text stringlengths 9 3.55k | source stringlengths 31 280 |
|---|---|
Émile Arthur Vallin (27 November 1833 in Nantes – 27 February 1924 in Montpellier) was a French military physician, considered to be a precursor of public health in France a convinced Pasteurian. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Émile_Vallin |
Son of François-Auguste Vallin, a doctor in Nantes and Fanny Robertson-Martel, he married Berthe Marie Vidal on 15 September 1866, whom he divorced to marry Louise Marie Bidermann on 2 April 1882. After secondary school, he was a prize-winning intern at the Nantes hospitals in the 1853 competition, then a prosector at the Nantes Secondary School of Medicine in 1855. On 8 February 1858, he passed his medical thesis at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris and in December of the same year, he was appointed trainee doctor at the Imperial School of Military Medicine and Pharmacy.From 5 August 1860 to 16 June 1861, he took part in the Syrian Expeditionary Force. On his return, he was appointed to the Military Hospital in Strasbourg. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Émile_Vallin |
In 1865, he passed the agrégation examination, which led him to the post of professor of epidemiology at the Val-de-Grâce Army Training Hospital.On 27 December 1866, he was appointed doctor major 2nd class and officiated at the hospitals of the Algiers division (19 February 1870), at the Médéa military hospital (5 March 1870). He took part in the Franco-Prussian War in the ambulance of the 17th corps headquarters as chief doctor on 2 November 1870.Promoted to the rank of Major 1st class doctor on 8 February 1871, he was transferred to the army of Versailles, to the 46th line regiment in April, to the hospital of Saint-Omer in July, to that of Valenciennes in October, before being sent to the divisional hospitals of Constantine in February 1872. He was sent to the Bône hospital as acting chief doctor (August 1873), and again to Constantine (October 1873).In 1874, as full professor of military hygiene and forensic medicine at the École du Val-de-Grâce, he travelled to the major cities of Europe to study their health organisations and institutions, and everywhere he noted the inferiority in France in this field.He became a senior doctor of 1st class in the Val-de-Grâce on 12 December 1881, and then at the Gros-Caillou hospital from 1 December 1884.Director of the 3rd corps health service in Rouen in December 1885, he was appointed Medical Inspector at the health service of the military government in Lyon and at the 14th corps (16 June 1888).From 1888 to 1893, he was director of the new Lyon Military Medical School (28 December 1888).On 22 April 1893, he was appointed Director of the Paris military government's health service and he ended his career. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Émile_Vallin |
Public health medicine in France came up against local politics and the incomprehension of a rural population. Entrusted to military doctors (Vallin, Lacassagne, Laveran), it had solid frameworks but poor execution in the field, despite Pasteur's discoveries. A prefect who does not dare, a mayor who does not want to, a hygienist who cannot In 1869, Émile Vallin took part in the 5th edition of Michel Lévy's Traité d'Hygiène publique et privée (Treatise on Public and Private Hygiene) with a work on the Hygiene of the Military Profession (Hygiène de la profession militaire). He revised the translation of Griesinger's Infectionskrankheiten ("Infectious diseases") (1877). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Émile_Vallin |
In 1879, he founded the Revue d'hygiène et de police sanitaire ("Hygiene and sanitary police review") and he then wrote numerous articles in this journal, all devoted to the most important questions of public, professional or private hygiene, military hygiene, the etiology and prophylaxis of preventable diseases, the sanitation of urban environments, collective and private homes, food hygiene, etc. He also wrote the Traité des désinfectants et de la désinfection (Treatise on Disinfectants and Disinfection) published in 1882.At the Academy of Medicine, he was interested in alcoholisation, the dangers of mobile stoves, the pathogenesis of heat stroke, disinfection in contagious diseases, alcoholism through breast-feeding, typhoid fever in Paris, stinging caterpillars and the sickness in the basins of silkworm farms and the prophylaxis of tuberculosis. He is also the author of reports on the use of salicylic acid and its derivatives in foodstuffs (1886), on epidemic diseases requiring compulsory declaration (1893), on the sanitary services and the Lazaret of Frioul (1902), on the supply of drinking water to the garrisons (1903).He was elected member of the Hygiene Section of the Académie Nationale de Médecine on July 7, 1885, and was its annual Secretary from 1898 to 1902. In 1877, with Alexandre Lacassagne and Apollinaire Bouchardat, he was a founding member of the Société de Médecine publique et d'Hygiène professionnelle (Society of Public Medicine and Professional Hygiene). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Émile_Vallin |
He was also a member of the Medical Society of Hospitals. As early as 1884, he recommended that: Tuberculosis be included in the lists of contagious livestock diseases, which obliged livestock breeders to declare it, isolate the sick animals, slaughter them and destroy the meat, which was made possible in 1888 with the publication of a first presidential decree. He became Paul Brouardel's right-hand man on the Advisory Committee on Public Hygiene which depended on the authority of the Minister of the Interior and in 1889, Pasteur, Brouardel and Vallin, during the Exposition Universelle, invited the members of the departmental hygiene councils to take part in a congress devoted to prophylaxis. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Émile_Vallin |
Commander of the Legion of Honour (26 December 1894). Officer of the Ordre des Palmes académiques (7 June 1876). Officer of the Order of the Medjidie (9 October 1886). Montyon Prize (1854) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Émile_Vallin |
