former vice-chairman and head of bond trading at Salomon Brothers. Members of LTCM's board of directors included Myron Scholes and Robert C. Merton, who three years later in 1997 shared the Nobel Prize in Economics for having developed the Black–Scholes model of financial dynamics.
LTCM was initially successful, with annualized returns (after fees) of around 21% in its first year, 43% in its second year and 41% in its third year. However, in 1998 it lost $4.6 billion in less than four months due to a combination of high leverage and exposure to the 1997 Asian financial crisis and 1998 Russian financial crisis. The master hedge fund, Long-Term Capital Portfolio L.P., collapsed soon thereafter, leading to an agreement on September 23, 1998, among 14 financial institutions for a $3.65 billion recapitalization under the supervision of the Federal Reserve. The fund was liquidated and dissolved in early 2000.
LTCM can also be described as using an absolute return strategy in combination with high leverage.
Founding
John Meriwether headed Salomon Brothers' bond arbitrage desk until he resigned in 1991 amid a trading scandal. According to Chi-fu Huang, later a Principal at LTCM, the bond arbitrage group was responsible for 80–100% of Salomon's global total earnings from the late 1980s until the early 1990s.
In 1993 Meriwether created Long-Term Capital as a hedge fund and recruited several Salomon bond traders; Larry Hilibrand and Victor Haghani in particular would wield substantial clout and two future winners of the Nobel Memorial Prize, Myron Scholes and Robert C. Merton. Other principals included Eric Rosenfeld, Greg Hawkins, William Krasker, Dick Leahy, James McEntee, Robert Shustak, and David W. Mullins Jr.
The company consisted of Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM), a company incorporated in Delaware but based in Greenwich, Connecticut. LTCM managed trades in Long-Term Capital Portfolio LP, a partnership registered in the Cayman Islands. The fund's operation was designed to have extremely low overhead; trades were conducted through a partnership with Bear Stearns and client relations were handled by Merrill Lynch.
Meriwether chose to start a hedge fund to avoid the financial regulation imposed on more traditional investment vehicles, such as mutual funds, as established by the Investment Company Act of 1940—funds which accepted stakes from 100 or fewer individuals each with more than $1 million in net worth were exempt from most of the regulations that bound other investment companies. The bulk of the money raised, in late 1993, came from companies and individuals connected to the financial industry. With the help of Merrill Lynch, LTCM also secured hundreds of millions of dollars from high-net-worth individual including business owners and celebrities, as well as private university endowments and later the Italian central bank. By 24 February 1994, the day LTCM began trading, the company had amassed just over $1.01 billion in capital.
Trading strategies
The main strategy was to find pairs of bonds which should have a predictable spread between their prices, and then when this spread widened further to basically place a bet that the two prices would come back towards each other.
The core investment strategy of the company was then known as involving convergence trading: using quantitative models to exploit deviations from fair value in the relationships between liquid securities across nations, and between asset classes (i.e Fed model-type strategies). In fixed income the company was involved in US Treasuries, Japanese Government Bonds, UK Gilts, Italian BTPs, and Latin American debt, although their activities were not confined to these markets or to government bonds. LTCM was the brightest star on Wall Street at that time.
List of Major 1998 Trades
Fixed Income Arbitrage
Short US swap spread
Euro Cross-Swap
Long US mortgages hedged
Swap curve Japan
Italian swap spread
Fixed income Volatility
On-the-run/off-the-run spread
Junk bond arbitrage
Equity
Short equity volatility
Risk arbitrage
Equity relative value
Emerging Markets
Long emerging market sovereigns
Long emerging market currency
Long emerging market equity hedged to S&P 500
Other
Yield curve trades
Short high-tech stocks
Convertible arbitrage
Index arbitrage
Fixed income arbitrage
Fixed income securities pay a set of coupons at specified dates in the future, and make a defined redemption payment at maturity. Since bonds of similar maturities and the same credit quality are close substitutes for investors, there tends to be a close relationship between their prices (and yields). Whereas it is possible to construct a single set of valuation curves for derivative instruments based on LIBOR-type fixings, it is not possible to do so for government bond securities because every bond has slightly different characteristics. It is therefore necessary to construct a theoretical model of what the relationships between different but closely related fixed income securities should be.
For example, the most recently issued treasury bond in the US – known as the benchmark – will be more liquid than bonds of similar but slightly shorter maturity that were issued previously. Trading is concentrated in the benchmark bond, and transaction costs are lower for buying or selling it. As a consequence, it tends to trade more expensively than less liquid older bonds, but this expensiveness (or richness) tends to have a limited duration, because after a certain time there will be a new benchmark, and trading will shift to this security newly issued by the Treasury. One core trade in the LTCM strategies was to purchase the old benchmark – now a 29.75-year bond, and which no longer had a significant premium – and to sell short the newly issued benchmark 30-year, which traded at a premium. Over time the valuations of the two bonds would tend to converge as the richness of the benchmark faded once a new benchmark was issued. If the coupons of the two bonds were similar, then this trade would create an exposure to changes in the shape of the typically upward sloping yield curve: a flattening would depress the yields and raise the prices of longer-dated bonds, and raise the yields and depress the prices of shorter-dated bonds. It would therefore tend to create losses by making the 30-year bond that LTCM was short more expensive (and the 29.75-year bond they owned cheaper) even if there had been no change in the true relative valuation of the securities. This exposure to the shape of the yield curve could be managed at a portfolio level, and hedged out by entering a smaller steepener in other similar securities.
Leverage and portfolio composition
Because the magnitude of discrepancies in valuations in this kind of trade is small (for the benchmark Treasury convergence trade, typically a few basis points), in order to earn significant returns for investors, LTCM used leverage to create a portfolio that was a significant multiple (varying over time depending on their portfolio composition) of investors' equity in the fund. It was also necessary to access the financing market in order to borrow the securities that they had sold short. In order to maintain their portfolio, LTCM was therefore dependent on the willingness of its counterparties in the government bond (repo) market to continue to finance their portfolio. If the company was unable to extend its financing agreements, then it would be forced to sell the securities it owned and to buy back the securities it was short at market prices, regardless of whether these were favourable from a valuation perspective.
At the beginning of 1998, the firm had equity of $4.7 billion and had borrowed over $124.5 billion with assets of around $129 billion, for a debt-to-equity ratio of over 25 to 1. It had off-balance sheet derivative positions with a notional value of approximately $1.25 trillion, most of which were in interest rate derivatives such as interest rate swaps. The fund also invested in other derivatives such as equity options.
John Quiggin's book Zombie Economics (2010) states, "These derivatives, such as interest rate swaps, were developed with the supposed goal of allowing firms to manage risk on exchange rates and interest rate movements. Instead, they allowed speculation on an unparalleled scale."
Secret and opaque operations
LTCM was open about its overall strategy, but very secretive about its specific operations, including scattering trades among banks. And in perhaps a disconcerting note, "since Long-Term was flourishing, no one needed to know exactly what they were doing. All they knew was that the profits were coming in as promised," or at least perhaps what should have been a disconcerting note when looked at in hindsight.
Opaqueness may have made even more of a difference and investors may have had even a harder time judging the risk involved when LTCM moved from bond arbitrage into arbitrage involving common stocks and corporate mergers.
