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For much of the eighteenth century, France approached its wars in the same way. It would let colonies defend themselves or would offer only minimal help (sending them limited numbers of troops or inexperienced soldiers), anticipating that fights for the colonies would most likely be lost anyway. This strategy was to a ...
The British—by inclination as well as for practical reasons—had tended to avoid large-scale commitments of troops on the Continent. They sought to offset the disadvantage of this in Europe by allying themselves with one or more Continental powers whose interests were antithetical to those of their enemies, particularly...
William Pitt, who entered the cabinet in 1756, had a grand vision for the war that made it entirely different from previous wars with France. As prime minister Pitt committed Britain to a grand strategy of seizing the entire French Empire, especially its possessions in North America and India. Britain's main weapon was...
The British Prime Minister, the Duke of Newcastle, was optimistic that the new series of alliances could prevent war from breaking out in Europe. However, a large French force was assembled at Toulon, and the French opened the campaign against the British by an attack on Minorca in the Mediterranean. A British attempt ...
Frederick II of Prussia had received reports of the clashes in North America and had formed an alliance with Great Britain. On 29 August 1756, he led Prussian troops across the border of Saxony, one of the small German states in league with Austria. He intended this as a bold pre-emption of an anticipated Austro-French...
Accordingly, leaving Field Marshal Count Kurt von Schwerin in Silesia with 25,000 soldiers to guard against incursions from Moravia or Hungary, and leaving Field Marshal Hans von Lehwaldt in East Prussia to guard against Russian invasion from the east, Frederick set off with his army for Saxony. The Prussian army march...
The Saxon and Austrian armies were unprepared, and their forces were scattered. Frederick occupied Dresden with little or no opposition from the Saxons. At the Battle of Lobositz on 1 October 1756, Frederick prevented the isolated Saxon army from being reinforced by an Austrian army under General Browne. The Prussians ...
Britain had been surprised by the sudden Prussian offensive but now began shipping supplies and ₤670,000 (equivalent to ₤89.9 million in 2015) to its new ally. A combined force of allied German states was organised by the British to protect Hanover from French invasion, under the command of the Duke of Cumberland. The ...
In early 1757, Frederick II again took the initiative by marching into the Kingdom of Bohemia, hoping to inflict a decisive defeat on Austrian forces. After winning the bloody Battle of Prague on 6 May 1757, in which both forces suffered major casualties, the Prussians forced the Austrians back into the fortifications ...
Later that summer, the Russians invaded Memel with 75,000 troops. Memel had one of the strongest fortresses in Prussia. However, after five days of artillery bombardment the Russian army was able to storm it. The Russians then used Memel as a base to invade East Prussia and defeated a smaller Prussian force in the fier...
Things were looking grim for Prussia now, with the Austrians mobilising to attack Prussian-controlled soil and a French army under Soubise approaching from the west. However, in November and December of 1757, the whole situation in Germany was reversed. First, Frederick devastated Prince Soubise's French force at the B...
This problem was compounded when the main Hanoverian army under Cumberland was defeated at the Battle of Hastenbeck and forced to surrender entirely at the Convention of Klosterzeven following a French Invasion of Hanover. The Convention removed Hanover and Brunswick from the war, leaving the Western approach to Prussi...
Calculating that no further Russian advance was likely until 1758, Frederick moved the bulk of his eastern forces to Pomerania under the command of Marshal Lehwaldt where they were to repel the Swedish invasion. In short order, the Prussian army drove the Swedes back, occupied most of Swedish Pomerania, and blockaded i...
Between 10 and 17 October 1757, a Hungarian general, Count András Hadik, serving in the Austrian army, executed what may be the most famous hussar action in history. When the Prussian King Frederick was marching south with his powerful armies, the Hungarian general unexpectedly swung his force of 5,000, mostly hussars,...
In early 1758, Frederick launched an invasion of Moravia, and laid siege to Olmütz (now Olomouc, Czech Republic). Following an Austrian victory at the Battle of Domstadtl that wiped out a supply convoy destined for Olmütz, Frederick broke off the siege and withdrew from Moravia. It marked the end of his final attempt t...
In April 1758, the British concluded the Anglo-Prussian Convention with Frederick in which they committed to pay him an annual subsidy of £670,000. Britain also dispatched 9,000 troops to reinforce Ferdinand's Hanoverian army, the first British troop commitment on the continent and a reversal in the policy of Pitt. Fer...
