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United States

United States

:For alternative meanings, see the disambiguation page for US, USA, United States, or American. The United States of America is a federal democratic republic situated primarily in central North America. It comprises 50 states and one federal district, and has several territories. It is also referred to, with varying formality, as the United States, the U.S., the U.S.A., the States, or simply and most commonly, America. The official founding date of the United States is July 4, 1776, when the Second Continental Congress—representing thirteen British colonies—adopted the Declaration of Independence. However, the structure of the government was profoundly changed in 1788, when the states replaced the Articles of Confederation with the United States Constitution. The date on which each of the fifty states adopted the Constitution is typically regarded as the date that state "entered the Union" (became part of the United States). Since the mid-20th century, following World War II, the United States has emerged as a dominant global influence in economic, political, military, scientific, technological, and cultural affairs.

Geography and climate

The United States shares land borders with Canada (to the north) and Mexico (to the south), and territorial water boundaries with Canada, Russia, the Bahamas, and numerous smaller nations. It is otherwise bounded by the Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea, in the west; the Arctic Ocean, in the northernmost areas; and the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean Sea, in the eastern and southeastern areas. Forty-eight of the states are in the single region between Canada and Mexico; this group is referred to, with varying precision and formality, as the continental or contiguous United States, sometimes abbreviated CONUS, and as the Lower 48. Alaska, which is not included in the term contiguous United States, is at the northwestern end of North America, separated from the Lower 48 by Canada. The archipelago of Hawaii is in the Pacific Ocean. The capital city, Washington, District of Columbia is a federal district located on land donated by the state of Maryland. (Virginia also donated land, but it was returned in 1847.) The United States also has overseas territories with varying levels of independence and organization. When inland water is included in the total area, only Russia and Canada are larger than the United States; if inland water is excluded, China ranks third and the U.S. ranks fourth. The United States' total area is 3,718,711 square miles (9,631,418 km²), of which land makes up 3,537,438 square miles (9,161,923 km²) and water makes up 181,273 square miles (469,495 km²). The United States' landscape is one of the most varied among those of the world's nations: among its many features are temperate forestland and rolling hills, on the east coast; mangrove, in Florida; the Great Plains, in the center of the country; the Mississippi–Missouri river system; the Great Lakes, four of the five of which are shared with Canada; the Rocky Mountains, west of the Great Plains; deserts and temperate coastal zones, west of the Rocky Mountains; and temperate rain forests, in the Pacific northwest. Alaska's tundra, and the volcanic, tropical islands of Hawaii add to the geographic diversity. Hawaii The climate varies along with the landscape, from tropical in Hawaii and southern Florida to tundra in Alaska and atop some of the highest mountains. Most of the North and East experience a temperate continental climate, with warm summers and cold winters. Most of the South experiences a subtropical humid climate with mild winters and long, hot, humid summers. Rainfall decreases markedly from the humid forests of the Eastern Great Plains to the semi-arid shortgrass prairies on the high plains abutting the Rocky Mountains. Arid deserts, including the Mojave, extend through the lowlands and valleys of the southwest, from westernmost Texas to California and northward throughout much of Nevada. Some parts of California have a Mediterranean climate. Rainforests line the windward mountains of the Pacific Northwest from Oregon to Alaska.

History

American history started with the migration of people from Asia across the Bering land bridge approximately 12,000 years ago following large animals that they hunted into the Americas. These Native Americans left evidence of their presence in petroglyphs, burial mounds, and other artifacts. It is estimated that 2-9 million people lived in the territory now occupied by the U.S. before European contact, and the subsequent introduction of foreign diseases such as small pox that greatly diminished the native populations. Some advanced societies were the Anasazi of the southwest, who inhabited Chaco Canyon, and the Woodland Indians, who built Cahokia, located near present-day St Louis, a city with a population of 40,000 at its peak in AD 1200. Vikings first visited North America around 1000, but did not settle permanently. Following the discovery voyages of Christopher Columbus around 1492, other Europeans began to explore and settle there. During the 1500s and 1600s, the Spanish settled parts of the present-day Southwest and Florida, founding St. Augustine, Florida in 1565 and Santa Fe (in what is now New Mexico) in 1607. The first successful English settlement was at Jamestown, Virginia, also in 1607. Within the next two decades, several Dutch settlements, including New Amsterdam (the predecessor to New York City), were established in what are now the states of New York and New Jersey. In 1637, Sweden established a colony at Fort Christina (in what is now Delaware), but lost the settlement to the Dutch in 1655. This was followed by extensive British settlement of the east coast. The British colonists remained relatively undisturbed by their home country until after the French and Indian War, when France ceded Canada and the Great Lakes region to Britain. Britain then imposed taxes on the 13 colonies, widely regarded by the colonists as unfair because they were denied representation in the British Parliament. Tensions between Britain and the colonists increased, and the thirteen colonies eventually rebelled against British rule. British Parliament, George Washington (1789-1797).]] In 1776, the 13 colonies split from Great Britain and formed the United States, the world's first constitutional and democratic federal republic, after their Declaration of Independence of that year, and the Revolutionary War (1775 to 1783). The original political structure was a confederation in 1777, ratified in 1781 as the Articles of Confederation. After long debate, this was supplanted by the Constitution in 1789, forming a more centralized federal government. Prior to all these was the Albany Congress in 1754, in which a union was first seriously proposed. From early colonial times, there was a shortage of labor, which encouraged unfree labor, particularly indentured servitude and slavery. In the mid-19th century, a major division occurred in the United States over the issue of states' rights and the expansion of slavery. The northern states had become opposed to slavery, while the southern states saw it as necessary for the continued success of southern agriculture and wanted it expanded to the territories. Several federal laws were passed in an attempt to settle the dispute, including the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850. The dispute reached a crisis in 1861, when seven southern states seceded¹ from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America, leading to the Civil War. Soon after the war began, four more southern states seceded. During the war, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, mandating the freedom of all slaves in states in rebellion, though full emancipation did not take place until after the end of the war in 1865, the dissolution of the Confederacy, and the Thirteenth Amendment took effect. The Civil War effectively ended the question of a state's right to secede, and is widely accepted as a major turning point after which the federal government became more powerful than state governments. Thirteenth Amendment). The title of the painting, from a 1726 poem by Bishop Berkeley, was a phrase often quoted in the era of Manifest Destiny, expressing a widely held belief that civilization had steadily moved westward throughout history. [http://americanart.si.edu/t2go/1lw/1931.6.1.html (more)] ]] During the 19th century, many new states were added to the original 13 as the nation expanded across the continent. Manifest Destiny was a philosophy that encouraged westward expansion in the United States. As the population of the Eastern states grew and as a steady increase of immigrants entered the country, settlers moved steadily westward across North America. In the process, the U.S. displaced most American Indian nations. This displacement of American Indians continues to be a matter of contention in the U.S. with many tribes attempting to assert their original claims to various lands. In some areas American Indian populations were reduced by foreign diseases contracted through contact with European settlers, and US settlers acquired those emptied lands. In other instances American Indians were removed from their traditional lands by force. Though some would say the U.S. was not a colonial power until the Spanish-American War when it acquired Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines, the dominion exercised over land in North America the United States claimed is essentially colonial. The Philippines became independent in 1946. During this period, the nation also became an industrial power. This continued into the 20th century, which has been termed "the American Century" because of the nation's overriding influence on the world. The US became a center for innovation and technological development; major technologies that America either developed or was greatly involved in improving include the telephone, television, computer, the Internet, nuclear weapons, nuclear power, aviation, and aeronautics. In addition to the Civil War, another major traumatic experience for the nation was the Great Depression (1929 to 1939). The nation has also taken part in several major foreign wars, including World War I and World War II (in both of which the US later joined the Allies). During the Cold War, the US was a major player in the Korean War and Vietnam War, and, along with the Soviet Union, was considered one of the world's two "superpowers". With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US emerged as the world's leading economic and military power. Beginning in the 1990s, the United States became very involved in police actions and peacekeeping, including actions in Kosovo, Haiti, Somalia and Liberia, and the first Persian Gulf War driving Iraq out of Kuwait. After attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, the United States and other allied nations found themselves involved in what has come to be called the "War on Terrorism," which has primarily encompassed military actions in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

Government

Iraq of the United States.]]

Republic and suffrage

The United States is an example of a constitutional republic, with a government composed of and operating through a set of limited powers imposed by its design and enumerated in the United States Constitution. Specifically, the nation operates as a presidential democracy. There are three levels of government: federal, state, and local. Officials of each of these levels are either elected by eligible voters via secret ballot or appointed by other elected officials. Americans enjoy almost universal suffrage from the age of 18 regardless of race, sex, or wealth. There are some limits, however: felons are disenfranchised and in some states former felons are likewise. Furthermore, the national representation of territories and the federal district of Washington, DC in Congress is limited: residents of the District of Columbia are subject to federal laws and federal taxes but their only Congressional representative is a non-voting delegate.

Federal government

The federal government is the national government, comprising the Legislative Branch (led by Congress), the Executive Branch (led by the President), and the Judicial Branch (led by the Supreme Court). These three branches were designed to apply checks and balances on each other. The Constitution limits the powers of the federal government to defense, foreign affairs, the issuing and management of currency, the management of trade and relations between the states, and the protection of human rights. In addition to these explicitly stated powers, the federal government—with the assistance of the Supreme Court—has gradually extended these powers into such areas as welfare and education, on the basis of the "necessary and proper" clause of the Constitution.

The Congress

necessary and proper The Congress of the United States is the legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, comprising the House of Representatives and the Senate. The House of Representatives consists of 435 members, each of whom represents a congressional district and serves for a two-year term. House seats are apportioned among the states by population; in contrast, each state has two Senators, regardless of population. There are a total of 100 senators, who serve six-year terms. The powers of Congress are limited to those enumerated in the Constitution; all other powers are reserved to the states and the people. The Constitution also includes the necessary-and-proper clause, which grants Congress the power to "make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers."

The President

necessary-and-proper clause At the top level of the executive branch is the President of the United States. The President and Vice-President are elected as 'running mates' for four-year terms by the Electoral College, for which each state, as well as the District of Columbia, is allocated a number of seats based on its representation (or ostensible representation, in the case of D. C.) in both houses of Congress (see U.S. Electoral College). The relationship between the President and the Congress reflects that between the English monarchy and parliament at the time of the framing of the United States Constitution. Congress can legislate to constrain the President's executive power, even with respect to his or her command of the armed forces; however, this power is used only very rarely—a notable example was the constraint placed on President Richard Nixon's strategy of bombing Cambodia during the Vietnam War. The President cannot directly propose legislation, and must rely on supporters in Congress to promote his or her legislative agenda. The President's signature is required to turn congressional bills into law; in this respect, the President has the power—only occasionally used—to veto congressional legislation. Congress can override a presidential veto with a two-thirds majority vote in both houses. The ultimate power of Congress over the President is that of impeachment or removal of the elected President through a House vote, a Senate trial, and a Senate vote. The threat of using this power has had major political ramifications in the cases of Presidents Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton. The President makes around 2,000 executive appointments, including members of the Cabinet and ambassadors, which must be approved by the Senate; the President can also issue executive orders and pardons, and has other Constitutional duties, among them the requirement to give a State of the Union address to Congress once a year. Although the President's constitutional role may appear to be constrained, in practice, the office carries enormous prestige that typically eclipses the power of Congress: the Presidency has justifiably been referred to as 'the most powerful office in the world'. The Vice President is first in the line of succession, and is the President of the Senate ex officio, with the ability to cast a tie-breaking vote. The members of the President's Cabinet are responsible for administering the various departments of state, including the Department of Defense, the Justice Department, and the State Department. These departments and department heads have considerable regulatory and political power, and it is they who are responsible for executing federal laws and regulations. George W. Bush is the 43rd President, currently serving his second term.

The Courts

George W. Bush The highest court is the Supreme Court, which consists of nine justices. The court deals with federal and constitutional matters, and can declare legislation made at any level of the government as unconstitutional, nullifying the law and creating precedent for future law and decisions. Below the Supreme Court are the courts of appeals, and below them in turn are the district courts, which are the general trial courts for federal law. Separate from, but not entirely independent of, this federal court system are the individual court systems of each state, each dealing with its own laws and having its own judicial rules and procedures. A case may be appealed from a state court to a federal court only if there is a federal question; the supreme court of each state is the final authority on the interpretation of that state's laws and constitution.

State and local governments

supreme court of each state. Note that Alaska and Hawaii are shown at different scales, and that the Aleutian Islands and the uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands are omitted from this map.]] The state governments have the greatest influence over people's daily lives. Each state has its own written constitution and has different laws. There are sometimes great differences in law and procedure between the different states, concerning issues such as property, crime, health, and education. The highest elected official of each state is the Governor. Each state also has an elected legislature (bicameral in every state except Nebraska), whose members represent the different parts of the state. Of note is the New Hampshire legislature, which is the third-largest legislative body in the English-speaking world, and has one representative for every 3,000 people. Each state maintains its own judiciary, with the lowest level typically being county courts, and culminating in each state supreme court, though sometimes named differently. In some states, supreme and lower court justices are elected by the people; in others, they are appointed, as they are in the federal system. The institutions that are responsible for local government are typically town, city, or county boards, making laws that affect their particular area. These laws concern issues such as traffic, the sale of alcohol, and keeping animals. The highest elected official of a town or city is usually the mayor. In New England, towns operate directly democratically, and in some states, such as Rhode Island and Connecticut, counties have little or no power, existing only as geographic distinctions. In other areas, county governments have more power, such as to collect taxes and maintain law enforcement agencies.

Political divisions

With the Declaration of Independence, the thirteen colonies proclaimed themselves to be nation states modeled after the European states of the time. Although considered as sovereigns initially, under the Articles of Confederation of 1781 they entered into a "Perpetual Union" and created a fully sovereign federal state, delegating certain powers to the national Congress, including the right to engage in diplomatic relations and to levy war, while each retaining their individual sovereignty, freedom and independence. But the national government proved too ineffective, so the administrative structure of the government was vastly reorganized with the United States Constitution of 1789. Under this new union, the continued status of the individual states as sovereign nation states fell into dispute in 1861, as several states attempted to secede from the union; in response, then-President Abraham Lincoln claimed that such secession was illegal, and the result was the American Civil War. Since the Union victory in 1865, the independent status of the individual states has not been broached again by any state, and the status of each state within the union has been deemed by mainstream officials and academics to be settled as being subordinate to the union as a whole. In subsequent years, the number of states grew steadily due to western expansion, the purchase of lands by the national government from other nation states, and the subdivision of existing states, resulting in the current total of 50. The states are generally divided into smaller administrative regions, including counties, cities and townships. The United States–Canadian border is the longest undefended political boundary in the world. The U.S. is divided into three distinct sections:
- the "continental United States," also known as "the Lower 48" and more accurately termed the conterminous, coterminous or contiguous United States
- Alaska, which is physically connected only to Canada
- the archipelago of Hawaii, in the central Pacific Ocean. The United States also holds several other territories, districts, and possessions, notably the federal district of the District of Columbia, which is the nation's capital, and several overseas insular areas, the most significant of which are American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the United States Virgin Islands. The Palmyra Atoll is the United States' only incorporated territory; it is unorganized and uninhabited. The United States Navy has held a base at a portion of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 1898. The United States government possesses a lease to this land, which only mutual agreement or United States abandonment of the area can terminate. The present Cuban government of Fidel Castro disputes this arrangement, claiming Cuba was not truly sovereign at the time of the signing. The United States argues this point moot because Cuba apparently ratified the lease post-revolution, and with full sovereignty, when it cashed one rent check in accordance with the disputed treaty.

Foreign relations and military

sovereign] The immense military and economic dominance of the United States has made foreign relations an especially important topic in its politics, with considerable concern about the image of the United States throughout the world. Reactions towards the United States by other nationalities are often strong, ranging from uninhibited admiration and mimicking of all things American to anti-Americanism. US foreign policy has swung about several times over the course of its history between the poles of strict isolationism and imperialism and everywhere in between. Three of the nation's four military branches are administered by the Department of Defense: the Army, the Navy (including the Marine Corps), and the Air Force. The Coast Guard falls under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime, but is placed under the Department of the Navy in time of war. The combined United States armed forces consist of 1.4 million active duty personnel, along with several hundred thousand each in the Reserves and the National Guard. Military conscription ended in 1973. The United States Armed forces are considered to be the most powerful military (of any sort) on Earth and their force projection capabilities are unrivaled by any other nation. The 2005 defense budget amounted to $401.7 billion, which is an increase of 4% over 2004 and of 35% since 2001. Over 50% of that number is spent in research & development. (For comparison, in 2004 the European Union (considered as the second-largest military force) had a combined total of 1.6 million troops, and a defense budget of €160 billion, with less than 10% of that being spent on R&D.)

Largest cities

The United States has dozens of major cities, including 11 of the 55 global cities of all types — with three "alpha" global cities: New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago. The figures expressed below are for populations within city limits. A different ranking is evident when considering U.S. metro area populations, although the top three would be unchanged. Note that some cities not listed (such as Atlanta, Boston, Las Vegas, Miami, Nashville, New Orleans, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.) are still considered important on the basis of other factors and issues, including culture, economics, heritage, and politics. The twenty largest cities, based on the United States Census Bureau's 2004 estimates, are as follows:

Economy

The United States has the largest single-country economy in the world, with a per-capita gross domestic product of $40,100. In this market-oriented economy, private individuals and business firms make most of the decisions, and the federal and state governments buy needed goods and services predominantly in the private marketplace. gross domestic product The largest industry of the U.S. is now service, which employs roughly three quarters of the U.S. work force. The United States has many natural resources, including oil and gas, metals, and such minerals as gold, soda ash, and zinc. In agriculture, the U.S. is a top producer of, among other crops, corn, soy beans, and wheat; the United States is a net exporter of food. The U.S. manufacturing sector produces goods such as, cars, airplanes, steel, and electronics, among many others. Economic activity varies greatly from one part of the country to another, with many industries being largely dependent on a certain city or region; New York City is the center of the American financial, publishing, broadcasting, and advertising industries; Silicon Valley is the country’s primary location for high-technology companies, while Los Angeles is the most important center for film production. The Midwest is known for its reliance on manufacturing and heavy industry, with Detroit, Michigan, serving as the center of the American automotive industry; the Great Plains are known as the "breadbasket" of America for their tremendous agricultural output; the intermountain region serves as a mining hub and natural gas resource; the Pacific Northwest for fish and timber, while Texas is largely associated with the oil industry; the Southeast is a major hub for both medical research and the textiles industry. Several countries continue to link their currency to the dollar or even use it as a currency (such as Ecuador), although this practice has subsided since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system. Many markets are also quoted in dollars, such as those of oil and gold. The dollar is also the predominant reserve currency in the world, and more than half of global reserves are in dollars. The largest trading partner of the United States is Canada (19%), followed by China (12%), Mexico (11%), and Japan (8%). More than 50% of total trade is with these four countries. In 2003, the United States was ranked as the third most visited tourist destination in the world; its 40,400,000 visitors ranked behind France's 75,000,000 and Spain's 52,500,000. Labor unions have existed since the 19th century, and grew large and powerful from the 1930s to the 1950s. See Labor history of the United States. Since 1970 they have shrunk in the private sector and now cover fewer than 8% of the workers. However union membership has grown rapidly in the public sector, especially among teachers, nurses, police, postal workers, and municipal clerks. There have been few strikes in recent years. The United States' imports exceed exports by 80%, leading to an annual trade deficit of $700,000,000,000, or 6% of gross domestic product. It is the largest debtor nation in the world, with total gross foreign debt of over $13,000,000,000,000 (2005 estimate); and it absorbs more than 50% of global savings annually. Since the 1980s, the U.S. has increased the use of neoliberal economic policies that reduce government intervention and reduce the size of the welfare state, backing away from the more interventionist Keynsian economic policies that had been in favor since the Great Depression. As a result, the United States provides fewer government-delivered social welfare services than most industrialized nations, choosing instead to keep its tax burden lower and relying more heavily on the free market and private charities. Sixteen states and the District of Columbia have minimum wages higher than the national level ($5.15 per-hour), including the highest, Washington State at $7.35. Twenty-six states are the same as the federal level; two--Ohio and Kansas--are below; and six do not have state laws. America's wealth is relatively highly concentrated. The average C.E.O. earns 500 times the typical amount a worker grosses, this is up from 25 times in the late 1970s. In terms of wealth the top 1% of Americans own 40% of all assets and 50.1% of the country's income goes to the top twenty percent of households. Average wages for the majority of employees have been largely stagnating since the 1970s. America's poverty line defined as a family of four earning less than $19,157 is at 12.7% of the general population. Approximately one out of every five children in the United States grows up below the official poverty line. Among racial groups; African Americans have the lowest median income while Asians had the highest. Regionally, the southern states had the lowest median incomes while the West Coast and New England had the highest. The current Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan remarked that the U.S.’s growing income inequality since the 1970s is, "not the type of thing which a democratic society - a capitalist democratic society - can really accept without addressing."[http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0614/p01s03-usec.html?s=itm] However, Greenspan also noted, "...you can look at the system and say it's got a lot of problems to it, and sure it does. It always has. But you can't get around the fact that this is the most extraordinarily successful economy in history."

Transportation

Alan Greenspan ]] Because the United States is a relatively young nation, most of the development of U.S. cities has taken place since the invention of the automobile. To link its vast territory, the United States built a network of high-capacity, high-speed highways, of which the most important element is the Interstate Highway system, commissioned in the 1950s by President Dwight D. Eisenhower and modeled after the German Autobahn. The United States also has a transcontinental rail system, which is used for moving freight across the lower forty-eight states. Passenger rail service is provided by Amtrak, which serves forty-six of the lower forty-eight states. Many cities in the United States have extensive mass-transit systems. New York City operates one of the world's largest and most heavily used subway systems. The regional rail and bus networks that extend into Long Island, New Jersey, Upstate New York, and Connecticut are among the most heavily used in the world. Air travel is often preferred for destinations over 300 miles (500 kilometers) away. In terms of passengers, seventeen of the world's thirty busiest airports in 2004 were in the U.S., including the world's busiest, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport; in terms of cargo, in the same year, twelve of the world's thirty busiest airports were in the U.S., including the world's busiest, Memphis International Airport. There are several major seaports in the United States; the three busiest are the Port of Los Angeles, California; the Port of Long Beach, California; and the Port of New York and New Jersey. Others include Houston, Texas; Charleston, South Carolina; Savannah, Georgia; Miami, Florida; Portland, Oregon; San Francisco, California; Boston, Massachusetts; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Seattle, Washington; plus, outside the contiguous forty-eight states, Anchorage, Alaska, and Honolulu, Hawaii.

Society

Demographics

Hawaii The mean center of the U.S. population continues to drift farther west and south. The fastest growing region is the western United States followed by the southern portion. According to Census 2000, the states that saw the greatest increases from 1990 were: Nevada (66.3%), Arizona (40%), Colorado (30.6%), Utah (29.6%), Idaho (28.5%), Georgia (26.4%), Florida (23.5%), Texas (22.8%), North Carolina (21.4%), and Washington (21.1%). [http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t2/tab03.pdf]

Ethnicity and race

:Main article: Racial demographics of the United States The United States is a very racially diverse country. According to the 2000 census, it has 31 ethnic groups with at least one million members each, and numerous others represented in smaller amounts. The majority of Americans descend from white European immigrants who arrived at the establishment of the first colonies (most after Reconstruction). This majority--69.1% in 2000--decreases each year, and is expected to become a plurality within a few decades. The most frequently stated European ancestries are German (15.2%), Irish (10.8%), English (8.7%), Italian (5.6%) and Scandinavian (3.7%). Many immigrants also hail from Slavic countries such as Poland and Russia. Other significant immigrant populations came from eastern and southern Europe and French Canada. Russia Hispanics from Mexico and South and Central America are the largest minority group in the country, comprising 12.5% of the population (2000 census). People of Mexican descent made up 7.3% of the population in the 2000 census, and this proportion is expected to increase significantly in the coming decades. About 12.3% (2000 census) of the American people are African Americans (Blacks). African Americans are spread throughout the country, but their presence is largest in the South. Asian Americans--including Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders--are a third significant minority (3.7% of the population in 2000). Most Asian Americans are concentrated on the West Coast and Hawaii. The largest groups are immigrants or descendants of emigrants from the Philippines, China, India, Vietnam, South Korea, and Japan. Indigenous peoples in the United States, such as American Indians and Inuit, make up 0.9% of the population (2000 census). About 35% live on Indian reservations.

Religion

Polls estimate that just under 80 percent of Americans are Christians of various denominations. The other 20 percent comprises other religions such as Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism, other various faiths, and those without a specific religion. The United States is noteworthy among developed nations for its relatively high level of religiosity. According to a 2004 Gallup poll, about 44% of Americans attend a religious service at least once a week. However, this rate is not uniform across the country; attendance is more common in the Bible Belt—composed largely of Southern and Midwestern states—than in the Northeast and West Coast. In the Southern states, Baptists are the largest group, followed by Methodists; Roman Catholics are dominant in the Northeast and in large parts of the Midwest due to their being settled by descendants of Catholic immigrants from Europe (such as Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Poland) or other parts of North America (mainly Quebec and Puerto Rico). The rest of the country for the most part has a complex mixture of various Christian groups.

Education

West Coast's home at Monticello and the University of Virginia (library building shown above, and designed by Jefferson), the only collegiate campus on the list. Both sites are located in Charlottesville, Virginia.]] In the United States, education is a state, not federal, responsibility, and the laws and standards vary considerably. However, the federal government, through the Department of Education, is involved with funding of some programs and exerts some influence through its ability to control funding. In most states, all students must attend mandatory schooling starting with kindergarten, which children normally enter at age 5, and following through 12th grade, which is normally completed at age 18

US (disambiguation)

US, Us or us may stand for
- us, the oblique case form of the English language pronoun we.
- Us (Peter Gabriel), a 1992 Peter Gabriel album.
- Us (album), a Mull Historical Society album
- the IATA code for US Airways.
- the ICAO code for the airport at Mirny, Sakha Republic, Russian Federation.
- Us, Val-d'Oise, a commune in the Val-d'Oise département, in France.
- Us (magazine), an American variety magazine.
- the designation "U/S" - meaning unserviceable or useless when written on mechanical equipment.
- the Unit Separator character (ASCII 31 decimal) in the C0 control code set.
- the United States of America

USA (disambiguation)

USA or Usa may refer to:
- United Snakes Of Amerikkka
- United States of America
- United States Army
- University of South Alabama in Mobile, Alabama
- Conference USA (C-USA), a college athletic conference which is now in the Southern United States.
- Miss USA pageant, an annual beauty contest.
- USA 3000 Airlines, an airline headquartered in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania.
- U-S-A! cheer, a patriotic chant.
- USA Funds, a nonprofit corporation that guarantees loans for student financial aid.
- USA Network, an American cable television network.
- USA Today, an American newspaper.
- USA Weekend, an American Sunday-newspaper supplement.
- U.S.A. trilogy, a series of novels by American writer John Dos Passos.
- USA - Land of Opportunities, a trilogy of films by the Danish director Lars von Trier.
- USA Perpignan, a French rugby union club that plays in the city of Perpignan in Pyrénées-Orientales.

Places in Japan

- Usa, Oita (宇佐市; -shi), a city located in Oita, Japan.
- Usa District, Oita (宇佐郡; -gun), a district located in Oita, Japan.
- Shimo-Usa Province (下総国 -no kuni), a former province of Japan. ja:USA (曖昧さ回避)

American

:This page disambiguates the many uses of American. For an article about those various uses, please see Use of the word American. American may relate to:
- the United States of America
- the Americas more broadly
- the 4-4-0 type of railroad steam locomotive American may also refer to:
- a citizen of or immigrant to the United States
- a current or former resident of the Americas
- a native of the Americas
- American English
- a name in the United States for processed cheese
- the American option, a style of option contract that allows for exercise anytime before the maturity date American may be a shortened form of:
- the American race, an obsolete 19th-century racial classification referring to the various peoples now called Native Americans or Amerindians
- different automobiles with the American marques, see American (automobile)
- American Motors
- American Airlines
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Republic

:This article concentrates on the several forms of government of real states and countries that have been termed republic, for all other uses see: republic (disambiguation) In a broad definition, a republic is a state whose political organization rests on the principle that the citizens or electorate constitute the ultimate root of legitimacy and sovereignty. Several definitions, including that of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, stress the importance of autonomy and the 'rule of law' as part of the requirements for a Republic. The detailed organization of republics' governments can vary widely in practice. The first section of this article gives an overview of the distinctions that characterise different types of non-fictional republics. In addition, many forms of national governments that call themselves "republics" are actually some other form of government, such as oligarchies, hereditary monarchies or socialist states or simple dictatorships. The second section of the article gives short profiles of some of the most influential republics, by way of illustration. A more comprehensive List of republics appears in a separate article. The third section is about how republics are approached as state organisations in political science: in political theory and political science, the term "republic" is generally applied to a state where the government's political power depends solely on the consent, however nominal, of the people governed, along with some form of written constitution, limitations against absolute power by a single individual or a combination of individuals, and other characteristic mechanisms of freedom, such as economic freedom, or a "commonwealth".

Characteristics of republics

Heads of state

In most modern republics the head of state is termed president. Other titles that have been used are consul, doge, knyazs, archon, and many others. In republics that are also democracies the head of state is appointed as the result of an election. This election can be indirect: a council of some sort is elected by the people, and this council then elects the head of state. In these kinds of republics the usual term for a president is in the range of four to six years. In some countries the constitution limits the number of terms the same person can be elected as president. If the head of state of a republic is at the same time the head of government, this is called a presidential system (example: United States). In Semi-presidential systems the head of state is not the same person as the head of government, in that case he is usually termed prime minister or premier. Depending on whether the president has any specific tasks (for example, advisory role in the formation of a government after an election) this can leave the president with little more than a ceremonial function. The Prime Minister is responsible for managing the policies and the central government. Depending on the rules for appointing the president and the leader of the government, it is possible for some of these countries to have a situation where the president and the prime minister have opposing political convictions: in France, when the members of the ruling cabinet and the president come from opposing political factions, this situation is called cohabitation. In countries such as Germany and India, however, the president needs to be strictly non-partisan. In some countries, like Switzerland and San Marino, the head of state is not a single person but a committee (council) of several persons holding that office. The Roman Republic had two consuls, appointed for a year by the senate. During the year of their consulship each consul would in turn be head of state for a month at a time, thus alternating the office of consul maior (the consul in power) and of consul suffectus (not-ruling consul, however with some supervision on the work of the consul maior) for their joint term. Republics can be led by a head of state that has many of the characteristics of a monarch: not only do some republics install a president for life, and invest such president with powers beyond what is usual in a representative democracy, examples such as the post-1970 Syrian Arab Republic show that such a presidency can apparently be made hereditary. Historians disagree when the Roman Republic turned into Imperial Rome: the reason is that the first Emperors were given their head of state powers gradually in a government system that in appearance did not originally much differ from the Roman Republic. Similarly, if taking the broad definition of republic above ("In a broad definition a republic is a state or country that is led by people that don't base their political power on any principle beyond the control of the people living in that state or country."), countries usually qualified as monarchies can have many traits of a republic in terms of form of government. The political power of monarchs can be non-existent, limited to a purely ceremonial function or the "control of the people" can be exerted to the extent that they appear to have the power to have their monarch replaced by another one. The often assumed "mutual exclusiveness" of monarchies and republics as forms of government is thus not to be taken too literally, and largely depends on circumstances:
- Autocrats might try to give themselves a democratic tenure by calling themselves president (or princeps or princeps senatus in the case of Ancient Rome), and the form of government of their country "republic", instead of using a monarchic based terminology.
- For full-fledged representative democracies ultimately it generally does not make all that much difference whether the head of state is a monarch or a president, nor, in fact, whether these countries call themselves a monarchy or a republic. Other factors, for instance, religious matters (see next section) can often make a greater distinguishing mark when comparing the forms of government of actual countries. For this reason, in political science the several definitions of "republic", which in such a context invariably indicate an "ideal" form of government, do not always exclude monarchy: the evolution of such definitions of "republic" in a context of political philosophy is treated in republicanism. However, such theoretical approaches appear to have had no real influence on the everyday use (that is: apart from a scholar or "insider" context) of the terminology regarding republics and monarchies. The least that can be said is that Anti-Monarchism, the opposition to monarchy as such, did not always play a critical role in the creation and/or management of republics. For some republics, not choosing a monarch as head of state, could as well be a practical rather than an ideological consideration. For example where there was no monarchial candidate readily available. However, for the states created during or shortly after the Enlightenment the choice was always deliberate: republics created in that period inevitably had anti-monarchial characteristics. For the United States the opposition to the British Monarchy played an important role, as did the overthrow of the French Monarchy in the creation of the first French Republic. By the time of the creation of the Fifth Republic in that country "anti-monarchist" tendencies were barely felt. The relations of that country to other countries made no distinctions whether these other countries were "monarchies" or not.

Role of religion

Before several Reformation movements established themselves in Europe, changes in the religious landscape rarely had any relation to the form of government adopted by a country. For instance the transition from polytheism to Christianity in Ancient Rome maybe had brought new rulers, but no change in the idea that monarchy was the obvious way to rule a country. Similarly, late Middle Age republics, like Venice, emerged without questioning the religious standards set by the Roman Catholic church. This would change, for instance, by the cuius regio, eius religio from the Treaty of Augsburg (1555): this treaty, applicable in the Holy Roman Empire and affecting the numerous (city-)states of Germany, ordained citizens to follow the religion of their ruler, whatever Christian religion that ruler chose - apart from Calvinism (which remained forbidden by the same treaty). In France the king abolished the relative tolerance towards non-Catholic religions resulting from the Edict of Nantes (1598), by the Edict of Fontainebleau (1685). In the United Kingdom and in Spain the respective monarchs had each established their favourite brand of Christianity, so that by the time of the Enlightenment in Europe (including the depending colonies) there was not a single absolute monarchy that tolerated another religion than the official one of the state.