UBS investment
Under prevailing US tax laws, there was a different treatment of long-term capital gains, which were taxed at 20.0 percent, and income, which was taxed at 39.6 percent. The earnings for partners in a hedge fund was taxed at the higher rate applying to income, and LTCM applied its financial engineering expertise to legally transform income into capital gains. It did so by engaging in a transaction with UBS (Union Bank of Switzerland) that would defer foreign interest income for seven years, thereby being able to earn the more favourable capital gains treatment. LTCM purchased a call option on 1 million of their own shares (valued then at $800 million) for a premium paid to UBS of $300 million. This transaction was completed in three tranches: in June, August, and October 1997. Under the terms of the deal, UBS agreed to reinvest the $300 million premium directly back into LTCM for a minimum of three years. In order to hedge its exposure from being short the call option, UBS also purchased 1 million of LTCM shares. Put-call parity means that being short a call and long the same amount of notional as underlying the call is equivalent to being short a put. So the net effect of the transaction was for UBS to lend $300 million to LTCM at LIBOR+50 and to be short a put on 1 million shares. UBS's own motivation for the trade was to be able to invest in LTCM – a possibility that was not open to investors generally – and to become closer to LTCM as a client. LTCM quickly became the largest client of the hedge fund desk, generating $15 million in fees annually.
Diminishing opportunities and broadening of strategies
LTCM attempted to create a splinter fund in 1996 called LTCM-X that would invest in even higher risk trades and focus on Latin American markets. LTCM turned to UBS to invest in and write the warrant for this new spin-off company.
LTCM faced challenges in deploying capital as their capital base grew due to initially strong returns, and as the magnitude of anomalies in market pricing diminished over time. James Surowiecki concludes that LTCM grew such a large portion of such illiquid markets that there was no diversity in buyers in them, or no buyers at all, so the wisdom of the market did not function and it was impossible to determine a price for its assets (such as Danish bonds in September 1998).
In Q4 1997, a year in which it earned 27%, LTCM returned capital to investors. It also broadened its strategies to include new approaches in markets outside of fixed income: many of these were not market neutral – they were dependent on overall interest rates or stock prices going up (or down) – and they were not traditional convergence trades. By 1998, LTCM had accumulated extremely large positions in areas such as merger arbitrage (betting on differences between a proprietary view of the likelihood of success of mergers and other corporate transactions would be completed and the implied market pricing) and S&P 500 options (net short long-term S&P volatility). LTCM had become a major supplier of S&P 500 vega, which had been in demand by companies seeking to essentially insure equities against future declines.
Early skepticism
Despite the fund's prominent leadership and strong growth at LTCM, that there were skeptics from the very beginning. Investor Seth Klarman believed it was reckless to have the combination of high leverage and not accounting for rare or outlying scenarios. Software designer Mitch Kapor, who had sold a statistical program with LTCM partner Eric Rosenfeld, saw quantitative finance as a faith, rather than science. Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Samuelson was concerned about extraordinary events affecting the market. Economist Eugene Fama found in his research that stocks were bound to have extreme outliers. Furthermore, he believed that, because they are subject to discontinuous price changes, real-life markets are inherently more risky than models. He became even more concerned when LTCM began adding stocks to their bond portfolio.
Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger were two of the individual investors that Meriwether approached in 1993 to invest in the fund. Both analyzed the company but turned down the offer, considering the leverage plan to be too risky.
Downturn
Riskier investments starting in 1997
LTCM's profit percentage for 1996 was 40%. However, for 1997, it was "only" 17%, which was actually right at average for hedge funds. A big reason was that other companies were by now following LTCM's example. And this greater competition left fewer arbitrage opportunities for LTCM themselves.
As a result, LTCM began investing in emerging-market debt and foreign currencies. Some of the major partners, particular Myron Scholes, had their doubts about these new investments. For example, when LTCM took a major position in the Norwegian kroner, Scholes warned that they had no "informational advantage" in this area.
In June 1998 -- which was before the Russian financial crisis -- LTCM posted a 10% loss, which was their biggest monthly loss to date.
1997 Asian financial crisis
Although 1997 had been a very profitable year for LTCM (27%), the lingering effects of the 1997 Asian crisis continued to shape developments in asset markets into 1998. Despite the crisis originating in Asia, its effects were not confined to that region. The rise in risk aversion had raised concerns amongst investors regarding all markets heavily dependent on international capital flows, and this shaped asset pricing in markets outside Asia too.
1998 Russian financial crisis
Although periods of distress have often created tremendous opportunities for relative value strategies, this did not prove to be the case on this occasion, and the seeds of LTCM's demise were sown before the Russian default of 17 August 1998. LTCM had returned $2.7 bn to investors in Q4 of 1997, although it had also raised a total in capital of $1.066bn from UBS and $133m from CSFB. Since position sizes had not been reduced, the net effect was to raise the leverage of the fund.
In May and June 1998 returns from the fund were -6.42% and -10.14% respectively, reducing LTCM's capital by $461 million. This was further aggravated by the exit of Salomon Brothers from the arbitrage business in July 1998. Because the Salomon arbitrage group (where many of LTCM's strategies had first been incubated) had been a significant player in the kinds of strategies also pursued by LTCM, the liquidation of the Salomon portfolio (and its announcement itself) had the effect of depressing the prices of the securities owned by LTCM and bidding up the prices of the securities LTCM was short. According to Michael Lewis in the New York Times article of July 1998, returns that month were circa -10%. One LTCM partner commented that because there was a clear temporary reason to explain the widening of arbitrage spreads, at the time it gave them more conviction that these trades would eventually return to fair value (as they did, but not without widening much further first).
Such losses were accentuated through the 1998 Russian financial crisis in August and September 1998, when the Russian government defaulted on its domestic local currency bonds. This came as a surprise to many investors because according to traditional economic thinking of the time, a sovereign issuer should never need to default given access to the printing press. There was a flight to quality, bidding up the prices of the most liquid and benchmark securities that LTCM was short, and depressing the price of the less liquid securities it owned. This phenomenon occurred not merely in the US Treasury market but across the full spectrum of financial assets. Although LTCM was diversified, the nature of its strategy implied an exposure to a latent factor risk of the price of liquidity across markets. As a consequence, when a much larger flight to liquidity occurred than had been anticipated when constructing its portfolio, its positions designed to profit from convergence to fair value incurred large losses as expensive but liquid securities became more expensive, and cheap but illiquid securities became cheaper. By the end of August, the fund had lost $1.85 billion in capital.
Because LTCM was not the only fund pursuing such a strategy, and because the proprietary trading desks of the banks also held some similar trades, the divergence from fair value was made worse as these other positions were also liquidated. As rumours of LTCM's difficulties spread, some market participants positioned in anticipation of a forced liquidation. Victor Haghani, a partner at LTCM, said about this time "it was as if there was someone out there with our exact portfolio,... only it was three times as large as ours, and they were liquidating all at once."
Because these losses reduced the capital base of LTCM, and its ability to maintain the magnitude of its existing portfolio, LTCM was forced to liquidate a number of its positions at a highly unfavorable moment and suffer further losses. A vivid illustration of the consequences of these forced liquidations is given by Lowenstein (2000). He reports that LTCM established an arbitrage position in the dual-listed company (or "DLC") Royal Dutch Shell in the summer of 1997, when Royal Dutch traded at an 8%–10% premium relative to Shell. In total $2.3 billion was invested, half of which was "long" in Shell and the other half was "short" in Royal Dutch.
LTCM was essentially betting that the share prices of Royal Dutch and Shell would converge because in their belief the present value of the future cashflows of the two securities should be similar. This might have happened in the long run, but due to its losses on other positions, LTCM had to unwind its position in Royal Dutch Shell. Lowenstein reports that the premium of Royal Dutch had increased to about 22%, which implies that LTCM incurred a large loss on this arbitrage strategy. LTCM lost $286 million in equity pairs trading and more than half of this loss is accounted for by the Royal Dutch Shell trade.
The company, which had historically earned annualised compounded returns of almost 40% up to this point, experienced a flight to liquidity. In the first three weeks of September, LTCM's equity tumbled from $2.3 billion at the start of the month to just $400 million by September 25. With liabilities still over $100 billion, this translated to an effective leverage ratio of more than 250-to-1.
1998 bailout
Long-Term Capital Management did business with nearly every important person on Wall Street. Indeed, much of LTCM's capital was composed of funds from the same financial professionals with whom it traded. As LTCM teetered, Wall Street feared that Long-Term's failure could cause a chain reaction in numerous markets, causing catastrophic losses throughout the financial system.