By this point Frederick was increasingly concerned by the Russian advance from the east and marched to counter it. Just east of the Oder in Brandenburg-Neumark, at the Battle of Zorndorf (now Sarbinowo, Poland), a Prussian army of 35,000 men under Frederick on Aug. 25, 1758, fought a Russian army of 43,000 commanded by...
The war was continuing indecisively when on 14 October Marshal Daun's Austrians surprised the main Prussian army at the Battle of Hochkirch in Saxony. Frederick lost much of his artillery but retreated in good order, helped by dense woods. The Austrians had ultimately made little progress in the campaign in Saxony desp...
The year 1759 saw several Prussian defeats. At the Battle of Kay, or Paltzig, the Russian Count Saltykov with 47,000 Russians defeated 26,000 Prussians commanded by General Carl Heinrich von Wedel. Though the Hanoverians defeated an army of 60,000 French at Minden, Austrian general Daun forced the surrender of an entir...
The French planned to invade the British Isles during 1759 by accumulating troops near the mouth of the Loire and concentrating their Brest and Toulon fleets. However, two sea defeats prevented this. In August, the Mediterranean fleet under Jean-François de La Clue-Sabran was scattered by a larger British fleet under E...
Despite this, the Austrians, under the command of General Laudon, captured Glatz (now Kłodzko, Poland) in Silesia. In the Battle of Liegnitz Frederick scored a strong victory despite being outnumbered three to one. The Russians under General Saltykov and Austrians under General Lacy briefly occupied his capital, Berlin...
1762 brought two new countries into the war. Britain declared war against Spain on 4 January 1762; Spain reacted by issuing their own declaration of war against Britain on 18 January. Portugal followed by joining the war on Britain's side. Spain, aided by the French, launched an invasion of Portugal and succeeded in ca...
On the eastern front, progress was very slow. The Russian army was heavily dependent upon its main magazines in Poland, and the Prussian army launched several successful raids against them. One of them, led by general Platen in September resulted in the loss of 2,000 Russians, mostly captured, and the destruction of 5,...
Britain now threatened to withdraw its subsidies if Prussia didn't consider offering concessions to secure peace. As the Prussian armies had dwindled to just 60,000 men and with Berlin itself under siege, Frederick's survival was severely threatened. Then on 5 January 1762 the Russian Empress Elizabeth died. Her Prusso...
By 1763, the war in Central Europe was essentially a stalemate. Frederick had retaken most of Silesia and Saxony but not the latter's capital, Dresden. His financial situation was not dire, but his kingdom was devastated and his army severely weakened. His manpower had dramatically decreased, and he had lost so many ef...
Despite the debatable strategic success and the operational failure of the descent on Rochefort, William Pitt—who saw purpose in this type of asymmetric enterprise—prepared to continue such operations. An army was assembled under the command of Charles Spencer, 3rd Duke of Marlborough; he was aided by Lord George Sackv...
Pitt now prepared to send troops into Germany; and both Marlborough and Sackville, disgusted by what they perceived as the futility of the "descents", obtained commissions in that army. The elderly General Bligh was appointed to command a new "descent", escorted by Howe. The campaign began propitiously with the Raid on...
The troops were reembarked and moved to the Bay of St. Lunaire in Brittany where, on 3 September, they were landed to operate against St. Malo; however, this action proved impractical. Worsening weather forced the two armies to separate: the ships sailed for the safer anchorage of St. Cast, while the army proceeded ove...
Great Britain lost Minorca in the Mediterranean to the French in 1756 but captured the French colonies in Senegal in 1758. The British Royal Navy took the French sugar colonies of Guadeloupe in 1759 and Martinique in 1762 as well as the Spanish cities of Havana in Cuba, and Manila in the Philippines, both prominent Spa...
During the war, the Seven Nations of Canada were allied with the French. These were Native Americans of the Laurentian valley—the Algonquin, the Abenaki, the Huron, and others. Although the Algonquin tribes and the Seven Nations were not directly concerned with the fate of the Ohio River Valley, they had been victims o...
In 1756 and 1757 the French captured forts Oswego and William Henry from the British. The latter victory was marred when France's native allies broke the terms of capitulation and attacked the retreating British column, which was under French guard, slaughtering and scalping soldiers and taking captive many men, women ...
British Prime Minister William Pitt's focus on the colonies for the 1758 campaign paid off with the taking of Louisbourg after French reinforcements were blocked by British naval victory in the Battle of Cartagena and in the successful capture of Fort Duquesne and Fort Frontenac. The British also continued the process ...