Republics reducing state religion impact

An important reason why people could choose their society to be organised as a republic is the prospect of staying free of state religion: in this approach living under a monarch is seen as more easily inducing a uniform religion. All great monarchies had their state religion, in the case of pharaohs and some emperors this could even lead to a religion where the monarch (or his dynasty) were endowed with a god-like status (see for example imperial cult). On a different scale kingdoms can be entangled in a specific flavour of religion: Catholicism in Belgium, Church of England in the United Kingdom, Orthodoxy in Tsaristic Russia and many more examples. In absence of a monarchy, there can be no monarch pushing towards a single religion. As this had been the general perception by the time of the Enlightenment, it is not so surprising that republics were at that time seen as the preferable form of state organisation, if one wanted to avoid the downsides of living under a too influential state religion:
- United States: the Founding Fathers, seeing that no single religion would do for all Americans, adopted the principle that the federal government would not support any established religion. At first the states were free to establish religion, but they disestablished it instead, and apparently lost the right to set up state religions as a result of 20th century Supreme Court decisions.
- Besides being anti-monarchial, the French Revolution, leading to the first French Republic, was at least as much anti-religious, and led to the confiscation, pillage and/or destruction of many abbeys, beguinages, churches and other religious buildings and/or communities. Up to the Fifth Republic, laïcité can be seen to have a much more profound meaning in republican France than in its neighbouring countries ruled as a monarchy. Several states that called themselves republics have been fiercely anti-religious. This is particularly true for communist republics like the (former) Soviet Republics, North Vietnam, North Korea, and China.

Republics highlighting state religion impact

Some countries or states prefer or preferred to organise themselves as a republic, precisely because it allows them to inscribe a more or less obligatory state religion in their constitution: Islamic republics generally take this approach, but the same is also true (in varying degrees) for example in the Jewish state of Israel, in the Protestant republic that originated in the Netherlands during the Renaissance, and in the Catholic Irish Republic, among others. In this case the advantage that is sought is that no broad-thinking monarch could push his citizens towards a less strict application of religious prescriptions (like for instance the Millet system had done in the Ottoman Empire) or change to another religion altogether (like the swapping of religions under the Henry VIII/Edward VI/Mary I/Elizabeth I succession of monarchs in England). Such approach of an ideal republic based on a consolidated religious foundation played an important role for example in the overthrow of the regime of the Shah in Iran, to be replaced by a republic with influential ayatollahs (which is the term for religious leaders in that country), the most influential of which is called "supreme leader".

Concepts of democracy

Republics are often associated with democracy, which seems natural if one acknowledges the meaning of the expression from which the word "republic" derives (see: res publica). This association between "republic" and "democracy" is however far from a general understanding, even if acknowledging that there are several forms of democracy. This section tries to give an outline of which concepts of democracy are associated with which types of republics. As a preliminary remark it should be noted that the concept of "one equal vote per adult" did not become a genererally-accepted principle in democracies until around the middle of the 20th century: before that in all democracies the valour of ones vote (or the right to vote) depended on financial situation, sex, race, or a combination of these and other factors. Many forms of government in previous times termed "democracy", including for instance the Athenian democracy, would, when transplanted to the early 21st century be classified as plutocracy or a broad oligarchy, because of the rules on how votes were counted. In a Western approach, warned by the possible dangers and impracticality of direct democracy described since antiquity, there was a convergence towards representative democracy, for republics as well as monarchies, from the Enlightenment on. A direct democracy instrument like referendums is still basically mistrusted in many of the countries that adopted representative democracy. Nonetheless, some republics like Switzerland have a great deal of direct democracy in their state organisation, with usually several issues put before the people by referendum every year. Marxism inspired state organisations that, at the height of the Cold War, had barely more than a few external appearances in common with Western types of democracies. That is, notwithstanding that on an ideological level Marxism and communism sought to empower proletarians. A Communist republic like Fidel Castro's Cuba has many "popular committees" to allow participation from citizens on a very basic level, without much of a far-reaching political power resulting from that. This approach to democracy is sometimes termed Basic democracy, but the term is contentious: the intended result is often something in between direct democracy and grassroots democracy, but connotations may vary. Some of the hardline totalitarianism lived on in the East, even after the Iron Curtain fell. Sometimes the full name of such republics can be deceptive: having "people's" or "democratic" in the name of a country can, in some cases bear no relation with the concepts of democracy (neither "representative" nor "direct") that grew in the West. It also should be clear that many of these "Eastern" type of republics fall outside a definition of a republic that supposes control over who is in power by the people at large – unless it is accepted that the preference the people displays for their leader is in all cases authentic.

Influence of republicanism

Like Anti-monarchism and religious differences, republicanism played no equal role in the emergence of the many actual republics. Up to the republics that originated in the late middle ages, even if, from what we know about them, they also can be qualified "republics" in a modern understanding of the word, establishing the kind and amount of "republicanism" that led to their emergence is often limited to educated guesswork, based on sources that are generally recognised to be partly fictitious reconstruction. Republicanism was the founding ideology of the United States of America and remains the core of American political values. See Republicanism in the U.S. Over time there were various mixtures of republicanism along with democratic theories of the rights of individuals, which (for instance in the Age of Enlightenment) would find expression in the formation of "liberal" and "socialist" parties. What both liberalism and socialism shared was the belief in the self-determination of peoples, and in individual human dignity. But they disagreed and continue to disagree on whether this required a republic, what is the "exact" use of the term republic, and to what degree economic liberties should be regulated. This conflict is often described in terms of capitalism versus socialism, and the compromise between democracy and having an herditary head of state would be called constitutional monarchy.

In antiquity

A number of cities of the Levant achieved collective rule. Arwad has been cited as the first known example of a republic, in which the people, rather than a monarch, are described as sovereign. The important politico-philosophical writings of Antiquity that survived the middle ages rarely had any influence on the emergence or strengthening of republics in the time they were written. When Plato wrote the dialogue that later, in English speaking countries, became know as The Republic (a faulty translation from several points of view), Athenian democracy had already been established, and was not influenced by the treatise (if it had, it would have become less republican in a modern understanding). Plato's own experiment with his political principles in Syracuse were a failure. Cicero's De re publica, far from being able to redirect the Roman state to reinforce its republican form of governement, rather reads as a prelude to the Imperial form of government that indeed emerged soon after Cicero's death.

In the renaissance

The emergence of the Renaissance, on the other hand, was marked by the adoption of many of these writings from Antiquity, which led to a more or less coherent view, retroactively termed "classical republicanism". Differences however remained regarding which kind of "mix" in a mixed government type of ideal state would be the most inherently republican. For those republics that emerged after the publication of the Renaissance philosophies regarding republics, like the United Provinces in the Netherlands, it is not always all that clear what role exactly was played by republicanism - among a host of other reasons - that led to the choice for "republic" as form of state ("other reasons" indicated elsewhere in this article: e.g., not finding a suitable candidate as monarch; anti-Catholicism; a middle class striving for political influence).

Enlightenment republicanism

The Enlightenment had brought a new generation of political thinkers, showing that, among other things, political philosophy was in the process of refocussing to political science. This time the influence of the political thinkers, like Locke, on the emergence of republics in America and France soon thereafter was unmistakable: Separation of powers, Separation of church and state, etc were introduced with a certain degree of success in the new republics, along the lines of the major political thinkers of the day. In fact, the Enlightenment had set the standard for republics, as well as in many cases for monarchies, in the next century. The most important principles established by the close of the Enlightenment were the rule of law, the requirement that governments reflect the self-interest of the people that were subject to that law, that governments act in the national interest, in ways which are understandable to the public at large, and that there be some means of self-determination.

Proletarian republicanism

The next major branch in political thinking was pushed forward by Karl Marx, who argued that classes, rather than nationalities, had interests. He argued that governments represented the interests of the dominant class, and that, eventually, the states of his era would be overthrown by those dominated by the rising class of the proletariat. Here again the formation of republics along the line of the new political philosophies followed quickly after the emergence of the philosophies: from the early 20th century on communist type of republics were set up (communist monarchies were at least by name excluded), many of them standing for about a century - but in increasing tension with the states that were more direct heirs of the ideas of the Enlightenment.

Islamic republicanism?

Following decolonialization in the second half of 20th century, the political dimension of the Islam knew a new impulse, leading to several Islamic republics. As far as "Enlightenment" and "communist" principles were sometimes up to a limited level incorporated in these republics, such principles were always subject to principles laid down in the Qur'an. While, however, there is no apparent reason why sharia and related concepts of islamic political thought should emerge in a republican form of government, the strife for islamic republics is generally not qualified as a form of "republicanism".

Economical factors

The ancient concept of res publica, when applied to politics, had always implied that citizens on one level or another took part in governing the state: at least citizens were not indifferent to decisions taken by those in charge, and could engage in political debate. A line of thought followed often by historians is that citizens, under normal circumstances, would only become politically active if they had spare time above and beyond the daily effort for mere survival. In other words, enough of a wealthy middle class (that did not get its political influence from a monarch as nobility did) is often seen as one of the preconditions to establish a republican form of government. In this reasoning neither the cities of the Hanseatic League, nor late 19th century Catalonia, nor the Netherlands during their Golden Age emerging in the form of a republic comes as a surprise, all of them at the top of their wealth through commerce and societies with an influential and rich middle class. Here also the different nature of republics inspired by Marxism becomes apparent: Karl Marx theorised that the government of a state should be based on the proletarians, that is on those whose political opinions never had been asked before, even less had been considered to really matter when designing a state organisation. There was a problem Marxist/Communist types of republics had to solve: most proletarians were lacking interest and/or experience in designing a state organisation, even if acquainted with Das Kapital or Engels' writings. While the practical political involvement of proletarians on the level of an entire country hardly ever materialised, these communist republics were more often than not organised in a very top-down structure.

Aggregations of states

When a country or state is organised on several levels (that is: several states that are "associated" in a "superstructure", or a country is split in sub-states with a relative form of independency) several models exist:
- Both over-arching structure and sub-states take the form of a republic (Example: United States)
- The over-arching structure is a republic, while the sub-states are not necessarily (Example: European Union);
- The over-arching structure is not a republic, while the sub-states can be (Example: Holy Roman Empire, after the emergence of republics, like those of the Hanseatic League, within its realm)

Sub-national republics

In general being a republic also implies sovereignty as for the state to be ruled by the people it cannot be controlled by a foreign power. There are important exceptions to this, for example, Republics in the Soviet Union were member states which had to meet three criteria to be named republics, :1) Be on the periphery of the Soviet Union so as to be able to take advantage of their theoretical right to secede, :2) Be economically strong enough to be self sufficient upon secession, And :3) Be named after at least one million people of the ethnic group which should make up the majority population of said republic. Republics were originally created by Stalin and continue to be created even today in Russia. Russia itself is not a republic but a federation. States of the United States are required, like the federal government, to be republican in form, with final authority resting with the people. This was required because the states were intended to create and enforce most domestic laws, with the exception of areas delegated to the federal government and prohibited to the states. The founding fathers of the country intended most domestic laws to be handled by the states, although, over time, the federal government has gained more and more influence over domestic law. Requiring the states to be a republic in form was also seen as protecting the citizens' rights and preventing a state from becoming a dictatorship or monarchy.

Supra-national republics

Sovereign countries can decide to hand in a limited part of their sovereignty to a supra-national organisation. The most famous example of this, since the second half of the 20th century, is the emergence of the European Union, which models its organisation as a republic. That it would be a republic in a strict sense can be debated while the European Union is not a "country" in a strict sense. Being a republic is not part of the admission criteria for the member states. Although the largest political family of EU parlementaries has a Christian denomination, the European constitution establishes its form of government as secular.

Examples of republics

In the early 21st century the states that are not hereditary monarchies, but still don't label themselves as republics are the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, the State of Vatican City, the State of Israel, the Union of Myanmar and the Russian Federation. Israel and Russia, and even Myanmar and Libya, would meet many definitions of the term republic, however. Republics by additional qualifier:
- Without other qualifier than the term Republic - for example France.
- Federal republic - India, USA, Austria, Germany, Brazil are republics governed by representative democracy, in which the states play a crucial role.
- Confederation - Switzerland is a confederal republic governed by a combination of representative democracy and direct democracy. Please note the confederation page says Switzerland is now a federation in its confederation vs. federation section. A better example should be found.
- Islamic Republic - Countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran are republics governed in accordance with Islamic law.
- Arab Republic - for example, Syria its name reflecting its theoretically pan-Arab Ba'athist government.
- People's Republic - Countries like China, North Korea are meant to be governed for and by the people but generally without direct elections. This name is generally used by communist states.
- Democratic Republic - Also often used by communists is similar in meaning to People's Republic.
- Other modifiers are rooted in tradition and history and usually have no real political meaning. San Marino, for instance, is the "Most Serene Republic" while Uruguay is the "Eastern Republic".

Republics in political theory

In political theory and political science, the term "republic" is generally applied to a state where the government's political power depends solely on the consent, however nominal, of the people governed. This usage leads to two sets of problematic classification. The first are states which are oligarchical in nature, but are not nominally hereditary, such as many dictatorships, the second are states where all, or almost all, real political power is held by democratic institutions, but which have a monarch as nominal head of state, generally known as constitutional monarchies. The first case causes many outside the state to deny that the state should, in fact, be seen as a Republic. In many states of the second kind there are active "republican" movements that promote the ending of even the nominal monarchy, and the semantic problem is often resolved by calling the state a Democracy. Generally, political scientists try to analyse underlying realities, not the names by which they go: whether a political leader calls himself "king" or "president", and the state he governs a "monarchy" or a "republic" is not the essential characteristic, whether he exercises power as an autocrat or not is. In this sense political analysts may say that the First World War was, in many respects, the death knell for monarchy, and the establishment of republicanism, whether de facto and/or de jure, as being essential for a modern state. The Austro-Hungarian Empire and the German Empire were both abolished by the terms of the peace treaty after the war, the Russian Empire overthrown by the Russian Revolution of 1917. Even within the victorious states, monarchs were gradually being stripped of their powers and prerogatives, and more and more the government was in the hands of elected bodies whose majority party headed the executive. Nonetheless post-WWI Germany, a de jure republic, would develop into a de facto autocracy by the mid 1930s: the new peace treaty, after the Second World War, took more precaution in making the terms thus that also de facto (the Western part of) Germany would remain a republic.

References and notes

# Shorter definitions of Republic, like for instance Webster's "a state where the head of state is not a monarch, and in modern times is usually a president", don't acknowledge that the distinction between monarchy and republic was not always made as it is in modern times (see for instance Machiavelli footnote below); that oligarchies are traditionally considered neither monarchy nor republic, and that such definition depends very much on the monarch concept, which has various definitions, not making clear which of these is used for defining republic. # Tacitus, Ann. I,1-15. # Example: Leopold III of Belgium replaced by Baudouin in 1951 under popular pressure. # See for example the opening chapter of Machiavelli's The Prince. Note however that even Machiavelli could not always keep to this mutual exclusiveness of "republics" and "monarchies", not even in The Prince: for example, when he tries to characterise the form of government of the Papal States in the 11th chapter of that book, he points out that usual methods and distinctions are not applicable for analysing such type of state. # For instance Mobutu Sese Seko is generally considered such "autocrat" that tried to give an appearance of "republican democracy" to his style of government, for instance by allowing something that was generally regarded a sockpuppet opposition. # References where in everyday language countries with a king or emperor as head of state are termed republic have not been encountered. # For instance the United Provinces: after the Oath of Abjuration (1581) the Duke of Anjou and later the Earl of Leicester were asked to rule the Netherlands. After these candidates had declined the office, the Republic was only established in 1588. # This section draws from, among others, Geschiedenis der nieuwe tijden by J. Warichez and L. Brounts, 1946, Standaard Boekhandel (Antwerp/Brussels/Ghent/Louvain) and Cultuurgetijden (history books for secondary school in 6 volumes), Dr. J. A. Van Houtte et. al., several editions and reprints in 1960ies through 1970ies, Van In (Lier). # Note however that individual states of the US could have a state religion. # see also Republicanism and religion # Example: French law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools - a similar law was tentatively debated in Belgium, but deemed incompatible with the less profoundly secularized Belgian state. # After the Duke of Anjou and the Earl of Leicester had declined the offer to become ruler of the Seven Provinces (see note above), William I of Orange had been the obvious choice for king: the volume Nieuwe tijden from the Cultuurgetijden series as mentioned in a previous note, elaborates on p. 63-65 (supported by a quote of the contemporary Pontus Payen) that William of Orange was perceived as too lenient towards Catholicism to be acceptable as king for the protestants. # Although in Turkey the ensuing republic would become relatively tolerant towards other religions, the straight multicultural approach of the Millet system, that had allowed Christians and Jews to form state-in-state like communities, would remain unparallelled. # See for example Federalist No. 10 by James Madison - An original framer of the U.S. Constitution advocates a republic over a democracy. See Republicanism in the United States for the connotations of the terms "democracy" and "republic" in the 1787 context when this article was written. Further clarification of this "democracy" vs "republic" idea in the US can be found in Republicanism in the United States#A typical definition of democracy vs republic # Some of the earliest warnings in this sense came from Socrates' pupils Plato and Xenophon around 400 BC: indeed their friend Socrates had been condemned to death in an entirely "democratic" system at Athens, hence they preferred the less democratic Spartan system of government. See also Trial of Socrates - Laws (dialogue). # For instance in Pakistan the expression "basic democracy" is tied to the epoch of the military dictature. # For example, what is known about the origins of the Roman Republic is based on works by Polybius, Livy, Plutarch, and others, all of which wrote at least some centuries after the emergence of that Republic — without exception all these authors have historical exactitude issues, including relative uncertainty over the year when the Roman Republic would have emerged. # Martin Bernal, Black Athena Writes Back (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 359. # See for instance Marxism, Paris Commune. # That Islam would have a more intrinsic political dimension than most other religions is argued, among others, by Afshin Ellian ([http://www.onderzoekinformatie.nl/en/oi/nod/onderzoeker/PRS1270113/]) in his book Brieven van een Pers (Meulenhoff - ISBN 9029075228) # For instance, Historia series of history books, chief editor prof. dr. M. Dierickx sj, published by De Nederlandse Boekhandel (Antwerpen/Amsterdam) in several editions from 1955 to the late 1970ies studies these links between the presence of a wealthy middle class and the republics that emerged throughout history. # see for example [http://europa.eu.int/constitution/en/part13_en.htm#a73 Title IX] and [http://europa.eu.int/constitution/en/part2_en.htm#a3 Title I] in the text for [http://europa.eu.int/constitution/en/lsart1_en.htm a constitution for Europe] # After some fierce debate it was decided that the 2005 version of the Constitution proposal would not make any reference to the "Christian" roots (among other communal values) of Europe, see [http://europa.eu.int/constitution/en/part2_en.htm#a5 Art. I,2 of the European Constitution proposal].

U.S. state

A U.S. state is any one of the fifty states (four of which officially favor the term commonwealth) which, together with the District of Columbia and Palmyra Atoll (an uninhabited incorporated unorganized territory), form the United States of America. The separate state governments and the U.S. federal government share sovereignty, in that an "American" is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of residence. The United States Constitution allocates power between the two levels of government in general terms; the general idea is that by ratifying the Constitution, each state has transferred certain aspects of its sovereign powers to the federal government while retaining the remainder for itself. The tasks of education, health, transportation, and other infrastructure are generally the responsibility of the states. Over time, the Constitution has been amended, and the interpretation and application of its provisions have changed. The general tendency has been toward centralization, with the federal government playing a much larger role than it once did.

Legal relationship

At the time of the Declaration of Independence from Great Britain in 1776, the 13 colonies became 13 independently sovereign states, which became fourteen in 1777 with the formation of the Vermont Republic; for a brief period, they were in effect legally separate nations. But upon the adoption of the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, the states became a single sovereign political entity as defined by international law, empowered to levy war and to conduct international relations, albeit with a very loosely structured and inefficient central government. After the failure of the union under the Articles of Confederation, the thirteen states joined the modern union via ratification of the United States Constitution, beginning in 1789. Under Article IV of the Constitution, which outlines the relationship between the states, the Congress has the power to admit new states to the union. The states are required to give "full faith and credit" to the acts of each other's legislatures and courts, which is generally held to include the recognition of legal contracts, marriages, criminal judgments, and - at the time - slave status. The states are guaranteed military and civil defense by the federal government, which is also required to ensure that the government of each state remains a republic. The Constitution is silent on the issue of the secession of a state from the union. The Articles of Confederation had stated that the earlier union of the colonies "shall be perpetual", and the preamble to the Constitution states that Constitution was intended to "form a more perfect union". In 1860 and 1861, several states attempted to secede, but were brought back into the Union by force of arms during the Civil War. Subsequently, the federal judicial system, in the case of Texas v. White, established that states do not have the right to secede without the consent of the other states.
- Four of the states bear the formal title of Commonwealth: Kentucky, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. In these cases, this is merely a name and has no legal effect. However, the United States has non-state areas called commonwealths (Puerto Rico and the Northern Marianas) which do have a legal status different from the states.
- States are free to organize their judicial systems differently from the federal judiciary, as long as due process is protected. See state supreme court for more information. For example, most lawsuits in the state of New York are filed in the Supreme Court, and then appealed to the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court. The highest court in New York is the Court of Appeals.
- The joint resolution which admitted the Republic of Texas to the Union as a state guaranteed Texas the right to divide itself up into up to 5 states. This clause may be redundant, however, as any such state would arguably require Congressional approval, just as when Maine was split off from Massachusetts; it may also be unconstitutional, as reducing the equal suffrage of the other states in the United States Senate.

List of states

The states, with their U.S. postal abbreviations, traditional abbreviations, capitals and largest cities, are as follows. For a complete list of non-state dependent areas and other territory under control of the U.S., see United States dependent areas. State names speak to the circumstances of their creation. (See the lists of U.S. state name etymologies and U.S. county name etymologies for more detail.)
- Southern states on the Atlantic coast originated as British colonies named after British monarchs: Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, and Maryland. Some northeastern states, also former British colonies, take their names from places in the British Isles: New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York.
- Many states' names are those of Native American tribes or are from Native American languages: Kansas, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Connecticut, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, the Dakotas, Mississippi, Texas, Utah, and others.
- Because they are on territories previously controlled by Spain or Mexico, many states in the southeast and southwest have Spanish names. They include Colorado, New Mexico, Florida, and Nevada.
- Because it was previously a French colony, Louisiana is named after the Louis XIV (King of France at the time).
- The origins of the names of California, Oregon, Idaho, and Rhode Island are unknown, although various theories exist.

Trivia

Names

- "Georgia" can refer to either a U.S. state or to an independent country in the Caucasus.
- The name "New York" can refer to any one of three geographical levels: a state, a city in that state, or a county (coterminous with the borough of Manhattan) in that city.
- "Washington" is a state, a city corresponding to the District of Columbia (and thus not part of any state), and a number of cities and counties in various states. See the list of places named for George Washington.
- The state of Washington is the only state named after a U.S. President (or after a person born within the area now comprising the U.S., for that matter).
- The official name of Rhode Island is "the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations."
- Only two states have state capitals named for the state (however, such name-sharing occurs commonly with states and provinces in some other countries, where the state or province actually often takes its name from a capital city): Oklahoma, with capital Oklahoma City, and Indiana, with capital Indianapolis (which means Indiana City). Iowa City, Iowa was the first state capital of Iowa but the capital was later moved to Des Moines, Iowa.
- Maine is the only state with a one-syllable name.

Geography

- Colorado and Wyoming are bounded by two circles of latitude and two meridians each, i.e. they appear to be rectangles in a cylindrical map projection.
- Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming are the only states whose borders are made up of only straight lines (taking meridians and circles of latitude as straight lines) and, thus, the only states whose borders completely ignore natural features.
- Every state—except Hawaii, which has no land boundaries—has straight lines as at least part of its boundaries. These are usually combined with rivers (see river borders of U.S. states), ridge lines and other natural boundaries. Pennsylvania and Delaware are unique in that their common border is an arc of a circle, see The Twelve-Mile Circle.
- The lower peninsula of Michigan is shaped like a mitten; Louisiana is shaped like a boot.
- Alaska, Florida, Idaho, Maryland, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas and West Virginia have panhandles.
- Alabama, Missouri, New Mexico and Mississippi have bootheels.
- Alaska and Hawaii are the only states that are not physically connected to other states; Maine is the only state that borders only one other state. Missouri and Tennessee each border eight other states, the most for any state.
- Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah are the only four states to share a common border, known as the "Four Corners."
- Appearances given by the stereographic projection to the contrary, Minnesota is the northernmost of the forty-eight contiguous United States, as a northern spur of the state contains a portion of Lake of the Woods. At one time it was thought that Lake of the Woods contained the headwaters of the Mississippi River (now known to be at Lake Itasca).
- Alaska is the northernmost state and the westernmost state. Some would argue that it is also the easternmost state, as the Aleutian island chain crosses the 180º line of longitude.

Grouping of the states in regions

Alaska, The South and The Northeast. Note that Alaska and Hawaii are shown at different scales, and that the Aleutian Islands and the uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands are omitted from this map.]] States may be grouped in regions; there are endless variations and possible groupings, as most states are not defined by obvious geographic or cultural borders. For further discussion of regions of the U.S., see the list of regions of the United States.

State lists

References

External links

- [http://factfinder.census.gov/bf/_lang=en_vt_name=DEC_2000_SF1_U_GCTPH1R_US9S_geo_id=01000US.html Tables with areas, populations, densities and more (in order of population)]
- [http://factfinder.census.gov/bf/_lang=en_vt_name=DEC_2000_SF1_U_GCTPH1_US9_geo_id=01000US.html Tables with areas, populations, densities and more (alphabetical)]
- [http://www.usnewspapers.org US Newspapers by State]
- [http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0854966.html Origin of State Names] United States, States of the Category:Subdivisions of the United States
- U.S. State ja:アメリカ合衆国の地方行政区画 ko:미국의 주 simple:List of U.S. states th:มลรัฐของสหรัฐอเมริกา zh-min-nan:Bí-kok ê hêng-chèng-khu

Federal district

Federal districts are subdivisions of a federal system of government. Often, these districts are not one of the countries' component subdivisions, and should not be confused with them, but are rather separate entities under the direct control of the federal government. The seat of the federal government is often located in a Federal District, so that no single individual component can exercise undue influence over federal affairs.

United States

There are several types of federal districts in the United States:
- the seat of the federal government in Washington, D.C. is a federal district.
- the federal court system divides the country into federal judicial districts, and a United States District Court is located in each.
- the U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve, consists of twelve banks located around the country; each of these banks serves a Federal Reserve district.

Other countries

The term Distrito Federal, meaning "Federal District" in both the Spanish and Portuguese languages, is used to refer to:
- Argentine Federal District, today the Autonomous city of Buenos Aires
- Brazilian Federal District
- Mexican Federal District
- Venezuelan Capital District In Australia, the seat of the federal government in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, which is a federal district. In India, the capital city, New Delhi, is located in the National Capital Territory of Delhi. There are seven Federal districts of Russia, which function as an additional administrative layer between other subdivisions and the Russian Federation as a whole. Category:Federalism Category:Subnational entities

United States territory

United States territory is any extent of region under the jurisdiction of the federal government of the United States, including all waters (around islands or continental tracts). The United States has traditionally proclaimed the sovereign rights for exploring, exploiting, conserving, and managing its territory. This extent of territory is all the area belonging to, and under the dominion of, the United States federal government (which includes tracts lying at a distance from the country) for administrative and other purposes. The United States total territory includes a subset of political divisions.

Territory of the United States

The United States territory includes any points of extended spatial location under the control of the United States federal government. Various regions, districts, and divisions are under the supervision of the United States federal government. The United States territory includes clearly defined geographical area and refers to an area of land under jurisdiction of United States federal governmental authority (but is not limited only to these areas). The extent of territory is all the area belonging to, and under the dominion of, the United States of America federal government (which includes tracts lying at a distance from the country) for administrative and other purposes.

Constitution of the United States

In the Constitution of the United States, territory is subject to and belongs to the United States (but not necessarily within the national boundaries or any individual state). This includes tracts of land or water not included within the limits of any State and not admitted as a State into the Union. The Constitution of the United States states, : "the congress shall have power to dispose of, and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property of the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be construed, so as to preclude the claims of the United States or of any state." - Article IV

Congress of the United States

Congress possesses power to set territorial governments within the territory of the United States. The power of congress over such territory is exclusive and universal. Congress legislation is subject to no control, unless in the case of ceded territory. The U.S. Congress is granted the exclusive and universal power to set United States territory's political divisions.

Supreme Court of the United States

All territory under the control of the federal government is considered part of the "United States" for purposes of law. The Supreme Court ruling from 1945 stated that the term "United States" can have three different meanings, in different contexts. : "The term 'United States' may be used in any one of several senses. It may be merely the name of a sovereign occupying the position analogous to that of other sovereigns in the family of nations. It may designate the territory over which the sovereignty of the United States extends, or it may be the collective name of the states which are united by and under the Constitution." [Hooven & Allison Co. v. Evatt, 324 U.S. 652 (1945)] This means that the United States territory is composed of any area or region over which the federal government has jurisdiction (including, but not limited to, the 50 states, plus all federal possessions and territories).

United States Department of the Interior

Main articles: U.S. Department of the Interior The Interior Department is charged with managing federal affairs within U.S. territory. The Interior Department has a wide range of responsibilities (which include the regulation of territorial governments and the basic stewardship for public lands, et. al.). The United States Department of the Interior is not responsible for local government or for civil administration except in the cases of Indian reservations, through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, as well as those territories administered through the Office of Insular Affairs.

United States divisions

Main article: Political divisions of the United States

District, States, Counties, Cities and Townships

Territories are subdivided into legally administered tracts (e.g., non-sovereign geographic areas that have voluntarily come under the authority of a government). For example, American Samoa is a territory of the government of the United States. A U.S. state is not a "state" as viewed by international law, since the U.S. Constitution restricts individual states from conducting foreign relations. The District of Columbia is under the direct authority of Congress, and was established from territory ceded by the states of Maryland and Virginia, with essentially all of the Virginia cession having since been returned to state jurisdiction. The contiguous part of the U.S., (along with Hawaii and Alaska), are divided into smaller administrative regions, called counties in 48 of the 50 states. (They are boroughs in Alaska and parishes in Louisiana.) U.S. counties can include a number of cities and towns, or sometimes just a part of a city. These counties have varying degrees of political and legal significance. U.S. townships are a term of varying meaning. In some states they represent an intermediate civic designation between city and county, in others, they designate land that is not part of any city. Some townships have governments and political power, others are simply geographic designations.

Historic regions of the United States

Main articles: Historic regions of the United States, Insular areas Territories are, at times, organized with a separate legislature under a Territorial governor and officers appointed by the President and approved by the Senate of the United States. Territory has been historically divided into organized territories and unorganized territories. Unorganized territory was generally either unpopulated or set aside for Native Americans and other indigenous peoples in the United States by the U.S. federal government until such time as the growing and restless population encroached into the areas. In recent times, unorganized refers to the degree of self-governmental authority exercised by the territory. As a result of some Supreme Court cases after the Spanish-American War, in which the U.S. had to determine how to deal with newly acquired territories such as the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam and other areas that were not part of the North American continent and which were not necessarily intended to become a part of the Union of States. As a consequence of the Supreme Court decisions, the United States has since made a distinction between incorporated and unincorporated territory. Incorporated territory in essence is land that has been irrevocabably incorporated within the sovereignty of the United States and to which the full corpus of the U.S. Constitution applies. Unincorporated territory is land held by the United States, and to which U.S. Congress applies selected parts of the constitution. Currently the only incorporated territory held by the U.S. is the unorganized (and unpopulated) Palmyra Atoll.

Dependent areas of the United States

Main article: U.S. Insular areas Several islands in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea are dependent territories of the United States. The United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay is leased from Cuba and only mutual agreement or U.S. abandonment of the area can terminate the lease. The United States has made no territorial claim in Antarctica but has reserved the right to do so. From July 18, 1947 until October 1, 1994, the U.S. administered the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, but the Trust ceased to exist when the last member state of Palau gained its independence to become the Republic of Palau. The Panama canal, and the Canal Zone surrounding it, was territory administered by the United States until 1999, when control was relinquished to Panama. Currently, the Guantanamo Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is administered by the US under a perpetual lease, much as the Panama Canal Zone used to be before the signing of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties.

Maritime territory of the United States

The Government of the United States of America has claims to the oceans in accord with international law, which delineates a zone of territory adjacent to territorial lands and seas. United States protects this marine environment, though not interfering with other lawful uses of this zone. The United States jurisdiction has been established on vessels, ships, and artificial islands (along with other marine structures).
- to do: ships and vessels at sea

International law concerning United States territory

United States is not restricted from making laws governing its own territory by international law.
- todo: secure and recognize boundaries The United States territory can include illegally occupied territory, which is a geographic area that claims sovereignty, but is being illegally or forcibly subjugated to the authority of the United States of America federal government. The United States territory can also include disputed territory, which is a geographic area claimed by United States of America federal government and one (or more) rival governments. America has acquired territory by force and conquest (Latin, "to seek for"). Internationally (specifically according to the Hague law), United States territory can include areas occupied when placed under the authority of a United States army. When this authority has been established, and exercised, occupation extends to that territory. The United States forces has a responsibility of providing for the basic needs of individuals under its control (which includes food, clothing, shelter, medical attention, law maintenance, and social order). The United states forces must enforce laws that were in place in the territory before occupation during its occupation.
- todo: Acquisition of territory by war

Land occupied by the United States

Main article: Occupied territories Historically, all of the United States of America was originally the territory of a multitude of Native American Indian tribes/nations. However, the source of this situation goes back several centuries, and includes land taken from Native Americans by the Spanish, French, Russians, Dutch, Danish and British. The current United States government was obviously not responsible for all of these cessions, since many took place under British rule. However, some Native Americans claim that the U.S. still illegally occupies some of their land, pointing to treaties that they say the United States later violated. (Some say the U.S. violated all treaties it signed with Indian tribes.) The United States also occupied Japan and West Germany for several years following its victory over those nations in World War II, leaving modern market-driven democracies behind. This is also its stated goal for Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which are soverign states, perhaps in name only because of the massive United States and international presence in both countries.
- The present status of Iraq as an occupied territory. The question of whether Iraq properly falls under a listing of either present or past territories occupied by the US is a matter of some political contention, but ultimately comes down to the following facts: :# As of the date of the official transfer of sovereignty from the United States Military government in Iraq to the locally representative Iraqi Interim Government, and especially following the date of democratic elections for new representatives in that government, Iraq maintains its full international sovereignty and territorial integrity. :# As a result, the presence of US and international military in that country can no longer be legally classified as an occupation, but as a joint military operation with permission of the host country, as is the case with military forces in Afghanistan. :# Despite the official termination of Iraqi occupation, many who consider the invasion to have been illegal would argue that the continued presence of that illegal military force to be morally equivalent to an occupation. :# Others would disagree with that argument, including some who view the invasion as illegal, and would retort that even whilst assuming the initial invasion to have been a violation of International Law, said law, especially the Geneva Convention, explicitely demands that any de facto occupying power, whether it be legitimate or illegitimate de jure, once having destroyed the existing regime, and once having damaged civilian infrastructure, is not only allowed to remain in the territory, but is actually obligated to do so until it has restored to full functionality and autonomy both civil government and vital services. International law also requires the occupying power to provide a reasonable amount of security and protection against insurgent violence. Indeed, it is argued that abandonment of the territory in a state of chaos and violence would constitute both a legal and a human rights violation that is on par, with if not more serious than, the original invasion itself. :# Because the United States, Great Britain, and other coalition forces in Iraq presently do not argue their rights as occupying powers, but instead argue their rights as coalition forces acting with the full cooperation of the sovereign Iraqi government, there exists a dilemma regarding the arguments used by these forces in the exercize of rights and obligations normally associated with a legally recognized occupation. This also seems to generate a conflict of interest with regard to the prioritization of foreign activities in Iraq, with the primary stated foreign policy emphasis in Iraq being, in the words of President Bush, the "War on Terror," and the matter of rebuilding civilian infrastructure receiving much less attention and proceeding at an oft-criticized slow pace. In conclusion, the true techical status of Iraq either as a territory presently occupied by the United States, or as a past-occupied territory, can only be objectively defined as a distinct and simultaneous series of conflicting but equally legitimate legal and ethical interpretations with no simple solution.