After LTCM failed to raise more money on its own, it became clear it was running out of options. On September 23, 1998, Goldman Sachs, AIG, and Berkshire Hathaway offered then to buy out the fund's partners for $250 million, to inject $3.75 billion and to operate LTCM within Goldman's own trading division. The offer of $250 million was stunningly low to LTCM's partners because at the start of the year their firm had been worth $4.7 billion. Warren Buffett gave Meriwether less than one hour to accept the deal; the time lapsed before a deal could be worked out.
Seeing no options left, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York organized a bailout of $3.625 billion by the major creditors to avoid a wider collapse in the financial markets. The principal negotiator for LTCM was general counsel James G. Rickards. The contributions from the various institutions were as follows:
$300 million: Bankers Trust, Barclays, Chase, Credit Suisse First Boston, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, J.P.Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Salomon Smith Barney, UBS
$125 million: Société Générale
$100 million: Paribas and Lehman Brothers
Bear Stearns and Crédit Agricole declined to participate.
In return, the participating banks got a 90% share in the fund and a promise that a supervisory board would be established. LTCM's partners received a 10% stake, still worth about $400 million, but this money was completely consumed by their debts. The partners once had $1.9 billion of their own money invested in LTCM, all of which was wiped out.
The fear was that there would be a chain reaction as the company liquidated its securities to cover its debt, leading to a drop in prices, which would force other companies to liquidate their own debt in a vicious cycle.
The total losses were found to be $4.6 billion. The losses in the major investment categories were (ordered by magnitude):
$1.6 bn in swaps
$1.3 bn in equity volatility
$430 mn in Russia and other emerging markets
$371 mn in directional trades in developed countries
$286 mn in Dual-listed company pairs (such as VW, Shell)
$215 mn in yield curve arbitrage
$203 mn in S&P 500 stocks
$100 mn in junk bond arbitrage
no substantial losses in merger arbitrage
Long-Term Capital was audited by Price Waterhouse LLP. After the bailout by the other investors, the panic abated, and the positions formerly held by LTCM were eventually liquidated at a small profit to the rescuers. Although termed a bailout, the transaction effectively amounted to an orderly liquidation of the positions held by LTCM with creditor involvement and supervision by the Federal Reserve Bank. No public money was injected or directly at risk, and the companies involved in providing support to LTCM were also those that stood to lose from its failure. The creditors themselves did not lose money from being involved in the transaction.
Some industry officials said that Federal Reserve Bank of New York involvement in the rescue, however benign, would encourage large financial institutions to assume more risk, in the belief that the Federal Reserve would intervene on their behalf in the event of trouble. Federal Reserve Bank of New York actions raised concerns among some market observers that it could create moral hazard since even though the Fed had not directly injected capital, its use of moral suasion to encourage creditor involvement emphasized its interest in supporting the financial system .
LTCM's strategies were compared (a contrast with the market efficiency aphorism that there are no $100 bills lying on the street, as someone else has already picked them up) to "picking up nickels in front of a bulldozer"—a likely small gain balanced against a small chance of a large loss, like the payouts from selling an out-of-the-money naked call option.
Aftermath
In 1998, the chairman of Union Bank of Switzerland resigned as a result of a $780 million loss incurred from the being short put options on LTCM, which had become significantly in-the-money due to LTCM's collapse.
After the bailout, Long-Term Capital Management continued operations. In the year following the bailout, it earned 10%. By early 2000, the fund had been liquidated, and the consortium of banks that financed the bailout had been paid back, but the collapse was devastating for many involved. Mullins, once considered a possible successor to Alan Greenspan, saw his future with the Fed dashed. The theories of Merton and Scholes took a public beating. In its annual reports, Merrill Lynch observed that mathematical risk models "may provide a greater sense of security than warranted; therefore, reliance on these models should be limited."
After helping unwind LTCM, John Meriwether launched JWM Partners. Haghani, Hilibrand, Leahy, and Rosenfeld signed up as principals of the new firm. By December 1999, they had raised $250 million for a fund that would continue many of LTCM's strategies—this time, using less leverage. With the credit crisis of 2008, JWM Partners LLC was hit with a 44% loss from September 2007 to February 2009 in its Relative Value Opportunity II fund. As such, JWM Hedge Fund was shut down in July 2009. Meriwether then launched a third hedge fund in 2010 called JM Advisors Management. A 2014 Business Insider article stated that his later two funds used "the same investment strategy from his time at LTCM and Salomon."
Analysis
Historian Niall Ferguson proposed that LTCM's collapse stemmed in part from their use of only five years of financial data to prepare their mathematical models, thus drastically under-estimating the risks of a profound economic crisis. Using ten years of data would have included the 1987 US market crash, while using 80 years of data would have included many minor and major economic downturns including the 1918 Russian sovereign debt default after the First World War and Russian Civil War, highlighting the possibility of a major foreign event causing international repercussions that LTCM seemingly overlooked.
A 2016 CFA article written by Ron Rimkus pointed out that the VaR model, one of the major quantitative analysis tool by LTCM, had several flaws in it. A VaR model is calculated based on historical data, but the data sample used by LTCM excluded previous economic crises such as those of 1987 and 1994. VaR also could not interpret extreme events such as a financial crisis in terms of timing.
Was bailout a (major) contributing factor to the 2008 near-collapse of major financial institutions?
In his 1998 testimony to a Congressional committee, Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan said, “My own guess is that the probability [of systematic collapse] was significantly below 50 percent, but still large enough to be worrisome.” It was unknown whether major investors would be able to tell which banks were most exposed and which were not, meaning that the market might be "opaque" in this regard. However, an after-the-fact study found that investors were able to tell. Four banks highly involved lost money during the LTCM crisis, whereas other banks made money during this same time period.
There was also concern about whether the Fed's bailout was taken as an implicit guarantee for similar situations in the future. That is, did it create a moral hazard and encourage banks to engage in riskier behavior than they otherwise would have?
In an article regarding the 2008 near-collapse of major financial institutions (the Sept. 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers and the near-collapse of AIG), economist and former Fed Deputy Chair Alan Blinder put forward 10 lessons for fellow economists. One of these was entitled, "Moral hazard isn’t a show-stopper, it’s a tradeoff." He went on to state, "Second, timing matters. Features of a financial system that either create or limit moral hazard are mainly long-run, design issues—such as the parameters of and conditions on deposit insurance, the Dodd-Frank requirement for 'living wills,' or Dodd-Frank’s 'orderly liquidation authority.' As just noted, such design decisions should balance moral hazard costs against the gains from reducing runs and contagion. But in the midst of a crisis, with the house on fire, it may be imperative to douse the fire first and try to persuade the occupant not to smoke later—time inconsistency notwithstanding."
See also
Black–Scholes model
Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000
Game theory
Greenspan put
James Rickards
Kurtosis risk
Limits to arbitrage
Martingale (betting system)
Martingale (probability theory)
Probability theory
St. Petersburg paradox
Value at risk
When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management
Black swan problem
Notes
Bibliography
. Chapter 15: Long-Term Capital Management, pp. 245–273
Further reading
Case Study: Long-Term Capital Management erisk.com
Meriwether and Strange Weather: Intelligence, Risk Management and Critical Thinking austhink.org
US District Court of Connecticut judgement on tax status of LTCM losses
Michael Lewis – NYT – How the Egghead's Cracked-January 1999
Stein, M. (2003): Unbounded irrationality: Risk and organizational narcissism at Long Term Capital Management, in: Human Relations 56 (5), S. 523–540.