All of Britain's campaigns against New France succeeded in 1759, part of what became known as an Annus Mirabilis. Fort Niagara and Fort Carillon on 8 July 1758 fell to sizable British forces, cutting off French frontier forts further west. On 13 September 1759, following a three-month siege of Quebec, General James Wol...
In 1762, towards the end of the war, French forces attacked St. John's, Newfoundland. If successful, the expedition would have strengthened France's hand at the negotiating table. Although they took St. John's and raided nearby settlements, the French forces were eventually defeated by British troops at the Battle of S...
The history of the Seven Years' War in North America, particularly the expulsion of the Acadians, the siege of Quebec, the death of Wolfe, and the Battle of Fort William Henry generated a vast number of ballads, broadsides, images, and novels (see Longfellow's Evangeline, Benjamin West's The Death of General Wolfe, Jam...
The Anglo-French hostilities were ended in 1763 by the Treaty of Paris, which involved a complex series of land exchanges, the most important being France's cession to Spain of Louisiana, and to Great Britain the rest of New France except for the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon. Faced with the choice of retrieving e...
In India, the British retained the Northern Circars, but returned all the French trading ports. The treaty, however, required that the fortifications of these settlements be destroyed and never rebuilt, while only minimal garrisons could be maintained there, thus rendering them worthless as military bases. Combined wit...
The Treaty of Hubertusburg, between Austria, Prussia, and Saxony, was signed on February 15, 1763, at a hunting lodge between Dresden and Leipzig. Negotiations had started there on December 31, 1762. Frederick, who had considered ceding East Prussia to Russia if Peter III helped him secure Saxony, finally insisted on e...
Austria was not able to retake Silesia or make any significant territorial gain. However, it did prevent Prussia from invading parts of Saxony. More significantly, its military performance proved far better than during the War of the Austrian Succession and seemed to vindicate Maria Theresa's administrative and militar...
Not only that, Austria now found herself estranged with the new developments within the empire itself. Beside the rise of Prussia, Augustus III, although ineffective, could mustered up an army not only from Saxony, but also Poland, considering the elector was also the King of Poland. Bavaria's growing power and indepen...
Prussia emerged from the war as a great power whose importance could no longer be challenged. Frederick the Great’s personal reputation was enormously enhanced, as his debt to fortune (Russia’s volte-face after Elizabeth’s death) and to the British subsidy were soon forgotten while the memory of his energy and his mili...
The British government was close to bankruptcy, and Britain now faced the delicate task of pacifying its new French-Canadian subjects as well as the many American Indian tribes who had supported France. George III's Proclamation of 1763, which forbade white settlement beyond the crest of the Appalachians, was intended ...
The war had also brought to an end the "Old System" of alliances in Europe, In the years after the war, under the direction of Lord Sandwich, the British did try to re-establish this system. But after her surprising grand success against a coalition of great powers, European states such as Austria, The Dutch Republic, ...
Richard Phillips Feynman (/ˈfaɪnmən/; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics...
Feynman was a keen popularizer of physics through both books and lectures, including a 1959 talk on top-down nanotechnology called There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom, and the three-volume publication of his undergraduate lectures, The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Feynman also became known through his semi-autobiograp...
Richard Phillips Feynman was born on May 11, 1918, in Queens, New York City, the son of Lucille (née Phillips), a homemaker, and Melville Arthur Feynman, a sales manager. His family originated from Russia and Poland; both of his parents were Ashkenazi Jews. They were not religious, and by his youth Feynman described hi...
The young Feynman was heavily influenced by his father, who encouraged him to ask questions to challenge orthodox thinking, and who was always ready to teach Feynman something new. From his mother he gained the sense of humor that he had throughout his life. As a child, he had a talent for engineering, maintained an ex...
When Richard was five years old, his mother gave birth to a younger brother, but this brother died at four weeks of age. Four years later, Richard gained a sister, Joan, and the family moved to Far Rockaway, Queens. Though separated by nine years, Joan and Richard were close, as they both shared a natural curiosity abo...
Feynman attended Far Rockaway High School, a school in Far Rockaway, Queens also attended by fellow Nobel laureates Burton Richter and Baruch Samuel Blumberg. Upon starting high school, Feynman was quickly promoted into a higher math class. An unspecified school-administered IQ test estimated his IQ at 123—high, but "m...