1776

:This article is about the year 1776. For the musical, see 1776 (musical) 1776 was a leap year starting on Monday (see link for calendar).

Events

- January 10 - Thomas Paine publishes Common Sense
- March 17 - American Revolutionary War: British forces evacuate Boston, Massachusetts after George Washington places artillery overlooking the city.
- March 28 - Juan Bautista de Anza finds the site for the Presidio of San Francisco.
- May 1 - Former Jesuit Adam Weishaupt founds the Bavarian Illuminati (Order of the Illuminati) in Ingolstadt, Bavaria.
- May 6 - Battle of Prague Prussian king Frederick the Great triumphs over Austrian army.
- June 7 - Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed to the Continental Congress a resolution calling for a Declaration of Independence.
- June 8 - American Revolutionary War: Battle of Trois-Rivières - American invaders are driven back at Trois-Rivières, Quebec.
- June 12 - Virginia Declaration of Rights by George Mason adopted by the Virginia Convention of Delegates.
- June 15 - Delaware Separation Day - The Delaware General Assembly votes to suspend government under the British Crown.
- June 17 - Lt. Jose Joaquin Moraga leads a band of colonists from Monterey Presidio, landing on June 29 and constructing the Mission Dolores of the new Presidio of San Francisco.
- July 2 - The final (despite minor revisions) U.S. Declaration of Independence is written.
- July 4 - American Revolutionary War: United States Declaration of Independence.
- July 8 - The U.S. declaration of Independence is signed.
- July 9 - An angry mob in New York City topples the equestrian statue of George III in Bowling Green.
- July 12 - Captain James Cook sets off from Plymouth England on his third, and fatal, expedition to the Pacific Ocean.
- August 15 - First Hessian troops land on Staten Island to join British forces
- August 27 - American Revolutionary War: Battle of Long Island - Washington's troops routed in Brooklyn by British under William Howe.
- September - First running of the St. Leger Stakes horse race in England.
- September 6 - Hurricane hits Guadeloupe, killing more than 6000.
- September 7 - World's first submarine attack. American submersible craft Turtle attempts to attach a time bomb to the hull of British Admiral Richard Howe's flagship HMS Eagle in New York Harbor.
- September 11 - American Revolutionary War: abortive peace conference between British and Americans on Staten Island.
- September 15 - American Revolutionary War: British land on Manhattan at Kip's Bay.
- September 16 - American Revolutionary War: Battle of Harlem Heights
- September 22 - American Revolutionary War: Nathan Hale executed in New York City for espionage.
- October 7 - Crown Prince Paul of Russia marries Sophie Marie Dorothea of Württemberg.
- October 9 - Father Francisco Palou founds Mission San Francisco de Asis in what is now San Francisco, California.
- October 11 - American Revolutionary War: Battle of Valcour Island - On Lake Champlain near Valcour Island, a British fleet led by Sir Guy Carleton defeats 15 American gunboats commanded by Brigadier General Benedict Arnold. Although nearly all of Arnold's ships are destroyed, the two day-long battle will give Patriot forces enough time to prepare defenses of New York City.
- October 28 - American Revolutionary War: Battle of White Plains - British forces arrive at White Plains, attack and capture Chatterton Hill from the Americans.
- November 16 - American Revolutionary War: Hessian mercenaries under Lieutenant General Wilhelm von Knyphausen capture Fort Washington from the American Continentals.
- December 5 - The Phi Beta Kappa society is founded at the College of William and Mary.
- December 7 - Marquis de Lafayette attempts to enter the American military as a major general.
- December 23 - Thomas Paine, living with Washington's troops begins publishing The American Crisis, containing the stirring phrase, "These are the times that try men's souls."
- December 25 - American Revolutionary War: Gen. George Washington orders the first issue of The Crisis read to his troops on Christmas Eve, then at 6 PM all 2600 of them march to McKonkey's Ferry, cross the Delaware River and land on the Jersey bank at 3 AM.
- December 26 - American Revolutionary War: Battle of Trenton - Washington's troops surprise the 1500 Hessian troops under the command of Col. Johan Rall at 8 AM outside Trenton and score a victory, taking 1000 prisoners while suffering only 6 wounded.
- Adam Smith publishes The Wealth of Nations
- Edward Gibbon publishes The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
- Austria abolishes death penalty and torture and decriminalizes witchcraft
- British begin to use old ships docked close to shore as temporary prisons, prison junks
- 35th and last volume of Diderot's Encyclopédie published

Births

- January 24 - E.T.A. Hoffmann, German writer, composer, and painter (d. 1822)
- February 11 - Joannis Capodistrias, Greek governor of Troezen (d. 1831)
- March 10 - Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Queen of Prussia (d. 1810)
- April 1 - Sophie Germain, French mathematician (d. 1831)
- June 11 - John Constable, English painter (d. 1837)
- August 9 - Amedeo Avogadro, Italian chemist (d. 1856)
- Muttusvami Dikshitar, Indian composer

Deaths

- March 10 - Élie Catherine Fréron, French critic (b. 1719)
- March 10 - Niclas Sahlgren, Swedish merchant and philanthropist (b. 1701)
- March 26 - Samuel Ward, American politician (b. 1725)
- March 24 - John Harrison, English clockmaker (b. 1693)
- April 29 - Edward Wortley Montagu, English traveler and writer (b. 1713)
- May 4 - Jacques Saly, French sculptor (b. 1717)
- June 10 - Leopold Widhalm, Austrian luthier (b. 1722)
- June 20 - Benjamin Huntsman, English inventor and manufacturer (b. 1704)
- July 7 - Jeremiah Markland, English classical scholar (b. 1693)
- July 10 - Richard Peters, English-born clergyman (b. 1704)
- August 2 - Louis François I, Prince of Conti, French military leader (b. 1717)
- August 25 - David Hume, Scottish philosopher (b. 1711)
- October 17 - Pierre François le Courayer, French theologian (b. 1681)
- November 17 - James Ferguson, Scottish astronomer (b. 1710)
- Francis Salvador, American patriot (b. 1747) Category:1776 ko:1776년 ms:1776 simple:1776

Kingdom of Great Britain

:This article is about the historical state called the Kingdom of Great Britain (1707-1800). For information about its modern successor state, see the main article: United Kingdom. :For other meanings of the terms "United Kingdom" and "UK" , see United Kingdom (disambiguation) and UK (disambiguation). :For an explanation of terms like England, (Great) Britain and United Kingdom see British Isles (terminology). The Kingdom of Great Britain, also known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain, was a state located in Western Europe, from 1707 to 1800. It was created by the merging of the Kingdom of Scotland and the Kingdom of England under the Acts of Union 1707 to create a single kingdom encompassing the whole of the island of Great Britain. A new, single parliament and government, based in Westminster in London, controlled the new kingdom. The two former kingdoms had shared the same monarch since King James VI of Scotland became King James I of England in 1603. From 1707 onward, a joint "British" throne replaced the English and Scottish thrones and a joint Parliament of Great Britain replaced the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England. Scotland and England were given seats in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords of the new parliament. Although Scotland's representation in both houses was smaller than its population indicated it should have been, representation in parliament was at that time based not on population but on taxation, and Scotland was given a greater number of MPs than its share of taxation warranted. Under the terms of the union, Scotland elected forty-five members to the Commons and sent sixteen representative peers to the Lords. The Kingdom of Great Britain was superseded by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801 when the Kingdom of Ireland was absorbed with the enactment of the Act of Union following the suppression of the Irish Rebellion of 1798.
Monarchs of Great Britain

- Anne (1707–1714), previously Queen of England, Queen of Scotland, and Queen of Ireland since 1702.
- George I (1714–1727)
- George II (1727–1760)
- George III (1760–1801), continued as King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until 1820.
See also

- Union Jack
- UK topics
- Style of the British Sovereign
Great Britain, United Kingdom of Great Britain, United Kingdom of Category:History of Great Britain British Isles (terminology) ja:グレートブリテン王国

13 Colonies

with 13 stars and 13 stripes representing each of the 13 colonies.]] The Thirteen Colonies were the 13 British colonies in North America, separately chartered and governed, that signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and formally broke with the Kingdom of Great Britain, leading to the American Revolutionary War and the establishment of the United States of America. Other British North American possessions—the former French colony of Quebec and the colonies of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island—remained loyal to the British Crown and much later were united as Canada. The colonies of East Florida and West Florida also remained loyal during the American Revolution.

The Thirteen Colonies

Contemporaneous documents almost always listed the colonies in geographical order, roughly from north to south, as follows (the division into three regions is a later construct of historians, though New England was always considered to be a distinct region):
- New England:
- Province of New Hampshire, later New Hampshire
- Province of Massachusetts Bay, later Massachusetts and Maine
- Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, later Rhode Island and Providence Plantations
- Connecticut Colony, later Connecticut
- Middle Colonies:
- Province of New York, later New York and Vermont
- Province of New Jersey, later New Jersey
- Province of Pennsylvania, later Pennsylvania
- Delaware Colony (before 1776, the Lower Counties on Delaware), later Delaware
- Southern Colonies:
- Province of Maryland, later Maryland
- Colony and Dominion of Virginia, later Virginia, Kentucky and West Virginia
- Province of North Carolina, later North Carolina and Tennessee
- Province of South Carolina, later South Carolina
- Province of Georgia, later Georgia Reference is sometimes seen to the Chesapeake Colonies, these being the Province of Maryland and the Colony and Dominion of Virginia; so called because they border the Chesapeake Bay.

Proprietary, royal, and charter colonies

The Thirteen Colonies were established by one of three possible means.
- Proprietary colonies: Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland. Proprietary means "of or relating to an owner or an ownership".
- Royal colonies: New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Royal refers to "of a quality or size suitable for a King or queen".
- Charter colonies: Rhode Island and Connecticut. A charter is "a written grant by a country's legislative or sovereign power, by which an institution such as a company, college, or a city is created and its rights and privileges defined".

Other British colonies in North America and the Caribbean in 1776

Britain held several other colonies in North America and the Caribbean in 1776 which did not join the 13 in their Revolution against the Crown.

Future Canadian provinces

- Nova Scotia (including present day New Brunswick)
- Newfoundland
- Prince Edward Island (before 1798, Île Saint-Jean or St. John's Island)
- the Province of Quebec, which included present day Ontario) Ontario. The red area is the area of the 13 colonies after the Proclamation of 1763. (Map produced by U.S. Dept. of Interior.)]]

Other

- West Indies Note that Guyana was a Dutch colony as of 1776; British Honduras had settlements, but was "unofficial" until some decades later.

External links

- [http://www.regiments.org/nations/namerica/namerica.htm British North American Colonies to 1783 - Military History & Institutions]
- [http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/states/statech.htm The Avalon Project at Yale Law School: Colonial Charters, Grants and Related Documents] Category:U.S. colonial history Category:Former British colonies

United States Declaration of Independence

The Declaration of Independence is the document in which the Thirteen Colonies declared themselves independent of the Kingdom of Great Britain and explained their justifications for doing so. It was ratified by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. This anniversary is celebrated as Independence Day in the United States. The original signed copy of the document is on display in the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

History

Background

Washington, D.C. Throughout the 1760s and 1770s, relations between Great Britain and thirteen of her North American colonies had become increasingly strained. Fighting broke out in 1775 at Lexington and Concord marking the beginning of the American Revolutionary War. Although there was little initial sentiment for outright independence, the pamphlet Common Sense by Thomas Paine was able to promote the belief that total independence was the only possible route for the colonies. Independence was adopted on July 2, 1776, pursuant to the "Lee Resolution" presented to the Continental Congress by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia on June 7, 1776, which read (in part): "Resolved: That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved."

Draft and Adoption

On June 11, 1776, a committee consisting of John Adams of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, Robert R. Livingston of New York, and Roger Sherman of Connecticut, was formed to draft a suitable declaration to frame this resolution. Jefferson did most of the writing, with input from the committee. His draft was presented to the Continental Congress on July 1, 1776. 1776 The full Declaration was rewritten somewhat in general session prior to its adoption by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, at the Pennsylvania State House. This version was only signed by the President of the Congress John Hancock and the Secretary Charles Thomson. A famous signing ceremony, often attributed to July 4, actually took place on August 2.

Distribution

After its adoption by Congress on July 4, a copy was then sent a few blocks away to the printing shop of John Dunlap. Through the night between 150 and 200 copies were made, now known as "Dunlap broadsides". One was sent to George Washington on July 6, who had it read to his troops in New York on July 9. The 25 Dunlap broadsides still known to exist are the oldest surviving copies of the document. On January 18, 1777, the Continental Congress ordered that the declaration be more widely distributed. The second printing was made by Mary Katharine Goddard. The first printing had included only the names John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Goddard's printing was the first to list all signatories. Word of the declaration reached London on August 10.

Signatories

August 10. [http://www.americanrevolution.org/deckey.html] ]] On July 19, 1776, Congress ordered a copy be handwritten for the delegates to sign. This copy of the Declaration was produced by Timothy Matlack, assistant to the secretary of Congress. Most of the delegates signed it on August 2, 1776, in geographic order of their colonies from north to south, though some delegates were not present and had to sign later. Two delegates never signed at all. As new delegates joined the congress, they were also allowed to sign. A total of 56 delegates eventually signed. This is the copy on display at the National Archives. The first and most famous signature on the Declaration was that of John Hancock, President of the Continental Congress. Two future presidents, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, were among the signatories. Edward Rutledge (age 26), was the youngest signer, and Benjamin Franklin (age 70) was the oldest signer. The fifty-six signers of the Declaration represented the new states as follows: ;New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton; ;Massachusetts: Samuel Adams, John Adams, John Hancock, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry; ;Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery; ;Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott; ;New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris; ;New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark; ;Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross; ;Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean; ;Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton; ;Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton; ;North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn; ;South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton; ;Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton.

Annotated text of the Declaration

George Walton The text of the Declaration of Independence can be divided into five sections: the introduction, the preamble, the indictment of George III, the denunciation of the British people, and the conclusion.

Introduction

In CONGRESS, July 4 1776 The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
Preamble

- The preamble is presented as a logical demonstration, with one proposition leading to another proposition. From the first proposition (that all men are created equal), a chain of logic is produced that leads to the right of revolution when a government becomes destructive of the people's rights. We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is in the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.

Indictment

throw off such Government Such has been the patient Sufferance so these Colonies; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The History of the Present King of Great-Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let the Facts be submitted to a candid World.
- The signers then list 27 grievances against the British Crown. The grievances are directed personally at the King (as in "He has refused his Assent to Laws..."), although many of them refer to actions taken by the British Parliament or the Royal Governors. Many of the grievances are examples of violations of fundamental English law, such as "imposing taxes on us without our Consent", and "depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury". Many historians maintain that some of the grievances are exaggerated propaganda (such as the "Swarms of Officers" in truth referring to about fifty men ordered to prevent smuggling). In every stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble Terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated Injury. A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People.

Denunciation

Nor have we been wanting in Attentions to our British Brethren. We have warned them from Time to Time of Attempts by their Legislature to extend an unwarrantable Jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the Circumstances of our Emigration and Settlement here. We have appealed to their native Justice and Magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the Ties of our common Kindred to disavow these Usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our Connections and Correspondence. They too have been deaf to the Voice of Justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the Necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of Mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace, Friends.

Conclusion

propaganda in Philadelphia.]]
- The signers assert that (since conditions exist under which people must change their government, and the British have produced such conditions) the colonies must necessarily throw off political ties with the British Crown and become independent states. The conclusion contains, at its core, the Lee Resolution that had been passed on July 2. We, therefore, the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in GENERAL CONGRESS, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly Publish and Declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that they are absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political Connection between them and the State of Great-Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which INDEPENDENT STATES may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of the divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
Differences between draft and final versions
Thomas Jefferson's original draft included a denunciation of the slave trade ("He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither." ), which was later edited out, as was a lengthy criticism of the British people and parliament. Also, Jefferson's draft used the phrase "inherent and inalienable rights", which was changed to "certain unalienable rights." Jefferson created a collation of his draft and the final version in [http://libertyonline.hypermall.com/Jefferson/Autobiography.html#declaration his autobiography], which quotes both as using the word "inalienable" rather than "unalienable".
Analysis
collation
Historical Influences
The United States Declaration of Independence was influenced by the 1581 Dutch Republic declaration of independence, called the Oath of Abjuration. The Kingdom of Scotland's 1320 Declaration of Arbroath was undoubtedly also an influence as the first known formal declaration of independence. Jefferson is also thought to have drawn on the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which had been adopted in June 1776.
Philosophical background
The Preamble of the Declaration is influenced by Enlightenment philosophy, including the concepts of natural law, self-determination, and Deism. Ideas and even some of the phrasing was taken directly from the writings of English philosopher John Locke, particularly his Second Treatise on Government, titled "Essay Concerning the true original, extent, and end of Civil Government." In this treatise, Locke espoused the idea of government by consent. Locke wrote that human beings had certain natural rights. Other influences included the Discourses of Algernon Sydney, and the writings of Wawrzyniec Grzymala Goslicki and Thomas Paine. According to Jefferson, the purpose of the Declaration was "not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of . . . but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take."
Practical effects
Some historians believe that the Declaration was used as a propaganda tool, in which the Americans tried to establish clear reasons for their rebellion that might persuade reluctant colonists to join them and establish their just cause to foreign governments that might lend them aid. The Declaration also served to unite the members of the Continental Congress. Most were aware that they were signing what would be their death warrant in case the Revolution failed, and the Declaration served to make anything short of victory in the Revolution unthinkable.
Influence on other documents
The Declaration of Independence contains many of the founding fathers' fundamental principles, some of which were later codified in the United States Constitution. It was the model for the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention Declaration of Sentiments. It has also been used as the model of a number of later documents such as the declarations of independence of Vietnam and Rhodesia. In the United States, the Declaration has been frequently quoted in political speeches, such as Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech.
Popular culture
A fictionalized (but somewhat historically accurate) version of how the Declaration came about is the musical play (and 1972 movie) 1776, which is usually termed a "musical comedy" but deals frankly with the political issues, especially how disagreement over the institution of slavery almost defeated the Declaration's adoption. The Declaration of Independence is also the central subject of the 2004 film National Treasure, starring Nicolas Cage and Diane Kruger. In the film, a hidden treasure map on the back of the Declaration leads treasure hunters to a cache of wealth hidden from the British by Freemasons during the Revolutionary War.
Myths
Several myths surround the document:
- Because it is dated July 4, 1776, many people believe it was signed on that date - it was signed August 2 by most of the delegates.
- An unfounded legend states that John Hancock signed his name so large that King George III would be able to read it without his spectacles.
- A painting by John Trumbull, depicting the signing of the Declaration with all representatives present, hangs in the grand Rotunda of the Capitol of the United States: no such ceremony ever took place.
- There is no evidence that Benjamin Franklin ever made the statement often attributed to him: "We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall hang separately".
- The Liberty Bell was not rung to celebrate independence, but to call the local inhabitants to hear the reading of the document on July 8, and it certainly did not acquire its crack on so doing: that story comes from a children's book of fiction, Legends of the American Revolution, by George Lippard. The Liberty Bell was actually named in the early nineteenth century when it became a symbol of the anti-slavery movement.
References

- [http://www.americanrevolution.com/DeclarationofIndependence.htm The complete text of the Declaration of Independence] at AmericanRevolution.com
- [http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/declaration_history.html "The Declaration of Independence: A History"] - detailing the history of the physical document from conception to today.
See also

- Declaration of independence
- History of the United States
External links
;Official website :
- [http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/declaration.html Declaration of Independence] at the National Archives ;Additional information :
- [http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/declaration_style.html "The Stylistic Artistry of the Declaration of Independence"] by Stephen E. Lucas - a thorough linguistic examination of the document. :
- Library of Congress: [http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/DeclarInd.html Declaration of Independence and related resources] :
- PBS/NOVA: [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/charters/ The Preservation and History of the Declaration] :
- ERIC Digest: [http://ericdigests.org/2003-4/independence.html "Teaching the Declaration of Independence"] :
- National Geographic News: [http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/06/0629_040629_july4.html "U.S. Independence Celebrated on the Wrong Day?"] (July 2, 2004) :
- [http://www.generalatomic.com/AmericanHistory/declaration_of_independence.html "Declaration of Independence"] from the book Thrilling Incidents in American History :
- Colonial Hall: [http://www.colonialhall.com/histdocs/declaration/ A line by line historical analysis of the grievances]. ;Maps, photos, and other images :
- National Archives: [http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/charters_downloads.html High-resolution images of the Declaration] :
- [http://teachpol.tcnj.edu/amer_pol_hist/thumbnail31.html "Drafting of the Declaration of Independence. The Committee: Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Livingston, and Sherman."] 1776. Copy of engraving after Alonzo Chappel. ([http://teachpol.tcnj.edu/amer_pol_hist/fi/0000001f.htm large version]) :
- [http://teachpol.tcnj.edu/amer_pol_hist/thumbnail32.html "The Declaration of Independence"] by John Trumbull. ([http://teachpol.tcnj.edu/amer_pol_hist/fi/00000020.htm large version]) :
- [http://www.declareyourself.com/videos.htm "Declaration of Independence Performance"]: A video hosted by Morgan Freeman with a dramatic reading of the Declaration of Independence by actors Mel Gibson, Michael Douglas, Kevin Spacey, Whoopi Goldberg, Edward Norton, Benicio Del Toro, Renée Zellweger, Winona Ryder, Graham Greene (actor), Ming-Na, and Kathy Bates. :
- [http://www.artlebedev.ru/kovodstvo2/sections/113/ An origin of the Declaration of Independence found 2004 in the National Archive in Kiev] (in Russian, with photos) ;The Signers :
- [http://www.snopes.com/history/american/pricepaid.asp The Price They Paid] Sorting Fact from Fiction. Declaration of Independence Category:United States official documents Category:U.S. colonial history Category:American Revolution Category:1776 in law ko:미국 독립선언 ja:アメリカ独立宣言

Articles of Confederation

The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, commonly known as the Articles of Confederation, formed the first governing document of the United States of America. They combined the colonies of the American Revolutionary War into a loose confederation. The second Continental Congress adopted the Articles on November 15, 1777, after 16 months of debate. The Articles then languished for another three years before ratification was completed on March 1, 1781. The Articles were replaced by the United States Constitution on June 21, 1788, when the 9th state, New Hampshire, ratified the Constitution. According to their own terms for modification, however, the Articles were still in effect until 1790, when every one of the 13 states had ratified the new Constitution.

Ratification

The Articles of Confederation were submitted to the states for ratification on November 17 1777, accompanied by a letter from Congress urging that the document :be candidly reviewed under a sense of the difficulty of combining in one general system the various sentiments and interests of a continent divided into so many sovereign and independent communities, under a conviction of the absolute necessity of uniting all our councils and all our strength, to maintain and defend our common liberties . . . The document only became effective as it was ratified by the states. This process dragged on for several years, stalled by an interstate quarrel over claims to uncolonized land in the west. Maryland was the last hold-out; it refused to ratify until Virginia and New York agreed to rescind their claims to lands in the Ohio River valley. All of the colonies rebelling against Britain ratified it by 1781. Although Congress debated the Articles for over a year, it requested immediate action on the part of the states. On February 5 1778 South Carolina became the first state to ratify the Articles of Confederation. However, three-and-a-half years passed before the final ratification by Maryland on March 1 1781.

Article Summaries

Even though the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution were established by much of the same people, they were still very different. The document contained 13 articles, a conclusion, and a signatory section. #Establishes the name of the confederation as "The United States of America" #Explains the rights possessed by any state, and the amount of power to which any state is entitled #Establishes the United States as a league of states united "...for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them..." #Anyone can pass freely between states (excluding fugitives from the law) and be entitled to the rights established by the state into which he or she travels. If a crime is committed in one state and the perpetrator flees to another state, he will be transported to and tried in the state in which the crime was committed. #Allocates one vote in Congress to each state, which was entitled to a delegation of between two and seven members. Members of Congress were appointed by state legislatures; individuals could not serve more than three out of any six years. #Limits the powers of states to conduct foreign relations and to declare war. #When an army is raised for common defense, officers of or below the rank of colonel will be named by the state legislatures. #Expenditures by the United States will be paid by funds raised by state legislatures, and apportioned to the states based on the real property values of each. #Defines the rights of the central government: to declare war, to set weights and measures (including coins), and for Congress to serve as a final court for disputes between states. #Defines a Committee of the States to be a government when Congress is not in session. #Sets rules for new states requiring nine state approval, preapproves Canada, if they apply for membership. #Reaffirms that the Confederation accepts war debt incurred by Congress before the articles. #Declares that the articles are perpetual, and can only be altered by approval of Congress with ratification by all the state legislatures. Still at war with the Kingdom of Great Britain, the colonists were reluctant to establish another powerful national government. Jealously guarding their new independence, the Continental Congress created a loosely structured unicameral legislature that protected the liberty of the individual states at the expense of the confederation. While calling on Congress to regulate military and monetary affairs, for example, the Articles of Confederation provided no mechanism to ensure states complied with requests for troops or revenue. At times this left the military in a precarious position, as George Washington wrote in a 1781 letter to the governor of Massachusetts, John Hancock.

The end of the war

The Treaty of Paris (1783), ending hostilities with Great Britain, languished in Congress for months because state representatives failed to attend sessions of the national legislature. Yet, Congress had no power to enforce attendance. Writing to George Clinton in September 1783, George Washington complained: :Congress have come to no determination yet respecting the Peace Establishment, nor am I able to say when they will. I have lately had a conference with a Committee on this subject, and have reiterated my former opinions, but it appears to me that there is not a sufficient representation to discuss Great National points.

Function

The Articles supported the Congressional direction of the Continental Army, and allowed the Thirteen Colonies to present a unified front when dealing with the European powers. But as an instrument of government, they were largely a failure. Congress could make decisions, but had no power to enforce them. Perhaps the most important power that Congress was denied was the power of taxation: Congress could only request money from the states. Understandably, the states did not generally comply with the requests in full, leaving the confederation chronically short of funds. The states and the national congress had both incurred debts during the war, and paying congressional debts became a major issue. Nevertheless the Continental Congress did take two actions with lasting impact. The Land Ordinance of 1785 established the general land survey and ownership provisions used throughout later American expansion. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 noted the agreement of the original states to give up western land claims and cleared the way for the entry of new states. Once the unity demanded by the Revolutionary War became unnecessary, the Continental Army was largely disbanded. A very small national force was maintained to man frontier forts and protect against Indian attacks. Meanwhile, each of the states had an army (or militia), and 11 of them had navies. The wartime promises of bounties and land grants to be paid for service were not being met. In 1783, Washington defused the Newburgh conspiracy, but riots by unpaid Pennsylvania veterans forced the Congress to leave Philadelphia on June 21.

Revision

In May 1786, Charles Pinckney of South Carolina proposed that Congress revise the Articles of Confederation. Recommended changes included granting Congress power over foreign and domestic commerce, and providing means for Congress to collect money from state treasuries. Unanimous approval was necessary to make the alterations, however, and Congress failed to reach a consensus. In September, five states assembled in the Annapolis Convention (1786) to discuss adjustments that would improve commerce. Under their chairman, Alexander Hamilton, they invited state representatives to convene in Philadelphia to discuss improvements to the federal government. After debate, Congress endorsed the plan to revise the Articles of Confederation on February 21 1787. According to some historians, the Articles were flawed; in particular, the confederal government was unable to settle state disputes on issues like trade and had no power to tax directly. After all, the states were thirteen individual republics. It took radical action to strip them of that sovereignty.

Lessons

Although ultimately replaced by the United States Constitution, the Articles of Confederation provided stability during the American Revolutionary War years. Most importantly, the experience of drafting and living under this initial document provided valuable lessons in self-governance and somewhat tempered fears about a powerful central government. Still, reconciling the tension between state and federal authority continues to challenge America, as seen in such conflicts as the 1832 Nullification Crisis, the American Civil War (1861-65), post-Civil War Reconstruction, and the Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.

Signatures

The copy of the Articles in the U.S. National Archives has a series of signatures on page six. A list of them is presented here. The signing of the Articles was a process that has caused some confusion. The Articles were approved for distribution to the states, on November 15, 1777. A copy was made for each state and one was kept by the Congress. The copies sent to the states for ratification were unsigned, and a cover letter had only the signatures of Henry Laurens and Charles Thomson, who were the President and Secretary to the Congress. But, the Articles at that time were unsigned, and the date was blank. Congress began the signing process by examining their copy of the Articles on June 27, 1778. They ordered a final copy prepared (the one in the National Archives), and that delegates should inform the secretary of their authority for ratification. Then, on July 9, 1778 the prepared copy was ready. They dated it, and began to sign. They also requested the remaining states to notify their delegation when ratification was completed. On that date, delegates present from New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and South Carolina signed the articles to indicate that their states had ratified. New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland could not, since their states had not ratified. North Carolina and Georgia also didn't sign that day, since their delegations were absent. After the first signing, some delegates signed at the next meeting they attended. For example John Wentworth of New Hampshire added his name on August 8. John Penn was the first of North Carolina's delegates to arrive (on July 10), and the delegation signed the Articles on July 21, 1778. The other states had to wait until they ratified the Articles, and notified their Congressional delegation. Georgia signed on July 24, New Jersey on November 26, and Delaware on February 12, 1779. After a wait of two years, Maryland ratified, and her delegates signed the Articles on March 1, 1781. The articles were finally in force. Congress had debated the Articles for over a year and a half, and the ratification process had taken nearly three and a half years. Many participants in the original debates were no longer delegates, and some of the signers had only recently arrived. The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union were signed by a group of men who were never present in the Congress at the same time. The signers and the states they represented were:
- New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett and John Wentworth Jr.
- Massachusetts Bay: John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Elbridge Gerry, Francis Dana, James Lovell, and Samuel Holten
- Rhode Island and Providence Plantations: William Ellery, Henry Marchant, and John Collins
- Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, Oliver Wolcott, Titus Hosmer, and Andrew Adams
- New York: James Duane, Francis Lewis, William Duer, and Gouverneur Morris
- New Jersey: John Witherspoon and Nathaniel Scudder
- Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Daniel Roberdeau, Jonathan Bayard Smith, William Clingan, and Joseph Reed
- Delaware: Thomas McKean, John Dickinson, and Nicholas Van Dyke
- Maryland: John Hanson and Daniel Carroll
- Virginia: Richard Henry Lee, John Banister, Thomas Adams, John Harvie, and Francis Lightfoot Lee
- North Carolina: John Penn, Cornelius Harnett, and John Williams
- South Carolina: Henry Laurens, Will Henry Drayton, John Mathews, Richard Hutson, and Thomas Heyward Jr.
- Georgia: John Walton, Edward Telfair, and Edward Langworthy

Presidents under the Articles

The following list are those who led the Congress under the Articles of Confederation as the Presidents of the United States in Congress Assembled. The "president" under the Articles was the presiding officer of Congress, not the chief executive, as is the President of the United States under the Constitution. Also, the Articles defined the powers of a confederation of states as opposed to the current Constitution, which defines the powers of a federation of states. #Samuel Huntington #Thomas McKean #John Hanson #Elias Boudinot #Thomas Mifflin #Richard Henry Lee #John Hancock #Nathaniel Gorham #Arthur St. Clair #Cyrus Griffin For a full list of Presidents of the Congress Assembled and Presidents under the two Continental Congresses before the Articles, see President of the Continental Congress.