1998 in economics
Financial services companies established in 1994
Financial services companies disestablished in 2000
Corporate scandals
Financial crises
Hedge funds
Hedge fund firms in Connecticut
Defunct hedge funds
1994 establishments in Connecticut
2000 disestablishments in Connecticut |
18674 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal%20arts%20education | Liberal arts education | Liberal arts education (from Latin "free" and "art or principled practice") is the traditional academic program in Western higher education. Liberal arts takes the term art in the sense of a learned skill rather than specifically the fine arts. Liberal arts education can refer to studies in a liberal arts degree program or to a university education more generally. Such a course of study contrasts with those that are principally vocational, professional, or technical.
History
Before they became known by their Latin variations (, , ), the liberal arts were the continuation of Ancient Greek methods of enquiry that began with a "desire for a universal understanding." Pythagoras argued that there was a mathematical and geometrical harmony to the cosmos or the universe; his followers linked the four arts of astronomy, mathematics, geometry, and music into one area of study to form the "disciplines of the mediaeval quadrivium". In 4th-century Athens, the government of the polis, or city-state, respected the ability of rhetoric or public speaking above almost everything else. Eventually rhetoric, grammar, and dialectic (logic) became the educational programme of the trivium. Together they came to be known as the seven liberal arts. Originally these subjects or skills were held by classical antiquity to be essential for a free person (, "worthy of a free person") to acquire in order to take an active part in civic life, something that included among other things participating in public debate, defending oneself in court, serving on juries, and participating in military service. While the arts of the quadrivium might have appeared prior to the arts of the trivium, by the middle ages educational programmes taught the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) first while the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy) were the following stage of education.
Rooted in the basic curriculum – the or "well-rounded education" – of late Classical and Hellenistic Greece, the "liberal arts" or "liberal pursuits" (Latin ) were already so called in formal education during the Roman Empire. The first recorded use of the term "liberal arts" () occurs in by Marcus Tullius Cicero, but it is unclear if he created the term. Seneca the Younger discusses liberal arts in education from a critical Stoic point of view in Moral Epistles. The exact classification of the liberal arts varied however in Roman times, and it was only after Martianus Capella in the 5th century AD influentially brought the seven liberal arts as bridesmaids to the Marriage of Mercury and Philology, that they took on canonical form.
The four "scientific" —music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy—were known from the time of Boethius onwards as the quadrivium. After the 9th century, the remaining three arts of the "humanities"—grammar, logic, and rhetoric—‚were grouped as the trivium. It was in that two-fold form that the seven liberal arts were studied in the medieval Western university. During the Middle Ages, logic gradually came to take predominance over the other parts of the trivium.
In the 12th century the iconic image – (Philosophy and seven liberal arts) – was produced by an Alsatian nun and abbess Herrad of Landsberg with her community of women as part of the . Their encyclopedia compiled ideas drawn from philosophy, theology, literature, music, arts, and sciences and was intended as a teaching tool for women of the abbey. Compiled between 1167 and 1185 it contained humanity's most significant ideas. The image Philosophy and seven liberal arts represents the circle of philosophy, and is presented as a rosette of a cathedral: a central circle and a series of semicircles arranged all around. It shows learning and knowledge organised into seven relations, the or Seven Liberal Arts. Each of these arts find their source in the Greek φιλοσοφία, philosophia, literally “love of wisdom”. St. Albert the Great, a doctor of the Catholic Church, asserted that the seven liberal arts were referred to in Sacred Scripture, saying: "It is written, 'Wisdom hath built herself a house, she hath hewn her out seven pillars' (Proverbs 9:1). This house is the Blessed Virgin; the seven pillars are the seven liberal arts."
In the Renaissance, the Italian humanists and their Northern counterparts, despite in many respects continuing the traditions of the Middle Ages, reversed that process. Re-christening the old trivium with a new and more ambitious name: , and also increasing its scope, they downplayed logic as opposed to the traditional Latin grammar and rhetoric, and added to them history, Greek, and moral philosophy (ethics), with a new emphasis on poetry as well. The educational curriculum of humanism spread throughout Europe during the sixteenth century and became the educational foundation for the schooling of European elites, the functionaries of political administration, the clergy of the various legally recognized churches, and the learned professions of law and medicine. The ideal of a liberal arts, or humanistic education grounded in classical languages and literature, persisted in Europe until the middle of the twentieth century; in the United States, it had come under increasingly successful attack in the late 19th century by academics interested in reshaping American higher education around the natural and social sciences.
Similarly, Wilhelm von Humboldt's educational model in Prussia (now Germany), which later became the role model for higher education also in North America, went beyond vocational training. In a letter to the Prussian king, he wrote:
The philosopher Julian Nida-Rümelin has criticized discrepancies between Humboldt's ideals and the contemporary European education policy, which narrowly understands education as a preparation for the labor market, arguing that we need to decide between "McKinsey and Humboldt".
Modern usage
The modern use of the term liberal arts consists of four areas: the natural sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. Academic areas that are associated with the term liberal arts include:
Life sciences (biology, ecology, neuroscience)
Physical science (physics, astronomy, chemistry, physical geography)
Logic, mathematics, statistics, computer science
Philosophy
History
Social science (anthropology, economics, human geography, linguistics, political science, jurisprudence, psychology, and sociology)
Creative arts (fine arts, music, performing arts, literature)
For example, the core courses for Georgetown University's Doctor of Liberal Studies program cover philosophy, theology, history, art, literature, and the social sciences. Wesleyan University's Master of Arts in Liberal Studies program includes courses in visual arts, art history, creative and professional writing, literature, history, mathematics, film, government, education, biology, psychology, and astronomy.
Secondary school
Liberal arts education at the secondary school level prepares students for higher education at a university.
Curricula differ from school to school, but generally include language, chemistry, biology, geography, art, music, history, philosophy, civics, social sciences, and foreign languages.
In the United States
In the United States, liberal arts colleges are schools emphasizing undergraduate study in the liberal arts. The teaching at liberal arts colleges is often Socratic, typically with small classes; professors are often allowed to concentrate more on their teaching responsibilities than are professors at research universities.
In addition, most four-year colleges are not devoted exclusively or primarily to liberal arts degrees, but offer a liberal arts degree, and allow students not majoring in liberal arts to take courses to satisfy distribution requirements in liberal arts.
Traditionally, a bachelor's degree in one particular area within liberal arts, with substantial study outside that main area, is earned over four years of full-time study. However, some universities such as Saint Leo University, Pennsylvania State University, Florida Institute of Technology, and New England College have begun to offer an associate degree in liberal arts. Colleges like the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts offer a unique program with only one degree offering, a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies, and colleges like the University of Oklahoma College of Liberal Studies offer an online, part-time option for adult and nontraditional students.
Most students earn either a Bachelor of Arts degree or a Bachelor of Science degree; on completing undergraduate study, students might progress to either a liberal arts graduate school or a professional school (public administration, engineering, business, law, medicine, theology).
Great Books movement
In 1937 St. John's College changed its curriculum to focus on the Great Books of the Western World to provide a new sort of education that separated itself from the increasingly specialized nature of higher schooling.
In Europe
In most parts of Europe, liberal arts education is deeply rooted. In Germany, Austria and countries influenced by their education system it is called 'humanistische Bildung''' (humanistic education). The term is not to be confused with some modern educational concepts that use a similar wording. Educational institutions that see themselves in that tradition are often a Gymnasium (high school, grammar school). They aim at providing their pupils with comprehensive education (Bildung) to form personality with regard to a pupil's own humanity as well as their innate intellectual skills. Going back to the long tradition of the liberal arts in Europe, education in the above sense was freed from scholastic thinking and re-shaped by the theorists of the Enlightenment; in particular, Wilhelm von Humboldt. Since students are considered to have received a comprehensive liberal arts education at gymnasia, very often the role of liberal arts education in undergraduate programs at universities is reduced compared to the US educational system. Students are expected to use their skills received at the gymnasium to further develop their personality in their own responsibility, e.g. in universities' music clubs, theatre groups, language clubs, etc. Universities encourage students to do so and offer respective opportunities but do not make such activities part of the university's curriculum.