A street is named after him in Nantes facing the street Capitaine Yves Hervouët. 47.25931°N 1.56504°W / 47.25931; -1.56504 == References == | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Émile_Vallin |
Hockett's Design Features are a set of features that characterize human language and set it apart from animal communication. They were defined by linguist Charles F. Hockett in the 1960s. He called these characteristics the design features of language. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
Hockett originally believed there to be 13 design features. While primate communication utilizes the first 9 features, the final 4 features (displacement, productivity, cultural transmission, and duality) are reserved for humans. Hockett later added prevarication, reflexiveness, and learnability to the list as uniquely human characteristics. He asserted that even the most basic human languages possess these 16 features. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
Charles Hockett was an American linguist and anthropologist, who lived from 1916 to 2000. Hockett graduated from Yale in 1939, and later taught at both Cornell and Rice. Hockett made significant contributions to structural linguistics, as well as the study of Native American, Chinese, and Fijian languages. His work focused mainly on detailed linguistic analysis, particularly morphology and phonology, and on the concepts and tools that facilitated such analysis. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
Up until the 1950s, language was largely viewed as a social-behavioral phenomenon. Hockett was challenged in this belief by Noam Chomsky, who argued that language is biologically based and innate. Chomsky believed that humans share a universal grammar that ties all languages together. Hockett staunchly opposed this "Chomskyan" concept of the nature of language. However, Hockett is most famous for defining what he called the design features of language, which demonstrated his beliefs about the commonalities among human languages. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
Vocal-auditory channel Refers to the idea that speaking/hearing is the mode humans use for language. When Hockett first defined this feature, it did not take sign language into account, which reflects the ideology of orality that was prevalent during the time. This feature has since been modified to include other channels of language, such as tactile-visual or chemical-olfactory. Broadcast transmission and directional reception When humans speak, sounds are transmitted in all directions; however, listeners perceive the direction from which the sounds are coming. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
Similarly, signers broadcast to potentially anyone within the line of sight, while those watching see who is signing. This is characteristic of most forms of human and animal communication. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
Transitoriness Also called rapid fading, transitoriness refers to the temporary quality of language. Language sounds exist for only a brief period of time, after which they are no longer perceived. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
Sound waves quickly disappear once a speaker stops speaking. This is also true of signs. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
In contrast, other forms of communication such as writing and Inka khipus (knot-tying) are more permanent. Interchangeability Refers to the idea that humans can give and receive identical linguistic signals; humans are not limited in the types of messages they can say/hear. One can say "I am a boy" even if one is a girl. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
This is not to be confused with lying (prevarication): The importance is that a speaker can physically create any and all messages regardless of their truth or relation to the speaker. In other words, anything that one can hear, one can also say. Not all species possess this feature. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
For example, in order to communicate their status, queen ants produce chemical scents that no other ants can produce (see animal communication below). Total feedback Speakers of a language can hear their own speech and can control and modify what they are saying as they say it. Similarly, signers see, feel, and control their signing. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
Specialization The purpose of linguistic signals is communication and not some other biological function. When humans speak or sign, it is generally intentional. An example of non-specialized communication is dog panting. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
When a dog pants, it often communicates to its owner that it is hot or thirsty; however, the dog pants in order to cool itself off. This is a biological function, and the communication is a secondary matter. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
Semanticity Specific sound signals are directly tied to certain meanings. Arbitrariness Languages are generally made up of both arbitrary and iconic symbols. In spoken languages, iconicity takes the form of onomatopoeia (e.g., "murmur" in English, "māo" in Mandarin). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
For the vast majority of other symbols, there is no intrinsic or logical connection between a sound form (signal) and what it refers to. Almost all names a human language attributes an object are thus arbitrary: the word "car" is nothing like an actual car. Spoken words are really nothing like the objects they represent. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
This is further demonstrated by the fact that different languages attribute very different names to the same object. Signed languages are transmitted visually and this allows for a certain degree of iconicity ("cup", "me," "up/down", etc. in ASL). For example, in the ASL sign HOUSE, the hands are flat and touch in a way that resembles the roof and walls of a house. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