References

#[http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/hlaw:@field(DOCID+@lit(jc00941)) Monday, November 17, 1777], Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789. [http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lawhome.html A Century of Lawmaking, 1774-1873] #[http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mgw:@field(DOCID+@lit(gw270170)) Letter George Washington to George Clinton], September 11, 1783. [http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gwhtml/gwhome.html The George Washington Papers, 1741-1799]

External links

- [http://earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/milestones/articles/cover.html Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union]".
- [http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/articles.html Library of Congress: Articles of Confederation and related resources]
- [http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/nov15.html Library of Congress: "Today in History: November 15"]
- [http://www.usconstitution.net/articles.html The United States Constitution Online: The Articles of Confederation] Category:Defunct constitutions Category:United States historical documents Category:Legal history of the United States Category:American Revolution Category:Federalism Category:1781 in law

United States Constitution

The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It was completed on September 17, 1787, with its adoption by the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was later ratified by special conventions in each of the original thirteen states. It created a federal union of sovereign states, and a federal government to operate that union. It replaced the less defined union that had existed under the Articles of Confederation. It took effect in 1789 and has served as a model for the constitutions of numerous other nations. nations] nations nations nations

History

During the Revolutionary War, the thirteen states first formed a very weak central government—with the Congress being its only component—under the Articles of Confederation. Congress lacked any power to impose taxes, and, because there was no national executive or judiciary, relied on state authorities (who were often uncooperative) to enforce all of its acts. It also had no authority to override tax laws and tariffs between states. The Articles required unanimous consent from all the states before they could be amended and states took the central government so lightly that their representatives were often absent. For lack of a quorum, Congress was frequently blocked from making even moderate changes. In September 1786, commissioners from five states met in the Annapolis Convention to discuss adjustments to the Articles of Confederation that would improve commerce. They invited state representatives to convene in Philadelphia to discuss improvements to the federal government. After debate, the Confederation Congress endorsed the plan to revise the Articles of Confederation on February 21, 1787. Twelve states (Rhode Island being the only exception) accepted this invitation and sent delegates to convene in May 1787. The resolution calling the Convention specified its purpose was to propose amendments to the Articles, but the Convention decided to propose a rewritten Constitution. The Philadelphia Convention voted to keep deliberations secret and decided to draft a new fundamental government design which eventually stipulated that only 9 of the 13 states would have to ratify for the new government to go into effect. These actions were criticized by some as exceeding the convention's mandate and existing law. However, Congress, noting dissatisfaction with the Articles of Confederation government, unanimously agreed to submit the proposal to the states despite what some perceived as the exceeded terms of reference. On September 17, 1787, the Constitution was completed in Philadelphia, and the new government it prescribed came into existence on March 4, 1789, after fierce fights over ratification in many of the states. The original transcribed copy of the Constitution is on permanent display at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. For a list of those who signed the Constitution, see List of signatories of the United States Constitution.

The Constitution

The U.S. Constitution styles itself the "supreme law of the land." Courts have interpreted this phrase to mean that when laws (including state constitutions) that have been passed by state legislatures, or by the (national) U.S. Congress, are found to conflict with the federal constitution, these laws are ultra vires and have no effect. Decisions by the Supreme Court over the course of two centuries have repeatedly confirmed and strengthened the doctrine of Constitutional supremacy, or the supremacy clause. supremacy clause The Constitution guarantees the legitimacy of the American state by invoking the American electorate. The people exercise authority through state actors both elected and appointed; some of these positions are provided for in the Constitution. State actors can change the fundamental law, if they wish, by amending the Constitution or, in the extreme, by drafting a new one. Different kinds of public officials have varying levels of limitations on their power. Elected officials can only continue in office if they are reelected at periodic intervals; appointed officials serve, in general, at the pleasure of the person or authority that appointed them, and may be removed at any time. The exception to this practice is the lifetime appointment by the President of Justices of the Supreme Court and other federal judges; the justification for this exception is that once appointed for life, these judges are presumed capable of acting free of political obligations or influence.

Principles of government

Although the Constitution has been amended several times since it was first adopted, its basic principles remain the same now as in 1789. There are three branches of the national government—executive, legislative, and judicial—and they are separate and distinct from one another. The powers given to each are in theory balanced and checked by the powers of the other two. Each branch ideally serves as a check on potential excesses of the others. This is known as "separation of powers", and was partly taken from the ideas of the Baron de Montesquieu. Baron de Montesquieu.]] The United States is federal in nature. Powers enumerated in the Constitution are given to the Federal Government, and all other, unenumerated, powers remain with the states or the people. (See the Tenth Amendment.) The Constitution, together with laws passed according to its provisions and treaties entered into by the president and approved by the Senate, stands above all other laws, executive acts, and regulations. Beginning with the case of Marbury v. Madison, the United States judiciary has engaged in judicial review. This means that the federal courts will examine duly enacted laws, and, if they are found to be unconstitutional, will overturn them. They also examine the acts of public officials—up to and including those of the president. (See United States v. Nixon.) Since the enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment, all persons have been equally entitled to the law's protection. All states are equal and in principle none can officially receive special treatment from the federal government. Within the limits of the Constitution, each state must recognize and respect the laws of the others. State governments, like the federal government, must be republican in form, with final legitimacy resting with the people. By means defined in the Fifth Article of the Constitution, Congress may propose amendments to the Constitution. Moreover, any two thirds of the states may themselves initiate a convention for proposing amendments. When ratified as specified, all amendments are considered part of the Constitution.

Preamble

The Preamble reads: :We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. The Preamble neither grants any powers nor inhibits any actions; it only explains the rationale behind the Constitution. The preamble, especially the first three words ("We the people"), is one of the most quoted and referenced sections of the Constitution.

Articles of the Constitution

The remainder of the constitution consists of seven articles.

Legislative power

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Article One establishes the legislative branch of government, U.S. Congress, which includes the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Article establishes the manner of election and qualifications of members of each House. In addition, it outlines legislative procedure and indicates the powers of the legislative branch. Finally, it establishes limits on federal and state legislative power.

Executive power

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Article Two describes the presidency (the executive branch): procedures for the selection of the president, qualifications for office, the oath to be affirmed, the powers and duties of the office, and procedures for selection. It also provides for the office of Vice President of the United States, and specifies that the Vice President succeeds to the presidency if the President is incapacitated or resigns. The article nominally makes the Vice President the presiding officer of the Senate, but in practice the Vice President only serves as such under limited circumstances. Article Two also provides for the impeachment and removal from office of civil officers (the President, Vice President, judges, and others). (See presidential system).

Judicial power

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Article Three describes the court system (the judicial branch), including the Supreme Court. The article requires that there be one court called the Supreme Court; Congress, at its discretion, can create lower courts, whose judgments and orders are reviewable by the Supreme Court. Article Three also requires trial by jury in all criminal cases, defines the crime of treason, and charges Congress with providing for a punishment for it, while imposing limits on that punishment.

States' powers and limits

Article Four describes the relationship between the states and the Federal government, and amongst the states. For instance, it requires states to give "full faith and credit" to the public acts, records and court proceedings of the other states. Congress is permitted to regulate the manner in which proof of such acts, records or proceedings may be admitted. The "privileges and immunities" clause prohibits state governments from discriminating against citizens of other states in favor of resident citizens (e.g., having tougher penalties for residents of Ohio convicted of crimes within Arizona). It also establishes extradition between the states, as well as laying down a legal basis for freedom of movement and travel amongst the states. Today, this provision is sometimes taken for granted, especially by citizens who live near state borders; but in the days of the Articles of Confederation, crossing state lines was often a much more arduous (and costly) process.

Process of amendment

Article Five describes the process necessary to amend the Constitution. It establishes two methods of proposing amendments: by Congress or by a national convention requested by the states. Under the first method, Congress can propose an amendment by a two-thirds vote (of a quorum, not necessarily of the entire body) of the Senate and of the House of Representatives. Under the second method, Congress must call a national convention for the purpose of considering amendments when two-thirds of the state legislatures "apply" to Congress for such a convention. Thus far, only the first method (proposal by Congress) has been used. Once proposed—whether submitted by a national convention or by Congress—amendments must then be ratified by three-fourths of the states to take effect. Article Five gives Congress the option of requiring ratification by state legislatures or by special conventions assembled in the states. The convention method of ratification has been used only once (to approve the 21st Amendment). Article Five currently places only one limitation on the amending power—that no amendment can deprive a state of its equal representation in the Senate without that state's consent.

Federal power

Article Six establishes the Constitution, and the laws and treaties of the United States made in accordance with it, to be the supreme law of the land. It also validates national debt created under the Articles of Confederation and requires that all legislators, federal officers, and judges take oaths to support the Constitution.

Ratification

Article Seven sets forth the requirements for ratification of the Constitution. The Constitution was originally proposed as an amendment of the Articles of Confederation, which required ratification by all 13 of the original states for amendments to take effect. Article Seven of the Constitution, however, only required ratification by 9 states for that document to take effect. Scholars have traditionally resolved this contradiction by arguing that when the ninth state ratified the Constitution and the document took effect, those 9 states implicitly seceded from the union governed by the Articles and created a new, separate federal union. Under this theory, those states that did not ratify the Constitution would have remained part of a separate country. However, eventually all the states did ratify the Constitution.

Provisions for amendment

The authors of the Constitution were clearly aware that changes would be necessary from time to time if the Constitution was to endure and cope with the effects of the anticipated growth of the nation. However, they were also conscious that such change should not be easy, lest it permit ill-conceived and hastily passed amendments. Balancing this, they also wanted to ensure that an overly rigid requirement of unanimity would not block action desired by the vast majority of the population. Their solution was to devise a dual process by which the Constitution could be altered. The first option must begin in Congress which, by a two-thirds vote (of a quorum) in each house, may initiate an amendment. Alternatively, the legislatures of two-thirds of the several states may ask Congress to call a national convention to discuss and draft amendments. To date, all amendments have been proposed by Congress; although state legislatures have on occasion requested the calling of a convention, no such request has yet received the concurrence required for such a convention. In either case, amendments must have the approval of the legislatures or of smaller ratifying conventions within three-fourths of the states before becoming part of the Constitution. All amendments save one have been submitted to the state legislatures for ratification; only the 21st Amendment was ratified by individual conventions in the states. Unlike most constitutions, amendments to the U.S. constitution are appended to the existing body of the text, rather than being revisions of or insertions into the main articles. There is no provision for expunging from the text obsolete or rescinded provisions. Some people feel that demographic changes in the U.S.—specifically the great disparity in population between states—have made the Constitution too difficult to amend, with states representing as little as 4% of the population theoretically able to block an amendment desired by over 90% of Americans; others feel that it is unlikely that such an extreme result would occur. However, any proposals to change this would necessarily involve amending the Constitution itself, creating something of a Catch-22. Aside from the direct process of amending the Constitution, the practical effect of its provisions may be altered by judicial decision. The United States is a common law country, and courts are obliged to follow the precedents established in prior cases. However, when a Supreme Court decision clarifies the application of a part of the Constitution to existing law, the effect is to establish the meaning of that part for all practical purposes. Not long after adoption of the Constitution, in the 1803 case of Marbury v. Madison, the Supreme Court established the doctrine of judicial review, which is the power of the Court to examine legislation and other acts of Congress and to decide their constitutionality. The doctrine also embraces the power of the Court to explain the meaning of various sections of the Constitution as they apply to particular cases brought before the Court. Since such cases will reflect changing legal, political, economic, and social conditions, this provides a mechanism, in practice, for adjusting the Constitution without needing to amend its text. Over the years, a series of Court decisions, on issues ranging from governmental regulation of radio and television to the rights of the accused in criminal cases, has effected a change in the way many Constitutional clauses are interpreted, without amendment to the actual text of the Constitution. Congressional legislation, passed to implement provisions of the Constitution or to adapt those implementations to changing conditions, also broadens and, in subtle ways, changes the meanings given to the words of the Constitution. Up to a point, the rules and regulations of the many agencies of the federal government have a similar effect. In case of objection, the test in both cases is whether, in the opinion of the courts, such legislation and rules conform with the meanings given to the words of the Constitution.

Amendments

The Constitution has a total of 27 amendments. The first ten, collectively known as the Bill of Rights, were ratified simultaneously. The following seventeen were ratified separately.

The Bill of Rights (1–10)

Bill of Rights The Bill of Rights comprises the first ten amendments to the Constitution. Those amendments were all adopted within a few years of the ratification of the Constitution, and all relate to limiting the power of the federal government. They were added in response to criticisms of the Constitution by the state ratification conventions and by prominent individuals such as Thomas Jefferson (who was not a delegate to the Constitutional Convention). These critics argued that without further restraints, the strong central government would become tyrannical. The amendments were proposed by Congress as part of a block of twelve in September 1789. By December 1791 a sufficient number of states had ratified ten of the twelve proposals, and the Bill of Rights became part of the Constitution. It is commonly understood that the Bill of Rights was not originally intended to apply to the states, though except where amendments refer specifically to the Federal Government or a branch thereof (as in the first amendment, under which some states in the early years of the nation officially established a religion), there is no such delineation in the text itself. Nevertheless, a general interpretation of inapplicability to the states remained until 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was passed, which stated, in part, that: :No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. The Supreme Court has interpreted this clause to extend some, but not all, parts of the Bill of Rights to the states. Nevertheless, the balance of state and federal power has remained a battle in the Supreme Court; for example, a recent case dealt with whether a state could be sued by an employee under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (see Federalist Society and Federalism). The amendments that became the Bill of Rights were actually the last ten of the twelve amendments proposed in 1789. The second of the twelve proposed amendments, regarding the compensation of members of Congress, remained unratified until 1992, when the legislatures of enough states finally approved it and, as a result, it became the Twenty-seventh Amendment despite more than two centuries of pendency. The first of the twelve—still technically pending before the state legislatures for ratification—pertains to the apportionment of the United States House of Representatives after each decennial census. The most recent state whose lawmakers are known to have ratified this proposal is Kentucky in 1792 during that commonwealth's first month of statehood. The first amendment addresses the rights of freedom of speech and the press; the right of peaceful assembly; and the right of petition. It also addresses freedom of religion, both in terms of prohibiting the establishment of religion and protecting the right to free exercise of religion. The second states, in its entirety, "A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." Current case law (including U.S. Supreme Court decisions) tends to assert that the "right of the people to keep and bear Arms" is an individual right but not an absolute right, and that the states and federal government may omit certain classes of people from the general-public sense of the "militia" for cause (criminal record, young or old age, mental incapacity, etc.), and may limit the types of weapons to which the right applies. The courts have interpreted and reinterpreted the second amendment since it was ratified; the Supreme Court first visiting it in United States v. Cruikshank, in 1875. The third prohibits the government from using private homes as quarters for soldiers without the consent of the owners. The fourth guards against unreasonable searches, arrests, and seizures of property. The next four amendments deal with the system of justice. The fifth forbids trial for a major crime except after indictment by a grand jury; prohibits repeated trials for the same offense after an acquittal (except in certain very limited circumstances); forbids punishment without due process of law; and provides that an accused person may not be compelled to testify against himself. The sixth guarantees a speedy public trial for criminal offenses. It requires trial by a jury (of peers), guarantees the right to legal counsel for the accused, and guarantees that the accused may require witnesses to attend the trial and testify in the presence of the accused. The seventh assures trial by jury in civil cases involving anything valued at more than 20 U.S. dollars. The eighth forbids excessive bail or fines, and cruel and unusual punishment. The last two of the first ten amendments contain very broad statements of constitutional authority. The ninth declares that the listing of individual rights is not meant to be comprehensive; that the people have other rights not specifically mentioned in the Constitution. The tenth provides that powers the Constitution does not delegate to the United States and does not prohibit the states from having are "reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Subsequent amendments (11–27)

Amendments to the Constitution subsequent to the Bill of Rights cover many subjects. The majority of the seventeen later amendments stem from continued efforts to expand individual civil or political liberties, while a few are concerned with modifying the basic governmental structure drafted in Philadelphia in 1787.
- Eleventh Amendment (1795): Clarifies judicial power over foreign nationals, and limits ability of citizens to sue states in federal courts and under federal law. (Full text)
- Twelfth Amendment (1804): Changes the method of presidential elections so that members of the electoral college cast separate ballots for president and vice president. (Full text)
- Thirteenth Amendment (1865): Abolishes slavery and grants Congress power to enforce abolition. (Full text)
- Fourteenth Amendment (1868): Defines United States citizenship; prohibits states from abridging citizens' privileges or immunities and right to due process and the equal protection of the law; repeals the three-fifths compromise. (Full text)
- Fifteenth Amendment (1870): Prohibits the federal government and the states from using a citizen's race, color, or previous status as a slave as a qualification for voting. (Full text)
- Sixteenth Amendment (1913): Authorizes unapportioned federal taxes on income. (Full text)
- Seventeenth Amendment (1913): Establishes direct election of senators. (Full text)
- Eighteenth Amendment (1919): Prohibited the manufacturing, importing, and exporting of beverage alcohol. Repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment. (Full text)
- Nineteenth Amendment (1920): Prohibits the federal government and the states from using a citizen's sex as a qualification for voting. (Full text)
- Twentieth Amendment (1933): Changes details of Congressional and presidential terms and of presidential succession. (Full text)
- Twenty-first Amendment (1933): Repeals Eighteenth Amendment but permits states to retain prohibition and ban the importation of alcohol. (Full text)
- Twenty-second Amendment (1951): Limits president to two terms. (Full text)
- Twenty-third Amendment (1961): Grants presidential electors to the District of Columbia. (Full text)
- Twenty-fourth Amendment (1964): Prohibits the federal government and the states from requiring the payment of a tax as a qualification for voting for federal officials. (Full text)
- Twenty-fifth Amendment (1967): Changes details of presidential succession, provides for temporary removal of president, and provides for replacement of the vice president. (Full text)
- Twenty-sixth Amendment (1971): Prohibits the federal government and the states from using an age greater than 18 as a qualification to vote. (Full text)
- Twenty-seventh Amendment (1992): Limits congressional pay raises. (Full text) There also have been many failed attempts to amend the Constitution. There are some that are still ongoing today (See Proposals for amendments to the United States Constitution).

Unratified Amendments

Over 10,000 Constitutional amendments have been introduced in Congress since 1789; in a typical Congressional year in the last several decades, between 100 and 200 are offered. Most of these concepts never get out of Congressional committee, much less get proposed by the Congress for ratification. Backers of some amendments have attempted the alternative, and thus far never-utilized, method mentioned in Article Five. In two instances—reapportionment in the 1960s and a balanced federal budget during the 1970s and 1980s—these attempts have come within just two state legislative "applications" of triggering that alternative method. The Eighteenth Amendment is the only amendment to be directly and specifically repealed by another (the Twenty-first). The episode highlighted the importance of proposing and ratifying only the most important, and least evanescent, of amendments. Of the thirty-three amendments that have been proposed by Congress, six have failed ratification by the required three-quarters of the state legislatures—and four of those six are still technically pending before state lawmakers. Starting with the 18th amendment, each proposed amendment (except for the 19th Amendment and for the still-pending Child Labor Amendment of 1924) has specified a deadline for passage. The following are the unratified amendments:
- The Congressional Apportionment Amendment proposed by the 1st Congress on September 25, 1789, defined a formula for how many members there would be in the United States House of Representatives after each decennial census. Ratified by eleven states, the last being Kentucky in June 1792 (Kentucky's initial month of statehood), this amendment contains no expiration date for ratification. In principle it may yet be ratified, though as written it became moot when the population of the United States reached ten million.
- The so-called missing thirteenth amendment, or "Titles of Nobility Amendment" (TONA), proposed by the 11th Congress on May 1, 1810, would have ended the citizenship of any American accepting "any Title of Nobility or Honour" from any foreign power. Some scholars maintain that the amendment was actually ratified by the legislatures of enough states, and that a conspiracy has suppressed it. Known to have been ratified by lawmakers in twelve states, the last in 1812, this amendment contains no expiration date for ratification. It may yet be ratified.
- A pro-slavery proposal, known as the Corwin amendment, proposed by the 36th Congress on March 2, 1861, which would purportedly have prevented the passage of any future constitutional amendment allowing Congress to regulate "the domestic institutions" within any state. It was ratified by only Ohio and Maryland lawmakers before the outbreak of the Civil War. Illinois lawmakers—sitting as a state constitutional convention at the time—likewise approved it, but that action is of questionable validity. The proposed amendment contains no expiration date for ratification and may yet be ratified. However, adoption of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments after the Civil War likely means that the amendment would be ineffective if adopted.
- A child labor amendment proposed by the 68th Congress on June 2, 1924, which stipulates: "The Congress shall have power to limit, regulate, and prohibit the labor of persons under eighteen years of age." This amendment is now moot, since subsequent federal child labor laws have uniformly been upheld as a valid exercise of Congress' powers under the commerce clause. This amendment contains no expiration date for ratification. It may yet be ratified.

Expired Amendments

Properly placed in a separate category from the other four constitutional amendments that Congress proposed to the states, but which not enough states have approved, are the following two offerings which—due to deadlines—are no longer subject to ratification.
- The Equal Rights Amendment, or ERA, which reads in pertinent part "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex." Proposed by the 92nd Congress on March 22, 1972, it was ratified by the legislatures of 35 states, and expired on either March 22, 1979, or on June 30, 1982, depending upon one's point of view of a controversial ratification deadline three-year extension by the 95th Congress in 1978. Of the 35 states ratifying it, four later rescinded their ratifications prior to the extended ratification period which commenced March 23, 1979 and a fifth—while not going so far as to actually rescind its earlier ratification—adopted a resolution stipulating that its approval would not extend beyond March 22, 1979. There continues to be diversity of opinion as to whether such reversals are valid; no court has ruled on the question, including the Supreme Court. But a precedent against the validity of rescission was first established during the ratification process of the 14th Amendment when Ohio and New Jersey rescinded their earlier approvals, but yet were counted as ratifying states when the 14th Amendment was ultimately proclaimed part of the Constitution in 1868.
- The District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment was proposed by the 95th Congress on August 22, 1978. Had it been ratified, it would have granted to Washington, D.C., two Senators and at least one member of the House of Representatives as though the District of Columbia were a state. Ratified by the legislatures of only 16 states—less than half of the required 38—the proposed amendment expired on August 22, 1985.

Proposals for amendments

There are currently only a few proposals for amendments which have entered mainstream political debate. These include the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment, the Balanced Budget Amendment, and the Flag-Burning Amendment.

International influences on the development of the Constitution

Flag-Burning Amendment acknowledged the debt American law and constitutionalism had to Magna Carta by erecting a monument at Runnymede, England.]] Some of the ideas embodied in the Constitution were new, but many were drawn from Classical Antiquity and the British governmental tradition of mixed government which was in practice among 12 of the 13 states and were advocated by the writings of Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu. The United States Constitution was partly based on ideas from the uncodified constitution of the United Kingdom, such as Article 39 from the Magna Carta of 1215 which states that: :No free man shall be arrested, or imprisoned, or deprived of his property, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor shall we go against him or send against him, unless by legal judgement of his peers, or by the law of the land. The English Bill of Rights (1689) also acted as a source of ideas for the United States Constitution. For example, like the English Bill of Rights, the U.S. Constitution requires jury trials, contains a right to bear arms, and prohibits excessive bail and of "cruel and unusual punishments." Liberties guaranteed by Magna Carta and the 1689 English Bill of Rights were directly incorporated into state statutes and the Virginia Declaration of Rights, and many were then further incorporated into the Constitution and the United States Bill of Rights.

International influences of the Constitution

The Constitution of the United States has also served as a model for the constitutions of numerous other nations, including the second oldest codified constitution, the May Constitution of Poland, which was written in 1791. The course and ideas of the French Revolution were also heavily influenced by the United States Constitution.

Legality of the Constitution

One historical controversy is whether the Constitution was illegally adopted. For example, historian Joseph Ellis in Founding Brothers charges that there is truth in the allegations that the: # "Convention was extralegal, since its explicit mandate was to revise the Articles of Confederation, not replace them." # "Machinery for ratification did not require the unanimous consent [as] dictated by the Articles [of Confederation] themselves." Constitutional lawyer Michael P. Farris disagrees, arguing that: # "No limits were placed on the authority of the convention to make amendments," and that the Constitution is, in effect, simply an amended version of the Articles of Confederation. # "Congress and all thirteen state legislatures approved the new ratification process as required by the Articles." Eleven states held ratification conventions (approved by their legislatures) and approved the Constitution by July 26, 1788, a direct approval of the change in procedure. The other two states' legislatures (of North Carolina and Rhode Island) also approved of the ratification process—North Carolina by holding a convention and Rhode Island by submitting the Constitution to a referendum, although they both rejected the Constitution (at first). Thus, the change in procedure was approved by all the states.

External links

National Archives

- [http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/constitution.html The National Archives Experience — Constitution of the United States]
- [http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/charters_downloads.html The National Archives Experience — High Resolution Downloads of the Charters of Freedom]
- [http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/constitution_transcript.html Full text of U.S. Constitution]
- [http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html Full text of The Bill of Rights]
- [http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/constitution_amendments_11-27.html Full text of the amendments]

Official U.S. government sources

- [http://www.gpoaccess.gov/constitution/index.html Analysis and Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States]: Annotated constitution, with descriptions of important cases (official publication of U.S. Senate)
- [http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/Constitution.html United States Constitution and related resources]: Library of Congress

Non-government web sites

- [http://www.law.cornell.edu/topics/constitutional.html Law about...the Constitution]: An overview of constitutional law from the Legal Information Institute
- [http://www.usconstitution.net The U.S. Constitution Online]: Full text of Constitution, with some history and annotation
- [http://www.usconstitution.net/constamrat.html The U.S. Constitution Online: Record of ratifications by states]
- [http://www.constitutioncenter.org/ National Constitution Center in Philadelphia]: Museum and education center
- [http://www.ericdigests.org/pre-926/constitution.htm Education on the U.S. Constitution. ERIC Digest No. 39.]: Study on the treatment of the Constitution in public education
- [http://librivox.org/the-constitution-of-the-united-states-of-america-1787/ Free audiobook] from [http://librivox.org librivox.org]
- [http://www.law.cornell.edu/anncon/ Annotated Constitution] by the Congressional Research Service of the U.S. Library of Congress(hyperlinked version published by LII)

Activist/advocacy web sites

- [http://www.smallgovtimes.com/ SmallGovTimes.com]: Site advocating small government and strict constitutional construction
- [http://www.thirty-thousand.org/ Thirty-Thousand.org]: Site advocating an increase in the size of the House of Representatives.
- [http://www.usconstitution.biz U.S. Constitution.biz]: Web site of "Free Mart Publications", offering conservative pamphlets on the Constitution
- [http://www.krusch.com/real/real2.html Krusch, Barry (2003). Would The Real First Amendment Please Stand Up?] Online book arguing that the Supreme Court's interpretation of the First Amendment has created a “virtual First Amendment" that is radically different from the true amendment.
- [http://praxeology.net/LS-NT-0.htm No Treason by Lysander Spooner] 19th century essay argues that the U.S Constitution is without authority. Constitution Constitution Constitution Category:Constitutions ja:アメリカ合衆国憲法

Geopolitics

Geopolitics analyses politics, history and social science with reference to geography. The term was coined by Rudolf Kjellén, a Swedish political geographer, at the end of the 19th century. Kjellén was inspired by the German geographer Friedrich Ratzel, who published his book "Politische Geographie" (political geography) in 1897. The term was popularized in English by US diplomat Robert Strausz-Hupé, a faculty member of the University of Pennsylvania. University of Pennsylvania The discipline gained attention largely through the work of Sir Halford Mackinder in England and his formulation of the Heartland Theory in 1904. This theory involved concepts diametrically opposed to the notion of Alfred Thayer Mahan about the significance of navies (he coined the term sea power) in world conflict. The Heartland theory, on the other hand, hypothesized the possibility for a huge empire to be brought into existence which didn't need to use coastal or transoceanic transport to supply its military industrial complex, and that this empire could not be defeated by all the rest of the world coalitioned against it. The basic notions of Mackinder's theory involve considering the geography of the Earth as being divided into a variation on the notion of the Old World (most of the Eastern Hemisphere) and the New World (the Western Hemisphere and what was called Oceania). The difference was that the archipelagoes which were traditionally able to defend themselves by naval power — historically, Britain and prospectively, Japan — were taken from the former, which was renamed the World Island. They were added to the other part of the world, renamed the Periphery, along with Philippines, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Madagascar. Australia and New Zealand were already part of the New World. Not only was the Periphery noticeably smaller than the World Island, it necessarily required much sea transport to function at the technological level of the World Island, which contained sufficient natural resources for a developed economy. Also, the industrial centers of the Periphery were necessarily located in widely-separated locations. The World Island could send its navy to destroy each one of them in turn. It could locate its own industries in a region further inland than the Periphery could, so they would have a longer struggle reaching them, and would be facing a well-stocked industrial bastion. This region Mackinder termed the Heartland. It was essentially comprised of Ukraine, Western Russia, and Mitteleuropa. The Heartland contained the grain reserves of Ukraine, and many other natural resources. Mackinder's notion of geopolitics can be summed up in his saying "Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland. Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island. Who rules the World-Island commands the world." Though the theory was first imagined before World War I, developments in that war did not disprove it. Vast systems of trenches were not envisaged as part of the antagonism, but their appearance, as well as the demonstration that submarines could destroy convoys, made geopolitics appear even more frightening. The development of mechanized military transport needing petroleum fit right into the theory, for Russia's major oil reserves are located on the western shore of the Caspian Sea. Also, it was imagined before the industrial development of Russia herself. Thus it was as much a "thought experiment" as Schlieffen's plan to conquer France. Some influential Germans, both before and during the Third Reich, found this theory compatible with their desire to control Mitteleuropa and to take Ukraine. The intention to take the latter was indicated by the slogan Drang nach Osten, or "drive to the east". Although the fascists took much of Ukraine in World War II, nonetheless they were defeated. Another point which Mackinder missed was that the Soviets could actually move their factories out of the Heartland. For a time it seemed as though the theory was defunct, at first because conventional air force had been falsely touted as capable of destroying industries thousands of miles from the seacoast, and shortly afterward with the appearance of nuclear weapons. But with the coming of the Cold War, Mackinder's theory regained a bit of plausibility when instead of war, influence upon other nations was considered. This would be projection of power in other terms. The Soviet Union accomplished the domination of both Ukraine and Mitteleuropa. It was industrial, technically competent, and militarily able. Some anti-communists in the West who had heard of Mackinder gained additional fear of them from of his theory. What reduced the plausibility of this form of geopolitics drastically was the rise of Japan, a country without natural resources, yet which could surpass the Soviet Union without dealing with anything military at all. The Balance of terror, which enforced a state of relative peace during that period, also extends beyond the predictions of the original theory. Since then, the word geopolitics has been applied to other theories, most notably the notion of the clash of civilizations. In a peaceable world, neither sea lanes nor surface transport are threatened; hence all countries are effectively close enough from one another physically. It is in the realm of the political ideas and workings that there are differences, and the term has shifted to this arena. After World War I, Kjellen's thoughts and the term were picked up and extended by a number of scientists: in Germany by Karl Haushofer, Erich Obst, Hermann Lautensach and Otto Maull; in England, Mackinder and Fairgrieve; in France Vidal de la Blache and Vallaux. In 1923 Karl Haushofer founded the "Zeitschrift für Geopolitik" (magazine for geopolitics), which developed as a propaganda organ for Nazi-Germany.

In the abstract, geopolitics traditionally indicates the links and causal relationships between political power and geographic space; in concrete terms it is often seen as a body of thought assaying specific strategic prescriptions based on the relative importance of land power and sea power in world history. . . . The geopolitical tradition had some consistent concerns, like the geopolitical correlates of power in world politics, the identification of international core areas, and the relationships between naval and terrestrial capabilities.—Oyvind Osterud, The Uses and Abuses of Geopolitics, Journal of Peace Research, no. 2, 1988, p. 191

Political

Politics is the process by which decisions are made for a given society. The method of making decisions for groups varies, but the act of decision making is the key component that characterises politics. Although it is generally applied to governments, politics is also observed in all human group interactions, including corporate, academic, and religious institutions. Political science is the study of political behavior and examines the acquisition and application of power, i.e. the ability to impose one's will on another. One theorist, Harold Lasswell, has defined politics as "who gets what, when, and how." Another definition of 'politics' is: "how power is distributed within a group or system".

A natural state

In 1651, Thomas Hobbes published his most famous work, Leviathan, in which he proposed a model of early human development to justify the creation of human associations. Hobbes described an ideal state of nature wherein every person had equal right to every resource in nature and was free to use any means to acquire those resources. He noted that such an arrangement created a “war of all against all” (bellum omnium contra omnes). Further, he noted that men would enter into a social contract and would give up absolute rights for certain protections. While it appears that social cooperation and dominance hierarchies predate human societies, Hobbes’s model illustrates a rationale for the creation of societies (polities).

Early history

V.G. Childe describes the transformation of human society that took place around 6000 BCE as an urban revolution. Among the features of this new type of civilization were the institutionalization of social stratification, non-agricultural specialised crafts (including priests and lawyers), taxation, and writing. All of which require clusters of densely populated settlements - city-states. The word "Politics" is derived from the Greek word for city-state, "Polis". Corporate, religious, academic and every other polity, especially those constrained by limited resources, contain dominance hierarchy and therefore politics. Politics is most often studied in relation to the administration of governments. The oldest form of government was tribal organization. Rule by elders was supplanted by monarchy, and a system of Feudalism as an arrangement where a single family dominated the political affairs of a community. Monarchies have existed in one form or another for the past 5000 years of human history.

Definitions

- Power is the ability to impose one's will on another. It implies a capacity for force, i.e violence.
- Authority is the power to enforce laws, to exact obedience, to command, to determine, or to judge.
- Legitimacy is an attribute of government gained through the acquisition and application of power in accordance with recognized or accepted standards or principles.
- A government is the body that has the authority to make and enforce rules or laws.

Political power

Samuel Gompers’ often paraphrased maxim,"Reward your friends and punish your enemies," hints at two of the five types of power recognized by social psychologists: incentive power (the power to reward) and coercive power (the power to punish). Arguably the other three grow out of these two. Legitimate power, the power of the policeman or the referee, is the power given to an individual by a recognized authority to enforce standards of behavior. Legitimate power is similar to coercive power in that unacceptable behavior is punished by fine or penalty. Referent power is bestowed upon individuals by virtue of accomplishment or attitude. Fulfillment of the desire to feel similar to a celebrity or a hero is the reward for obedience. Expert power springs from education or experience. Following the lead of an experienced coach is often rewarded with success. Expert power is conditional to the circumstances. A brain surgeon is no help when your pipes are leaking.

Authority and legitimacy

Max Weber identified three sources of legitimacy for authority known as (tripartite classification of authority). He proposed three reasons why people followed the orders of those who gave them:

Traditional

Traditional authorities receive loyalty because they continue and support the preservation of existing values, the status quo. Traditional authority has the longest history. Patriarchal (and more rarely Matriarchal) societies gave rise to hereditary monarchies where authority was given to descendants of previous leaders. Followers submit to this authority because "we've always done it that way." Examples of traditional authoritarians include kings and queens.

Charismatic

Charismatic authority grows out of the personal charm or the strength of an individual personality (see cult of personality for the most extreme version). Charismatic regimes are often short lived, seldom outliving the charismatic figure that leads them. Examples include Hitler, Napoleon, and Mao.

Legal-rational

Legal-Rational authorities receive their ability to compel behavior by virtue of the office that they hold. It is the authority that demands obedience to the office rather than the office holder. Modern democracies are examples of legal-rational regimes.