Thus, on the level of higher education, despite the European origin of the liberal arts college, the term liberal arts college usually denotes liberal arts colleges in the United States. With the exception of pioneering institutions such as Franklin University Switzerland (formerly known as Franklin College), established as a Europe-based, US-style liberal arts college in 1969, only recently some efforts have been undertaken to systematically "re-import" liberal arts education to continental Europe, as with Leiden University College The Hague, University College Utrecht, University College Maastricht, Amsterdam University College, Roosevelt Academy (now University College Roosevelt), University College Twente (ATLAS), Erasmus University College, the University of Groningen, Bratislava International School of Liberal Arts, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Central European University, and Bard College Berlin, formerly known as the European College of Liberal Arts. Central European University launched a liberal arts undergraduate degree in Culture, Politics, and Society in 2020 as part of its move to Vienna and accreditation in Austria. As well as the colleges listed above, some universities in the Netherlands offer bachelors programs in Liberal Arts and Sciences (Tilburg University). Liberal arts (as a degree program) is just beginning to establish itself in Europe. For example, University College Dublin offers the degree, as does St. Marys University College Belfast, both institutions coincidentally on the island of Ireland. In the Netherlands, universities have opened constituent liberal arts colleges under the terminology university college since the late 1990s. The four-year bachelor's degree in Liberal Arts and Sciences at University College Freiburg is the first of its kind in Germany. It started in October 2012 with 78 students. The first Liberal Arts degree program in Sweden was established at Gothenburg University in 2011, followed by a Liberal Arts Bachelor Programme at Uppsala University's Campus Gotland in the autumn of 2013. The first Liberal Arts program in Georgia was introduced in 2005 by American-Georgian Initiative for Liberal Education (AGILE), an NGO. Thanks to their collaboration, Ilia State University became the first higher education institution in Georgia to establish a liberal arts program.
In France, Chavagnes Studium, a Liberal Arts Study Centre in partnership with the Institut Catholique d'études supérieures, and based in a former Catholic seminary, is launching a two-year intensive BA in the Liberal Arts, with a distinctively Catholic outlook. It has been suggested that the liberal arts degree may become part of mainstream education provision in the United Kingdom, Ireland and other European countries. In 1999, the European College of Liberal Arts (now Bard College Berlin) was founded in Berlin and in 2009 it introduced a four-year Bachelor of Arts program in Value Studies taught in English, leading to an interdisciplinary degree in the humanities.
In England, the first institution to retrieve and update a liberal arts education at the undergraduate level was the University of Winchester with their BA (Hons) Modern Liberal Arts programme which launched in 2010. In 2012, University College London began its interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences BASc degree (which has kinship with the liberal arts model) with 80 students. King's College London launched the BA Liberal Arts, which has a slant towards arts, humanities and social sciences subjects. The New College of the Humanities also launched a new liberal education programme. Durham University has both a popular BA Liberal Arts and a BA Combined Honours in Social Sciences programme, both of which allow for interdisciplinary approaches to education. The University of Nottingham also has a Liberal Arts BA with study abroad options and links with its Natural Sciences degrees. In 2016, the University of Warwick launched a three/four-year liberal arts BA degree, which focuses on transdisciplinary approaches and problem-based learning techniques in addition to providing structured disciplinary pathways. And for 2017 entry UCAS lists 20 providers of liberal arts programmes.
In Scotland, the four-year undergraduate Honours degree, specifically the Master of Arts, has historically demonstrated considerable breadth in focus. In the first two years of Scottish MA and BA degrees students typically study a number of different subjects before specialising in their Honours years (third and fourth year). The University of Dundee and the University of Glasgow (at its Crichton Campus) are the only Scottish universities that currently offer a specifically named 'Liberal Arts' degree.
In Slovakia, the Bratislava International School of Liberal Arts (BISLA) is located in the Old Town of Bratislava. It is the first liberal arts college in Central Europe. A private, accredited three-year degree-granting undergraduate institution, it opened in September 2006.
In Asia
The Commission on Higher Education of the Philippines mandates a General Education curriculum required of all higher education institutions; it includes a number of liberal arts subjects, including history, art appreciation, and ethics, plus interdisciplinary electives. Many universities have much more robust liberal arts core curricula; most notably, the Jesuit universities such as Ateneo de Manila University have a strong liberal arts core curriculum that includes philosophy, theology, literature, history, and the social sciences. Forman Christian College is a liberal arts university in Lahore, Pakistan. It is one of the oldest institutions in the Indian subcontinent. It is a chartered university recognized by the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan. Habib University in Karachi, Pakistan offers a holistic liberal arts and sciences experience to its students through its uniquely tailored liberal core program which is compulsory for all undergraduate degree students. The Underwood International College of Yonsei University, Korea, has compulsory liberal arts courses for all the student body.
In India, there are many institutions that offer undergraduate UG or bachelor's degree/diploma and postgraduate PG or master's degree/diploma as well as doctoral PhD and postdoctoral studies and research, in this academic discipline. Manipal Academy of Higher Education – MAHE, an Institution of Eminence as recognised by MHRD of Govt of India in 2018, houses a Faculty of Liberal Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, and also others like Symbiosis & FLAME University in Pune, Ahmedabad University, Ashoka University, and Azim Premji University in Bangalore. Lingnan University and University of Liberal Arts- Bangladesh (ULAB) are also a few such liberal arts colleges in Asia. International Christian University in Tokyo is the first and one of the very few liberal arts universities in Japan. Fulbright University Vietnam is the first liberal arts institution in Vietnam.
In Australia
Campion College is a Roman Catholic dedicated liberal arts college, located in the western suburbs of Sydney. Founded in 2006, it is the first tertiary educational liberal arts college of its type in Australia. Campion offers a Bachelor of Arts in the Liberal Arts as its sole undergraduate degree. The key disciplines studied are history, literature, philosophy, and theology.
The Millis Institute is the School of Liberal Arts at Christian Heritage College located in Brisbane. Founded by Dr. Ryan Messmore, former President of Campion College, the Millis Institute offers a Bachelor of Arts in the Liberal Arts in which students can choose to major in Philosophy, Theology, History or Literature. It also strongly endorses a 'Study Abroad' program whereby students can earn credit towards their degree by undertaking two units over a five-week program at the University of Oxford. As of 2016, the Millis Institute is currently directed under Elizabeth Hillman.
A new School of Liberal Arts has been formed in the University of Wollongong; the new Arts course entitled 'Western Civilisation' was first offered in 2020. The interdisciplinary curriculum focuses on the classic intellectual and artistic literature of the Western tradition. Courses in the liberal arts have recently been developed at the University of Sydney and the University of Notre Dame.
See also
Citations
References
Kimball, Bruce A. Orators and Philosophers: A History of the Idea of Liberal Education. College Board, 1995.
Further reading
Barzun, Jacques. The House of Intellect, Reprint Harper Perennial, 2002.
Blaich, Charles, Anne Bost, Ed Chan, and Richard Lynch. "Defining Liberal Arts Education." Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts, 2004.
Blanshard, Brand. The Uses of a Liberal Education: And Other Talks to Students. (Open Court, 1973. )
Friedlander, Jack. Measuring the Benefits of Liberal Arts Education in Washington's Community Colleges. Los Angeles: Center for the Study of Community Colleges, 1982a. (ED 217 918)
Grafton Anthony and Lisa Jardine. From Humanism to the Humanities: The Institutionalizing of the Liberal Arts in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-century Europe, Harvard University Press, 1987.
Guitton, Jean. A Student's Guide to Intellectual Work, The University of Notre Dame Press, 1964.
Highet, Gilbert. The Art of Teaching, Vintage Books, 1950.
Joseph, Sister Miriam. The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric. Paul Dry Books Inc, 2002.
Kimball, Bruce A. The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Documentary History. University Press Of America, 2010.