However, many other signs are not iconic, and the relationship between form and meaning is arbitrary. Thus, while Hockett did not account for the possibility of non-arbitrary form-meaning relationships, the principle still generally applies. Discreteness Linguistic representations can be broken down into small discrete units which combine with each other in rule-governed ways. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
They are perceived categorically, not continuously. For example, English marks number with the plural morpheme /s/, which can be added to the end of any noun. The plural morpheme is perceived categorically, not continuously: we cannot express smaller or larger quantities by varying how loudly we pronounce the /s/. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
Displacement Displacement refers to the idea that humans can talk about things that are not physically present or that do not even exist. Speakers can talk about the past and the future, and can express hopes and dreams. A human's speech is not limited to here and now. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
Displacement is one of the features that separates human language from other forms of primate communication. Productivity Productivity refers to the idea that language-users can create and understand novel utterances. Humans are able to produce an unlimited amount of utterances. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
Also related to productivity is the concept of grammatical patterning, which facilitates the use and comprehension of language. Language is not stagnant, but is constantly changing. New idioms are created all the time and the meaning of signals can vary depending on the context and situation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
Traditional transmission Also known as cultural transmission, traditional transmission is the idea that, while humans are born with innate language capabilities, language is learned after birth in a social setting. It differs critically from Chomsky's idea of Universal Grammar but rather purports that people learn how to speak by interacting with experienced language users. Significantly, language and culture are woven together in this construct, functioning hand in hand for language acquisition. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
Duality of patterning Meaningful messages are made up of distinct smaller meaningful units (words and morphemes) which themselves are made up of distinct smaller, meaningless units (phonemes). Prevarication Prevarication is the ability to lie or deceive. When using language, humans can make false or meaningless statements. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
This is an important distinction made of human communication, i.e. language as compared to animal communication. While animal communication can display a few other design features as proposed by Hockett, animal communication is unable to lie or make up something that does not exist or have referents. Reflexiveness Humans can use language to talk about language. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
Also a very defining feature of human language, reflexiveness is a trait not shared by animal communication. With reflexiveness, humans can describe what language is, talk about the structure of language, and discuss the idea of language with others using language. Learnability Language is teachable and learnable. In the same way, as a speaker learns their first language, the speaker is able to learn other languages. It is worth noting that young children learn language with competence and ease; however, language acquisition is constrained by a critical period such that it becomes more difficult once children pass a certain age. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
Hockett distinguished language from communication. While almost all animals communicate in some way, a communication system is only considered language if it possesses all of the above characteristics. Some animal communication systems are impressively sophisticated in the sense that they possess a significant number of the design features as proposed by Hockett. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
Ants make use of the chemical-olfactory channel of communication. Ants produce chemicals called pheromones, which are released through body glands and received by the tips of the antenna. Ants can produce up to twenty different pheromone scents, each a unique signal used to communicate things such as the location of food and danger, or even the need to defend or relocate the colony. When an ant is killed, it releases a pheromone that alerts others of potential danger. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
Pheromones also help ants distinguish family members from strangers. The queen ant has special pheromones which she uses to signal her status, orchestrate work, and let the colony know when they need to raise princesses or drones. Ants will even engage in warfare to protect the colony or a food source. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
This warfare involves tactics that resemble human warfare. Marauder ants will capture and hold down an enemy while another ant crushes it. Ants are loyal to their colony to the death; however, the queen will kill her own in order to be the last one standing. This level of "planning" among an animal species requires an intricate communication. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
Bird communication demonstrates many of the features: the vocal-auditory channel, broadcast transmission/directional reception, rapid fading, semanticity, and arbitrariness. Bird communication is divided into songs and calls. Songs are used primarily to attract mates, while calls are used to alert conspecifics of food and danger and coordinate movement with the flock. Calls are acoustically simple, while songs are longer and more complex. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
Bird communication is both discrete and non-discrete. Birds use syntax to arrange their songs, where musical notes act as phonemes. The order of the notes is important to the meaning of the song, thus indicating that discreteness exists. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