References

GOMPERS,SAMUEL; “Men of Labor! Be Up and Doing,” editorial, American Federationist, May 1906, p. 319

Technological

:See also: Innovation Innovation.]] Technology is a word with origins in the Greek word technologia (τεχνολογια), techne (τεχνη) "craft" + logia (λογια) "saying". It is an encompassing term dealing with the use and knowledge of humanity's tools and crafts.
Disambiguation of technology
Depending on context, the word technology has the following definitions and uses:
- Technology as tool-In its most common usage, technology is the tools and machines that help to solve problems. In this usage, technology is a far-reaching term that can include both simple tools, such as a wooden spoon, and complex tools, such as the space station.
- Technology as technique-In this usage, technology is the current state of our knowledge of how to combine resources to produce a desired products, to solve a problem, to fulfill a need, or to satisfy a want. Technology in this sense includes technical methods, skills, processes, techniques, tools and raw materials. (such as artificial intelligence, building technology, or medical technology).
- Technology as culture former-a culture-forming (or destroying) activity (such as manufacturing technology, infrastructure technology, or space-travel technology). (McGinn). As a cultural activity, technology predates both science and engineering. This is not to imply that technology is the only culture forming activity, nor that it is the primary culture-forming activity. Often, it is dominant in cultural formation; often, it is not. In addition, culture may act to form technology. Due to widespread, and sometime careless, use of technology, several other topics arise in the study of technology, including technological ethics, environmental impacts, technological by-products, and technological risk, among many other philosophical and sociological topics.

Science and technology

The lines between science and technology are not always clear. Generally, science is the reasoned investigation or study of nature, aimed at finding out the truth, generally according to the scientific method. Technology is the application of knowledge (scientific, engineering, and/or otherwise) to achieve a practical result (Roussel, et.al.). For example, science might study the flow of electrons in an electric current. This knowledge may be used to create artifacts, such as semiconductors, computers, and other forms of technology.

History of technology

The history of technology is as old as the history of humanity because history proper refers to what could be recorded by technological means. Mind you that other animals currently use tools and animals prior to human existence may have as well. The history of technology follows a progression from simple (low-tech) tools and simple energy sources to complex ("hi-tech") tools. The earliest technologies converted natural resources into simple tools. Processes such as carving, chipping, scraping, rolling (the wheel), and sun-baking are simple means for the conversion of raw materials into usable products. Anthropologists have uncovered many early human houses and tools made from natural resources (although birds also build nests out of dried materials and we don't consider them to have a technological society). The use, and then mastery, of fire was a key turning point in man's technological evolution providing him with simple energy. The use of fire extended the capability for the treatment of natural resources and allowed the use of natural resources that require heat to be useful. Wood and charcoal were among the first materials used as a fuel. Wood, clay, and rock (such as limestone), would be among the earliest materials shaped or treated by fire, for making weapons, pottery, bricks, and cement, among others. Continuing improvements such as the furnace enabled the ability to smelt and forge metal (such as copper, ca. 8000 BC), and eventually to the discovery of alloys, such as brass and bronze (ca. 4000 BC). The first uses of iron alloys, steel, dates to around 1400 BC. Complex tools include both simple machines (such as the lever (ca. 300 BC), the screw (ca. 400 BC), and the pulley) and complex machines (such as the ocean liner, the engine, the computer, modern communications devices, the electric motor, the jet engine, among many others). Again we are confronted with an impractical vagueness as we categorise the lever with the jet engine. As tools increase in complexity, so does the type of knowledge needed to support them. Modern complex machines require written technical manuals of collected information that his been countinually added to and improved upon and are so complex, that entire technical knowledge-based processes and practices (also complex tools themselves) exist to support them, including engineering, medicine, computer science, etc. Further, complex machinies require complex manufacturing and construction techniques and organizations. Entire industries have arisen to support and develop complex tools.

The nature of technology

General characteristics

With all of the technology in use in modern society, it may seem futile to attempt a generalized list of common characteristics. Many authors, such as McGinn (1991) and Winston (2003), list the following: Complexity refers to the characteristic that most modern tools are difficult to understand. Some are easy to use, but difficult to comprehend source and means of make, such as a kitchen knife, or a baseball. Others are both difficult to use and difficult to comprehend, such as a tractor, gasoline, a television, or a computer. Dependency refers to the fact that modern tools depend on other modern tools, which depend on other modern tools, for their make and their use. Cars, as an example, have a huge complex of industry of means and methods. And to use them requires a complex of road, streets, highways, and gasoline stations, waste collection, etc., beyond our comprehension. Valence refers to the many, many different types of the same tool. Imagine the many different types of spoons available today, or scissors, and even complex tools come in many shape as well, like the construction crane, or the automobile. Scale refers to the sheer magnitude, size, and pervasiveness of modern technology. Simply put, technology seems to be everywhere. It dominates modern life. Scale refers also to the magnitude of some modern technological projects, like the cellular telephone network, the Internet, air travel, satellites, etc.

Types of Technology

One possible classification of technology uses the fields of technological studies, commonly found in academic institutions of higher learning:
- Applied Science;
- Athletics and recreation;
- The Arts and language;
- Business/information;
- Defense;
- Domestic/residential;
- Engineering;
- Health;
- Cognitive;
- Travel and trade .

Relationship with society

The relationship between society and technology is quite complex, creating what many characterize as a co-dependence upon the other; society creates and depends upon technology to meet its needs and desires, and technology's very existence arises due to society's needs and desires. However, this "symbiosis" goes further than that: Every advancement in technology influences and eventually changes society. So the needs of society change, creating more needs, and, eventually, creating more technology. (McGinn 1991) Consider the telephone, and its latest sibling the mobile phone. With the invention of the telephone, society began to depend on quicker ways of communication with others. Higher expectations for quicker communications were initially met using short-range radio systems for use in emergency vehicles. However, even higher portability was realized with miniaturization of components. This demand for a new product led to the invention of the mobile phone. The influence of portability is so pervasive now anyone can be accessible to talk in most urban places in the developed world Many technologies allow one society to have a military advantage over another society. This can be indirectly as something that creates population growth, for example, or this can be direct technology put into use like the gun or the atom bomb. The effects these technologies have on human society are complex and could result in slavery, assimilation, or genocide. Some technologies, like the video camera, start without militaristic use but eventually find themselves employed for those purposes. The car is another example of this... it is created and marketed with the promise of freedom (initially for the wealthy and without regard to the factory hands) but then it impedes upon other forms of transportation (like the free movement of the pedestrian), requires extensive paving for its full accommodation, and then it is employed militaristically. Its consumption of fuel eventually even becomes the potential basis for a resource war. The use of advanced mass media techniques, such as television programming, allows some members of society to have larger sway over the attititudes and opinions of others. Mass media often shapes mass opinion -- for better or, at least as often, worse. The effects that various forms of technology have upon the environment also sways public opinion. The Chernobyl effect (caused by a massive nuclear meltdown) is thought to have played a part in undermining the confidence that citizens of the Soviet Union had in their government. The exact causes for the collapse of that government are debatable but the new leader in Russia had a reputation as being a strong environmentalist.

Funding for technological development

Government

The government is a major contributor to the development of technology. In the United States, many agencies invest millions of dollars in new technology. In 1980, the UK government invested just over 6 million pounds in a 4 year Programme, later extended to 6 years, called the Microlectronics Education Programme (MEP) which aimed to provide every school in Britain with at least one computer, microprocessor training materials and software, plus extensive teacher training.

Military technology

Technology has frequently been driven by the military, with most modern applications being developed for the military before being taken up for civilian use. However, this trend has recently seen a reversal, with the industry often taking the lead in developing technology which is then adopted by the military.

Other

Some government agencies are dedicated specifically to research, such as the American's National Science Foundation, the United Kingdom scientific research institutes, the American's Small Business Innovative Research effort. And many government agencies dedicate a major portion of their budget to research and development.

Private source

For profit

Research and development is one of the biggest investments made by corporations toward new and innovative technology.

Non-profit

Many foundations and non-profit organizations contribute to the development of technology.

Side effects

There are two types of effects from the use of technology, main effects and side effects. Main effects are those intended by the technology, usually to fulfill some desire or need. Side effects are (usually) unintended, and often unknown prior to technology's implementation. This portion of the article deals with those side effects.

Sociological

The most subtle side effects from technological uses are sociological in nature. Subtle because those side effects can go unnoticed without careful observation and contemplation of individual, institutional, and group behaviors.

Values

The implementation of technology influence the values (beliefs, ideas, opinions) of society by changing expectations and realities. There are (at least) three major, interrelated, values that are the result of technological innovations:
- Mechanistic World View. A set of beliefs that views the universe as a collection of parts, like a machine, that can be individually analyzed and understood. (McGinn)
- Efficiency. A value, originally applied only to machines, but now placed upon all aspects of society, whereby each element (organizational structures and human beings) is expected to attain higher and higher performance, output, ability, etc. (McGinn)
- Progressivism. The belief that societal progress is good.

Ethics

Winston provides an excellent summary of the ethical implications of technological development and deployment. He states there are four major ethical implications:
- Challenges traditional ethical norms.
- Creates an aggregation of effects.
- Changes the distribution of justice.
- Provides great power.

Lifestyle

In many ways, technology simplifies life.
- The rise of a leisure class
- More informed
- Sets the stage for more complex learning tasks
- Increases multi-tasking
- Global Networking
- Creates denser social circles
- others In other ways, technology complicates life.
- Sweatshops and harsher forms of slavery are more likely to be found in technologically advanced societies (relative to primitive societies).
- More people are currently starving now that at any point in history or pre-history
- Work to drive to drive to work to work to drive -- consequently dealing with the traffic jams.
- the prison population grows with advancements in jailing techniques and tools.
- Too much information
- Consumerism
- Pace
- Technicism
- New forms of danger
- Can cause obesity and laziness
- Distraction among students-internet, gaming, etc. can take away from academic performance

Institutions and groups

Technology influences, often enables, organizational and bureaucratic group structures and influence. Example of this include:
- The rise of organizations: e.g., health institutions.
- The commericalization of leisure: sports events, products, etc. (McGinn)
- The advent of large organizational structures.
- Others

International

Technology provides a heightened awareness of international issues, values, and cultures. Due mostly to mass transportation and mass media, the world seems to be a much smaller place due to the following, among others:
- Globalization of ideas
- Embeddedness of values
- Population growth and control
- Others

Environmental

The effects of technology on the environment is both obvious and subtle. The more obvious effects include the depletion of nonrenewable natural resources (such as petroleum, coal, ores), and the added pollution of air, water, and land. The more subtle effects include debates over long-term impacts (e.g., global warming, deforestation, natural habitat destruction, costal wetland loss) Others

Control

Autonomous technology

In one line of thought, technology develops autonomously, in other words technology seems to feed on itself, moving forward with a force irresistible by humans. To these individuals, technology is "inherently dynamic and self-augmenting." (McGinn, p. 73) Jacques Ellul is one proponent of the irresistibleness of technology to humans. He espouses the idea that humanity cannot resist the temptation of expanding our knowledge and our technological abilities. He, however, does not believe that these seeming autonomy of technology is inherent. But the perceived autonomy is due to the fact that humans do not adequately consider the responsibility that are inherent to technological processes. Another proponent of these ideas is Langdon Winner who believes that technological evolution is essentially beyond the control of individuals or society.

Government

Individuals rely on governmental assistance to control the side effects and negative consequences of technology. Government intervenes many through laws.
- Supposed independence of government. An assumption commonly made about the government is that their governance role is neutral or independent. Often, if not usually, that assumption is misplaced. Governing is a political process, more so in some countries than in others, therefore government will be influenced by political winds of influence. In addition, government provides much of the funding for technological research and development. Therefore, even government has a vested interest in certain outcomes.
- Liability. One means for controlling technology is to place responsibility for the harm with the agent causing the harm. Government can allow more or less legal liability to fall to the organization(s) or individual(s) responsibile for damages.
- Legislation.
- Others

Choice

Society also controls technology through the choices that it makes. These choices not only include consumer demands; it includes
- the channels of distribution, how do products go from raw materials to consumption to disposal;
- the cultural beliefs regarding style, freedom of choice, consumerism, materialism, etc.;
- the economic values we place on the environment, individual wealth, government control, capitalism, etc.
- Others

Technology and philosophy

Technicism

Generally, Technicism is an overreliance or overconfidence in technology as a benefactor of society. Taken to extreme, some argue that technicism is the belief that humanity will ultimately be able to control the entirety of existence using technology. In other words, human beings will eventually be able to master all problems, supply all wants and needs, possibly even control the future. (For a more complete treatment of the topic see the work of Egbert Schuurman, for example at [http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/SPT/v3n1/schuurman.html].) Some, such as Monsma, et al., connect these ideas to the abdication of God as a higher moral authority. More commonly, technicism is a criticism of the commonly held belief that newer, more recently-developed technology is "better." For example, more recently-developed computers are faster than older computers, and more recently-developed cars have greater gas efficiency and more features than older cars. Since current technologies are generally accepted as good, future technological developments are not considered circumspectly, resulting in what seems to be a blind acceptance of technological developments.

Optimism, pessimism and appropriate technology

Pessimism

On the somewhat pessimistic side, are certain philosophers like Herbert Marcuse, Jacques Ellul, and John Zerzan, who believe that technological societies are inherently flawed a priori. They suggest that the result of such a society is to become evermore technological at the cost of freedom and psychological health (and probably physical health in general as pollution from technological products is dispersed). Perhaps the most poignant criticisms of technology are found in what are now considered to be literary classics, for example Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Optimism

On the other hand, the optimistic assumptions are made by proponents of technoprogressivist views or ideologies such as transhumanism and singularitarianism, that view technological development as generally having beneficial effects for the society and the human condition. In these ideologies, technological development is morally good. Some critics see these ideologies as examples of scientism, mathematical fetishism, or techno-utopianism and fear the idea of technological singularity which they support.

Appropriate technology

The notion of appropriate technology, however, was developed in the twentieth century to describe situations where it was not desirable to use very new technologies or those that required access to some centralized infrastructure or parts or skills imported from elsewhere. The eco-village movement emerged in part due to this concern.

Theories and concepts in technology

There are many theories and concepts that seek to explain the relationship beteen technology and society:
- Appropriate technology
- Diffusion of innovations
- Jacques Ellul's Technological Society, is considered a classic criticism of modern culture's pursuit of technology for its own sake. For more on these ideas see http://www.usd.edu/~ssanto/ellul.html.
- Intermediate technology, more of an economics concern, refers to compromises between central and expensive technologies of developed nations and those which developing nations find most effective to deploy given an excess of labour, and scarcity of cash. In general, a so-called "appropriate" technology will also be "intermediate".
- Persuasion technology, in economics, definitions or assumptions of progress or growth are often related to one or more assumptions about technology's economic influence. Challenging prevailing assumptions about technology and its usefulness has led to alternative ideas like uneconomic growth or measuring well-being. These, and economics itself, can often be described as technologies, specifically, as persuasion technology — a concern covered in its own separate article.
- Posthumanism
- Precautionary principle
- Strategy of technology
- Technocapitalism
- Radovan Richta's theory of technological evolution
- Technological determinism
- Technological diffusion
- Technological singularity
- Technology acceptance model
- Technology lifecycle
- Technology transfer
- Transhumanism

References

- Adas, Michael. Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance, Cornell University Press, 1990.
- Nobel, David. Forces of Production: a social history of industrial automation, New York: Knopf 1984, Paperback Edition: Oxford University Press, 1990.
- McGinn, Robert E. Science, Technology and Society, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1991.
- Monsma, S.V., C. Christians, E.R. Dykema, A. Leegwater, E. Schuurman, and L. VanPoolen. Responsible Technology. Grand Rapids, Michigan (USA): W.B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1986.
- Roussel, P.A., K. N. Saad, and T. J. Erickson. Third Generation R&D, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press, 1991.
- Winston, M.E. "Children of Invention", in Society, Ethics, and Technology, Second Edition, M.E. Winston and R.D. Edelbach (eds.), Belmont, California (USA): Wadsworth Group/Thomson Learning, 2003.
- Smil, Vaclav. Energy in World History, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994, pp. 259-267, as quoted in http://www.thenagain.info/webchron/Technology/Technology.html, maintained by David W. Koeller, Northpark University, Chicago, Illinois (USA), downloaded September 11, 2005.

External links

- [http://www.pneumatica.be basic pneumatics]
- [http://www.memoryzine.com/cognitivetechnolgy.html Cognitive Technology Journal]
- [http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/bookdescription.cws_home/525392/description#description Cognitive Technology, Elsevier]
- [http://topics.developmentgateway.org/egovernment Development Gateway's e-Government Page] — Depository of various e-government technology resources.
- [http://www.greatachievements.org/ Greatest Engineering Achievements of the 20th Century]
- [http://technologybusiness.blogspot.com/ The Business of Technology]
- ko:기술 ms:Teknologi ja:工業 th:เทคโนโลยี

Cultural

:For other uses of Culture or Cultures, see Culture (disambiguation) The word culture, from the Latin root colere (to inhabit, to cultivate, or to honor), generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activity significance. Different definitions of "culture" reflect different theoretical orientations for understanding, or criteria for valuing, human activity. Anthropologists most commonly use the term "culture" to refer to the universal human capacity to classify, codify and communicate their experiences symbolically. This capacity is a defining feature of the genus Homo.

Defining culture

Different definitions of culture reflect different theories for understanding - or criteria for valuing - human activity. Sir Edward B. Tylor wrote in 1871 that "culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society", while a 2002 document from the United Nations agency UNESCO states that culture is the "set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group, and that it encompasses, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs". http://www.unesco.org/education/imld_2002/unversal_decla.shtml UNESCO, 2002 While these two definitions range widely, they do not exhaust the many uses of this concept - in 1952 Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of more than 200 different definitions of culture in their book, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions [Kroeber and Kluckhohn, 1952].

Culture as civilization

Many people today use a conception of "culture" that developed in Europe during the 18th and early 19th centuries. This idea of culture then reflected inequalities within European societies, and between European powers and their colonies around the world. It identifies "culture" with "civilization" and contrasts the combined concept with "nature". According to this thinking, one can classify some countries as more civilized than others, and some people as more cultured than others. Thus some cultural theorists have actually tried to eliminate popular or mass culture from the definition of culture. Theorists like Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) or the Leavises regard culture as simply the result of "the best that has been thought and said in the world” (Arnold, 1960: 6), thus labeling anything that doesn't fit into this category as chaos or anarchy. On this account, culture links closely with social cultivation: the progressive refinement of human behavior. Arnold consistently uses the word this way: "...culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world". http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/nonfiction_u/arnoldm_ca/ca_all.html Arnold, 1882 In practice, culture referred to élite goods and activities such as haute cuisine, high fashion or haute couture, museum-caliber art and classical music, and the word cultured described people who knew about, and took part in, these activities. For example, someone who used 'culture' in the sense of 'cultivation' might argue that classical music "is" more refined than music produced by working-class people such as punk rock or than the indigenous music traditions of aboriginal peoples of Australia. People who use "culture" in this way tend not to use it in the plural as "cultures". They do not believe that distinct cultures exist, each with their own internal logic and values; but rather that only a single standard of refinement suffices, against which one can measure all groups. Thus, according to this worldview, people with different customs from those who regard themselves as cultured do not usually count as "having a different culture"; but class as "uncultured". People lacking "culture" often seemed more "natural", and observers often defended (or criticized) elements of high culture for repressing "human nature". From the 18th century onwards, some social critics have accepted this contrast between cultured and uncultured, but have stressed the interpretation of refinement and of sophistication as corrupting and unnatural developments which obscure and distort people's essential nature. On this account, folk music (as produced by working-class people) honestly expresses a natural way of life, and classical music seems superficial and decadent. Equally, this view often portrays non-Western people as 'noble savages' living authentic unblemished lives, uncomplicated and uncorrupted by the highly-stratified capitalist systems of the West. Today most social scientists reject the monadic conception of culture, and the opposition of culture to nature. They recognize non-élites as just as cultured as élites (and non-Westerners as just as civilized) - simply regarding them as just cultured in a different way. Thus social observers contrast the "high" culture of élites to "popular" or pop culture, meaning goods and activities produced for, and consumed by, non-élite people or the masses. (Note that some classifications relegate both high and low cultures to the status of subcultures.)

Culture as worldview

During the Romantic era, scholars in Germany, especially those concerned with nationalist movements - such as the nationalist struggle to create a "Germany" out of diverse principalities, and the nationalist struggles by ethnic minorities against the Austro-Hungarian Empire - developed a more inclusive notion of culture as "worldview". In this mode of thought, a distinct and incommensurable world view characterizes each ethnic group. Although more inclusive than earlier views, this approach to culture still allowed for distinctions between "civilized" and "primitive" or "tribal" cultures. By the late 19th century, anthropologists had adopted and adapted the term culture to a broader definition that they could apply to a wider variety of societies. Attentive to the theory of evolution, they assumed that all human beings evolved equally, and that the fact that all humans have cultures must in some way result from human evolution. They also showed some reluctance to use biological evolution to explain differences between specific cultures - an approach that either exemplified a form of, or legitimized forms of, racism. They believed that biological evolution would produce a most inclusive notion of culture, a concept that anthropologists could apply equally to non-literate and to literate societies, or to nomadic and to sedentary societies. They argued that through the course of their evolution, human beings evolved a universal human capacity to classify experiences, and to encode and communicate them symbolically. Since human individuals learned and taught these symbolic systems, the systems began to develop independently of biological evolution (in other words, one human being can learn a belief, value, or way of doing something from another, even if the two humans do not share a biological relationship). That this capacity for symbolic thinking and social learning stems from human evolution confounds older arguments about nature versus nurture. Thus Clifford Geertz (1973: 33 ff.) has argued that human physiology and neurology developed in conjunction with the first cultural activities, and Middleton (1990: 17 n.27) concluded that human "'instincts' were culturally formed". People living apart from one another develop unique cultures, but elements of different cultures can easily spread from one group of people to another. Culture changes dynamically and people can (must?) teach and learn culture, making it a potentially rapid form of adaptation to change in physical conditions. Anthropologists view culture as not only as a product of biological evolution but as a supplement to it, as the main means of human adaptation to the world. This view of culture as a symbolic system with adaptive functions, and one which varies from place to place, led anthropologists to conceive of different cultures as defined by distinct patterns (or structures) of enduring, arbitrary, conventional sets of meaning, which took concrete form in a variety of artifacts such as myths and rituals, tools, the design of housing, and the planning of villages. Anthropologists thus distinguish between material culture and symbolic culture, not only because each reflects different kinds of human activity, but also because they constitute different kinds of data that require different methodologies. This view of culture, which came to dominate between World War I and World War II, implied that each culture had bounds and demanded interpretation as a whole, on its own terms. There resulted a belief in cultural relativism; the belief that one had to understand an individual's actions in terms of his or her culture; that one had to understand a specific cultural artifact (a ritual, for example) in terms of the larger symbolic system of which it forms a part. Nevertheless, the belief that culture comprises symbolical codes and can thus pass via teaching from one person to another meant that cultures, although bounded, would change. Cultural change could result from invention and innovation, but it could also result from contact between two cultures. Under peaceful conditions, contact between two cultures can lead to people "borrowing" (really, learning) from one another (diffusion or transculturation). Under conditions of violence or political inequality, however, people of one society can "steal" cultural artifacts from another, or impose cultural artifacts on another (acculturation). Diffusion of innovations theory presents a research-based model for how, when and why people adopt new ideas. All human societies have participated in these processes of diffusion, transculturation, and acculturation, and few anthropologists today see cultures as bounded. Modern anthropologists argue that instead of understanding a cultural artifact in terms of its own culture, one needs to understand it in terms of a broader history involving contact and relations with other cultures. In addition to the aforementioned processes, migration on a major scale has characterized the world, particularly since the days of Columbus. Phenomena such as colonial expansion and forced migration through slavery became prominent. As a result, many societies have become culturally heterogeneous. Some anthropologists have argued nevertheless that some unifying cultural system bound heterogeneous societies, and that it offers advantages to understand heterogenous elements as subcultures. Others have argued that no unifying or coordinating cultural system exists, and that one must understand heterogeneous elements together as forming a multicultural society. The spread of the doctrine of multiculturalism has coincided with a resurgence of identity politics, which involve demands for the recognition of social subgroups' cultural uniqueness. Sociobiologists argue that observers can best understand many aspects of culture in the light of the concept of the meme, first introduced by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins suggests the existence of units of culture - memes - roughly analogous to genes in evolutionary biology. Although this view has gained some popular currency, anthropologists generally reject it.

Culture as values, norms, and artifacts

Another common way of understanding culture sees it as consisting of three elements: # values # norms # artifacts. (See Dictionary of Modern Sociology, 1969, 93, cited at [http://www.info.gov.hk/coy/eng/report/doc/Youth_Statistical/2002/app/Chp6_Cultural_Capital.pdf]) Values comprise ideas about what in life seems important. They guide the rest of the culture. Norms consist of expectations of how people will behave in different situations. Each culture has different methods, called sanctions, of enforcing its norms. Sanctions vary with the importance of the norm; norms that a society enforces formally have the status of laws. Artifacts — things, or material culture — derive from the culture's values and norms. Julian Huxley gives a slightly different division, into inter-related "mentifacts", "socifacts" and "artifacts", for ideological, sociological, and technological subsystems respectively. Socialization, in Huxley's view, depends on the belief subsystem. The sociological subsystem governs interaction between people. Material objects and their use make up the technological subsystem. [http://fog.ccsf.cc.ca.us/~aforsber/ccsf/culture_defined.html] As a rule, archeologists focus on material culture whereas cultural anthropologists focus on symbolic culture, although ultimately both groups maintain interests in the relationships between these two dimensions. Moreover, anthropologists understand "culture" to refer not only to consumption goods, but to the general processes which produce such goods and give them meaning, and to the social relationships and practices in which such objects and processes become embedded.

Culture as patterns of products and activities

In the early 20th century, anthropologists understood culture to refer not to a set of discrete products or activities (whether material or symbolic) but rather to underlying patterns of products and activities. Moreover, they assumed that such patterns had clear bounds (thus, some people confuse "culture" with the society that has a particular culture). In the case of smaller societies, in which people merely fell into categories of age, gender, household and descent group, anthropologists believed that people more-or-less shared the same set of values and conventions. In the case of larger societies, in which people undergo further categorization by region, race, ethnicity, and class, anthropologists came to believe that members of the same society often had highly contrasting values and conventions. They thus used the term subculture to identify the cultures of parts of larger societies. Since subcultures reflect the position of a segment of society vis a vis other segments and the society as a whole, they often reveal processes of domination and resistance. The 20th century also saw the popularization of the idea of corporate culture - distinct and malleable within the context of an employing organization or of a workplace.

Culture as Symbols

The symbolic view of culture, the legacy of Clifford Geertz (1973) and Victor Turner (1967), holds symbols to be both the practices of social actors and the context that gives such practices meaning. Anthony P. Cohen (1985) writes of the "symbolic gloss" which allows social actors to use common symbols to communicate and understand each other while still imbuing these symbols with personal significance and meanings. Symbols provide the limits of cultured thought. Members of a culture rely on these symbols to frame their thoughts and expressions in intelligible terms. In short, symbols make culture possible, reproducible and readable. They are the "webs of significance" in Weber's sense that, to quote Pierre Bourdieu (1977), "give regularity, unity and systematicity to the practices of a group...".

Culture as stabilizing mechanism

Modern cultural theory also considers the possibility that (a) culture itself is a product of stabilization tendencies inherent in evolutionary pressures toward self-similarity and self-cognition of societies as wholes, or tribalisms. See Steven Wolfram "A new kind of science" on iterated simple algorithms from genetic unfolding, from which the concept of culture as an operating mechanism can be developed, and Richard Dawkins "The extended phenotype" for discussion of genetic and memetic stability over time, through negative feedback mechanisms, such as Wikipedia.

Cultural change

Cultures, by predisposition, both embrace and resist change dependence of culture traits. For example, men and women have complementary roles in many cultures. One sex might desire changes that affect the other, as happened in the second half of the 20th century in western cultures. Cultural change can come about due to the environment, to inventions (and other internal influences), and to contact with other cultures. For example, the end of the last ice age helped lead to the invention of agriculture, which in its turn brought about many cultural innovations. In diffusion, the form of something moves from one culture to another, but not its meaning. For example, hamburgers, mundane in the United States, seemed exotic when introduced into China. "Stimulus diffusion" refers to an element of one culture leading to an invention in another. Diffusions of innovations theory presents a research-based model for why and when individuals and cultures adopt new ideas, practices, and products. "Acculturation" has different meanings, but in this context refers to replacement of the traits of one culture with those of another, such as happened to certain Native American tribes and to many indigenous peoples across the globe during the process of colonization. Related processes on an individual level include assimilation (adoption of a different culture by an individual) and transculturation.

Propagating culture

Insofar as culture grows and changes naturally within human society, it requires little or no formal propagation. Families or age-based peer-groups will instinctively foster (and develop) their own cultural norms. But few cultures act in such a laissez faire manner. Most societies develop some sort of religion or similar basis for inculcating and preserving established or "correct" cultural behavior. And many societies take the task of education out of the hands of priests and shamans and place it on a wider footing, so that the young (at least) gain a practical and emotional identification with a standardised version of their nurturing culture. Groups of immigrants, exiles, or minorities often form cultural associations or clubs to preserve their own cultural roots in the face of a surrounding (generally more locally-dominant) culture. Thus the world has acquired many Garibaldi Clubs, Pushkin Societies, and underground schools. On a broader scale, many countries market their cultural heritage internationally. This occurs not only in the promotion of tourism (importing money), but also in cultural development abroad (exporting ideas). Note the roles of cultural attachés in embassies and the function of specific organizations devoted to propagating the mother-culture, its language and its ideologies abroad, for example the work of:
- the Alliance française
- the British Council
- the Fulbright Program
- the Goethe-Institut
- the Instituto Cervantes

Cultural studies

Cultural studies developed in the late 20th century, in part through the re-introduction of Marxist thought into sociology, and in part through the articulation of sociology and other academic disciplines such as literary criticism. This movement aimed to focus on the analysis of subcultures in capitalist societies. Following the non-anthropological tradition, cultural studies generally focus on the study of consumption goods (such as fashion, art, and literature). Because the 18th- and 19th-century distinction between "high" and "low" culture seems inappropriate to apply to the mass-produced and mass-marketed consumption goods which cultural studies analyses, these scholars refer instead to "popular culture". Today, some anthropologists have joined the project of cultural studies. Most, however, reject the identification of culture with consumption goods. Furthermore, many now reject the notion of culture as bounded, and consequently reject the notion of subculture. Instead, they see culture as a complex web of shifting patterns that link people in different locales and that link social formations of different scales. According to this view, any group can construct its own cultural identity.

Sample list of cultures

Cultures of contemporary countries and regions

Main article: List of national culture articles.

- Albania
- Angola
- Australia
- Belgium
- Bhutan
- Brazil
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Canada
- Quebec
- Political culture of Canada
- Chile
- China
- Hong Kong
- Denmark
- Egypt
- Finland

- France
- Georgia
- Gibraltar
- Greece
- Hungary
- India
- Indonesia
- Ireland
- Israel
- Italy
- Japan
- Jersey
- Korea
- North Korea
- South Korea
- Kuwait
- Lithuania
- Macedonia
- Mexico

- Netherlands
- New Zealand
- Maori culture
- Pakistan
- Peru
- Portugal
- Russia
- South Africa
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Turkey
- United Kingdom
- England
- Northern Ireland
- Scotland
- Wales
- United States

Contemporary local cultures

- Culture of New York City
- Culture of Stockholm
- Culture of Sydney

Other contemporary cultures

- Cassette culture
- Deaf culture
- Drug culture
- Esperanto culture
- Hacker culture
- Queer culture
- Underground culture
- Working-class culture
- Youth culture

Historic cultures

- Assyro-Babylonian culture
- Clovis culture — pre-historic in North America and Central America from about 13,500 years ago
- Indus Valley Culture
- Cemetery H culture
- La Tene culture — from the Iron Age in parts of Europe
- Natufian culture — in the Mediterranean more than 10,000 years ago
- Paideia — Classical Greek culture
- Romanitas — Roman Imperial culture
- Weimar culture
- Western culture

References

- Arnold, Matthew, Culture and Anarchy, 1882. Macmillan and Co., New York. Online at [http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/nonfiction_u/arnoldm_ca/ca_titlepage.html].
- Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice. 1977.
- Cohen, Anthony P. The Symbolic Construction of Community. Routledge: New York, 1995 (1985).
- Geertz, Clifford. (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York. ISBN 0465097197.
- Hoult, Thomas Ford, ed. (1969). Dictionary of Modern Sociology. Totowa, New Jersey, United States: Littlefield, Adams & Co.
- Kroeber, A. L. and C. Kluckhohn, 1952. Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. Peabody Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States.
- Middleton, Richard (1990/2002). Studying Popular Music. Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0335152759.
- [http://anthro.palomar.edu/tutorials/cultural.htm Cultural Anthropology Tutorials], Behavioral Sciences Department, Palomar College, San Marco, California, United States, as of December 12, 2004.
- UNESCO, "[http://www.unesco.org/education/imld_2002/unversal_decla.shtml UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity]", issued on International Mother Language Day, February 21, 2002.

External links

- [http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv1-72 Dictionary of the History of Ideas:] "Cultural Development" in Antiquity
- [http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv1-73 Dictionary of the History of Ideas:] "Culture" and "Civilization" in Modern Times
- [http://samvak.tripod.com/class.html Classificatory system for cultures and civilizations], by Dr. Sam Vaknin zh-min-nan:Bûn-hoà ja:文化 simple:Culture

Mexico

The United Mexican States or Mexico (Spanish: Estados Unidos Mexicanos or México; regarding the use of the variant spelling Méjico, see section The name below) is a country located in North America, bordered by the United States to the north, and Belize and Guatemala to the southeast. It is the northernmost and westernmost country in Latin America, and also the most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world.