He attained a perfect score on the graduate school entrance exams to Princeton University in mathematics and physics—an unprecedented feat—but did rather poorly on the history and English portions. Attendees at Feynman's first seminar included Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli, and John von Neumann. He received a PhD fro...
At Princeton, the physicist Robert R. Wilson encouraged Feynman to participate in the Manhattan Project—the wartime U.S. Army project at Los Alamos developing the atomic bomb. Feynman said he was persuaded to join this effort to build it before Nazi Germany developed their own bomb. He was assigned to Hans Bethe's theo...
He immersed himself in work on the project, and was present at the Trinity bomb test. Feynman claimed to be the only person to see the explosion without the very dark glasses or welder's lenses provided, reasoning that it was safe to look through a truck windshield, as it would screen out the harmful ultraviolet radiat...
Feynman's other work at Los Alamos included calculating neutron equations for the Los Alamos "Water Boiler", a small nuclear reactor, to measure how close an assembly of fissile material was to criticality. On completing this work he was transferred to the Oak Ridge facility, where he aided engineers in devising safety...
Due to the top secret nature of the work, Los Alamos was isolated. In Feynman's own words, "There wasn't anything to do there." Bored, he indulged his curiosity by learning to pick the combination locks on cabinets and desks used to secure papers. Feynman played many jokes on colleagues. In one case he found the combin...
Feynman alludes to his thoughts on the justification for getting involved in the Manhattan project in The Pleasure of Finding Things Out. He felt the possibility of Nazi Germany developing the bomb before the Allies was a compelling reason to help with its development for the U.S. He goes on to say that it was an error...
Following the completion of his PhD in 1942, Feynman held an appointment at the University of Wisconsin–Madison as an assistant professor of physics. The appointment was spent on leave for his involvement in the Manhattan project. In 1945, he received a letter from Dean Mark Ingraham of the College of Letters and Scien...
After the war, Feynman declined an offer from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, despite the presence there of such distinguished faculty members as Albert Einstein, Kurt Gödel and John von Neumann. Feynman followed Hans Bethe, instead, to Cornell University, where Feynman taught theoretical phy...
Despite yet another offer from the Institute for Advanced Study, Feynman rejected the Institute on the grounds that there were no teaching duties: Feynman felt that students were a source of inspiration and teaching was a diversion during uncreative spells. Because of this, the Institute for Advanced Study and Princeto...
Feynman has been called the "Great Explainer". He gained a reputation for taking great care when giving explanations to his students and for making it a moral duty to make the topic accessible. His guiding principle was that, if a topic could not be explained in a freshman lecture, it was not yet fully understood. Feyn...
He also developed Feynman diagrams, a bookkeeping device that helps in conceptualizing and calculating interactions between particles in spacetime, including the interactions between electrons and their antimatter counterparts, positrons. This device allowed him, and later others, to approach time reversibility and oth...
From his diagrams of a small number of particles interacting in spacetime, Feynman could then model all of physics in terms of the spins of those particles and the range of coupling of the fundamental forces. Feynman attempted an explanation of the strong interactions governing nucleons scattering called the parton mod...
After the success of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman turned to quantum gravity. By analogy with the photon, which has spin 1, he investigated the consequences of a free massless spin 2 field, and derived the Einstein field equation of general relativity, but little more. The computational device that Feynman discovere...
Feynman was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1965. At this time in the early 1960s, Feynman exhausted himself by working on multiple major projects at the same time, including a request, while at Caltech, to "spruce up" the teaching of undergraduates. After three years devoted to the task, he...
In 1974, Feynman delivered the Caltech commencement address on the topic of cargo cult science, which has the semblance of science, but is only pseudoscience due to a lack of "a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty" on the part of the scientist. He ...
In the late 1980s, according to "Richard Feynman and the Connection Machine", Feynman played a crucial role in developing the first massively parallel computer, and in finding innovative uses for it in numerical computations, in building neural networks, as well as physical simulations using cellular automata (such as ...
Feynman diagrams are now fundamental for string theory and M-theory, and have even been extended topologically. The world-lines of the diagrams have developed to become tubes to allow better modeling of more complicated objects such as strings and membranes. Shortly before his death, Feynman criticized string theory in...
Feynman devoted the latter half of his book What Do You Care What Other People Think? to his experience on the Rogers Commission, straying from his usual convention of brief, light-hearted anecdotes to deliver an extended and sober narrative. Feynman's account reveals a disconnect between NASA's engineers and executive...