Bird communication is also continuous in the sense that it utilizes duration and frequency. However, the fact that birds have "phonemes" does not necessarily mean that they can infinitely combine them. Birds have a limited number of songs that they can produce. The male indigo bunting only has one song, while the brown thrasher can sing over 2000 songs. Birds even have unique dialects, depending on where they are from.Two different bird species, the Southern Pied Blabber and the Japanese Tit have been observed to be using the duality of patterning, which is another feature thought to only be used by humans. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
Honeybee communication is distinct from other forms of animal communication. Rather than vocal-auditory, bees use the space-movement channel to communicate. Honeybees use dances to communicate—the round dance, the waggle dance, and the transitional dance. Depending on the species, the round dance is used to communicate that food is 20–30 m from the hive, the waggle dance that food is 40–90 m from the hive, and the transitional dance that food is at a distance in between. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
To do the waggle dance, a bee moves in a zig-zag line and then loops back to the beginning of the line, forming a figure-eight. The direction of the line points to the food. The speed of the dance indicates the distance to the food. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
In this way, bee dancing is also continuous, rather than discrete. Their communication is also not arbitrary: They move in a direction and pattern that physically points out where food is located. Honeybee dancing demonstrates displacement, which is generally considered a human characteristic. Most animals will only give a "food-found" call in the physical presence of food, yet bees can talk about food that is over 100 m away. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockett's_design_features |
The Indian Academy of Forensic Medicine (IAFM) was founded and registered as Society on 12 May 1972. Dr. I. Bhooshana Rao was the first President of the academy.The Indian Academy of Forensic Medicine is the largest association of the specialty of Forensic Pathology in India. It also publishes its quarterly Journal of Indian Academy of Forensic Medicine regularly. This association has specialist member strength of more than 1200. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Academy_of_Forensic_Medicine |
The policy of standardization was a policy implemented by the Sri Lankan government in 1971 to curtail the number of Tamil students selected for certain faculties in the universities. In 1972, the government added a district quota as a parameter within each language. In 1977 this policy was annulled and new policies were implemented for a fair education. Now, students from districts with inadequate educational facilities are given an allocated quota irrespective of their race. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_of_standardisation |
Under the British, English was the state language and consequently greatly benefited English speakers. However the majority of Sri Lankan populace lived outside urban areas and did not belong to the social elite, and therefore did not enjoy the benefits of English-medium education. The issue was compounded further by the fact that in Jaffna, where a largely Tamil populace resided, students had access to English-medium education through missionary schools. In addition, many Tamils sought jobs in government service and the medical and engineering professions due to the lack of opportunities in the densely populated dry zone of Jaffna, where crop yields were low. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_of_standardisation |
As a result Tamil parents pressurised their children to master English, Mathematics and Science as a means to secure good employment, and to avoid a life of unemployment and hard labour. This created a situation where a large proportion of students enrolled in universities throughout the country were English speaking Tamils and Sinhalese from urban centers like Colombo, particularly in professional courses such as medicine and engineering. In the early 1970s, some Sinhalese complained of Tamils overrepresentation in universities, especially in engineering and the sciences.Despite this in 1979, over 21% of the illiterates in the Tamil districts had no schooling, compared to 23% for the country as a whole. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_of_standardisation |
The highest rates of literacy were found in the Sinhala wet zone districts such as Matara, Kalutara, Gampaha and Colombo districts. Compared to the national average, the Tamil districts had a lower percentage attending primary and secondary school. Despite only a measly 6.67% of the estate Tamil population having secondary schooling, the government adopted no measures to create special ethnic quotas for them. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_of_standardisation |
The government policy of standardisation was in essence a discriminatory regulation to curtail the number of Tamil students selected for certain faculties in the universities. The benefits enjoyed by Sinhalese students as a result of this also meant a significant fall in the number of Tamil students within the Sri Lankan university student populace. University selection of 1971 was calculated based on language they sit. Numbers of allocations were proportional to the number of participants who sat to the examination in that language. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_of_standardisation |