McGrath, Charles. "What Every Student Should Know", New York Times, 8 January 2006.
Parker, H. "The Seven Liberal Arts," The English Historical Review, Vol. V, 1890.
Ruckdeschel, Christopher. On the Nature of the Classical Liberal Arts, Bookbaby, 2019.
Saint-Victor, Hugh of. The Didascalicon, Columbia University Press, 1961.
Schall, James V. Another Sort of Learning, Ignatius Press, 1988.
Sertillanges, A. G. The Intellectual Life, The Catholic University of America Press, 1998.
Tubbs, N. (2011) "Know Thyself: Macrocosm and Microcosm" in Studies in Philosophy and Education Volume 30 no.1
Winterer, Caroline. The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780–1910. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.
Wriston, Henry M. The Nature of a Liberal College. Lawrence University Press, 1937.
Zakaria, Fareed. In Defense of a Liberal Education. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2015.
External links
Definition and short history of the Seven Liberal Arts from 1905.
Fr. Herve de la Tour, "The Seven Liberal Arts", Edocere, a Resource for Catholic Education, February 2002. Thomas Aquinas's definition of and justification for a liberal arts education.
Otto Willmann. "The Seven Liberal Arts". In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907. Retrieved 13 August 2012.] "[Renaissance] Humanists, over-fond of change, unjustly condemned the system of the seven liberal arts as barbarous. It is no more barbarous than the Gothic style, a name intended to be a reproach. The Gothic, built up on the conception of the old basilica, ancient in origin, yet Christian in character, was misjudged by the Renaissance on account of some excrescences, and obscured by the additions engrafted upon it by modern lack of taste… That the achievements of our forefathers should be understood, recognized, and adapted to our own needs, is surely to be desired."
Andrew Chrucky (1 September 2003). "The Aim of Liberal Education". "The content of a liberal education should be moral problems as provided by history, anthropology, sociology, economics, and politics. And these should be discussed along with a reflection on the nature of morality and the nature of discussions, i.e., through a study of rhetoric and logic. Since discussion takes place in language, an effort should be made to develop a facility with language."
"Philosophy of Liberal Education" A bibliography, compiled by Andrew Chrucky, with links to essays offering different points of view on the meaning of a liberal education.
Mark Peltz, "The Liberal Arts and Leadership", College News (The Annapolis Group), 14 May 2012. A defense of liberal education by the Associate Dean of Grinnell College (first appeared in Inside Higher Ed).
"Liberal Arts at the Community College", an ERIC Fact Sheet. ERIC Clearinghouse for Junior Colleges Los Angeles
"A Descriptive Analysis of the Community College Liberal Arts Curriculum". ERIC Clearinghouse for Junior Colleges Los Angeles
The Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts. Website about The Wabash Study (for improving liberal education). Sponsored by the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts at Wabash College (Indiana), the Wabash Study began in the fall of 2010 – scheduled to end in 2013. Participants include 29 prominent colleges and universities.
Academic Commons. An online platform in support of the liberal education community. It is a forum for sharing practices, outcomes, and lessons learned of online learning. Formerly sponsored by the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts, The Academic Commons is hosted by the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education ("NITLE".).
The Liberal Arts Advantage – for Business. Website dedicated to "Bridging the gap between business and the liberal arts". "A liberal arts education is aimed at developing the ability to think, reason, analyze, decide, discern, and evaluate. That's in contrast to a professional or technical education (business, engineering, computer science, etc.) which develops specific abilities aimed at preparing students for vocations."
Video explanation by Professor Nigel Tubbs of liberal arts curriculum and degree requirements of Winchester University, UK.. "Liberal arts education (Latin: liberalis, free, and ars'', art or principled practice) involves us in thinking philosophically across many subject boundaries in the humanities, the social and natural sciences, and fine arts. The degree combines compulsory modules covering art, religion, literature, science and the history of ideas with a wide range of optional modules. This enables students to have flexibility and control over their programme of study and the content of their assessments." |
18678 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral%20consonant | Lateral consonant | A lateral is a consonant in which the airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but it is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth. An example of a lateral consonant is the English L, as in Larry. Lateral consonants contrast with central consonants, in which the airstream flows through the center of the mouth.
For the most common laterals, the tip of the tongue makes contact with the upper teeth (see dental consonant) or the upper gum (see alveolar consonant), but there are many other possible places for laterals to be made. The most common laterals are approximants and belong to the class of liquids, but lateral fricatives and affricates are also common in some parts of the world. Some languages, such as the Iwaidja and Ilgar languages of Australia, have lateral flaps, and others, such as the Xhosa and Zulu languages of Africa, have lateral clicks.
When pronouncing the labiodental fricatives , the lip blocks the airflow in the centre of the vocal tract, so the airstream proceeds along the sides instead. Nevertheless, they are not considered lateral consonants because the airflow never goes over the side of the tongue. No known language makes a distinction between lateral and non-lateral labiodentals. Plosives are never lateral, but they may have lateral release. Nasals are never lateral either, but some languages have lateral nasal clicks. For consonants articulated in the throat (laryngeals), the lateral distinction is not made by any language, although pharyngeal and epiglottal laterals are reportedly possible.
Examples
English has one lateral phoneme: the lateral approximant , which in many accents has two allophones. One, found before vowels as in lady or fly, is called clear l, pronounced as the alveolar lateral approximant with a "neutral" position of the body of the tongue. The other variant, so-called dark l, found before consonants or word-finally, as in bold or tell, is pronounced as the velarized alveolar lateral approximant with the tongue assuming a spoon-like shape with its back part raised, which gives the sound a - or -like resonance. In some languages, like Albanian, those two sounds are different phonemes. East Slavic languages contrast and but do not have [l].
In many British accents (e.g. Cockney), dark may undergo vocalization through the reduction and loss of contact between the tip of the tongue and the alveolar ridge, becoming a rounded back vowel or glide. This process turns tell into , as must have happened with talk or walk at some stage. A similar process happened during the development of many other languages, including Brazilian Portuguese, Old French, and Polish, in all three of these resulting in voiced velar approximant or voiced labio-velar approximant , whence Modern French sauce as compared with Spanish salsa, or Polish Wisła (pronounced ) as compared with English Vistula.
In central and Venice dialects of Venetian, intervocalic has turned into a semivocalic , so that the written word ła bała is pronounced . The orthography uses the letter ł to represent this phoneme (it specifically represents not the sound but the phoneme that is, in some dialects, and, in others, ).
Many aboriginal Australian languages have a series of three or four lateral approximants, as do various dialects of Irish. Rarer lateral consonants include the retroflex laterals that can be found in many languages of India and in some Swedish dialects, and the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative , found in many Native North American languages, Welsh and Zulu. In Adyghe and some Athabaskan languages like Hän, both voiceless and voiced alveolar lateral fricatives occur, but there is no approximant. Many of these languages also have lateral affricates. Some languages have palatal or velar voiceless lateral fricatives or affricates, such as Dahalo and Zulu, but the IPA has no symbols for such sounds. However, appropriate symbols are easy to make by adding a lateral-fricative belt to the symbol for the corresponding lateral approximant (see below). Also, a devoicing diacritic may be added to the approximant.
Nearly all languages with such lateral obstruents also have the approximant. However, there are a number of exceptions, many of them located in the Pacific Northwest area of the United States. For example, Tlingit has but no . Other examples from the same area include Nuu-chah-nulth and Kutenai, and elsewhere, Chukchi and Kabardian.
Standard Tibetan has a voiceless lateral approximant, usually romanized as lh, as in the name Lhasa.
A uvular lateral approximant has been reported to occur in some speakers of American English.
Pashto has a retroflex lateral flap that becomes voiced retroflex approximant when it is at the end of a syllable and a word.
There are a large number of lateral click consonants; 17 occur in !Xóõ.