Although born to and raised by parents who were Ashkenazi, Feynman was not only an atheist, but declined to be labelled Jewish. He routinely refused to be included in lists or books that classified people by race. He asked to not be included in Tina Levitan's The Laureates: Jewish Winners of the Nobel Prize, writing, "...
While pursuing his PhD at Princeton, Feynman married his high school sweetheart, Arline Greenbaum (often misspelled "Arlene"), despite the knowledge that she was seriously ill with tuberculosis—an incurable disease at the time. She died in 1945. In 1946, Feynman wrote a letter to her, expressing his deep love and heart...
Feynman had a great deal of success teaching Carl, using, for example, discussions about ants and Martians as a device for gaining perspective on problems and issues. He was surprised to learn that the same teaching devices were not useful with Michelle. Mathematics was a common interest for father and son; they both e...
Feynman traveled to Brazil, where he gave courses at the BCPF (Brazilian Center for Physics Research) and near the end of his life schemed to visit the Russian land of Tuva, a dream that, because of Cold War bureaucratic problems, never became reality. The day after he died, a letter arrived for him from the Soviet gov...
According to Genius, the James Gleick-authored biography, Feynman tried LSD during his professorship at Caltech. Somewhat embarrassed by his actions, he largely sidestepped the issue when dictating his anecdotes; he mentions it in passing in the "O Americano, Outra Vez" section, while the "Altered States" chapter in Su...
In Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, he gives advice on the best way to pick up a girl in a hostess bar. At Caltech, he used a nude or topless bar as an office away from his usual office, making sketches or writing physics equations on paper placemats. When the county officials tried to close the place, all visitors ...
In a 1992 New York Times article on Feynman and his legacy, James Gleick recounts the story of how Murray Gell-Mann described what has become known as "The Feynman Algorithm" or "The Feynman Problem-Solving Algorithm" to a student: "The student asks Gell-Mann about Feynman's notes. Gell-Mann says no, Dick's methods are...
The Feynman Lectures on Physics is perhaps his most accessible work for anyone with an interest in physics, compiled from lectures to Caltech undergraduates in 1961–64. As news of the lectures' lucidity grew, professional physicists and graduate students began to drop in to listen. Co-authors Robert B. Leighton and Mat...
Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi (Arabic: معمر محمد أبو منيار القذافي‎ Arabic pronunciation: [muʕamar al.qaðaːfiː]; /ˈmoʊ.əmɑːr ɡəˈdɑːfi/; audio (help·info); c. 1942 – 20 October 2011), commonly known as Colonel Gaddafi,[b] was a Libyan revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He governed Libya as Revol...
The son of an impoverished Bedouin goat herder, Gaddafi became involved in politics while at school in Sabha, subsequently enrolling in the Royal Military Academy, Benghazi. Founding a revolutionary cell within the military, in 1969 they seized power from the absolute monarchy of King Idris in a bloodless coup. Becomin...
In 1977, Gaddafi dissolved the Republic and created a new socialist state, the Jamahiriya ("state of the masses"). Officially adopting a symbolic role in governance, he retained power as military commander-in-chief and head of the Revolutionary Committees responsible for policing and suppressing opponents. Overseeing u...
Muammar Gaddafi was born in a tent near Qasr Abu Hadi, a rural area outside the town of Sirte in the deserts of western Libya. His family came from a small, relatively un-influential tribal group called the Qadhadhfa, who were Arabized Berber in heritage. His father, Mohammad Abdul Salam bin Hamed bin Mohammad, was kno...
From childhood, Gaddafi was aware of the involvement of European colonialists in Libya; his nation was occupied by Italy, and during the North African Campaign of World War II it witnessed conflict between Italian and British troops. According to later claims, Gaddafi's paternal grandfather, Abdessalam Bouminyar, was k...
Gaddafi's earliest education was of a religious nature, imparted by a local Islamic teacher. Subsequently moving to nearby Sirte to attend elementary school, he progressed through six grades in four years. Education in Libya was not free, but his father thought it would greatly benefit his son despite the financial str...
Gaddafi organized demonstrations and distributed posters criticizing the monarchy. In October 1961, he led a demonstration protesting Syria's secession from the United Arab Republic. During this they broke windows of a local hotel accused of serving alcohol. Catching the authorities' attention, they expelled his family...
Gaddafi briefly studied History at the University of Libya in Benghazi, before dropping out to join the military. Despite his police record, in 1963 he began training at the Royal Military Academy, Benghazi, alongside several like-minded friends from Misrata. The armed forces offered the only opportunity for upward soc...