As guaranteed before the exam, Tamil share was dropped to the proportion of the Tamils medium students (According to 1971 census 27% of the total population used Tamil as first medium).According to 1971 exam results, a large proportion of the Tamil allocation was enjoyed by Tamils in Jaffna and a large proportion of the Sinhalese share was enjoyed by the Sinhalese in Colombo. In 1972 government added district quota as a parameter within each languages. 30% of university places were allocated on the basis of island-wide merit; half the places were allocated on the basis of comparative scores within districts and an additional 15% reserved for students from under privileged districts. A lower university entrance qualifying mark for Sinhalese-medium students was also introduced in 1971 for science faculties, as shown by the table below: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_of_standardisation |
The hardest hit population group were the Sri Lankan Tamils, rather than the affluent Sinhalese of the rural and urban areas. Sinhalese historian C.R. de Silva stated that "ethnically there is little doubt that the major blow fell on Ceylon Tamils. "In 1969, the Northern Province, which was largely populated by Tamils and comprised 7% of the population of the country, provided 27.5 percent of the entrants to science-based courses in Sri Lankan universities. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_of_standardisation |
By 1974, this was reduced to 7%. However, Tamils were underrepresented in university as a whole in 1970, constituting 21.6% of the population, but holding only 16% of the places.The Indian Tamils had not gained from standardisation, despite having "the poorest schooling facilities on the island".Ratnajeevan Hoole in a letter to the Washington Times recounts: "I took the common Advanced Level exam in 1969 and was admitted to the engineering faculty. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_of_standardisation |
The government then redid the admissions after adding some 28 marks to the four-subject aggregate of Sinhalese students. I lost my seat. They effectively claimed that the son of a Sinhalese minister in an elite Colombo school was disadvantaged vis-a-vis a Tamil tea-plucker's son." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_of_standardisation |
In 1969, the Western Province provided 67.5 percent of admissions to science-based courses. This reduced to 27% in 1974, after a further law came into effect in 1973.In 1971, a system of standardisation of marks was introduced for admissions to the universities, obviously directed against Tamil-medium students. K. M. de Silva describes it as follows: "The qualifying mark for admission to the medical faculties was 250 (out of 400) for Tamil students, whereas it was only 229 for the Sinhalese. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_of_standardisation |
Worse still, this same pattern of a lower qualifying mark applied even when Sinhalese and Tamil students sat for the examination in English. In short, students sitting for examinations in the same language, but belonging to two ethnic groups, had different qualifying marks." He observes that by doing this in such an obviously discriminatory way, 'the United Front Government of the 1970s caused enormous harm to ethnic relations.' | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_of_standardisation |
This was not the end; in 1972 the 'district quota system' was introduced, again to the detriment of the Sri Lankan Tamil people. The Sinhalese historian C.R. de Silva wrote: "By 1977 the issue of university admissions had become a focal point of the conflict between the government and Tamil leaders. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_of_standardisation |
Tamil youth, embittered by what they considered discrimination against them, formed the radical wing of the Tamil United Liberation Front. Many advocated the use of violence to establish a separate Tamil state of Eelam. It was an object lesson of how inept policy measures and insensitivity to minority interests can exacerbate ethnic tensions." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_of_standardisation |
Singapore's founding Prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, one of Asia's most respected statesman summarized the negative effect of the policy: “When I went to Colombo for the first time in 1956 it was a better city than Singapore because Singapore had three-and-a-half years of Japanese occupation and Colombo was the centre or HQ of Mountbatten’s Southeast Asia command. And they had sterling reserves. They had two Universities. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_of_standardisation |
Before the war, a thick layer of educated talent. So if you believe what American liberals or British liberals used to say, then it ought to have flourished. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_of_standardisation |
But it didn’t. One-man one-vote led to the domination of the Sinhalese majority over the minority Tamils who were the active and intelligent fellows who worked hard and got themselves penalised. And English was out. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_of_standardisation |
They were educated in English. Sinhalese was in. They got quotas in two universities and now they have become fanatical Tigers. And the country will never be put together again.” | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_of_standardisation |
The language based standardization of university entrance was abandoned in 1977, and introduced different standardization based on merits, district quotas. 80% of the university places were filled in accordance with raw marks scored by students. The remaining 20% of places was allocated to students in districts with inadequate educational facilities. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_of_standardisation |
A great power is a sovereign state that is recognized as having the ability and expertise to exert its influence on a global scale. Great powers characteristically possess military and economic strength, as well as diplomatic and soft power influence, which may cause middle or small powers to consider the great powers' opinions before taking actions of their own. International relations theorists have posited that great power status can be characterized into power capabilities, spatial aspects, and status dimensions.While some nations are widely considered to be great powers, there is considerable debate on the exact criteria of great power status. Historically, the status of great powers has been formally recognized in organizations such as the Congress of Vienna of 1814–1815 or the United Nations Security Council, of which permanent members are: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