Lateral trills are also possible, but they do not occur in any known language. They may be pronounced by initiating or with an especially forceful airflow. There is no symbol for them in the IPA. They are sometimes used to imitate bird calls, and they are a component of Donald Duck talk.
List of laterals
Approximants
Voiced dental lateral approximant
Voiced alveolar lateral approximant
Voiced retroflex lateral approximant
Voiced palatal lateral approximant
Voiced velar lateral approximant
Voiced uvular lateral approximant
Fricatives
Voiceless dental lateral fricative (in Wahgi)
Voiced dental lateral fricative (allophonic in Wahgi)
Voiceless alveolar lateral fricative (in Adyghe, Kabardian, Navajo, Welsh)
Voiced alveolar lateral fricative (in Adyghe, Kabardian, Mongolian, Tigak)
Voiceless retroflex lateral fricative (in Toda)
Voiced retroflex lateral fricative or extIPA (in Ao)
Voiceless palatal lateral fricative or or extIPA (PUA ) (in Dahalo, Inupiaq)
Voiced palatal lateral fricative or extIPA (allophonic in Jebero)
Voiceless velar lateral fricative or extIPA (PUA ) (in Archi, Nii, Wahgi)
Voiced velar lateral fricative or extIPA (in Archi, allophonic in Wahgi)
Only the alveolar lateral fricatives have dedicated letters in the IPA. However, others appear in the extIPA.
Affricates
Voiceless alveolar lateral affricate (in Navajo, Tlingit)
Voiced alveolar lateral affricate (allophonic in Zulu and Xhosa)
Voiceless retroflex lateral affricate (in Kamkata-vari)
Voiced retroflex lateral affricate or extIPA (in Kamkata-vari)
Voiceless palatal lateral affricate or extIPA (PUA ) (perhaps prepalatal in Sandawe and Hadza)
Voiced palatal lateral affricate (perhaps prepalatal in Sandawe)
Voiceless velar lateral affricate or extIPA (PUA ) (in Archi, Laghuu, Muji)
Voiced velar lateral affricate (in Laghuu, Muji)
Flaps
Voiceless alveolar lateral flap (in Yavitero)
Voiced alveolar lateral flap (in Wayuu)
Voiceless retroflex lateral flap or (PUA ) (allophonic in Wahgi)
Voiced retroflex lateral flap or (PUA ) (in Pashto, Iwaidja)
Palatal lateral flap (allophonic in Iwaidja and Ilgar)
Velar lateral flap (in Kanite and Melpa)
Ejective
Fricatives
Alveolar lateral ejective fricative (in Adyghe, Kabardian, Tlingit)
Retroflex lateral ejective fricative
Palatal lateral ejective fricative or extIPA
Velar lateral ejective fricative or extIPA
Only the alveolar has been attested in natural languages.
Affricates
Alveolar lateral ejective affricate (in Baslaney, Navajo, Tlingit)
Palatal lateral ejective affricate or extIPA (in Dahalo, Sandawe, Hadza)
Velar lateral ejective affricate or extIPA (in Archi, Gǀwi, Zulu)
Clicks
Alveolar lateral clicks , , , , , etc. (in all five Khoisan families and several Bantu languages)
Ambiguous centrality
The IPA requires sounds to be defined as to centrality, as either central or lateral. However, languages may be ambiguous as to some consonants' laterality. A well-known example is the liquid consonant in Japanese, represented in common transliteration systems as , which can be recognized as a (post)alveolar tap, alveolar lateral flap, (post)alveolar lateral approximant, (post)alveolar approximant, voiced retroflex stop, and various less common forms.
Lateralized consonants
A superscript is defined as lateral release.
Consonants may also be pronounced with simultaneous lateral and central airflow. This is well-known from speech pathology with a lateral lisp. However, it also occurs in nondisordered speech in some southern Arabic dialects and possibly some Modern South Arabian languages, which have pharyngealized nonsibilant and (simultaneous and ) and possibly a sibilant (simultaneous ). Examples are 'pain' in the dialect of Al-Rubu'ah and 'back' and 'hyena' in Rijal Almaa.
(Here the indicates simultaneous laterality rather than lateral release.) Old Arabic has been analyzed as having the emphatic central–lateral fricatives , and .
See also
Delateralization
Lateral release (phonetics)
List of phonetics topics
Notes
References
Sources
Consonants by manner of articulation |
18679 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid%20consonant | Liquid consonant | In phonetics, liquids are a class of consonants consisting of voiced lateral approximants like together with rhotics like .
Etymology
The grammarian Dionysius Thrax used the Greek word ὑγρός (hygrós, "moist") to describe the sonorant consonants () of classical Greek. Most commentators assume that this referred to their "slippery" effect on meter in classical Greek verse when they occur as the second member of a consonant cluster. This word was calqued into Latin as , whence it has been retained in the Western European phonetic tradition.
Phonological properties
Liquids as a class often behave in a similar way in the phonotactics of a language: for example, they often have the greatest freedom in occurring in consonant clusters.
Metathesis
Cross-linguistically, liquids are the consonants most prone to metathesis.
Spanish
In Spanish, /r/ is liable for metathesis. More specifically, /r/ and /l/ frequently switch places:
Lat. crocodīlus > Span. cocodrilo “crocodile”
Lat. mīrāculum > Span. milagro “miracle”
Lat. perīculum > Span. peligro “danger”
Lat. parabola > Span. palabra “speech”
English
comfortable is frequently pronounced /ˈkʌmf.tɚ.bəl/ in rhotic varieties, although its stem, comfort is pronounced /ˈkʌm.fɚt/, with the rhotic /ɹ/ in its original position.
Dissimilation
Liquids are also prone to dissimilation when they occur in sequence.
Sequence r..r > l..r
Latin peregrinus > Old French pelegrin (> )
Sequence l..l > r..l
Italian colonello > Middle French coronnel
This example of a relatively old case of phonetic dissimilation has been artificially undone in the spelling of English colonel, whose standard pronunciation is (with the r sound) in North-American English, or in RP. It was formerly spelt coronel and is a borrowing from Middle French coronnel, which arose as a result of dissimilation from Italian colonnello.
Nucleus slot
Liquids are also the consonants most prone to occupying the nucleus slot in a syllable (the slot usually assigned to vowels). Thus Czech and other Slavic languages allow their liquid consonants and to be the center of their syllables – as witnessed by the classic tonguetwister "push (your) finger through (your) throat".
Areal distribution
Languages differ in the number and nature of their liquid consonants.
Many languages, such as Japanese, Korean, or Polynesian languages (see below), have a single liquid phoneme that has both lateral and rhotic allophones.
English has two liquid phonemes, one lateral, and one rhotic, , exemplified in the words led and red.
Many other European languages have one lateral and one rhotic phoneme. Some, such as Greek, Italian and Serbo-Croatian, have more than two liquid phonemes. All three languages have the set , with two laterals and one rhotic. Similarly, the Iberian languages contrast four liquid phonemes. , , , and a fourth phoneme that is an alveolar trill in all but some varieties of Portuguese, where it is a uvular trill or fricative (also, the majority of Spanish speakers lack and use the central instead). Some European languages, for example Russian and Irish, contrast a palatalized lateral–rhotic pair with an unpalatalized (or velarized) set (e.g. in Russian).
Elsewhere in the world, two liquids of the types mentioned above remains the most common attribute of a language's consonant inventory except in North America and Australia. In North America, a majority of languages do not have rhotics at all and there is a wide variety of lateral sounds though most are obstruent laterals rather than liquids. Most indigenous Australian languages are very rich in liquids, with some having as many as seven distinct liquids. They typically include dental, alveolar, retroflex and palatal laterals, and as many as three rhotics.
On the other side, there are many indigenous languages in the Amazon Basin and eastern North America, as well as a few in Asia and Africa, with no liquids.