History

Main article: History of Mexico

Pre-Hispanic Times

Hunter-Gatherer peoples are thought to have discovered and inhabited Mexico more than 28,000 years ago. Ancient Mexicans began to selectively breed corn plants around 8,000 B.C. Evidence shows the explosion of pottery works by 2300 B.C. and the beginning of intensive farming between 1800 and 1500 BC. For more than 3,000 years, Mexico was the site of several Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Aztec, the Olmec, Teotihuacan, the Toltec, Mixtec, Zapotec and the Mayan. These indigenous civilizations are credited with many inventions: pyramid-temples, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, writing, highly-accurate calendars, fine arts, intensive agriculture, engineering, an abacus, a complex theology, and the wheel. Archaic inscriptions on rocks and rock walls all over northern Mexico (especially in the state of Nuevo León) demonstrate an early propensity for counting in Mexico. These very early and ancient count-markings were associated with astronomical events and underscore the influence that astronomical activities had upon Mexican natives, even before they possessed civilization. In fact, the later Mexican civilizations would all carefully build their cities and ceremonial centers according to specific astronomical events. At different points in time, three different Mexican cities were the largest cities in the world: Teotihuacan, Tenochtitlan, and Cholula. These cities, among several others, blossomed as centers of commerce, ideas, ceremonies, and theology. In turn, they radiated influence outwards onto neighboring cultures. Cholula] Cholula] While many city-states, kingdoms, and empires competed with one another for power and prestige, Mexico had four major, unifying civilizations: The Olmec, Teotihuacan, Toltec, and the Mexica. These four civilizations extended their reach across Mexico and beyond like no others. They consolidated power and distributed influence in matters of trade, art, politics, technology, and theology. Other regional power players made economic and political alliances with these four civilizations over the span of 4,000 years. Many made war with them, but almost all found themselves within these four spheres of influence. Latecomers to Mexico's central plateau, the Mexica, or Aztecs, as they were sometimes called in memory of Aztlán, the starting point of their tribes wanderings, never thought of themselves as anything but heirs of the brilliant civilizations that had preceded them. For them, highly-civilized arts, sculpture, architecture, engraving, feather-mosiac work, and the invention of the calendar were due to the former inhabitants of Tula, the Toltecs, who reached the height of their civilization in the tenth and eleventh centuries. The Mexica, one of the Aztec groups, were the first people in the world to practice mandatory education for all people, regardless of gender, rank, or station. There were two types of schools: the telpochcalli, for practical and military studies, and the calmecac, for advanced learning in writing, astronomy, statesmanship, theology, and other areas. The Aztecs' religious beliefs were based on a fear that the universe would cease functioning without a constant offering of human sacrifice. This belief was common throughout nahuatl people. As a result, Aztec warfare was conducted with an aim to only injure the enemy, so that he could later be sacrificed, and weapons were constructed with this in mind. This penchant for human sacrifice proved to be the undoing of the Aztecs, for when they confronted the Spaniards, who fought to the death, their less effective weapons made resistance difficult. In order to acquire captives in time of peace, the Aztec resorted to ritual warfare, or flower war. Tlaxcalteca and other nahuatl nations were forced into such wars, so they joined the Spaniard forces against the Aztec. The small Spanish force was reinforced with thousands of indian allies, who were schooled on European warfare.

The Spanish Era

The arrival of the Spanish in the early 16th century and their defeat of the Mexica in 1521 marked the beginning of the 300 year-long colonial period of Mexico as New Spain. After the fall of Tenochtitlan, it would take decades of continuous war to pacify Mesoamerica. Particularly fierce were the "Chichimeca wars" in the north of Mexico (1576-1606). The colonists brought with them the Catholic faith, to which the population seemingly converted rapidly, but soon they found the natives had adopted "the god of the heavens", as they called it, as just one of their gods. While it was an important god, because it was the god of the conquerors,they did not see why they had to abandon their old beliefs. As a result, a second wave of missionaries began a process attempting to completely erase the old beliefs, and thus wiped out many aspects of Mesoamerican culture. Hundreds of thousands of codices were destroyed, priests and teachers were persecuted, and the temples and statues of the gods were destroyed. The Mesoamerican education system was set aside and replaced by church education; even some foods associated with religion, like amaranto, were forbidden. Eventually, the natives were declared minors, and forbidden to read and write, so they would always need a white man in charge of them to be responsible of their indoctrination. Although officially they could not become slaves, the system, known as encomienda, came to signify the oppression and exploitation of natives, although its originators did not set out with such intent. Due to some horrifying instances of abuse against the indigenous peoples, Bishop Bartolome de las Casas suggested bringing black slaves to replace them. Bartolome later repented when he saw the treatment given to the black slaves. Unlike most English-speaking colonists of North America, Spanish colonists married the natives, and were even encouraged to do so by Queen Isabella during the earliest days of colonization (in Cuba, specifically). The first Spanish colonists were mainly male, so they took native women, and sometimes black women, although rarely. After the native population was decimated by epidemics and forced labor, black slaves were imported, and for a time they even outnumbered the white population. However, they eventually mixed with the population. There are still a few black communities (see Afro-Mexican), but few modern Mexicans are aware of this. As a result of these unions, as well as concubinage, a vast class of people known as "Mestizos" and mulatos came into being, of Amerindian, black, and Spanish descent. But even if mixes were allowed, the white population tried to keep their status. A system was created to keep each mix in a different social level. This was "El sistema de castas" (the caste system). Each different mix had a name and a different privileges or prohibitions. There were even two different kind of whites, those born in Spain, or "peninsulares", and in a lower level, those born in America or "criollos". Mestizos and mulatos were next, and then the other mixes. In this system, Native Americans had the lower status, even lower than free black people. The Spanish "peninsulares" tried by all means to keep their status, even if they took native women. Those who could afford also tried to have a Spanish wife, who was sent to Spain to give birth, thus preventing their children became criollos. Mestizos and criollos were not allowed in the upper levels of the government, and eventually they joined forces for the independence of México. With independence, the caste system and slavery were abolished. Mestizos, while they no longer have a separate legal status from other groups, comprise approximately 60% of the population. In modern México, mestizo has became more a cultural term, since a Native American that abandons his traditional ways is considered a mestizo, also most Afromexicans prefer to be considered mestizo, since they feel more identified with this group. During the following centuries, under Spanish rule, a new culture developed that combined the customs and traditions of the indigenous peoples with that of Catholic Spain. Numerous churches and other buildings were constructed in the Spanish style, and cities were named after various saints and objects of veneration, such as "San Luis Potosí" (after St. Louis) and "Vera Cruz" ("True Cross"). Spanish settlers brought with them smallpox, typhus, and other diseases. Most of the settlers had developed an immunity from childhood, but the indigenous peoples had not. There were three separate epidemics that decimated the population: Smallpox (1520-1521), measles ( 1545-1548) and typhus (1576-1581). Of the estimated 15 to 20 million of the original prehispanic population, less than two million survived. The New Spain of the end of XVI century was an underpopulated country with abandoned cities, which would be the main cause of collapse of the Mesoamerican cultures.

Mexican Independence

On September 16, 1810, independence from Spain was declared by Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a Catholic priest in the small town of Dolores, causing a long war that eventually led to independence in 1821 and the creation of the First Mexican Empire. After independence, Spanish possessions in Central America which also proclaimed independence were all incorporated into Mexico from 1822 to 1823, with the exception of Chiapas. Soon after achieving its independence from Spain, the Mexican government, in an effort to populate its sparsely-settled hinterlands, awarded land grants in a remote area of the northernmost state of Coahuila y Tejas to hundreds of immigrant families from the United States, on the condition that the settlers convert to Catholicism and assume Mexican citizenship. It also forbade the importation of slaves, a condition that, like the others, was largely ignored. The Empire soon fell to rogue republican forces led by Antonio López de Santa Anna. The first Republic was formed with Guadalupe Victoria as its first president, followed in office by Santa Anna. As president, in 1834 Santa Anna abrogated the federal constitution, causing insurgencies in the southern state of Yucatán and the northernmost portion of the northern state of Coahuila y Tejas. Both areas sought independence from the Mexican government. While negotiations eventually brought Yucatán to again recognize Mexican sovereignty, Santa Anna's army turned to the northern rebellion. The inhabitants of Tejas, calling themselves Texans and led mainly by relatively recently-arrived English-speaking settlers, declared independence from Mexico at Washington-on-the-Brazos, giving birth to the Republic of Texas. Texas won its independence in 1836, further reducing the territory of the fledgling republic. In the 1840s, Mexico was invaded and defeated by the United States, which demanded and received roughly one-half of the country's remaining territory, from which were formed the modern states of California, Nevada, and Utah, and most of Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado (see Mexican-American War). In the 1860s, the country again suffered a military occupation, this time by France, seeking to establish the Habsburg Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian of Austria as Emperor of Mexico, with support from the Roman Catholic clergy and conservative criolloss. The Second Mexican Empire was then overthrown by the Zapotec Benito Juárez, with diplomatic and logistical support from the United States and the military expertise of General Porfirio Díaz. General Ignacio Zaragoza defeated the French Army (arguably the most powerful in the world at the time) at the city of Puebla on May 5, 1862, celebrated as Cinco de Mayo ever since. However, after his death, the city was lost in early 1863, following a renewed French attack which penetrated as far as Mexico City, forcing Juárez to organize an itinerant government. 1863 to 1867. In mid-1867, following repeated losses in battle to the Republican Army, Maximilian was captured and murdered by Juárez's soldiers, along with his last loyal generals, in Querétaro. From then on, Juárez remained in office until his death in 1872. After Juárez's death, Mexico experienced economic growth under the conservative and pro-European rule of Porfirio Díaz. Foreign investment allowed the development of the oil industry and the construction of a railroad system across the country. This period of relative peace and prosperity is known as the "Porfiriato". His mandate, however, was mostly undemocratic and benefited the middle and upper classes, while the Amerindian indigenous population continued to live in precarious conditions. Growing social inequalities, restricted freedom of the press, and his insistence to be reelected for a fifth term led to massive protests. His fraudulent victory in the 1910 elections sparked the Mexican Revolution. Revolutionary forces defeated the federal army, but were left with internal struggles, leaving the country in conflict for two more decades. The creation of the National Revolutionary Party (which later became the Institutional Revolutionary Party or PRI), in 1929 ended the struggles, uniting all generals and combatants of the revolution. During the next four decades, Mexico experienced impressive economic growth, and historians call this period "El Milagro Mexicano", the Mexican Miracle. This was in spite of falling foreign confidence in investment, first through the assumption of mineral rights and subsequent nationalisation of the oil industry into Pemex during the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas del Río. However the management of the economy collapsed several times afterwards. Accused many times of fraud, the PRI's candidates held almost all public offices until the end of the 20th century. It was not until the 1980s that the PRI lost the first state governorship, an event that marked the beginning of the party's loss of hegemony. Through the electoral reforms started by president Carlos Salinas de Gortari and consolidated by president Ernesto Zedillo, by the mid 1990s the PRI had lost its majority in Congress. In 2000, after seventy years, the PRI lost a presidential elections to a candidate of the National Action Party (PAN), Vicente Fox. On September 19, 1985, an earthquake measuring approximately 8.0 on the Richter scale struck Michoacán and inflicted severe damage on Mexico City. Estimates of the number of dead range from 6,500 to 30,000. (See Great Mexican Earthquake.) On January 1 1994, Mexico became a full member of the North American Free Trade Agreement, joining the United States of America and Canada in a large economic bloc with two counties vastly more prosperous. On March 23, 2005, the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America was signed by the elected leaders of those countries.

Government and politics

Main articles: Government of Mexico, Politics of Mexico Politics of Mexico The 1917 Constitution provides for a federal republic with powers separated into independent executive, legislative, and judicial branches. Historically, the executive is the dominant branch, with power vested in the president, who promulgates and executes the laws of the Congress. Congress has played an increasingly important role since 1997, when opposition parties first formed a majority in the legislature. The president also legislates by executive decree in certain economic and financial fields, using powers delegated from Congress. The president is elected by universal adult suffrage for a six-year term and may not hold office a second time. There is no vice-president; in the event of the removal or death of the president, a provisional "emergency" president is elected by Congress, whose first task is to summon the Congress for a session to choose an interim president; the first task of that interim president is to call for elections within the next 18 months. However, in the event of a very short unavailability of the president (e.g. in the case of minor surgery) the executive power is handed to the president of the Supreme Court, who at the same time relinquishes temporarily his role as such. On July 2, 2000, Vicente Fox of the opposition "Alliance for Change" coalition, headed by the National Action Party (PAN), was elected president. Fox began his six-year term on December 1, 2000. His victory ended the Institutional Revolutionary Party's (PRI) 71-year hold on the presidency. The three most important political parties in Mexico are the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the National Action Party (PAN), and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).

Political divisions

:Main article: States of Mexico :See also: Mexican state name etymologies. Mexico is divided into 31 states (estados) and a federal district. Each state has its own constitution and its citizens elect a governor as well as representatives to their respective state congresses. governor
The Federal District is a special political division in Mexico, where the national capital, Mexico City, is located. It enjoys more limited local rule than the nation's "free and sovereign states": only since 1997 have its citizens been able to elect a Head of Government, whose powers are still more curtailed than those of a state governor. Much of the capital city's metropolitan area overflows the limits of the Federal District.

Major cities

The following is a list of the biggest Metropolitan Areas of Mexico in order of population: #Mexico City, Distrito Federal (22.0 million) #Guadalajara, Jalisco (4.7 million) #Monterrey, Nuevo León (3.6 million) #Puebla, Puebla (2.6 million) #Tijuana, Baja California (1.5 million) #León, Guanajuato (1.2 million) #Toluca, México (1.2 million) #Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua (1.1 million) #Torreón, Coahuila (1.1 million) #San Luis Potosí, San Luis Potosí (0.8 million) #Mérida, Yucatán (0.8 million) #Santiago de Querétaro, Querétaro (0.8 million) #Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes (0.7 million) #Cuernavaca, Morelos (0.7 million) #Chihuahua, Chihuahua (0.7 million) :Population figures according to INEGI (National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Information) 2000

Geography

Chihuahua, Chihuahua]] Main article: Geography of Mexico Situated in the southwestern part of mainland North America and roughly triangular in shape, Mexico stretches more than 3000 km from northwest to southeast. Its width is varied, from more than 2000 km in the north and less than 220 km at the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in the south. Mexico is bordered by the United States to the north, and Belize and Guatemala to the southeast. Mexico is about one-fourth the size of the United States. Baja California in the west is a 1,250-km peninsula and forms the Gulf of California. In the east are the Gulf of Mexico and the Bay of Campeche, which is formed by Mexico's other peninsula, the Yucatán. The center of Mexico is a great, high plateau, open to the north, with mountain chains on the east and west and with ocean-front lowlands lying outside of them. (See list of mountains in Mexico). list of mountains in Mexico The terrain and climate vary from rocky deserts in the north to tropical rain forest in the south. Mexico's major rivers include the Río Bravo del Norte (Rio Grande) and the Usumacinta on its northern and southern borders, respectively, together with the Grijalva, Balsas, Pánuco, and Yaqui in the interior.

Economy

Yaqui.]] Main article: Economy of Mexico According to the World Bank, Mexico is the 12th nation in the world in regard to GDP and the highest per capita income in that region; and is firmly established as an upper middle-income country. Since the economic debacle of 1994–1995 the country has made an impressive economic recovery. According to the director for Colombia and Mexico of the World Bank, the population below the poverty level has decreased from 24.2% to 17.6% in the general population and from 42% to 27.9% in rural areas [http://estadis.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/301198.html]. Mexico has a free-market economy with a mixture of modern and outmoded industry and agriculture, increasingly dominated by the private sector. The number of state-owned enterprises in Mexico has fallen from more than 1,000 in 1982 to fewer than 200 in 1999. The administration of President Ernesto Zedillo (1994–2000) continued a policy of privatizing and expanding competition in sea ports, railroads, telecommunications, electricity, natural gas distribution, and airports which was initiated by his predecessors Miguel de la Madrid and Carlos Salinas. A strong export sector helped to cushion the economy's decline in 1995 and led the recovery in 1996–1999. Private consumption became the leading driver of growth, accompanied by increased employment and higher wages. Mexico still needs to overcome many structural problems as it strives to modernize its economy and raise living standards. Income distribution is very unequal, with the top 20% of income earners accounting for 55% of income. Following 6.9% growth in 2000, real GDP fell 0.3% in 2001, with the US slowdown the principal cause. Positive developments in 2001 included a drop in inflation to 6.5%, a sharp fall in interest rates, and a strong peso that appreciated 5% against the US dollar. Trade with the US and Canada has tripled since NAFTA was implemented in 1994. Mexico has opened its markets to free trade as no other country in the world, having lifted its trade barriers with more than 40 countries in 12 Free Trade Agreements, including Japan and the European Union. However more than 85% of the trade is still done with the United States. Government authorities expect that by putting more than 90% of trade under free trade agreements with different countries Mexico will lessen its dependence on the US. The government is seeking to sign an additional agreement with Mercosur.

Demographics

Mercosur Mercosur]] Mercosur Main article: Demographics of Mexico With an estimated 2005 population of about [http://estadis.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion/127113.html 106.5 million], Mexico is the most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world. Mexico is ethnically and culturally diverse. According to the CIA World Factbook, about 60% of the population is mestizo (mixed Amerindian and white), another 30% is Amerindian or predominantly Amerindian, and 9% is white (or of European descent). The remaining 1% includes Afro-Mexicans and others. Mexico is also home for many other Latin American groups: mostly Argentines, but also Brazilians, Cubans, Nicaraguans,Colombians and Venezuelans. The PRI governments in power for most of the 20th century had a policy of granting asylum to fellow Latin Americans fleeing political persecution in their home countries. Mexico also has a sizeable population of Asians numbering around 200,000, many of them being Chinese and Japanese. There are also a small amount of Lebanese. According to the Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas ("The National Council for the Development of Indigenous People") the Amerindian population in Mexico is approximately [http://estadis.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion/127113.html 12.7 million]. However, the Mexican government does not collect racial information during censuses. In 2004, the National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Informatic had estimated this figure to be 12,089,094 of indigenous people of which, more than one million do not speak Spanish and almost five million are bilingual ([http://www.inegi.gob.mx/prod_serv/contenidos/espanol/bvinegi/productos/integracion/sociodemografico/mujeresyhombres/2004/myh_2004.pdf INEGI, 2004]). Judging by the proportion of people speaking indigenous languages the states with a higher proportion of indigenous people are Yucatán (37.3%), Oaxaca (37.1%), Chiapas (24.6%) and Quintana Roo (23%). The states of Aguascalientes (0.2% ), Coahuila (0.2%), Zacatecas (0.2%) and Nuevo León (0.5%) have the lowest proportion of speakers of indigenous languages ([INEGI, 2004]). Mexico is the country where the greatest number of U.S citizens live outside the United States. This may be due to the growing economic and business interdependence of the two countries under NAFTA, and also that Mexico is considered an excellent choice for retirees. A clear example of the latter phenomenon is provided by San Miguel de Allende and many towns along the Baja California peninsula and around Guadalajara, Jalisco. The official figures for foreign-born citizens in Mexico are 493,000 (since 2004), with a majority (86.9%) of these born in the US (with the exception of Chiapas, where the majority of immigrants are from Central America). The five states with more immigrants are Baja California (12.1% of total immigrants), Federal District (11.4%), Jalisco (9.9%), Chihuahua (9%) and Tamaulipas (7.3). More than 54.6% of the immigrant population are 15 years old or younger, while 9% are 50 or older. 4.2% of male immigrants and 3.8% of female immigrants did not have formal education while 20.2% of male immigrants and 17.7% of female immigrants had a college degree [INEGI, 2004. Life expectancy in Mexico increased from 34.7 for men and 33 years for women in 1930 to 72.1 for men and 77.1 years for women in 2002. The states with the highest life expectancy are Baja California (75.9 years) and Nuevo Leon (75.6 years). The Federal District has a life expectancy of the same level as Baja California. The lowest levels are found in Chiapas (72.9), Oaxaca (73.2) and Guerrero (73.2 years), although the first two have had the highest increase (19.9 and 22.3% respectively). The mortality rate in 1970 was 9.7/1000 people and by 2001 the rate had dropped to 4.9/1000 for men and 3.8/1000 for women. The most common reasons for death in 2001 were heart problems (14.6% for men 17.6% for women) and Cancer (11% for men and 15.8% for women).

Religion

Guadalajara, Jalisco] Mexico is predominantly Roman Catholic (about 89% of the population), with 6% adhering to various Protestant faiths (mostly Pentecostal), and the remaining 5% of the population adhering to other religions or professing no religion. Some of the country's Catholics (notably those of indigenous background) syncretize Catholicism with various elements of Aztec or Mayan religions. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism) has a growing presence in the major border cities of northeastern Mexico with over 1,000,000 members nationwide. Judaism has been practiced in Mexico for centuries, and there are estimated to be 100,000 Jews in Mexico today. Islam is mainly practiced by members of the Arab, Turkish, and other expatriate communities, though there is a very small number of the indigenous population in Chiapas state that practice Islam.

Languages

Spanish is the official language of Mexico and is spoken by the majority of the population. About 7% of the population speak an Amerindian language. The government officially recognizes 62 Amerindian languages. Of these Nahuatl, and Maya are each spoken by 1.5 million, while others, such as Lacandon, are spoken by less than 100. The Mexican government has promoted and established bilingual education programs in indigenous rural communities. Although Spanish is the official language of Mexico, English is widely used in business. As a result, English language skills are much in demand and can lead to an increase in the salary offered by a company. It is also spoken along the U.S. border, in big cities, and in beach resorts. Also, the majority of private schools in Mexico offer what they like to describe as "bilingual" education, both in Spanish and English. English is the main language spoken in U.S. expatriate communities such as those along the coast of Baja California and the town of San Miguel de Allende. There are also Mennonite colonies in Chihuahua where education is delivered in English. With respect to other European languages brought by immigrants, the case of Chipilo, in the state of Puebla, is unique, and has been documented by several linguists like Carolyn McKay. The immigrants that founded the city of Chipilo in 1882 came from the Veneto region in northern Italy, and thus spoke a northern variant of the Venetian dialect. While other European immigrants assimilated into the Mexican culture, the people of Chipilo retained their language. Nowadays, most of the people who live in the city of Chipilo (and many of those who have migrated to other cities) still speak the unaltered Veneto dialect spoken by their great-grandparents making the Veneto dialect an unrecognized minority language in the city of Puebla. A similar case is that of the Plautdietsch language, spoken by the descendants of German and Dutch Mennonite immigrants in the states of Chihuahua and Durango.

Education

Mexico has made impressive improvements in education in the last two decades. In 2004, the literacy rate was at 92%, and the youth literacy rate (ages 15-24) was 96%. Primary and secondary education (9 years) is free and mandatory. Even though different bilingual education programs have existed since the 1960s for the indigenous communities, after a constitution reform in the late 1990s, these programs have had a new thrust, and free text books are produced in more than a dozen indigenous languages. In the 1970's, Mexico became the first country to establish a system of "distance-learning" satellite secondary education, aimed for the little towns and rural communities. In 2005 this system included 30,000 connected schools, 3 million students and 300,000 teachers, who use televised lectures and education science programs, pre-recorded and transmitted through "EduSat", via satellite. Schools that use this system are known as telesecundarias in Mexico. The Mexican "distance-learning" secondary education is also transmitted to some Central American countries and to Colombia, and it is used in some southern regions of the United States as a method of bilingual education.

Culture

United States Main article: Culture of Mexico
- Music of Mexico
- Literature of Mexico
- Cinema of Mexico
- Cuisine of Mexico
- Holidays and celebrations in Mexico

The name

Mexico is named after its capital city, whose name comes from the Aztec city Mexico-Tenochtitlan that preceded it. The Mexi part of the name is from Mexitli, the war god, whose name was derived from metztli (the moon) and xictli (navel) and thus meant "navel (probably implying 'child') of the moon". So, Mexico is the home of the people of Mexitli (the Mexicas), co meaning "place" and ca meaning "people". When the Spaniards encountered this people and transcribed their language, they naturally did so according to the spelling rules of the Castilian language of the time. The Nahuatl language had a sound (like English "shop"), and this sound was written x in Spanish (e.g. Ximénez); consequently, the letter x was used to write down words like Mexitli. Over the centuries, the pronunciation of Spanish changed. Words like Ximénez, exercicio, xabón and perplexo started to be pronounced with a (this phonetic symbol represents the sound in the word "loch"). The sound (as in "vision") represented by the letter j (usually g before e or i) also started to be pronounced this way. The coalescence of the two phonemes into a single new one encouraged scholars to use the same letter for the sound, regardless of its origin (Spanish scholars have always tried to keep the orthography of their language faithful to the spoken tongue). It was j/g that was chosen. So, modern Spanish has ejercicio, ejército, jabón, perplejo, etc. (Another example is the old spelling of Don Quixote which is now Don Quijote. The old pronunciation is maintained in French "Quichotte", and the English word "quixotic" maintains the spelling while pronouncing it with its English value.) Proper nouns and their derivatives are optionally allowed to break this rule. Thus, although xabón is now incorrect and archaic, alongside many millions of people called "Jiménez", there also are plenty called "Giménez" or "Ximénez" — a matter of personal choice and tradition. In Mexico, it has become almost a matter of national pride to maintain the otherwise archaic x spelling in the name of the country. It is regarded as more authentic and less jarring to the reader's eye. Mexicans have tended to demand that other Spanish-speakers use this spelling, rather than following the general rule, and the demand has largely been respected. The Real Academia Española states that both spellings are correct, and most dictionaries and guides recommend México first, and present Méjico as a variant. Today, even outside of the country, México is preferred over Méjico by ratios ranging from 10-to-1 (in Spain) to about 280-to-1 (in Costa Rica). Also, in the placenames "Oaxaca" and "Xalapa", the x is pronounced as ; in "Xochimilco", however, it sounds as a . A cultural side-effect of the fact that Mexicans use México and Spaniards sometimes use Méjico is the occasional boiling-over of negative sentiment towards the old colonial oppressor. The mere act of using the j spelling is interpreted by some as a form of colonial aggression. On the other hand, some Peninsular scholars (such as Ramón Menéndez Pidal) prefer to apply the general spelling rule, arguing that the spelling with an x could encourage non-Mexicans to mispronounce México as (as is generally the case in the English-speaking world). Méjico on the other hand could easily be mispronounced as well, because the letter j stands for in other languages. In the Nahuatl language, from which the name originally derived, the name for Mexico is Mēxihco (IPA ).

External links

Government

- [http://www.gob.mx Gob.mx]: Governmental portal (in Spanish)
- [http://www.presidencia.gob.mx/en/ Presidencia]: President of the Republic
- [http://www.cddhcu.gob.mx Cámara de Diputados]: Chamber of Deputies (in Spanish)
- [http://www.senado.gob.mx/index.php?lng=en Cámara de Senadores]: Senate

Information about Mexico

- [http://archaeology.about.com/od/s4/ Mexican Archaeological Sites]
- [http://www.consejomexicano.org.mx/ Mexican Council for Economic and Social Development]
- [http://www.inegi.gob.mx INEGI]: National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Information (in Spanish)
- [http://www.cenam.mx/husos-horarios.htm Time zones in Mexico] (in Spanish)
- [http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/LACEXT/MEXICOEXTN/0,,menuPK:338407~pagePK:141132~piPK:141107~theSitePK:338397,00.html World Bank's assessment of the Mexican economy]
- [http://www.portaldeldesarrollo.org/ Mexico Development Gateway]
- [http://texashistory.unt.edu/search.tkl?q=mexico+map&search=Search&fulltext_select=ON&format=&collection=&institution=&document_type=&date1=Anytime&date2=Anytime&type=form Historic Maps of Mexico] hosted by the Portal to Texas History
- [http://www.freeworldmaps.net/northamerica/mexico/map.html Physical map of Mexico]
- [http://www.elbalero.gob.mx/index_kids.html Mexico for kids]

Mexican newspapers and news agencies

- [http://www.reforma.com Reforma]
- [http://www.informador.com.mx El Informador]
- [http://www.eluniversal.com.mx El Universal]
- [http://www.elnorte.com El Norte]
- [http://www.jornada.unam.mx La Jornada]
- [http://www.mural.com Mural]
- [http://www.debate.com.mx El Debate]
- [http://www.imagen.com.mx Imagen Informativa]
- [http://www.milenio.com Milenio]
- [http://www.cronica.com.mx La Crónica]
- [http://www.enmexico.com/noticias.htmMexican Newspapers]
- [http://www.am.com.mx AM Bajío]
- [http://www.notimex.com.mx Notimex] A zh-min-nan:México ko:멕시코 ms:Mexico ja:メキシコ simple:Mexico th:ประเทศเม็กซิโก

Russia

The Russian Federation (, transliteration: Rossiyskaya Federatsiya or Rossijskaja Federacija), or Russia (Russian: Росси́я, transliteration: Rossiya or Rossija), is a country that stretches over a vast expanse of Europe and Asia. With an area of 17,075,200 km² (6,595,600 mi²), it is the largest country in the world (by land mass), covering almost twice the territory of the next-largest country, Canada. It ranks eighth in the world in population. It shares land borders with the following countries (counter-clockwise from NW to SE): Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland (only through Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia and North Korea. It is also close to the United States and Japan across stretches of water: the Diomede Islands (one controlled by Russia, the other by the United States) are just 3 km apart, and Kunashir Island (controlled by Russia but claimed by Japan) is about 20 kilometers from Hokkaido. Formerly the dominant republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Russia is now an independent country, and an influential member of the Commonwealth of Independent States, since the Union's dissolution in December 1991. During the Soviet era, Russia was officially called the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR). Russia is usually considered the Soviet Union's successor state in diplomatic matters. Most of the area, population, and industrial production of the Soviet Union, then one of the world's two superpowers, lay in Russia. After the breakup of the USSR, Russia's global role was greatly diminished, and cannot be compared to that of the former Soviet Union. In October 2005, the federal statistics agency reported that Russia's population has shrunk by more than half a million people dipping to 143 million.

History

Ancient Rus

:This section covers the pre-Russ ancient history of present Russia and its early medieval period, which is historically referred to as Ancient Rus. The vast lands of present Russia were home to disunited tribes who were variously overwhelmed by invading Goths, Huns, and Turkish Avars between the third and sixth centuries C.E. The Iranian Scythians populated the southern steppes, and a Turkic people, the Khazars, ruled the western portion of these lands through the 8th century. They in turn were displaced by a group of Scandinavians, the Varangians, who established a capital at the Slavic city of Novgorod and gradually merged with Slavic ruling classes. The Slavs constituted the bulk of the population from the 8th century onwards and slowly assimilated both the Scandinavians as well as native Finno-Ugric tribes, such as the Merya, the Muromians and the Meshchera. Meshchera The Varangian dynasty lasted several centuries, during which they affiliated with the Byzantine, or Orthodox church and moved the capital to Kiev in 1169 A.D. In this era the term "Rhos", or "Russ", first came to be applied to the Varangians and later also to the Slavs who peopled the region. In the 10th to 11th centuries this state of Kievan Rus became the largest in Europe and was quite prosperous, due to diversified trade with both Europe and Asia. Nomadic Turkic people Kipchaks (Polovtsi) conquered southern Russia at the end of 11th century and founded a nomadic state in the steppes along the Black Sea (Desht-e-Kipchak). In the 13th century the area suffered from internal disputes and was overrun by eastern invaders, the Golden Horde of the pagan Mongols and Muslim Turkic-speaking nomads who pillaged the Russian principalities for over three centuries. Also known as the Tatars, they ruled the southern and central expanses of present-day Russia, while its western zone was largely incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Poland. The political dissolution of Kievan Rus divided the Russian people in the north from the Belarusians and Ukrainians in the west. The northern part of Russia together with Novgorod retained some degree of autonomy during the time of the Mongol yoke and was largely spared the atrocities that affected the rest of the country. Nevertheless it had to fight the Germanic crusaders who attempted to colonize the region. Like in the Balkans and Asia Minor long-lasting nomadic rule retarded the country's economic and social development. Asian autocratic influences degraded many of the country's democratic institutions and affected its culture and economy in a very negative way. In spite of this, unlike its spiritual leader, the Byzantine Empire, Russia was able to revive, and organized its own war of reconquest, finally subjugating its enemies and annexing their territories. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453 Russia remained the only more or less functional Christian state on the Eastern European frontier, allowing it to claim succession to the legacy of the Eastern Roman Empire.

Imperial Russia

While still nominally under the domain of the Mongols, the duchy of Moscow began to assert its influence, and eventually tossed off the control of the invaders late in the 14th century. In the beginning of the 16th century the Russian state set the national goal to return all Russian territories lost as a result of the Mongolian invasion and to protect the borderland against attacks of hordes. The noblemen, receiving a manor from the sovereign, were obliged to serve in the army. The manor system became a basis for the nobiliary horse army. The Russian state persistently battled against Nogai-Horde and Crimean khanat which were successors of the Golden Horde. Russians, captivated by nomads, were on sale on Crimean slave markets. In 1571 Crimean khan Devlet-Girei, with a horde of 120 thousand horsemen, devastated Moscow. Annually thousands of Russians became victims of attacks by nomads. Tens of thousand of soldiers protected the southern borderland--a heavy burden for the state--which slowed its social and economic development. Ivan the Great first took the title Tsar (from the Roman Caesar, also written Czar) of Moscow following his marriage to Sofia, a Byzantine Princess (niece of the last Byzantine Emperor) consolidated surrounding areas under Moscow's dominion. At the end of 16 centuries Russian cossacks established the first settlements in Western Siberia. To the middle of 17th century Russian settlements were in Eastern Siberia, on Chukotka, the river Amur, coast of Pacific ocean. In 1648 Cossack Semyon Dezhnev opened the passage between America and Asia. The Russian Empire was born. Russian Empire] Muscovite control of the nascent nation continued after the Polish intervention 1605-1612 under the subsequent Romanov dynasty, beginning with Tsar Michael Romanov in 1613. Peter the Great, who ruled from 1689 to 1725, succeeded in bringing ideas and culture from Western Europe to a Russia which had been affected by primitive nomadic cultures. Catherine the Great, ruling from 1762 to 1796, enhanced this effort, establishing Russia not just as an Asian power, but on an equal footing with Britain, France, and Germany in Europe. She enlarged the Russian territory by the Partitions of Poland. Russia has taken territories with the ethnic Belarus and Ukrainian population, earlier parts of the medieval Kievan Rus'. As a result of victorious Russian-Turkish wars Russia reached to Black sea and has set as the purpose protection of Balkan Christians against a Turkish yoke. In 1783 Russia and Georgian Kingdom (which was almost totally devastated by Persian and Turkish invasions) have signed the treatise of Georgiev according to which Georgia has received protection of Russia. In 1812, having gathered nearly half a million soldiers from France, as well as from all of its vassal states in Europe, Napoleon entered Russia and was defeated by Russian troops. In 1813 Russian army defeated the French armies in Germany. Russia has won in the War of 1877-1878 and Ottoman Empire recognized the independence of Romania, Serbia and Montenegro and autonomy of Bulgaria. Unrest of the peasants and suppression of the growing Intelligentsia were continuing problems however, and on the eve of World War I, the position of Tsar Nicholas II and his dynasty appeared precarious. Repeated devastating defeats of the Russian army in World War I led to widespread rioting in the major cities of the Russian Empire and to the overthrow in 1917 of the Romanovs. At the close of this Russian Revolution of 1917, a Marxist political faction called the Bolsheviks seized power in St. Petersburg and Moscow under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin. The Bolsheviks changed their name to the Communist Party. A bloody civil war ensued, pitting the Bolsheviks' Red Army against a loose confederation of anti-socialist monarchist and bourgeois forces known as the White Army. The Red Army triumphed, and the Soviet Union was formed in 1922.