The United Nations Security Council, NATO Quint, the G7, the BRICs and the Contact Group have all been described as great power concerts.The term "great power" was first used to represent the most important powers in Europe during the post-Napoleonic era. The "Great Powers" constituted the "Concert of Europe" and claimed the right to joint enforcement of the postwar treaties. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
The formalization of the division between small powers and great powers came about with the signing of the Treaty of Chaumont in 1814. Since then, the international balance of power has shifted numerous times, most dramatically during World War I and World War II. In literature, alternative terms for great power are often world power or major power. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
There are no set or defined characteristics of a great power. These characteristics have often been treated as empirical, self-evident to the assessor. However, this approach has the disadvantage of subjectivity. As a result, there have been attempts to derive some common criteria and to treat these as essential elements of great power status. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
Danilovic (2002) highlights three central characteristics, which she terms as "power, spatial, and status dimensions," that distinguish major powers from other states. The following section ("Characteristics") is extracted from her discussion of these three dimensions, including all of the citations.Early writings on the subject tended to judge states by the realist criterion, as expressed by the historian A. J. P. Taylor when he noted that "The test of a great power is the test of strength for war." Later writers have expanded this test, attempting to define power in terms of overall military, economic, and political capacity. Kenneth Waltz, the founder of the neorealist theory of international relations, uses a set of six criteria to determine great power: population and territory, resource endowment, military strength, economic capability, political stability and competence.John Mearsheimer defines great powers as those that "have sufficient military assets to put up a serious fight in an all-out conventional war against the most powerful state in the world." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
As noted above, for many, power capabilities were the sole criterion. However, even under the more expansive tests, power retains a vital place. This aspect has received mixed treatment, with some confusion as to the degree of power required. Writers have approached the concept of great power with differing conceptualizations of the world situation, from multi-polarity to overwhelming hegemony. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
In his essay, 'French Diplomacy in the Postwar Period', the French historian Jean-Baptiste Duroselle spoke of the concept of multi-polarity: "A Great power is one which is capable of preserving its own independence against any other single power. "This differed from earlier writers, notably from Leopold von Ranke, who clearly had a different idea of the world situation. In his essay 'The Great Powers', written in 1833, von Ranke wrote: "If one could establish as a definition of a Great power that it must be able to maintain itself against all others, even when they are united, then Frederick has raised Prussia to that position." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
These positions have been the subject of criticism.In 2011, the U.S. had 10 major strengths according to Chinese scholar Peng Yuan, the director of the Institute of American Studies of the China Institutes for Contemporary International Studies. 1. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
Population, geographic position, and natural resources. 2. Military muscle. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
3. High technology and education. 4. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
Cultural/soft power. 5. Cyber power. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
6. Allies, the United States having more than any other state. 7. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
Geopolitical strength, as embodied in global projection forces. 8. Intelligence capabilities, as demonstrated by the killing of Osama bin Laden. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
9. Intellectual power, fed by a plethora of U.S. think tanks and the “revolving door” between research institutions and government. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
10. Strategic power, the United States being the world’s only country with a truly global strategy.However he also noted where the U.S. had recently slipped: 1. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
Political power, as manifested by the breakdown of bipartisanship. 2. Economic power, as illustrated by the post-2007 slowdown. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
3. Financial power, given intractable deficits and rising debt. 4. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
Social power, as weakened by societal polarization. 5. Institutional power, since the United States can no longer dominate global institutions | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
All states have a geographic scope of interests, actions, or projected power. This is a crucial factor in distinguishing a great power from a regional power; by definition, the scope of a regional power is restricted to its region. It has been suggested that a great power should be possessed of actual influence throughout the scope of the prevailing international system. Arnold J. Toynbee, for example, observes that "Great power may be defined as a political force exerting an effect co-extensive with the widest range of the society in which it operates. The Great powers of 1914 were 'world-powers' because Western society had recently become 'world-wide'. "Other suggestions have been made that a great power should have the capacity to engage in extra-regional affairs and that a great power ought to be possessed of extra-regional interests, two propositions which are often closely connected. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