The Bovington signal course's director reported that Gaddafi successfully overcame problems learning English, displaying a firm command of voice procedure. Noting that Gaddafi's favourite hobbies were reading and playing football, he thought him an "amusing officer, always cheerful, hard-working, and conscientious." Ga...
Many teachers at Sabha were Egyptian, and for the first time Gaddafi had access to pan-Arab newspapers and radio broadcasts, most notably the Cairo-based Voice of the Arabs. Growing up, Gaddafi witnessed significant events rock the Arab world, including the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, the Su...
Idris' government was increasingly unpopular by the latter 1960s; it had exacerbated Libya's traditional regional and tribal divisions by centralising the country's federal system in order to take advantage of the country's oil wealth, while corruption and entrenched systems of patronage were widespread throughout the ...
In mid-1969, Idris travelled abroad to spend the summer in Turkey and Greece. Gaddafi's Free Officers recognized this as their chance to overthrow the monarchy, initiating "Operation Jerusalem". On 1 September, they occupied airports, police depots, radio stations and government offices in Tripoli and Benghazi. Gaddafi...
Having removed the monarchical government, Gaddafi proclaimed the foundation of the Libyan Arab Republic. Addressing the populace by radio, he proclaimed an end to the "reactionary and corrupt" regime, "the stench of which has sickened and horrified us all." Due to the coup's bloodless nature, it was initially labelled...
Although theoretically a collegial body operating through consensus building, Gaddafi dominated the RCC, although some of the others attempted to constrain what they saw as his excesses. Gaddafi remained the government's public face, with the identities of the other RCC members only being publicly revealed on 10 Januar...
The coup completed, the RCC proceeded with their intentions of consolidating the revolutionary government and modernizing the country. They purged monarchists and members of Idris' Senussi clan from Libya's political world and armed forces; Gaddafi believed this elite were opposed to the will of the Libyan people and h...
In May 1970, the Revolutionary Intellectuals Seminar was held to bring intellectuals in line with the revolution, while that year's Legislative Review and Amendment united secular and religious law codes, introducing sharia into the legal system. Ruling by decree, the RCC maintained the monarchy's ban on political part...
With crude oil as the country's primary export, Gaddafi sought to improve Libya's oil sector. In October 1969, he proclaimed the current trade terms unfair, benefiting foreign corporations more than the Libyan state, and by threatening to reduce production, in December Jalloud successfully increased the price of Libyan...
Increasing state control over the oil sector, the RCC began a program of nationalization, starting with the expropriation of British Petroleum's share of the British Petroleum-N.B. Hunt Sahir Field in December 1971. In September 1973, it was announced that all foreign oil producers active in Libya were to be nationaliz...
The RCC attempted to suppress regional and tribal affiliation, replacing it with a unified pan-Libyan identity. In doing so, they tried discrediting tribal leaders as agents of the old regime, and in August 1971 a Sabha military court tried many of them for counter-revolutionary activity. Long-standing administrative b...
The RCC implemented measures for social reform, adopting sharia as a basis. The consumption of alcohol was banned, night clubs and Christian churches were shut down, traditional Libyan dress was encouraged, while Arabic was decreed as the only language permitted in official communications and on road signs. From 1969 t...
The influence of Nasser's Arab nationalism over the RCC was immediately apparent. The administration was instantly recognized by the neighbouring Arab nationalist regimes in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Sudan, with Egypt sending experts to aid the inexperienced RCC. Gaddafi propounded Pan-Arab ideas, proclaiming the need for...
After Nasser died in November 1970, his successor, Anwar Sadat, suggested that rather than a unified state, they create a political federation, implemented in April 1971; in doing so, Egypt, Syria and Sudan got large grants of Libyan oil money. In February 1972, Gaddafi and Sadat signed an unofficial charter of merger,...
After the 1969 coup, representatives of the Four Powers – France, the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union – were called to meet RCC representatives. The U.K. and U.S. quickly extended diplomatic recognition, hoping to secure the position of their military bases in Libya and fearing further instabilit...
Moving to reduce Italian influence, in October 1970 all Italian-owned assets were expropriated and the 12,000-strong Italian community expelled from Libya alongside a smaller number of Jews. The day became a national holiday. Aiming to reduce NATO power in the Mediterranean, in 1971 Libya requested that Malta cease to ...
His relationship with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat of Fatah was strained, with Gaddafi considering him too moderate and calling for more violent action. Instead he supported militia like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, the Democrati...

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