Russia as part of Soviet Union

The Soviet Union was to be a transnational worker's state free from nationalism, which Leninism teaches is a ruse used by the bourgeoisie to keep the international working classes from realizing their common exploited position and overthrowing the bourgeois. The concept of Russia as a separate national entity was therefore downplayed in the early Soviet Union. Although Russian institutions and cities certainly remained dominant, many non-Russians participated in the new government at all levels. One of these was a Georgian named Joseph Stalin. A brief power struggle ensued after Lenin's death in 1924. Stalin gradually eroded the various checks and balances which had been designed into the Soviet political system and assumed dictatorial power by the end of the decade. Leon Trotsky and almost all other Old Bolsheviks from the time of the Revolution were killed or exiled. As the 1930s began, Stalin launched the Great Purges, a massive series of political repressions. Millions of people who Stalin suspected of being a threat to his power in some way were executed or exiled to Gulag labor camps in remote areas of Siberia. Stalin forced rapid industrialization of the largely rural country and collectivization of its agriculture. Stalin also strengthened Russian dominance within the Soviet Union as he buttressed his own hold on power. In 1928, Stalin introduced his "First Five-Year Plan" for modernizing the Soviet economy. Most economic output was immediately diverted to establishing heavy industry. Civilian industry was modernized and heavy weapon factories established with German and US assistance. The plan worked, in some sense, as the Soviet Union successfully transformed from an agrarian economy to a major industrial powerhouse in an unbelievably short span of time, but widespread misery and famine ensued for many millions of people as a result of the severe economic upheaval. In 1939 the USSR was in strong opposition to nazi Germany, and supported the republicans in Spain who struggled against German and Italian troops. However, in 1938 Germany and the other major European powers signed the Munich treaty. Germany then divided Czechoslovakia with Poland. The Soviet government, being afraid of a German attack to the USSR, began diplomatic maneuvers. In 1939 Poland refused to participate in any measures of collective safety, so the USSR signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany. On September, 17, 1939, when German armies were within 150 kilometers of the Soviet border, the Soviet army invaded eastern portions of Poland, populated by ethnic Ukrainians and Belorussians. The Soviet Union staged an artillery attack it claimed had come from neighboring Finland, and invaded it in an attempt to secure itself against future invasion by Germany (which Finland had good relations with) and to gain control of the country, separating it from Europe, and most importantly, from Germany. This conflict is now known as the Winter War. The invasion was a slight disappointment as only the eastern parts of Finland (Karelia) were occupied. This lead to Finland allying with Germany in order to gain revenge. Germany and its allies (Hungary, Italy, Finland, Romania) invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. Although the Wehrmacht reached the outskirts of Moscow, the Red Army stopped the Nazi offensive at the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943, which became the decisive turning point for Germany's fortunes in the war. The Soviets drove through Eastern Europe and captured Berlin before Germany surrendered in 1945 (see Great Patriotic War). About 10 million Soviet citizens became victims of the oppressive policies and war crimes of Germany and its allies in the occupied territory. Although ravaged by the war, the Soviet Union emerged from the conflict as an acknowledged great power. The Red Army occupied Eastern Europe after the war, including the eastern half of Germany. Stalin installed loyal Communist governments in these satellite states. During the immediate postwar period, the Soviet Union first rebuilt and then expanded its economy, with control always exerted exclusively from Moscow. The Soviets extracted heavy war reparations from the areas of Germany under their control, mostly in the form of machinery and industrial equipment. The Soviet Union consolidated its hold on eastern Europe (see Eastern bloc). The United States helped the western European countries establish democracies, and both countries sought to achieve economic, political, and ideological dominance over the Third World. The ensuing struggle became known as the Cold War, which turned the Soviet Union's wartime allies, the United Kingdom and the United States, into its foes. Stalin died in early 1953 without leaving any instructions for the selection of a successor. His closest associates officially decided to rule the Soviet Union jointly, but secret police chief Lavrenty Beria appeared poised to seize dictatorial control. General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev organized an anti-Beria alliance and staged a coup d'etat. Beria was arrested in June of 1953 and executed later that year; Khrushchev became the undisputed leader of the USSR. Under Khrushchev, the Soviet Union launched the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, and Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit the earth. Khrushchev's reforms in agriculture and administration, however, were generally unproductive, and foreign policy toward China and the United States suffered reverses, notably the Cuban Missile Crisis, when he began installing nuclear missles in Cuba and nearly provoked a war with the United States. Over the course of several angry outbursts at the United Nations, Khrushchev was increasingly seen by his colleagues as belligerent, boorish, and dangerous. The remainder of the Soviet leadership removed him from power in 1964. Following the ousting of Khrushchev, another period of rule by collective leadership ensued, lasting until Leonid Brezhnev established himself in the early 1970s as the preeminent figure in Soviet political life. Brezhnev is frequently derided by historians for stagnating the development of the Soviet Union. In contrast to the revolutionary spirit that accompanied the birth of the Soviet Union, the prevailing mood of the Soviet leadership at the time of Brezhnev's death in 1982 was one of aversion to change. In the mid and late 1980s, the reform-minded Mikhail Gorbachev came to power. He introduced the landmark policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring), in an attempt to modernize Soviet communism. Glasnost meant that the harsh restrictions on free speech that had characterized most of the Soviet Union's existence were removed, and open political discourse and criticism of the government became possible again. Perestroika meant sweeping economic reforms designed to decentralize the planning of the Soviet economy. However, his initiatives provoked strong resentment amongst conservative elements of the government, and an unsuccessful military coup that attempted to remove Gorbachev from power instead led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin seized power in Russia and declared the end of exclusive Communist rule. The USSR splintered into 15 independent republics, and was officially dissolved in December of 1991 (see History of the Soviet Union (1985-1991)). Since then, Russia has struggled in its efforts to build a democratic political system and a market economy to replace the strict centralized social, political, and economic controls of the Soviet era.

Post-Soviet Russia

market economy Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin had been elected President of Russia in June 1991 in the first direct presidential election in Russian history. In October 1991, as Russia was on the verge of independence, Yeltsin announced that Russia would proceed with radical market-oriented reform along the lines of Poland's "big bang," also known as "shock therapy." After the disintegration of the USSR, the economy of Russia went through a crisis. Outside Russia, in the newly independent states, were most of the nonfreezing ports, consumer goods factories, former Soviet pipelines, and significant numbers of the hi-tech enterprises (including the atomic power station). In Russia there was mainly heavy and military industry. Russia has taken up the responsibility for payment of the USSR's external debts, though its population is 50% of the population of the USSR. The largest state enterprises (a petroleum industry, metallurgy) have been privatized for the small sum of $US 600 million, which is far less than they were worth. Russia's Congress of People's Deputies attempted to impeach Yeltsin on 1993-03-26. Yeltsin's opponents gathered more than 600 votes for impeachment, but fell 72 votes short. On 1993-09-21, Yeltsin disbanded the Supreme Soviet and the Congress of People's Deputies by decree, which was illegal under the constitution. On September 21 there was a military showdown, the Russian constitutional crisis of 1993. With military help, Yeltsin held control. The conflict resulted in a number of civilian casualties, and was resolved in Yeltsin's favor. Elections were held on 1993-12-12. Since the Chechnyan seperatists declared independence in the early 1990s, an intermittent guerrilla war (First Chechen War, Second Chechen War) has been fought between disparate Chechen groups and the Russian military. Some of these groups have become increasingly Islamist over the course of the struggle. It is estimated that over 200,000 people have died in this conflict. Minor conflicts also exist in North Ossetia and Ingushetia. After Yeltsin's presidency in the 1990s, Vladimir Putin was elected in 2000. Under Putin, the intensified state control of the Russian media has raised Western concerns over Russian civil liberties. At the same time, the rising oil prices, tensions, and war in the Middle East have helped increase Russia's revenue from oil production and export, and have stimulated economic expansion. Putin's presidency has shown improvements in the Russian standard of living, as compared to the 1990s; despite acute crises, human rights abuses, and largely criticized government failures.

Politics

The Russian Federation is a federal republic with a president, directly elected for a four-year term, who holds considerable executive power. The president, who resides in the Kremlin, nominates the highest state officials, including the prime minister (or premier), who must be approved by the State Duma, the lower house of Russian parliament, and governors, who must be approved by regional legislatures. The president can pass decrees (executive orders) without consent from Parliament and is also head of the armed forces and of the Russian National Security Council. Russia's bicameral parliament, the Federal Assembly (Russian: Федеральное Собрание, English transliteration: Federalnoye Sobraniye) consists of an upper house known as the Federation Council (Совет Федерации, Sovet Federatsii), composed of 178 delegates, which are appointed by executive and legislative bodies of each of 89 federal subjects for the term of four or five years, and a lower house known as the State Duma (Государственная Дума, Gosudarstvennaya Duma), comprising 450 deputies also serving a four-year term, of which 225 are elected by direct popular vote from single member constituencies and 225 are elected by proportional representation from nation-wide party lists. From the next elections, which are to be held in December 2007, all 450 members of the Duma will be elected from party lists.

Subdivisions

:See also: Federal districts of Russia, Federal subjects of Russia, Republics of Russia, Oblasts of Russia, Krais of Russia, Autonomous Oblasts of Russia, Autonomous Districts of Russia, Federal cities of Russia. Federal cities of Russia The Russian Federation consists of a great number of different federal subjects, making a total of 88 constituent components. There are 21 republics within the federation that enjoy a high degree of autonomy on most issues and these correspond to some of Russia's ethnic minorities. The remaining territory consists of 48 oblasts (provinces) and 7 krais (territories), as well as 9 autonomous okrugs (autonomous districts), and 1 autonomous oblast. Beyond these there are two federal cities (Moscow and St. Petersburg). Recently, seven extensive federal districts (four in Europe, three in Asia) have been added as a new layer between the above subdivisions and the national level.

Geography
federal districts The Russian Federation stretches across much of the north of the supercontinent of Eurasia. Although it contains a large share of the world's Arctic and sub-Arctic areas, and therefore has less population, economic activity, and physical variety per unit area than most countries, the great area south of these still accommodates a great variety of landscapes and climates. Most of Russia is in zones of a continental and Arctic climate. Russia is the coldest country of the world. Mid-annual temperature is −5,5 °C (for comparison, in Iceland +1,2 °C, in Sweden +4 °C). Most of the land consists of vast plains, both in the European part and the Asian part that is largely known as Siberia. These plains are predominantly steppe to the south and heavily forested to the north, with tundra along the northern coast. The permafrost (areas of Siberia and the Far East) occupies more than half of territory of Russia. Mountain ranges are found along the southern borders, such as the Caucasus (containing Mount Elbrus, Russia's and Europe's highest point at 5,633 m) and the Altai, and in the eastern parts, such as the Verkhoyansk Range or the volcanoes on Kamchatka. The more central Ural Mountains, a north-south range that form the primary divide between Europe and Asia, are also notable. Russia has an extensive coastline of over 37,000 km along the Arctic and Pacific Oceans, as well as more or less inland seas such as the Baltic, Black and Caspian seas. Some smaller bodies of water are part of the open oceans; the Barents Sea, White Sea, Kara Sea, Laptev Sea and East Siberian Sea are part of the Arctic, whereas the Bering Sea, Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan belong to the Pacific Ocean. Major islands found in them include Novaya Zemlya, the Franz-Josef Land, the New Siberian Islands, Wrangel Island, the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin. (See List of islands of Russia). Many rivers flow across Russia. See Rivers of Russia. Major lakes include Lake Baikal, Lake Ladoga and Lake Onega. See List of lakes in Russia.
Borders
The most practical way to describe Russia is as a main part (a large contiguous portion with its off-shore islands) and an exclave (at the southeast corner of the Baltic Sea). The main part's borders and coasts (starting in the far northwest and proceeding counter-clockwise) are:
- borders with the following countries: Norway and Finland,
- a short coast on the Baltic Sea, facing eight other countries on its shores from Finland to Estonia and including the port of St. Petersburg,
- borders with Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, and Ukraine,
- a coast on the Black Sea, facing five other countries on its shores from Ukraine to Georgia,
- borders with Georgia and Azerbaijan,
- a coast on the Caspian Sea, facing four other countries on its shores from Azerbaijan to Kazakhstan,
- borders with Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, and North Korea,
- an extensive coastline that provides access with all the maritime nations of the world, and stretches
- from the North Pacific Ocean including
- the Sea of Japan (where the west shore of Russia's Sakhalin lies),
- the Sea of Okhotsk (where the east shore of Sakhalin and its Kurile Islands lie), and
- the Bering Sea,
- through the Bering Strait (where its minor island of Big Diomede is separated by only a few miles from Little Diomede, a part of the US state of Alaska),
- to the Arctic Ocean, including
- the Chukchi Sea (where the south and east shores of its Wrangel Island lie),
- the East Siberian Sea (where its west shore, and the east shores of its New Siberian Islands lie),
- the Laptev Sea (where their west shores lie),
- the Kara Sea (where the east shore of its Novaya Zemlya lies),
- the Barents Sea (where their west shore, the south shores of its Franz-Josef Land the port of Murmansk and important naval facilities lie, and where the White Sea reaches far inland). The exclave, constituted by the Kaliningrad Oblast,
- shares borders with
- Poland to its south and
- Lithuania to its north and east, and
- has a northwest coast on the Baltic Sea. The Baltic and Black Sea coasts of Russia have less direct and more constrained access to the high seas than its Pacific and Arctic ones, but both are nevertheless important for that purpose. The Baltic gives immediate access with the nine other countries sharing its shores, and between the main part of Russia and its Kaliningrad Oblast exclave. Via the straits that lie within Denmark, and between it and Sweden, the Baltic connects to the North Sea and the oceans to its west and north. The Black Sea gives immediate access with the five other countries sharing its shores, and via the Dardanelles and Marmora straits adjacent to Istanbul, Turkey, to the Mediterranean Sea with its many countries and its access, via the Suez Canal and the Straits of Gibraltar, to the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The salt waters of the Caspian Sea, the world's largest lake, afford no access with the high seas.
Spatial extent
The two most widely separated points in Russia are about 8,000 km (5000 mi) apart along a geodesic (i.e. shortest line between two points on the Earth's surface). These points are: the boundary with Poland on a 60-km-long (40-mi-long) spit of land separating the Gulf of Gdańsk from the Vistula Lagoon; and the farthest southeast of the Kurile Islands, a few miles off Hokkaido Island, Japan. However, this is confusing because the points which are furthest separated in longitude are "only" 6,600 km (4,100 mi) apart along a geodesic. These points are: in the West, the same spit; in the East, the Big Diomede Island (Ostrov Ratmanova). It is also often mentioned that the Russian federation spans eleven time zones.
Cities
As of 2005 Russia has 13 cities with over a million inhabitants (from largest to smallest): Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Omsk, Kazan, Chelyabinsk, Rostov-on-Don, Ufa, Volgograd and Perm. See also: List of cities in Russia
Economy
More than a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia is now trying to establish a market economy and achieve more consistent economic growth. Russia saw its comparatively developed centrally-planned economy contract severely for five years, as the executive and legislature dithered over the implementation of reforms and Russia's industrial base faced a serious decline. Moreover, an emergency livestock shortage in 1987, which triggered large-scale international aid, severely bruised the ego, as well as the economy, of the emerging Russian state. After the breakup of the USSR, Russia's first slight recovery, showing the signs of open-market influence, occurred in 1997. That year, however, Asian financial crisis culminated in the August depreciation of the ruble in 1998, a debt default by the government, and a sharp deterioration in living standards for most of the population. Consequently, the year 1998 was marked by recession and intense capital flight. Nevertheless, the economy started recovering in 1999. Then it entered a phase of rapid economic expansion, the GDP growing by an average of 6.7% annually in 1999-2005 on the back of higher petroleum prices, weaker ruble, and increasing service production and industrial output. The economic development of the country, however, has been extremely uneven: the capital region of Moscow contributes a third to the country's GDP having only a tenth of its population. The recent recovery, made possible due to high world oil prices, along with a renewed government effort in 2000 and 2001 to advance lagging structural reforms, has raised business and investor confidence over Russia's prospects in its second decade of transition. Russia remains heavily dependent on exports of commodities, particularly oil, natural gas, metals, and timber, which account for about 80% of exports, leaving the country vulnerable to swings in world prices. In recent years, however, the economy has also been driven by growing internal consumer demand that has increased by over 12% annually in 2000-2005, showing the strengthening of its own internal market. The country's GDP shot up to reach €1.2 trillion ($1.5 trillion) in 2004, making it the ninth largest economy in the world and the fifth largest in Europe. If the current growth rate is sustained, the country is expected to become the second largest European economy after Germany (€1.9 trillion or $2.3 trillion) and the sixth largest in the world within a few years. The greatest challenge facing the Russian economy is how to encourage the development of SME (small and medium sized enterprises) in a business climate with a young and dysfunctional banking system, dominated by Russian oligarchs. Many of Russia's banks are owned by entrepreneurs or oligarchs, who often use the deposits to lend to their own businesses. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank have attempted to kick-start normal banking practices by making equity and debt investments in a number of banks, but with very limited success. Other problems include disproportional economic development of Russia's own regions. While the huge capital region of Moscow is a bustling, affluent metropolis living on the cutting edge of technology with a per capita income rapidly approaching that of the leading Eurozone economies, much of the country, especially its indigenous and rural communities in Asia, lags significantly behind. Market integration is nonetheless making itself felt in some other sizeable cities such as Saint Petersburg, Kaliningrad, and Ekaterinburg, and recently also in the adjacent rural areas. Encouraging foreign investment is also a major challenge due to legal, some cultural, linguistic, economic and political peculiarities of the country. Nevertheless, there have been significant inflow of capital in recent years from many European investors attracted by cheaper land, labor and higher growth rates than in the rest of Europe. Amazingly high levels of education and societal involvement achieved by the majority of the population, including women and minorities, secular attitudes, mobile class structure, better integration of various minorities in the mainstream culture set Russia far apart from the majority of the so-called developing and even some developed nations. So far, the country is also benefiting from rising oil prices and has been able to pay off much of its formerly huge debt. Equal redistribution of capital gains from the natural resource industries to other sectors is also a problem. Still, since 2003, exports of natural resources started decreasing in economic importance as the internal market has strengthened considerably largely stimulated by intense construction, as well as consumption of increasingly diverse goods and services. Yet teaching customers and encouraging consumer spending is a relatively tough task for many provincial areas where consumer demand is primitive, although some laudable progress has already been made in larger cities especially in clothing, food, entertainment industries. The arrest of Russia's wealthiest businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky on charges of fraud and corruption in relation to the large-scale privatizations organized under then-President Yeltsin has caused many foreign investors to worry about the stability of the Russian economy. Most of the large fortunes currently prevailing in Russia seem to be the product of either acquiring government assets particularly at low costs or gaining concessions from the government. Other countries have expressed concerns and worries at the "selective" application of the law against individual businessmen. However, some international firms are investing heavily in Russia. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Russia had nearly $26 billion in cumulative foreign direct investment inflows during the 2001-2004 period (of which $11.7 billion occurred last year alone).
Demographics
Despite its comparatively very high population, Russia has a low average population density due to its enormous size. Population is densest in the European part of Russia, in the Ural Mountains area, and in the south-western parts of Siberia; the south-eastern part of Siberia that meets the Pacific Ocean, known as the Russian Far East, is sparsely populated, with its southern part being densest. The Russian Federation is home to as many as 160 different ethnic groups and indigenous peoples. As of the 2002 census, 79.8% of the population is ethnically Russian, 3.8% Tatar, 2% Ukrainian, 1.2% Bashkir, 1.1% Chuvash, 0.9% Chechen, 0.8% Armenian, and the remaining 10.3% includes those who did not specify their ethnicity as well as (in alphabetical order) Avars, Azerbaijanis, Belarusians, Buryats, Chinese, Evenks, Georgians, Germans, Greeks, Ingushes, Inuit, Jews, Kalmyks, Karelians, Kazakhs, Koreans, Maris, Mordvins, Nenetses, Ossetians, Poles, Tuvans, Udmurts, Uzbeks, Yakuts, and others. Nearly all of these groups live compactly in their respective regions; Russians are the only people significantly represented in every region of the country. The Russian language is the only official state language, but the individual republics have often made their native language co-official next to Russian. Cyrillic alphabet is the only official script, which means that these languages must be written in Cyrillic in official texts. The Russian Orthodox Church is the dominant Christian religion in the Federation; other religions include Islam, various Protestant faiths, Judaism, Roman Catholicism and Buddhism. Division into different religions takes place primarily along ethnic lines: majority of Russians are Orthodox, majority of people of Turkic descent are Muslim, Judaism is very uncommon among non-Jews. Neopaganism is on the rise, especially among Slavic people. See Religion in Russia for more.
Culture

- Cinema of Russia
- List of famous Russians
- Music of Russia
- Russian architecture
- Russian cuisine
- Russian humour
- Russian literature
- List of Russian language poets
- Russian formalism
- Russian folklore
- Russian music
- Russian painting
- Russian theatre
Name
:Main article: Etymology of Rus and derivatives. The name of the country derives from the name of the Rus' people. The origin of the people itself and of their name is a matter of controversy.
Miscellaneous topics

- Communications in Russia
- Education in Russia
- Foreign relations of Russia
- Law of the Russian Federation
- List of Russian companies
- Military of Russia
- Postage stamps and postal history of Russia
- Public holidays in Russia
- Russian Association of Scouts/Navigators
- Tourism in Russia
- Transportation in Russia
References

- The New Columbia Encyclopedia, Col.Univ.Press, 1975
- World Civilizations:The Global Experience, by Peter Stearns, Michael Adas, Stuart Schwartz, and Marc Gilbert
External links

Government resources

- [http://www.duma.ru/ Duma] - Official site of the parliamentary lower house (in Russian)
- [http://www.council.gov.ru/eng/index.html Federative Council] - Official site of the parliamentary upper house
- [http://www.kremlin.ru/eng/ Kremlin] - Official presidential site (in English)
- [http://www.gov.ru/ Gov.ru] - Official governmental portal (in Russian)
- [http://www.russianembassy.org/ Embassy of the Russian Federation to the United States]
- [http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/russia.html Russia Energy Resources and Industry from U.S. Department of Energy]
- [http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1006.html U.S. State Department Consular Information Sheet: Russia]
General information

- [http://www.russiaprofile.org/index.wbp Russia Profile]
- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/country_profiles/1102275.stm Count

Bahamas

The Commonwealth of The Bahamas is an independent English-speaking nation in the West Indies. An archipelago of 700 islands and cays (which are small islands), the Bahamas is located in the Atlantic Ocean, east of Florida in the United States, north of Cuba and the Caribbean, and west of the British dependency of the Turks and Caicos Islands.

History

Main article: History of the Bahamas Christopher Columbus's first landfall in the New World in 1492 is believed to have been on the island of San Salvador (also called Watling's Island), in the southeastern Bahamas. He encountered Taino (also known as Lucayan) Amerindians and exchanged gifts with them. Taino Indians from both northwestern Hispaniola and northeastern Cuba moved into the southern Bahamas about the 7th century AD and became the Lucayans. They appear to have settled the entire archipelago by the 12th century AD. There may have been as many as 40,000 Lucayans living in the Bahamas when Columbus arrived. The Bahamian Lucayans were deported to Hispaniola as slaves, and within two decades Taino societies ceased to exist as a separate population due to forced labour, warfare, disease, emigration and outmarriage. Some say the name 'Bahamas' derives from the Spanish for shallow sea - baja mar. Others trace it to the Lucayan word for Grand Bahama Island - ba-ha-ma, or 'large upper middle land'. After the Lucayans were destroyed the Bahamian islands were deserted until the arrival of English settlers from Bermuda in 1650. Known as the Eleutherian Adventurers, these people established settlements on the island now called Eleuthera (from the Greek word for freedom). The Bahamas became a British crown colony in 1718, but remained sparsley settled until the newly indpendent United States expelled thousands of American tories and their slaves. Many of these British Loyalists were given compensatory land grants in Canada and the Bahamas. Some 8,000 loyalists and their slaves moved to the Bahamas in the late 1700s from New York, Florida and the Carolinas. The British granted the islands internal self-government in 1964 and In 1973 Bahamians achieved full independence while remaining a member of the British Commonwealth of Nations. Since the 1950s, the Bahamian economy has been based on the twin pillars of tourism and financial services. Today, the country enjoys the third highest per capita income in the western hemisphere.

Geography

Main Article: Geography of the Bahamas The Bahamas is an archipelago of some 700 islands and cays covering over 100,000 square miles of the Atlantic ocean between Florida and Hispaniola. The archipelago has a total land area of 5,382 square miles - about 20 per cent larger than Jamaica - and a population of some 310,000 concentrated on the islands of New Providence and Grand Bahama. The largest island is Andros Island. The Biminis are just 50 miles east of Florida. The island of Grand Bahama is home to the second largest city in the country, Freeport. The island of Abaco is to its east. The most southeastern island is Inagua. Other notable islands include Eleuthera, Cat Island, San Salvador, Acklins, Crooked Island, Exuma and Mayaguana. Nassau is the capital and largest city, located on New Providence. The islands have a subtropical climate, moderated by the Gulf Stream.

Politics

Main article: Politics of the Bahamas Queen Elizabeth II is the head of state of The Bahamas, which has remained a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. She is represented in the Bahamas by a Governor-General, appointed on the recommendation of the elected government. A multi-party democracy in the British tradition, the Bahamas has a bicameral parliament with an elected assembly and an appointed senate. The country is governed by a cabinet headed by a prime minister. Elections are held every five years.

Districts

Main article: Districts of the Bahamas

Economy

Main article: Economy of the Bahamas The Bahamas is a stable, developing nation with an economy heavily dependent on tourism and offshore banking. Tourism alone accounts for more than 60% of GDP and directly or indirectly employs almost half of the archipelago's labour force. Steady growth in tourism receipts and a boom in construction of new hotels, resorts, and residences have led to solid GDP growth in recent years. Manufacturing and agriculture together contribute approximately a tenth of GDP and show little growth, despite government incentives aimed at those sectors. Overall growth prospects in the short run rest heavily on the fortunes of the tourism sector, which depends on growth in the United States, the source of the majority of tourist visitors.

Demographics

Main article: Demographics of the Bahamas Most of the Bahamian population is black (85%); about 12% is white. The official language is English, spoken by virtually all inhabitants, though many speak a "patois" form of it. A small number of immigrants also speak Creole. A heavily religious country, there are more places of worship per person in the Bahamas than any other nation in the world. Christianity is the main religion on the islands, with Baptists forming the largest denomination (about one third), followed by the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches. A few people, especially in the southern and eastern islands, practice obeah, a spiritistic religion similar to voodoo. While well-known throughout the Bahamas, obeah is shunned by many people. Voodoo is practiced, but almost exclusively by immigrants from Haiti.

Culture

Main article: Culture of the Bahamas Bahamanian culture is a hybrid of African, European and indigenous forms. Perhaps its most famous export is a rhythmic form of music called junkanoo. See also: Music of the Bahamas

Climate

The climate of the Bahamas is subtropical to tropical, and is moderated significantly by the waters of the Gulf Stream, particularly in winter. Conversely, this often proves very dangerous in the summer and autumn, when hurricanes pass near or through the islands. Hurricane Andrew hit the northern islands in 1992, and Hurricane Floyd hit most of the islands in 1999. Hurricane Frances of 2004 was expected to be the worst ever for the islands. Also in 2004, the northern Bahamas were hit by a less potent Hurricane Jeanne.

Miscellaneous topics

- Bahamian American
- Tongue of the Ocean, a geological phenomenon
- Communications in the Bahamas
- Foreign relations of the Bahamas
- Military of the Bahamas
- Transportation in the Bahamas

Bahamian History Resources

General History
- Albury, Paul. The Story of The Bahamas. London: MacMillan Caribbean, 1975.
- Miller, Hubert W. “The Colonization of the Bahamas, 1647-1670,” The William and Mary Quarterly 2 no.1 (Jan 1945): 33-46.
- Craton, Michael. A History of the Bahamas. London: Collins, 1962.
- Craton, Michael and Saunders, Gail. Islanders in the Stream: A History of the Bahamian People. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992. Economic History
- Johnson, Howard. The Bahamas in Slavery and Freedom. Kingston: Ian Randle Publishing, 1991.
- Johnson, Howard. The Bahamas from Slavery to Servitude, 1783-1933. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1996.
- Storr, Virgil H. Enterprising Slaves and Master Pirates: Understanding Economic Life in the Bahamas. New York: Peter Lang, 2004. Social History
- Johnson, Wittington B. Race Relations in the Bahamas, 1784-1834: The Nonviolent Transformation from a Slave to a Free Society. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas, 2000.
- Shirley, Paul. “Tek Force Wid Force,” History Today 54, no. 41 (April 2004): 30-35.
- Saunders, Gail. The Social Life in the Bahamas 1880s-1920s. Nassau: Media Publishing, 1996.
- Saunders, Gail. Bahamas Society After Emancipation. Kingston: Ian Randle Publishing, 1990.

External links

- [http://www.bahamas.gov.bs/ Bahamas Government Official Website]
- [http://www.bahamas.co.uk/ UK Bahamas Tourist Office]
- [http://www.bahamas-tourisme.fr/ French Bahamas Tourist Office]
- [http://www.bahamas.com/ Bahamas Ministry of Tourism]
- [http://www.constitution.org/cons/bahamas.htm The Bahamas Constitution]
- [http://www.strausbach.de/bahamas_photo.php Photo-Gallery] (with slide show)
- [http://www.lodgephoto.com/galleries/bahamas-abacos/ Photographs of the Bahamas]: Abaco islands, including Junkanoo festival Category:Caribbean countries Category:Monarchies Category:North Atlantic Islands Category:Members of the Commonwealth of Nations Category:Island nations Category:CARICOM member states zh-min-nan:Bahamas ko:바하마 ms:Bahamas ja:バハマ simple:Bahamas

Pacific Ocean

:For other meanings of Pacific, see Pacific (disambiguation). The Pacific Ocean (from the Latin name Mare Pacificum, "peaceful sea", bestowed upon it by the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan) is the world's largest body of water. It encompasses a third of the Earth's surface, having an area of 179.7 million km² (69.4 million sq miles). Extending approximately 15,500 km (9,600 miles) from the Bering Sea in the Arctic to the icy margins of Antarctica's Ross Sea in the south (although the Antarctic regions of the Pacific are sometimes described as part of the circumpolar Southern Ocean)the Pacific reaches its greatest east-west width at about 5°N latitude, where it stretches approximately 19,800 km (12,300 miles) from Indonesia to the coast of Colombia. The western limit of the ocean is often placed at the Strait of Malacca. The lowest point on earth—the Mariana Trench—lies some 10,911 m (35,797 ft) below sea level. The Pacific contains about 25,000 islands (more than the total number in the rest of the world's oceans combined), the majority of which are found south of the equator. (See: Pacific Islands.) Along the Pacific Ocean's irregular western margins lie many seas, the largest of which are the Celebes Sea, Coral Sea, East China Sea, Sea of Japan, South China Sea, Sulu Sea, Tasman Sea, and Yellow Sea. The Straits of Malacca joins the Pacific and the Indian Oceans on the west, and the Straits of Magellan links the Pacific with the Atlantic Ocean on the east. As the Pacific straddles the ±180° longitude where East becomes West, the Asian side of the ocean (where latitudes are E) is correctly referred to as East Pacific and the opposite side (eastwards) where latitudes are W is the West Pacific. To retain the popular "left is western" and "right is eastern" means of reference, the Western Pacific is thus the East Pacific and the Eastern Pacific the West Pacific. The International Date Line follows the ±180° longitude to the greater part of its North-South demarcation but veers far eastwards around Kiribati (Caroline Island, which, not coincidentally, was renamed Millennium Island) and westwards round the Aleutian Islands as can be seen on the map at International Date Line. For most of Ferdinand Magellan's voyage from the Straits of Magellan to the Philippines, the Portuguese explorer indeed found the ocean peaceful. However, the Pacific is not always peaceful. Many typhoons and hurricanes batter the islands of the Pacific and the lands around the Pacific rim are full of volcanoes and often rocked by earthquakes. Tsunamis, caused by underwater earthquakes, have devastated many islands and wiped out whole towns. Tsunami

Ocean bottom

The ocean floor of the central Pacific basin is relatively uniform, an abyssal plain with a mean depth of about 4270 m (14,000 ft). The major irregularities in the basin are the extremely steep-sided, flat-topped submarine peaks known as seamounts. The western part of the floor consists of mountain arcs that rise above the sea as island groups, such as the Solomon Islands and New Zealand, and deep oceanic trenches, such as the Mariana Trench, the Philippine Trench, and the Tonga Trench. Most of the trenches lie adjacent to the outer margins of the wide western Pacific continental shelf. Along the eastern margin of the Pacific Basin is the East Pacific Rise, which is a part of the worldwide mid-oceanic ridge. About 3000 km (1800 miles) across, the rise stands about 3 km (2 miles) above the adjacent ocean floor. Because a relatively small land area drains into the Pacific, and because of the ocean's immense size, most sediments are authigenic or pelagic in origin. Authigenic sediments include montmorillonite and phillipsite. Pelagic sediments derived from seawater include pelagic red clays and the skeletal remains of sea life. Terrigenous sediments eroded from land masses are confined to narrow marginal bands close to land.