Formal or informal acknowledgment of a nation's great power status has also been a criterion for being a great power. As political scientist George Modelski notes, "The status of Great power is sometimes confused with the condition of being powerful. The office, as it is known, did in fact evolve from the role played by the great military states in earlier periods... But the Great power system institutionalizes the position of the powerful state in a web of rights and obligations. "This approach restricts analysis to the epoch following the Congress of Vienna at which great powers were first formally recognized. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
In the absence of such a formal act of recognition it has been suggested that great power status can arise by implication by judging the nature of a state's relations with other great powers.A further option is to examine a state's willingness to act as a great power. As a nation will seldom declare that it is acting as such, this usually entails a retrospective examination of state conduct. As a result, this is of limited use in establishing the nature of contemporary powers, at least not without the exercise of subjective observation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
Other important criteria throughout history are that great powers should have enough influence to be included in discussions of contemporary political and diplomatic questions, and exercise influence on the outcome and resolution. Historically, when major political questions were addressed, several great powers met to discuss them. Before the era of groups like the United Nations, participants of such meetings were not officially named but rather were decided based on their great power status. These were conferences that settled important questions based on major historical events. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
Historian Phillips P. O'Brien, Head of the School of International Relations and Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of St. Andrews, criticizes the concept of a great power, arguing that it is dated, vaguely defined, and inconsistently applied. He states that the term is used to "describe everything from true superpowers such as the United States and China, which wield the full spectrum of economic, technological, and military might, to better-than-average military powers such as Russia, which have nuclear weapons but little else that would be considered indicators of great power. " O'Brien advocates for the concept of a "full-spectrum power", which takes into account "all the fundamentals on which superior military power is built", including economic resources, domestic politics and political systems (which can restrain or expand dimensions of power), technological capabilities, and social and cultural factors (such as a society's willingness to go to war or invest in military development). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
Various sets of great, or significant, powers have existed throughout history. An early reference to great powers is from the third century, when the Persian prophet Mani described Rome, China, Aksum, and Persia as the four greatest kingdoms of his time. During the Napoleonic wars in Europe, American diplomat James Monroe observed that, "The respect which one power has for another is in exact proportion of the means which they respectively have of injuring each other." The term "great power" first appears at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
The Congress established the Concert of Europe as an attempt to preserve peace after the years of Napoleonic Wars. Lord Castlereagh, the British foreign secretary, first used the term in its diplomatic context, writing on 13 February 1814: "there is every prospect of the Congress terminating with a general accord and Guarantee between the Great powers of Europe, with a determination to support the arrangement agreed upon, and to turn the general influence and if necessary the general arms against the Power that shall first attempt to disturb the Continental peace. "The Congress of Vienna consisted of five main powers: the Austrian Empire, France, Prussia, Russia, and Great Britain. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
These five primary participants constituted the original great powers as we know the term today. Other powers, such as Spain, Portugal, and Sweden, which were great powers during the 17th century and the earlier 18th century, were consulted on certain specific issues, but they were not full participants. After the Congress of Vienna, Great Britain emerged as the pre-eminent global hegemon, due to it being the first nation to industrialize, possessing the largest navy, and the extent of its overseas empire, which ushered in a century of Pax Britannica. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
The balance of power between the Great Powers became a major influence in European politics, prompting Otto von Bismarck to say "All politics reduces itself to this formula: try to be one of three, as long as the world is governed by the unstable equilibrium of five great powers. "Over time, the relative power of these five nations fluctuated, which by the dawn of the 20th century had served to create an entirely different balance of power. Great Britain and the new German Empire (from 1871), experienced continued economic growth and political power. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
Others, such as Russia and Austria-Hungary, stagnated. At the same time, other states were emerging and expanding in power, largely through the process of industrialization. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