Polynesian languages typically have only one liquid, which may be either a lateral or a rhotic. Non-Polynesian Oceanic languages usually have both and , occasionally more (e.g. Araki has , , ) or less (e.g. Mwotlap has only ). Hiw is unusual in having a prestopped velar lateral as its only liquid.
See also
Sonorant
List of phonetics topics
Perception of English /r/ and /l/ by Japanese speakers
Engrish
References
Phonetics
Phonology |
18683 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loya%20jirga | Loya jirga | A jirga (, "grand assembly") is a special type of jirga, or legal assembly, in Pashtunwali, the traditional code of laws of the Pashtun people. It is mainly organized for choosing a new head of state in case of sudden death, adopting a new constitution, or to settle national or regional issue such as war. It predates modern-day written or fixed laws and is mostly favored by the Pashtun people but to a lesser extent by other nearby groups that have been influenced by Pashtuns (historically known as Afghans).
In Afghanistan, jirgas have been reportedly organized since at least the early 18th century when the Hotaki and Durrani dynasties rose to power.
History and terminology
There is a myth in the sense that the ancient Aryan tribes, who are hypothesized to have spoken Proto-Indo-Iranian, came down in intermittent waves from Central Asia and Afghanistan. They practiced a sort of jirga system with two types of councils – and . The (summit) comprised elders and tribal chiefs. The king also joined sessions of the . was a sort of rural council. In India they are referred to as Samiti and Sabha.
It was used over time for the selection of rulers and headmen and the airing of matters of principle. From the time of the great Kushan ruler Kanishka to the 1970s, there were sixteen national jirgas and hundreds of smaller ones. The institution, which is centuries old, is a similar idea to the Islamic shura (consultative assembly).
In the Afghan society, the is still maintained and favored, mostly by tribal leaders to solve internal or external disputes with other tribes. In some cases it functions like a town hall meeting.
When the Afghans took power they tried to legitimize their hold with such a jirga. While in the beginning only Pashtuns were allowed to participate in the jirgas, later other ethnic groups like Tajiks and Hazaras were allowed to participate as well, however they were little more than observers. The member of the jirgas were mostly members of the Royal Family, religious leaders and tribal leaders of the Afghans. King Amanullah Khan institutionalized the jirga. From Amanullah until the reign of Mohammed Zahir Shah (1933–1973) and Mohammed Daoud Khan (1973–1978) the jirga was recognized as a common meeting of regional Pashtun leaders.
The meetings do not have scheduled occurrences, but rather are called for when issues or disputes arise. There is no time limit for a jirga to conclude, and the meetings often take time because decisions can only be made as a group and arguments can drag out for days. Various issues can be addressed such as major disaster, foreign policy, declaration of war, the legitimacy of leaders, and the introduction of new ideas and laws.
Afghanistan
Some of the historical jirgas in the history of Afghanistan are:
1707–1709 – a jirga was gathered by Mir Wais Hotak at Kandahar in 1707, but according to Ghulam Mohammad Ghobar it was gathered in Manja in 1709.
October 1747 – A jirga at Kandahar was attended by Afghan representatives who appointed Ahmad Shah Durrani as their new leader.
September 1928 – A jirga at Paghman, called by King Amanullah, the third jirga of his reign (1919–1929) to discuss reforms.
September 1930 – A jirga of 286 called by Mohammed Nadir Shah to confirm his accession to the throne.
1941 – Called by Mohammed Zahir Shah to approve neutrality in World War II.
1947 – Held by Pashtuns in the Tribal Agencies to choose between joining India or Pakistan.
July 26, 1949 – Afghanistan-Pakistan relations rapidly deteriorated over a dispute, officially declared that it did not recognize the 1893 Durand Line border any longer between the two countries.
September 1964 – A meeting of 452 called by Mohammed Zahir Shah to approve a new constitution.
July 1974 – A meeting with Pakistan over the Durand Line.
January 1977 – Approved the new constitution of Mohammed Daoud Khan establishing one-party rule in the Republic of Afghanistan.
April 1985 – To ratify the new constitution of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.
May 1990 – To ratify a new constitution of the Republic of Afghanistan under Mohammad Najibullah, amendments includes providing for multiple political parties.
September 2001 – Four different jirga movements anticipating the end of Taliban rule. Little communication took place between each of them.
The first was based in Rome around Mohammed Zahir Shah, and it reflected the interests of moderate Pashtuns from Afghanistan. The Rome initiative called for fair elections, support for Islam as the foundation of the Afghan state, and respect for human rights.
The second was based in Cyprus and led by Homayoun Jarir, a member of the Islamic Party of his father-in-law, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Critics of the Cyprus initiative suspected that it served the interests of Iran. The members of the Cyprus initiative, however, considered themselves closer to the Afghan people and regard the Rome group as too close to the long-isolated nobility.
The most significant was based in Germany, which resulted in the Bonn Agreement (Afghanistan). This agreement was made under United Nations auspices, established the Afghan Interim Authority and paved the way for the later jirgas that established the Constitution of Afghanistan.
A lesser initiative based in Pakistan.
June–July 2002 – Hamid Karzai elected to oversee it. This was possible only because in the fall of 2001, Karzai was able to successfully lead one of the largest southern Afghanistan tribes against the draconian rule of the Taliban. The jirga was organized by the interim administration of Hamid Karzai, with about 1600 delegates, either selected through elections in various regions of the country or allocated to various political, cultural, and religious groups. It was held in a large tent in the grounds of Kabul Polytechnic from June 11 and was scheduled to last about a week. It formed a new Transitional Administration that took office shortly thereafter.
December 2003 – To consider the proposed Afghan Constitution.
2006 – Afghan president Hamid Karzai said that he and the Pakistani president will jointly lead a jirga to end a dispute over border attacks.
December 2009, after his disputed re-election, President Hamid Karzai announced to move ahead with a plan for a jirga to discuss the Taliban insurgency. The Taliban was invited to take part in this jirga, but they declined.
June 2010, at Kabul, in which around 1,600 delegates of all ethnic groups attended for a peace talks with the Taliban.
17 November 2013, at Kabul, in which around 2,500 Afghan elders approved the presence of a limited number of US forces beyond 2014.
April 29 – May 3, 2019, at the Bagh-e Bala Palace in Kabul, held to agree a common approach to peace talks with the Taliban, amid negotiations between the Taliban and the United States. The jirga was chaired by Abdul Rasul Sayyaf and over 3,200 delegates attended. The Taliban refused to attend.
7–9 August 2020, held to decide the fate of 400 Taliban prisoners accused of serious crimes, who were supposed to be freed as part of the Afghan peace process.
British India and Pakistan
On June 21, 1947, in Bannu, a jirga was held consisting of Bacha Khan, his brother Chief Minister Dr Khan Sahib, the Khudai Khidmatgars, members of the Provincial Assembly, Mirzali Khan (Faqir of Ipi), and other tribal chiefs, just seven weeks before the Partition of India. The jirga declared the Bannu Resolution, which demanded that the Pashtuns be given a choice to have an independent state of Pashtunistan composing all Pashtun territories of British India, instead of being made to join either India or Pakistan. However, the British Raj refused to comply with the demand of this resolution, in response to which the Khudai Khidmatgars boycotted the referendum.
In April 2006, former Balochistan Chief Minister Taj Muhammad Jamali offered to arrange a meeting between President Pervez Musharraf and a jirga for peace in Balochistan. A jirga was held at Kalat in September 2006 to announce that a case would be filed in the International Court of Justice regarding the sovereignty and rights of the Baloch people.
See also
National Assembly (Afghanistan)
All India Pakhtoon Jirga-e-Hind
References
This article contains material from the Library of Congress Country Studies, which are United States government publications in the public domain. (About this Collection | Country Studies | Digital Collections | Library of Congress)
Afghan culture
Pashtun culture
Government of Afghanistan
Politics of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
Politics of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas
Politics of Balochistan, Pakistan
Pashtun politics |