Elevation extremes

- lowest point: -10,924 m (-35,840 ft). at the bottom of the Mariana Trench
- highest point: 0 m (0 ft), sea level.

Water characteristics

Water temperatures in the Pacific vary from freezing in the poleward areas to about 29°C (84°F) near the equator. Salinity also varies latitudinally. Water near the equator is less salty than that found in the mid-latitudes because of abundant equatorial precipitation throughout the year. Poleward of the temperate latitudes salinity is also low, because little evaporation of seawater takes place in these frigid areas. The surface circulation of Pacific waters is generally clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere (the North Pacific Gyre) and anti-clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. The North Equatorial Current, driven westward along latitude 15°N by the trade winds, turns north near the Philippines to become the warm Japan or Kuroshio Current. Turning eastward at about 45°N, the Kuroshio forks and some waters move northward as the Aleutian Current, while the rest turn southward to rejoin the North Equatorial Current. The Aleutian Current branches as it approaches North America and forms the base of an anti-clockwise circulation in the Bering Sea. Its southern arm becomes the chilled slow, south-flowing California Current. The South Equatorial Current, flowing west along the equator, swings southward east of New Guinea, turns east at about 50°S, and joins the main westerly circulation of the Southern Pacific, which includes the Earth-circling Antarctic Circumpolar Current. As it approaches the Chilean coast, the South Equatorial Current divides; one branch flows around Cape Horn and the other turns north to form the Peru or Humboldt Current.

Climate

Only the interiors of the large land masses of Australia, New Guinea, and New Zealand escape the pervasive climatic influence of the Pacific. Within the area of the Pacific, five distinctively different climatic regions exist: the mid-latitude westerlies, the trades, the monsoon region, the typhoon region, and the doldrums. Mid-latitude westerly air streams occur in both northerly and southerly latitudes, bringing marked seasonal differences in temperature. Closer to the equator, where most of the islands lie, steadily blowing trade winds allow for relatively constant temperatures throughout the year of 21-27°C (70-81°F). The monsoon region lies in the far western Pacific between Japan and Australia. Characteristic of this climatic region are winds that blow from the continental interior to the ocean in winter and in the opposite direction in summer. Consequently, a marked seasonality of cloudiness and rainfall occurs. Typhoons often cause extensive damage in the west and southwest Pacific. The greatest typhoon frequency exists within the triangle from southern Japan to the central Philippines to eastern Micronesia. Although more poorly defined than the other climatic regions, two major doldrum areas lie within the ocean, one located off the western shores of Central America and the other within the equatorial waters of the western Pacific. Both areas are noted for their high humidity, considerable cloudiness, light fluctuating winds, and frequent calms.

Geology

The Andesite Line is the most significant regional distinction in the Pacific. It separates the deeper, basic igneous rock of the Central Pacific Basin from the partially submerged continental areas of acidic igneous rock on its margins. The Andesite Line follows the western edge of the islands off California and passes south of the Aleutian arc, along the eastern edge of the Kamchatka Peninsula, the Kuril Islands, Japan, the Mariana Islands, the Solomon Islands, and New Zealand. The dissimilarity continues northeastward along the western edge of the Albatross Cordillera along South America to Mexico, returning then to the islands off California. Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan, New Guinea, and New Zealand—all eastward extensions of the continental blocks of Australia and Asia—lie outside the Andesite Line. Within the closed loop of the Andesite Line are most of the deep troughs, submerged volcanic mountains, and oceanic volcanic islands that characterize the Central Pacific Basin. It is here that basaltic lavas gently flow out of rifts to build huge dome-shaped volcanic mountains whose eroded summits form island arcs, chains, and clusters. Outside the Andesite Line, volcanism is of the explosive type, and the Pacific Ring of Fire is the world's foremost belt of explosive volcanism.

Landmasses

The largest landmass entirely within the Pacific Ocean is the island of New Guinea— the second largest in the world. Almost all of the smaller islands of the Pacific lie between 30°N and 30°S, extending from South-east Asia to Easter Island; the rest of the Pacific Basin is almost entirely submerged. The great triangle of Polynesia, connecting Hawaii, Easter Island, and New Zealand, encompasses the island arcs and clusters of the Cook, Marquesas, Samoa, Society, Tokelau, Tonga, and Tuamotu islands. North of the equator and west of the international date line are the numerous small islands of Micronesia, including the Caroline Islands, the Marshall Islands, and the Mariana Islands. In the southwestern corner of the Pacific lie the islands of Melanesia, dominated by New Guinea. Other important island groups of Melanesia include the Bismarck Archipelago, Fiji, New Caledonia, the Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu. Islands in the Pacific Ocean are of four basic types: continental islands, high islands, coral reefs, and uplifted coral platforms. Continental islands lie outside the Andesite Line and include New Guinea, the islands of New Zealand, and the Philippines. These islands are structurally associated with the nearby continents. High islands are of volcanic origin, and many contain active volcanoes. Among these are Bougainville, Hawaii, and the Solomon Islands. The third and fourth types of islands are both the result of coralline island building. Coral reefs are low-lying structures that have built up on basaltic lava flows under the ocean's surface. One of the most dramatic is the Great Barrier Reef off northeastern Australia. A second island type formed of coral is the uplifted coral platform, which is usually slightly larger than the low coral islands. Examples include Banaba (formerly Ocean Island) and Makatea in the Tuamotu group of French Polynesia.

History and economy

See the Oceania article for information on one set of the Pacific Island states listed below here. Important human migrations occurred in the Pacific in prehistoric times, most notably those of Polynesians from Tahiti to Hawaii and New Zealand. The ocean was sighted by Europeans early in the 16th century, first by Vasco Núñez de Balboa (1513) and then by Ferdinand Magellan, who crossed the Pacific during his circumnavigation (1519-1522). In 1564 conquistadors crossed the ocean from Mexico led by Miguel López de Legazpi who sailed to the Philippines and Mariana Islands. For the remainder of the 16th century Spanish influence was paramount, with ships sailing from Spain to the Philippines, New Guinea, and the Solomons. The Manila Galleons linked Manila and Acapulco. During the 17th century the Dutch, sailing around southern Africa, dominated discovery and trade; Abel Janszoon Tasman discovered (1642) Tasmania and New Zealand. The 18th century marked a burst of exploration by the Russians in Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, the French in Polynesia, and the British in the three voyages of James Cook (to the South Pacific and Australia, Hawaii, and the North American Pacific Northwest). Growing imperialism during the 19th century resulted in the occupation of much of Oceania by Great Britain and France, followed by the United States. Significant contributions to oceanographic knowledge were made by the voyages of the HMS Beagle in the 1830s, with Charles Darwin aboard; the HMS Challenger during the 1870s; the U.S.S. Tuscarora (1873-76); and the German Gazelle (1874-1876). Although the United States took the Philippines in 1898, Japan controlled the western Pacific by 1914, and occupied many other islands during World War II. By the end of that war the U.S. Pacific Fleet was the virtual master of the ocean. Seventeen independent states are located in the Pacific: Australia, Fiji, Japan, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, New Zealand, Palau, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Republic of China (Taiwan), Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu. Eleven of these nations have achieved full independence since 1960. The Northern Mariana Islands are self-governing with external affairs handled by the United States, and Cook Islands and Niue are in similar relationships with New Zealand. Also within the Pacific are the U.S. state of Hawaii and several island territories and possessions of Australia, Chile, Ecuador, France, Japan, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The exploitation of the Pacific's mineral wealth is hampered by the ocean's great depths. In shallow waters of the continental shelves off the coasts of Australia and New Zealand, petroleum and natural gas are extracted, and pearls are harvested along the coasts of Australia, Japan, Papua New Guinea, Nicaragua, Panama, and the Philippines, although in sharply declining volume. The Pacific's greatest asset is its fish. The shoreline waters of the continents and the more temperate islands yield herring, salmon, sardines, snapper, swordfish, and tuna, as well as shellfish. In 1986, the member nations of the South Pacific Forum declared the area a nuclear-free zone in an effort to halt nuclear testing and prevent the dumping of nuclear waste there.

Ports and harbours

- Acapulco (Mexico)
- Anchorage (United States)
- Auckland (New Zealand)
- Brisbane (Australia)
- Callao (Peru)
- Hong Kong (Hong Kong (China (PRC)))
- Honolulu (United States)
- Kobe (Japan)
- Long Beach (United States)
- Los Angeles (United States)
- Panama City (Panama)
- Portland (Oregon) (United States)
- Prince Rupert (Canada)
- San Diego (United States)
- San Francisco (United States)
- Sapporo (Japan)
- Seattle (United States)
- Shanghai (China (PRC))
- Sydney (Australia)
- Taipei (China (ROC))
- Vancouver (Canada)
- Victoria (Canada)
- Vladivostok (Russia)
- Yokohama (Japan)

Bibliography

- Barkley, R.A., Oceanographic Atlas of the Pacific Ocean (1969)
- Cameron, I., Lost Paradise (1987)
- Couper, A., Development in the Pacific Islands (1988)
- Crump, D.J., ed., Blue Horizons (1980)
- Gilbert, John, Charting the Vast Pacific (1971)
- Lower, J. Arthur, Ocean of Destiny: A Concise History of the North Pacific, 1500-1978 (1978)
- Oliver, D.L., The Pacific Islands, 3nd ed. (1989)
- Ridgell, R., Pacific Nations and Territories, 2nd ed. (1988)
- Soule, Gardner, The Greatest Depths (1970)
- Spate, O.H., Paradise Found and Lost (1988)
- Terrell, J.E., Prehistory in the Pacific Islands (1986). :Based on public domain text from US Naval Oceanographer

External links

- [http://www.epic.noaa.gov/epic/ewb/ EPIC Pacific Ocean Data Collection] Viewable on-line collection of observational data
- [http://dapper.pmel.noaa.gov/dchart/ NOAA In-situ Ocean Data Viewer] Plot and download ocean observations
- [http://www.mapsouthpacific.com/ Map South Pacific]
- [http://www.oscar.noaa.gov/datadisplay/ NOAA Ocean Surface Current Analyses - Realtime (OSCAR)] Near-realtime Pacific Ocean Surface Currents derived from satellite altimeter and scatterometer data
- [http://floats.pmel.noaa.gov/floats/ NOAA PMEL Argo profiling floats] Realtime Pacific Ocean data
- [http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/jsdisplay/ NOAA TAO El Nino data] Realtime Pacific Ocean El NIno buoy data
- [http://www.southpacific.org/ South Pacific Organizer] Category:Oceans
- zh-min-nan:Thài-pêng-iûⁿ ko:태평양 ja:太平洋 simple:Pacific Ocean th:มหาสมุทรแปซิฟิก

Bering Sea

The Bering (or Imarpik) Sea is a body of water above, and separted from, the north Pacific Ocean by the Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Islands. Covering over two million square kilometers (775,000 sq. miles), it is bordered on the east and northeast by Alaska, on the west by Russia's Siberia and Kamchatka Peninsula, on the south by the Alaska Peninsula and the Aleutian Islands and on the far north by the Bering Strait which separates the Bering Sea from the Arctic Ocean's Chukchi Sea. It is named for the first white discoverer to sail its waters, the Danish navigator Vitus Bering. During the most recent ice age, the sea level was thought to be low enough to allow humans and other animals to migrate from Asia to North America on foot across what is now the Bering Strait, located on the northern side of the sea. This is commonly referred to as the "Bering land bridge" and is believed by some scholars (in dispute by others) to be the first entry of humans into the Americas. The [http://www.beringclimate.noaa.gov/ Bering Sea] is one of the world's richest fisheries, and landings from Alaskan waters represents half the U.S. catch of fish and shellfish. Because of the [http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/detect changes going on in the Arctic], future evolution of the Bering Sea climate/ecosystem is more uncertain. This is a symmetric problem: climate change impacts ecosystems, and ecosystems serve as indicators for climate change. Track the [http://www.beringclimate.noaa.gov/bering_status_overview.html current State of the Bering Sea] with [http://www.beringclimate.noaa.gov/quick_data_summary.html near-realtime ecological and climatic indicators]. Islands of the Bering Sea include:
- Pribilof Islands
- Bering Island

External links

- [http://www.beringclimate.noaa.gov/ Bering Sea Climate and Ecosystem] Comprehensive resource includes maps, photos, essays on key Bering Sea issues, organizations, ecosystem information, and viewable data with narratives on trends and ecosystem relevance.
- [http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/np/ North Pacific Ocean theme page] Category:Seas ko:베링 해 ja:ベーリング海

Atlantic Ocean

The Atlantic Ocean is Earth's second-largest ocean, covering approximately one-fifth of its surface. The ocean's name, derived from Greek mythology, means the "Sea of Atlas". This ocean occupies an elongated, S-shaped basin extending in a north-south direction and is divided into the North Atlantic and South Atlantic by equatorial counter currents at about 8° north latitude. Bounded by the Americas on the west and Europe and Africa on the east, the Atlantic is linked to the Pacific Ocean by the Arctic Ocean on the north and the Drake Passage on the south. An artificial connection between the Atlantic and Pacific is also provided by the Panama Canal. On the east, the dividing line between the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean is the 20° east meridian. The Atlantic is separated from the Arctic Ocean by a line from Greenland to northwestern Iceland and then from northeastern Iceland to southernmost tip of Spitsbergen and then to North Cape in northern Norway. Norway on a fair day.]] Covering approximately 20% of Earth's surface, the Atlantic Ocean is second only to the Pacific in size. With its adjacent seas it occupies an area of about 106,400,000 km² (41,100,000 square miles); without them, it has an area of 82,400,000 km² (31,800,000 mi²). The land area that drains into the Atlantic is four times that of either the Pacific or Indian oceans. The volume of the Atlantic Ocean with its adjacent seas is 354,700,000 km³ (85,100,000 mi³) and without them 323,600,000 km³ (77,640,000 mi³). The average depth of the Atlantic, with its adjacent seas, is 3,332 m (10,932 ft); without them it is 3,926 m (12,881 ft). The greatest depth, 8,605 m (28,232 ft), is in the Puerto Rico Trench. The width of the Atlantic varies from 2,848 km (1,770 miles) between Brazil and Liberia to about 4,830 km (3,000 miles) between the United States and northern Africa. The Atlantic Ocean has irregular coasts indented by numerous bays, gulfs, and seas. These include the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, Gulf of St. Lawrence, Mediterranean Sea, Black Sea, North Sea, Labrador Sea, Baltic Sea, and Norwegian-Greenland Sea. Islands in the Atlantic Ocean include Faroe Islands, Greenland, Iceland, Rockall, Great Britain, Ireland, Fernando de Noronha, the Azores, the Madeira Islands, the Canaries, the Cape Verde Islands,Sao Tome e Principe, Newfoundland, Bermuda, the West Indies, Ascension, St. Helena, Trindade, Martin Vaz, Tristan da Cunha, the Falkland Islands, and South Georgia Island. South Georgia Island

Ocean bottom

The principal feature of the bottom topography of the Atlantic Ocean is a great submarine mountain range called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. It extends from Iceland in the north to approximately 58° south latitude, reaching a maximum width of about 1,600 km (1,000 miles). A great rift valley also extends along the ridge over most of its length. The depth of water over the ridge is less than 2,700 m (8,900 ft) in most places, and several mountain peaks rise above the water, forming islands. The South Atlantic Ocean has an additional submarine ridge, the Walvis Ridge. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge separates the Atlantic Ocean into two large troughs with depths averaging between 3,700 and 5,500 m (12,000 and 18,000 ft). Transverse ridges running between the continents and the Mid-Atlantic Ridge divide the ocean floor into numerous basins. Some of the larger basins are the Guiana, North American, Cape Verde, and Canaries basins in the North Atlantic. The largest South Atlantic basins are the Angola, Cape, Argentina, and Brazil basins. The deep ocean floor is thought to be fairly flat, although numerous seamounts and some guyots exist. Several deeps or trenches are also found on the ocean floor. The Puerto Rico Trench, in the North Atlantic, is the deepest. The Laurentian Abyss is found off the eastern coast of Canada. In the south Atlantic, the South Sandwich Trench reaches a depth of 8,428 m (27,651 ft). A third major trench, the Romanche Trench, is located near the equator and reaches a depth of about 7,454 m (24,455 ft). The shelves along the margins of the continents constitute about 11% of the bottom topography. In addition, a number of deep channels cut across the continental rise. Ocean sediments are composed of terrigenous, pelagic, and authigenic material. Terrigenous deposits consist of sand, mud, and rock particles formed by erosion, weathering, and volcanic activity on land and then washed to sea. These materials are largely found on the continental shelves and are thickest off the mouths of large rivers or off desert coasts. Pelagic deposits, which contain the remains of organisms that sink to the ocean floor, include red clays and Globigerina, pteropod, and siliceous oozes. Covering most of the ocean floor and ranging in thickness from 60 m to 3,300 m (200 ft to 11,000 ft), they are thickest in the convergence belts and in the zones of upwelling. Authigenic deposits consist of such materials as manganese nodules. They occur where sedimentation proceeds slowly or where currents sort the deposits.

Water characteristics

sediment The salinity of the surface waters in the open ocean ranges from 33 to 37 parts per thousand by mass and varies with latitude and season. Although the minimum salinity values are found just north of the equator, in general the lowest values are in the high latitudes and along coasts where large rivers flow into the ocean. Maximum salinity values occur at about 25° north latitude. Surface salinity values are influenced by evaporation, precipitation, river inflow, and melting of sea ice. Surface water temperatures, which vary with latitude, current systems, and season and reflect the latitudinal distribution of solar energy, range from less than −2 °C to 29 °C (28 °F to 84 °F). Maximum temperatures occur north of the equator, and minimum values are found in the polar regions. In the middle latitudes, the area of maximum temperature variations, values may vary by 7 °C to 8 °C (13 °F to 15 °F). The Atlantic Ocean consists of four major water masses. The North and South Atlantic central waters constitute the surface waters. The sub-Antarctic intermediate water extends to depths of 1,000 m (3,300 ft). The North Atlantic deep water reaches depths of as much as 4,000 m (13,200 ft). The Antarctic bottom water occupies ocean basins at depths greater than 4,000 m (13,200 ft). Within the North Atlantic, ocean currents isolate a large elongated body of water known as the Sargasso Sea, in which the salinity is noticeably higher than average. The Sargasso Sea contains large amounts of seaweed, and is also the spawning ground for the European eel. Due to the Coriolis effect, water in the North Atlantic circulates in a clockwise direction, whereas water circulation in the South Atlantic is counter clockwise. The South tides in the Atlantic Ocean are semi-diurnal; that is, two high tides occur during each 24 lunar hours. The tides are a general wave that moves from south to north. In latitudes above 40° north some east-west oscillation occurs.

Climate

diurnal The climate of the Atlantic Ocean and adjacent land areas is influenced by the temperatures of the surface waters and water currents as well as the winds blowing across the waters. Because of the oceans' great capacity for retaining heat, maritime climates are moderate and free of extreme seasonal variations. Precipitation can be approximated from coastal weather data and air temperature from the water temperatures. The oceans are the major source of the atmospheric moisture that is obtained through evaporation. Climatic zones vary with latitude; the warmest climatic zones stretch across the Atlantic north of the equator. The coldest zones are in the high latitudes, with the coldest regions corresponding to the areas covered by sea ice. Ocean currents contribute to climatic control by transporting warm and cold waters to other regions. Adjacent land areas are affected by the winds that are cooled or warmed when blowing over these currents. The Gulf Stream, for example, warms the atmosphere of the British Isles and northwestern Europe, and the cold water currents contribute to heavy fog off the coast of northeastern Canada (the Grand Banks area) and the northwestern coast of Africa. In general, winds tend to transport moisture and warm or cool air over land areas. Hurricanes develop in the southern part of the North Atlantic Ocean.

History and economy

The Atlantic Ocean appears to be the second youngest of the world's oceans, after the Southern Ocean. Evidence indicates that it did not exist prior to 180 million years ago, when the continents that formed from the breakup of the ancestral supercontinent, Pangaea, were being rafted apart by the process of seafloor spreading. The Atlantic has been extensively explored since the earliest settlements were established along its shores. The Vikings, Portuguese, and Christopher Columbus were the most famous among its early explorers. After Columbus, European exploration rapidly accelerated, and many new trade routes were established. As a result, the Atlantic became and remains the major artery between Europe and the Americas (known as transatlantic trade). Numerous scientific explorations have been undertaken, including those by the German Meteor expedition, Columbia University's Lamont Geological Observatory, and the U.S. Navy Hydrographic Office. The ocean has also contributed significantly to the development and economy of the countries around it. Besides its major "transatlantic" transportation and communication routes, the Atlantic offers abundant petroleum deposits in the sedimentary rocks of the continental shelves and the world's richest fishing resources, especially in the waters covering the shelves. The major species of fish caught are cod, haddock, hake, herring, and mackerel. The most productive areas include the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, the shelf area off Nova Scotia, Georges Bank off Cape Cod, the Bahama Banks, the waters around Iceland, the Irish Sea, the Dogger Bank of the North Sea, and the Falkland Banks. Eel, lobster, and whales have also been taken in great quantities. All these factors, taken together, tremendously enhance the Atlantic's great commercial value. Because of the threats to the ocean environment presented by oil spills, marine debris, and the incineration of toxic wastes at sea, various international treaties exist to reduce some forms of pollution.
- In 1858, the first Transatlantic telegraph cable was laid by Cyrus Field.
- In 1919, the American NC-4 became the first airplane to cross the Atlantic (though it made a couple of landings on islands along the way).
- Later in 1919, a British airplane piloted by Alcock and Brown made the first non-stop transatlantic flight from Newfoundland to Ireland.
- In 1921, the British were the first to cross the North Atlantic in an airship.
- In 1922, the Portuguese were the first to cross the South Atlantic in an airship.
- The first transatlantic telephone call was made on January 7, 1927.
- In 1927, Charles Lindbergh made the first solo non-stop transatlantic flight in an airplane (between New York City and Paris).
- After rowing for 81 days and 2,962 miles, on December 3, 1999 Tori Murden became the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean by rowboat alone when she reached Guadeloupe from the Canary Islands. Location: body of water between Africa, Europe, the Southern Ocean, and the Americas Geographic coordinates: Map references: World Area:
- total: 76.762 million km²
- note: includes the Baltic Sea, Black Sea, Caribbean Sea, Davis Strait, Denmark Strait, part of the Drake Passage, Gulf of Mexico, Labrador Sea, Mediterranean Sea, North Sea, Norwegian Sea, almost all of the Scotia Sea, and other tributary water bodies Area - comparative: slightly less than 6.5 times the size of the US Coastline: 111,866 km Climate: Tropical cyclones (hurricanes) develop anywhere from off the coast of Africa near Cape Verde to the Windward Islands and move westward into the Caribbean Sea or up the east coast of North America; hurricanes can occur from May to December, but are most frequent from late July to early November. Storms are common in the North Atlantic during northern winters, making ocean crossings more difficult and dangerous.

Terrain

The surface is usually covered with sea ice in the Labrador Sea, Denmark Strait, and Baltic Sea from October to June. There is a clockwise warm-water gyre (broad, circular system of currents) in the northern Atlantic, and a counter-clockwise warm-water gyre in the southern Atlantic. The ocean floor is dominated by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a rugged north-south centerline for the entire Atlantic basin, first discovered by the Challenger Expedition.

Elevation extremes

- lowest point: Milwaukee Deep in the Puerto Rico Trench -8,605 m
- highest point: sea level 0 m

Natural resources

Petroleum and gas fields, fish, marine mammals (seals and whales), sand and gravel aggregates, placer deposits, polymetallic nodules, precious stones

Natural hazards

Icebergs are common in the Davis Strait, Denmark Strait, and the northwestern Atlantic Ocean from February to August and have been spotted as far south as Bermuda and the Madeira Islands. Ships are subject to superstructure icing in extreme northern Atlantic from October to May. Persistent fog can be a maritime hazard from May to September. So can hurricanes north of the equator (May to December). The Bermuda Triangle is popularly believed to be the site of numerous aviation and shipping incidents, due to unexplained and supposedly mysterious causes, but coastguard records do not support this belief.

Current environmental issues

Endangered marine species include the manatee, seals, sea lions, turtles, and whales. Drift net fishing is killing dolphins, albatrosses and other seabirds (petrels, auks), hastening the decline of fish stocks and contributing to international disputes. There is municipal sludge pollution off eastern US, southern Brazil, and eastern Argentina, oil pollution in the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, Lake Maracaibo, Mediterranean Sea, and North Sea, and industrial waste and municipal sewage pollution in the Baltic Sea, North Sea, and Mediterranean Sea.

Notes on geography

Major chokepoints include the Strait of Gibraltar and the Panama Canal; strategic straits include the Strait of Dover, Straits of Florida, Mona Passage, The Sound (Oresund), and Windward Passage; the Equator divides the Atlantic Ocean into the North Atlantic Ocean and South Atlantic Ocean (previously known as the Ethiopic Ocean). During the Cold War the so called Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) Gap was a major strategic concern, the seabed in that area was laid with extensive hydrophone systems to track Soviet submarines.

Ports and harbours

- A Coruña (Spain)
- Abidjan (Côte d'Ivoire)
- Accra (Ghana)
- Amsterdam (Netherlands)
- Antwerp (Belgium)
- Bahia Blanca (Argentina)
- Baltimore (US)
- Banjul (The Gambia)
- Belfast (Northern Ireland)
- Bergen (Norway)
- Bissau (Guinea-Bissau)
- Bodø (Norway)
- Bordeaux (France)
- Boston (US)
- Bremen (Germany)
- Brest (France)
- Bristol (England)
- Cadiz (Spain)
- Cape Town (South Africa)
- Casablanca (Morocco)
- Cayenne (French Guiana)
- Charleston (US)
- Cherbourg (France)
- Conakry (Guinea)
- Cork (Republic of Ireland)
- Cotonou (Benin)
- Dakar (Senegal)
- Douala (Cameroon)
- Dublin (Republic of Ireland)
- Dunkirk (France)
- Edinburgh (Scotland)
- Fortaleza (Brazil)
- Georgetown (Guyana)
- Glasgow (Scotland)
- Gothenburg(Sweden)
- Hamburg (Germany)
- Halifax (Canada)
- Jacksonville (US)
- Lagos (Nigeria)
- Las Palmas (Spain)
- Le Havre (France)
- Libreville (Gabon)
- Lisbon (Portugal)
- Liverpool (England)
- Lomé (Togo)
- London (England)
- Luanda (Angola)
- Maceió (Brazil)
- Malabo (Equatorial Guinea)
- Miami (US)
- Monrovia (Liberia)
- Montréal (Canada)
- Morehead City (US)
- Nantes (France)
- Nantucket (US)
- Narvik (Norway)
- New Haven (US)
- New London (US)
- New York (US)
- Newcastle upon Tyne (England)
- Newport News (US)
- Norfolk (US)
- Nouakchott (Mauritania)
- Oslo (Norway)
- Ostend (Belgium)
- Paramaribo (Suriname)
- Philadelphia (US)
- Port Harcourt (Nigeria)
- Portland (US)
- Porto (Portugal)
- Porto-Novo (Benin)
- Portsmouth (England)
- Portsmouth (US)
- Providence (US)
- Puerto Cortes (Honduras)
- Québec (Canada)
- Rabat (Morocco)
- Recife (Brazil)
- Reykjavík (Iceland)
- Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
- Rotterdam (Netherlands)
- Salvador (Brazil)
- Saint-Nazaire (France)
- Santa Cruz de Tenerife (Spain)
- Santander (Spain)
- Santos (Brazil)
- Savannah (US)
- Seville (Spain)
- Saint John (Canada)
- St. John's (Canada)
- Southampton (England)
- Stavanger (Norway)
- Tangier (Morocco)
- Tromsø (Norway)
- Trondheim (Norway)
- Vigo (Spain)
- Vitória (Brazil)
- Walvis Bay (Namibia)
- Wilmington (US)
- Yarmouth (Canada)
- Ålesund (Norway)

Note on transportation

The Saint Lawrence Seaway is an important waterway.

References

- Much of this article comes from the public domain site http://oceanographer.navy.mil/atlantic.html (dead link). It is now accessible from the Internet Archive at http://web.archive.org/web/20020221215514/http%3a//oceanographer.navy.mil/atlantic.html.
- Disclaimers for this website, including its status as a public domain resource, are recorded on the Internet Archive at http://web.archive.org/web/20020212021049/http%3a//oceanographer.navy.mil/warning.html.

External links

- [http://dapper.pmel.noaa.gov/dchart/ NOAA In-situ Ocean Data Viewer] Plot and download ocean observations
- [http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/zh.html CIA – The World Factbook – Atlantic Ocean] Category:Atlantic Ocean Category:Oceans als:Atlantik zh-min-nan:Tāi-se-iûⁿ ko:대서양 ja:大西洋 simple:Atlantic Ocean th:มหาสมุทรแอตแลนติก

Caribbean Sea

The Caribbean Sea is a tropical body of water adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean and southeast of the Gulf of Mexico. It covers most of the Caribbean Plate and is bounded on the south by Venezuela, Colombia, and Panama, to the west by Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, and the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico, to the north by the Greater Antilles islands of Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico, and to the east by the Lesser Antilles. The Caribbean Sea is one of the largest salt water seas and has an area of about 2,754,000 km² (1,063,000 square miles). The sea's deepest point is the Cayman Trench, between Cuba and Jamaica, at 7,686 m (25,220 feet) below sea level. The entire area of the Caribbean Sea, especially the numerous islands, is known as the Caribbean.

Lower 48

The continental United States refers (except sometimes in federal law and regulations) to the largest part of the U.S. that makes up one single geographic unit (plus minor nearby islands. Specifically, this includes the District of Columbia and the 48 states that all border at least one other state; it excludes Alaska and Hawaii. The continental United States can also be used in its more literal (and geographically accurate) sense to refer the part of the United States situated on the North American continent, thus excluding only Hawai'i but not the exclave of Alaska. These 48 states and the District of Columbia are also referred to as:
- the contiguous states (occasionally meant to include the District of Columbia)
- the contiguous United States (abbreviated in various specialized contexts as "CONUS")
- the conterminous or coterminous states Some places, because of their own location relative to the continental US, have their own unique labels for the contiguous states.
- In Hawaii, it is called "the mainland" or "the continent".
- In Alaska, long-time residents often simply call this area "Outside", as in "My brother went Outside to have heart surgery". Some Alaskans use the more familiar term "lower 48" (logical only from an "Alaskan-centric" perspective). All of these have some shortcoming of logic, ambiguity, or excessive or deficient formality. In particular:
- no collection of states includes the District of Columbia.
- "conterminous" and "coterminous" are rare, somewhat technical words. In addition, they are more generally used in the sense of having fully coincident boundaries. That is, the County of Hawaii and the Island of Hawaii are conterminous, and the eastern border of Arizona is conterminous with the western border of New Mexico, but it is inaccurate to say that Arizona and New Mexico are "conterminous" without some such clarification.
- while Hawaii is not part of any continent, Alaska is clearly, like the contiguous states, part of North America, and excluding it from the "continental U.S." must be described as a misnomer. It is sometimes objected that since, for example, Oregon and Maryland are neither "contiguous" nor "conterminous", that these words are inappropriate to describe the whole main area of the US. However, the phrase Contiguous United States is entirely in keeping with the general use of the word "contiguous", as in Long rows of contiguous houses or the contiguous colors of the rainbow. In addition, "conterminous" is occasionally used in the same broad sense, as in Allied species, whose ranges are separate but conterminous. In the case of the US states, the disambiguating word "separate" would not be necessary.)

Use in federal law

As the language of the Alaska Omnibus Act of 1959 makes apparent, the term was in use in U.S. federal law prior to then. It presumably dates from after the acquisition of Alaska in 1867, and probably from after the Spanish-American War and the annexation of Hawaii brought the U.S. its first off-continent possessions, both in 1898. Whatever else these terms may be, "continental United States" is a term defined in various federal laws, in different ways in different time periods; it is also defined in different ways at the same time, depending on whether the context was the IRS or not, during at least a period that began with Alaska statehood.

Zdena Studenková

Zdena Studenková (
- 19. máj 1954, Bratislava) je slovenská herečka. Bývalá manželka režiséra Stanislava Párnického. Vyštudovala odbor fotografia na Strednej umeleckopriemyselnej škole v Bratislave (1972) a herectvo na VŠMU (1977). V rokoch 1977 - 1978 členka činohry Novej scény, od roku 1978 činohry SND. Hrala v mnohých filmoch, televíznych inscenáciách a seriáloch. V roku 1995 jej vyšiel hudobný album Dotyky noci. Hrala aj v muzikáloch na Novej scéne, v Košiciach, v Nitre aj v Prahe. V súčasnosti hrá v Činohre SND v inscenáciách Chrobák v hlave, Ideálny manžel a Dom nad oceánom, v Štúdiu L+S v Barmankách a Čo zostalo z lásky, na Novej scéne v muzikáli Donaha!. V roku 2004 bola členkou poroty súťaže Miliónové dievča televízie JOJ, v televízii Markíza stvárňuje jednu z hlavných postáv seriálu Medzi nami. Žije v Bratislave, má dcéru Simonu a jej partnerom je dirigent Branislav Kostka.

Filmografia:

- 1974: Motív pro vraždu (Věra)
- 1978: Panna a netvor (Kráska – Julie)
- 1982: S tebou mě baví svět (Gábina Bednářová)
- 1983: Anděl s ďáblem v těle (Renáta Vaňková)
- 1983: Putování Jana Amose (kráľovná Kristína)
- 1984: O sláve a tráve (Alena Hatalová)
- 1985: Kára plná bolesti (Mara)
- 1986: Kohút nezaspieva (prostitútka Marika)
- 1987: Južná pošta (Magda Gondová)
- 1988: Anděl svádí ďábla (Renata)
- 1990: Súkromné životy (Iveta)
- 1990: Šípová Ruženka (víla)
- 1992: Všetko čo mám rád (Magda)
- 2003: Zostane to medzi nami (tlmočníčka)
- 2004: Konečná stanica Studenkova, Zdena Studenkova, Zdena Studenkova, Zdena Studenkova, Zdena

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