These countries seeking to attain great power status were: Italy after the Risorgimento era, Japan during the Meiji era, and the United States after its civil war. By 1900, the balance of world power had changed substantially since the Congress of Vienna. The Eight-Nation Alliance was an alliance of eight nations created in response to the Boxer Rebellion in China. It formed in 1900 and consisted of the five Congress powers plus Italy, Japan, and the United States, representing the great powers at the beginning of the 20th century. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
Shifts of international power have most notably occurred through major conflicts. The conclusion of World War I and the resulting treaties of Versailles, St-Germain, Neuilly, Trianon, and Sèvres made Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and the United States the chief arbiters of the new world order. The German Empire was defeated, Austria-Hungary was divided into new, less powerful states and the Russian Empire fell to revolution. During the Paris Peace Conference, the "Big Four" – Great Britain, France, Italy, and the United States – controlled the proceedings and outcome of the treaties more than Japan. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
The Big Four were the architects of the Treaty of Versailles which was signed by Germany; the Treaty of St. Germain, with Austria; the Treaty of Neuilly, with Bulgaria; the Treaty of Trianon, with Hungary; and the Treaty of Sèvres, with the Ottoman Empire. During the decision-making of the Treaty of Versailles, Italy pulled out of the conference because a part of its demands were not met and temporarily left the other three countries as the sole major architects of that treaty, referred to as the "Big Three".The status of the victorious great powers were recognised by permanent seats at the League of Nations Council, where they acted as a type of executive body directing the Assembly of the League. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
However, the council began with only four permanent members – Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan – because the United States, meant to be the fifth permanent member, never joined the League. Germany later joined after the Locarno Treaties, which made it a member of the League of Nations, and later left (and withdrew from the League in 1933); Japan left, and the Soviet Union joined. When World War II began in 1939, it divided the world into two alliances: the Allies (initially the United Kingdom and France, and Poland, followed in 1941 by the Soviet Union, China, and the United States) and the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
During World War II, the U.S., U.K., USSR, and China were referred as a "trusteeship of the powerful" and were recognized as the Allied "Big Four" in Declaration by United Nations in 1942. These four countries were referred as the "Four Policemen" of the Allies and considered as the primary victors of World War II. The importance of France was acknowledged by their inclusion, along with the other four, in the group of countries allotted permanent seats in the United Nations Security Council. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
Since the end of the World Wars, the term "great power" has been joined by a number of other power classifications. Foremost among these is the concept of the superpower, used to describe those nations with overwhelming power and influence in the rest of the world. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
It was first coined in 1944 by William T. R. Fox and according to him, there were three superpowers: Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union. But after World War II Britain lost its superpower status. The term middle power has emerged for those nations which exercise a degree of global influence but are insufficient to be decisive on international affairs. Regional powers are those whose influence is generally confined to their region of the world. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
The Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc, which began following World War II. The term "cold" is used because there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two superpowers, but they each supported major regional conflicts known as proxy wars. The conflict was based around the ideological and geopolitical struggle for global influence by these two superpowers, following their temporary alliance and victory against Nazi Germany in 1945.During the Cold War, Japan, France, the United Kingdom and West Germany rebuilt their economies. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
France and the United Kingdom maintained technologically advanced armed forces with power projection capabilities and maintain large defense budgets to this day. Yet, as the Cold War continued, authorities began to question if France and the United Kingdom could retain their long-held statuses as great powers. China, with the world's largest population, has slowly risen to great power status, with large growth in economic and military power in the post-war period. After 1949, the Republic of China began to lose its recognition as the sole legitimate government of China by the other great powers, in favour of the People's Republic of China. Subsequently, in 1971, it lost its permanent seat at the UN Security Council to the People's Republic of China. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States are often referred to as great powers by academics due to "their political and economic dominance of the global arena". These five nations are the only states to have permanent seats with veto power on the UN Security Council. They are also the only state entities to have met the conditions to be considered "Nuclear Weapons States" under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and maintain military expenditures which are among the largest in the world. However, there is no unanimous agreement among authorities as to the current status of these powers or what precisely defines a great power. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_power |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.